Burke-Attitudes Towards History

8/11/2019 Burke-Attitudes Towards History

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TTITUDES

TOW RD HISTORY

K E N N E T H B U RK E


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T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

INTRODUCTION

PART I

University of California PressBerkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of Californ ia Press, Ltd.London, England

1937 by Editorial Publications, Inc. Revised secondedition 19 59 by Hermes Publications. The afterword

Attitudes Toward History: In Retrospective Prospect1784 by Kenneth Burke.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Burke, Kenneth, 1897-Attitudes toward history.

1 History-Philosophy. I. Title.D16.8.B83 1784 901 80-51234ISBN 0-520-04145-3ISBN 0-520-04148-8 (pb k.

Printed in the Un ited States of Am erica

ACCEPTANCE AND REJECTION

CH PTER I: WILLIAM JAMES WHITMAN AND EMERSON 3

Acceptance and Passivity , 19; Rejection, 21 Th e Changin g Emphasisof Frames, 25; S entimental Acceptance n Futurism, 30.

CH PTER : POETIC CATEGORIES 34

Tragedy, 37; Comedy, Humor, the Ode, 39; Negative Emphasis: the Elegy,or Plaint, 44; Satire, 49; Burlesque, 52; The Grotesque, 57; Monasticismand the Transitional, 69; Th e Didactic, 75; Didactic Transcendence inHesiod, 80; Didactic Transcendence in Eliot, 83; O ther Instances of T rans-cendence, 86.

CH PTER : TH E DESTINY OF ACCEPTANCE FRAMES 92

Discomfitures of Rejection, 99.

CH PTER IV: CONCLUSION 1 6

PART I

THE CURVE OF HISTORY

CH PTER I: CHRISTIAN EVANGELISM

CHAPTER : MEDIAEVAL SYNTHESIS

CH PTER : PROTESTANT TRANSITION

CH PTER I V: NAIVE CAPITALISM

CH PTER V: EMERGENT COLLECTIVISM

CH PTERVI:

COMIC CORRECTIVES


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A T T I T U D E S T O W A R D H I S T O R Y

P RT

ANALYSIS OF SYMBOLIC STRUCTURE

CHAPTER I: GENERAL NATURE OF RITUAL 179

The Tracking Down of Symbols, 191; Synthesis and Analysis, 196; Testsof Selectivity, 200; Analytic Radiations , 203; Main Components ofRitual, 209.

CHAPTER : DICTIONARY OF PIVOTAL TERMS 216Alienation, 216; Being Driven Into a Corner, 220; Bridging Device, 224;Bureaucratization of the Imaginative, 225; Casuistic Stretching, 229;Clusters, 232; Communion, 234; Control, 236; Cues, 236; Discounting,243; Earning One's World, 246; Erficiency, 248; Essence, 252; Forensic,254; Good Life , 256; Heads I Win, Tails You Lose , 260; Identity,Identification, 263; Imagery, 273; Legality, 291; Lexicological, 293; Neo-Malthusian Principle, 298; Oppor tunism, 306; Perspective by Incongruity,

308; Problem of Evil, 314; Reposxss the World, 314; Rihlals of Rebirth,317; Salvation Device, 319; Sect 320; Secular Prayer--or, extended :Character-building by Secular Prayer, 321; Stealing Back and Forth ofSymbols, 326: Symbolic Mergers, 328; Sym bols of Authority, 329; Tra ns-cendence, 336.

CONCLUSION 9

AFTERWORD TO SECOND EDITION 45

APPENDIX: THE SEVEN OFFICES 5

AFTERWORD: ATTITUDES TOW ARD HISTORYIN RETROSPECTIVE PROSPECT 77

I N T R O D U C T I O N

TOUGH the tendency is to pronounce the title of

this book with the accent on history so fa r as meaninggoes the accent should be on d f e ~ n d y historyis meant prima*-ns l ees Thebook, th


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A T T I T U D E S T O W A R D H I S T O R Y I N T R O D U C T I O N

tragedy, satire, fantasy, comedy. For such expressive formsare viewed as recordings on the dial-and we aim to get ou raccuracy by the inspecting and ch artin g of their accuracy.

Ou r second section, The Curv e of History, seeks tocha rt the over-all problems of merger and division (w ithcorresponding confusion and profusion of orth odoxy, here-sy, sect, and schism) that marked our particular Westernculture. Dramatistically inclined, we conceive of these de-velopmental stages af te r the analogy of a five-act play, thus:

Ac t I. Evangelical Christian ity emerging out of d$ng,pagan Rome.

Act 11. Mediaeval Synthesis.Act 111. Protestantism.Ac t IV. Early Capitalism.

form or otheraccountancy,

States, a m , ommunism, the Welfi re State, andthe giant i n d u s t r i a l ~ e i o n s hich &e t y p g o f ourown nation a t the present time (and which have aptly beencalled business governments, as dist inct from stric tly

political>overnmmiS'. j .

Th e third section, on The Gene~ralNaurc~ual,is necessary because of the i'i-~niei whereby a group's r -tines q n become its rituals, while on the o th er hi id ' its rit-

. .

I uals b e c o m x n e s . Or, otherwise put: poe age andr rhetqrical idea can become _ ubtly. used- a

the very natur e of poetry and rhetoric makes us prone. Forthe practised rhetoric ian relies greatly upon images to affectmen's ideation (as with curre nt terms like power vacuumand iron cu rta in ), and a poet's images differ from sheerly

sensory images precisely by reason of the f ac t tha t a poet'simages are saturated with ideas.

Throughout these three sections we have graduallyworked up a terminology, some terms of which r ecur qu itefrequently . These are our attitudinal terms for conf ront -ting kinds of q uanda ry t h a t nzutatis 17zutafzdis recur un der

various historical conditions. Th a t is, thoug h every historicalperiod is unique as regards its part icular set of circumstancesand persons, the tenor of men's policies for confrontingsuch manifold conditions has a syrzthesizing functio n. Forinstance,-if we feel happy on th j _ e d ~ t f e r e ~ t ccasions, thesethree occasions are in a sense$titudinally u n i i - i t h e y areorre iiz spirit, regardless of how different they may have beenin their particulars. And il: this sense, his tory constan tlyrepeats itself.

On e now sees the impor tance of o ur stress upon the t ermattitudes in our title. For all the terms which we consideralphabetically in our four th section are of strongly atti-tudinal sort. Even when they name a process or a condition,they name it from a meditative, or m~ra liz in q, r even hor-

.

taea And saturating the lot is the attitudeof at?itudes which we call the comic frame, the methodicview of human antics as a comedy, albeit as a comedy everon the verge of the most disastrous tragedy.

If comedy is our att itu de of attitudes, the n the process.of processes which this comedy meditates upon is whatcall the bureaucra tization of the imaginative. This for-

. . --- . --mula is designed to name the vexing things tha t happen whenmen tr y t o translate some pure aim or vision into terms ofits corresponding material embodiment, thus necessarilyinvolving elements alien to the original, spiritual ( imag-native ) motive. p

:


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: v , L r, I [ : ;


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Also, perhaps in another respect we should invoke the

charity of the comic discount. For despite some revisionsin this tiny Universal History, the work still clearly revealsits origins in the conditions and temper of the thirties (boththe century's and the author's). So, let us hope that thereader, comically inspirited, will forgive the author those

occasions when the author's.e$orts to transcend a local sit-uation b r a s t k l l y - t a s s e d - - ~ r ~ - ~ gf it.

