Critical Theory

As It Is
In Defense of a Classical Education

Carlos Aureus

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 Critical Theory As It Is
In Defense of a Classical Education

Contents

Page
I. Preface …………………………………………………………………
II. Introduction: What is Critical Theory? …………………………………..
III. The Classical Background: Mimesis ………………………………………
A. Plato: Introduction ………………………………………………………….
B. Plato: Republic (Books II, III, and X) ………………………………..
C. Aristotle: Introduction …………………………………………………………
D. Aristotle: Poetics ……………………………………………………..
E. Horace: Ars Poetica ………………………………………….
F. Longinus: On the Sublime …………………………………………
IV. The Medieval Worldview. ……………………………………………………
A. Plotinus: “On the Intellectual Beauty” …………………………………
B. St. Augustine: Semiotics . . . . . . …………………………………..
C. Manlius Severinus Boethius: Consolation of Philosophy ………….
D. St. Thomas Aquinas: Aesthetics and Hermeneutics ……………………
V. The Neoclassical Tradition: Decorum …………………………………
A. Sir Philip Sidney: “An Apology for Poetry” …………………………….
B. John Dryden: “An Essay of Dramatic Poesy” ……………………………
C. Alexander Pope: An Essay on Criticism
VI. Epistemological Bases of Romanticism ……………………
A. Edmund Burke: A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the
Sublime and Beautiful …………………………………
B. Immanuel Kant: Introduction …………………………….
C. Immanuel Kant: Critique of Judgment …………………………………….
D. Friedrich von Schiller: Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man…….
E. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Introduction ………………
F. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Philosophy of Fine Art …………
VII. The Romantic Imagination …………………………………………………….
A. William Wordsworth: Introduction ………………………….
B. William Wordsworth: “Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads”
C. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Biographia Literaria …………………………..
D. John Keats: On Negative Capability and the Egotistical Sublime ………
E. Percy Bysshe Shelley: “A Defense of Poetry” …………………………….
VIII. The Poetics of W. B. Yeats in A Vision ……………………………………………
IX. Epilogue ……………………………………………………………………………………………
X. Appendix A: The Euclidean Poetry of Alexander Pope …………………..

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 XI. Appendix B: Course Syllabus ……………………………………………………………………
XII. Biographical Notes ……………………………………………………………
XIII. Glossary ………………………………………………………………………
XIV. Bibliography ……………………………………………………………….
XV. Index …………………………………………………………………………

Preface

T he title of this book is Critical Theory As It Is. It is not critical theory as viewed

through the contracted lens of postcolonialism or postmodernism—or any other “ism”

for that matter. It is none of the above. It is critical theory Ding an sich. In a word: Critical
Theory With No Hidden Agendas.
Not that the above “isms” are objectionable. They are not—per se. They have a
purpose and a function in their own right, in their own time, in their own place and in
their own state of affairs.1
But this book is not about ideologies; it is about theories.
As teacher of critical theory, I cannot help interacting with factions—their name
is legion—where eschewing the classics as obsolete has become part of the current
social gestalt.2
As a result, classical education as an intellectual thoroughfare today is strewn with
many roadblocks. For some, the teacher of the classics seems, at best, a generalist who
wanders too widely, who simply follows the election returns. For others s/he is a narrow
particularist, one who speaks only to an elite group.
Admittedly, these common censures of classical education have some empirical truth
in them, especially when one considers how lackadaisical reflection can hide beneath
theories taught under the rubric “tradition,” or how ultra-conservative agendas have
provided for the real motivation for some infantile claims. And yet, on the whole, the
above charges are unjust and damaging to the true value of classical education and to
the wider culture which needs the particular form of public meaning that only genuine
classical education provides.
This book will argue that classical education is a need

1
This study, however, does not reject different perspectives. On the contrary, we firmly believe that
different perspectives invigorate and enrich our study. (This recognition and appreciation of various
perspectives will be amplified below) What we object to is the “my view is the only true view” attitude.
2
“From time to time, a cry has gone up that all critical theory before a certain date is now mercifully
obsolete, that one may safely ignore it.” —Hazard Adams, “Introduction,” Critical Theory Since Plato, p. 1.
Note: unless otherwise indicated, Critical Theory Since Plato refers to the Revised 1992 edition.

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 It is regrettable, to say the least,3 that students taking courses in the Humanities
enter classrooms with very little or no exposure to the classics. Consequently, they never
even hear of it, even in courses taken as electives. Even for the three groups—European
Languages majors, English majors, and students who, on their own conviction, have
been convinced of the cultural and practical value of even a little exposure to the classics
—disenfranchisement has become a fact of life. Into the lives of such mature students, it
is a pity and a lost opportunity to put teachers who in pace and in thought are haters of
the classics.
As a result, Critical Theory of the classical tradition is no longer part of the
intellectual equipment of our students, even students of the best colleges and
universities. True it is that a majority of intelligent students read and discuss the works
of Foucault, René Girard, Derrida, Edward Said, et al.; or display knee-jerk excitement
over anti- and/or post-colonial discourse/s, whether they be hybridized, nationalized, or
nativized.
But Critical Theory of the classical tradition remains a closed book. Whatever the
reasons, most well-educated students are familiar with the names of Plato and Aristotle,
Horace and Longinus, Aquinas and Augustine, but they do not know what or where
exactly their eminence rests on. Why these names have become bywords more than two
millennia after their deaths remains a mystery to them. To “unravel” that mystery is the
intent of this book.
I have no quarrel with Philippine folk and regional literature, popular culture,
feminist literature, translation studies, regional postcolonial writings, nativism,
unhomeliness, protest literature, “englishes,” and all that. I myself do write in my native
vernacular (Bicol) because I feel most comfortable in the tongue of my native town.
What I find ghastly inappropriate is the way we think that young people can
understand and appreciate everything, including critical theory itself, only if we make it
“trendy” and forcing us all to see everything through the jaundiced eyes of
postcolonialism. It seems that we are not confident enough to let the works speak for
themselves and as themselves.
It also seems to me that teachers who deliver their message by means of the
stunts and tricks characteristic of the faddist are not being honest. By sugar coating the
primary sources and presenting them through biased bromides, teachers are actually
teaching counter-productively, in the sense that they are defeating their own purpose of
winning new converts, so to speak. I know for a fact that young students of today are
interested in critical theory and are much more readily engaged by exposure to—and
unadulterated presentations of—original primary texts. It is the “What Is” that really
grabs them. No gimmicks, no hidden agendas. There's no need for me to amplify this
further to the passionate few dedicated to having our students appreciate literary theory
and criticism. To these teachers I say, hold aloft the torch of liberal education. Do not be
bamboozled by the faddists. We owe the students the best and only the best of the best,
and we do that by presenting critical theory as it is, Ding an sich, and nothing short of it.

3
Disastrous is the more precise word.

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 I disagree with the so-called postcolonial ideologues and their award-conscious
cronies who, armed with Maslow’s hammer,4 bamboozle the intelligent public with
inanities. Instead of creating for us responsible work informed by profound thought and
extensive honest-to-goodness research, instead of concerning themselves with the more
serious ethical, social, and spiritual concerns, the majority of these creatures are too
busy admiring each other, congratulating each other, awarding each other, anthologizing
each other, promoting each other, titillating each other, masturbating each other. Few
have been brave enough to articulate ways and means that will lead us out of the
labyrinth of mediocrity.
Academicians have not fared well either. Until now, the majority of my colleagues
are oblivious of the limits of academic jargon. Indeed, academic writing these days has
become unreadable even to the educated. The writing is full of conceit (passing for so-
called intellectual labor) yet so lacking in substance. We have not been responsible. True,
new social and critical theories have proliferated as rapidly as the problems have
appeared, yet very few of these have reached out to address basic mainstream
problems. This is even worse than what Karl Popper calls the “Myth of the Framework,”
where we move and act like prisoners trapped in the framework of our own theories so
that communication with others of different frameworks has become virtually
impossible.5
Today, academicians have become addicted to their own frameworks and expect
others to become addicted too.
Pseudo nationalism is worse. The day the jingoists and pseudo-nationalists
brought their ungrammatical tagalog into the classrooms, that day marked the beginning
of my country’s cultural and literary backwardness, our period of cultural and economic
decline and disruption, and without extending its pejorative use and expanding its
scope, “although they were surrounded by darkness and dense gloom"6 the day marked
the beginning of our new dark ages, no deliberate melodrama intended.
The moral, intellectual, and spiritual bankruptcy of our time is visible most plainly in
the cancerous state of contemporary academia. The postmodern, postcolonial cultural
establishment is philosophically empty and esthetically distorted. Yet no one is brave
enough to explain this distortion or give a satisfying answer to the question of the
proper role of liberal education in our society. To do so would be to invite the superior
smiles of the people in the know, the august albeit brainless members of the mutual
admiration societies. But the meaning and warrants for my claim can be argued, and in
this book I thus examine the social reality of a classical education.
Critical Theory As It Is is meant to be a manifesto for a new vision of culture that is
both classical and radical.
4
Maslow's hammer: "When the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to
treat everything as if it were a nail.” Abraham H. Maslow (1966). The Psychology of
Science: A Reconnaissance. Maurice Basset Publishing, 1966, p. 15.
5
Karl Popper, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Ed. Ted Honderich. New York: Oxford University Press,
1995. 702-3.
6
Francesco Petrarch (1367). Apologia cuiusdam anonymi Galli calumnias (Defence against the calumnies
of an anonymous Frenchman), in Petrarch, Opera Omnia, Basel, 1554, p. 1195. This quotation comes from
the English translation of Mommsen's article, where the source is given in a footnote .

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 Why radical?
Because liberal education can never be politically correct, whether that correctness
comes from the Right or from the Left. Liberal education goes deeper than politics—
even as it includes it. Arnold Bennett’s “passionate few” understood this, but their
successors have forgotten. The bankrupt tribe of mediocrities, who now infest the
academe, citing their naive rejection of civility, their ignorant denial of tradition, and
their lazy dismissal of the classics, is a case in point. On the other side of the fence,
conservatives who call for a return to conventional values seek a socially "safe" vision of
art that has never existed and never can. Critical Theory As It Is takes the middle way
even as it aims to take us past the wreckage of postmodernism and postcolonialism to
recover the classical tradition and values in the humanities
The recovery of classical values in the arts, such as beauty, order, harmony, meaning,
and right reason is imperative even if it means unlearning fifty years of nonsense to re-
absorb their lessons.
Am I a traditionalist? You can bet your bottom peso I am: an unbowed traditionalist
of the classical variety at that. I am not a traditionalist of the conservative kind. The
difference between the unthinking traditionalist of the conservative kind and a genuine
traditionalist of the classical kind is as day/night dissimilar as the difference between a
Pat Robertson or a Mike Velarde and the profound respect for tradition as shown in the
theology of a Paul Tillich, a Bernard Lonergan, a Horacio de la Costa, or a Hans Urs von
Balthasar.
I have seen old buttresses built to last hundreds of years torn down and replaced
with cement posts. I have seen old sacristies renovated and transformed into multi-
purpose halls. I have seen old manuscripts burned because they took up space. I have
seen chandeliers removed from ceilings and replaced with fluorescent lamps. I have
seen ivory statuettes replaced with paint-coated statues made of plastic, paper mache,
and plaster of paris.
Our present clergy have replaced the baroque with the generic.
With parish priests behaving as if everything were their property, I wonder if there
will be anything left to Catholicism to distinguish it from other Christian churches: no
incense, no votive candles, no stained glass windows, no solemn music, no mystery, no
awe.
And no respect for privacy. Post-conciliar Catholics would not leave you alone. You
have to clap your hands, reach out, greet each other, feel sociable. Attending church
services these days is no different from attending a meeting of the Kiwanis club—or a
political rally.
We need our literary counterparts of Caravaggio who can weave grand religious
themes from the everyday world of peasants, ugly old men, baskets full of fruits, and
calesas without appearing obviously “religious.” Or literary Bernini’s who will write of
fiestas and evening processions with passion without having to chant “Amen” after every
sentence.
Aristarchus of Samos ( 310 BC – ca. 230 BC) is the first known person to present a
heliocentric model of the solar system, but his astronomical ideas were often rejected in
favor of the geocentric theories of Aristotle and later Ptolemy until they were

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successfully revived nearly 1800 years later by Copernicus and extensively developed
and built upon by Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton.
Hop in and join in. You do not need to belong to academia to enjoy my book. In
fact, you do not need to attend my classes at university at all to be my friend. The Poet
Himself did not attend university. In his Groats-Worth of Wit (1592), Robert Greene,
surveying the literary scene in London, mocks “an upstart Crow” who, with “his Tygers
hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse”
and “is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey.” Greene here parodies a
line taken from Shakespeare’s very early play Henry VI, part 3; it is clear from his remarks
that Master “Shake-scene” was already quite well known, both as an actor and as a
dramatist. What galled Greene was the fact that this “yokel,” this “bumpkin” from the
province was not a member of Greene’s exclusive “university wits.”
What matter if our voices are as yet unheard and crying in the wilderness.
One has only to look up at the night sky to see from a larger perspective how this
postcolonial schlock, like all ideologies that preceded it, will turn out to be a transition at
best to a still different ideology. If you look up at the night sky, you will see many stars
and heavenly bodies that follow the natural laws. You may also see a meteor or two.
Meteors are very bright stray fragments that break away from the natural orbit. They
choose wild courses of their own. After some time, however, they are drawn into the
natural orbit of some law abiding planet and are dissipated.
Ours is a small band of law abiding citizens of the universe who know enough,
and therefore care enough. We will not be intimidated any longer by meteors. To quote
that oft-repeated passage from Edmund Burke: “All that is necessary for the triumph of
evil is that good men do nothing,”7 this book is my humble two cents’ worth.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the University of the Philippines for granting me a sabbatical
to write this book. I would also like to thank my students in Classical Latin for urging me
to finish this book. In particular, I would like to thank my students, graduate and
undergraduate, for doing me the honor of recording my lectures live—a gesture that has
obligated me (in a very pleasant way) to scrupulously weigh and consider every word I
released in these classroom lectures.8 The keen interest they have shown me in their
eagerness to learn the classics in general and critical theory in particular has not only
inspired me but has also greatly contributed to the enhancement, organization, and
substance of this book. They are my co-authors.
The deficiencies that remain, however, are my responsibility alone.

7
Edmund Burke Irish orator, philosopher, & politician (1729 - 1797). A whole chapter is
devoted to him in this book.
8
All the lectures in this book (vide Appendix B: Course Syllabus) have been recorded live and may
be downloaded at http://carlosaureus.blogspot.com

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 Many manuscripts submitted for publication often drag along with them a heavy
freight of bibliographic cross references, content footnotes, reference footnotes, and
annotated bibliographies to impress upon the reader the amount of research done and
the meticulousness of documentation that have been dug out. I must confess that I too
have been guilty of this tendency. For this book, however, I have decided to curb the
spur, so to speak, and provide the reader instead with as few sources as possible for just
one reason: In an on-line age such as ours, the absence of direct references to
authorities in the text can no longer indicate a lack of indebtedness. My purpose is to
preclude the tendency to overwhelm the reader with a long list of sources one can easily
locate by accessing on any on-line bibliographic database. I want to give the reader a
minimum of overt scholarly apparatus by including only
I say that in all humility and honesty, because most of the insights you will find
here have been derived from lectures and writings by some of the best teachers in the
world. These are the passionate few that Arnold Bennett writes about, 9 the few who
have devoted their lives honing areas I have barely scratched. Students here will hear
the echoes of my first teacher in critical theory Dr. Edilberto K. Tiempo of Silliman
University (who introduced me to the Smith and Parks book), and the echoes of my
mentor and adviser Dr. Elmer Ordoñez of the University of the Philippines (who
introduced me to the Hazard Adams book). I am extremely honored to be granted
permission by two of the finest professors in the world, Dr. Louis Markos (Professor of
English at Houston Baptist University) and Dr. Judith V. Grabiner (the Flora Sanborn Pitzer
Professor of Mathematics at Pitzer College) to draw from, adapt, and make use of their
lectures in my classes. I want to acknowledge the following Dr. Elizabeth Vandiver of
Whitman College for my chapters on Plato, Horace, and Augustine; Dr. David Roochnik of
Boston University from whom I have drawn Books II, III, and X of the Plato’s Republic; Dr.
John M. Bowers of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, for Socrates, Plato, Aristotle,
Augustine, and Boethius; Dr. Philip Cary of Eastern College in St. Davids, Pennsylvania,
for Plotinus, Augustine on “Signs and Sacraments,” Hegel; Dr. Darren M. Staloff of the
City College of New York for Hegel; Dr. Michael Sugrue of Ave Maria University in Florida,
for Plato and Poetry; Dr. Stephen Erickson of Pomona College, Claremont, California, for
Kant and Hegel; Dr. Willard Spiegelman of Southern Methodist University, for
Wortdsworth; Dr. John Sutherland of the University College London, for Lyrical Ballads.
These are the experts I have brazenly, liberally, and sedulously borrowed from
and whose works, if the reader may have come to have read them, my thoughts are
heavily vectored on.
I have tried my best to provide all the bibliographical data in the bibliography and
wherever I see fit when what I say is derived. I have “stolen” various insights which could
not be said better and I heartily admit it by sedulously becoming the mouthpiece of the
gods, Shelley’s Aeolian harp. They could not have said it better. I could not improve on
them. I can only be their mouthpiece.
Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to my student in Latin Sarah Jean Morato
for all the various sorts of technical help that I have received while writing this book.

9
Arnold Bennett, “Why a Classic is a Classic,” A Textbook in Freshman English, pp. 352-4.

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Because I am a complete idiot in computer technology (I only want to write a book,
dearie, I am not in this world to complicate my life) this work would never have been
finished without Sarah’s technical expertise and infinite patience.

Recommendation

To get the most out of this course, I heartily recommend that you purchase a
copy of Hazard Adams’s Critical Theory Since Plato (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College
Publishers). This is the one textbook I believe you should have as companion to this
present book. I have been using Adams’s book in teaching Critical Theory ever since the
early 1970s and it is the one companion book I shall be using all throughout the course
in pointing to all the primary sources in this study. In a word, if you have Adams’s book,
there is nothing else to buy. It is the “one-stop-shop book” I can heartily recommend to
anyone interested in a comprehensive treatment of the subject of critical theory. If you
cannot purchase the latest edition, the 1971 or the 1992 revised edition would do just
fine. In fact, in this present study, I sometimes make use of the 1971 first edition in
excerpting passages; for example, I have used the translation of Horace’s Ars Poetica by
E. C. Wickham instead of the 1992 translation by Walter Jackson Bate. Not that the
former is better than the latter, but probably I have gotten so used to the Wickham
version over the decades to feel more comfortable with it.
If your funds permit, I would also highly recommend (in the same breath), James
Harry Smith’s The Great Critics: An Anthology of Literary Criticism (Third Edition, W.W.
Norton & Co., 1951, Ed Winfield Parks, co-editor). My passion for literary theory actually
began with exposure to this jewel of a book (we used to refer to it back then as the
“Smith and Parks”) and the passionate manner in which it was taught by the late
“Arnoldian” critic Dr. Edilberto K. Tiempo, a great critic in his own right, when I took this
course under him at Silliman University way back in June 1970.
After these two books, it would be helpful if one could “warm up” to the study by
pre-reading the following what I believe are essential sources in advance by way of
preliminary in getting the knack and feel of literary criticism:

Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp10

____________. A Glossary of Literary Terms
Beardsley, Monroe C. Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism
Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and
Beautiful (Ed. James T. Boulton)
Tillyard, E. M. W. The Elizabethan World Picture

A word about the book’s style of writing

Aristotle’s style of teaching—walking back and forth with his students while
lecturing—has been called the Peripatetic style of teaching, from the Greek
10
The complete publication data of these five books and all other sources cited in this study are provided
for in the bibliography found on the last pages of this book.

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περιπατητικός (walking about, itinerant, wandering, meandering). Aristotle taught in the
groves and covered walks of the gymnasium in the Lyceum. This habit of thinking while
walking is a habit that my Philosophy professors inculcated in me ever since my seminary
years to the effect that until now I cannot think if I would not pace the floor. The patio
outside the study hall where we used to walk back and forth to discuss the Summa
Theologica is no longer there, but the habit has remained with me for the rest of my life.
This book is written in that style, that is why it does not follow the usual paragraphing,
but sometimes I make use of dots, sometimes of the outline, all to make the point as
effective as possible.

It has often been heard that the Aristotelian style which is dry, concise,
systematic, unliterary, while Plato is literary. This may be true, But literariness is not a
prerequisite, albeit not inappropriate, for theory. If the nature of the subject required a
more “Aristotelian” (and later “Aquinian”) dry style. Aristotle’s (and Plato’s) works
survive not because of their literariness or their lack of it but in spite of it. Both
philosophers chose their style appropriate for their purpose. It was conscious and
deliberate and it worked well for teaching purposes.

In trying to achieve this task, I shall present a different approach. In a simul-sense

cyber environment where teachers have to compete with myriad distractions to the
effect that the student’s classroom attention span has become virtually non existent, I
shall use several presentations and employ what I think will engage the students today:
the outline approach, the classroom-lecture style, and the audio-download approach.

The outline approach compresses in distilled language what may otherwise take
a whole long-winded essay to explain. Even a cursory reading of the book will
demonstrate how I have tried my best to make the outlines as curt, laconic, and to the
point as possible. I have chosen every word with care. I have left out irrelevant detail and
concentrated only on the highlights. I have applied Occam’s razor when appropriate, and
amplified only when necessary. This is the reason why some outlines are constructed in
the traditional outline form, others in bullet form, while still others in paragraph form.
Whatever style was most effective, that I would use. The overall aim was to make the
lessons highly interesting and exciting and I wanted to maintain that excitement all
throughout.
Some chapters are long as some are short. I did not allow myself to be confined
to the same number of pages for each chapter. Some deserved a long chapter, while in
others, once the point is argued, there was no need to further elaborate. To adjust my
chapters to conform to a uniform number of pages would be to torture them according
to their size in relation to the bed of Procrustes.
To get the most out of this course, I suggest that the you read the primary source
first to be found in Hazard Adams’s Critical Theory Since Plato (for example, Book VII of
Plato’s Republic). Then I suggest you read the outline or chapter I have provided in this
book, while listening to the audio lecture. Better yet, underscore, write marginal notes,
pencil in asterisks, etc. while listening to the lecture. The best yet is to listen to the

10
lecture while writing on the primary source (Hazard Adams’s book) PROVIDED IT IS YOUR
OWN PERSONAL COPY, of course.
We guarantee that this format, if followed, will stand any student in good stead
in preparing for an examination, and will eliminate the burden of endless re-reading and
re-viewing and sorting through endless information to find which material is or is not
important.
My audio lectures are about an hour long each. By listening to them even an
hour a day, I guarantee you can master the course in a semester. By using this multi-
sense approach to the ancient tradition classroom teaching, I hope to be able to bring
the excitement of learning critical theory into your home or car or jogging lane. Allow
me to have a word more about these audio lectures:

About the Audio CD/Download

The audio CD/download that goes along with this book is originally intended to
provide my students with an audio version of my classroom lectures as soon as they had
gotten home. I would usually upload them first thing upon arriving home myself. The
students could then listen to them on the same day they were delivered.
These classroom lectures have been recorded live in order to walk the student step-by-
step through the course s/he is enrolled in. They are also meant to help supplement,
focus, and organize the student’s efforts in reviewing for the final examination. Although
these audio lectures are not meant to substitute for the classroom experience itself,
which cannot be replaced even in an on-line age like ours, they are made available here
to help maximize the student’s learning experience in an efficient, time-saving, and
frequently effortless way.
I have tried my best to record these lectures in such a manner that while listening
to the audio, the student would feel like I’m right there with him in the study room.
I am also providing a PDF file of this book, and the student may choose to
download it. The PDF file buttresses the lessons with extensive added materials like
glossaries, biographies, bibliographies, links to related websites, as well as suggestions
for further study.
The student may find it beneficial if she read the particular lesson while listening
to the audio lecture at the same time. In this manner, two senses—sight and hearing—
are maximized.
Among the benefits you may find in this strategy are the following:
A better focus.
A more organized and time-saving review.
The freedom to study anywhere and at any time. (You may choose, for
example, to transfer the audio lectures to your mp3 player and play it
while on the jogging lane, while travelling, while waiting your turn at an
office, etc.)
When you open my BlogSpot http://carlosaureus.blogspot.com you will find the
banner Critical Thinking instead of Critical Theory. A word about Critical Thinking, and
why it is the banner of my BlogSpot:

11
 Critical thinking is not about “criticizing” other people. Nor is it about passing
judgment on anybody. My premise is that we all make mistakes and we appreciate it
when someone helps us see them. We appreciate it if someone on the highway, for
example, points out that our car has a flat tire. In that sense. Likewise, we appreciate it if
someone tells us that our theory or claim is unfounded. Your friend will not be doing you
a favor if s/he told you your theory is brilliant when in fact s/he thinks it is actually
rotten. Critical thinking is about learning and understanding; it is about helping each
other, not about winning or putting down somebody else and coming out on top.
Why do we make mistakes? Because we are human, and as humans we are prone
to misjudgment, to oversight, to ignorance, and in my case, to stupidity. It’s a safe bet
that the majority of other human beings do not have a right view of things as they are.
Failing to understand things as they are is no crime. The problem arises when people
with un-theorized and mal-informed opinions poorly thought out; people full of dead
theory sanctified by time and naturalized by indolence, people who are jaundiced,
bigoted, biased and naive, act on those opinions.
College education addresses these problems and hopes to remedy them. College
thinking IS critical thinking. In college, learning is reached through right reason and
proper investigation, not through authority. We find out for ourselves whether or not a
thing is true on the basis of evidence supported by right reason.
Morton Cronin in his essay “What an Intellectual Is—And is Not” describes this
most succinctly by citing the intellectual’s important characteristic as the willingness—
indeed, the eagerness—to subject her views to critical discussion. According to Cronin:
If he [sic] is a good example of this type, he will glow with health and good
humor in an argument. . . . Yet his object is not to score debating points. For him
the pursuit of truth must be cooperative, as well as dialectic, and all the pleasure
vanishes when that pursuit turns into a mere contest of wills with his interlocutor.
It is easy for him to say “I don’t know,” and he is impressed when his own
questions evoke that reply.11
Although I have crafted this audio project to serve my students, first and
foremost, I have designed it in such a way that anybody may hop in and join the fun. Like
Professor Louis Markos of Houston Baptist University, I believe that “knowledge must
not be walled up in the academy, but must be freely and enthusiastically disseminated
to all those ‘who have ears to hear.’” Learning is fun. We should not say “I am going to
study.” Instead, we should say “I am going to have fun!”
So hop right in.
Introduction12
What is Critical Theory?

11
Morton Cronin. “What an Intellectual Is—And is Not.” In A Textbook in Freshman English, p. 336.
12
Apart from Keats’s extended metaphor, I have borrowed the analogy of travel here from Steven Lynn’s
Texts and Contexts, xvii ff.

12
 Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
—John Keats (1795-1821)
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

I. Literary works, like Keats’s realms of gold, are like exotic places we love to
visit.
II. Whether one travels alone or with a companion, there is always romance in
voyaging through strange lands.
III. To maximize the benefits of these journeys, it is a good idea to travel with an
experienced tourist guide.
IV. Let me be your literary tourist guide.
A. A tourist guide will tell you what you should look for.
B. A tourist guide will provide you a plan (i.e., a map, an itinerary). Before
the end of this chapter, I shall provide you with that map.
C. A tourist guide will make sure you have a satisfying, rewarding trip.
D. This is my guarantee—or, as a good salesman would say, your money
back!
V. Literary theory and criticism is no different from the tourist trade in that it
brings order and organization to our experience of the places we love to visit,
in this sense, literary works.
A. It brings us to focus our attention on the relevant areas.
B. It allows us to make sense of what we see.
VI. Critical theories are like the different travel agencies through which the
various tour guides generally work.
VII. Different agencies feature different kinds of tours.
A. One agency specializes in cultural tours.

13
 B. Another specializes in historical tours.
C. Others in cultural and artistic tours.
D. Still some others in religious and spiritual tours. 13
VIII. To be a good tourist guide, you need not only have spent some time with
your specialization but also to have some clear idea of the kinds of tours
available.
A. You must be able to combine and adapt.
B. In the field of critical theory you must, therefore, have an understanding
of various critical theories and practices.
IX. Is there one correct interpretation of a literary work?
A. Just as there is no one best place to view the breath-taking Banaue Rice
Terraces, so there is no one best reading of a literary work.

The Eighth Wonder of the World, the Banaue Rice Terraces, Ifugao Province,
Philippines. Photo courtesy of my student Sarah Jean Morato.

B. Endorsing variety, however, doesn’t mean that all opinions are equal.
1. Just because we marvel at the rice terraces from the viewpoints,
we need not also agree that all vantage points are satisfying to
all.
2. Some vantage points are arguably better than others. But then:
a. Better for what?
b. Better for whom?
c. I personally prefer to be overwhelmed by the panoramic
view of the terraces.

13
At this writing, in the Philippines, spiritual tours mean guided tours to native healers and healing shrines.

14
 d. You may want to be impressed by the skillfully devised
irrigation system built thousands of years ago by the great
Igorot race in the absence of modern machineries.
e. De gustibus non est disputandum.14
X. This book aims to address your preferences, attempting not only to explain
how to use various critical approaches, but also to consider what purposes
different approaches are likely to serve (better for what), as well as what sort
of audience is likely to be influenced by different critical strategies (better for
whom).
A. By the very nature of theory, there can be no universal perspective.
B. All perspectives are relative to different individuals and different
communities.
C. They are relative to different geographical areas and historical epochs.
XI. More important, this book aims to provide an introduction to the minds of
the great critics—the spiral of development in consciousness and culture.
XII. The most telling reason why Critical Theory of the classical tradition remains
a closed book to many is because it is excessively difficult reading. Because of
this, required courses in critical theory are being replaced by the more trendy
creative writing courses. As a result, twenty-first century ad hoc education
especially has become vulnerable to the charge that it no longer carries
classical liberal arts education to a high enough level of importance.

“The good critic cannot stop with studying poetry, he must also study poetics. If he
thinks that he must puritanically abstain from all indulgence in the theory, the good critic
may have to be a good little critic. . . . Theory, which is expectation, always determines
criticism.”
—John Crowe Ransom, The World’s Body

In this book, I shall use the word “Poetics” both in its expansive sense,
Περὶ ποιητικῆς, to denote the concept of critical theory itself, and in its contracted term,
still Περὶ ποιητικῆς, to signify the theory of poetry.

