High-tech Hollywood meets high art: Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is historically significant for being the first film to combine the most recent high-budget special effects with formal innovation and the most serious artistic ambition. In terms of formal innovation, it is not the high-quality special effects in themselves that are most interesting (the fusion of astronomical imagery with abstract representations of the divine is almost a sci-fi staple) but the fact that they form part of a disjunctive structure that departs from Hollywood's narrative conventions. Not that the film eschews narrative entirely - indeed I would suggest that it's most important formal innovation is precisely the way it combines standard narrative techniques (enabling us to enter the protagonist's Texas childhood with genuine emotion) with genuinely poetic, 'avant-garde' juxtapositions.
One juxtaposition in particular dominates the film: images of deep space and deep geological time side by side with a narrative of human loss. The epigram from Job with which the film begins (together with certain whispered voiceovers, and the sermon that occurs within the narrative) clearly suggests that we interpret this juxtaposition as an attempt to evoke the strangeness and at times cruel incomprehensibility of God through the strangeness and incomprehensibility of His creation. Understood in this way, the attempt may be judged successful; on the other hand, a more radical film might have refrained from overdetermining this interpretation and instead allowed the images and narrative to speak for themselves, thereby secularizing the strong Christian metaphysics.
However, the film's biggest failure is its lack of irony. It is not so much that great works of art must be ironic (though many are), but that a film so self-consciously sincere in pressing high-tech Hollywood techniques into the service of high art ought to have been more conscious of the meaning of such a strategy. Like the gleaming monuments to corporate America in which the protagonist moves (and of which he, and Malick himself, is clearly critical), The Tree of Life cannot help but appear as a slick, high-definition monument to Hollywood's big-budget culture industry (which it implicitly affirms by its mode of production, its use of special effects and its star Hollywood actors). Had this theme been raised and explored within the film, it might have been a great work of art (following on from my previous suggestion about secularizing the Christian metaphysics, one might imagine a similar film in which Hollywood special effects were themselves presented as a successor to religious art in a non-religious age). As it is, however, the film appears ignorant of its own preconditions and thus to some extent both pretentious and naive.
Friday 30 December 2011
Friday 16 December 2011
Benjamin, Baudelaire and a Dilemma of Contemporary Aesthetics.
Contemporary artistic practice can seem to face the dilemma of a choice between an antiquated aesthetic of meditative contemplation (postmodernism as neo-romanticism) and a fruitless skeptical fragmentation (postmodernism as intensification of modernism). In Walter Benjamin's terms, a purely contemplative aesthetic is antiquated because it aims at an experience of aura that no longer has a place in post-industrial capitalism, while a skeptical aesthetic is fruitless because it merely reflects this loss of aura.
One way to escape this dilemma is suggested by Benjamin's essay on Baudelaire. For while, for Benjamin, "the disintegration of the aura makes itself felt in [Baudelaire's] lyric poetry", it does so in such a way that the lived experience (Erlebnis) of this loss, is "given the weight" of auratic experience (Erfahrung). Unlike, say, Eliot's 'the Wasteland', in which the loss of aura is experienced only in the mode of skeptical fragmentation, Baudelaire's experience of loss (both as nostalgia - 'ideal' - and pessimistic clarity - 'spleen') attains metrical, thematic and thereby contemplative coherence.
One way to escape this dilemma is suggested by Benjamin's essay on Baudelaire. For while, for Benjamin, "the disintegration of the aura makes itself felt in [Baudelaire's] lyric poetry", it does so in such a way that the lived experience (Erlebnis) of this loss, is "given the weight" of auratic experience (Erfahrung). Unlike, say, Eliot's 'the Wasteland', in which the loss of aura is experienced only in the mode of skeptical fragmentation, Baudelaire's experience of loss (both as nostalgia - 'ideal' - and pessimistic clarity - 'spleen') attains metrical, thematic and thereby contemplative coherence.
Monday 28 November 2011
Heidegger on Poetry and Thinking
Poetry and thinking meet each other in one and the same only when, and as long as, they remain distinctly in the distinctness of their nature. (Heidegger, '...poetically man dwells...')