K. B.


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no Nazi ideologist happens to have grown rhapsodic inpraise of the multiplication table. Presumably, if he had,the thoroughgoing anti-Nazi would feel it necessary tocondemn arithmetic.

Bridging D

The symbolic stru cture whereby one transcends a con-flict in one way or another. Thus, the &ikZi?Jik-fiirne-work of Aquinas bridged the distinction between serfs andnobles by a theory that located and justified the sta tus quo.Authorit y was grounded in custom. &tinction insta tus was established by custom. And this customary orderwas established by God in punishment for the fall of man(whereby government, property, and slavery were madeinevitable by natural l aw). Th e bourgeoisie transcendeda distinction in status by conceiving of all men in terms ofbourgeois man. The Marxist proposes to recognize the con-flict, which he transcends by a philosophy of history tha tis a bridge in to a classless society of the fu ture .

~ll-ers can be called bridging devices,as they cannot be explained with reference to their facevalue alone, but are a way across to many othe r ingre-dients (as when one man says liberty and means the rightto retain his capitalist holdings, and another by the sameword means socialism). There are also explicitly conceptual

bridging devices whereby one may use an opponent's state-ment by discounting. When obiects are not in a line, andyou would have them in a line without moving them, youmay pu t them into a line by shifting your angle of vision.

Thus recently we saw an irritating example of suchstrategy. A man had writt en a book to show the corruptionof newspaper advertising. The reviewer in a newspaperpraised it highly. And he bridged the discordancy by his

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D I C T I O N A R Y O F P I V O T A L T E R M S

moral: These fac ts show you conclusively that you shouldonly believe the commercial advertising published in thisnewspaper.

Bureaucratizatio~zo f the l~uagina t ive

This formula is a perspective by incongruity for.. pS naming-a basic p-rocess of history. ~ ; ; h a ~ ~t merely names the pro-

- - - .. __ __cess of dying. ~u ~a uc ra ti za to n s an unwieldy word,&haps even an onomatopoeia, since it sounds as bunglin

-7as the situation it would characterize. Imaginative sug-gests p,Iiancy, liquidity, the vernal. And with it we coupkthe i n c o n g r u o u w and almo% unpronounceable.

Gide has said somewhere that he distrusts the carrying-out of one possibility because it necessarily restricts otherpossibilities. Call the possibilities imaginative. And call

the carrying-out of olre possibility the bzrrenucmtizatio~tofthe imaginative. An imaginative possibility (usually at thestart Utopian) is bureaucratized when it is embodied in therealities of a social texture , in all the complexity of languageand habits, in the property relationships, the methods ofgovernment, production and'distribution, and in the de-velopment of rituals that re-enforce the same emphasis.

It follows that, in this imperfect world, ~i rn ae in a; .tive possibility_____.__--I-__.-an ever att ain_ _ _ _orn-a-ucrdatisn.Even capitalism, as Sombart has pointed out, has not at-

tained its ideal perfection. Capitalism would not beideally perfect until we had monetary equivalent foreverything, until every last bit of material exchange amongfriends were done for profit, until every casual greetingwere given at a price (and t hat price as high as the trafficwould bear).

In bureaucratizing a possibility, we necessarily comeupon the necessity of compromise, since human beings are


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not a perfect fit for any historic texture. A given ordermust, in stressing certain emphases, neglect other< A bu-

./ . . _ _ _ _reau cat fifi fer approaches the stage oZ ie Zl on 1n pro-port ion as its ufactor than theage of allenation corresponds with an intensification of classstruggle because, at the point where the accumulation ofunintended by-products is becoming impressive and op-pressive, there will be a class of people who have a ve ry realstake in the retention of the ailing bureaucratization .

From this you get a fu rt he r alienation-as the dispossessedare robbed even of thei r spir itua l possession, thei r righ tto be obedient to the reigning symbols of authority..

Obedience to the r ek ni ng symbols of a utho rity is in itselfnatural a n F P . . ~ h e eed to r < i ~ ~ ; ?~ E i - i i aTnfuland h%Zldi5iTdenng.The dispossessed struggle hard and longto remain loyal-but by the nat ure of the case, the bureau-crat ic order tends simply to move in on such patience andobedience. Eventually , sectarian divergence becomes organ-ized (as thinkers manipulate the complex forensic struc -ture, t o give it a particular emphasis in one direction). Butthose in possession of the authoritative symbols tend todrive the opposition into a corner, by owning the priests(publicists, educator s) who will rebuke the opposition for

its disobedience to the reigning symbols. The opposition

abandons some of t he symbolic ingredients and makes itselfready to take over other symbolic ingredients.

Insofar as it can unite in a new collectivity, progressivelyaffirming its own title to the orthodoxy, tendencies towardthe negativistic, satanistic, sectarian, disintegrative, and

splintering2' fall away. But insofar as its own imaginativepossibility requires embodiment in bureaucratic fixities, itsnecessary divergences from Utopia become apparent.


Many persons who scorn the very name of Utopia be-come wounded as the imperfec t world of bureaucraticcompromise is revealed. They are simply Utopians-scorn-ing-the-name-of-Utopian. A t times, the doctrine of Zweck

~ ~ zecht is required to understand a policy. By this doc-trine, we are advised.to discount the face value of a state-

ment by noting what interests it protects. The principleof t he discount advises us t o note t hat many advocates ofsocialism, for instance, can gain asylum for their views byinterlarding their appeal with attacks upon Russia. Therebythey can advocate an unpopula r philosophy by sharingwith their audience the usual capitalist aversions. They neednot e hampered by the realistic problems involved in the

bureauc ratization of the imaginative. O r in explicitly

condemning Utopianism, they can conceal from both theirauditors and themselves the underlying Utopian pattern oftheir thought.

We concede the close relationship betiveen this concept(bureauc ratizati on of the imaginative) and Spengler's cul-ture-civilization dichotomy. But we should hold that everyindividual man, at any period in history, must develop hisown mat ure civilization ou t of his own childhood cul-ture. Again, Spengler's use of the formula vows him to anoverly mystical notion of historic change. And it asks us tothink of culture and civilization as historic absolutes, with

one reigning at one time and the othe r reigning at another,a schematization that makes for a false philosophy of pur-pose. Yet undeniably the accumulated by-products leadingto alienation are greater in some periods than in others.And o ur concept might offer a method of conversion where-by Spengler's formula could e sufficiently discounted tomake it useful for a comic critique of social relationships.