XIII. So why study theory?

A. For the same reasons we read literature.
1. To broaden our horizons.
2. To alter our perspectives.
3. To make us more perceptive, more observant, more alert.
4. To bring our keenness of perception into every department of
our lives.

14
In matters of taste, (let there be) no dispute.

15
  Critical theory, then, is the systematic study of the nature of literature and
of the methods for analyzing literature.15
 Some questions that are asked in critical theory:
1. Where is the ultimate starting place of poetry traced to?
2. Does poetry bring us closer to or farther away from “Truth”?
3. Is the poet an artist, a craftsman or a person possessed?
4. Of what use is poetry to society?
5. Is the poem a self-enclosed artifact the meaning of which is timeless
and transcendental or is it merely a product of material and social
forces?
 In our present study, critical theory as it has diffused into considerations
of intellectual history, moral philosophy, social prophecy, or other
interdisciplinary themes which are of relevance to the way humans
interpret meaning16 will not be our main concern.
 Our approach will be narrower and more focused, and will consist in
confining our study to critical appraisals of poetry, even if our discussions
can be applied to literature (and art) in general.
 This is the traditional approach; indeed, until relatively recently, critical
theory was basically synonymous with nothing other than the criticism of
poetry.
 By tradition, poetry has been privileged above prose and has been
considered a distilled form of writing.
 The time-honored defenses of art and song have been defenses of poetry.

The Four Basic Critical Orientations

 In The Mirror and the Lamp, M. H. Abrams of Cornell University classifies

critical theories according to their critical orientation, locating the poem
(1) in the nature it copies (mimetic), (2) in the audience it finds (pragmatic
or affective), (3) in the author (expressive), and (4) in its own verbal
structure (objective).17
 Mimetic theories consider the poem as an imitation, a representation, or
a copy of the world, whether natural or supernatural.
 These theories say that the best poem is that which comes closest to that
which it seeks to imitate.
 Pragmatic theories emphasize the reader’s relation to the work, or how it
affected the audience (affective).
 These theories assess whether the poem teaches and/or delights.
1. They also lay down rules for judging both the skill of the poet and the
taste of the reader.
15
Jonathan Culler’s definition, in his book, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1997, p. 1.
16
Ibid.
17
Critical Theory Since Plato (First Edition). See “General Introduction. Passim.”

16
 2. They explore the impact the work has on its readers.
 Expressive theories say that poetry is the reflection of internal, not
external, realities.
 Poetry has a personal (not social) and prophetic (not didactic) function.
 Objective theories (not within the scope of this book) focus on the poem
itself and its internal relationships—the poem as its own self-contained
microcosm following its own inner laws.
 We shall take up the first three orientations which will come up again and
again in the course of our study.

XIV. Theory is difficult.

A. Theory is difficult because it makes us think—and think with abstract
ideas.
B. Theory undermines reading as an innocent activity.
C. It forces us to examine our assumptions.
D. It makes explicit what is implied.
XV. In science this enterprise is called theory; in literature, poetics.
A. All human activity has a theory.
1. Theory may be defined as the deeper investigation into the
nature of an activity.
2. Even the theory of basketball has been thoroughly inquired into.
B. No discourse about literature is theory-free.
1. Even the simplest acts of literary response, such as “This is
boring,” depend on a certain theoretical stance.
2. The above stance includes the assumption that the purpose of
literature includes entertaining the reader, and the critic’s job
includes identifying works that fail this test.

So, whether you like it or not, you have at theory, or what I would like to call a
“theoretical stance.” When you watch a movie, for example, and tell your friends “this
movie is boring,” that is a theoretical stance. It assumes that, to you, a movie must
entertain. As a movie “critic” your statement has just identified a specific movie that
failed your test.
In literature, it is the same. You have a theory in order to make sense of the work
you are reading, listening to, or (if it’s a play or a movie) watching. You are guided by
some “elements,” or principles, of literature, like theme and style. You know what to
look for. When asked why the movie is boring, you do not merely shrug your shoulders
and say “ahh . . . I dunno . . . just because . . . basta.” You define your statement and
articulate the elements that make up a good movie. Theory is the absence of reading as
an innocent activity.

XVI. Poetics means the general theory of literature.

A. It is not interpretation, not a reaction paper, not a term paper.
B. It is the “science” of literature, and it consists in having:

17
 1. General laws.
2. Essences.
3. Universals.
XVII. A good critic, then, to repeat what John Crowe Ransom has said earlier, is
known by his poetics.
A. The purpose of studying these great critics from Plato to Yeats is to
expose you to the way they think, and this is done for a very good reason:
1. First we ask: “What do I think about poetry?” And then, after
starting with our own assumptions, we ask—
2. What did Plato have to say about poetry? Or—
3. How did Aristotle handle the theory of poetry?
4. Finally we read what these great critics have to say about these
questions.
B. By doing so, it is hoped that you will soon find/discover/formulate your
own poetics.
In order to make the most of our “guided tour,” rather than attempt an
exhaustive survey of Literary Theory and Criticism, we shall focus our sights by imposing
upon ourselves four limitations: first, we shall confine ourselves to critical appraisals of
poetry only; second, we shall limit the boundary of our study to enclose ourselves within
the perimeters from Plato to Yeats only; third, we shall concentrate on four theoretical
periods (the classical, the medieval, the neoclassical, and the romantic); and fourth, we
shall confine ourselves to close readings of representative primary, not secondary, texts.

Here is a rundown—the “map”—of the main sections that will make up our
study:

Part One: The Classical Background. This section will take up the difference between
Plato and Aristotle in the concept of mimesis. Whereas Plato saw poetry as twice
removed from reality, Aristotle saw reality as a process by which the Form manifests
itself through the concrete. The poet’s mimesis, therefore, is an analogue of this process.
This module shall also examine why Plato banished the poets from his ideal republic,
and why Aristotle refutes this by calling the poet not only an imitator but also a creator.
Although other critics may disagree with me, I am including Horace’s “Art of Poetry” and
Longinus’s “On the Sublime” in this module, instead of calling them neoclassicists,
because although less theoretical than Aristotle and even less moral than Plato, Horace’s
practical instructions on the art of composing poetry are ancient Greek in mindset.
Likewise, Longinus’s treatment of the sublime balances and blends inspiration and
rhetorical mastery in the tradition of ancient classical rhetoricians, hence his inclusion,
too, in this section.

Part Two: Medieval Aesthetics. This module will take up the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus
(who gives poetry a much higher position in his system), the semiotics of Augustine
(whose science of sign systems paved the way for later theories of allegory), the
hermeneutics of Aquinas (whose fourfold interpretive system opened up the possibility

18
of discovering multiple meanings in poems later), and the Platonic distrust of poets by
Boethius (who viewed poetry trivial by comparison to theological pursuits). It will be
seen here that in the medieval times, theology was described as the highest, the prince,
of the sciences. The lowest of the sciences was poetry.

Part Three: Neoclassical Criticism. Sir Philip Sidney’s “An Apology for Poetry” begins this
section which deals with the neoclassical temper, especially as this relates to decorum—
a favorite word of neoclassicists. Along with Dryden and Pope, Sidney defends poetry
from traditional attacks: that it is a waste of time, that it is the mother of lies, and that it
teaches sinful things—traditional complaints that go all the way back to Plato. Sydney,
Dryden, and Pope then lay down the rules upon which aspiring poets may achieve
excellence.

Part Four: German Epistemological Roots. This, I daresay, is the most difficult but
rewarding of the modules. We shall take up the theories of Kant, Schiller, and Hegel,
prefacing them with a general outline of the creeds of epistemology in Edmund Burke’s
An Inquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful, a seminal work which set the tone for
much of German aesthetics. In Kant’s Critique of Judgment we shall look into two kinds
of aesthetic judgments, those of the beautiful and those of the sublime, and discuss how
they differ from each other. In Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, we
shall learn about two fundamental drives, the sensuous drive and the formal drive, and
why these drives demand reconciliation in a higher drive which Schiller calls the “play
drive.” In Hegel’s Philosophy of Fine Art, we shall follow the “Idea” as it travels into
concrete form through the symbolic, the classical, and the romantic forms of art in
search of a perfect incarnation.

Part Five: The Romantic Imagination. This module shifts the attention from the
relationship between poem and reader (affective) to that between poet and poem
(expressive). We shall take up the great Romantics Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and
Keats—poets deeply speaking intimately to the reader, speaking not of concepts but of
intuitions of nature and of the self. This module presents the poet as a human being
“endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a
greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are
supposed to be common among mankind.” Needless to say, this is the easiest and the
most agreeable of the modules.

Part Six: William Butler Yeats’s Poetics in A Vision. I have chosen, instead of discussing
“The Symbolism of Poetry” that is found in the first edition of Hazard Adams’ book, to
discuss A Vision because the work is in my opinion the best showcase of a poet’s poetics
in the fullest display of his powers resulting in a grand synthesis of irony. 18 Yeats turned
his back on 19th century science because of its extreme emphasis on a rationalistic,
determinist, reductionist, and materialist universe. But his excursion to the mystical

18
Irony is one of my favorite words, along with restraint, decorum, verisimilitude, and gravitas.

19
furnished him with an architectural structure more comprehensive and sensible than the
science of his day. To anyone who asks me what is meant by finding one’s own poetics, I
recommend a cursory glance at A Vision.

Welcome to the world of Critical Theory.

Plato
Introduction

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that

it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
—Alfred North Whitehead
“Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here.”
—Sign on the door to Plato’s Academy in Ancient Athens

Abstract

A prefatory word about Plato, and why our study of poetics begins with him:
Although Aristotle’s Poetics is the earliest extant treatise of literary theory, all poetics in

20
truth begin with Plato (even if Plato himself never used the word “poetics”). We start
with Plato because he was the first critic to narrow his focus on poetry. Plato’s incisive
investigation into the nature of poetry formally inaugurates the business of poetics.
Plato, in fact, is the FIRST critic and the first CRITIC of poetry. Though himself a great
literary talent, Plato, when fashioning his ideal Republic, decided it would be best if poets
were banished from his Republic. To find out why, we shall present, in this chapter, an
overview of Plato’s philosophy as it relates to our question. In the next chapter, we shall
narrow our focus and examine Books II, III, and X, which examine why Plato banished the
poets from his Republic.

There is an anecdote, albeit apocryphal, about the first meeting of Plato and
Socrates, which dramatizes why Plato disapproves of poetry.
The story goes that Plato first made the acquaintance of Socrates after the
former had written a cycle of tragedies. The young Plato wanted to enter these tragedies
in the contest that the ancient Greeks held during the Dionysian festivals. He wanted to
win a prize for tragedy.
So Plato and Socrates met. The young Plato excitedly read aloud some of his
tragic poems. Socrates asked questions. Plato answered as best he could. Socrates asked
more questions. At the end of their dialogue, Plato went home, burned his tragedies and
never wrote tragedy again.
What actually transpired in that initial dialogue between Socrates and Plato we
can only surmise. What we do know is that Plato had become Socrates’ student, and
after Socrates’ tragic death, founded the Academy in Athens, the first University in the
Western world.19 Plato also paid his teacher the greatest of compliments by making
Socrates the main speaker in everything that Plato wrote hereafter. Alas, the teacher’s
negative impression of poetry and poets were passed on to the student.
Plato has a rather ambivalent attitude towards poetry. Poets are dangerous mis-
educators of the youth. Socrates was condemned to death because his accusers say he
corrupted the youth of Athens. Plato says no: the real corrupters of youth are these
poets who perhaps are divinely inspired but don’t really understand what they’re doing.
They have a kind of sacred madness which makes them write things that they
themselves do not understand, and often the harm they do is irrevocable.
To understand why Plato thought lowly of poets, we need to start looking father
back into his theory of the divided line.

Archetypes, Mathematics, and Plato’s Metaphor of the Divided Line

What are archetypes?

Normally, we see cases of just men and just actions, so we come up with the idea
of Justice. In other words, we know there is such a thing as justice because of the
evidence of just men and just actions we witness in the world. This is obvious, isn’t it?

19
The Academy lasted for some 900 years. Aristotle was Plato’s pupil here for nineteen years. The
Academy was closed in the Middle Ages.

21
 No. Plato says the contrary is what is true. The Idea of Justice is the reality.
Whether men were just or not, Justice remains as a self-existent Reality, independent of
whether or not men were just. We experience justice because Justice existed in the Ideal
World.
The viewpoint can be extended to any department of everyday experience. Take
a rose, for example. There are many varieties of roses, millions of them, but there is one
archetypal Rose, the Idea of the Rose.
Everything has an archetype behind it. Take the case of beauty. Why is your face
beautiful? Or your hand, your foot, your legs beautiful? Because each is a window
through which one glimpses the archetype. The nearer it is to the archetype, the more
beautiful it is. The farther it is from the archetype, the less beautiful it is.
The Idea of Beauty is the Form of Beauty. When we think of the Idea of Beauty,
we no longer belong to the Form but to the Concept of Beauty. The beautiful girl,
beautiful rose, beautiful vase that we see are individual beautiful entities. The painting
of a beautiful girl, beautiful rose, and beautiful vase are images or shadows of the
individual beautiful entities, and thus thrice removed from the truth. We shall return to
this central concept when we discuss the reasons why Plato thought lowly of poets and
poetry in the next chapter.
Plato's metaphor of the Divided Line is chiefly derived from the mathematical
ideas of ancient Greek geometry. Plato uses this metaphor to stand for his teachings
about reality, being, and knowledge. Whether or not the metaphor accurately describes
reality remains a philosophical question.
As the name implies (“divided line”), it is a metaphor borrowed from
mathematics.
By using the divided line, Plato tells us something about the relationship
between the blurry statements we make about the world of sense experience and the
exact statements we could make about eternal reality.

 To construct Plato's divided line, let us draw a line and divide it into 4 parts: A, B,
C, and D.
 The names under A and B pertain to the world of becoming, and the names
under C and D pertain to the world of being.

Plato’s Divided Line20

20
source: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/rhatch/HIS-SCI-STUDY-GUIDE/0019_platoDividedLine.html

22
World of Being World of Becoming

1. Side A represents images.

2. Side B represents objects of sense experience, including living things
and objects made by art.
3. Side C represents the objects of mathematics.
4. Side D represents the forms or ideas or the purely intelligible.
.........

1. Side A can be called imagining.

2. Side B can be called belief.
3. Side C can be called thinking.
4. Side D can be called intelligence.
..........

If we call the segments (starting from the left) A, B, C, and D, we have

these relationships: A < B < C < D, A/B = B/C = C/D, and (A + B)/(C + D) =
A/B.
The relationship between the segments A, B, C, and D corresponds to the
differing degrees of “reality” on the part of the things the segments
represent.

A. The relationship between C (the objects of mathematics) and B (physical

objects) is the same as the relationship between B (physical objects) and
A (images).

23
 B. This suggests that the sphere is more real than a basketball, because the
latter is merely an image of the sphere, although the basketball is more
real than its circular drawing/image.
C. The objects of the world of sense are subject to continual change, and
statements about them are fuzzy and (a modem person might say) only
probable.
D. But the objects of the world of thought are unchanging and eternal, and
therefore statements about them are always true.
E. There is, however, a difference between the objects on the third level, the
objects of mathematics, and those on the fourth, like the idea or form of
justice or of beauty.
1. The way we come to the truths of mathematics is hypothetical: They
are true provided that the basic axioms are true.
2. The truths on the fourth level are somehow reached by dialectic and
require no hypotheses.
3. One ascends the divided line through education, and education is
designed to draw the soul from the changing to the real.
F. The soul is drawn from the changing to the real by the study of
mathematics, where one may begin by looking at drawings or physical
spheres but where one soon progresses to the actual objects of
mathematics, which can be seen only with the eye of the intellect.
I. We ask whether the divided line, as described, can actually be constructed
geometrically.
A. We prove that it cannot.
B. It is clear that Plato knew more than enough mathematics to be aware of
this.
C. We ask what the philosophical meaning of this conclusion might be for
Plato and whether this is consistent with the views we have attributed to
him.
II. One can see from this lecture why Plato placed mathematics at the heart of
education.
A. By experiencing the objects of mathematics, like numbers or circles or
triangles, we come to realize that there is a world of intelligibles, of things
that can be grasped only by the intellect. So, as it is said, the door to
Plato's Academy in Athens read, "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter
here.”

The Allegory of the Cave

Plato's view of knowing and being in his discussion of the divided line is
elaborated further in his story of the cave. In one of his most famous passages, the
human condition is likened to prisoners chained in a dark underground cave where all

24
they can see are shadows on a wall. We will see how Plato uses the cave metaphor to
further illuminate the nature of reality and knowledge. We will conclude this lecture by
discussing how Plato uses the way we learn mathematics and formulate mathematical
ideas as a model for his influential account of the relationship between everyday
experience and reality.

 The most famous of Plato's metaphors is the story of the cave, where Plato likens
the human condition to being able to perceive only shadows of reality. Here is
Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave from Part Seven, Book Seven of the
Republic.21 The dialogue is between Socrates and Glaucon:

‘Imagine an underground chamber like a cave, with a long entrance open to

the daylight and ahead of them and cannot turn their heads. Some way off,
behind and higher up, a fire is burning, and between the fire and the
prisoners and above them runs a road, in front of which a curtain-wall has
been built, like a screen at puppet shows between the operators and their
audience, above which they show their puppets.’ as wide as the cave. In this
chamber are men who have been prisoners there since they were children,
their legs and necks being so fastened that they can only look straight.
‘I see.’
‘Imagine further that there are men carrying all sorts of gear along behind
the curtain-wall, projecting above it and including figures of men and animals
made of wood and stone and all sorts of other materials, and that some of
these men, as you would expect, are talking and some not.’
‘And odd picture and an odd sort of prisoner.’
‘They are drawn from life, I replied. For, tell me, do you think our prisoners
could see anything of themselves or their fellows except the shadows thrown
by the fire on the wall of the cave opposite them?’
‘How could they see anything else if they were prevented from moving their
heads all their lives?’
‘And would they see anything more of the objects carried along the road?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then if they were able to talk to each other, would they not assume that the
shadows they saw were the real things?’
‘Inevitably.’
‘And if the wall of their prison opposite them reflected sound, don’t you think
that they would suppose, whenever one of the passers-by on the road spoke,
that the voice belonged to the shadow passing before them?’
‘They would be bound to think so.’
‘And so in every way they would believe that the shadows of the objects we
mentioned were the whole truth.’
‘Yes, inevitably.’

21
Translated by Desmond Lee in Plato: The Republic. London: Penguin: 1955, pp. 317ff. Revised 1974.

25
 Book 7 of the Republic describes prisoners chained in a cave, facing the wall all
their lives. Behind them are a fire and a road, and between the fire and the
prisoners, people walk and talk. The prisoners hear the echoes and see the
shadows cast by the fire onto the wall, and mistake these for reality.
 A prisoner is unchained and dragged out of the cave.
A. At first he is temporarily blinded by the light.
B. He prefers to return to the coziness of the cave.
C. Out at the mouth of the cave, he sees trees, rivers, mountains, the sky.
D. Eventually his eyes get used to the sight and he realizes this is what is
real.
E. He returns to the cave to save his fellow prisoners.
F. At first he cannot see clearly in the relative darkness, and his fellow
prisoners tell him: "See what happens when you try to get to higher
things."
G. In their eyes, he has become a “weirdo,” and if he tries to lead them out
of the world of shadows, they would not believe him. They would not
even hesitate to kill him for teaching “dangerous things.”
H. I think it is far safer to enter a room filled with gunpowder with a lighted
match than to teach the Thing As It is, because it goes against the grain of
the nescient, unthinking majority.
I. When a person does a useless thing, nobody bothers to educate him;
when a person does an evil thing, few seek to restrain him; but when a
person teaches us the way out of our prison caves, the whole world will
condemn him and destroy him. Such is the fate of the world’s great
teachers.

III. The metaphor of the cave enriches our understanding of the process of
moving up the divided line from the changing to the real.
A. The form of the good renders things intelligible on the top half of the
divided line, as the Sun renders things visible on the bottom half.
B. The process by which we go from shadows to real objects is like the
process by which we go from real objects to the objects of mathematics,
and so this part of the ascent of the divided line draws the soul from the
changing to the real.
C. Education, then, is not stuffmg people's minds with information, but
turning the soul in the direction of greater certainty and reality (we
moderns might say, like moving from the study of the probable to the
study of the certain).
IV. The soul is best drawn from the changing to the real by studying examples of
that which does not change.
A. Plato here strongly, and influentially, prescribes the study of mathematics
for the philosophers who are to rule his ideal society-and for all of
Western education.

26
 B. Plato's curriculum starts with arithmetic, then plane and solid geometry,
then astronomy, then music.
1. This is rather like 1 dimension for arithmetic; then 2 for plane and 3
for solid geometry; then astronomy, understood not as the study of
physical stars and planets but as the pure mathematical motion of
geometrically perfect solids; and then the harmony that governs it all.
2. This, through the work of Boethius in the 6th century, became the
quadrivium of medieval education: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy,
and music or harmony. So the process by which we move from seeing
the cantaloupe, the basketball, and the Moon to understanding the
sphere involves turning the soul more toward the real.
3. Plato calls the analogous process, which takes us from the
hypothetical treatment of mathematics to grasping the
nonhypothetical first principles of knowledge of the forms, dialectic.
C. In the dialogue, Plato has Socrates say that he cannot explain exactly how
this works, and that Glaucon, to whom Socrates is speaking, would not be
able to follow such an explanation anyway.
D. So, the metaphors—and the central role mathematics plays in them—will
have to do.

Plato
Republic (Books II, III, and X)

Athens at the time of Socrates had no printed books, no newspapers, no mass

media stuff. When people wanted the news, they went to the Agora, a central place, a
market place, where open air “parliaments” were held. Here lawsuits were tried and
here sentences were meted out by a jury elected by the people. The Agora was also the
venue of “kapihan”22 groups where congregated the more outspoken, discussing
everything from politics to metaphysics.
The Hellenistic race was interested in everything, from the origin of things, to the
nature of man and the universe.
Into this world entered the sophists, travelling “university professors” who were
not from Athens but converged in the Agora to instruct and edify anyone—for a fee (we
call them “donations” today). The sophists were considered smart. Sophós means wise
and sophistēs is one who makes a business out of wisdom. They commanded a very high

22
This is akin to a late night talk show, or an informal round table discussion over cups of coffee.

27
fee. Unlike the Athenians, they were not interested in the big questions, but in the
mechanics of things. In other words, disagreements could not be decided by appeal to
Truth, but by rhetoric. The phrase “sophistic reasoning,” or sophistry, connotes specious
argumentation used for deceiving someone.
Their bitterest opponent was Socrates, a poor mason and carver who taught but
charged no fee. He wrote nothing and naturally had no publication. In an academic
setting, he would not qualify for tenure. His wife would nag him daily for neglect of
family. Athenians would refer to him as the proprietor of a thinking shop. His aim, he
said, was not to instruct but to bring to birth, to stimulate, through critical thinking, the
thing as it is, the Ding an sich. He was a gadfly. Through question and answer, he would
give the sophists enough rope to hang themselves.
Athens sentenced him to death because he “corrupted the young.” He was
offered pardon if only he would stop talking. He said he could not stop talking because
“the unexamined life is not worth living.” The executioner asked him to stop talking
because his incessant talking was preventing the poison to take effect immediately.
Socrates continued lecturing. “Your job,” he said to the executioner, “is to administer the
poison; my job is to talk until the end.”
He died as a symbol of free speech, and his martyrdom caused one favorite
student to change his life-goal from politics to philosophy. The student’s name is Plato.
Plato, unlike his teacher, was of aristocratic birth.23 After Socrates’ death, Plato set up the
Academy and taught and wrote voluminously—twenty extant volumes of dialogues—
with Socrates as main character, teacher, and speaker. One of the more famous of the
dialogues is the Republic.
The Republic is a work that deals with (1) the examination of the Good Life,
because, says Plato, the perfect life can be led only under ideal conditions, and (2) the
education of the philosopher rulers. The dialogue occurs in the house of the aging
Cephalus on the occasion of the feast of the goddess Bendis. Plato saw to it that the
characters in this “drama”were subordinate to the ideas and arguments of the work.
Books II and III deal with censorship. Book X, the last book of the Republic, is
written by way of an appendix, apparently in anticipation of reactions to Plato’s ideas on
censorship taken up in Books II and III.
Education is the second most important constituent in Plato’s Republic. There are
two components to education: gymnastics and music. These are misleading terms in
English because each of them connotes a narrow meaning. For Plato, they carry a
broader meaning.
Gymnastics includes the education and care of the body; music includes all forms
of literature, cultural activity in general. The more contemporary connotation of music is
what we think of as the media. It is ubiquitous.
Plato discusses music first. This is because music is fundamental in shaping young
minds which are impressionable. Thus it is imperative for the rulers of the Republic to
“establish a censorship of the writers of fiction.” (Adams, 21)

23
The story goes that Socrates traced his ancestry back to Daedalus, but the claim is precarious to lock it
in alongside other urban legends.

28
 The music (in the Platonic sense) that the young are exposed to must be
politically correct, i.e., beneficial to the Republic. For example, Hesiod’s story of the fight
between Cronus and Uranus (relate story from Encyclopaedia of Greek Mythology) must
not be told in the Republic. Such a story legitimizes rebellion against authority.
Books II and III are therefore engaged in a massive program of censorship, a word
that’s uncomfortable to most of us. Cronos was one of the early gods. Uranos was his
father (cont in Encyclopaedia) – a weird and disturbing story. This story must be
censored. It is dangerous to young people who might be encouraged to question,
challenge, or even attack authority—and that can have devastating consequences in a
Republic.
Homer tells stories about gods warring against each other. Perhaps the most
famous are the quarrels between Zeus and his jealous wife Hera. Once, as result of their
quarrels, Zeus throws one of his own sons from the great height of Mount Olympus, and
as a result the son is crippled. This is a clear case of child abuse and marital strife. This
can never be included in the curriculum of the education of the young. If the father of
the gods can treat his own son like this, then that opens the door to all illicit behavior on
the part of those of us here on earth who hear these stories.
Homer depicts the gods as not always doing good. In Plato’s version of poetry,
the gods must be depicted as good and as always doing good. The heroes must be
shown as brave, never weeping or wailing, “rolling in the dirt, calling each man loudly by
his name.”24 That is the stuff of weaklings. “Let us put an end to such tales,” he says, “lest
they engender laxity of morals among the young.”25
We may ask: Isn’t this a one-sided kind of education? Plato says yes and he
makes no bones about it. The purpose of education in the Republic is the character
formation of the future philosopher-kings. No child should be exposed to evil until her
character was formed. Only then would she be in a position to act rationally.
Death must never be depicted as something negative, terrible, to be feared.
Again, this is how Homer depicts death. In the Odyssey, Odysseus goes to Hades and
finds it an absolutely dreadful place. The dead are miserable with no substantial
existence. They are mere “shades” of their former existences. The most famous
statement “I would rather be a serf on the land of the poor and portionless man than
rule over all the dead who have come to naught”26 is one “obnoxious” passage Plato
would have to obliterate.

 Book X is also overtly the best evidence of Plato’s aversion of art. Here, he not
only belabors his issue with poetry by censorship, regulation, and restriction, but
also makes haste to banish the poets altogether from his Republic.
 The metaphysical critique of poetry is grounded on Plato’s Theory of Forms. Let
us elaborate on this, the first of his two arguments against poetry, found in Book
X.
24
The passage refers to Priam in the Iliad, XXII. 414.
25
Adams, 27.
26
Odyssey. XI. 489.

29
 “We have been accustomed to assume that there is one single idea
corresponding to each group of particulars; and to these we give the
same name (as we give the idea).”
“I do.”
“Let us take, for our present purpose, any instance of such a group; there
are beds and tables in the world—many of each, are there not?”
“Yes.”
“But there are only two ideas or forms of such furniture—one the idea of
a bed, the other of a table.”

The Theory of Forms takes its bearing from language. Take the word “table.” This
word has a very general meaning. It refers to all the particular tables that exist in the
world. Every single one of them is different from another, but they are united in being a
table.
God produced the Idea,27 in our case the Idea of a table.
A carpenter who imitates the idea of the table builds a particular table.
A painter imitates the table that the carpenter built. The keyword here is
imitation—or any form of artistic representation.
Imitation, therefore, is twice removed from Truth. Because of that, Plato’s
concept of mimesis branded poetry as an unreliable source of truth.
1. Again, for Plato, there are two kinds of worlds, the World of Being and the
World of Becoming. Our physical world of Becoming is but a shadowy
reflection (mimesis) of the ideal World of Being.
2. Everything in our world, from objects to ideas, is but a pale copy of the
perfect, unchanging originals of the world of Forms.
3. When a poet describes a table, he is not imitating the Form (“tableness”)
of the table, but presenting us with an imitation of the ideal Table.
4. Poetry, therefore, because it imitates what is already an imitation (the
carpenter’s table), is twice removed from reality (the Forms); and as such,
it is an unreliable source of truth.
A. Poetry appeals to the irrational side of our psyche.
1. Unlike mathematics or philosophy, which we apprehend by way of our
rational (Apollonian) powers, poetry engages that part of our psyche that
is both illogical and irrational (Dionysiac).
2. This irrational part of the soul is not only unreliable in matters of truth
but also dangerous.
3. The poet, therefore is possessed by a madness and not in control of
himself when he writes.
 In Socrates’ time there was a rhapsode by the name of Ion of Ephesus.
1. A rhapsode is a “song-stitcher,” a “reciter” of songs. He made a living
by giving public recitations of epic poems. The good rhapsodes could

27
The idea of a God producing the idea is problematic because it actually contradicts the idea of forms,
because one important feature of the forms is that they have always existed. They do not come into being.

30
 hold their audiences spellbound and move them to laughter or to
tears.
2. Ion was such a one. He was a “specialist” in Homer.
3. But Ion also lectured, and Socrates disapproved of this.
4. Socrates suggested to Ion that his skill was due to divine madness,
and therefore his claim to teach rules of conduct from Homer was
absurd. He spoke not by art or skill, but by possession, which is an
inappropriate method.
 Socrates/Plato, however, eschewed poets and poetry not because they were
ineffectual but because they were effective! With some misgivings, Socrates
concludes that only songs offering innocuous praises to the gods and the state
will be allowed. The rest would be banned.