The profundity of Heidegger's thinking about poetry (or 'poetic thinking' as Heidegger's 'Dichten' can also be translated) lies in his sensitivity to the possibility that the essence of poetry might simply be inaccessible to thinking - even postmetaphysical or meditative thinking, i.e. 'Denken'. Heidegger recognizes that 'Dichten', as the spiritual activity or thoughtful journey of the poet might be such that it can only be fully understood 'from the inside', in the same sort of way that swimming can only be fully understood by someone who has actually learned to swim. If this is true, and the spiritual journey involved in 'Denken' is radically distinct from 'Dichten', it would follow that 'Denken' could only ever approach an understanding of poetry indirectly and externally. Not only would a philosophical definition of the nature and purpose of poetry be unattainable - even a philosophical account of the relation between philosophy and poetry, between Dichten and Denken, would face significant limits. Indeed it is not clear why Heidegger's claim that poetry and thinking can 'meet....in one and the same' does not overstep these limits, in that it brings the kinds of spiritual activity together under the roof of 'the same' as this is understood by 'Denken.
The profundity of Heidegger's thinking about poetry (or 'poetic thinking' as Heidegger's 'Dichten' can also be translated) lies in his sensitivity to the possibility that the essence of poetry might simply be inaccessible to thinking - even postmetaphysical or meditative thinking, i.e. 'Denken'. Heidegger recognizes that 'Dichten', as the spiritual activity or thoughtful journey of the poet might be such that it can only be fully understood 'from the inside', in the same sort of way that swimming can only be fully understood by someone who has actually learned to swim. If this is true, and the spiritual journey involved in 'Denken' is radically distinct from 'Dichten', it would follow that 'Denken' could only ever approach an understanding of poetry indirectly and externally. Not only would a philosophical definition of the nature and purpose of poetry be unattainable - even a philosophical account of the relation between philosophy and poetry, between Dichten and Denken, would face significant limits. Indeed it is not clear why Heidegger's claim that poetry and thinking can 'meet....in one and the same' does not overstep these limits, in that it brings the kinds of spiritual activity together under the roof of 'the same' as this is understood by 'Denken.
Sunday 14 August 2011
Richard Rorty and Conversational Philosophy
According to Richard Rorty's definition, doing 'conversational philosophy' requires us "to give up the goal of getting things right, and substitute that of enlarging our repertoire of individual and cultural self-descriptions". This fits in with his pragmatist view that the point of philosophy "is not to find out what anything is 'really' like, but to help us grow up - to make us happier, freer, and more flexible".
Rorty does not seem to want us to read too much into his use of the term 'conversational', but it strikes me that there is indeed a close connection term between the goal of enlarging a repertoire of descriptions and the art of conversation. Among other things, a good conversationalist ought to be able to engage and impress a wide range of potential interlocutors, which could be said to require a sympathetic grasp of the wide range of life-stances these interlocutors might hold.
Following this train of thought, we might say the conversational thinker ought to be interdisciplinary, as it would be a poor conversationalist who only felt comfortable talking to those working in her own discipline. In particular she ought to have a grasp of literary as well as scientific culture, in order to be able to converse skillfully with members of each.
An implication for literature and the arts - which Rorty sees as important voices in the 'conversation of mankind' - might be that the best art is that which attracts the interest and admiration of people with a wide range of different intellectual positions; and that the best artists will have the breadth of intellectual sympathy required to do this (even if this remains at a relatively intuitive level - Shakespeare?).
Reading Rorty, one sometimes has the feeling that his ideal 'liberal ironist' is a little too happy, too untroubled by doubts and fears in her intellectual life, to be a flesh and blood human being. After all, when one has given up trying to get anything right, what is there left to worry about, intellectually? But, again, the term 'conversational' suggests a way of putting flesh on the bones. The would-be conversational thinker will naturally worry whether she is really as good a conversationalist as she takes herself to be - there is always the possibility that the next person she meets (or the next book she reads) will say something that blows her mind or shakes her foundations, converting her to a radically new outlook. Indeed the next person she talks to might even convince her to give up conversational philosophy and return to classical epistemology.
Not that what fundamentally worries the conversational thinker is the shame of meeting a superior conversationalist. For the underlying worry is that one's current outlook is not sufficiently flexible and open-minded, that it has not been informed by a wide enough range of perspectives, and that consequently, one is not as happy or as free as one would like to be. Despite avoiding the anxieties associated with the traditional ideals of truth, it is quite possible for a conversational thinker to be driven, in his quest for an ever wider range of intellectual sympathies, by the kind of anxious, unsatisfied desire for fulfilment most of us recognize.