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In the modern l aboratory, the procedure of i~zveiztiorzitself (t he very essence of t he imagina tive) has been bu-reaucratized. Since the time of the Renaissance, the Westhas been accumulating and perfecting a methodology ofinvention, so that improvements can now be coached byroutine. Science. knowledge, is the bureaucratization of

-- I . _ -. ~ L

*d state the ~ ri nc ip le f the laboratory in thisproposition : Every machine contains a cow-path. Th at is:there are embodied somewhere in its parts t he variant s of aprocess that remains simply because the originators of themachine embodied this process in their invention . I t has beenretained, not because it has been criticized, evaluated, andjudged to be the best possible process, bu t simply becauseno one ever thought of questioning it. And i t wasn't ques-

tioned because it was never even formulated, never givenexplicit verbalization. If the original inventor used a variantof reciprocating motion in one process of his machine, forinstance, improvement s may have been designed that simplyintroduced new variants of reciprocat ing motion. Once youllalne this, by the efficiency of abstractions, you areequipped to ask yourself whether the basic process mightbe altered: could you change from a reciprocating motionto a rotary motion, and would the change be more efficientby reason of its advance from the cradle t o the wheel? May-be it would, maybe it wouldn't; in any case, you have a

cue, a lead, for cr it ic is r~ nd experiment. As it stands,the process is a cow path, in pious obedience to its secretgrounding in the author ity of custom.

Ou r formula, perspective by incongruity s a pu l le lm e t h - & ? L onceptual

sphere. It b ~ r e a u c r a t i z e s ~ ~ ' ~ ~ s s p ~ o d u c t ~ o nfpetspectives. It democratizes a resource once confined to a

/ .


choice few of our most royal thinkers. It makes P e w -tvdu -

ust there follow the usual deteriora tion in quality? Un -questionably. But deterioration fro m one standpoin t is

a improvement'' from another standpoint. T he deteriora-

tion that would go with the democratization of planned

incongruity should be matched, we hold, by a correspond-ing improvement in the qualit y of popular sophistication,since it would liquidate belief in the absolute tru th of con -cepts by reminding us that the mixed dead metaphors ofabstract thought are metaphors nonetheless.

ive dec r ~ ~ ~ ~ t i i ~ ~ ~ _s w ___...---n ~ o ~ s S c ' i z e

it by y&ballY denying its prssence). We must hrect newcolordina tes atop it , not beneath it. For this reason we holdthat a p o p u l a m t a n d i n g of the ra tional pun, as madebureaucratically available by a methodology of th e pun,should be a social improvement. The issue will be discussedmore full y in our remarks on perspective by incongruity.

Casuistic Stretching

By casuistic stretching, one introduces new principleswhile theoretically rema ini ng faithful to oTp-riinciples.Thus , we saw the church permi tting the growth of invest-ment in a system of law that explicitly forbade investment.The legalists took up the slack by casuistic stretching , the

secular prayer of legal fictions.The devices for ostensibly retaining allegiance to an

original principle by casuistic stretching eventually leadto demoralization, which can only e stopped by a new star t.


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A T T I T U D E S T O W A R D H I S T O R Y D I C T I O N A R Y O F P I V O T A L T E R M S

The term, for our purposes, certainly need not be con-fined to law. It could apply, for instance, to the strategiesof tragic ambiguity whereby a new tren d is given itsfirst expression in the role of a reprobate. The court fool,in plays at least, introduced serious views casuistically inprof iting by his professional immunity. An d if therenever were court fooGphilosophic as those portrayed bydramatists, the dramatist doubtless felt sympathy with therole because the dramatist himself, as entertainer to thetyrannic public, was often forced into analogous casuistries.

is an aspect of casuistic


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of the childhood thesis ). Th e debunke r,yy o mat ter how. . . - .matu re hrs wrltin may be on the surfacepremains a this&&-Sot occurunril he --negates theI&at< T hi s process w S b y he puts the pre-6rensZ

I a n n e orensic together, has also been called the state be-( yond good and evil, or beyond the opposites.

Good Life

A p ro ject f or g e t t i n ~ l o ng wit h ggople necessarilysubsumes a con ce pt of the good F s o T e t us formulateit briefly:

- physicality. Insofar as people outrage the+necessities of the physical economic plan t, they become soul-

ful in grotesque ways. Many psychologists are making adubious living by selling cures to people who think thatcures can be bought, whereas these people might haveearned a curc, or earned immu nit y fro m the state of affairswherein they needed a cure, by adequate physical expres-sion. The more that is done by the pressing of a but ton (o rits equivalent, the hiring of help )-th e &eater will e the

-

qca nti ty pro duction of poetasters (th e neuroses of the psy-chologically unemployed, the over-sedentary leisured, arebad poems). We m m n a t e l y , - - ~ t h e , , s e m i -

wor k). Th ere will be no better day until o runless a socictyat home in comedy will have been established long enoughfor its citizens to lose their reverence for these exploitiveplaythings.

There-is an over-emphasis upon things of the mind, dueh k --


partly to snobb~sm the insignia of mental work ranking--- . ~ ~ ~ . . .. ..___-h i g h e r ~ h a ~ i n ~ n i a a o f f P h y ~ i c a 1ork) -5iifiou knowmany Communists who talk- .ilibly 6ff&e proletariat whilenot even walking to the ofice, such purely verbal admira-

Ption of physicality doing the work once done for the seden- , +i,,,,tary by Wild West fiction. This higher rating upon things fJ1 : i

of the mind is also a secular varian; of the earlier relii iouic

'';du& tyE itke en mind and body. (Th e body was vile '

and the mind was puren-and eventually vile body wouldattai n the spirituality of pure mind. People now se en tohope th at such transcendence shall be done here on earth,by machinery.)

If the metaphors by which the neurologists explain thefunctioning of the brain are correct, we have another rea-son for holding to the justice of a physical emphasis. Pre-sumably there are two kinds of neural fibre, some leading

out war d towards physical action, and others leading acrossto one another, developing the internal activity of associa-tion. These associacional fibres, it seems, are gr oa in g thicker, piin proportion as purely mental activity takes the place of

b

physical activity. The ideal of such development wouldobviously be close t o that of Valdry (t he creator of Mr.Hea d ), who finds tha t the complete philosophicalmethody' would make expression in overt act a pure il-rele-vance. Such method would be developed in its internal per-fection, concerned with associational adjustments alone,and would have the symm etr y of a closed circle.

The importance of Marx's materialistic emphasis is pre-cisely the fac t tha t it admonishes us against this onanisticideal. The pressure comes froli t w ith o~ rthe circle--and thecircle leads to an ac t outside itself.

The Greeks realized the necessity of ~ h ~ s i c a l orrectives,in their tendency to keep physical and mental gymnastics


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in adjoining bins. The ideal Greek symposium admittedthe athle te along with the philosopher. And tha t wise bio-logical conservative, Aristotle, founded a school of anti-sedentary philosophers, who gave their views while walking(the peripatetics). The difficulty in ge ni wa sU t h at , l-th physical and mental athletes were represented

in the ideal philosophical symposium, they tended to comeas specialists, each representing one aspect of the duality.Thinkers tended to take up the slack between ideal andreality by their healthy mind in a healthy body formula-but too often, it seems, the mere statement was consid-ered enough.

M m p p o r t u n i t y fo r expression of t he sentiments.Distrust of the passions. 'l.he p ~ o 5 S a ~ ~ G o u s . heyare stimulated to the maximum by the creative psychiatryof capitalism. In an ideal society, a man would not go to adoctor when he lacked ambition-he would consult a doctorto help him cure ambition. In the paradoxes of capitalism,inordinate ambition has become the norm; the man wholoses it simply drops out the bottom. And he loses it assoon as he ceases to want all sorts of idiotic baubles that keepmillions frantically at work.