Conclusion: The Philosophical Hero

. The Platonic dialogue, albeit written in excellent dramatic style, is in actuality a

moving beyond the form of epic and tragedy, two techniques characteristic of the high
culture of Periclean Athens. Plato was such a profound and gifted poet. He was able to
contrive/invent a new kind of poetic mode or poetic genre called the Socratic Dialectic, a
style which is loaded with profound teachings. But the Platonic dialogue is meant to
move into a new art form which tries to remedy some of the defects which Plato himself
points out in tragedy as a whole.
For all his dramatic talents, why would he want to do this?
Because what Plato wants is not a tragic hero. A tragic hero has a tragic flaw, a
weakness in character which leads to his downfall even as it incites in us pity and fear.
Plato disapproves of this. Instead, in the Platonic dialogue, we have a new kind of hero:
not a tragic hero but a philosophical hero, a man of reason and logic, one who—instead
of killing people, being a man of passion and violence the way a Homeric hero is—
improves men rather than worsens them, one who benefits the world rather than
destroys it, one who takes upon himself the obligation to raise the standards of the
world rather than gratify its passions.
Any candidates?

Questions for discussion:

1. I have often been asked: Why were most ancient and medieval philosophers
men? Thales of Miletus (everything is made of water), Anaximander (everything
arose from water), Pythagoras (the famous theorem), Heraclitus (you cannot step

31
 into the same river twice), the Atomists Democritus and Parmenides (basic
elementary principles), et al.
2. Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (Russian: Иоо сиф Алексаондрович Броодский) (24
May 1940 – 28 January 1996) an anti-Plato Soviet-Russian-American poet said
that Plato’s subordinating aesthetics to the ethics was wrong, because aesthetics
is the mother of ethics, not the other way around. “Good ethics,” he said, “does
not create the masterpiece.” In a given society, which ought to be given priority,
ethics or aesthetics?

Aristotle
Introduction

In the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican, one can witness Raphael’s famous fresco
entitled Scuola di Atene. If one focuses in the center of the painting, one can see
Plato on the left and favorite student Aristotle beside him. Plato holds the Timaeus,
while Aristotle his own Nicomachean Ethics. Plato is painted as old, grey, wise, and
austere. By contrast Aristotle is relatively younger, fine-looking, and better dressed.
Both, however, were interested in the same questions. But their answers and methods
were different. What distinguishes the figures, for example, as depicted by Raphael, is
the way in which they gesture. Plato is pointing upward to the heavens, while Aristotle
thrusts his right hand forward with palms facing solid ground. The gestures are
significant because they indicate central aspects of their philosophies, the concepts of
idealism and realism. Plato's upward vertical gesture represents his Theory of Forms,
while Aristotle's horizontal forward gesture represents his empiricist views, with the
latter’s emphasis on concrete particulars, especially the insistence that the purpose of
learning is practical and pragmatic rather than theoretical or speculative. Aristotle
brought Plato back to earth.

32
 I think we are born either predominantly a Platonist (idealist, dualist) or
predominantly an Aristotelian (realist, pluralistic) in temperament. It is not a question of
which is the better temperament, but of different ways of looking at the world.
This is best illustrated in the theory of Forms. Plato taught that there were the Forms
and there were the things, the latter being poor imitations of the former. Aristotle
taught that there is only one world and we’re right smack in the heart of it. If the Forms
were the essence of things, he argued, how can they exist separately? If they were the
cause of things, how can they exist in a different world?
The soul to Plato was non-physical, eternal, and existed beyond the (imperfect)
physical body. The soul was imprisoned in the body. To Aristotle, the soul was a subtle
physical substance, composed of fine gossamer material, substantial, feathery, so fine
that it lacked inertia but which vanished when the physical body vanishes (as the
sharpness of a knife vanishes when melted in fire).
Aristotle studied under Plato and stayed in the Academy for nineteen years. He was
Plato’s star pupil. He only left it to go to the Greek city-state of Assus after Plato’s death,
when Plato’s nephew Speusippus inherited the Academy. Aristotle then founded his own
school The Lyceum in 335 BCE. When Aristotle’s famous student Alexander the Great
died, Aristotle, no lover of hemlock he, fled the city “lest the Athenians should sin twice
against philosophy.”
That knowledge should be logically structured, starting with elements and building
up to complexity, is so common that its intellectual originator is so often forgotten. That
originator is Aristotle. To understand the mind of Aristotle, we need to think in terms of
definitions, axioms, and postulates. It works both ways: looking back and looking
forward.
In the Middle Ages, Aristotle was known as the supreme philosopher. St. Thomas
Aquinas referred to him simply as The Philosopher. In writing his Summa Theologica,
Aquinas had to concur with Aristotle in affirming that the highest ideal of man the
thinker must be to reflect, right up to its final causes, the Aristotelian notion of totus
ordo universi.28

28
“Haec est ultima perfectio ad quam anima potest pervenire, secundum philosophum, ut in ea
describatur totus ordo universi et causarum ejus.” —St. Thomas Aquinas. De Veritatae, II.2.

33
 Detail of Scuola di Atene by Raphael (1483-1520)
Stanza della Segnatura, Stanze di Raffaello
Vatican Apostolic Palace
(Public domain)

In looking forward, Aristotle used a concept called the telos, or end, or purpose.
When defining something, you had to look past the thing you saw before you to discern
its end. To use Aristotle’s famous example of the acorn: the telos of an acorn is an oak
tree. If you want to know what an acorn is, you can’t really understand the acorn just by
looking at it. You need to see its potential, to see what it is meant to be. The acorn has
the potentiality of becoming an oak tree, which is the acorn’s telos. Each individual
substance, therefore, is a self-contained teleological system whose essence does not
change even if its accidents do.
Aristotle’s largeness of mind was such that there was no province he did not touch
with his outstretched hand. He even influenced Euclid and later geometricians who
embraced the Aristotelian teaching that linking ideas into a demonstrative science like
geometry was the best way to present a scientific subject.

 Aristotle taught that a science should proceed by demonstration, like we

do in geometry.
 Euclid's Elements later buttressed Aristotle's philosophy of demonstrative
science.
 Demonstrative science involves 3 things:
1. The subject matter whose essential properties the particular science
investigates.
2. The axioms, the basic assumptions.
3. The defining properties of the objects.
 In Aristotle’s day, the subject matter of geometry, for example, is lines,
points, squares, circles, etc.

34
  So where do we get them? Do we prove them? No. As to axioms, every
demonstrative science has to stem from first principles.
1. These principles must have their truth assumed if all the other
propositions are to be deduced from them (or else there would be
proofs upon proofs ad nauseam. You have to start from somewhere.
2. The ensuing propositions must be proved.
3. Is geometry the only demonstrative science? No.
4. In a natural science, in astronomy for example, the first principles are
discovered by experience. That is the difference between
mathematics and science.
 Defining properties do not assert the existence of the things defined, so
they require merely to be understood.
1. Defining something in terms of what it is not, is inappropriate. 29
2. Defining in a circle (e.g., defining A in terms of B, B in terms of C, and
C in terms of A) is also inappropriate.
 Definitions must define the thing in terms of other things that are both
better known and prior.
 In geometry, one must also assume the existence of some basic things
defined, such as lines and points and circles.
 Aristotle is the inventor of a detailed system of logic called syllogism.
 A syllogism is an argument having two premises and a conclusion.
1. The premises must share the middle term.
2. "If all A is B, and all B is C; ergo, all A is C." B is the middle term.
3. A syllogism by negation: "If no B is A, and all C is B; ergo, no C is A."
 In a demonstrative science constructed by syllogism, the way to a
scientific explanation is to look for the middle term.
 Aristotle taught that human reason is the ultimate tool in the search for
truth.
 This devout trust in human reason was Aristotle’s legacy that influenced
western thinking for centuries, a frame of mind that became the only way
at arriving at truth.
 The story goes that sometime in the Middle Ages, at Oxford, there was
once a debate on the question of how many teeth a horse has. Some
scholars quoted Aristotle while others quoted St. Thomas Aquinas. Both
gave a different reply. Finally, a young monk at the back of the study hall
suggested that since there was a horse in a stable outside, why don’t they
settle the question by opening the horse’s mouth and count its teeth.
Thereupon, the assembled scholars “fell upon him, smote him hip and
thigh, and cast him from the company of educated men.”30
 Galileo himself relates how a fellow scientist would refuse to take a look
through the telescope “because it would only confuse him.”31
29
For example, “a random sample is a sample that is not biased” is inappropriate.
30
James Trefil and Robert M. Hazen, The Sciences: An Integrated Approach, p. 4.
31
Hans Reichenbach (Ralph B. Winn, translator), From Copernicus to Einstein, Dover, p. 24.

35
  Aristotle did not approve of experimentation as a valid way to gain
knowledge.
 It never occurred to him to drop two stones of different weight to test his
postulation that the speed of the fall was proportional to the weight of
the stone.
 To Aristotle, experimentation like this was irrelevant because it
“interfered with and detracted from the beauty of pure deduction.” 32
 To Aristotle—as hang-over of Plato’s teaching—the external world is an
imperfect representation of the ideal world, therefore no amount of
inductive testing could render a generalization suitable. If the experiment
disagreed with the deduction, then one ought to adjust the “imperfect”
to the demands of the “perfect,” which is the ideal world, and not the
other way around.
 Galileo, father of experimental science, climbed to the top of the Leaning
Tower of Pisa and dropped two different iron balls, a ten-pound ball and a
one-pound ball, at the same time. The dull thud of the two balls hitting
the ground at the same time was heard round the world and demolished
Aristotle permanently.
 Aristotle’s method at arriving at truth, however, despite its flaws, does
stand in good stead.
 An example might be in explaining why the Moon's brightness increases
in the particular pattern it exhibits.
 We can deduce that pattern if we approach the problem through
syllogism and look for the middle term.
1. The Moon is a sphere that shines by light reflected from a body that
changes its position with respect to the Moon.
2. A sphere shining by light reflected from a body that changes its
position with respect to the Moon will have its light increase and
decrease in this pattern.
3. Ergo, the Moon has its light increase and decrease in this pattern.
Find the missing terms:
The moon is a ________________________.
A _____________________ has its light increase and decrease in this
pattern.
Ergo, the moon has its light increase and decrease in this pattern.
Questions:
Does the moon shine by its own light?
If it did, it would be full all the time.
But it’s full some of the time, so it must get its light somewhere, from
some other source.
We can see this light, so the moon gets that light somewhere and
reflect it to us.

32
Isaac Asimov, The New Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science, p. 12.

36
 What about the shape of the lighted parts?
It is crescent, so it can’t be flat, because light wouldn’t have a curved
boundary.
So why is the shape sometimes crescent, sometimes half-full,
sometimes full?
The source of the light must change its position with respect to the
moon.
And so on.

 Aristotle here demonstrates that the premises are related to the

conclusion as causes are related to effects.
 In fact, we have not only deduced the pattern of brightness, but we have
also explained why it is so.

 What is truly exciting in a demonstrative science occurs when the terms

connected by the middle term previously did not appear to have any obvious
connection. We learn something new. Newton's discovery of gravity, in which the
fall of an apple and the retention of the Moon in its orbit about the Earth are
both explained by the Earth's gravitation, is a striking example.
 Scientific knowledge as defined by Aristotle seemed superior to opinion because
it is universal and proceeds by necessary connections. Science tells us both why
the thing is as it is and why it cannot be otherwise.
 To have scientific knowledge of something, we need to know the general cause,
and then we can deduce the specific effect from that cause.
 When Galileo peered through the telescope and saw that Venus had similar
phases as the moon, he used the same reasoning to prove for the first time that
Venus did not have its own light but shines with light reflected from the sun. It
was a new discovery, courtesy of Aristotle’s deductive reasoning.
 Before Newton, no satisfactory explanation existed for what caused the motion
of the heavenly bodies. What caused the moon to go on orbit around the earth?
Newton explained this and the fall of an apple by means of the same force:
universal gravitation. The middle term—a force, depending on the masses
involved and universally proportional to the square of the distance between
them—revolutionized the physical sciences.

37
 Aristotle
Poetics

“I propose to treat of Poetry in itself and of its various kinds, noting the essential
quality of each, to inquire into the structure of the plot as requisite to a good poem; into
the number and nature of the parts of which a poem is composed; and similarly into
whatever else falls within the same inquiry. Following, then, the order of nature let us
begin with the principles which come first.

—Aristotle, Poetics33
33
Translated by S. H. Butcher. This and other quotations from primary sources, unless otherwise indicated,
are taken from Hazard Adams’ Critical Theory Since Plato. This quotation is found on page 50 of Adams’s
book (1992 edition).

38
 Aristotle’s Poetics is a “walking-lecture” about poetry. If Plato made use of the
dialogue to convey his ideas, Aristotle used the lecture as his genre. Aristotle’s Poetics
inaugurates the lecture as its own genre.
What is art? Why is it so powerful? Why is it beguiling, mysterious, enduring?
Why is it that every culture, no matter how primitive, has art?
Rather than eschew these questions, Aristotle instead squarely confronts them.
Poetics is divided into three topics: the origin and nature of art, the experience of
art, and the social and psychological function of art.
Aristotle has an almost engineer’s way of looking at things, and applies this
mindset in looking at poetry: will the structure hold up? Is it constructed badly or
properly? Aristotle, by starting with a topic, is a categorical thinker using topical analysis
in proceeding with his exegeses. He has a compartmentalized mind. He likes to label
things, put them in their proper order, and once the categories are created, he wants to
examine the contents of those individual categories.
The word “poetry” comes from the Greek word that simply means “making” or
“crafting.” A poem is something that is made. It is crafted. Thus it can have a solid
construction or a wobbly construction.
Unlike Plato, Aristotle believed that the artist not just copies nature. He does
more than that: “Not to know that a hind has no horns is a less serious matter than to
paint it inartistically.”34 Later poets and artists would amplify this very important
concept:
William Blake said that copying from nature is not the job of the painter. If that
were all there was to it, then hers would be no better than ordinary manual labor.
Anybody can do it. It is a work of no-brain.
Cézanne would say: “I do not reproduce nature; I represent it.”
Picasso said: “I paint what I think, not what I see.”
Not to be outdone, and casting all modesty to the four winds for the moment, I
would, in a past interview regarding my aesthetic theory, say: “I do not photocopy
nature; I distort it.”

This is so natural in the western way of thinking. If we think in this manner it is

because Aristotle invented this method.
Organic unity. Just like an organism. Henceforth this rule will become standard of
a successful work of art. Everything hangs together, everything is where it belongs,
nothing is missing, nothing is superfluous.
Within the unity of plot, causation is important. Causation is the centerpiece of
his entire teaching in philosophy, in logic. Everything should be viewed in a sequence of
cause and effect. Like every good Greek, Aristotle is teleological: he thinks in terms of
the end, the target, the destination to which the plot is moving, the grand finale, the
arrival point, the conclusion.
Every good writer ought to have that in mind, because if he knows where he’s
going, then the elements of the plot will all be in place, no going off track.

34
Aristotle. Poetics. In Adams, 64.

39
 Aristotle was aware that story tellers created artifacts that were different from
history. He knew that history was a jumble of events that happened all at the same time,
but did not necessarily hook up to make this unified, overarching narrative. Here’s how
he compares and contrasts storytellers and historians.

[The plot] should have for its subject a single action, whole and complete, with a
beginning, a middle, and an end. It will thus resemble a living organism in all its
unity, and produce the pleasure proper to it. It will differ in structure from
historical compositions, which of necessity present not a single action, but a
single period, and all that happened within that period to one person or to many,
little connected together as the events may be.35

In this part of Aristotle’s Poetics, we shall now consider how Aristotle took Plato’s
version of mimesis and converted it into a powerful method for composing poetry
worthy of philosophical consideration. We shall analyze Aristotle’s notion of plot as a
unified whole that moves in accordance with (1) necessity, (2) probability, and (3)
inevitability, and shall define and discuss the several elements that Aristotle believed
worked together to form the perfect plot. Throughout this third lecture we shall
examine the nature and elements of Aristotelian plot by referring it to the play that
is most often quoted in the Poetics—Oedipus Rex.

A. Aristotle, by disagreeing with Plato on where to locate reality, brought

philosophy down to earth: there is only one Form, Aristotle says, and we’re in it.
If the Forms were the essence of things, how can they exist separately? If the
Forms were the cause of things, how can they exist in a different world?
B. Aristotle is the first critic to attempt a systematic discussion of genres.
1. The idea that all knowledge can be broken up into discrete little packages (called
disciplines, or “majors”) comes directly from Aristotle.
2. Aristotle wrote a treatise on every facet of knowledge.
3. In his Poetics, Aristotle treats poetry as a separate discipline with its own specific
laws, its own unique tools, its own proper ends.
C. The works we have today by Aristotle were not actually written by him but
compiled by his students (hence their broken up nature).

II. Aristotle radically redefined Plato’s version of mimesis.

A. Aristotle says that mimesis is a positive thing.
1. As children, we learn primarily by imitation.
2. Even as adults, we delight in recognizing and contemplating
copies.
3. We possess an instinctual desire for hamony.

35
Aristotle. Poetics. In Adams, 62.

40
 B. In poetry in general and in the well-constructed plots of the great
tragedies in particular, Aristotle found the perfect food to feed our innate
desire for order, balance, and unity.
C. It is mimesis that allows the tragedian to construct a unified plot
(muthos).
1. The mimetic process transforms an action or story (praxis) that is long, episodic,
and haphazard into a plot that is focused and unified.
2. The mimesis of a praxis is a muthos.
3. The story of a person begins with his birth and ends with his death—and includes
all the various incidents that occur in between.
4. A plot, however, constructed around that life story would confine itself to a single
day in that life span when all that is most essential to that life comes to a head.
5. Whereas the events in a story follow each other in simple chronological order,
the events in a plot should move forward in accordance with (a) necessity, (b)
probability, and (c) inevitability.
6. The plot is life with all of life’s contradictions purged out of it.
7. To imitate life is not to present life not as it is, but as it should be, not as it
manifests itself in an imperfect world, but how it would appear in a more perfect
world where:
i. There is a necessary link between cause and effect.
ii. The stable, meaningful laws of probability determine action.
iii. A sense of inevitability, of a higher controlling fate, is felt.
 How to tell between an episodic play and an Aristotelian plot.
1. In an episodic play, there is no internal cohesion between the scenes; in
an Aristotelian plot, there is a causal relationship between each scene
that propels the reader toward the inevitable conclusion.
2. In an episodic play, the scenes follow each other without causation,, while
those in an Aristotelian follow causation.
3. The best test you can put yourself to is to ask yourself the next time you
watch a move if you can leave the theater for five minutes and think you
have not missed anything. Then the movie is episodic. In a movie with an
Aristotelian plot, you cannot step out of the theater even for one minute,
even if your legs are all tied up in knots, because all will be lost.
4. The movie Casablanca, is an excellent example of an Aristotelian movie:

Rick and Ilsa meet in Nazi-occupied Paris from which both of them must
flee. At the railroad station, however, Ilsa learns that Viktor (her husband
whom she believed to be dead) is alive, but injured. Bound by marital
honor, she fails to meet Rick at the station. A bitter Rick leaves Paris alone
and goes to Casablanca.
Ilsa and Viktor eventually go to Casablanca, and fortuitously find Rick in
his café. She appeals to Rick to help her get her husband escape from
Casablanca because his life is in danger. Rick in pouring out his scorn

41
 discovers what Ilsa has denied: that she still loves Rick. He agrees to aid
their escape.

5. Another favorite of mine, High Noon, is patent Aristotelian—all one hour

and twenty minutes of it:

Will Kane (Gary Cooper), a marshal of an old western town, retires from
his job to start a new life with his wife Amy (Grace Kelly). A murderer,
Frank Miller, whom Will had sent to prison years ago, has just been
pardoned and is arriving on the noon train. Three confederates wait for
Miller and all four of them plan to kill Will for the latter’s hand in
convicting Miller.
Will is in a quandary. The new marshal has not arrived yet. Will’s deputy
will not help. So Will has to face Miller himself. Amy, a Quaker who
believes in non-violence, urges her husband to leave. The townspeople
urge Will to leave and carry the danger with him. Then Amy threatens to
leave her husband if he stays and fight.
The train arrives at high noon. Frank descends the stairs. The three men
join him and all four go to the main street to face the lone Will Kane,
deserted by all.

D. Oedipus Rex, however, is Aristotle’s favorite example of the perfect plot:

1. The story of Oedipus the man is filled with long stretches during which
the tragic pieces of Oedipus’ life slowly coalesce; the plot of Oedipus Rex
is concentrated into an intense, dramatic period of less than a day during
which all the secrets of his life are revealed.
2. The story of Oedipus is a despicable tale about a man who kills his father
and marries his mother; the plot of Oedipus is about a man who discovers
late in life that he has killed his father and married his mother.
3. Whereas the story of Oedipus is about the committing of a taboo sin, the
plot of Oedipus is about the triumph of self-discovery.
4. In terms of his overall story, Oedipus is one of the most pathetic of all
men, a man trapped by a cruel and evil fate that he cannot escape; in the
confines of the plot, however, he is a noble and courageous man who
chooses to seek out the truth about himself no matter what the
consequences.
5. The story of Oedipus is the raw material for a telenovela; the plot of
Oedipus is one of the great and noble works of all time.

111. Having defined the nature of the unified plot, Aristotle goes on to enumerate the
many elements that work together to create the perfect plot.
A. A unified plot has a beginning, middle, and an end.

42
 B. It is shaped like an inverted “V” with a series of complications drawing the
plot upward to its climax downwards towards the denouement.
C. In the best plots, the climax is marked by a reversal and/or a recognition.
1. The use of a reversal/recognition is what renders a simple plot complex.
2. A reversal (Greek, peripeteia) occurs when the fortune of the hero moves
sudenly from good to bad or bad to good.
b. In Oedipus, the messenger thinks he brings news that will free Oedipus
from fear, but that very news leads to his destruction. This is peripeteia.
c. A recognition (Greek, anagnorisis) occurs when the hero moves suddenly
from a state of ignorance to enlightenment.
d. In Oedipus, the messenger reveals to Oedipus his true Theban origins.
e. The best kinds of recognitions are accompanied by reversals.
A. Deus ex machina is no good.
1. Deus ex machina was a crane-like device, a derrick, that allowed an
“angel” or heavenly being to descend onto the stage.
2. It was used by dramatists as a way of resolving from heaven all manner of
difficulties and misunderstandings in the play.
3. Aristotle considered the use of this device as an artificial way to end a
plot.
4. The plot should be strong enough to resolve itself in a manner consistent
with necessity, probability, and inevitability.
5. Oedipus Rex is so well constructed that the final tragic revelation of
Oedipus’ parentage does not seem contrived; it arises naturally out of the
plot.
6. Aristotle’s objection against deus ex machina reveals his strong
commitment to a balanced, rational universe in which all makes sense.
B. Finally, it should be noted that Aristotle argues forcefully that the plot is the
central, most important element of a tragedy.
1. The plot is both the end and the soul of tragedy.
2. Modern writers would disagree with Aristotle; we place character at the
center of the play.
This time we shall explore how the tragic character must be good,
appropriate, consistent, and true to life; and how he should be a moral man
who yet possesses a flaw. We shall then explore the nature of Aristotelian
catharsis and shall consider how this well-known word can be translated
either as purgation, purification, or clarification. We will conclude with some
other elements of the Poetics that have continued to exert a marked
influence on the history of literary theory down the ages to the present.

I. Aristotle carefully defines the proper nature of the tragic hero.

A. The Aristotelian tragic hero must possess four qualities:
1. He must be a good man: he should be neither immoral nor vicious.
2. His character must be appropriate to his station in life.
3. He must possess a likeness to human nature: though heroic, he is a man.

43
 4. His character must be consistent.
5. He should not be a commoner.
B. Oedipus possesses all of the above characteristics.
1. Though stubborn and a bit prideful, he is a good king who loves his people,
and is devoted to truth and justice.
2. His love and devotion, as well as his stubbornness and pride, are befitting
the nature and role of a king.
a. Though “larger than life,” Oedipus still possesses very human traits.
b. Both within the framework of the play and throughout his “offstage” life,
Oedipus is consistently the solver of riddles.
c. Oedipus is a member of the royal house of Thebes.
C. This good hero should yet possess a flaw (Greek, hamartia).
1. Hamartia is usually translated as tragic flaw, but a better translation is
error.
2. Aristotle clearly does not see this hamartia as a vice or moral flaw.
3. Though readers of Oedipus generally blame the hero’s misfortunes on his
pride (Greek, hubris), it is really his good qualities that lead to the tragic
revelation of his birth.
4. The full-blown concept of the tragic flaw as a single vice that leads the
hero to his tragic downfall is really more indicative of Shakespearean
tragedy.
5. The tendency of readers to identify tragic flaws in each of the heroes of
Greek tragedy seems to mask an innate desire to “blame the victim” to
gain control.
D. The best tragedies show a good man who, on account of his error, moves from
good to bad fortune; such a movement elicits pity and fear.
1. A bad man moving from good to bad fortune evokes neither pity nor fear.
2. A bad man moving from bad to good fortune merely disgusts us.
3. A good man moving from bad to good fortune makes us feel happy, but it
does not inspire either pity or fear.
4. Pity is evoked when we watch a good man suffer undeservedly; fear is
evoked when we realize the same may happen to us.
5. Pity draws us toward the hero; fear drives us away.

III. The mention of pity and fear leads us to Aristotle’s notion of the appropriate
response to tragedy.
A. According to Aristotle, the experience of a great tragedy so arouses in us the
emotions of pity and fear as to lead to a catharsis of those emotions.
B. Catharsis may be translated in at least three different ways: as (1) purgation, (2)
purification, and (3) clarification. Each has its own theory.
C. Purgation states that tragedy is a therapeutic experience that works on us like an
enema.
1. It cleanses us of our emotions of pity and fear and thus leaves us
more fit to be able to face the rigors of life.

44
 2. This is what Plato should have adopted.
3. When viewing Oedipus, the tragic end of the hero is so pitiful
and fearful, so emotionally overwhelming, that we leave the
theatre feeling drained, as if our emotions have been swept
away on a tide.
D. Purification states that tragedy does not so much purge our emotions as purity
them.
1. Just as God uses suffering to strengthen our faith, so the hot fire of
tragedy tests and tries us like gold in the fire.
2. To experience Oedipus is to have one’s emotions raised to a higher level;
in the end, we are left with a strange sense of calm, not purged, but
purified.
IV. Clarification theory states that tragedy sparks in us an intellectual response, a
searing moment of perfect clarity.
A. In this almost mystical moment of enlightenment, our ill-defined
emotions are carried up into a higher realm of balanced, harmonious
rationality, a realm where the higher patterns and forces of the cosmos
are made suddenly visible.
B. This is how we are supposed to feel at the end of Oedipus, when we
realize that Oedipus must suffer, for if he does not, the prophecy will have
been proven untrue, and fate will have been exposed as arbitrary and
chaotic. The story of the Passion of Christ is another example.
C. Clarification is still used today in a psychoanalytical setting, to signify that
moment when the connections between a patient’s past experiences and
present neuroses are suddenly revealed.

V. In addition to his view on plot, character, and catharsis, Aristotle set down a
number
of other mandates that have become linchpins of critical theory.
A. From Aristotle comes the notion that a critic can inspire great art.
1. Aristotle was no contemporary of Sophocles; by his time Athens had left
the Golden Age.
2. That is to say, the role of the critic is, in part, twofold: (1) to assess and
adumbrate the elements that make art successful; (2) to establish, on
the basis of these elements, fixed criteria for what constitutes great art.
The French Neoclassical period, exemplified by Racine et al. is an
example of a more “Golden Age.”
B. As we saw above, Aristotle advised that the hero be of kingly rank: from his
day until Ibsen’s and Miller’s time tragedies have always revolved around heroes
of noble rank.
C. As we also saw above, Aristotle preferred tragedies with unhappy endings.
D. Aristotle basically invented the notion of genre and genre studies.
1. He not only divided poetry into different forms (epic, tragic, lyric) but
also granted each form its own special criteria and mode of imitation.

45
 2. He believed that there was a proper mode that was natural to each
genre, a notion that is at the heart of all later theories of decorum.
3. He believed that each genre must its own natural, internal laws so that
he defended the presence in poetry of irrational elements if such were
befitting the genre.
4. Coleridge would later call such criticism “genial.” Ungenial occurs when
one judges a poem by standards outside its genre.
5. He initiated the aesthetic desire to rank genres in terms of refinement
and based this ranking partly on the responses of a cultivated audience.
This foreshadows pragmatic theory. The rankings were tragedy, epic, and
lyric.
E. Aristotle initiated an organic theory of poetry later revived by Coleridge.
1. He treated tragedy as a living organism that must be true to its own
laws.
2. He felt that a perfect tragedy was one to which nothing could either be
added or subtracted without affecting the work as a whole.
3. He privileged unified plots in which all parts were related organically.
F. Aristotle praises poetry as a synthesis of history and philosophy and held that it
was better than either one.
1. Like history, tragedy works with concrete particulars.
2. Like philosophy, however, it expresses universal truths.
3. Tragedy is a concrete universal that fuses the general with the specific.
4. The notion profoundly influenced Kant, Coleridge, and the New Critics.
G. Aristotle includes a brief section on linguistics in this study of poetry.

An Excursion
Eratosthenes, while a librarian at the Alexandrian library, read a papyrus which
said that at noon of every June 21st, being the summer solstice, vertical sticks cast
no shadows at Syene, Aswan, Egypt. Eratosthenes, however, did an experiment at
Alexandria and noticed that here vertical sticks cast shadows at noon of June 21 st,
while at Syene there were none.
If you stuck a stick in Alexandria at noon on June 21 and simultaneously stuck
another stick at Syene on the same day and time, and saw no shadow cast by both
sticks, that is well and good: the earth was flat and the sun was directly overhead.
If the two sticks cast shadows of equal length, that is also well and good because
the earth was flat and the sun’s rays would incline at the same angle to the two
sticks.
But why was there no shadow at Syene while a shadow showed up at
Alexandria? The earth, therefore, must be curved.
Also, the greater the curve, the greater was the difference in shadow lengths.

46
 Consider the illustration: because of their distance, the sun’s rays run parallel
when they reach the earth.

If two parallel lines are transected by a third line, the alternate interior angles are
equal. Angle B=Angle A. Eratosthenes calculated his results in units called stadia. We
don't know how long Eratosthenes' stadia were, but current estimates suggest that his
value of 252,000 stadia is equivalent to a circumference somewhere between 39,690
and 46,620 kilometers.
He calculated, from measurement, that in Alexandria, the angle of elevation of
the sun would be 1/50 of a full circle (7°12') south of the zenith at the same time.
Assuming that Alexandria was due north of Syene, he concluded that the distance
from Alexandria to Syene must be 1/50 of the total circumference of the earth. His
estimated distance between the cities was 5000 stadia (about 500 geographical
miles or 800km) by estimating the time that he had taken to travel from Syene to
Alexandria by camel. He rounded the result to a final value of 700 stadia per
degree, which implies a circumference of 252,000 stadia. The common stadium at
Athens at the time was about 185 m, which would imply a circumference of
46,620 km, which is 16.3% too large. Eratosthenes, however, must have used the
Egyptian Stadium of about 157.7 m. By measuring the shadow, Eratosthenes
concluded that Syene was A=B=7 degrees away on the circumference of the earth
or a measurement of 39,375 km, an error of less than 1%. The method is an early
application of elementary trigonometry.