Friday 17 June 2011
Heidegger and Wallace Stevens on Poetic Thinking
Is there a specifically poetic way of thinking? Heidegger thought there was. In his later writings he distinguishes poetic thinking from meditative philosophical thinking. For Heidegger these two styles of thinking are in some ways alike - both require the thinker to abstain from logical-scientific (or what Heidegger would call 'technological') thinking in order to be able to approach the 'holy mystery' of being. But Heidegger also emphasizes that they are distinct. Just what the distinction is Heidegger found difficult to say. As he put it, the dialogue between poetry and thinking is a long one, and is only just beginning.
Julian Young (in his book 'Heidegger's later Philosophy') suggests the following interpretation of Heidegger's distinction. Meditative thinking is discursive, while poetic thinking is intuitive and direct. Meditative thinking is thus limited to pointing to being in a negative way, while poetic thinking enables the thinker to actually set foot within the realm of being.
A problem with this way of drawing the distinction is that while experientially direct access to the realm of being may be the successful outcome of poetic thinking, only the most optimistic and mystical of poets would think of such access as characterizing their everyday way of thinking. Perhaps Holderlin, in his final days of madness, was granted a more or less continuous vision of being; most poets' everyday way of thinking is a more meandering, less ecstatic affair, only occasionally punctuated by moments of poetic vision.
Wallace Stevens' account of the poet's way of thinking (in the lecture 'A Collect of Philosophy') is more realistic in this respect:
"The probing of the philosopher is deliberate, as the history of the part that logic has played in philosophy demonstrates...On the other hand, the probing of the poet is fortuitous..Up to the point at which he has found his subject, the state of vague receptivity in which he goes about resembles one part of something that is dependent on another part, which he is not quite able to specify...It may be said that the philosopher probes the sphere or spheres of perception and that he moves about therein like someone intent on making sure of every foot of the way. If the poet moves about in the same sphere or spheres, and occasionally he may, he is light-footed. He is intent on what he sees and hears and the sense of the certainty of the presences about him is as nothing to the presences themselves. "
Here Stevens is describing, not the moment of poetic vision itself, nor the process of poetic composition, but the everyday way of thinking of a poet in search of a poem. Moreover, the description not only differentiates the poet's way of thinking from logical-scientific thinking, but also suggests a difference betweent the poet's way of thinking and Heidegger's meditative thinking. Despite the fact that, according to Heidegger, it involves a turn away from willed deliberation, there is after all something deliberate, slow and cautious about meditative thinking that contrasts with the easy, 'light-footed' and 'fortuitous' approach of Stevens' poet. Although both may involve a state of 'vague receptivity' ultimately directed at what Heidegger calls Being, or what Stevens calls the 'supreme fiction' (in 'A Collect of Philosophy' he suggests that 'the idea of God is the ultimate poetic idea'), Heidegger's 'Gelassenheit' differs from the relaxed, playful way of thinking Stevens seems to be after.
Julian Young (in his book 'Heidegger's later Philosophy') suggests the following interpretation of Heidegger's distinction. Meditative thinking is discursive, while poetic thinking is intuitive and direct. Meditative thinking is thus limited to pointing to being in a negative way, while poetic thinking enables the thinker to actually set foot within the realm of being.
A problem with this way of drawing the distinction is that while experientially direct access to the realm of being may be the successful outcome of poetic thinking, only the most optimistic and mystical of poets would think of such access as characterizing their everyday way of thinking. Perhaps Holderlin, in his final days of madness, was granted a more or less continuous vision of being; most poets' everyday way of thinking is a more meandering, less ecstatic affair, only occasionally punctuated by moments of poetic vision.
Wallace Stevens' account of the poet's way of thinking (in the lecture 'A Collect of Philosophy') is more realistic in this respect:
"The probing of the philosopher is deliberate, as the history of the part that logic has played in philosophy demonstrates...On the other hand, the probing of the poet is fortuitous..Up to the point at which he has found his subject, the state of vague receptivity in which he goes about resembles one part of something that is dependent on another part, which he is not quite able to specify...It may be said that the philosopher probes the sphere or spheres of perception and that he moves about therein like someone intent on making sure of every foot of the way. If the poet moves about in the same sphere or spheres, and occasionally he may, he is light-footed. He is intent on what he sees and hears and the sense of the certainty of the presences about him is as nothing to the presences themselves. "
Here Stevens is describing, not the moment of poetic vision itself, nor the process of poetic composition, but the everyday way of thinking of a poet in search of a poem. Moreover, the description not only differentiates the poet's way of thinking from logical-scientific thinking, but also suggests a difference betweent the poet's way of thinking and Heidegger's meditative thinking. Despite the fact that, according to Heidegger, it involves a turn away from willed deliberation, there is after all something deliberate, slow and cautious about meditative thinking that contrasts with the easy, 'light-footed' and 'fortuitous' approach of Stevens' poet. Although both may involve a state of 'vague receptivity' ultimately directed at what Heidegger calls Being, or what Stevens calls the 'supreme fiction' (in 'A Collect of Philosophy' he suggests that 'the idea of God is the ultimate poetic idea'), Heidegger's 'Gelassenheit' differs from the relaxed, playful way of thinking Stevens seems to be after.