Things of the mind ent er in this way, Conceptual and.___

ima gin ati ve- Z-m -js requ~red o favor the play of thes e y i m ~ t s . nd it is required to take up the slack'' (to

bridge inevitable conflicts, and to name the importantsocio-economic relationships with sufficient accuracy forthe adequate handling of them) .

Con st ru~~-to c_h*nelize the militaristic by tran-4scendence9'&to the c~ -~ p~ ey at iv e. The constructive, thecreative, the co-operative bei;l'gSrhe moral equivalent ofwar. )>atient study of the Do cu me m& Error. To avoid


cultura l vandalism there must be constant exposure tothe total archives accumulated by civilization (since noth-ing less can give us the admonitory evidence of the ways inwhich people's exaltations malfunction as liabilities). Notparochial in attitude, however. No t with the self-con-

gratulatory notion that everybody was a fool before No-

vember 14, 18-, etc. Ou r stupidities are ever born anew._ _ _ - -----___----\

bEven the most accurate, astute, and comprehensive of sci-ences would not be foolproof.

> Above all, criticism should seek to clarify the ways in//which any st ruc ture develops self-defeating emphases

. It should watch for e dId seek to avoid being driven into

.a corner in its att empt to signalize them. IStress always upon the knowledge of limitations. In other

words, an ability to caGy out= pr op o~ ii ie ss en ti al lySpirtozistic th at freedom is the knowledge of necessity.

Distrust hypertrophy of a_ct on paper. More of the artis-'-tic should be expressed i ~i ta 'r '~ ~oci a1 elationships. Other-

wise, it becomes efficient' Xe compensatory, antitheticalsense. So completely do we now accept capitalist standardsthat we test everything as a c o ~ n m o d i t yor sale. Hence wefeel th at a mere art ist at living has wasted his talents.Rather let him release his arti stry through a tota l socialtexture . Let it take more ecological forms, though its

use value as a commodity is thereby lessened.T o be sure, we do not thereby dispose of the whole issue.There is also the artist's desire to immortalize the transitory.He wants to see a good thing made permanently available,as Plato made the statements of Socrates permanently avail-able. Plato implemented the conversations of Socrates forpurpose of transmission. He was the inst rument for broad-casting over a history-wide network. One must salute the


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pious tendency to immortalize the transitory. One needsimply note an important distinction in quality betweenthis act and the act of a man who gets art on paper at thesacrifice of ar t in living.

Heads I Win, Tails ou Lose

A device whereby, if things tu rn o ut one way, your sys-tem accounts for them-and if they tu rn out the oppositeway, your system also accounts for them. When we firstcame upon this formula, we thought we had found a wayof discrediting an argument. If a philosopher outlined asystem, and we were able to locate its varian t of t he headsI win, tails you lose device, we thoug ht t ha t we had exposeda fat ar faIlacy. But s we grew older, y e 'began o sk our-. ^ - - - - -selves whether there 1s any oth er possible way of thinking.

And we now absolutely doubt that there is. Hence, weshould propose to control the matter not by elimination,but by channelization. That is, we merely ask that thethinker co-operate with us in the atte mpt t o track dow n hisvarian t of the heads I win, tails you lose strategy. It willnecessarily be implicit in his work. And we merely ask him,as a philosopher whose proper game is Cards-face-up-on-the-table, to help us find it, t hat we may thereby be assistedin discounting9' it properly.

he whole matter is related to the scholastic distinction

between essence and existence. A thing has many as-pects, good, Dad, indifferent. You transcend thls con fu-sion when, by secular prayer, __. y u vote tha t one of theseaspects is tG-& &c e of the lot. For instance, you may votethat the essence of man is the way in which he is like agod ; or you may vote tha t his essence is the way in whichhe is like an acimal. When you have, by an act of will (a

I D I C T I O N A R Y O F P I V O T A L T E R M S

moral choice) completed your balloting the attributestha t do not conf irm your choice of essence are labeled

accidents.Thus, in our discussion of principles and policies: the

constan t principle is the essence of motivation, and theshifting policies, ofte n directly cont rary to one another, arethe accidental variants. If you decree by secular prayertha t man is essentially a warrior (as did Nietzsche) youmay then proceed, by casuistic stretching, to discern thewarlike ingredient present even in love. If on the con trarf -Iyou legislated to the effect that man is essentiallia com- ( y- - - - - --- \ ? 1 7: m u n i c a n ~ - y q u cp~ rdX ssc ern he co-operative ingredientpresent essentially even in war. Capita lism is essentially 11/ 7c---- 7 1, ,ompetltlve (oiTh is point, both opponents and proponents/

L Lagree). But despite this essence, we note the presence of .

many non-competitive ingredients (there are many exam-

ples of tru e partnership in the compet itive struggle ).Heads I win, tails you lose is a technica legu ival ent of

the formula named moralistically ~p or tu gj sp . Thusyou get the opportunism of Whitm an who, by his doc-trine of unseen existences, could welcome an event inspirit ( in principle ) where the same event, in its rawexistential attributes, might have wounded him. That is, thet essence of a real estate boom was in its unseen existence ;and this unseen existence was not speculation fo r profit , bu tthe zeal and zest of collectively building up a continent;

when beholding men building capitalisnz, he could tran -scendentally welcome their existential act by a vote tha tthey were bqlilding socialism, as, to an extent, they actuallywere. (Addendum, 195 : In either case, they would bebuilding sociality.)

Perspective by incongruity is a heads I win, tails youlose devlce-and we hereby lay ou r cards on the table by


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saying so. For example, take the excellent planned incon -3:r~itY~ in,Palme-Dutt's ntellectual pun (his-dXnition ofFascism as the rganization of decay ). By the pliancy ofthis term, you can-VYou%E&e militaristic ingre-dients of the Nazis by italicizing one of the words: theorganization of decay. You name the co-operative ingre-dients by italicizing the other: the organization of decay.Decay is the essential, organization the accidental,

seleqj-tasf ormula for exposure because we ourselves5- _-- ---- --woul wholeheartTciryvote fo r it. Philosophers, in helpingus to play Cards-face-up-on-the-table, should look fo r tw oothe r manifestations of the heads I win, tails you loseformula in their work. They should seek to discover the

p a s t ~ - r ~ l e ~ ~ ~ o ~ ' , t h e ~re employing as the cue for thei . 7 -. . -organlzlng of their work. Thus : man is herein to be con-sidered a god, an ape, a machine, etc.-and I shall tell you

wha t can be said of him by the use of this metaphor. Or ,furt her, I shall try to help you in discovering just wheremix my metaphors and subtly shift from one to another. Istarted by saying that I would consider man as a machine,for instance, but at this strategic point you will note that I

opportunistically shi ft and begin discussing him as a hero(t ha t is, a god) .

One must say why he feels called upon to choose themetaphor he does choose. We choose the man as communi-cant metaphor, for instance, because we feel that it bringsout the emphases needed for handling present necessities.

When the banished Duke in s You L i b It says his speech aboutthe theme, Sweet are the uses of adversity, he is carrying out a per-spective by incongruity for heads win, tails you lose purposes. Whilebanished, he seeks the rewards of banishment-and when his ducalproperties are restored to him at the end of the play, he is ready to resumethe rewards of dukedom.