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 Horace
Ars Poetica

Abstract

This lesson will take a close look at Horace’s verse epistle, Ars Poetica (c. 20 BC). After a
brief introduction to Horace’s life and times, we shall enumerate Horace’s rules and
regulations for writing great poetry. We shall focus especially on the central notion of
decorum and RESTRAINT in the arts and on the stipulation that poetry must instruct and
entertain. We shall also discuss Horace’s views both of the critic and the poet.

Tags: Decorum, Restraint, purpureus pannus, linae labor, ut pictura poesis, delight and
instruct

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The suggested essential reading for this course is Art of Poetry by Horace in Adam
Supplementary reading:

Grant Showerman’s Horace and His Influence.

M. A. Grube’s The Greek and Roman Critics, Chapter 14. Wimsatt and Brooks’s Literary
Criticism: A Short History, Chapter 5. Karl Galinsky, Augustan Culture: An Interpretive
Introduction. Raphael Lyne, “Augustan Poetry and Society.”
Paul Miller’s Lyric Texts, especially chapters 4–8.

This chapter is adapted from the work of Dr. Elizabeth Vandiver of Whitman College and
that of Dr. Louis Markos of Houston Baptist University.

Part One: Life of Horace

 Horace is the second greatest poet of Rome’s Augustan Age.

 This golden age (named after Caesar Augustus) lasted from 27 BC
to AD 14 and included Ovid, Propertius, and Tibullus, and the
greatest of them all: Virgil.
 Quintus Horatius Flaccus was born on December 8, 65 B.C., and
died on November 27, 8 B.C.
 Horace included many biographical details in his poetry; in
addition, Suetonius’s biography of Horace has survived.
 Horace was born in Venusia, where his father, a freedman,
worked as an auctioneer.
 Horace received the education typical for an upper-class youth,
first in Rome, then in Athens.
 Horace’s family lost its possessions after Caesar’s assassination.
 Caesar’s death led to an open power struggle.
 Caesar’s friend Mark Antony joined forces with Caesar’s great-
nephew and adopted son, Octavian, to fight against the assassins
Brutus and Cassius.
 Horace’s family sided with Brutus; Horace joined Brutus’s army.
 After defeating Brutus and Cassius at Philippi (42 B.C.), Antony and
Octavian competed for leadership.
 Antony became involved with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra.
 In 31 B.C., Octavian defeated Antony and Cleopatra at the famous
Battle of Actium.

49
 After the Battle of Actium, Octavian became the sole ruler of
Rome and remained so until his death in A.D. 14. In 27 B.C.,
Octavian was awarded the title Augustus (“the revered one”),
which came to function as his name. 1. Although historians call
him the first Roman emperor, Augustus never used kingship
terms.
 He carefully restored and preserved the appearances of the
republican form of government.
 Augustus was also a patron of the arts, including poetry.
 Augustus’s close friend Maecenas provided financial support for
various poets and served as the link between those poets and
Augustus.
 Despite his support of Brutus, Horace made a career as a poet.
 In part, this was because of the influence of Virgil, who introduced
Horace to Maecenas.
 Maecenas’s patronage gave Horace the resources and security for
three decades of working life as a poet.

Part Two: Works and Style

 Horace was a master of the short lyric and the very embodiment
of wit.
 His most famous and influential poems are his four books of odes.
 The Odes, a collection of lyric poems on a variety of subjects,
includes love lyrics to various different addressees, political
statements, and vignettes of daily life.
 Horace’s tone is detached and urbane.
 He never expresses the heights or depths of passion of Catullus’s
amatory poetry.
 Within this controlled persona, Horace achieves great lyrical
beauty and extraordinarily memorable poetry.
 Formally, the odes are a tour de force. Horace adapts Greek
meters to Latin poetry with astonishing success.
 The odes show an amazing facility with meter, word choice, and
placement.
 They are, fundamentally, untranslatable, especially into a non-
inflected language such as English.

50
  The placement of Horace’s Latin words is all
important. The opening lines of Odes I.5 give some
idea of his technique.

Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa

perfusus liquidis urget odoribus
grato, Pyrrha, sub antro?
cui flavam religas comam,
simplex munditiis? heu quotiens fidem
mutatosque deos flebit et aspera
nigris aequora ventis
emirabitur insolens,
qui nunc te fruitur credulus aurea,
qui semper vacuam, semper amabilem
sperat, nescius aurae
fallacis! miseri, quibus
intemptata nites! me tabula sacer
votiva paries indicat uvida
suspendisse potenti
vestimenta maris deo. 36
 Translated literally, the first three lines read: “Pyrrha, what
graceful boy, drenched in liquid fragrances, urges you among
many roses in a pleasant cave?”
 The Latin word order is “What many graceful you boy among roses
drenched liquid urges fragrances pleasant, Pyrrha, in cave?”
36
What slender Youth bedew'd with liquid odours
Courts thee on Roses in some pleasant Cave,
Pyrrha for whom bindst thou
In wreaths thy golden Hair,

Plain in thy neatness; O how oft shall he

On Faith and changèd Gods complain: and Seas
Rough with black winds and storms
Unwonted shall admire:

Who now enjoyes thee credulous, all Gold,

Who alwayes vacant alwayes amiable
Hopes thee; of flattering gales
Unmindfull. Hapless they

To whom thou untry'd seem'st fair. Me in my vow'd

Picture the sacred wall declares t' have hung

My dank and dropping weeds

To the stern God of Sea. (translation by John Milton)

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  The word order mimics what is being described.

Part Three: Influence on Other Poets

 Milton tried his hand at translating this poem, as have many
others, including, recently, David Ferry
 Milton and Ferry’s translations indicate the difficulty inherent in
translating Horace.
 But no other lyric poet of antiquity had so strong an influence on
English poetry during the Renaissance and the neoclassical period.
 Impossible though a true translation of Horace may be, Wyatt,
Dryden, Pope, and many others were drawn to try.

Part Four: Ars Poetica

 In Art of Poetry, we see a deliberate, self-conscious desire to

imitate the classical world.
 Horace (and later Longinus), living in the Roman world, look back
to the great writers of Greece and attempt to assess why they
were so successful.
 Ars Poetica is a verse epistle (Epistula ad Pisones)37 composed at
the request of two young men of the Piso family: Telephus and
Peleus. The Piso family was Horace’s patron.
 Compared to Plato’s and Aristotle’s theoretical works, Ars Poetica
is not theoretical discussion but practical advice to poets and
newbie poets. These are rules for writing, a “how to” approach in
writing great poetry.
 The style is chatty and formless albeit urbane.
 In the epistle, Horace lays emphasis on decorum and restraint:
two keywords of Horace.
 Here are some Horatian rules of thumb for writing great poetry:
1. “If you wish to draw tears from me, you must feel pain
yourself.” In other words, no tears in the poet, no tears in the
reader.
2. “Of writing well, the source and fountainhead is wise
thinking.”Or, content is as important as style.
3. “He has gained every vote who has mingled profit with
pleasure by delighting the reader at once and instructing him.”
The aim of the poet is to delight and instruct.
4. “But if Homer, usually good, nods for a moment, I think it
shame; and yet it may well be that over a work of great length

37
Epistle to the Piso boys. An epistle is a long, elegant letter, (as in Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians).

52
 one should grow drowsy now and then.” Even a great poet
cannot sustain heightened language all the time, but it does
not matter, for “there are faults which we can gladly pardon,”
and “I am not the man to be offended by a few spots.” What is
important is the total impact of the poet.
5. “Yet you will not bring forward on the stage what should be
transacted behind the scenes,” because this is a lapse in
decorum, especially “you will not let Medea slay her boys
before the audience.”
6. “Neither should a god intervene, unless a knot befalls worthy
of his interference.” No deus ex machina allowed.
7. “Do ye thumb well by night and day Greek models.”
8. “Fictions intended to please must keep as near as may be to
real life.”
9. “Either follow tradition, or, if you invent, see that your
invention be in harmony with itself.”
10. “Scratch it out then; the work has been badly turned; send it
back to the fire and the anvil.”
 Horace, a master of the ironic pose, expresses contempt in his
letter for critics who flatter their patrons instead of telling them
the truth.
 Horace offers an influential view of the proper role of the critic.
1. A critic is a whetstone against which poets can sharpen their
work.
2. The purpose of the whetstone is not itself to write great
poetry (though Horace did so), but to teach the proper duty
and office of the poet.
3. This includes censuring and editing poetry that either uses the
wrong material or handles that material in an inappropriate
way.
4. The laws that dictate what is and is not appropriate for poetry
constitute the central and foundational notion of all
neoclassical art: decorum.
 Horace and the rules of decorum.
1. At the heart of decorum is the stipulation not to mix unlike
things. Horace illustrates this rule by scornfully lampooning
the image of the mermaid; such images, he declares, are the
work of feverish minds.
2. Horace attacks poets who mix genres, who use comic subjects
as the basis of a tragedy or vice versa. (If we consider
Shakespeare, we see that he does mix generic elements in
many of his plays, in a very un-Horatian way.)

53
 3. Each genre should have its own style that is natural to it; there
should be an unbroken, clearly defined unity of action,
character, and mood.
4. Indeed, each given genre should have its own specific meter, a
meter with rhythmic sounds that closely mimic (“fit”) the
sense of the poem.
 When writing on a traditional subject, “modern” poets must be
faithful to the literary precedents set by their poetic forebears.
1. “Modern” portrayals of Achilles or Orestes of Oedipus must be
consistent with earlier portrayals (in this case, by Homer and
the tragedians). Again, if we consider Shakespeare, we see
that he did not follow precedent in his Troilus and Cressida.
2. Horace here reiterates Aristotle’s rule that tragic heroes must
be both appropriate and consistent, but Horace further
inscribes this rule within an accepted authority or tradition: a
common trait of neoclassicists.
 In addition to the notions of what is appropriate and what is
traditional, decorum also stipulates what is fit or proper to be
shown publicly.
1. Gory, explicit scenes must be kept off the stage; such scenes of
suffering should be related (as they were in Greek tragedy) by
a messenger.
2. This rule was not followed in the theater of Shakespeare (cf.,
King Lear and the blinding of Gloucester).
 Related to decorum is Horace’s famous comparison of poetry to
painting.
1. As with painting, some poems are best viewed close up, while
others are better when seen from a distance; some best in
shadows, others in light.
2. In later neoclassical theory, this notion took on greater
significance.
 After his views on decorum, Horace is best known for his
stipulation that the proper end (goal) of poetry is to please and
teach (in Latin, dulce et utile). Horace here is moving toward
pragmatic theory.
1. Old men insist that poetry teach morality, while young men
insist that it please and entertain: the best poet will combine
the two.
2. Poets that do so successfully will win both fame and fortune.
3. To best achieve this goal, poetry should be both concise and
realistic.
 Horace’s rules for drama have been particularly influential.

54
 1. Plays (and epics) should not begin at the beginning (ab ovo,
“from the egg”) but should plunge in medias res (in the middle
of things”).
2. Plays should consist of five acts.
3. They should not end with a deus ex machina.
4. The chorus and choral songs should serve an integral function
(we might consider, in our time, the musical Oklahoma by
Rodgers and Hammerstein as an excellent example).
5. These four criteria (the third and fourth of which are adapted
from Aristotle) all express an organic view of drama.
6. Like Aristotle, Horace insisted that each part of a play be
directly and intimately related with all other parts and with
the work as a whole.
 Finally, two bits of Horatian advice have entered our language.
1. Horace counsels against tacking on elaborate, unnecessary
descriptions merely to impress readers; he calls such
excrescences “purple passages.”
2. Horace also counsels against starting one’s work with epic
promises, lest people say, “the mountain labored and brought
forth a mouse.”
 Horace comments on the nature and the duties of the poet.
1. The true poet combines genius and art; he is an inspired
craftsman. Like an athlete, he needs both native ability and
rigorous training.
2. The artisan poet must labor never to be mediocre; while a
mediocre lawyer may still win his suit, a mediocre poet is a
laughingstock.
3. The best poets make it look easy; their works are so perfect
and unified that the reader feels he could do the same (though
he could not).
 The role of the poet (especially the dramatist) is a difficult one.
1. He must please an often vulgar crowd while staying true to his
art.
2. He must make a living without letting the love of money taint
his soul.
 Horace expresses contempt for critics who flatter their patrons
instead of telling them the truth. ‘“Beautiful! good! perfect!’ He
will change color, drop tears from his friendly eyes, leap up, and
stamp the ground. Just as the hired mourners at a funeral lament
and do more than those who really grieve, so the insincere
admirer seems to be more moved than a true one.”
 Horace offers an influential view of the proper role of the critic.
1. A critic is a whetstone against which poets sharpen their work.
2. A whetstone teaches the proper office and duty of the poet.

55
 3. This includes censuring and editing poetry that either uses the wrong
material or handles the material in an inappropriate manner.
4. The laws that dictate what is and is not appropriate for poetry constitute
the central and foundational notion of all neoclassical art: decorum.

On Decorum
 What is decorum? It is order, restraint.
1. Horace illustrates this rule by lampooning the image of a mermaid.
2. Horace attacks poets who mix genres, who use comic subjects as the basis
of a tragedy or vice versa. (Shakespeare did this, and got away with it.)
3. Each genre should have its own style that is natural to it.
 When writing on a traditional subject, modern poets must be faithful to the
precedents set by their poetic forebears.
1. Modern portrayals of Achilles or Orestes or Oedipus must be consistent
with earlier portrayals. (Again, Shakespeare did not follow precedent in his
Troilus and Cressida.)
2. Horace reiterates Aristotle’s rule that tragic heroes must be both
appropriate and consistent, but he further inscribes this rule within an
accepted authority or tradition (a common trait of neoclassicists).
 In addition to the notions of what is appropriate and what is traditional,
decorum also stipulates what is fit or proper to be shown publicly.
5. Gory, explicit scenes must not be shown onstage; such scenes of
suffering should be related by a messenger. “Medea should not butcher
her children in plain view of the audience, nor the wicked Atreus cook
human flesh in public.”
6. This rule was not followed by Shakespeare in King Lear in the blinding of
Gloucester.
 Related to decorum is Horace’s famous comparison of poetry to painting.
7. As with painting, some poems are best viewed close up; others are better
seen from a distance; some in shadows, others in light.
8. In later neoclassical theory, this notion took on greater significance.

Other Horatian rules

 The proper end of poetry is to teach and delight. “The aim of the poet is to
inform or delight, or to combine together . . . both pleasure and applicability to
life.”
 The old insist that poetry instruct, while the young want it to delight: the
best poet combines the two. “He who combines the useful and the
pleasing wins out by both instructing and delighting the reader.”
 Poets that do so will win both fame and fortune. “That is the sort of
book that will make money for the publisher, cross the seas, and extend
the fame of the author.”
 To best achieve this goal, poetry should be both concise and realistic.

56
 Horace’s rules for the drama
 Plays and epics should not begin at the beginning but should plunge in
medias res.
 Let your play have five acts, no more no less.
 Do not have a deus ex machina intervene.
 The chorus should not sing anything that does not fit into the plot.
 These four criteria express an organic view of drama.
 Each part of the play should be directly and intimately related with all
other parts and with the work as a whole.

Finally, two bits of Horatian advice have entered the English language
 Purple patches.
 Counsels against promising much but delivering little.
 The nature and the duties of the poet, according to Horace.
 Genius and art equals an inspired craftsman.
 Like an athlete, he needs to have both native talent and discipline.
 The artisan poet must labor never to be mediocre; while a mediocre
lawyer may still win his case, the mediocre poet winds up a laughing-
stock.
 The best poets make it look easy.
 The role of a poet is a difficult one.
1. He must please an often vulgar crowd while staying true to his art.
2. He must make a living without letting the love of money taint his soul.

Longinus
On the Sublime

Abstract

What is sublimity? Where does it originate? Can we access it? How do we tap it? Is there
such a thing as sublimity in the first place? Rather than declaring inspiration as madness,
Longinus inquires how it can best be employed. This lesson will analyze Longinus’
pragmatic approach to theory and his influential conception of the ideal audience for
sublime literature. We shall also watch how Longinus launches a direct refutation of
Plato that not only converts the latter’s negatives into positives, but also transforms
Plato himself into one of the most sublime poets of all time.

57
On the Sublime, or On the Grand Style, or On Great Writing, or On Excellence in
Literature, is a systematic work in the Aristotelian style which inquires how poetic
inspiration can best be employed.

A. FYI, nothing is known of the life of Longinus. We call him

Longinus because the work is long.
B. In this work, Longinus asks if there is such a thing as sublimity
and then attempts to define its nature, before laying down
methods for achieving it.
C. Sublimity refers to a kind of elevated language flashing forth at
the right moment and scattering everything before it like a
thunderbolt.
 Unlike rhetoric, which merely persuades, sublimity’s effect
upon an audience is not persuasion but transport.
 The sublime has the power to unite contradictions.
 A sublime passage can be heard over and over without losing
its impact on the audience.
 Sublimity, because of its power to overwhelm, transcends both
time and space. Consider, for example these lines from Richard
11. Old John Gaunt is dying with his heart full of fear for his
beloved England. He is convinced that his land is being
destroyed, and he expresses his love for his country in the
following lines:

This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea . . .
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

What sublimity is not:

 It is not tumidity, or pompousness, or bathos, or bombast.
 It is not inflated, hyperbolic language that is used, inappropriately, to
enhance subjects that do not merit such treatment.
 It is not merely the use of fashionable expressions or fanciful images.
Sublimity is the “echo of a great soul.”
 Does this mean that sublimity belongs only in the sphere of genius—
those born with it?
 One sublime work is better than a hundred un-flawed, but un-sublime,
poems.

58
  Sublimity is the mixed product of inspiration plus art (i.e., skill,
craftsmanship, discipline).
 This ongoing dispute between genius and art is one that continues to
this day.

Having defined what sublimity is and is not, let us give some examples to
demonstrate what Longinus meant by what is and what is not sublime.

Here is Shakespeare’s Cleopatra as described by Enobarbus, a character in

Antony and Cleopatra. Enobarbus, returning from Egypt, is importuned by his friends to
tell them what he thought of this mysterious Serpent of the Nile whom he had had the
rare good fortune to have seen face to face:

Enobarbus: I will tell you.

The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
Burn’d on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar’d all description: she did lie
In her pavilion–cloth-of-gold of tissue–
O’er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour’d fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.

Agrippa: O, rare for Antony!

Now compare this with John Dryden’s “improved,” neo-classical version of the
same scene in his play All for Love:

Ant. … she came from Egypt.

Her Gally down the Silver Cydnos row’d
The Tacking Silk, the Streamers wav’d with Gold.
The gentle Winds were lodg’d in Purple Sails:
Her Nymphs, like Nereids, round her Couth, were plac’d;
Where she, another Sea-born Venus lay.

59
 Dolla. No more: I would not hear it.

Ant. O, you must!

She lay, and leant her Cheek upon her Hand,
And cast a Look so languishingly sweet,
As if, secure of all Beholders Hearts,
Neglecting she could take ‘em: Boys, like Cupids,
Stood fanning, with their painted Wings, the Winds
That played about her Face: But if she smil’d,
A darting Glory seem’d to blaze abroad:
That Men’s desiring Eyes were never waery’d;
But hung upon the Object: To soft Flutes
The silver Oars kept Time; and while they played,
The Hearing gave new Pleasure to the Sight;
And both to Thought: ‘twas Heav’n or somewhat more;
For she so charm’d all Hearts, that gazing crowds
Stood panting on the shore, and wanted Breath
To give their welcome Voice.

Below is an excerpt from a play called Cambyses written by Thomas Preston in

1561. The play is about a tyrannical Persian ruler. In this scene Cambyses has just
received his death wound:

“Out, alas! What shall I do? My life is finished. Wounded I am by sudden chance,
my blood is minished. I feel myself a-dying now; of life bereft am I. And Death
hath caught me with his dart; for want of blood I spy [expire]. Thus gasping here
on ground I lie; for nothing do I care. A just reward for my misdeeds my death
doth plain declare.”

Obviously, this is sentimental bombast written in a lumbering seven-beat line

that lends itself to a weedy anticlimax. Here, by contrast, is Christopher Marlowe’s
Doctor Faustus, greeting the mythical beauty, Helen of Troy, who has been summoned
by Mephistopheles to satisfy his desires, as he dreams of the power that magic could
offer him:

“Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.”

Longinus was the first “pagan” to quote the Bible. Here is an example of what I
consider to be the one of the supreme examples of sublime writing. From the King
James Bible Genesis 1:

1
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

60
2
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the
deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the
morning were the first day.

Notice there is hardly any adjective or adverb in the piece. Only nouns and verbs, nouns
and verbs govern the whole piece. Notice also the absence of “striving-for-effect” words
like “stupendous,” or “colossal,” or “breathtaking,” etc. The writing is simple and clear.
Yet the writing is sublime. It is English at its most eloquent.

Sublimity is light years apart from sentimentality. Sublimity is more akin to

Plainchant—or the music of Johann Sebastian Bach—which is overtly dry (to the
sentimental listener) but inertly rich.
In music, Bach is the perfect example of the sublime composer. If you are not
accustomed to his music, you may find it too cerebral. This is because almost all the
music we are used to listening to—including a lot of so-called classical music—is built
like an arch with pillars of chords supporting a single melody.
The baroque music of Bach is “contrapuntal,” i.e., melody is piled on melody,
with all the melodies sounded simultaneously, interpenetrating one another.
Bach’s genius was demonstrated some years ago in an experiment done when a
pianola roll of Bach music was reversed so that the high notes became bass and vice
versa. The music sounded even more melodious.
Bach does not appeal to the sentimental person. The sentimental person expects
to be lifted, to be moved to tears of happiness or sorrow, and is disappointed if his/her
emotions are not aroused this way. These violent emotions are unnecessary and
wasteful.
Again, try it yourself: play any Bach recording, a choral composition, for example,
three times. The first time you do, listen to the soprano only; the second time, try to
separate the bass from the strands of melody; the third time, listen to the middle voices
only. You might find the music you listen to paling in comparison. In fact, you can listen
to Bach a hundred times and each time uncover richness previously unearthed.

The late British author and Theosophist Geoffrey Hodson recounts the time a
group of theological college students asked a very learned professor to read Psalm 23.
He read it very well, as a professor and Bible expert would. Then the students asked a
retired minister to read the same Psalm 23. When the old man had finished there was
not a dry eye in the room.
What was the difference? Both read the same Psalm 23, and yet the learned
professor’s reading drew no tears. Later, a student asked the professor why he, despite

61
his great learning, could not generate that profound impact on the audience. “Well,”
said the professor, “I have studied the Bible and I know all about the Shepherd but, you
see, our friend knows the Shepherd.”38
The old man had gone through life’s sorrows and pains. St. Augustine said that
there were two ways of knowing how good God was: the first is never having to lose
Him; the second is to lose Him and then to find Him again. The old man must have gone
through the despair of losing God. Perhaps he had even tried committing suicide. When
he spoke in trembling voice, every fiber of his being assimilating sublimity.
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the audience.”

Here’s the Psalm:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou
art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my
head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the
house of the Lord for ever.

After admitting that sublimity cannot actually be defined, Longinus then

proceeds to lay down five elements of the sublime:
 The first two elements are grounded in the innate ability of the poet to
form great conceptions. Sublimity is the echo of a great soul. Hence, the
poet has vehement and inspired passion. These first two elements,
unfortunately, being innate, cannot be learned. You are either born with
it or not. You either have it or you do not have it.
 The other three can be considered features of the poem: due formation
of figures of speech, noble diction, and dignified and elevated
composition. These constitute the craft part that can, through discipline,
be learned. You can take up a course in Creative Writing and be trained.
 These sources have to do not with the thoughts and passions
themselves but with how they are embodied in words, syntax, and
poetic figures.
 Though quoting and analyzing copious passages from poets like Homer
and Sappho, Longinus shows how the great masters of the sublime knew
how to fit thoughts to words, passions to images.
 Longinus, like Horace, helped establish ground rules for the craft of
poetry.

38
I have taken this incident from The Hidden Wisdom of the Holy Bible (Volume I) by Geoffrey Hodson,
page 19.

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  There must be an appropriate, rational, organic relationship between
form and content: high and low, serious and comic must not be allowed
to mix (i.e., decorum).
 Poets should attempt to mimic in the sound of their poetry the sense
that they are trying to convey.
 The best art conceals.

11. Longinus is pragmatic in the sense that he is concerned with the relationship
between the sublime work and the audience.
A. As we have already seen, he defines the sublime not just in terms of its nature or
essence but in terms of the reaction it elicits in the audience.
B. What is the ideal audience?
 The ideal audience is a refined, cultivated audience.
 They are sensitive souls uplifted by sublimity.
 Only they can judge what is or what is not sublime.
 This may be elitist/aristocratic, but Longinus wants the
audience to be free from vulgar and the low thoughts.
 This attitude will not be seriously challenged until the Romantic
Age.

Curbing the Spur

Let us imagine a tank filled with clear water. Then let us imagine a lighted electric
bulb at the bottom of the tank. If the water is very still, you can see the lighted bulb
clearly.
Suppose we churn the water a bit. This time the light is no longer seen clearly as
earlier observed. This time the light is slightly distorted. Suppose we churn the water
some more. We will observe that the more we churn the water, the more distorted the
light becomes. If we churn the water at great speed, we will eventually see, in place of
the lighted bulb, patterns of lights streaking across and within, dissolving, reappearing,
until eventually we no longer see any light at all but only waves and waves in great
agitation.
Now suppose we stop churning the water. Gradually, as the turbulent water
subsides, we see, in a reverse order, at first, patterns of light, next a distorted light bulb,
then the clear-lighted bulb. Finally, if the water is kept very still, as in the first stage, we
will see the light bulb so clearly we may not even be aware of the water itself. This is
what happens to ourselves when we let our emotions (symbolized by the water) distort
our Imagination (symbolized by the lighted bulb). For sentimentality deforms our view of
things.
Sublimity is never sentimental, even if it appears to be so to the uninitiated. It is
the quietest thing in the world.

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111. Longinus turns Plato on his head.
Plato is a master of the sublime.
1. He quotes passages from his prose as models of sublimity.
2. It is Plato’s sublime power of imagery that drives home his points.
B. With irony, Longinus posits as the source of Plato’s sublimity his near
possession by the spirit of Homer.
1. The divine madness which Plato exposes in Ion as a form of aberration
is actually a higher form of mimesis.
2. What appears as possession is actually a kind of struggle on the part of
Plato to exceed his poetic master.
3. Harold Bloom calls this artistic and psychological need on the part of
the poet to outdo his influence the “anxiety of influence.”
4. For Longinus, this struggle is good; to seek to imitate and exceed an
influence if not plagiarism but a tribute.
5. The same sublime spirit that passes from Homer to Plato passes down
from Plato to the audience.
6. For Plato, this is negative (the iron rings).
7. For Longinus, this inspiration is positive: it ennobles and uplifts the
souls of all those who come in contact with it; it makes them richer,
fuller, nobler.

1V. In conclusion, Longinus not only offers his fullest refutation of Plato, but defines
the greatest threat to cultural refinement.
A. Longinus laments that his age is no longer conducive to the creation of sublime
art.
1. This feeling of being born too late into a non-poetic, non-heroic age is
typical of literary theorists.
2. As with Aristotle’s Poetics, one of the purposes of On the Sublime is to
inspire and equip a new golden age of poets.
B. At first, Longinus appears to suggest that the ultimate threat to sublimity is
tyranny. With an unexpected turn, however, he reveals that there is something
worse than the loss of freedom.
C. The supreme killers of the sublime are materialism and hedonism.
1. The lust for money and pleasure yields petty, ignoble thoughts; it breeds
both vanity and insolence and kills the sublime spark of the soul.
2. Even political slavery is better than this, because even the cruelest tyrant
cannot crush a soul inspired by sublimity.
3. The sublime poet must rise above our petty world.
4. The sublime poet must, like the Platonic philosopher, shun the false
illusions of this world is he is to achieve his goal.
D. Ironically, a treatise on poetry, which Plato thought so deleterious to the morals
of his Republic, ends with a powerful moral critique of society.

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 Plotinus
“On the Intellectual Beauty”

Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not fine yourself beautiful yet, act as
does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he
smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown
his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked,
bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one glow or beauty and never cease
chiseling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendor of
virtue, until you see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine.

—Plotinus, “On the Beautiful”39

Abstract

39
Translated by Stephen MacKenna. Vide bibliography.

65
Plotinus, the founder of Neo-Platonism, is the last significant philosopher of pagan
antiquity, a systematizer of the heritage of Plato, and a theorist of a form of otherworldly
spirituality that was strongly influential in the Western Christian tradition through
Augustine. He saw the universe in terms of a deep underlying unity (which he called the
One and identified with Plato’s idea of the Good). But he also thought in terms of an
intellectual vision of Platonic forms (a level of being he called Nous or the Mind of God,
which he located a step lower on the ladder of being than the One). Plotinus located the
human soul in a fundamental unity of all souls that have as their interior the intelligible
world of Nous and as their exterior, the world of bodies. Most influential of all, he
sketched a spiritual ascent of the soul’s turning inward to discover its fundamental unity
not only with the one Soul and the divine Mind, but with the One itself. Although the
Triad is important in Plotinus’s philosophy, it is not the center of his thought. The Triad
cannot be represented by diagrams or approached through logical reasoning.

I. Introduction.
A. Plotinus, a Greek-speaking philosopher and co-founder of Neo-Platonism,
was born in Egypt in ca. 203 or 204 or 205 or 206 CE (we are not sure
because he never celebrated his birthday, because he was ashamed of
being in a body).
B. He was educated in Alexandria, but was not satisfied with his studies until
he met, at 28, the Greek philosopher Ammonius Saccas, another founder
of Neo-Platonism.40
C. Ammonius Saccas is to Plotinus as Socrates is to Plato. Both teachers
wrote nothing.
D. Neo-Platonism is based on Plato’s theory of ideas and emphasizes the
mystical dimension of Plato. (Plato himself wrote on many topics but
Plotinus chose to focus on Plato’s mystical dimension only).
E. Plotinus emphasized otherworldliness. The soul is defiled by contact with
phenomenal existence. We must renounce the physical world in order to
regain our original nature.
F. At the age of 40, intending to found “Platonopolis,” he went to Rome in
the year 244 and opened a school there where he taught for 20 years.
G. At the age of 60, he had a pupil by the name of Porphyry (a Pythagorean).
Porphyry edited Plotinus’ works dividing them into six books with nine
chapters each. Plotinus, apart from bad penmanship, wrote in difficult
Greek. Credit goes to Porphyry for the tough editing. When they were
done, the work was called the Enneads, for the number nine.41 Thus the
standard citation of the Enneads Porphyry’s division into book (Ennead),
treatise (Tractate), and chapter. For example, IV.6.1.
H. Like Pythagoras, we cannot call Plotinus simply a philosopher. Neither can
we call him a metaphysical thinker in the real sense of the term. Jacques

40
Another famous student of Ammonius Saccas is Origen.
41
Porphyry’s books were condemned to be burned by the Council of Ephesus in 431 C.E.