Tuesday 17 May 2011
A Brief History of Literary Skepticism.
The birth of philosophical skepticism in ancient Greece was accompanied by an awareness of the natural affinity between such skepticism and imaginative literature. The founder of Pyrrhonism, Pyrrho of Elis, was fond of quoting Homer; indeed, the latter, according to Diogenes Laertes, was even called the founder of skepticism 'since he at different times gives different accounts of the same circumstance, as much as any one else ever did; and since he never dogmatizes definitively respecting affirmation'. Pyrrho's pupil, Timon of Phlius, wrote poems satirizing non-skeptical philosophers. Dee Clayman has argued that he initiated an 'aesthetics of skepticism' that persisted through such hellenistic poets as Callimachus and Theocritus. The key elements of this hellenistic literary skepticism are 1) an awareness that imaginative literature is, for purely formal reasons, particularly appropriate for the expression of philosophical skepticism, since the 'speech-act' involved in literary writing is different from the mere assertion of beliefs of any kind, and 2) the actual expression of specifically skeptical ideas as part of the content of literary writing (see Clayman's account of specifically skeptical ideas in Timon, Callimachus etc.)
The rebirth of philosophical skepticism in Renaissance Europe does not seem to have been immediately accompanied by a rebirth of this particular literary skeptical tradition - though it could be said to re-emerge in the 18th century of Pope and Sterne (see, for instance, Fred Parker's book Scepticism and Literature). Instead, we find the sporadic development of a different, more playful kind of literary skepticism. The Catholic Pyrrhonism of his 'apology for Raymond Sebond' does not lead Montaigne to the ancient skeptic's goal of 'ataraxia' or intellectual tranquillity, but instead to the Essays' playful recollections of self and history. The 18th century poet Charles Churchill expresses, perhaps for the first time, the connection between skepticism and a new kind of intellectual freedom:
Opinions should be free as air;
No man, whate'er his rank, whate'er
His qualities, a claim can found
That my opinion must be bound,
And square with his.
Only a little later, the imaginative religious skepticism of Hume's dialogues very likely influenced (as Christos Pulos has argued) Shelley's skeptical mythopoetic poetry, and his skeptical identification of philosophy with poetry in the 'defense of poetry'. Modern literary skepticism becomes yet more self-conscious with Nietzsche's call for an 'experimental' skepticism opposed to the 'lethargy' of Pyrrho's 'Greek Buddhism'. The modern literary skeptic, therefore, does not merely recognize that literature is particularly suitable for expressing skeptical ideas; he understands the literary exploration of fictional and historical worlds as part of a distinctively skeptical form of intellectual activity. Instead of pragmatically accepting the moral cultural norms of his time, as the ancient skeptics did, the modern literary skeptic recognizes that he might equally well live by freely imagined alternative norms. Instead of the emotional stability of ataraxia, his goal is a kind of intellectual and experiential self-transformation that does not depend on belief or knowledge.
Drawing on Hegel's claim that Shakespeare's characters are, for the first time in history, 'free artists of themselves', Harold Bloom has argued that Shakespeare (with the help of Montaigne) invented the modern idea of self-transformation through 'self-overhearing' (which I interpret as a species of aesthetic self-interpretation). This would make Shakespeare central to the modern tradition of literary skepticism here outlined.
The rebirth of philosophical skepticism in Renaissance Europe does not seem to have been immediately accompanied by a rebirth of this particular literary skeptical tradition - though it could be said to re-emerge in the 18th century of Pope and Sterne (see, for instance, Fred Parker's book Scepticism and Literature). Instead, we find the sporadic development of a different, more playful kind of literary skepticism. The Catholic Pyrrhonism of his 'apology for Raymond Sebond' does not lead Montaigne to the ancient skeptic's goal of 'ataraxia' or intellectual tranquillity, but instead to the Essays' playful recollections of self and history. The 18th century poet Charles Churchill expresses, perhaps for the first time, the connection between skepticism and a new kind of intellectual freedom:
Opinions should be free as air;
No man, whate'er his rank, whate'er
His qualities, a claim can found
That my opinion must be bound,
And square with his.