We modify it with the dead, mixed metaphor bureaucra- C .tizati on of the imaginative because we thin k tha t peoplethereby are GpTE-from-being too sensitively exposed t o dis-illusionment as they are affronte d by the let down tha tnecessarily occurs when when a tender imaginative-uto-pian possibility is implemented by being given its practicalembod iment in this imper fect world.

f i Ur .

l .i ~Identity Identificatron

All the issues with which we have been concerned cometo a head in the problem e f identit?. Bourgeois naturalismin its most naive manifestsion made a blunt distinctionbetween individual and environment, hence leadingautomatically to the notion tha t an individual's identityis something private, peculiar to himself. And when bour-geois psychologists began to discover the falsity of this no-tion, they still believed in it so thoroughly that they con-sidered all collective aspects of identity under the head ofpathology and illusion. Th at is: they discovered accuratelyenough tha t identity is not individual, tha t a man identi- ,fies himself -with all sortsef manife stations Keyond himself,and they set about trying to cure him of this tendency.

It can't be cured, fo r the simple reason that it is nor-mal. One may, by analytic debunking, assist him in b r e m gl a r o m ome particular identification that is disastrous(th e normal tendency of the Germans, fo r instance, t oidentfy themselves with Hitler had disastrous implications,since Hitler in turn was identified with malign economic

, relationships). But the mere removal of an identificationis not enough. The man who dies in battle, as the result of

'' a faulty identification, is better off than a man who cani identify himself with no corporate trend at all. And what-


16/24

\ A T T I T U D E S T O W A R D H I S T O R Y

&ver he might think he was doing, the lystcures his patient f a faulty i d e ' e c f a r

as he s m w e s n-pn-ftternative dentzJkation.-_ .- (Often, forinstance, th -patient identifies himself with ;he corporatebody of psychoanalytic science. )

--1 7

%s-ridtenism d r c ~ S j a lose, and the disorders of the

state made it impossible for the earnest man to identify him-self with rhe emperor (as the Stoics had done) many of theenlightened were enfeebled by the attempt to avoid all

identification whatever. And in thus attempting to rejectany corporate iden tity, they automatically despoiled them-selves (with inanition, emptying, boredom, alienation asthe result). Christian evangelism met the situation activelyby introducing a new concept of corporate identity. Andbecause of this important social asset, it prevailed. Simi-larly, the corruption in Russia, involving both Czar and

Church, frustrated the needs of corporate identity, untilyou got as subst itute the Marxist doctrine of the id roletarian corporation.

Th e so-called 1 is merely a unique combin_a_tion of par-/

tially cZnt~ictin~ corporate we's. (See HaroTd-Taski'swritings on social ~r ai is ml ~% om et im es hese variouscorporate identities work fairly well together. At othertimes they conflict, with disturbing moral consequences.

Thus, in America, it is natural for a man to identify him-self with the business corporat ion he serves. This is his bi rth-right, and insofar as he is denied it, he is impoverished, alien-ated. But insofar as business becomes a cor rupt sovereign,his only salvation is to make himself an identity in an alter-native corporation. The struggle t o establish this alternativecorporation is called the struggle for the one big union.Hence, the drive fo r industrial unionism, for parties offarmers and workers, etc.


Loyalty to the financial corporation is necessarily im-paired insofar as the obligations are of a one-way sort. Corn-plete corporate identity must be of a two-way sort. Theoverlord requires fealty of the underling-and in exchangehe guarantees certain protection to the underling. Byvarious insurance systems, the big financial corporations

are attempting to establish this two-way system. Hencetheir resistance to federal insurance projects, which turnthe worker towards an identification with his govertzmelztinstead of his company. Such issues illustrate the reasons forthe partial struggle between business and governmenttha t goes on despite the willingness of political parties to doall the y can in league with business. Their allegiance cannotbe complete (however much they might desire to make itSO) because businesses themselves are in conflict with oneanother. Hence there is no such thing as one business cor-

poration with which the political party can identify itselfon all points. Insofar as industry neither will nor can doall tha t would be necessary to establish a ful l two-way rela-tionship between owners and workers, t h e s u s e d shuf-flings of ident ity must go on.

We should alsd;iichx&he corporate ident ity of family,since property rights in the feudal structure were rigorouslyfixed by its co-ordinates. In King Richard the Second, wenote how Bolingbroke, who took an oath of banishmentunder his corporate identity as Hereford, can violate theoath with good conscience by r eturning under his corporateidenti ty as Lancaster:

As was banish'd, was banish'd Her efo rd;But as I come, I come for Lancaster.

By this prayerful device (by attributing a different

A T T I T U D E S T O W A R D H I S T O R Yy



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essence to himself as individual) he could avoid themagical strictures placed upon him, as an individual, by theking. The use suggests analogies with the contemporaryconveniences afforded by the modern concept of financiallycorporate identity (where the individual, by reincorpora-tion, can transcend the limits pu t upon him in a previouscorporate role).

There is a clear r e c o g ~ i c m o 2 m a t e - - - _ -dentity in_the)a -o ? editorial. we. ~Tfie . .d i t o ~ u S C T i p t s ,\P V and writes comments, with vague reference to his member-

ship in an institution . (He also, of course, quickly learns tocash in on the privileges of such an identi ty, as he rejects

your manuscript with a frank admission that the editorscould not agree on it, without adding that he may havedeputized for the lot.) A varian t is the we of businesscorrespondence, where the write r of the letter pronounces

his corporate role without so much as a thought on thematter.The simplest instance of conflicting corporate identities

is to be found in the old stories showing the hero torn be-tween love and duty. Duty is a shorthand w e n d i -cating i d e n t i f i ~ a t i o ~ - ~ ~ ~ ~ a t enit(church, nation, pa rt y) . Love is shorthand for mem-

. .

bership in the smallest corpora tion, a partnership of two.Alienation (culmina ting in divorce) characterizes thepartnership insofar as it no t a collective enterprise, bu t

is the war of the sexes celebrated by nineteenth- cent urynovelists (a war in which rivals may unit e for timeagainst the common foe of loneliness).

To sum up: Identification is not in itself abnormal; no rcan it be scientifically eradicated. One's partic ipation ina collective, social role cannot be obtained in any othe r way.In fact, identification is hardly other than a name for the


function of sociality. At other times, people use the wordto mean bad e wdenti (such as occurs when oneidentifies himse with the reigning symbols of author itywhile these symbols of authority are in turn identified withcovertly anti-social processes).