66
 Derrida in his Speech and Phenomena42 describes Plotinus’ system as
representing the “closure of metaphysics’ as well as the “transgression”
of metaphysical thought itself.
I. In the same work, Derrida writes:
Plotinus emphasizes the displacement or deferral of presence, refusing to
locate either the beginning (arkhe) or the end (telos) of existents at any
determinate point in the ‘chain of emanations’—the One, the
Intelligence, and the Soul—that is the expression of his cosmological
theory; for to predicate presence of his highest principle would imply, for
Plotinus, that this principle is but another being among beings, even if it is
superior to all beings by virtue of its status as their ‘begetter.’ 43

J. He died in solitude in 269 CE at Campania, a generation before

Christianity became the established religion of the Roman Empire under
Constantine.
K. He was the last great philosopher of pagan antiquity. He influenced
Augustine and Boethius. Augustine, reading Plotinus, changed his life-goal
from literature to philosophy.44
L. The central doctrine of his metaphysics is the theory of the trinity:
One→Nous→Soul. Reality is a continuum with a center from which circles
expand outward. The Higher determines the lower without being affected
by it.

42
Northwestern University Press, 1973, p. 128 note. Edward Moore, translator.
43
Ibid.
44
Eventually, Augustine, after reading St. Paul, would change his life-goal from philosophy to theology.

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 1. The One is the same as the Good of Plato. The One is ineffable.
It is called Good because it is not negative but supremely
positive. It is extremely “desirable” so that it draws back to itself
all that flows out from itself.
2. The Nous is also called the Intellect or Spirit. It is the first
emanation from the One and is inexhaustible, like the rays of the
sun. If the One is the sun, the Nous is the light by which the One
sees itself.
3. The Soul is also called World-Soul or Nature or Matter, and it is
emanated from the Nous; thus the Soul is the second emanation
from the One.
M. The main difference between Neo-Platonism and Christianity in the
theory of the trinity is that the former is hierarchical (the One is higher
than the Nous) while in the latter, all three “Persons” are equal (God the
Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost are three persons in One
God).
N.
II. Intellectual vision (Nous).
A. For Plotinus, the fundamental activity of all beings is intellectual
contemplation or vision, i.e., “seeing” or beholding Platonic forms with
the mind’s eye.

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 1. This mental activity is intuitive rather than discursive: more like
seeing than like talking, figuring things out, or proving
something.
2. Think of the difference between the long process of trying to
figure out a mathematical proof and the brief moment when
you get it and say “Aha!”
3. For a Platonist, this is a moment when time touches eternity,
when a merely human mind grasps something about the
timeless world of the forms.
4. Now imagine a mind that always sees that way, a mind for which
that moment of understanding is a permanent, eternal state of
being, a mind that “sees” the whole world of forms that way :
that is the divine Mind or Intellect.
B. The divine Intellect.
1. Intellect (Nous) is also translated “mind,” “Intelligence,”
“understanding,” “spirit.”
2. Its activity (noein) is translated variously as “understanding,”
“intellection,” “intelligizing,” or “thinking,” and can be described
as “contemplation” (Greek theoria) and “intuition” (from a Latin
word for “beholding”).
3. What intellect understands is always a Platonic form (also called
an “intelligible thing”).
4. Christian thinkers (especially Augustine) often identify Plotinus’s
concept of intellect with the Mind of God.
5. In that case, Platonic forms are ideas in the Mind of God,
blueprints used in creating the world. Like the artist, God, the
artist, creates the world.
6. Plotinus likens the One to the Sun which illuminated without
being illuminated.
7. He employs the image of the mirror which reduplicates the
image without itself undergoing any change or loss.
8. “The One cannot be any existing thing, but is prior to all
existents.”45 This is not the One of Parmedes which is a monistic
principle.
9. Goodness is attributed to the One, provided that it is not
attributed as an inherent quality. “The One is The Good rather
than “good.”46
10. Therefore, the One does not become less through emanation. It
remains untouched, undiminished, unmoved.
C. Intellect and intellects.

45
3.8.8 (351 d).
46
6.7.38.

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 1. In addition to the one divine intellect, many intellects exist (our
minds) that can see the forms and, thus, share in the vision of
the divine intellect.
2. In seeing the divine forms, we become one with the divine
Intellect, because to see a form is to become identical with it.
D. Plotinus’s conception of intellectual vision pulls together several strands
from the Platonist tradition.
1. Plato’s fundamental notion that a kinship exists between the
soul and the forms (Phaedo).
2. The metaphor of knowledge of the forms as “seeing” with the
mind’s eye (“Allegory of the Cave”).
3. Aristotle’s doctrine that the mind or intellect becomes identical
with the forms it knows, separate from matter.
III. The One beyond Intellect.
A. Above the divine Intellect.
1. Like Plato, Plotinus is convinced that the many must have its
source in the One.
2. Hence, for Plotinus, the origin or first principle of all things must
be One.
3. The Intellect or Divine Mind is not unified enough to be the first
principle, because it contains a multiplicity (the forms) and a
duality (knower and known, or intellect and intelligible).
4. The One is therefore above the forms and the Intellect.
5. Plotinus identifies the One with Plato’s “the Good” which shines
like the sun above the world of the forms (“Allegory of the
Cave”).
B. Characteristics of the One (simple, super-essential, incomprehensible).
1. The One is absolutely simple, having no parts or structure (like a
geometrical point rather than a geometrical figure).
2. The One is above being (super-essential), i.e., above the forms
or essences (it lowers the One to say “it exists”—it is beyond
mere existence).
3. It is above knowledge and understanding (because it is above
Intellect) and hence, it is incomprehensible.
C. Ascending beyond vision to union.
1. Because vision requires a duality of seer (knower) and seen
(known), one cannot have a view of the One, only union with it.
2. This union is possible because the One is the source of all being
and all being returns to it—like coming home.
3. For the soul to be united to the One is, thus, to be united to the
inmost source of its own being: it is not a new discovery but a
return to where it always is.
IV. The place of the soul in the universe.
A. As Intellect is both one and many, soul is both one and many.

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 1. There is the one Soul, a World Soul animating the visible world
(and causing the movement of the heavens).
2. Then there are particular souls (we’d call them individual souls,
but Plotinus would call them “divided,” i.e., separated from one
another, not unified), which are related to the one Soul as the
many intellects are related to the one divine Intellect.
3. Just as all intellects are identical with the divine Intellect as they
contemplate the forms, so are all souls one, identical with the
one Soul.
B. Soul is located between intellect and body.
1. What makes soul different from intellect is that it can be
embodied; hence, it is ignorant, mortal, impure, and vulnerable
to suffering.
2. As souls turn away from the intellect, they fall into embodiment.
3. As souls return to the intellect, they ascend to unity and purity
and rediscover their original inward happiness.
V. The hierarchy of being in Plotinus.
A. Plotinus’s universe is hierarchical, ordered by the notion of unity or
identity: the higher something is, the more unified it is.
1. The least unified are bodies, which are many, can always be
fragmented into parts, and can always perish (only bodily things
can break or die).
2. The next level is souls, which are fragmented and weak insofar
as they are absorbed in bodies, but unified and powerful as
they turn to contemplate forms in the intellect above.
3. The next level is the intellect, which eternally and
uninterruptedly contemplates the intelligible forms within it and
is, thus, identical with them (intellect = intelligible world).
4. The highest level is the One, which is so unified that it cannot
even be articulated as forms or understanding.
B. Plotinus’s concentric universe.
1. The One is the geometrical point at the center, the source of all
being and light.
2. The Intellect is a realm of light revolving around that center,
containing a multitude of illuminated forms.
3. The Soul is an outer sphere revolving around that inner globe of
light.
4. On the outer side of that sphere are many faces (our
“individual” souls) looking outward into the dark world of
bodies, fragmentation, and death.
5. If a soul turns to look inward, it will see the inner world of the
Forms and see that it is inwardly one with all souls—because all
souls share the same “interior.”

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 The implicate order is basically a view proposed by David Bohm, Basil Hiley, and
David Peat which allows for interconnectedness at a deep level. David Bohm was a
theoretical physicist who contributed significantly to Plasma Physics and Hidden
Variables. I am borrowing from his Wholeness and the Implicate Order (vide
bibliography), a book on the correlations between subatomic particles and the universe,
to make this little excursion.
The physical universe, according to the implicate order theory, is the explicate
order made explicit from the deep level which “implies” it. The beauty of this theory lies
in its being classical and non-classical at the same time. It is classical because at a deep
level the theory is deterministic. But because the theory also allows instantaneous
action-at-a-distance, it is as non-classical as quantum theory.
Bohm’s model to test the properties of the implicate order is known as the
Glycerin Dye experiment. Despite its simplicity, I was struck by its implications, perhaps
because the experiment was done at a time I was seeking some mental connections.
(Bohm’s model, by the way, has been widely ignored by the mainstream scientific
community for reasons I do not know. At the same time, I have not come across any
single experimental evidence to refute it.)
With the right instruments you can try the experiment yourself. All you will need
is a glycerin solution encased between two glass cylinders, one inside the other, and a
drop of dye solution which you let fall into the glycerin. A special jar with a rotating
cylinder with a space filled with glycerin was the one we used in this case.
As soon as you place a drop of ink in the cylinder, you rotate the crank slowly
clockwise. The first thing you will observe is the dye drop threading out into the liquid
and slowly vanishing in the thick glycerin. Turn the outer cylinder some more and the
dye completely disappears. Using a simple scientific term, we can now say that the
distribution of the dye is random, which means that the initially ordered state had
passed into entropy. This, however, is only the beginning of the experiment.

Bohm then asked: What

would happen if the cylinder were
rotated counterclockwise
exactly the same number of turns
it was rotated clockwise? If you
did this, you would discover that the drop would reconstitute itself. The drop of ink
slowly re-appears first as a long ribbon until it retains its former shape. In other words,

72
the seemingly random state had not been one of disorder at all but of an implicit order,
only hidden from view. According to Bohm, this is the state of the universe. When it
evolves into form, it becomes explicate; when it involves from form, it becomes
implicate. Bohm goes further to say that the implicate order itself is implied in an
underlying order of pure potential which in turn springs from an infinite pool of infinite
potential, and so on and so forth. If every particle of matter were interconnected with
every other particle, then we all must be interconnected with each other!
Unlike J. S. Bell, David Bohm did not feel that “action at a distance” was due to
the faster than light signaling process. Instead, its existence suggested a non-local level
of reality beyond the quantum level. What this means, in layman’s term, is that what we
perceive as separate particles in a subatomic system are not in reality separate on a
deeper level but extensions of one fundamental reality—an implicate order which we
just discussed. Particles only appear to be separate on the explicate level. The apparent
separateness therefore is an illusion.
Imagine, he says, a brick wall separating you and an aquarium in which a fish is
swimming.

Now, imagine two TV cameras (A and B) aimed at the aquarium. Camera A is

aimed in front of the aquarium, while Camera B is aimed at the right side, as shown in
our illustration above. Each camera is hooked to a TV monitor. Thus you have two TV
monitors (Monitor A and Monitor B) on each side of the brick wall facing you.
Because of the brick wall, you cannot see the aquarium. All you see are two images on
two TV screens. Due to this limitation, you may think that you are watching two fishes.
Whenever the fish in Monitor A moves, the fish in Monitor B also moves. You may now
conclude that some sort of instantaneous communication occurs between the two
fishes.

73
 In reality, there are no two fishes but just one fish.47 The two TV monitors
correspond to the world as we know it—the explicate order. The fish in the aquarium
corresponds to the level of reality beyond the quantum—the implicate order.

VI. Plotinus’s spirituality.

A. In many ways we can see
B. Plotinus’s philosophy as “pure spirituality.”
1. This philosophy is more spiritual than Judaism, with its
attachment to the fleshly people of Israel.
2. This philosophy is also more spiritual than Christianity, with its
attachment to the flesh or person of Christ.
3. It has affinities with any religion that aspires to find deep truths
behind the visible world of appearance, including the world of
finite persons (cf. Hinduism, for which no person or people is
ultimate).
C. Plotinus’s spirituality is a radical extension of the Platonist metaphysical
conviction that the truth of being lies deeper than physical appearances.
1. Behind the many-ness of external appearances is a deep inner
unity (the One).
2. Access to that unity comes by turning inward, finding the deep
unity within the soul that is beyond all understanding.

St. Augustine
47
This is analogous to the correlations between two photons in the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR)
experiment..

74
 Semiotics

Among the great figures of the Middle Ages, two personalities loom the largest:
one at the beginning and the other at the close. These are Augustine and Aquinas.
Within a span of almost a millennium between them, both exerted commanding
influence on European thought and culture, as both of them represent the most
profound theological thinking of the Middle Ages.
In this chapter, we shall take up Augustine who I consider to be one of the two
greatest medieval Christian thinkers next only to the Apostle Paul.
St. Augustine lived at a time when classical western civilization experienced its
greatest crisis. During his lifetime, an event that seemed improbable happened: Rome
fell.
Saint Augustine (354-430) is the founder of expressionism. By expressionism, I mean the
theory of external signs as expressions of internal things.
For Augustine, a sign is an outward thing “used to signify something.” (Adams,
108) It is a sensible thing that makes something else come into our thoughts. A sign,
therefore, always has signification. There’s always some “thing” that is signified.
There are two kinds of signs: natural and conventional. Smoke is an example of a
natural sign. It is a sign of fire. Even if you do not see the fire on the other side of the
mountain, you know there’s a fire over there. The smoke that we see brings up fire in
our minds.
Augustine, however, is more interested in the other kind of sign, the conventional
or the “communicative” sign. Words are used to communicate something; e.g., a gesture
or any thing that we do that communicates my thoughts to you. We give signs in order
to signify what’s in our hearts and minds, and then transfer them to another. It is an
external bridge from one inner self to another, and that external bridge is always some
kind of sign: a smile, a frown, a gesture, words, sacraments.
Conventional signs are used to teach things, but we don’t really learn things from
signs that signify them, rather we learn what the sign means from the thing it signifies.
We learn the significance of the sign by first knowing what it signifies. Take the example
of the Pythagorean Theorem. That is a sign.

Anything I do to communicate my thoughts to you—a word, a nod, a gesture, a

frown, etc.—is called a conventional sign. I give out signs in order to signify what’s in my
mind, what’s in my thoughts, what’s in my heart—and then I attempt to transfer them to
your mind, your thoughts, and your heart.
Among the many kinds of conventional signs, Augustine not unexpectedly singles
out what he calls divinely conventional signs. God, he says, uses signs in order to
communicate with his creation. The most important of God’s conventional signs are the
scriptures and the sacraments.
The sign’s excuse for being is the urge to communicate. In order to communicate
with each other, we must agree upon what the signs mean. In this way, signs are
“conventional.”

75
 The English language, for example, whose use is conventional to us, is
incomprehensible to one who does not speak the language. Augustine, for one,
wouldn’t make sense of it, in the same way that we wouldn’t make sense of Medieval
Latin. To communicate with each other, we have to agree upon what the signs mean.
Conventional signs, therefore, do not have a natural meaning, unlike smoke, which has a
natural meaning of fire.
But words get their meaning from our wills.
All key concepts in Augustine’s theology are focused on the doctrine of grace, or
God’s intervention in our lives. As we were taught in the New England Primer:
In Adam’s fall
We sinned all.
All are punishable because all share in Adam’s fall. And because we are totally
corrupt, all of us are unable to love God. Grace, therefore, is needed. And Grace is a gift
from God, wholly gratuitous, unmerited, and preceding all good actions.
This is where Augustine lay at variance with Pelagius, the British Theologian.
Pelagius acknowledged the concept of God’s grace, but believed, too, in the essential
goodness of human nature—and our ability to surmount the evil effects of Adam’s sin.
His key phrase was “human freedom.” Despite the damage wrought by Adam’s sin, even
to the point where sin has become our second nature (i.e., habitual), we still have
freedom, the freedom to do good, and thereby receive God’s gift of man’s good nature.
Augustine rejected this: nature was corrupted by self-love. The human will is
completely enslaved to sin. Human freedom is freedom to sin willingly, but not freedom
not to sin. We are rotten at the core, and are totally unable to love God. The sexual
pleasure in intercourse was the condition for the transmission of original sin to all of
Adam’s descendants. There is no exception.
Grace is an inward gift, and yet it is somehow related to external things, like the
Church, the Sacraments, and the Scriptures. What is the relationship between these
external things and the inward gift of grace? To understand the basic structure of the
doctrine of grace, think of a causal chain in this sequence: Faith→Charity→God.
For Augustine, Faith is not blind faith. Faith is always linked with understanding.
In other words, Augustine’s catchphrase is not faith and reason, but rather faith and
understanding. Faith is related to understanding as the road is related to the destination.
Faith is the way, understanding is the goal.
Understanding is the goal because a full understanding of God, who is the Truth,
is akin to “seeing” God with the mind’s eye eternally, without ever falling back into this
world and its darkness, when you are fully illuminated by the light of God (called Beatific
Vision), the seeing which makes us supremely happy.48
So that’s the end: “seeing” God is understanding God. Beatific vision therefore is
intellectual vision, the vision of the mind’s eye.
The problem with us human beings is that our mind’s eye is not prepared for that
kind of vision. Our souls are created to “see” God, but the “eye” of the soul is not

48
Happiness is the name for the thing we seek for its own sake.

76
healthy: it is not doing what it’s been made to do, which is to “see” God. Our mind’s eye
is not pure enough
For Augustine, God (Truth, Supreme Happiness) is ineffable and cannot be
contained as a mental object.
What, then, ought we to do to reach our destination—God? Augustine prescribes
Faith, the virtue of relinquishing all doubt in the Ineffable One. This sounds like blind
faith, but it is not. Faith, to Augustine, is the means to get to the goal of understanding.
Through Faith, our minds are purified.49
Faith is not based on what you can see with your mind’s eye; it is based on
authority. Here’s where reason comes in. Reason means using your mind’s eye in trying
to understand, while authority means believing what you are told.
Think of your high school teacher lecturing on the Pythagorean Theorem.
Imagine you do not understand it yet. She writes on the blackboard a2+b2=c2, where c,
she says, as soon as she has written the equation, represents the length of
the hypotenuse and a and b represent the lengths of the other two sides. That’s a sign,
and if you do not understand what it signifies, it does not mean anything to you. You
look at the equation and try to understand it. You do not quite get it, but you do believe
that what’s written on the blackboard is true—because the teacher says so. The teacher
has authority and she knows what she’s talking about. She tells you that it means that
the sum of the squares of the sides of a right triangle is equal to the square of the
hypotenuse. She further amplifies: In any right triangle, the area of the square whose
side is the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the
areas of the squares whose sides are the two legs (the two sides that meet at a right
angle). Now that she has told you that, you know what the sign signifies.
You have to understand the thing signified first, because it is from that signified
that you understand the significance of the sign. You learn signs from the things that
signify, and not the other way around, according to Augustine.
This does not mean that signs have no use, but Augustine always goes for the
intelligible thing, the thing you understand, to take priority over the sensible thing. What
you see with your mind’s eye must come first. What you see with the physical eye comes
second. You have to understand that real triangle—

—the sum of the areas of the two squares of the legs a and b equals the area of
the square on the hypotenuse c—in order to understand the significance of the sign

49
Unless you believe, you won’t understand. –Book of Isaiah 7:7

77
a2+b2=c2, where c represents the length of the hypotenuse, and a and b represent the
lengths of the other two sides.50

You are not in a position to understand it yet.

In order to understand that real triangle, the schoolteacher can only teach you
up to a certain point. He can’t make you understand. He can write as many equations,
say so many words, but he can’t make you understand. So, to go back to Augustine’s
theology, what’s going to make you understand? Who’s going to make you understand?
Not an external teacher, says Augustine, but an internal one: Christ. He teaches you.
The City of God shaped the political ideology of medieval Europe. It established
the principle that divine authority is greater than human authority. In time, the City of
God came to be identified with the Church to the effect that the state could only attain
virtue by submitting itself to the guidance of the Church.
Augustine lived at the beginning of what has often been characterized as the
European Dark Ages, a period in which cultural and intellectual activity declined while
violent barbarians destroyed the monuments of classical civilization.
The Romans had lost their civic virtue. They had become unwilling to fulfill their
civic duties, especially military service, and instead had become apathetic. Instead, they
had foisted off their civic duties onto barbarian mercenaries who had become so
powerful that by the 5th century CE, they were able to take control of the empire itself.
The chief characteristic of the Dark Ages, however, was the Fear of Learning. The
True, the Good, and the Beautiful had to go underground lest they suffer the same fate
of Hypatia (b. 370), a woman, a symbol of learning and the last scientist of Alexandria.
The people despised her because of her gender, and because they identified her great
learning with paganism. In 415 while on her way to the great library, parishioners of Cyril
of Alexandria dragged her from her chariot, tore off her clothes, and with abalone shells
flayed her flesh to the bones, before burning her skeleton with her books. Her name is
forgotten. The Church, years later, canonized—Cyril of Alexandria.
Despite this, the Church was the sole custodian of classical learning. Throughout
the Middle Ages, monasteries became refuge of scholars. As mass illiteracy prevailed
outside, the monasteries were the antidote, preventing the total extinction of classical
learning.

50
A simpler, layman’s way of putting it: The sum of the squares of the sides of a right triangle is equal to
the square of the hypotenuse. An excursion: Pythagoras offered a more elaborate solution than his pre-
Socratic predecessors to the problem of genesis: All, he said, is number. Like the Ionians, Pythagoras
sought to discover the unifying principle of all reality. He identified this principle with number, and for the
first time, departed from the Ionian tradition of designating a material substance (the elements) as the
first principle. If a direct relationship exists between numerical ratios and the harmonies of music, and just
as numbers undergird music, so are numbers the very stuff and pattern of the universe. The natural world
displays numerical order. So what notion of number did Pythagoras have? How did he arrive at this
principle? Like previous thinkers, Pythagoras had observed the dirrerent characteristics of phenomena.
From these observations he saw that these characteristics followed exact mathematical patterns. In other
words, natural phenomena followed an order which could be measured mathematically—the seasons, day
and night, the year, and so on.

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 Augustine lived to see the total collapse of Roman rule in Africa and the ruin of
his diocese. During the year of his death in 430, the Vandals had invaded that part of the
empire, burning churches, slaughtering bishops and clergy, violating the women,
torturing the laity. His own city of Hippo swarmed with refugees. In the midst of all
these, Augustine fell ill with a fever, and died shortly afterwards. He was buried on
August 28, 430. Hippo was then sacked and burned to the ground.
Thus, Augustine’s vision of the City of God rising from the ruins of the Roman
Empire was realized in the Church. The Church undertook the gigantic task of converting
to Christianity the barbarian invaders—and the Church succeeded to such an extent that
over the next several centuries, the barbarians acknowledged the Roman Pope as the
Supreme Authority in the land.
The year is 452 A.D. The Huns have razed Aquileia, and their leader Attila (406-
453) stands on top of a hill to watch the city burn to ashes. (He had erased the city from
the map so that there is no trace of Aquileia today.)
Attila is descended from the Xiongnu tribes, known for their cruelty. They had
moved towards Europe because Shi Huang Ti had built the Great Wall largely to keep
them out. All the lands around Germany to the Ural River, from the Danube to the Baltic
Sea, including the Balkans, Orleans, and Gaul in Western Europe have crumbled.
Meanwhile, the vandals have taken North Africa, and the Suevi have captured Iberia.
Britain has fallen too under the barbarian invaders and the Gaels sign a separate peace
with the Goths and the Burundians.
All these prepare the ground for the Huns to invade Northern Italy. Their intention
is to lay it in ruins. Many residents of Italy flee to the Venetian lagoon. This is how the
city of Venice was founded. And now we see the Huns thundering directly towards Rome,
the heart of western civilization. The people of Rome, abandoned by their own rulers,
turn to Leo I (reign 440-461) for help. The pope immediately orders his cardinals and
archbishops to assemble together and lead the people in procession to Mincio in the
vicinity of Mantua, there to meet the barbarian invaders. The Huns witness a long
procession coming out of the city to meet them. Attila is awed by the strange pomp of
incense and stately robes and the singing of sacred hymns led by an aging pope holding
aloft the processional crucifix. As soon as he is face to face with the invader, Leo I,
bishop of Rome and Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church, points the crucifix at Attila,
the Scourge of God, and orders him to depart from Rome. Attila, confused, turns back
and retreats to the Danube, never to bother Rome again.

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 The Repulse of Attila (1513/14) by Raphael
Stanza della Segnatura
The Vatican
(Public domain)

An Augustinian monk who chose as his religious name “Augustine” had declared that not
only had he read St. Augustine but that he had “swallowed him whole.” On October 13,
1517, he nailed to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral ninety-five theses.

80
 Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius
Consolation of Philosophy
Or
“Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People?”
Or
“Why Are Good Writers Born Losers?”
Or
“Why Do We Write Well When We Are Depressed?”

Abstract

Boethius’ great learning is reflected in his Consolation of Philosophy, an example of

prison literature.51 It is also an example of an unfinished masterpiece. It is unfinished
because the executioner had arrived to “interrupt” the writing. Despite never having
been given the opportunity to finish the book, Boethius is a canonical figure who was
read widely for hundreds of years. He was influenced by Plato in the sense that he
subscribed to the idea that poetry is dangerous because it feeds the passions. Boethius
echoes Plato’s censure of poetry as an inferior and dangerous pursuit. Lady Philosophy
upbraids the Muses of Poetry—the “seducing mummers”—for luring the condemned
man “with poisonous sweets” who "stifle the fruit-bearing harvest of reason with the
barren briars of the passions."
For Boethius, philosophy is the highest, the only legitimate occupation.
The severe depression Boethius is experiencing is due to his limited human perception, a
perception which only philosophy can repair. The Consolation of Philosophy is actualized
when one's perspective is shifted from the human to the Divine. A large part of this new
perspective is caused by the acceptance of the impermanence of all things. Nothing
lasts. Everything is ephemeral. Fortune is fickle. One day the Wheel spins us to the top,
the next day it crushes us to the ground. Boethius at the end of the day will not look
away. He will not kid himself. He will not live through the fraudulent belief in not seeing
what he does not want to see. He will look at good fortune and bad fortune equally with
serenity and acceptance. Only that would bring him peace.
Poetry, unfortunately, cannot do this, because poetry, by its very nature, dulls our
reason by exciting the passions.

But he had religious reasons as well. First, the Muses were pagan and second that
the arts catered to sensuous and earthly interests. Philosophy, then, not poetry, is the
true medicine of the soul.

51
The Catholic Encyclopedia is the oldest known source where this citation is found.
Another eminent example of prison literature is Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for
Meaning, a work that is also described as an example of Holocaust literature.

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 I. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, a Christian philosopher, scholar, and
saint (also known as Saint Severinus), was born in Rome around 480 CE of a
Patrician family. Life had been good to him.
A. He was talented. He translated Greek works, especially Plato and
Aristotle, into Latin.
B. His father was a consul.
C. Boethius himself became a consul.
D. His two sons also became consuls.
II. At the age of 40, he rose to become magister officiorum , or head of all
government and court service of the Ostrogoth ruler Theodoric the Great.
III. The position was short-lived.
A. Three years later he was arrested on charges of conspiring with the
Byzantine Empire at Constantinople.
a. Boethius was stripped of his title and wealth and
thrown into prison at Pavia.
b. Boethius attributes his arrest to slander by his rivals
who he thought were his friends.
B. He was executed in 524 by garrote. His head was bound in wet leather
straps, possibly rawhide, and as they dried, the leather shrunk and slowly
crushed his skull.
C. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:
“It was believed that among the accusations brought against him was
devotion to the Catholic cause, which at that time was championed by
the Emperor Justin against the Arian Theodoric. In the eighth century
this tradition had assumed definite shape, and in many places Boethius
was honored as a martyr, and his feast observed on the twenty-third of
October. In recent times, critical scholarship has gone to the opposite
extreme, and there have not been wanting critics who asserted
that Boethius was not a Christian at all, or that, if he was,
he abjured the Faith before his death. The foundation for this opinion is
the fact that in the ‘Consolations of Philosophy’ no mention is made
of Christ or of the Christian religion.”52
D. Arianism was a heresy that denied the divinity of Christ. According to this
teaching, Christ was created by God. The Incarnation is just a metaphor.
1. Because of this heresay, St. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria,
together with 220 bishops, met at the council of Nicaea and
condemned it while formulating the Nicene Creed in 325 CE:
2. We believe in One God, the Father Almighty, Creator of all things
visible and invisible. And in One Lord, Jesus Christ the Son of

52
W. Turner, Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton
Company, 1907. Let me offer an explanation in defense of Boethius. Boethius was a keen student of the
classical style and followed to the letter the ancient’s advice about writing. Horace and Longinus, as we
have seen, for example, advised against mixing genres. In other words, if you write philosophy, just write
philosophy. Don’t include scriptural commentaries.

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 God, the Only begotten of the Father that is of the substance of
the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true
God, begotten, not created, consubstantial with the Father.
3. The Creed that we are familiar with, however, that which is used
in our quotidian liturgy, is the Nicene Constantinople Creed of
381 at the Council of Constantinople.

IV. While at prison awaiting execution, he wrote his famous Consolation of

Philosophy.
A. Its five books have been characterized as “the last work of Roman
literature.”
B. Book I tells of a vision Boethius had, of a woman holding books in her
right hand and a scepter in the other. Her name is Philosophy.
C. In Book II, Philosophy upbraids him for clinging to ambition which has no
enduring value. She conjures up Lady Fortune who is seen spinning her
wheel. Lady Fortune never allows anybody to continue in prosperity.
D. Book III says that the Supreme Good lies not in riches, power, or pleasure,
but in God. Don’t lament your bad fortune, says Lady Philosophy. Lady
Fortune is just doing her job. You rode on the wheel of fortune. Now that
you are down, nobody is to blame. You wrought it on yourself.
E. Book IV is about the problem of Evil.
F. Book V reconciles Free Will and predestination.
V. Boethius is buried in Pavia (in the same church where also is buried St.
Augustine).
VI. Alfred the Great translated the Consolation into Anglo-Saxon in the 9 th
century. Chaucer translated it into Midland English, later published by Caxton
in 1480. Elizabeth I followed with an accurate translation in elegant English in
1593.
VII. Once read and loved widely, the book itself had fallen on Fortune’s Wheel.
Today it is read only by medievalists and by CL majors—not for pleasure but
as a duty.
VIII. Pope Benedict the XVI recently (March 12, 2008) declared: “Despite his
dedication to public life, Boethius did not neglect his studies.”
IX. Boethius’ feast day is celebrated every October 23.