Only a little later, the imaginative religious skepticism of Hume's dialogues very likely influenced (as Christos Pulos has argued) Shelley's skeptical mythopoetic poetry, and his skeptical identification of philosophy with poetry in the 'defense of poetry'. Modern literary skepticism becomes yet more self-conscious with Nietzsche's call for an 'experimental' skepticism opposed to the 'lethargy' of Pyrrho's 'Greek Buddhism'. The modern literary skeptic, therefore, does not merely recognize that literature is particularly suitable for expressing skeptical ideas; he understands the literary exploration of fictional and historical worlds as part of a distinctively skeptical form of intellectual activity. Instead of pragmatically accepting the moral cultural norms of his time, as the ancient skeptics did, the modern literary skeptic recognizes that he might equally well live by freely imagined alternative norms. Instead of the emotional stability of ataraxia, his goal is a kind of intellectual and experiential self-transformation that does not depend on belief or knowledge.
Drawing on Hegel's claim that Shakespeare's characters are, for the first time in history, 'free artists of themselves', Harold Bloom has argued that Shakespeare (with the help of Montaigne) invented the modern idea of self-transformation through 'self-overhearing' (which I interpret as a species of aesthetic self-interpretation). This would make Shakespeare central to the modern tradition of literary skepticism here outlined.
Monday 11 April 2011
Imaginative Liberty
Imaginative liberty is freedom of imagination - with imagination understood as the capacity to conceive, picture, and inhabit worldviews (ethical, political, artistic, religious, philosophical). Imaginative liberty is developed by acquaintance with the ideas and experiences of historical periods and geographical regions other than one's own; by anything, in fact, that enriches one's storehouse of worldviews, and of the feelings, concepts, etc. that go to make up such worldviews. It is fostered by Coleridge's 'suspension of disbelief', by Keats' 'negative capability', and by Schleiermacher's and Dilthey's hermeneutics. It is fostered by talking to the most varied and interesting people one can find. It is freedom from one-sidedness in the life of the mind - though it is compatible with political or religious commitment. It is a natural extension of the principle of 'freedom of religion' - it is the capacity to choose between broad ethical or religious commitments with as much autonomy as is possible in our post-enlightenment age. It is a species of 'positive liberty', but it is compatible with 'negative liberty'. It is a possible foundation for a romantic liberalism.
Wednesday 30 March 2011
Richards and Eliot on Poetry, Belief and the Waste Land.
For I A Richards, Eliot's 'The Waste Land' was exemplary in effecting a "complete severance" between poetry and belief. In his appendix to The Principles of Literary Criticism, Richards sees the obscurity, ambiguity and fragmentation of the Waste Land as a useful barrier to a traditional 'overintellectual' approach to poetry - one which tries "to catch [the poem] in an intellectual net or to squeeze out a doctrine". The Waste Land thus becomes a model for a poetry of the future in which poetry will not compete with science on the territory of belief, but will do the more important work of ordering our impulses and generating emotional attitudes in the service of life.
Eliot was sufficiently intrigued by Richards' view that he responded to it on several occasions, including a brief 'note on poetry and belief' in The Enemy (1927), a long footnote in his 1929 essay on Dante, and in Ch. 7 of The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933). The thrust of his response is that the interpretation of poetry can never be fully 'detached from the beliefs of the poet'. In the specific case of the Waste Land, Eliot suggests that if the poem expresses a sense of desolation, doubt, uncertainty, futility, this is 'not a separation from belief'; rather 'doubt and uncertainty are merely a variety of belief'. Perhaps more precisely, the expression of a sense of desolation and doubt in a poem cannot be separated from the poet's wider beliefs, e.g. concerning the decline of Western civilization, and the erosion of religious belief.
This aspect of Eliot's response does not quite get to the heart of the issue, however, for it is open to Richards to question whether the poet's 'beliefs' about Western civilization and religion are really beliefs at all, and not rather emotional attitudes.