One may note, however, the subtle ways in which identi-fication serves as braggadocio. By it, the modest man canindulge in the most outrageous corporate boasting. H eidentifies himself- with some corporat e unit (church, guild,company, lodge, party, team, college, city, nation, etc.)-and by r e&this uni t he praises himself. For he-----_- __

o w n m e orpora te unrt-and by rigging the-market for the value of t he stock as a whole, he runs up t he , -alue of his personal holdings. We see the process in its sim--+A

n \plest form, when the music-lover clamorously admires a\ J \y/ \


18/24


sesses characteristics which his followers can possess only inattenuated form The truly religious man, for instance, hadno ambition to be as good as Christ. His vicarious share inChrist's perfection was precisely the factor that freed himof such ambition. He wanted to be as near like his hero as

le within his human limitations.

loses this property of humili ty as soonas

thedivine emphasis gives way to asecular hero is, by definition, a heroand even surpass. Hence, insofar as the ideal of heroism be-comes secularized, we hold err ondins%ft to

,t ct must take place. Thi=ro is replaGd bya collective body (and ohe has a property in this body inso-ar as he participates in the use and strengthening of its

traditions ). Thus, in proportion as the church lost its Byz-antine aloofness, it gravitated towards the comic in the

stress it laid upon a body of thought matched by a collectiveorganization When the proposals were first brought for-ward for translating the Bible into the vernaculars, wherebyeach man could read it and inte rpre t it for himself, the

churchmen were scandalized. They held tha t no one man isqualified to interpret a text, that interpretation must becorrected by a group. If , fo r the moment, we consider onlyso much of the case, the churchmen were right. (Wh at weare omitting, of course, is the way in which people hadmoved in on this collective body of interpreta tion , hence

requiring reinterpretation for the ends of a new start.And since those who advocated reinterpretation necessarilyhad to be somewhat individualistic as a way of int roducingtheir wedge, they were driven into a corner by upholdinga principle manifestly dubious.)

Identi ty involves change of identity insofar as anygiven struc tur e of society calls fort h conflicts among our

corporate weYs.'fFrom this necessity you get, in art , thevario rZua i a Ions f rebirth. Change of identi ty is a wayof seein n e corner. For since the twice born be-gins as one man and becomes another, he is at once a con-tinuum and a duality. Such changes of identity occur ineveryone. They become acute when a person has been par-

ticular ly scrupulous in forming himself about one set of co-ordinates, so scrupulous that the shift to new co-ordinatesrequires a violent wrenching of his earlier categories.

From this shift of co-ordinates (intense in some, moresubtle in others) he derives his perspective. In a sense, allperspectives are perspectives by incongruity. For they areobtained by se ei nx om two angles at once (quite as thestereopticon camera gives the sense of depth by putt ing twodifferent focuses upon a subject and remerging them,

We saw a let ter f r om a ma n who referred to his wife and himself asbeing, fo r the time, mumm ies, dead to social life. A child had re-centl y been born into this previously childless corpora te unit, wit hcorresponding need of reidentification on the pa rt of th e parents (achange all the greater on his parr, perhaps, because his pasr symbolismhad shown stron g traces of secular monasticis m ). Also: my book wasfinished to the last semi-color, in the fall, just a t the time asborn. It was a work on which he had been engaged for several years-hence its completion likewise required of him some large measure of re-ident if icat ion. N o wonder he had hardly ventured out , had seen nobody,read lirtle, thoug ht hard ly at all.

Also we read in The New York ~ m e s f Decem ber 29, 1936, the news

of a new calculus of individuals, pu t forw ard byH S. Leonard andH N . G d m a n , of Harvard:The pract ical appl ications of the new formulae are not part icular ly

valuable at th e present tinie, the philosophers said, but fur the r applica-tions ma y be possible. By using these new symbols an d equations devisedby the H arv ard men, logicians will be able to describe relationshipsamon g several individuals or objects by cr eating a fictitious 'whole' ou tof some of them, rhey explained.

Thus, they said, John, James and Arthur may be lodge members.

A T T I T U D E S T O W A R D H I S T O R Y : D I C T I O N A R Y O F PI VO T A I T E R M S


19/24


Instead of describing mathematically the relationships between Johnand James and between John and Arthur, the method of Drs. Leonardand Goodman allows the philosophers and mathematicians to express therelat ionship between John and A rth ur and James by considering A rth urand James as a single unit. . .

By al lowing the mathematicians to lump the tw o women in a man'slife, or the two men in a woman's life, together as a unit, the new philo-sophical concepts may be able to express the 'eternal triangle' as a sum ofthis or that, D r. Leonard added.

Are not these logicians considering, in their vocabulary, the sameparadoxes of identi ty tha t we are considering in ours?

whereas the one-eyed camera sees flat). The change givesone a sense of direct ion; hence he prophesies. ThomasMann has symbolized the process most efficiently in hisJoseph novels, as we get:

Stage one: Joseph's self-satisfied mooniness andmoodiness

Stage two: Th e transition, his being cast int o thepit

Stage three: T he new social sense of i den tity , andthe ability to prophesy.

It is obvious that if such prophecy is not sh&with - --r e f e r e n i ollectiyebody of c r i t m , it is exposed

= _ ._

to th ey xk s of x e eroic made secula~anrin. himself, by\his stri ct adherence t o the forensic materials, is an excellentexample of a man who has avoided the t emptat ions of the

individually vatic. And in keeping, he is concerned with asubtle notion of legendar identi t suggesting tha t the in-dividual gauges hls ro ~ t holes already giventhe a d 7 a Y -~ ~ c m t l c l s e--D----- (for in theshaping of the Biblical characters by legendary processes ofrevision, all irrelevant features are removed by the simple

:. D I C T I O N A R Y O F PI VO T A I . T E R M Sprocess of forgetting; a role defined by legend is the ulti-mate of auscultation, creation, and revision ).

Roughly, we may say that a man identifies the logica human purpose with the following points d'appui: God,

nature, community (lodge, guild, race, etc.), utility (capi-talism, and naive pragmatism), history. At times he hastried another, the self, with the inevitable punishmentsvisited upon th e narcissistic.

O r we might divide up th e field in this way:Totemistic identification. Individual relation to tribe.

Magical ways in which obedience is given or exacted in smallprimitive communities. Manipulated by variants of th emedicine man.

The carrying of the family perspective into the treat-ment of a vast corporat e, latent ly political organization, as

* W h a t we ca ll i d e n t i t ~ w i t hh e se lf i s of te n m e r e l ~ a g u e n e s s fidentitv. ~ a g u e ; i x n t i t ys o f t e G & o l i z e f i y t r a v e l ~ s o m e t im e sa a o b i l i t y , sometimes the consump;ion of t r m . e referparticularly to the kind of traveler who lives in transit, among aliens.The anthropologist, living as observer among primitive peoples, usuallyadopts a very definite identity in his relations with them. While, asmember of his academic corporation, he retains the role of spectator,

the people he is study ing oft en make calls upon his autho rity, an d in thisway he ma y gradually come to integ rate his science with their customs(a process made al l the easier by th e admirat ion and symp athy they m ayarouse in him ).

One who experiences difficulty in remembering the names of closeacquaintances when introdu cing them might console himself somewhatby noting that such sudden forgetfulness indicates sensitiveness to thesubtleties of identity. A t the mom ent of in trodu ction , he alters his rela-tionship to each of the introd uced, seeing them as strangers (in keepingwith the nature of the situation). And so closely are names associatedwith identi ties , tha t in thu s cha nging his at t i tu de towards the personal 50identities of the persons he is introducing, he loses his grip upon theirnames.


20/24


in Catholic-feudal thought. Non-intimate relations werehandled as though they were intimate relations. Manipu-lated by priests.

The parliamentary. The turn to delegated authority.Abandonment of the att emp t to handle forensic relation-ships on a purely family basis. Usually managed by reten-

tion of many in tim ate relationships, however. Manipulatedby the politician.