The Mindset of the Middle Ages

I like to divide the journey of Western thought into three great configurations:
the Graeco-Roman period (lasting up to the fourth century CE), the Christian-
Medieval period (from the fourth to the seventeenth century), and the Modern
(otherwise known as the Renaissance). Let us discuss, in this second module, the
second period: the Christian-Medieval.
The Christian-Medieval period is one that we can describe as theistic. It was God-
centered. Today, in secular society, only theologians and clerics can talk about God

83
openly without feeling self-conscious. In Medieval times, everybody talked about
God.
Medieval life was meaningful in ways we do not understand. For example, the
Medieval mind understood the purpose, but not the meaning, of life. The latter was
left to God. Only God knew. Our mind was limited, so there was no point in pressing
the issue. We trusted God, and there the matter ended. Medieval man and woman
lived as a child did while living in her parents’ house. The child did not understand
much the meaning of what was going on, but accepted everything her parents did
without question. After all, they cared for her and so they knew best.
In the High Middle Ages, nature’s obscurity as presented by cosmology through
Aristotle posed no problem. The cosmos was in good hands, and nobody ever
conceived things to be otherwise. Nobody challenged the status quo. Nobody
yearned for freedom. The emancipation of the individual was still to happen in the
Renaissance. Meanwhile, the way to salvation was simply to align ourselves with
God. The duty of every man and woman was clear and simple: do this and you will
be saved, disobey and you will be punished.
The Medieval outlook was unproblematic: Reality was God-focused—and
personal. The dynamics of the cosmos and the natural world were way beyond our
capacity to understand, so if you wanted to be saved, just follow the
commandments. Never question the Divine Order because that comes from Divine
Revelation. The latter is more important than discursive inquiry.
The Medieval universe was ordered—and finished (In Dante’s Divine Comedy and
in Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, decisions have been done and over with)—so there
was no need to worry: everyone, from the pope and the monarch down to the serf,
knew her place in the celestial ladder and served her purpose. The individual was
not important. Minstrels, troubadours, artificers expressed themselves, narrated
events, and worked without their by-lines attached underneath their works. The
individual was subordinate to the hierarchical world.
Do not rock the boat. If you did, you would be burned at the stake, and
everybody would think it was all right, because your soul would be saved.
The Medieval mindset had its advantages, too. Because of its sense of order
(which no one questioned) with God at the top of the ladder (which no one dared to
question), the medieval mindset was able to mobilize entire communities to build
cathedrals and bring the entire weight of that psychological comfort that all is well in
heaven and on earth.

St. Thomas Aquinas

Aesthetics and Hermeneutics

84
 Thomas Aquinas’ aesthetic theory is the least recognized aspect of his thought.
This stands to reason, because his aesthetics are not found in any one particular work,
but rather spread out throughout a body of works to a degree that we might not at first
suspect.
Although Thomas draws on both Plato and Aristotle, he is more Aristotelian than
Platonic in his definition of art as recta ratio factibilium.53
How does art imitate nature? Simply by moving from simplicity to complexity—a
sort of evolutionary movement.
Perhaps his most famous statement on the idea of beauty is his declaration that
beauty must have three requirements: integritas, consonantia, and claritas.54 These
qualities derive from God who is the One (the Good).55

I. Thomas Aquinas’s life and context.

A. Thomas Aquinas (1225?-1274) was the son of a south Italian noble house
that was well connected to the ruling dynasty of the Kingdom of Sicily and
to the international European aristocracy of 13th century Western Europe.
B. Two significant factors affected his education.
1. Aquinas was the child of the new university system, which had
emerged at Bologna, Paris, and Oxford in the second half of the
12th century. It was designed to train professionals.
2. Aquinas was also the star of the even newer Dominican Order.
C. Aquinas was educated at the venerable Benedictine monastery of Monte
Cassino near his birthplace; then at the University of Naples, founded (in
1224) by his kinsman King (and Holy Roman Emperor) Frederick II (there
he earned his A.B.); then at the University of Paris (M.A. and S.Th.D.).
1. He taught thereafter at Paris, at the itinerant papal university in
Italy, and finally at the University of Naples.
2. He died on March 7, 1274 at the age of 49, author of some 60 to
100 titles.
II. Aquinas’s Aristotelianism.
A. Aquinas was the last creative commentator on Aristotle’s philosophy.
B. Some key instances of Aquinas’s creatively critical Aristotelianism will be
outlined below:
1. Aquinas’s teaching regarding the eternity of the world—a
conviction of Aristotle’s: Aquinas argued that neither the
eternity of the world nor the contrary could be demonstrated by

53
Right reason applied to the making of things. Summa Theologica, 1st part of the 2nd part of the prima
secundae of the Summa, Q 57 article 3, this quote taken from his commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics: “Art
Imitates Nature.”
54
Integrity or perfection, due proportion or harmony, and clarity or brilliance. The complete text reads
integritas sive perfectio, debita proportio sive consonantia, et claritas.
55
Plato’s influence is shown here.

85
 pure logic; the Bible provides the necessary authoritative
information on that point.
2. Aquinas’s teaching on the nature of the human being: the soul is
the form of the body (Aristotle’s doctrine), but the soul is
immortal. All in all, Aquinas’s teaching on this matter is closer to
the Christian Neo-Platonism of St. Augustine than to Aristotle.
C. Aquinas accepted Aristotle’s logical thought integrally and uncritically;
when he disagreed with Aristotle—as in the question of the eternity of
the world and the immortality of the soul—he usually did so by critiquing
Aristotle’s conclusions with Aristotle’s logic.
D. Aquinas followed Aristotle’s epistemology: what we know we know from
data collected by the senses. In regard to the human soul, however,
Aquinas taught that its function was to learn truths of a spiritual nature,
as well as material sense-knowledge. As such, the human soul survives
the death of the body.
E. Following Aristotle, Aquinas’s thought was resolutely teleological, that is,
concerned to establish the end or purpose of any being or any of its
actions. Thomas expressed this teleological reasoning in his thought on
biology, ethics, politics, and cosmology, as well as theology.
F. Aristotle’s doctrine of motion was used by Aquinas in developing proofs
for the existence of God.
1. Aquinas’s Summa Theologica (Part 1, Question 2, Article 3)
proposes five such proofs; the proofs from motion and from
contingency or necessity of being depend on this Aristotelian
doctrine.
2. It is important to recognize that for Aristotle, motion involved
not merely physical movement, but also the “reduction’ of
potency to act. Thus, the operation of the entire universe was
explained by “motion.”
G. In political philosophy, Aquinas followed Aristotle quite closely, although,
again, not in every matter.
1. For Aquinas, as for Aristotle, the state was natural to the human
condition, rather than a punitive consequence of Original Sin, as
Augustine and most Western Christian thinkers since him had
maintained. For Aquinas, as for Aristotle, man was a political
animal who needed civil society to reach his fulfillment, his
teleological end.
2. Like Aristotle, Aquinas considered mixed government (elements
of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy combined) to be the
best form of government. He favored monarchy more than
Aristotle had, perhaps (as some have argued) because of his
attachment to papal theocracy. On the other hand, Aquinas
considered democracy, somewhat tempered by aristocracy, to
be teleologically most appropriate for the city-states of his

86
 contemporary Italy, which resembled in so many ways the ideal
polis of Aristotle.
H. In his distinctive doctrine of law, Aquinas combined the main lines of
Aristotle’s Politics with the Stoic doctrine of natural law and added some
original features. According to Aquinas, four or five major kinds of laws
exist: the eternal law of God and his created universe, the natural law
inherent in human nature, divine positive law specifically legislated for
human conduct, human positive law, and human custom (sort of law in
itself if it is not in conflict with natural law). No divine law can be in
conflict with natural law, and any human statute or custom that is
inconsistent with natural law has no force—it is not a real law at all,
because it does not conform to human teleology.
III. Reactions to Aquinas’s Aristotelianism.
A. Aquinas’s most Aristotelian teachings provoked a strong negative
reaction, even in his lifetime. This reaction was turned into a movement
to condemn Thomism as a heresy; the leading thinkers of the Dominican
Order’s main rival, the Franciscan Order, led this movement. It got as far
as inspiring a bishop of Paris and two archbishops of Canterbury to
condemn several of Aquinas’s teachings, eventually declaring some of
them formal heresies.
B. The Dominican Order reacted with gusto, leading to Thomas’s
controversial canonization by Pope John XXII in 1323.
1. In 1879, Leo XIII issued a papal bull, Aeterni patris, that praised
Aquinas as Doctor of the Church.
2. Neo-Thomism flourished for roughly a century, but then lost
appeal even in Catholic academic circles. At the very end of the
20th century, however, we have seen what we might call “Neo-
neo-Thomism,” a philosophical movement recasting Thomism
and Neo-Thomism in the light of such thinkers as Michel
Foucault and Jacques Lacan. Basically, though, all forms of
Thomism have been inspired by their respect for the thought of
Aristotle.

Aquinas’s Proof of the Existence of God

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 Source: Summa Theologica, 1a.2.1 – 3.56

The existence of God can be proved in five ways:

The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident
to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is
put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that
towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. For motion
is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But
nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of
actuality. Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot,
to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it. Now it is not possible that the
same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only
in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot;
but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same
respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e. that it should
move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by
which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in
motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because
then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that
subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as
the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to
arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be
God.

The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find
there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed,
possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be
prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to
infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the
intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the
intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away
the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no
ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to
infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor
any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to
admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.

The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature
things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to
corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. But it is impossible for
56
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica Second and Revised Edition, translated by Fathers of the English
Dominican Province,1920. This translation is now in the public domain. See also Opera Omnia, Leonine
edition, volume iv.

88
these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. Therefore,
if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in
existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because
that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if
at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have
begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence--which is absurd.
Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the
existence of which is necessary. But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused
by another, or not. Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which
have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient
causes. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself
its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their
necessity. This all men speak of as God.

The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there
are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But "more" and "less" are
predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways
something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more
nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest,
something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost
being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in
Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire,
which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be
something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other
perfection; and this we call God.

The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack
intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting
always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is
plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks
intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed
with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer.
Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their
end; and this being we call God.

Before arguing that God exists, Aquinas deals with two objections to the project
of proving God’s existence: first, that it is unnecessary to prove God’s existence because
it is self-evident that God exists and, second, that it is impossible to prove God’s
existence because the existence of God is exclusively a matter for faith and revelation. In
response, Aquinas argues that the existence of God is not self-evident in the way a
mathematical or logical truth is, but it can be proved by reasoning backwards from
effects—the objects of our sense experience—to God as their ultimate cause.
There are five ways to prove that God exists. The first and “most evident” of
these is an argument from motion. Everything that is in motion must be put in motion by

89
some other thing. Because an infinite series of movers is impossible, there must be a
first mover that is not itself in motion. This first unmoved mover, Aquinas says, is God.
Before Aquinas offers his five proofs for the existence of God, he deals with the
objection that the existence of God cannot be proved: either because it is self-evident or
because it just has to be taken on faith.
Aquinas’s approach to this objection illustrates his use of the Scholastic method,
which framed philosophical inquiry as a debate between opposing points of view. The
Scholastic method begins with a quaestio: a question that can be given a yes-or-no
answer. Then, one marshals the best arguments from authorities (the “big names in the
field”) for the view that one rejects. Then, one sets forth one’s own view and gives
arguments for it. Finally, one considers the opposing arguments and explains why they
fail.
Perhaps one finds a mistaken premise or logical fallacy in the original argument,
or perhaps one shows that the authority is wrong if interpreted in one way but right if
interpreted in another way.
Aquinas interprets Anselm as holding that the existence of God is self-evident. In
reply, he denies that the existence of God is self-evident in a way that would make a
proof of God’s existence otiose. A proposition is self-evident when one can tell, just by
thinking about the concepts involved, that it is true.
According to Anselm, once we understand the concept of God, we can see that
God exists. Aquinas argues that we cannot, in this life, have the kind of understanding of
God that would enable us just to “see” that God exists. The objection that the existence
of God must simply be taken on faith takes off from Aquinas’s response to Anselm. If we
cannot have any direct insight into the nature of God, how are we supposed to prove
that God exists? Aquinas replies by distinguishing between two different kinds of
arguments. In an argument propter quid, we argue from the nature of a thing to its
features; in an argument quia, we argue backwards from effects to cause. Because we
have no direct insight into the nature of God, we cannot have any propter quid
arguments about God. But we can have quia arguments about God by reasoning
backwards from God’s effects—sensible things—to their cause.
Each of the famous “five ways” begins from some fact that can be observed by
the senses and argues on that basis for the existence of God. The first way argues on the
basis of motion that there must be a first unmoved mover. The second way argues on
the basis of causality that there must be a first uncaused cause. The third way argues on
the basis of contingency (the fact that things are capable of existing and of not existing)
that there must be a necessary being. The fourth way argues on the basis of the degrees
of perfection that there must be a maximally perfect being. The fifth way argues on the
basis of apparently purposive behavior that there must be an intelligent being that
directs all things to attain their ends.
A detailed look at the first way to prove that God exists, which Aquinas calls “the
clearest way,” offers a glimpse into Aquinas’s argumentative method and his use of
Aristotelian principles. It is “evident to the senses” that some things are in motion. In
Aristotelian jargon, three kinds of changes count as “motion”: change in quality, change

90
in size, and change in place. Each of these changes involves going from potentiality
(potentially being a certain way) to actuality (actually being a certain way).
Whenever something goes from potentiality to actuality, there must be
something that causes it go from potentiality to actuality. Something that causes motion
is in actuality, whereas something that undergoes motion is in potentiality. For example,
something that is actually hot is needed to heat what is only potentially hot. Because
nothing can be both in actuality and in potentiality in the same respect at the same
time, nothing can move itself. Thus, everything that is moved is moved by some other
thing. Because there cannot be an infinite regress of movers and things moved, we must
come to a first unmoved mover.
In an infinite series of movers, there is no first mover. If there is no first mover,
there is no motion. Therefore, there is no infinite series of movers. Whenever something
goes from potentiality to actuality, there must be something that causes it go from
potentiality to actuality. Something that causes motion is in actuality, whereas
something that undergoes motion is in potentiality. For example, something that is
actually hot is needed to heat what is only potentially hot. Because nothing can be both
in actuality and in potentiality in the same respect at the same time, nothing can move
itself. Thus, everything that is moved is moved by some other thing.
Because there cannot be an infinite regress of movers and things moved, we
must come to a first unmoved mover. In an infinite series of movers, there is no first
mover. If there is no first mover, there is no motion. Therefore, there is no infinite series
of movers.

Aquinas and the Problem of Language

Aquinas’s Aristotelian strategy of arguing from effects to cause allows us to

establish a wide range of conclusions about God, but it also threatens to undermine the
meaningfulness of our language about God. Our language reflects our concepts, and our
concepts are all ultimately derived from our experience of the objects of the senses. But
the objects of the senses fall far short of God. How, then, can the words that we use for
ordinary objects be meaningful when applied to God? Aquinas’s answer is that created
things resemble or imitate their creator. We can, therefore, use the language that
derives from experience of creatures to speak meaningfully about God, although our
words cannot have exactly the same meaning in theological language that they have in
ordinary language.
Given the fact that God far exceeds our understanding, how can we say anything
true about God? In medieval terminology, how can we have “names” for God?
Some of Aquinas’s sources concerning this issue particularly emphasized the via
remotionis or via negativa: that is, the approach to speaking of God that insists that we
can say only what God is not. According to these authors, God is so much beyond the
sensible things that we must use in order to understand him that the best we can do is
to say of him what he is not. Some would even go so far as to say that even the
affirmative names are really disguised negatives.

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 Maimonides had held that affirmative names for God actually express (a) what
God is not and (b) God’s relation to creatures. Aquinas allows a role to the via
remotionis, but he insists that it can and must be supplemented by the via affirmationis:
the practice of using affirmative names to speak of God. If no positive predications are
possible, there is no reason to call God one thing in preference to another. Although God
transcends sensible things, such things do provide enough clues to his nature that we
can derive positive conclusions about God and express them in affirmative names.
Aquinas develops a general theory about how names work, then applies it to the
case of names for God. The general theory of names, derived from Aristotle, holds that
we can name something insofar as we can understand it. Words are signs of ideas, and
ideas are resemblances (“similitudes”) of things. Thus, words do serve as signs of things
but indirectly: They signify things by means of our intellect’s conception of the things.
We can, therefore, name God insofar as we can understand God. Given that we
cannot understand God as he is in himself, we also cannot name God as he is in himself.
(In that sense, the proponents of the via remotionis were right.) But because we can
understand God as he is known from creatures, we can name him on the basis of our
knowledge of creatures.
Because God possesses all the perfections of creatures, though in a more
excellent way, we can apply the names for those perfections to God—in the technical
jargon of the day, we can predicate those names of God. If a name implies a perfection
without limitation, we can apply it literally to God. For example, good does not imply any
limitation; thus, we can apply it literally to God, as we apply it literally to creatures. We
can also predicate it “in the mode of supereminence,” in which case, it applies only to
God. For example, we can predicate highest good of God alone. If a name implies some
limitation or defect, we can apply it metaphorically to God. For example, we can
predicate rock metaphorically of God.
Aquinas’s main interest is in names that can be predicated literally of both God
and creatures. Even these names are inadequate in a way. As all our names do, they get
their meaning through our intellect’s conception, and our intellect’s conception falls
short of the reality of God. Our names for God suggest multiplicity within God, even
though God has no parts of any kind. We have to use a plurality of names, all of which
are signs of the same thing—the divine essence—which we conceive in a variety of
ways.
For these reasons, such names are predicated analogically of God. Analogical
predication is contrasted with equivocal predication (in which the same word is used
with entirely different meanings) and with univocal predication (in which the same word
is used with exactly the same meaning). In analogical predication, the same word is used
with different but related meanings. For example, the expression my niece is predicated
analogically of my niece and a photograph of my niece. On Aquinas’s theory, God is the
original of which all creatures are images. Our knowledge of God is somewhat like our
knowledge of someone we know only from a photograph.

Sir Philip Sidney

“An Apology for Poetry”

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 Abstract

This chapter will explore Sidney’s views on the origin and social utility of poetry.
First, we shall discuss how Sidney praises poetry (1) for being the cradle of civilization,
(2) for being a channel of divine power, (3) for teaching and delighting, and (4) for
combining and surpassing the virtues of history and philosophy. Then we shall show
how Sidney refutes the main arguments made against poetry, i.e., (1) that it is
unprofitable, (2) that it is full of lies, (3) that it entices us to sin, and (4) that the poets
were banished by Plato from his Republic.

1. Sidney the man, the age, the work (“Apology”).

A. Sidney was not only a poet and critic but also a man of the world—a
Renaissance Man.
1. He lived during the Elizabethan Age (otherwise known as the English
Renaissance).
2. He was both soldier and courtier to the Queen.
B. Sidney saw it as his task to revive the plummeting reputation of poetry.
1. Like all critics before him, he knew he would have to answer not only
contemporary attacks on poetry but also the attacks by Plato himself.
2. His “Apology” is more synthetic than original: it pulls together ideas
from Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, and a host of other theorists.
3. Sidney is very much a Christian critic; his defense of the moral nature
of poetry answers both Platonic philosophy and Biblical theology.
11. Sidney’s arguments in defense of poetry.
A. Poetry is the great light-giver, the cradle of civilization.
1. The first law-givers, philosophers, and historians were all poets.
2. Plato was himself the greatest of poets; his fanciful dialogues and
beautiful allegories are built into his philosophy.
3. Poetry makes the mind receptive to learning.
4. Those who attack poetry are like ungrateful children who rise up
against their parents.
B. The power and craft of poetry are of the same essence as the divine.
1. In antiquity, poets were seers, and verse was the language of
prophecy.
2. It is through poetry that David, in the Psalms, expressed the majesty
and beauty of God. St. Paul, likewise, switches to poetry when
extolling God’s glory.
3. The poet is a maker; whereas all other arts (geometry, music, science)
take their cues and their foundations from nature, the poet alone
transcends and even improves upon the natural world.
4. The mimesis of the poet is a higher kind of imitation; it transforms
beasts into Cyclopes, men into heroes, bronze into gold.

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 5. Indeed, what the poet finally imitates is not nature herself but a more
perfect idea in the mind to which the poet gives shape.
C. The end of poetry is to teach and to delight; thus it is useful to society.
1. The imitations of poetry can delight and teach, for they do not merely
copy virtues and vices as they are, but as they should be.
2. Poetry inspires the soul both to scorn vices and admire virtues;
philosophy, which is too serious to delight, leaves the soul cold.
D. Poetry unites the universal truths (abstractions) of philosophy with the
concrete examples of history.
1. Such “concrete universals” (Aesop’s fables, Jesus’ parables) have a
way of impressing themselves in our memory.
2. The historian is bound to recount a particular event just as it was,
even if that event debases virtue and encourages vice; the poet is free
to alter the particular so as to embody more fully the universal.
3. Sidney’s favorite example is the parable of the ewe lamb that Nathan
used to convict David (2 Samuel 12)
111. Sidney refutes the four arguments thrown in against poetry.
A. Poetry is unprofitable; there are more gainful ways to spend our time.
1. Poetry is, in fact, the most fruitful of all knowledge; it has the power,
through teaching and pleasing, to move the hearers to virtuous
action.
2. As just stated, poetry does this more effectively than philosophy or
history.
B. Poetry is the mother of lies.
1. Poets never lie; in the first place, they never claim their poems to be
the truth.
2. Poetry, like the stage, offers an illusion: an account of what should or
should not be, not what is; only fools confuse illusions with reality.
C. Poetry entices and leads to sinful behavior.
1. It is the abuse of poetry, not poetry itself, that leads to sin.
2. If we were to accept this argument, then we must also criticize the
Bible, which has often been perverted.
D. Plato banished the poets from his Republic.
1. For Sidney, this is the toughest, for he admires Plato.
2. Nevertheless, it was the poets who taught and guided the
philosophers.
3. Sidney discovers an “anxiety of influence” between Plato and Homer;
whereas many cities strove for the honor of being Homer’s birthplace,
Athens killed Socrates.
4. Plato’s central critique of the poets was their scandalous stories about
the gods, but the poets did not invent them, but only imitated them.
5. Indeed, as St. Paul affirms in Act 17, it was the pagan poets, and not
the philosophers, who came closest to foreseeing the truths of Christ.
Paul quotes pagan poets three times in his writings.

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 6. Plato himself, in Ion, admits that poets speak via divine inspiration.
1V. Sidney concludes by putting a curse on all poet-haters: may they never win love for
want of a sonnet; may they be forgotten for want of an epitaph.

John Dryden
“An Essay of Dramatic Poesy”

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 Abstract

This chapter will discuss one of the two greatest inaugurators of English
neoclassicism: John Dryden. The next chapter will take up Alexander Pope. After a brief
survey of the historical background of the period and a glance at some similar trends in
France, we shall analyze closely Dryden’s “Essay” by trying to define his central notion of
the three unities. Then we shall use this notion as a way both to explore the relationship
between Dryden’s age and that of the Ancients and to contrast the distinctions between
French and English neoclassicism.

1. A brief historical background.

A. At the time Sidney was writing his “Apology,” England was entering her
Golden Age.
1. This was the age of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Donne, John Milton.
2. Meanwhile, a similar phenomenon was happening in the New World:
Emerson, Walt Whitman, Thoreau, Hawthorne.
B. Art experiences a disruption during the Puritan rule under Cromwell.
C. Art is revived during the Restoration.
1. During the Restoration, poets and poetry turn toward high society
and aristocracy.
2. There is a concerted effort to return to Greek and Roman models
and to produce art fashioned after Aristotle and Horace.
3. From 1660 onwards till the end of the 18th century, England
experiences her Neoclassical Period (also known as the Age of
Reason or the Age of Enlightenment).
4. This was England’s version of the Augustan Age.
5. This age reached its height during the reign of Queen Anne (1702-
14).
D. Meanwhile, France was also in the middle of her Neoclassical Age.
1. Racine, Corneille, Boileau, sought to model themselves precisely
on classical precepts.
2. Indeed, British culture at this time had an air of French in it.

11. The “Essay of Dramatic Poesy” is a succinct overview of the main critical issues
debated at the beginning of the Neoclassical Age.
A. Like Plato’s Republic, the “Essay” is written in dialogue form.
1. It takes place on the eve of a great battle (1665) and concerns
four men who, as they cross the Thames in a boat, discuss the
issues of the day.
2. Although the four disagree on particular issues, they all agree
that art is a form of mimesis, that it should teach and delight,
and that it should follow the laws of decorum.

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B. The first issue of debate concerns their relationship with the Ancients.
1. Should they imitate them closely? Can the Ancients be
surpassed?
2. One man argues that we are nothing but copiers of the Ancients:
our merits are their merits, but our faults are ours alone.
3. Another says that we have progressed and improved art,
because we have both nature and the Ancients to imitate, while
they had only nature.
4. All, however, agree that the Ancients are to be honored and
heeded.
C. The dialogue gets more specific as they discuss the three unities.
1. The unities of time, place, and action are derived from Aristotle
and Horace but codified by Corneille, Racine, and Boileau.
2. According to the unity of time, stage time must mimic real time
as closely as possible; in any case, no more than 12 hours
(Oedipus Rex).
3. According to the unity of place, action onstage should be
confined to a single space; it should not leap from place to
place.
4. According to the unity of action, there should be one main plot
that is not complicated or diluted by the interweaving of
subplots.
D. The four men compare and contrast the French and English theatre.
1. Whereas most French plays follow the unities, most English
plays do not.
2. French plays are more decorous; British more lively.
3. The Dryden persona concludes that English plays are better
because, though it respects the Ancients, it is not afraid to
depart from them when necessary.
4. If there is a “moral” to the “Essay,” it is this: when the ancient
rules on decorum are in sync with nature they should be
followed, but if they lead us to abuse nature, they must be
changed or abandoned altogether.
5. Neoclassical art is not a pale copy of the Ancients, but a
traditional approach that requires laws and models albeit not
enslaved by them.
6. Decorum is not a straightjacket, but a guide to keep us in the
right track.

Alexander Pope
An Essay on Criticism

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 An Essay on Criticism is the only essay I know that is not an essay but a verse epistle
in the tradition of Horace. It is decorum set to meter. Pope, also known as “The British
Horace,” is stricter than Dryden because the former lived in the very heart of the
neoclassical age. In this chapter, we shall discuss Alexander Pope’s view of the proper
role and nature of the critic and on his insistence that nature is the final source, end, and
test of art. We shall also explore how the very verse from that Pope chose mimics the
spirit of neoclassical decorum.

 In his “Essay,” Pope fully embodies the spirit of neoclassicism.

A. Like Horace’s Ars Poetica, Pope’s “Essay” is a verse epistle.
1. It is written in heroic couplets. A heroic couplet has two lines of
poetry with each line having ten syllables each (five stresses) with an
end stop at the end of the couplet.
2. Though these heroic couplets are linked together in a series, there is
always a strong stop at the end of each couplet, marked by a period, a
semicolon, a colon, or a comma.
3. Pope’s heroic couplets read like mathematical proofs that move
logically, step by step, from proposition to proposition to conclusion.
4. In the movement of his heroic couplets, we feel the balance, the
order, the rationality that the neoclassicists prized so highly.
5. Pope cannot be read quickly: he demands intense concentration and a
sense of proportion; his poetry is decorum set to meter.
B. Like Horace, Pope spends time defining the proper role of the critic.
1. True taste in a critic is as rare as true genius in a poet.
2. The function of the critic is almost as vital as that of the poet;
indeed, a bad critic is more dangerous to art than a bad poet.
3. Many critics write not out of love of poetry or out of a fine sense
of judgment, but out of envy and spite; they destroy what they
cannot do.
4. The critic should serve as the handmaid of poetry; but too often
critics turn against poets and poetry.
5. Too many critics are like half-breed mules that lack both the
genius of the poet and the taste of the true critic; rather than
accept the limits of their gifts, they elevate themselves at the
expense of others.
6. The true critic (like the true poet) must learn humility; this is best
learned by exposing oneself to the sacred fire of ancient literature.
7. The true critic must judge art not on the basis of his own
prejudices but via a close, fair, genial study of a poet’s age, his
chosen genre and mode of imitation, and the desired end and aim
of his poem.
C. The best poets and critics look to nature as the source, end, and test of
art.

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 1. We follow the Ancients, because in following them, we follow
nature; Virgil himself discovered that to imitate Homer was to
imitate nature.
2. The Ancients did not so much invent the rules of decorum as find
them, ready made, in nature.
3. Nature is the best touchstone of art, for it is unchanging and
eternal.
4. We must never loose ourselves in poetic frenzy; we must never
forget a poet’s most prized guide-word: restraint.

Edmund Burke

A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

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 Abstract

This chapter opens Part Four of our course: The German Epistemological Roots of
Romanticism. In this section, we shall take up the German critics Kant, Schiller, and
Hegel. But before we do so, a housecleaning is in order with the English critic Edmund
Burke and his Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and
Beautiful. (Note: You may find this section on the German critics a bit more
“challenging” than the sections. It cannot be helped. Kant and Hegel, for example, are
two of the most difficult, albeit influential, thinkers after Plato and Aristotle.)
Our analysis of Burke’s Inquiry in this chapter is brought in by two vital
distinctions: between the ontological orientation of Burke’s predecessors and the
epistemological orientation of Burke’s successors. We shall also define some key terms of
Burke such as senses, imagination, judgment, and taste; and demonstrate how Burke
defined and differentiated between the sublime and the beautiful.