Richards follows the logical positivists in drawing a strict distinction between beliefs and emotional attitudes, between fact-stating and emotive discourse, with science on one side and poetry on the other (while inverting the logical positivists' conclusion that emotive, poetic discourse ought to be jettisoned). Richards might thus seem to be vulnerable to the classic criticism of the logical positivists, namely that they were unable to say whether their own assertions about discourse were fact-stating or emotive. Eliot almost makes this point in The Use of poetry... when he quotes a passage in which Richards discusses emotive 'pseudo-statements' , and writes tersely: 'I submit that this is itself a pseudo-statement, if there is such a thing'. But this is more of a challenge than a refutation - it leaves room for Richards to respond by either staking out a middle ground between fact-stating and emotive discourse in which to locate his brand of literary criticism, or to follow German romanticism, strands of French 'theory', or the 'Yale school' in accepting that literary criticism is itself a kind of literature, and so not scientific or fact-stating.
I suggest that to make progress with the question of poetry and belief we focus instead on an issue raised briefly in Eliot's footnote in the essay on Dante. Eliot writes: 'The theory of Mr. Richards is... incomplete until he defines the species of religious, philosophical, sientific, and other beliefs, as well as that of 'everyday' belief'. Eliot is exactly right, I suggest, to point to the variety of types of belief, though he may be wrong to suggest that there are radically different species here. It may be that all we need is a distinction between the degrees of belief with which an educated person may reasonably hold different types of belief. Everyday beliefs ('the post has arrived') and some types of scientific belief ('this aeroplane will fly safely') are reasonably held with a high degree of belief, while many religious and philosophical beliefs (and even some scientific beliefs - e.g. quantum theory is reconcilable with relativity) are most reasonably held with a very low degree of belief, given the divergence of expert opinion.
It seems to me that this distinction between 'high' and 'low' degree beliefs allows us to see the partial truth in the positions of both Eliot and Richards. We can affirm, with Eliot, that even on issues concerning the value and fate of Western civilization, it is not unreasonable to speak of belief, as long as we bear in mind the differences between different types and degrees of belief. At the same time, we can maintain something like Richards' distinction between emotional attitudes, and scientific belief. Richard's category of scientific belief translates into the category of beliefs that are reasonably held with a high degree of certainty. His emotional attitudes, on the other hand, can be understood as complex and compound psychological states involving (among many other things) philosophical, religious and other beliefs that are distinct from scientific and everyday beliefs in that it is unreasonable to hold them with any great degree of certainty. This enables us also to preserve the idea that it is a key function of poetry (perhaps, we might add, along with philosophy, theology and literary criticism) to generate and impact on emotional attitudes of this sort; and more specifically, that it is a key virtue of 'the Waste Land' that it does so.
Eliot was sufficiently intrigued by Richards' view that he responded to it on several occasions, including a brief 'note on poetry and belief' in The Enemy (1927), a long footnote in his 1929 essay on Dante, and in Ch. 7 of The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933). The thrust of his response is that the interpretation of poetry can never be fully 'detached from the beliefs of the poet'. In the specific case of the Waste Land, Eliot suggests that if the poem expresses a sense of desolation, doubt, uncertainty, futility, this is 'not a separation from belief'; rather 'doubt and uncertainty are merely a variety of belief'. Perhaps more precisely, the expression of a sense of desolation and doubt in a poem cannot be separated from the poet's wider beliefs, e.g. concerning the decline of Western civilization, and the erosion of religious belief.
This aspect of Eliot's response does not quite get to the heart of the issue, however, for it is open to Richards to question whether the poet's 'beliefs' about Western civilization and religion are really beliefs at all, and not rather emotional attitudes.
Richards follows the logical positivists in drawing a strict distinction between beliefs and emotional attitudes, between fact-stating and emotive discourse, with science on one side and poetry on the other (while inverting the logical positivists' conclusion that emotive, poetic discourse ought to be jettisoned). Richards might thus seem to be vulnerable to the classic criticism of the logical positivists, namely that they were unable to say whether their own assertions about discourse were fact-stating or emotive. Eliot almost makes this point in The Use of poetry... when he quotes a passage in which Richards discusses emotive 'pseudo-statements' , and writes tersely: 'I submit that this is itself a pseudo-statement, if there is such a thing'. But this is more of a challenge than a refutation - it leaves room for Richards to respond by either staking out a middle ground between fact-stating and emotive discourse in which to locate his brand of literary criticism, or to follow German romanticism, strands of French 'theory', or the 'Yale school' in accepting that literary criticism is itself a kind of literature, and so not scientific or fact-stating.