Transitional. Based primarily on concept of historic pur-pose (whereas the str ict ly bourgeois-parliamentary hadbeen rationalized by co-ordinates of profit or util ity ).Concerned with clari flicts underlying thes o - c a l ~ i m .ouldcoach shif t in allegiance &he symbols of author ity. Propa-gandist ( informal adult educator ).

Universalizing opportunities to be plumbed by establish-ment of new co-operative frame, once the economic mal-adjustments underlying the social order are removed. Co-ordinated by planners. Ideal: comic self-consciousness.

Neo-ca tholicizing. Ideological homogeneity, to be-cor-rected by a m e t h o d o l ~ ~ ~ ~ d i n a r i a n i s m ~

~ n k u s s i a , h e ~ h m n k x 4 e w b e t w e e n evolu-tion there and elsewhere has brought up problems extrinsicto the political pattern per se. The rabid rearming of

Germany, for instance, has imposed upon Russia as dras-tic a contradiction as any to be found in capitalism. For itrequires the allocation of enormous manpower and thesquandering of vast material resources in purely unproduc-tive ways-that is, the training and equipping of the army.As judged by the standards of peace (t he proper tests forjudging a socialist economy) this vast expenditure for themilita ry is precisely the same as the unearned increment

; D I C T I O N A R Y O F P I V O T A L T E R M S

given to the coupon-clippers of the capitalist economy. I n-@far as the army must train fo r battle, and millions mustdevote their effo rts o its equipment, t n t r p r i qs strangled._ And sin ould have no other choice

but to let herself be -Iirshe must continuet build up her military (whic h functions as a rentier class,

1s the idle rich, so fa r as peacetime criter ia of productionare concerne d).

Nor is this diAcul ty lacking in spiritual counterpart s.

41 The euphemisms of the secular heroic are an integral as-,y pect of military action (and the preparation for military

iaction). Where an army is so necessary, it must be excep-

k i tionally drgnified. Instead of planners, who are deputiesf (subject t o comic co-ordinate5) you get magical-heroic ves-t els of author ity ( superior to the com ic) .jj

There arises another contradiction: Members of a co-operative enterpris e founded along sufficiently rational linesto make for peace must identify themselves with a corporateunit devoted to war. Such paradoxes must inevitably distortthe logic of a tr uly socialist development. We ask only tha t

hose who gloat over such distortions pause long enough tosuggest how matte rs could be handled otherwise. The me th-ods of ad just ment in a going concern composed of 160,000,-000 people cannot be as subtly pliant as the methods ofadjustment operating between a couple of private individ-

uals. And even when you get things down t o tha t scale, youfind considerable unwieldiness.

1magery

We have previously mentioned our delight in CarolineSpurgeon's study of Shakespeare s Ima gery . To be sure,Mr. M, D. Zabel, whose opinions on matt ers a ffecting poetry



21/24


Every situation in history is unique, requires its own par-ticular gauging or sizing-up of the factors that shall be con-

pivotal in the situation. Th e scientists of historyhave brought us unintentionally t o the realization th at th egauging of the right historical moment is a mat ter oftaste Thu s, every situat ion calls for a policy that is a casu-istic stretching of the principle. T o sum up: implicit in

em is glven a moralistic twist (leading to th e charge ofppo rtun ism i n e e ce n 7 o r i o us ~ e) hen a speaker wouldmploy a shorthand version of secular prayer fo r recruiting

Perspec t ive b y Incongru i ty

. ,

G@' metaphorically app ly it to a different 6ategory.Ou r contem porary ortho dox economists, hired by busi- I

to provide the scholastic rationalization of its proce-ures, might best be defined by incongruity, as we carriedver a term from semi-feudal Germany: they are our

ameralists, bureauLrats who were i-ctivelyH con-e cerned solely with the internal adjustmen ts of the bureau-

@ ' .

PQU kratic order. And as we are warned against the spread ofv,r-) Y?L . b~xeaur-a, or in ou r own gov ernm ent arei encouraged to forget tha t if one ansp? nt a typi-

\ :ash ca1 American business from t x t e s o Russia,~ h- leaving all its managerial and co-ordinating processes intact ,

its functionaries now dignified as examples of privateenterprise could automatically, in the new setting, be stig-matized as bureau cr s. One would thus be using a per-T

spective by incongruity if he named th e business manjsown associates as b u r e a u c r a w a l v use an-in is d~ssolving, o lend weighttha4 perspectivesof virtuosity, but bring us

Perspective by incongruity, or planned incongruity, is'Pun is here itself metaphoric-

un links by tonal a s d i o nwords hithe rto unlinged. Perspective by incongruitycarries on the same kind of enterprise in linking hitheitounlinked w o r d s ~ r a t ~ n ~ 1 ~ c r i t e r i a a ~ d d d o f t o n ~ l riteria.


22/24


fo r instance.. Act V, Scenc I1 of A nton y and Cleopatra,where Cleopatra exposes her flesh to the stin g of the asp,and says:

Peace, peaceDost thou not see my baby at my breast,That sucks the nurse asleep?

Th e "whimsical Barrie" con trived to expand a "perspec-tive by incongruity" into a whole play. H e wrote a play inwhich he tried his hand at one of Empson's "pastoral" revo-lutions. A group of upper-class people were marooned ona desert island-and their butler, who alone amon g themis equal to the situat ion , becomes their "ru ler." If we re-member correctly, however, the play has a happy ending:in the last scene you are back in England-the pa rty hasbeen rescued+verything is as was-and the bu tle r hasreturned to his proper role.

In his book on recent m o v e m e n t s m g (cited else-where in these pages) James Johnson S e e n e ~ t e l l s s thatat one period the artists %e Gt te mp ti ng to introduce avariety of perspectives, seeing the same objects fr om m anysides at once. And after they had made such purely disinte-grative attem pts at analysis for a time, they began to searchfor a master ~e rs ~e ct iv e hat would establish a new unityatoD the shifts. Was not this concern akin to Einstein'smethod, whereby he g e t s 3 F i ~ m e s-- of reXreirc&- but

t co-ordinates their r e l a t i v i t y ~ ~ n c e o the speed. ~ ~ . --.-.

of light as a const*?-Perspective in arose with the rise of individual-

ism. It depicts natu re by stressing the point of z~iew f theobserver. And precisely at the terminus of individualism,we find some artists who would return to two-dimensionalpainting (abolishing perspective) and others who would

D I C T I O N A R Y.--\

stress a @iultipJ~clty o perspec-often the same arti stexe mpl iGs -bo th of these tenden& at different stages inhis developmen t.)

In a sense, incongru ity is the law of the universe; if notthe mystic's universe, then the real and multiple universeof daily life. Driving our definition to the fullest, we could

say th,at a table is incongruous with a chair. Ou r term refers,however, to a relationship less purely technical. The incon-

ruities we speak of are moral or esthetic. Our experiencewith t for instance, ma& their toaether- -ness congruous. Hence, to get incongruity in our moral,esthetic sense of the term, the artist would have to go out-side this combination. The chair might be upside down, fo rinstance. Or, we could imagine a table and two chairs: onone chair there might be a bloated, profiteering type suchas Grosz draws-and opposite him, as his female guest, along-lashed manikin dressed as they are in the window dis-plays. Table, chairs, and diners are congruous, since experi-ence has made them so. But table, chairs, living diner, and adining lady manikin are incongruous. The result is a per-spective with interpretative ingredients. The picture, by its

f planned in co ng ru iK wo ul d say, in effect, that Grosz'sprofiteer is typically himself when entertaining the simula-cru m of a woman.