With Edmund Burke, we shift our perspective from a mimetic-ontological

approach to literature to an affective-epistemological approach.
Ontology is the study of being; it is concerned with determining the quintessence
of things.
1. Mimetic theorists are ontological critics.
2. Aristotle’s goal, for example, to define precisely the proper nature and
essence of a well-constructed plot is an ontological approach.
3. Indeed the Platonic-Aristotelian argument over mimesis is really a debate
over the ontological status of a work of art. What is a poem: does it
possess its own essence (of Reality) or is it just a reflection?
4. Neoclassical poetics is partially affective in approach, but it nevertheless
works within a philosophical framework that is essentially ontological.
5. Even the rules of decorum and restraint laid down by Horace, and later by
Dryden and Pope, are less concerned with reader response than with
what a poem should be.
6. Even Longinus, who defines the sublime partly in terms of its effect on the
audience, is really concerned with the actual physical, metaphorical, and
linguistic qualities of a sublime poem.
Burke’s approach to the sublime is quite different from all of the above. Burke’s
approach is epistemological.
If Ontology is the study of being, Epistemology is the study of knowing; it is
concerned not with the “thingness” of things, but with how we perceive that thingness.
1. Affective critics are epistemological critics.
2. They seek to explore not just whether a poem teaches and/or
pleases but the mental processes by which that lesson/pleasure
is perceived.
3. These processes are called modes of thought.
4. Beauty does not so much define a quality that is inherent in a
poem as it describes a kind of mental/emotional/intellectual

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 response that occurs within the mind of the person experiencing
it.
C. This leads us to a vital distinction that lies at the core of epistemology and of any
theory that takes such an approach: subject/object.
1. In philosophy, subject is a conscious self that perceives.
2. An object, on the other hand, is an unconscious thing that does not
perceive but is, rather, perceived (by a subject).
2. Hence, when epistemologists define their responses to art as purely
subjective, they mean that the experience has nothing to do with the poetic
object per se, but exists wholly in the mind of the subject.
3. The philosophical use of the word “subjective” should not be confused with its
modern use to signify a personal, relativistic belief.
4. Beginning with Burke and Kant, it becomes standard to refer to those who would
define group standards of aesthetic taste as aestheticians.
11. In Burke’s introduction to Inquiry, he lays the groundwork for understanding how we
perceive both art and the larger world around us.
A. For Burke, the groundwork of all perception and thought is the senses. This makes
Burke an empiricist in the tradition of John Locke.
1. Because all normal persons have equal access to sense perceptions and
because
the senses are the “great originals of all our ideas,” it is possible to arrive at a
universal principle of judgment.
2. Indeed, says Burke, if we are unable to establish fixed principles of taste and
and general laws for that mental faculty we call imagination, then his Inquiry
is absurd and all aesthetic judgment is mere whimsy.
3. Let us trace how Burke moves from universal sense experience to universal
principles of taste (a movement typical of epistemological theory that betrays
a desire for order and system that is as strong as that of Aristotle, Horace,
Longinus, or Pope).
B. All people perceive external objects in the same way.
1. We all recognize sugar as sweet and tobacco as bitter, and we all find
more natural pleasure in the sweet than in the bitter.
2. Habit can alter these perceptions, but it cannot abolish our knowledge
that tobacco is not sweet and sugar not bitter.
3. If we do not agree, it means that we are mad or our senses are impaired.
C. The faculties of imagination and judgment are shaped by the senses.
1. Imagination (or sensibility) takes the raw material offered it by sense
perceptions and recombines that material in a new way.
2. Although the imagination can be inventive, it cannot produce anything
new; it can only vary what it is given by the senses.
3. Therefore, whatever affects our imagination powerfully, whatever brings
it pleasure or pain, must have a similar effect on all human beings.

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 4. Whereas imagination is linked primarily to immediate perceptions and
has about it an almost childlike quality, judgment is a higher critical
faculty that is closely linked to reason.
5. Judgment is gained through an increase in understanding brought about
by a long, close study of the object of sensation.
6. Still, as it relies on the sense, judgment, too, is common to all men.
D. The faculty of taste is the mental product of imagination plus judgment.
1. As such, taste is common to all men; though there are exceptions.
2. Some whose natures are blunt and cold are deficient in sensibility.
3. If this were the case, or if they have seared their imaginative faculties
through hedonism or avarice, they will suffer from a lack of taste.
4. On the other hand, if they are deficient in judgment (because they have
not thought and studied hard), they will suffer from bad taste.
5. Taste differs from person to person, not in kind but in degree.
6. The principles of taste operate the same in all men, but some, due to a
keener sensibility or greater knowledge and discernment, have a fuller,
more refined taste.
7. This view is both democratic and elitist.
E. Some additional distinctions between imagination and judgment.
1. Imagination tends toward synthesis; judgment, analysis.
2. Imagination discovers, even creates unity in the midst of differences;
judgment discerns subtle distinctions in what appears to be uniform.
3. Imagination affords more direct, unmediated pleasure than judgment.
4. Though Burke asserts that imagination is essential to taste, he finally gives
preference to judgment as the true foundation of good taste.
5. The Romantics will shift this preference, privileging imagination over
judgment, synthesis over analysis, unmediated over mediated.
111. Burke defines the sublime and the beautiful in epistemological terms.
A. Beauty and sublimity are not qualities of the object, but faculties of perception
that can be categorized.
B. He defines the sublime as that which inspires in us feelings of terror.
1. Dark, gloomy, massive objects invoke in us an overwhelming feeling of
power and infinity, feelings that fill us with terror.
2. Terror produces in us a mental-emotional response called astonishment.
3. Burke defines astonishment as that moment in which all motion is
suspended and our minds are filled totally by an object or thought.
4. The sublime is experienced not only through eye and ear, but also
through the senses of taste, smell, and touch.
5. Indeed, though sublimity is a mental experience, it manifests itself in our
body by causing our hands to clench and our muscles to constrict.
6. Though sublimity is linked to terror, no actual danger must be present.
C. The beautiful inspires in us sentiments of tenderness and affection.
1. Whereas the sublime is more masculine and closely allied to pain, the
beautiful is more feminine and linked to pleasure and love.

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 2. Small, smooth, bright things cause a relaxing of the body.
3. Beauty, like sublimity, is perceived by all the senses.

Immanuel Kant
Introduction

Any person is a child until he has understood Kant.

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 —Schopenhauer

To be a philosopher, one must first have been a Kantian.

—Hegel

If you don’t understand Kant, you can’t.

—Benito F. Reyes, Founder and late President
World University in Ojai, California
His main prerequisite before admitting me
into the Ph.D. program in Philosophy in 1989.

Abstract
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) originated Phenomenology, a movement that turned the
eye of philosophy away from the world we seek to know—towards the mind that seeks to
know it. The external world, he says, remains ever isolated from us; the only information we
actually have derives from the phenomena, or “images,” that our mind constructs and
interprets from sense data. Not since Aristotle has a philosopher revolutionized the Western
philosophical approach to the world. This chapter will try to explore why this is so.

Philosophy up to Kant’s time took it for granted that when we look at the world, we are
engaging an objective reality outside of ourselves. The question is: Is this engaging with the
world empirical or rational?
In an empirical approach, the mind takes in information about the world and learns
about it that way.
In a rational approach, the mind begins with a picture of the world that is already
implanted within itself.
David Hume, the great apostle of empiricism, disputed the suggestion that we have any
innate knowledge of the objective world. The human mind was simply blank, a tabula rasa,
at the moment of birth, and all human knowledge was gained through experience. Basic
ideas such as cause and effect could not be deduced by pure reason. More, cause and effect
could not even be proven theoretically, for they were merely the sum of our past
experiences.
Hume’s Inquiry Concerning the Human Understanding, where these ideas were written,
reached the desk of Kant, already past middle age, and it roused him from his “dogmatic
slumber.” Kant realized that no progress in philosophy could be made until Hume’s
empiricism had been refuted.
The result is the Critique of Pure Reason (1781).
In this work, Kant shifted his focus from the external world to the mind that comes to
know it. This is known as the famous “turn to the subject.” These trends led to the
development of a philosophical school called “phenomenology.”
Kant is the last person whom we should read on Kant. Marcus Herz himself
returned the Critique of Pure Reason manuscript half read fearing insanity if he went on.

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Kant disdained giving illustrative examples because he said they would make his book too
long. So he abbreviated it to 800 pages. Only philosophers were expected to read it, and
philosophers needed no illustrative examples.
The word “phenomenology” comes from the Greek phainomenon, or “image.”
It is a style of thought that shifts the focus from propositions about the external world
to the “image” of it in the mind of the subject. External objects are unknowable because
any knowledge of them is mediated to the mind through the senses. The mind receives only
raw sensory data, which it then interprets by forming it into an image and correlating it with
other images and concepts.
The mind is structured in such a way that certain categories of knowing, or ways of
handling the data, are built into it. These categories of knowing, for example space and
time, are not innate knowledge; rather, they are ways of organizing and handling data so as
to create knowledge.
Take this table, for example. It has shape, texture, color, and (if I tap it) sound. The mind
begins by taking in all this data and forming them into a coherent mental image. To do this,
the mind uses inbuilt mechanisms (such as space and time) for constructing images. We
process the image as extending in space and enduring over time, even though in reality no
such thing may be true.
Thus we then have a concept of the table where the image is correlated with memory,
language, and past experience. This complete image is all we will ever know, and so it is
useless to ask whether or not it accurately reflects the world as such.
This approach is neither empirical nor rational. Phenomenology breaks through the
conflict between empiricism and rationalism. The assumption that an objective, external
reality exists is a better hypothesis for understanding the continuity and intersubjectivity of
the world. The basic sameness of the structure of all human minds means that, even though
we do not perceive the Ding an sich directly, we all process the “images” of them in the
same way, so we can still communicate with one another about them. As a result, our task is
not to understand the world as such, but to understand our experience of the world.
Kant says that there are but two avenues for knowing: reason and the avenue of the
senses.
Reason is interpretive; it is not capable of directly revealing reality without distortion.
Reason also generates certain ideas that are inescapable, albeit rationally irresolvable. On
account of this, humans can have no rational insight into metaphysical realities.
How then to live our lives under the circumstances Kant presents?
As we said, Kant believes that there are two avenues to know reality: reason and the
senses.
Kant says our senses are tied to physical things and can reveal the physical, but that we
have no extrasensory capacity. Our Western tradition says that we see this world solely
through our senses and that we have no sense that allows us to see beyond this world.
Our eyes can only see an extremely narrow shred of what is out there. What we call light
has waves and frequencies.. The electromagnetic spectrum chart below illustrates this. We
cannot see infrared waves and beyond; neither can we see ultraviolet waves and beyond. All
our naked eyes can see are objects confined within the narrow band—called visible light—of

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the spectrum. Without the proper instruments the assist the naked human eye, there is no
way we can ordinarily detect what is out there beyond the visible band.
Sir Frederick William Herschel, the German-born British astronomer who discovered the
planet Uranus and guessed the shape of our galaxy, tried this experiment: With sunlight
beaming through a prism, he held a thermometer at the red end of the spectrum. The
mercury went up. Then he held the same thermometer beyond the red end of the
spectrum. The mercury rose! Thus was discovered the existence of infra (below) red light.
Infrared rays range from 700 nanometers to a millimeter. Although our human eyes
cannot see them, we can feel them in the form of heat. Microwave rays range from 1 mm to
10 cm; while radio, radar, and TV range from 3 cm to millions of meters. Antennas and
power lines peak at 50 cps/sec but range up to 6 million kilometers in wavelength.
Johann Wilhelm Ritter, the German chemist and physicist noticed that silver nitrate
breaks down to metallic silver and darkens when exposed to blue or violet light. And then he
noticed that it broke down more rapidly when placed beyond the violet end of the
spectrum. Thus was discovered the existence of ultra (beyond) violet light.
We do not see ultraviolet rays, but they cause sunburn, as well as kill germs.
Some animals like the eagle and the owl have eyes more sensitive than human eyes. The
eagle has eyes that can make out and recognize objects in detail several miles away; the owl
has eyes that can see things in complete darkness. Some snakes, like pit vipers, can see
infrared radiations,57 that is why they can locate their victims even in the dark.

Not only do our eyes not give us a complete picture of the outside world; our other
sense organs are also unreliable. Sound frequency, for example, is a case in point.

Sound Reception Chart

Frequency in Cycles Per Second (CPS)

57
Living beings give off infrared radiations because of the warmth of the living body.

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 Sound is measured in terms of cycles per second (CPS). If the human eye can see only an
infinitesimal portion of the universe, the human ear likewise hears only a tiny portion of the
sounds in the universe. In other words, the human ear cannot hear the majority of all the
sounds going on out there. The outer ear simply picks up sound waves and leads them into
the auditory canal in the direction of the eardrum. Sound vibrations cause the eardrum to
vibrate. This vibration sets up a reaction/s in the malleus, incus, and stapes ossicles (bones)
of the cochlea, which converts the sound waves into nerve impulses. The latter is the
language of the brain.
Mechanical vibrations set up longitudinal waves in matter. When the object vibrates, it
moves the air which pushes the air particles and squeezes them. When vibrating objects
move back, air particles expand. The compression and expansion cause what is known as
the longitudinal wave.
Humans and animals live in different sensory worlds. If you look at the chart above, you
will see that a human being can perceive sounds ranging between 20 and 20,000 cps. The
peaks in this band are what are commonly called “sound waves.” Sound waves of more than
20,000 cps are called ultrasonic; while those less than 20 cps are called infrasonic waves or
subsonic vibrations. A dog’s hearing power ranges between 15 and 50,000 cps. Dogs can
also smell at concentrations 1,000 times weaker than humans; that is why they are used at
airports and malls to sniff and detect anything from prohibited drugs to bombs. Your
Halloween Monster costume may scare everybody at a party, but you cannot fool Spot who
will approach you and identify you immediately by the wagging of its tail. Cats have even
keener ears; they can hear sounds 3x better than humans. Cats, however, are color blind. If
your car stops at the red signal of a traffic light, Sultana will wonder what in the world the
matter is.
Bats, whose hearing range reach up to 130,000 cps, “squeak” in order to deliberately
emit sound waves, and then listen to the reflection. They judge directions and locations of
trees and insects with excellent accuracy by the reflection and the time lag between the
squeak and the echo. They see “with their ears.” Bats can fly even if they are blind, but not
if they are deaf.
They say porpoises are intelligent aquatic creatures. It has been observed that their
hearing power ranges between 150 cps and 150,000 cps!
Kant offers the notion of unanswerable questions that our senses and our scientific
knowledge cannot comprehend: Do we have a soul? Do we survive after this life ends? Is
there a power beyond us—God perhaps? What happens to us when we die?
Given the limits of my reason and my senses, what can I know and what ought I to do?
What can I hope for?

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 Is metaphysics possible?

Kant argues that the traditional answers to metaphysical questions like "How can we tell
whether every effect has a cause?" are all wrong. Kant provides a way of classifying types of
statements, with statements like "every effect has a cause" falling into one of his
classifications. Kant asks whether there are any examples of statements that clearly are of
this type. If there were not, maybe the whole program of creating metaphysics is hopeless.
But if there were, we know that some statements with the properties we want for the truths
of metaphysics actually do exist. Will geometry provide examples of such statements? In
this lecture, we will see how geometry provides examples of the existence of the kind of
statements-synthetic a priori statements-required by Kant's view of metaphysics. We will
see that Kant, unlike Newton, locates space in the mind, not in the outside world. How does
Kant establish his view of the nature of space? We will see how Euclidean geometry is
presupposed by him and ask whether Euclidean geometry is therefore the only one
possible. We will raise, but not answer yet, the question of what Kant's views portend for
the philosophy of mathematics, space, time, and human thought. Finally, we will see how
other mathematicians and philosophers of the day also assumed the necessity of Euclidean
space, though in different ways and for different reasons than Kant did

A Philosophic Background

 When people think of philosophy, they often think about the branch called
metaphysics.
 Metaphysics deals with those questions about reality that transcend any
particular science.
 Some examples of metaphysical questions:
1. What exists, if anything, beyond the world of sense perceptions?
2. Are there laws of nature?
3. If there are laws of nature, is it necessary that they be exactly as they are?
4. Must every effect have a cause?
5. What do space and time mean?
6. Do space and time exist independently of our ideas of them?
 For the purpose of the present lecture, the most important property of
metaphysical questions is that they are not investigated by the methods of
empirical science.
 Near the end of the 18th century, the perceived triumph of Isaac Newton's
physics still left a number of these questions unanswered.
 Newton and his followers held that space was real. The reality of space was vital
to Newton's concept of force.
 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, however, denied that space was real, saying instead
that all that existed was the relations between the physical bodies.

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 The skeptical philosopher David Hume went so far as to deny that there was
causality in the world.

Kant’s Prolegomena

 Immanuel Kant came down firmly on the side of causality, and he therefore
believed that all events follow determined laws.
 Kant's argument for this makes it clear that this is not a question of science, but
a question of metaphysics.
 The urgency of the questions about causality motivated Kant to ask whether
metaphysics was possible.
 To answer this question, Kant strove to fmd out what kind of statements made
up metaphysics, and whether we had any reason to believe that there were any
statements of this kind.
 Kant wrote his Prolegomena [preparatory exercises or observations] to Any
Future Metaphysics to investigate whether propositions that transcend any
particular experience could exist, and if so, how one could come to know their
truth.
 We cannot know anything about things in themselves, but the appearances that
constitute our experience.
 In his writings, Kant focuses on the kind of proposition he calls a judgment, and
he classifies judgments according to how one comes to decide their truth.
 A judgment is a statement of the form "A is a B," or as he puts it, subsuming a
particular under a universal. Examples include "The grass is green" or "A
bachelor is unmarried."
 We can come to know the truth of some judgments just by analyzing the terms
in them.
Analytic Judgment and Synthetic Judgment

 Analytic judgment is one whose predicate is a mere analysis of the subject; in

other words, it is that which truth is determined just by analyzing the terms in it.
 Synthetic judgment is one whose predicate contains information not contained
in the subject; or, it is that which truth cannot be determined just by analyzing
the terms so that to decide its truth we must appeal to something ab extra.
 To resolve the truth of a proposition whose judgment is synthetic we may appeal
either to sense experience or to something outside sense experience.

A Posteriori Judgment and A Priori Judgment

 A posteriori judgments are those we gain from sense experience. They are also
known as empirically based judgments.
 A priori judgments are those “truths” we know independently of sense
experience.

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 Because there are two sets of two categories, there are now four possible types
of judgments:
1. Analytic a priori.
2. Analytic a posteriori.
3. Synthetic a posteriori.
4. Synthetic a priori.

 An analytic a priori judgment exists. It is any judgment that is true by definition.

For example, "A bachelor is not married."
 An analytic a posteriori judgment does not exist, because it involves a
contradiction in terms: “A bachelor is married.”
 A synthetic a posteriori judgment exists. It is any nontrivial judgment about the
world of sense experience, albeit requiring an appeal to sense experience. For
example, "The grass is green" or “The earth revolves around the sun.”
 Does a synthetic a priori judgment exist?
 Let us turn the question around: "In which of these categories are the judgments
of metaphysics?"
 Kant says that they cannot be a posteriori.
 For example, we cannot determine whether nature always follows laws by
appealing to experience and observation alone.
 The judgments of metaphysics are also not analytic, because we do not define
nature as following laws, nor do we define facts as effects that must have causes.
Whether or not they do is precisely the kind of question metaphysics is supposed
to answer.
 Ergo, the judgments of metaphysics must be synthetic a priori.
 Kant's Prolegomena raises these questions:
1. Do synthetic a priori judgments exist?
2. If so, are there any synthetic a priori judgments whose truth is
unanimously recognized?
3. If so, how do we come to know that they are true, or as Kant puts it, "How
is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?"
4. If there are such judgments, and we can determine their truth by reason,
metaphysics is possible.

Synthetic A Priori Judgments and Geometry

 Kant demonstrates that metaphysics is possible by appealing to mathematics.

 Mathematics is possible, thanks to the pure intuitions of our faculty of sensibility.
 Mathematics and metaphysics both lay claim to synthetic a priori propositions.
 Since mathematics is a well-established field, its synthetic truths are possible a
priori.

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 It is hoped that this examination will shed light on the possibility of metaphysics
as a science.
 Metaphysics must consist of synthetic a priori judgments, and geometry, space,
and time is its province.
 Space and time are not things in themselves that we meet with in experience;
rather, they are pure intuitions that help us structure our sensations.
 Geometry is not about the empirical world, so its judgments must be a priori,
and not a posteriori.
 Geometry comes from our pure intuition of space
 Mathematics comes from our pure intuition of time—our concept of numbers is
built from the successive moments in our concept of time.

 Are they therefore analytic or synthetic?
 To say they are analytic is attractive, since after all, one begins by stating
definitions, and we often analyze the definitions in the course of a proof.
 Kant says otherwise: the judgments of geometry are synthetic, and he shows us
why by carefully discussing how we come to know the truth of a particular
proposition in geometry: that the sum of the angles of a triangle is two right
angles.
 How do we prove synthetically that the sum of the angles of a triangle is two
right angles?
 First of all, if this were an analytic judgment, we could have proved it by
analyzing the term "sum of the angles of a triangle."
 But you can analyze this term until you turn blue in the face, and what you get is
always three angles (because it is a triangle), three sides (again, because it is a
triangle), and "sum," and we will have no way of breaking that down further into
what that sum is.
 Kant’s synthetic approach to the problem consists in three steps:

 First, create a triangle.

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 A

1 3
B C

 Second, lengthen the base of the triangle.

1 3

B C D

 Third, divide the newly-formed exterior angle and create a line through the
corner parallel to the opposite side.

A E

4
1 3 5

B C D

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  Now, once these structures are created, we can deal with the equality of various
angles, and show that the sum of the angles of the triangle adds up to the sum of
the angles along the straight line at the corner, which form two right angles.
 So, what is the essential feature of this proof?
 The structure, a feature which we make not on paper but in space.
 Space cannot be sensed because it is not empirical.
 Space exists in our minds.
 We organize our perceptions in space; we say, "To the left" or “To the right,” etc.
 We can imagine a space without objects but we cannot imagine objects without
space.
 Space, for Kant, is the form of all possible perceptions.
 Space is therefore a pure, unique, a priori intuition of the intellect.

There cannot be any certainty in anything in the world. Even the information
gathered by science depends on our sense organs and instruments. These are
extremely limited and unreliable. The less we know, the more we are certain.

Immanuel Kant
Critique of Judgment

If Burke brought in epistemology into the province of aesthetics, Kant’s Critique

of Judgment renovated that preamble into a full-scale “science.” In this chapter, we shall
explore Kant’s central assertion that aesthetic judgments constitute a subjective
universality. In other words, though such judgments are purely subjective and are
neither dependent on nor concerned with the usefulness or even existence of the
aesthetic object, they are nevertheless felt equally by all people at all times

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 Kant’s thoughts on (1) the beautiful and the good, (2) imagination and
understanding, (3) imagination and reason, (4) the beautiful and the sublime, (5) pure
beauty and dependent beauty, (6) the quantitative sublime and the qualitative sublime
come from his analysis of beauty, imagination, and sublimity in Critique of Judgment.

On the Beautiful
The statement, “this is a beautiful table,” is in part an act of cognition. This act of
cognition, however, only covers the recognition of the object in front of me as a table.
“This is a table,” is a “determinative” judgment: it states a fact.
“This is a beautiful table,” however, is a “reflective” judgment: it states more
than a fact; it expresses a feeling.
In the Critique of Judgment, Kant turns to the structure of the mind and the
mechanisms by which it experiences beauty.
In judging something beautiful, we usually do not claim it as a purely private
determination; it behooves us, as social individuals, to communicate it to others. This
communicability of judgments of beauty is possible not because the object is beautiful
per se but because the minds of all human beings have the same structure. If I call
something beautiful, then others would most likely find it beautiful as well. This makes
the experience of the beauty of any person, place, or thing both universal and necessary.

On the Sublime
Like the beautiful, the sublime is appreciated for its own sake, producing a sense
of pleasure and manifesting itself in the harmonization of the mind’s faculties.
Unlike the beautiful, however, sublimity is found in the sense that the object
transcends even its own form. The sublime, unlike the beautiful, evokes more than just
feelings of pleasure and joy. It can confront us with fear and awe. The sublime is not
necessarily adapted to our sensibilities. The sublime, said Kant, can “outrage” us.

Bold, overhanging, and, as it were, threatening rocks; clouds piled up in

the sky, moving with lightning flashes and thunder peals; volcanoes in all their
violence of destruction; hurricanes with their track of devastation; the boundless
ocean in a state of tumult; the lofty waterfall of a mighty river, and such like—
these exhibit our faculty of resistance as insignificantly small in comparison with
their might. But the sight of them is the more attractive, the more fearful it is,
provided only that we are in security; and we willingly call these objects sublime,
because they raise the energies of the soul above their accustomed height and
discover in us a faculty of resistance of a quite different kind, which gives us
courage to measure ourselves against the apparent almightiness of nature. 58

58
Critical Theory Since Plato, p. 390.

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I. The judgment of the beautiful, says Kant, is purely subjective.
A. As in Burke, beauty has nothing to do with the beautiful object per se, but with
the way it is perceived by a subject. In this regard, we might think of Kant as the
epistemological version of Aristotle in his catalogue of the mental faculties.
1. Judgments of beauty are not cognitive but aesthetic.
2. Cognitive judgments presuppose fixed ideas and work to establish fixed
concepts, but aesthetic judgments work through our feelings and neither rest
on any concepts nor seek to generate any.
3. Aesthetic judgments are likewise free of all ends or purposes.
4. Should it seek an end, either in its own subjective perceptions or in the object
perceived, that end is actually an end in itself.
5. Should it seek a purpose, it must be a “purposeless purpose.”
6. Both subject and object are perceived as being complete and perfect within
themselves: no ulterior end or purpose is needed.
B. Kant clarifies by comparing the beautiful to the pleasurable and the good.
1. Whereas the pleasurable is an interested emotion that seeks some kind
of gratification from the object (eros), the beautiful is purely
disinterested: it seeks nothing from the object and makes no demands on
it (agape).
2. Indeed, it is unconcerned as to whether the object even exists.
3. Whereas the good seeks beauty as a means to some higher end, the
beautiful accepts it, unconditionally, as a finished thing in itself.
C. Though the judgment of beauty is purely subjective, it is, paradoxically,
universally felt: it constitutes a subjective universality. This is a key point in
understanding Kant.
1. What allows the aesthetic to be felt universally is the very fact that it is
purely subjective, untainted by any ulterior interests or inclinations.
2. Because it does not work in accordance with any concepts, because it is a
free and disinterested delight, and because it is even indifferent to the
existence of the object, it is likewise free of all internal prejudice and
external restraint.
3. Both modern and postmodern theorists tend to reject this concept.
4. Modernists deny the possibility of a purely free, disinterested response.
5. Postmodernists deny that any experience of art is universal.
6. Nevertheless, the concept is central to Kant: for the aesthetic realm to be
free, it must be subjective; yet, if that realm is to offer itself as a field for
critical analysis and systematic study, it must be universal.
D. Typically, taste is not universally valid because it is linked to pleasure: the charm
of the object gratifies the taste and monopolizes its focus.
1. There is, however, a purer kind of taste that focuses on form.
2. A poem’s form may be studied as an end in itself, as a purposeless
purpose; as such, it lies in the realm of the aesthetic judgment.

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 3. This formalist element in Kant may be traced back to Aristotle’s
preference for plot over character and forward to new critical (objective)
theories of poetry as a self-enclosed aesthetic artifact.
E. Though many times Kant speaks as if beauty resides in the object, he reminds us
time and again that it resides solely in the subject.
F. Kant calls that spontaneous, independent mental power that is both enlivened
and set free by aesthetic ideas the imagination.
1. Kant, like Burke, ascribes to the imagination the power to recombine
sense data to form new associations.
2. Poetry sets the associational powers of the imagination most at liberty.
III. Though Kant’s aesthetic is grounded in concept-free feelings
experienced by the imagination, understanding and reason do play an
important role.
IV.
A. Kant distinguishes between pure beauty and dependent beauty.
1. Pure beauty presupposes no concept of what the object ought to be.
2. We may link pure beauty to the later 19th century concept of art for art’s
sake.
3. Dependent beauty presupposes a concept of perfection against which to
measure the object; it adheres to a purpose external to the object.
4. For instance, it may presuppose rules of decorum or a dictum to please
and teach.
5. Kant notes that much of the disagreement among critics rises from the
fact that they are comparing two different kinds of beauty.
6. When dependent beauty starts to form concepts, it moves out of the
realm of the imagination (aesthetics) and into the realm of the
understanding.
B. Kant distinguishes between the quantitative and the qualitative sublime.
1. The sublime is that which is absolutely great, which inspires in us feelings
of limitlessness and infinity.
2. The quantitative sublime is occurs when we come into the presence of
wild, chaotic objects that cannot be absorbed.
3. Their greatness surpasses the power of our intuition to grasp them.
4. As a consequence, the imagination is forced to turn to reason for
support.
5. Whereas understanding merely converts sense data into concepts,
reason takes these concepts and transforms them into higher laws.
6. The qualitative sublime occurs when we feel awe or fear before an object
of overwhelming power.
7. Our imagination is inadequate to stand up against such might and, as
before, it turns to the higher faculty of reason for help.
C. The true epistemological nature of the sublime and the beautiful has to do with
the free play of two mental powers.

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 1. With beauty, Kant describes the subjective experience as a feeling of
harmony in the free play of imagination and understanding.
2. With sublimity, the subjective experience manifests itself in terms of a
disharmony between imagination and reason.
3. With this distinction, Kant offers a “mental” justification for Burke’s
assertion that beauty causes us to relax while sublimity brings tension.

III. Kant builds on the mental disharmony induced in us by the sublime to posit a
fascinating theory as to why the sublime moves us so powerfully.
A. True, when we experience the sublime, and our imagination is forced to turn
to reason, we experience displeasure at our inability to comprehend its
magnitude or stand up to its might.
B. This soon turns to pleasure as we realize what this surrender signifies.
1. Our experience reveals to us that cognition (reason) is superior to
sensation (imagination), and that we are supra-sensible creatures.
2. We learn that there is a faculty within us that is greater than nature,
that can surpass both her majesty and might.
3. If both of these discoveries are true, then our final destination is
greater than that of nature.
4. That is to say, we are not only rational but spiritual creatures endued
with purpose and an ability to endure and transcend pain and terror.
5. I like to call this dazzling moment of insight the Kantian catharsis.
C. Though we are seeing Kant as a philosophical source of Romanticism, we must
remember that Kant himself lived in Pope’s “Age of Reason.”
1. Indeed, only an Enlightenment thinker could posit as the source of our
greatest emotional experience the knowledge that we are rational.
2. The Romantics raise imagination to a far higher realm than Kant.