I suggest that to make progress with the question of poetry and belief we focus instead on an issue raised briefly in Eliot's footnote in the essay on Dante. Eliot writes: 'The theory of Mr. Richards is... incomplete until he defines the species of religious, philosophical, sientific, and other beliefs, as well as that of 'everyday' belief'. Eliot is exactly right, I suggest, to point to the variety of types of belief, though he may be wrong to suggest that there are radically different species here. It may be that all we need is a distinction between the degrees of belief with which an educated person may reasonably hold different types of belief. Everyday beliefs ('the post has arrived') and some types of scientific belief ('this aeroplane will fly safely') are reasonably held with a high degree of belief, while many religious and philosophical beliefs (and even some scientific beliefs - e.g. quantum theory is reconcilable with relativity) are most reasonably held with a very low degree of belief, given the divergence of expert opinion.
It seems to me that this distinction between 'high' and 'low' degree beliefs allows us to see the partial truth in the positions of both Eliot and Richards. We can affirm, with Eliot, that even on issues concerning the value and fate of Western civilization, it is not unreasonable to speak of belief, as long as we bear in mind the differences between different types and degrees of belief. At the same time, we can maintain something like Richards' distinction between emotional attitudes, and scientific belief. Richard's category of scientific belief translates into the category of beliefs that are reasonably held with a high degree of certainty. His emotional attitudes, on the other hand, can be understood as complex and compound psychological states involving (among many other things) philosophical, religious and other beliefs that are distinct from scientific and everyday beliefs in that it is unreasonable to hold them with any great degree of certainty. This enables us also to preserve the idea that it is a key function of poetry (perhaps, we might add, along with philosophy, theology and literary criticism) to generate and impact on emotional attitudes of this sort; and more specifically, that it is a key virtue of 'the Waste Land' that it does so.
Thursday 27 January 2011
TS Eliot vs Matthew Arnold in The Use of Poetry
Eliot's main target in 'The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism' is Matthew Arnold's view (echoed by I. A. Richards) that poetry ought to be a substitute for religious faith. To summarise crudely, Eliot seems to offer two main arguments against Arnold. Firstly, following Jacques Maritain, he claims that Arnold's attitude leads one to expect too much from poetry, engendering arrogance in the poet, and mystical extravagance in the poetry, instead of classical restraint. Second, he thinks Arnold fails to consider that religious poetry is at its best when it has a background in a genuine, stable religion (like Eliot's Church of England). Such a background not only provides a proper religious context for any spiritual nourishment the poetry provides, but also gives the religious poet more room to focus on the formal excellence of his poetry. In sum Eliot claims that Arnold's view leads to bad poetry, and bad religion.
Though I find Eliot's overall case to be powerful, these explicit arguments seem to me rather weak. On the issue of formal excellence, one can respond by pointing out that even if Arnoldian poetry is at risk of tending toward extravagance, this surely leaves open the possibility of good Arnoldian poets who write formally excellent verse with the appropriate restraint. Indeed, one of the cornerstones of the post-Eliot critical defence of romanticism is that the romantics were good Arnoldian poets - avant la lettre - in precisely this sense. On the issue of spiritual nourishment, on the other hand, Eliot simply begs the question against the Arnoldian, who is interested in a substitute for religious faith precisely because he no longer wants to be embedded in a Church of any kind. Arnoldian poetry may indeed be the worse, in nutritional terms, for operating in a spiritual void, but for most of us that void is one from which there is no escape.
Though I find Eliot's overall case to be powerful, these explicit arguments seem to me rather weak. On the issue of formal excellence, one can respond by pointing out that even if Arnoldian poetry is at risk of tending toward extravagance, this surely leaves open the possibility of good Arnoldian poets who write formally excellent verse with the appropriate restraint. Indeed, one of the cornerstones of the post-Eliot critical defence of romanticism is that the romantics were good Arnoldian poets - avant la lettre - in precisely this sense. On the issue of spiritual nourishment, on the other hand, Eliot simply begs the question against the Arnoldian, who is interested in a substitute for religious faith precisely because he no longer wants to be embedded in a Church of any kind. Arnoldian poetry may indeed be the worse, in nutritional terms, for operating in a spiritual void, but for most of us that void is one from which there is no escape.