In sum, we cont end that "perspectiv& incongru ity"makes for a dramatic vocab&ary, with we i g h ti z an dcounter-weight= in c the liberal ideal of- . . . -

.. -

neu tral nam ing in the charact erizati on of processes. Sim-: a concept I j ~ ~ ~ ~ ' d ; ~ ~ ~ ; f ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ < nal

vation devices" migh t be named, in typical "liberal," simplyas "diffusion." But we hold th at such a vocabulary is mime t-ically truncat ed. I ts "improvisational" feat ure is weak. It is



23/24


less of an act, qu it e as the diffusion of investmen t is lessof an act than the democratization of investment, withattendant deterioration of quality, as it spread with casuis-tic stretchi ng, to the point of demoralization, Ghereat it wasremoralized by Calvin's changing of the rules.

The neutral idea prompts one to forget that terms are

chara ay is an a t t ~ z z t e dlay. The essayist'st a set of inter *phases, quiteas Othello, Iago, and Desdemon.a&ted emphases.The re are hero and villain terms, with subsidiary termsdistrib uted ab out these two poles like iron filings in a mag-netic field, and tracin g somewhat of a graded series'' be-tween them. Emphases cann ot contradict one another, sofa r as the total plot is concerned, any more tha n Iago'sfunc tion in t he play can be said to con trad ict Othello's.

The element of dramatic personality in essayistic ideascannot be intelligently discerned until we recognize thatnames ( fo r either dram atic characters o r essayistic con-cepts) are shorthand designations for certain fields andmethods of action. Perhaps Samuel Butler was both of t thetrack and o f it when he said th at Men and women existonly as the organs and tools of the ideas th at domina te them(on th e trac k, insofar as he recognized the integral relation-ship between people and ideas, bu t off it inso far as, underthe stim ulus of idealism, he

7ook t h p l d e a u s ~ a l ~ r ) .

In line with such thin king, we canno t say enough in praiseof t he conc ep t, the 9-2-as _ _ un forliquidating the false r i g + t e concepts and for inducingquick c ~ n ; i r t i b G ~ T r ~ ~ o r ~ l ~ - t 6 i c o n o m i c ategor-ies. The operation of this salvation device in the investment

Id has its counterpart in the curative doctrin e oforiginal sin whereby a man socializes his personal loss

by holding that all men are guilty. It suggests, for instance,

)I D I C T I O N A R Y O F P I V O T A L T E R M S.I;

the ingredient of twisted tragedy behind Swift's satire,whe;eby he uses such thinking, not t o lif t himself u p but to

.

pull all mankind down (th e author himself being caught inthe general deflation). I have ever hated all nations, pro-fessions, and communities; and all my love is towards indi-viduals. But principally I hate and detest th at animal

called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas,and so forth.In men as different as Malraux and Whitehead, we see the

essentially religious attempt to socialize one's loneliness,though Whitehead stresses p u r e l y ~ t i c trategies in-tKeaccomplishment of this, whereas Malraux seeks the correc-tive dialectically in collective action, in accordance withMarx's form ula fo r the socialization of losses, t o the effectth at I am not alone as a vict im; ISwift, begouover-individualistic emphases turned the tragic scapegoatint o a satiric scapegoat, thereby t urn ing a device for solacein to a device for indi ctment . Lack of religiosity is a con-venience; but religion gone wrong is a major disaster.

Recentl y we heard a speech th at ran somewhat as follows:It was confessional in tone, an inti mate talk by a write r ad-dressing writers. The speaker first humbled himself: I ama bad critic. There is too much that I still have to learn. Ishould not write a word for five years. I should simply study

and practice. In sum, I am a bad critic. Whereu pon he wenton, to socialize this loss, by adding, a l lbad critic*

.

Hence, the more we look about us, the greater becomesour belief t hat t he finned incongruity in the concept ofthe =i ;r Lz at ii f * us pretty co-earo f t h in~ , -The ormula seems basic fo r purposes of pu tti ngthi Gc tog eth er, by establishing modes of convertibility be-



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tween economic, religious, and esthetic vocabularies. Butwe have not as yet been able to locate the autho r of the t erm.

o far his contri bution t o the architecture of thou ght re-mains like that of some anonymous mason who cont rib utedan especially accomplished bit of stonework t o a mediaevalcathedral.

Problem of vilEvery policy is a policy of lesser evil. Thu s the religious

Augustine and the atheistic Jefferson unite when the first? xplains government as a punishment f or the fall of man,

and the second calls it a necessary evil. For, in our terms,gov-necessarily means bureaucrat izat ion; and bu-r e a u c r a t i z a t i o w rep~nd-~f

_ _~ n w a n t e 6 6 ~ - ~ r o d u c t s .

~ h e r o b K ~ M i s et by transcendence--the processof secular prayer whereby a man sees an intermingling ofgood and evil factors, and votes t o select eithe r the goodones or the evil ones as the essence of th e lot. And a choicebetween policies is not a choice between one that is a lesserevil policy and anot her tha t is not. It is a choice betweentw o lesser-evil policies, with one of them having more of alesser evil than the other.

Repossess the World

As the imaginative becomes bureaucratized, the bureau-cratic body brings up new problems of its own. Thus, thebureaucratic complexities of modern business bring forththe need of complex filing systems. The persons who mustdevote all their genius to such incidental by-products (t hefiling systems) are, to tha t extent, threatened wi th in-anition or alienation. They are robbed of the world,since their efforts are expended in so cramped a territory./

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And they must struggle to repossess the world. Usually,when such a state of affairs becomes aggravated, you willfind str ong material for class struggle, as the develop-ment of the bureaucratic body will have led to a classactually or apparently enjoying the f rui ts of t he givenbureaucratic order and anothe r class of relatively alienated

or dispossessed. Their struggle to repossess will involve allthe tacti cal issues concerned w ith shift s regarding allegianceto the symbols of aut horit y.

A rationale of history is the first step whereby the dis-possessed repossess the world. By organizing their interestsand their characters about a purpose as located by therationale, they enjoy a large measure of repossession (aspiritual proper ty that no one can take from them ) eventhough they are still suffering under the weight of thebureaucratic body oppressing their society. Maximum alien-ation prevails when the oppressed suffer oppression withouta rationale that locates the cause of the disturbance and thepolicies making for its removal. By a rationale of history, onthe other hand, they own a w y o _ ~ k e p the slackbetween what is desired and wh-

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Such a mytli ,incidental ly, may also operate on otheroccasions to promot e the ends of resignation. Imagine a manrunn ing the same elevator the same numb er of hours underthree different economies: capitalist, Fascist, communist.

Thou gh the mater ial processes were the same in all instances,the act would be a different act, in accordance with thechange in rationale, the logic of collective purpose by whichthis individual act is located. This important difference canmake a man willing to undertake without protest a dismalkind of work, if only its ultimate relationship to a rationaleof history is genuinely believed by him. The resources forcasuistic stretching are obvious (as men might conceivably

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Documents

Burke-Attitudes Towards History