Friday 21 January 2011
George Steiner, Real Presences and Liberal Scepticism
In Real Presences, George Steiner "argues a wager on transcendence" (214). The wager is, more precisely, that the fundamental aesthetic act is an imitatio of an original, divine, act of creation that transcends empirical proof. Steiner clearly hopes to tempt at least some of his readers into making the same wager themselves. At the same time, however, he emphasizes that his proposal - "that there is some fundamental encounter with transcendence in the creation of art" (228) - is unacceptable to "the prevailing climate of thought and of feeling in our culture"(228). It is unacceptable to deconstruction, with its contrary presumption of immanence and absence. It is unacceptable to "logical atomism" and "logical positivism" - and by extension to most contemporary anglophone philosophy - because it exceeds the bounds of empirical or logical argument. Among the most pervasive sources of opposition to the purported encounter with transcendence, is "liberal scepticism" (227). With this tag - he also refers elsewhere to 'sceptical positivism' and 'sceptical rationality' - Steiner presumably aims to refer, not so much to a particular philosophical school or tradition, but to a widespread intellectual mood: sceptical, rational and suspicious of transcendence.
How, then, does Steiner hope to convert the late twentieth century sceptic? Steiner's overall rhetorical strategy in Real Presences can be seen as a sustained attempt to use the sceptic's own suspicions against him. Deconstructive nihilism, he concedes, cannot be refuted "on its own terms and planes of argument"(132). To the sceptical empiricist, moreover, he concedes that his convictions concerning transcendence are 'verification transcendent'. But for Steiner these sceptical tendencies do not go far enough. It is precisely because verification transcendence "marks every essential aspect of human existence" that one must, in confronting great art, take something like a leap of faith. Moreover, it is precisely "in the light or, if you will, in the dark of the nihilistic alternative" represented by deconstruction that one supposedly finds further motivation to take Steiner's wager.
However, this rhetorical strategy seems to me to exaggerate the distance between Steiner and the liberal sceptic. For one thing, the key step in Steiner's argument, the recognition of pervasive verification transcendence, is one many liberal sceptics would presumably be happy to take. Moreover, although it might seem that Steiner's next step - the irrational wager itself - marks a decisive break from scepticism, I suggest that even here Steiner is closer to the liberal sceptic than he appears to think. After all Steiner is careful not to present his 'wager' as a return to dogma - he is not a postmodern dogmatic theologian. Indeed it is precisely because he is extremely reluctant to present his convictions as a matter of straightforward empirical belief or propositional assertion that he resorts at key points to such terms as 'wager', 'conjecture', 'affirmation'. At this point, Steiner should perhaps have drawn on the liberal scepticism of I. A. Richards, with his distinction, for example, between intellectual and emotional belief. Placing himself within this ultimately Coleridgean sceptical tradition might have served not only to clarify his views, but also to tone down his antagonistic stance toward 'the prevailing climate of thought and of feeling'.
How, then, does Steiner hope to convert the late twentieth century sceptic? Steiner's overall rhetorical strategy in Real Presences can be seen as a sustained attempt to use the sceptic's own suspicions against him. Deconstructive nihilism, he concedes, cannot be refuted "on its own terms and planes of argument"(132). To the sceptical empiricist, moreover, he concedes that his convictions concerning transcendence are 'verification transcendent'. But for Steiner these sceptical tendencies do not go far enough. It is precisely because verification transcendence "marks every essential aspect of human existence" that one must, in confronting great art, take something like a leap of faith. Moreover, it is precisely "in the light or, if you will, in the dark of the nihilistic alternative" represented by deconstruction that one supposedly finds further motivation to take Steiner's wager.
However, this rhetorical strategy seems to me to exaggerate the distance between Steiner and the liberal sceptic. For one thing, the key step in Steiner's argument, the recognition of pervasive verification transcendence, is one many liberal sceptics would presumably be happy to take. Moreover, although it might seem that Steiner's next step - the irrational wager itself - marks a decisive break from scepticism, I suggest that even here Steiner is closer to the liberal sceptic than he appears to think. After all Steiner is careful not to present his 'wager' as a return to dogma - he is not a postmodern dogmatic theologian. Indeed it is precisely because he is extremely reluctant to present his convictions as a matter of straightforward empirical belief or propositional assertion that he resorts at key points to such terms as 'wager', 'conjecture', 'affirmation'. At this point, Steiner should perhaps have drawn on the liberal scepticism of I. A. Richards, with his distinction, for example, between intellectual and emotional belief. Placing himself within this ultimately Coleridgean sceptical tradition might have served not only to clarify his views, but also to tone down his antagonistic stance toward 'the prevailing climate of thought and of feeling'.
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