A Personal Afterthought on Kant

It is interesting to know that many people who know nothing else of Kant
do know that his personal life was so methodical that the housewives of
Kōnigsberg used to set their clocks by the regular afternoon walks he took. His
life was said to pass like the most regular of regular verbs. But a more accurate
description of Kant is perhaps this charming reminiscence written by one of his
students, Johann Gottfried Herder:

I have had the good fortune to know a philosopher. He was my

teacher. In his prime he had the happy sprightliness of a youth; he
continued to have it, I believe, even as a very old man. His broad forehead,
built for thinking, was the seat of an imperturbable cheerfulness and joy.

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 Speech, the richest in thought, flowed from his lips. Playfulness, wit, and
humor were at his command. His lectures were the most entertaining
talks. His mind, which examined Leibniz, Wolff, Baumgarten, Crusius, and
Hume, and investigated the laws of nature of Newton, Kepler, and the
physicists, comprehended equally the newest works of Rosseau . . . and the
latest discoveries in science. He weighed them all, and always came back
to the unbiased knowledge of nature and to the moral worth of man. The
history of men and peoples, natural history and science, mathematics and
observation, were the sources from which he enlivened his lectures and
conversation. He was indifferent to nothing worth knowing. No cabal, no
sect, no prejudice, no desire for fame could ever tempt him in the slightest
away from broadening and illuminating the truth. He incited and gently
forced others to think for themselves; despotism was foreign to his mind.
This man, whom I name with the greatest gratitude and respect, was
Immanuel Kant.59

Friedrich von Schiller

Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man

I hope to convince you that the theme I have chosen is far less alien to the needs of our
age than to its taste. More than this: if man is ever to solve that problem of politics in
practice he will have to approach it through the problem of the aesthetic, because it is
only through Beauty that man makes his way to Freedom.

–Friedrich Schiller, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man

Abstract
59
I have taken this from the book Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic by Immanuel Kant. Edited by
Lewis White Beck. Editor’s Introduction, p. XXII.

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 If Plato is to Socrates, and Aristotle to Plato, and Alexander the Great to Aristotle,
then Schiller is to Kant in the sense that although he carefully preserved the
epistemological slant of his master, Schiller turned that slant by giving a new turn to the
Kantian thesis that the experience of the beautiful is analogous to the experience of the
morally good. Schiller’s main purpose in his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man is
to fuse the Dionysiac and the Apollonian sides of our being, linking these two facets of
our nature to the material (or sensuous) drive (Stofftrieb) and the formal (or spiritual)
drive (Formtrieb), and then uniting these two opposing drives into a third: the play drive
(Spieltrieb). Schiller believes that the state of true aesthetic freedom is achieved only by
the Spieltrieb which acts as mediator between the Stofftrieb and the Formtrieb, thus
allowing both sides of our human nature to be fully developed, integrated and unified.
The Spieltrieb is an aesthetic impulse which allows us to transcend our inner and outer
constraints, thereby enabling us to experience physical, emotional, and spiritual
freedom.

Lastly, we shall see how Schiller links the play drive both to beauty and to culture,
and how he uses this connection to ensure for poetry a position in society that is even
more essential than that of philosophy.
Schiller integrated Kant’s epistemology and Plato's ontology and as a result came up
with one of the most successful aesthetics theories in critical history. The Letters on the
Aesthetic Education of Man demonstrate the crucial role of artistic experience in healthy
human development, thus allowing for mental health in the individual and society.

I. Schiller “romanticizes” the theories of Kant.

A. On the one hand, he expands on the epistemological theories of Kant.
1. Beauty remains a subjective experience that is free and
indifferent.
2. The free play of mental powers is still put at center stage.
3. The privileging of aesthetic form over didactic content
continues.
B. On the other hand, he gives these theories a new (Romantic) focus.
1. While Burke preferred judgment (analysis) to imagination
(synthesis), and Kant privileged the disharmony of the sublime
over the harmony of the beautiful, Schiller preferred both
synthesis and harmony.
2. The idea for Schiller is a fusion (or incarnation) of subject and
object. This gives a mystical, spiritual bent to Schiller that is
lacking in Kant.
3. Nature takes on greater importance in Schiller. It is not merely
the dead object that it is for Burke and Kant; it, too, seeks a kind
of perfection.

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II. In the Letters, Schiller looks back with awe on the Classical Age but not for
the same reasons as the neoclassicists did.
A. The Ancient Greeks had a natural humanity that we have lost.
1. They possessed a fullness that could fuse imagination and
reason.
2. We, in contrast, live divided, fragmented lives: our imaginative,
intuitive side is cut off from our speculative, rational side.
3. Nietzsche would term these two sides the Dionysiac and the
Apollonian.
4. Today, they are often linked to male/female, East/West,
religion/science, etc.
5. T. S. Eliot would later call it the “dissociation of sensibility.”
6. Whereas Eliot says this division occurred in the late 17 th century,
Schiller places it at the end of the Classical Age.
7. Schiller’s final (aesthetic) goal is for these two sides to be
reintegrated.
III. The role of education, culture, and beauty is to achieve this reintegration.
A. In Letters, Schiller distinguishes between the sensuous and formal drives.
1. The sensuous drive is linked to material life: to matter,
body and change, to the World of Becoming.
2. The formal drive is more rational: it is linked to the
preservation of personality, to the spirit that remains the
same, the World of Being.
3. Our sensuous drive is Dionysiac; it is ecstatic and leads us
to be swept along by sensation, causing the personality to
be suspended.
4. Our formal drive is Apollonian; it seeks a higher, more
abstract harmony free from the restraints of time and
space.
5. The realm of the sensuous drive is the world of the
particular case, the concrete, the object; the formal drive is
the world of the general law, the universal, and the
subject.
6. If sensuous/formal = body/spirit, we might think it would
also = form/content, because body and form are both on
the “outside.”
7. The form, however, of a work of art is actually the more
timeless, abstract element; it can be studied coolly and
rationally.
8. Schiller, like Kant, treats form as an aesthetic end in itself.
B. Though we might expect the Kantian Schiller to advocate the
subordination of the sensuous to the dictates of the formal, he does not
do so.

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 1. Indeed, he treats them as two distinct but equally valid
and vital modes of thought (and spheres of operation) that
need to be synthesized.
2. The greatest task of culture and education is to allow these
two drives to operate together: to reintegrate feeling and
reason.
C. Out of the fusion of these two drives emerges the play drive.
1. Schiller’s term is not meant to be derogatory.
2. Man, he says, is only fully human when he plays.
3. The play drive, by simultaneously fusing (and transcending)
the other two drives, sets us free from both the physical
restraints of nature (sensuous) and the moral restraints of
reason (formal).
4. The play drive is incarnational; it creates a living form.
5. The play drive effects a marriage between sensuous and
formal, between objective nature and subjective mind,
between the concrete (particular) and the abstract
(universal).
6. A Biblical analogy: just as our final heavenly form will not
be pure spirit but spirit joined to a glorious resurrection
body, so the end product of a play drive is not an abstract,
bodiless idea (Plato’s Form) but a general timeless form
imbued with a particular, dynamic life.
7. In that divine, transcendent moment of play, the universal
lifts the concrete up into itself, the form consumes the
matter.
8. The play drive is equivalent to beauty: both are purely
aesthetic.
D. Schiller ascribes a unique role to beauty.
1. As with Kant, beauty is indifferent; it is neither useful nor
didactic.
2. It teaches us nothing and supplies us with not particular
knowledge.
3. It provides us instead with a totality, a perfect wholeness;
within that whole we find all the faculties existing in a
higher harmony.
4. To experience that wholeness is to enter into a pure
aesthetic mood, a state of suspension beyond the confines
of time and space.
5. In that mood, we experience true freedom, true play, and
true unity.
6. Through beauty (and the sublime) we are empowered to
give form to that which is formless in nature.

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 7. When we do so, we gain an epistemological, suprasensible
victory over nature that frees us from our deepest fears.
8. Still, Schiller is careful (Kant is not) to hold on to physical
reality; the contemplation of form must not be cut off from
the feeling of life.
E. Schiller’s aesthetics turns Plato on his head.
1. Beauty proves to us that feeling and thought can occur
together.
2. Ergo, an education in beauty is best able to lead us back to
that original, naïve unity that we have lost.
3. Beauty, because it most fully fuses the concrete and the
universal, body and soul, is better suited than philosophy
to heal the disunity within.
4. It is the poets, not the philosophers, who are best qualified
to form whole, integrated citizens who will know justice
and live justly.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Introduction

Abstract

Hegel contended that the whole of world history unfolds according to a divine
and necessary logic. History unfolds dialectically, i.e., according to a logic in which
every conflict is subsumed in a higher unity. This unfolding is the process by
which Geist, the universal Mind or divine Spirit, alienates itself in the external
world, but eventually comes back to itself in self-knowledge. The Christian
religion represents this self-alienation and self-knowledge of the Divine in a
powerful but mythological way, and Hegel thinks his own philosophy is the

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 subsumption of this mythological representation into a philosophical concept,
through which the divine Spirit becomes fully conscious of itself for the first time.

Essential reading:

Avineri, Schlomo. Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State. Cambridge, 1974.

Fackenheim, The Religious Dimension of Hegel’s Thought, chapters 5 and 6.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Phänomenologie des Geistes.“

“Introduction,” “Revealed Religion” and “Absolute Knowledge” (pp. 46-57, 458-
478, 479-493).

______________. Introduction to the Philosophy of History (trans. Leo Rauch).

Indianapolis, 1988.

Inwood, M. J. (Ed.). Hegel Selections. Macmillan, 1989.

The German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel is the father of modern historicism and

German idealism. Hegel’s project was to show the rational basis of all of history, by
uncovering the logic that produced it.
Spirit (Geist) in History

Phänomenologie des Geistes

1. The key term, Geist, means both Mind and Spirit (like French esprit).
2. Behind this double meaning is the tendency in Christian Platonism to compare
the Platonist sensible/ intelligible distinction to the Biblical flesh/spirit
distinction (so that an intellectual being is a spiritual, i.e., non-bodily, being).
3. Indeed, Hegel’s Geist is quite a bit like Plotinus’ Nous or divine Intellect.
4. The difference is that Plotinus’ Nous is unchanging, separate from the visible
world, and rich in intellectual content from the beginning, while Hegel’s Geist
acquires its content only by getting involved in history—by becoming a
Zeitgeist, a spirit of the age.
5. History is in fact the externalization of Geist—a little like Spinoza, for whom
the visible world is the external aspect of the substance of God, except that
(once again) Hegel’s Geist is in motion.
6. Phenomenology is a word Hegel made up meaning study of phenomena
(Greek for “appearance”): his book is the study of how Geist makes its
appearance in the phenomena of history.

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B. The Dialectic of History
1. The whole of world-history unfolds logically: “the real is the rational, the
rational is the real.”
2. Hegel’s name for this logical process of Geist unfolding in history is
“dialectic”—Plato and Aristotle’s word for a logical argument or debate.
3. Thus for Hegel history is like an argument: not the kind where one side defeats
the other, but where the opposition between the two sides is subsumed in an
agreement at a higher level.
4. “Subsumption” (Aufhebung) means literally “picking up,” but this can be in the
sense of “removing” (hence canceling or abolishing) or “raising to a higher
level” (and hence preserving).
5. In Hegel’s dialectic, subsumption overcomes the opposition between the two
previous “moments” of history by incorporating them into a higher unity, so
that the opposition is in one sense canceled, in another sense preserved, and
in any case resolved at a higher level.
6. Hence the basic movement of history is triadic: an original position is negated,
then both the original position and the negation are subsumed in a higher
unity (a later Hegelian labeled these three moments Thesis, Antithesis, and
Synthesis).
7. Each moment of resolution is the beginning for another triadic movement—
the dialectic, like history itself, keeps on going.
C. Through Negation to Unity
1. Through this repeated triadic process all the oppositions of history are
subsumed in the unity of Geist.
2. Because negation is at the root of all conflict, division and limitation, the
dialectic is also a process of overcoming division, moving from self-identity to
self-alienation to reconciliation, or from self to other to self-consciousness
(recognizing the self in the other).
3. Hence the overall dialectic of history: Geist externalizes itself in the world,
then comes back to itself, recognizing itself in the development of historical
self-consciousness.
4. Thus philosophy, which appears to start out treating Geist as object, is
revealed in the end as the expression of Geist as subject: philosophical
knowledge is Geist as subject coming to know itself as object (Hegel calls this
“absolute knowledge”).

 Professor Darren Staloff, of the City College of New York, succinctly sums
up Hegel’s philosophy of history in four tightly packed sentences. I have
taken the liberty to replace the word “Spirit” (which Professor Staloff
prefers) with the original word Geist for reasons I have already stated
above.

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 1. History is the dialectical process whereby Geist comes to know
itself and realizes its Idea.
2. Freedom is the idea of Geist and Geist is Reason in and for itself.
3. The means of this realization, or cunning of Reason, is the
passions of the individual as both subject and object of history,
and its form is the State.
4. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the
dusk.
 History is the dialectical process whereby Geist comes to know itself and
realizes its Idea.
1. By history is meant world history as it is philosophically conceived, or
the sum of human experience as understood under a rational
conception. The keyword here is rational: if you looked at the world
rationally, the world looks back at you rationally. The job of the
philosopher of history, therefore, is to search for that rational
explanation of history.
2. Dialectical refers to the inter-relating triad of thesis-antithesis-
synthesis (terms Hegel himself rarely used). One example Hegel uses
to illustrate his famous triad in the case of the family, civic society, and
the state: undifferentiated unity-differentiated disunity-differentiated
unity.
3. Undifferentiated unity refers to the unity of the family which is bound
by love and affection for one another. It is undifferentiated because
that unity is not broken down into distinct individuals with their own
selfish interests and agendas.
4. Differentiated disunity refers to civic society of the economic market
place where each individual has his own agenda which comes in
conflict with another’s.
5. Differentiated unity refers to the state which keeps us differentiated
but creates laws for the benefit of all.
6. Geist is untranslatable and refers to that collective subjectivity (the
collective mind of humanity) which is both agent and subject of
history.
7. To realize is to actualize.
8. Idea, in the Hegelian sense, means essence.
 Freedom is the idea of Geist, and Geist is Reason in-and-for itself.
1. Reason is abstract rationality, the philosophical expression of Geist.
2. Reason in-and-for itself’s dialectical antithesis is reason out-of-itself or
nature.
3. Geist is the synthesis of Reason and nature.
4. By freedom here is meant autonomy in the Kantian sense.
 The means of this realization, or cunning of Reason, is the passions of the
individual as both subject and object of history, and its form is the State.
1. By passion is meant self-interested action.

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 2. The individual as subject refers to the “Great Man” (e.g. Napoleon)
who moves the Geist by sacrificing his own personal happiness to his
passions. The cunning of Reason uses the Great Man to advance the
Geist.
3. The individual as object is the private individual, the victim of history.
4. The State is the culture of a people and the principles that integrate
the individual with the larger whole.
 The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.
Here is Hegel’s interpretation in his own words:
“Philosophy in any case always comes on the scene too late to give it. As
the thought of the world, it appears only when actuality is already there
cut and dried after its process of formation has been completed. The
teaching of the concept, which is also history’s inescapable lesson, is that
it is only when actuality is mature that the ideal first over against the real
and that the ideal apprehends this same real world in its substance and
builds it up for itself into the shape of an intellectual realm. When
philosophy paints its grey in grey, then has a shape of life grown old. By
philosophy’s grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood.” 60

A. The Difference between God and Geist

1. As in Spinoza, Geist is not ultimately other than the World, and as in Plotinus,
it is not ultimately other than the human mind.
2. Yet in contrast to Spinoza and Plotinus, Hegel sets Geist in motion in history.
Why?
3. The key here seems to be in the last moment in the dialectic of
Phenomenology of Spirit before Absolute Knowledge: “the Revealed
Religion.”
4. The key idea of the Revealed Religion (which for Hegel is clearly Christianity) is
Incarnation.

60
Hegel, “Philosophy of Right: Preface.” In Hegel Selections. (M. J. Inwood, Ed.). Macmillan, p. 287.

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 5. The Principle of Incarnation, as philosophically understood, means that Geist
enters the world of history, with all its alienation, division, negativity—and
suffering.
B. Philosophy as Subsumption of Religion
1. Hegel’s concept of Incarnation is clearly not that of orthodox Christianity,
which was the incarnation of God in a particular man, Jesus.
2. Rather, Hegel has taken up or subsumed the orthodox doctrine of incarnation
in a purely conceptual understanding of it.
3. In Hegel’s language, philosophy subsumes a religious representation
(Vorstellung) into a speculative concept (Begriff)—thus preserving its true
content while abolishing its mythological form.
C. The Theological Interest of Hegel
1. You might think that orthodox theologians would be put off by Hegel’s
subsumption of orthodox doctrine—and often they are—yet there is
something extremely interesting and new going on in Hegel’s thought, which
draws the attention of both Christian and Jewish theologians.
2. In one sense, Hegel’s philosophical subsumption of religion sounds like a
variation on an old familiar theme: it’s one more way of combining Platonist
metaphysics and Judaeo-Christian religion.
3. But in contrast to the Church Fathers, who combined the Bible and Platonism
and got an unchanging God, Hegel combines them and gets a God who is
historical, in and of the world, yet not a finite being (not merely a pagan god
like a Zeus or Apollo).

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 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
The Philosophy of Fine Art

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives

In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.

—W. H. Auden, In Memory of W. B. Yeats

A poem should not mean

But be.
—Archibald MacLeish, Ars Poetica

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 Abstract

Hegel’s Philosophy of Fine Art achieves what is perhaps the best refutation of
mimesis (in the Platonic sense) by positing a Platonic Form that, rather than remain pure
and untainted in the World of Being seeks to “journey through the spirit” in order to
enter into our World of Becoming. This Hegelian Idea moves through three distinct
phases (the symbolic, the classical, and the romantic) in its search of a total and
sensuous incarnation. We shall discover how each of these phases is linked to a specific
artistic medium.

Art is an end in itself. It is never a means to an end. Art is a product of the human spirit. It
serves no utilitarian purpose.

Hegel says that art is not mimesis. The latter assumes that art is lesser than nature. But
art is a product of the human spirit, and being so, art is therefore the truly higher form.

Because art derives itself from the human spirit, and spirit is above nature, it should be
regarded as a higher and more beautiful form than nature itself.

Because of this "journey through the spirit,” a work of art stands higher than a natural
product.

The true role of art serves no external purpose, only the internal manifestation of truth:

Art's vocation is to unveil the truth in the form of sensuous artistic configuration, to set
forth the reconciled opposition just mentioned, and so to have an end and aim in itself, in
this very setting forth and unveiling. (p. 55)

In art, Hegel perceives the dissolution of opposition, "not in the sense...that the
opposition and its two sides do not exist at all, but that they exist reconciled" (p. 55). The
root of Hegel's high regard for art becomes apparent here, when he perceives in art the
almost holy ability, not to eliminate opposition, but to truly resolve it with what is true.
He sees in art the highest ideal of truth expressed in sensuous form, the spirit manifest in
the physical world.

I. If Schiller moves Kantian epistemology in the direction of Romanticism, then

Hegel (who is another Kantian), extends and consummates that movement.
A. Like Schiller, Hegel seeks in art a higher fusion of subject and object.
1. True art mediates between form and content, idea and image.
2. It seeks a full incarnation that offers the greatest degree of
intimacy and union between the universal idea and the concrete
image.

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B. Like Schiller, Hegel ascribes to art a key cultural and educational function.
1. True fine art is, like religion and philosophy, one of the modes
through which divine or spiritual truths enter our physical world
of change.
2. Art is a cultural storehouse of the wisdom of the ages.
3. In addition to storing this wisdom, art also acts as a key to
unlocking the treasures of long dead civilizations. An example is
Chaucer’s “General Prologue” to Canterbury Tales which
describes life in the late 14th century England better than any
history book.
C. Finally, like Schiller, Hegel too undermines Plato by converting the arts
into a higher form of education: a journey of the poet (not the
philosopher) from division to wholeness.
1. In this area, however, Hegel goes far beyond Schiller to enter
into a more direct dialogue with the very essence of Platonic
thought.
2. Schiller traces the education, the growth toward unity, of poet
and reader, but Hegel traces the education of the poetic Idea
itself.
3. The timeless Idea, the divine Beauty, the Truth that lies at the
core of all great art dwells, like Plato’s Forms, in the World of
Being.
4. Whereas Plato’s Forms remain apart from and untainted by our
World of Becoming, Hegel’s Idea seeks a sensuous incarnation.
5. The Philosophy of Fine Art delineates a Platonic journey of the
Idea through various artistic modes and genres, as it seeks full
and final expression in our world.
6. What Idea seeks is not just a well-executed artistic form in which
to dwell, but an incarnation in which it is expressed in and
through a concrete image: not just as a body is by clothes but as
the soul is by the body.
7. Imagine a liquid with the desire and power to create its own
container.
8. If it is to achieve this incarnation, Idea must not be fully abstract
(as are Plato’s Forms), but must partake of some concreteness.
D. Hegel’s aesthetic offers what amounts to a Christian reworking of Plato.
1. Hegel links the journey of the Idea to several key
theological/philosophical distinctions of Christianity.
2. For example, his declaration that the Idea must already partake
of the concrete if it is to successfully incarnate itself is strongly
liked to two central Christian doctrines: the Trinity and the
Incarnation.
3. Just as the Idea was essentially concrete even before its physical
manifestation, so Jesus, even before he became man in the

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 Incarnation, existed in a pre-incarnate state as the eternal Son of
God.

II. As the Idea travels on its incarnational odyssey, it moves through three
distinct stages, each of which is linked to a specific artistic medium.
A. The first and oldest is the symbolic.
1. In this stage, Idea has not yet found its own formative principle;
it cannot shape its own container and so seeks a more general
form.
2. The best example of symbolic art is the ancient temple; here the
spirit of God (or the gods) dwelt, but in a indeterminate form.
3. The defining artistic medium of raw matter, of huge, rough
stones, the early pagans and Jews sought to express the majesty
of divinity.
4. In this phase, full incarnation is not yet possible; the best that
can be achieved is to create a divine space for the congregation.
B. The second phase is the classical.
1. In this phase, the free and adequate embodiment of the Idea is
achieved.
2. Something in physical nature is found that is compatible with
the spiritual Idea; the result is a concrete spirituality, a mystic
fusion in which the Idea appears and is revealed in a sensuous
guise.
3. The defining artistic medium of the classical phase is sculpture.
4. In the classical statues of Zeus, Athena, et al., the full presence
and power of the god/goddess stands before us in eternal
repose.
5. God enters his temple with a flash and takes on a discernible
shape with which the congregation can commune directly.
6. If the symbolic phase is linked to God the Father, a spiritual
being whom no one has ever seen, then the classical phase is
linked to God the Son, God incarnate, who became Flesh and
dwelt among us.
7. In the symbolic Old Testament God’s power is loosely expressed
in images like the eagle or the burning bush; in the classical New
Testament, his presence enters physically into our world.
8. The Incarnate Christ is the perfection of pagan
anthropomorphism.
C. The third phase is the romantic.
1. The symbolic phase aspires to an ideal fusion and the classical.
2. In the romantic phase, there is a desire to break down the
perfection, completion, and rigidity of the classical form.
3. This shedding of limits frees the spirit to move to a higher plane.

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 4. When this happens, the Idea gains self-knowledge and becomes
self-conscious.
5. Romantic art is art transcending itself: though it we see the
triumph of the rational soul over the external world.
6. As in Schiller (but not in Kant), this triumph is more a higher
fusion than a complete overthrow of nature; rather than
abandon or eliminate the world, the Idea creates its own inner
world.
7. Just so it is good that the Incarnate Christ go away so that the
Holy Spirit may descend on earth and dwell in the inner life/soul
of each believer.
8. The higher fusion of the romantic phase does not restore the
classical repose of Eden or the Golden Age; instead, it looks
ahead to that greater city, the New Jerusalem, where physical
and spiritual will be united.
9. The New Jerusalem will be heralded by the Great Marriage of
Christ and the Church, the ultimate fusion of Creator/subject
and created/object.
D. Romantic art works through painting, music, and poetry.
1. Of these three, painting is the least ideal, for it is a physical
medium.
2. Music is more ideal for it is free from physical constraints, yet it
still must heed fixed laws and quantities.
3. Poetry is the freest and most ideal—the “universal art of the
mind”—a fully abstract, subjective spirituality able to create its
own inner world of ideas.
4. Most Romantic aestheticians would disagree and posit music as
the freest, most unmediated of the arts.
E. The movement from symbolic to classical to romantic forms a dialectic.
1. In the dialectical thought of Hegel, an idea (thesis) creates its
own opposite (antithesis); eventually the two collide and
struggle to form a new and higher fusion (synthesis).
2. Marx would apply this principle to the material, physical world
and would call it dialectical materialism.

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 The Romantic Imagination
Overture

This overture which opens Part Five: The Romantic Imagination will distinguish the
Romantics from the century that preceded them. We shall also analyze one of the great
poetic manifestos of all time since Aristotle’s Poetics: the Lyrical Ballads. We shall try to
explore both the unique plan of Lyrical Ballads and the implications of that plan for
literary theory. In addressing the plan of the work, we shall compare and contrast
Wordsworth’s task to present natural, everyday objects in a manner almost supernatural
with Coleridge’s task to portray supernatural events and characters in such a way as to
render them almost natural. We shall then discuss how Lyrical Ballads effects a shift in
earlier views of mimesis, epistemology, and decorum. Finally, we shall define two key
Romantic phrases: defamiliarization and the willing suspension of disbelief.
This section will study the contributions of the English Romantic poets
Wordsworth (“Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads”), Coleridge (Biographia
Literaria), Shelley (Defense of Poetry), and Keats.
Like Pope and Dryden, all four are poets first and critics second.
Unlike Pope and Dryden, however, the Romantics treated the poet (expressive) rather
than nature (mimesis) or the audience (pragmatic) as the source and benchmark of their
art.
They fashioned a new social role for the poet.

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 They modified the epistemological theories of Kant, Schiller, and Hegel.
1. Whereas the Germans were pragmatic, the British Romantics were
expressive.
2. Whereas the theorists in the previous section (Part Four) brought with
them the hangovers of the 18th century (the Age of Reason), the
Romantics not only turned their backs on that age but defined
themselves in opposition to it.
3. Though still interested in epistemology, they substituted the 18th
century emphasis on analysis with the emphasis on synthesis.
4. Especially, they privileged Imagination over Reason.
The three contending causes of Romanticism are:
1. The publication of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions.
2. The French Revolution.
3. The publication of Lyrical Ballads.
Let us discuss the third cause.
It started when the neighbors Wordsworth and Coleridge planned together in
writing a new volume of poetry.
The story of this great friendship, one of the most fruitful literary friendships
of all time, is told, partially, in Wordsworth’s Preface and more fully in
Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria.
About 1797, the neighbors Wordsworth and Coleridge spent
long days discussing the nature of poetry and the powers
of the imagination.
Out of these conversations, they conceived the idea of
composing a series of poems of two distinct but
complementary kinds.
The former kind would select its objects from nature, from the common,
mundane, everyday world of the countryside.
It would deal with familiar things we often overlook, things
whose very commonness renders them invisible.
Rather than merely copy or record these things in a straight
mimetic fashion, however, the poet would throw over
them an imaginative insight that would allow his readers to
see them in a new light.
By lending these objects a “charm of novelty,” the poet would
evoke a sense of child-like wonder in his reader, a feeling
more often associated with the supernatural than with the
natural.
This process is called defamiliarization.
Coleridge paraphrases Isaiah 6 when he says that most men
have eyes but do not see. Defamiliarization opens our eyes
to the wonders around us.
Wordsworth was responsible for this portion of Lyrical Ballads
when he composed a series of poems centered on humble,

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 provincial characters as Simon Lee, Goody Blake, and the
Idiot Boy.
Despite their commonness, however, Wordsworth infused
them with dignity, mystery, and power.
Coleridge’s poetry would select its objects from the realm of the
supernatural.
Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner is richly suffused with
the supernatural.
Just as Wordsworth made the common uncommon, so
Coleridge made the uncommon common.
Coleridge uncovered behind the supernatural dramatic and
emotional truths.
Our recognition of the psychological truth of the Mariner’s
journey compels us to lend the poem our “willing
suspension of disbelief.”
To inspire in readers this moment of poetic faith, the poem
must invite them into a higher realm of illusion rather than
merely delude them with fanciful images and events.
Implications of Lyrical Ballads to the study of Aesthetics and Literary Criticism.
Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s plan calls for a new kind of mimesis that rather
than simply imitate or even perfect its object, transforms it into
something rich and strange.
Nature (or super nature) is merely the occasion for the poem;
the poetic act itself (the transformation) is the real point. It
is about the subject, not the object.
It is not the rules of decorum but the imaginative vision of the
poet that determines the shape and end of the poem.
More radically, the plan of Lyrical Ballads carries out a supreme form of
epistemology in which objects (things) take their ultimate nature not
from what they are, but from how they are perceived by the poet.
In this, Wordsworth and Coleridge were certainly influenced
by William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience.
In this work, Blake demonstrates how the same images and
events take on a different coloring, form, and reality when
viewed through the eyes of innocence and experience.
The subtitle of his work—shewing the two contrary states of
the human soul—captures perfectly the radical Romantic
belief that things are as they are perceived and that we
half create the world around us.
This concept lies behind the Romantic faith that “of the doors
of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as
it is: infinite.”
This new, more radical epistemology places the poet and his
perceptions at the center of literary theory; poetry is now

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 to be regarded as self-expression, as a journal of the
unique perceptions of an individual.
Lyrical Ballads shifted old 18th century notions of decorum that declared
certain subjects unfit for poetry.
The rustics created by Wordsworth would have been subjects
for comedy in the 18th century; Wordsworth ennobles
them.
Lyrical Ballads mixes the realms of the real and the ideal.
Indeed, it sees the ideal in the real, the supernatural in the
natural (and vice versa).
Not only does Lyrical Ballads often take children as its subject,
but it also privileges their naïve sense of wonder, their
freshness, and innocence over the refined urbanity and
studied wit of the 18th century.

William Wordsworth
“Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads”

We shall analyze closely Wordsworth’s “Preface,” and then explore how he

radically redefines both the nature of poetry and the poet and the function of poetry
and the poet in society. We shall focus especially on such key Wordsworthian
formulations as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” the poet as a “man
speaking to men,” and the role of poetry as an antidote to society’s “degrading thirst
after outrageous stimulation.”

In his famous “Preface,” Wordsworth redefines the nature and status of poetry
along expressive lines.
A. Rather than treat poetry as an imitation of an action (mimetic) or an object
fashioned to teach and delight (pragmatic), Wordsworth sees poetry as a personal
reflection of the poet’s interactions with himself and the world.
1. This, however, does not mean that Wordsworth is unconcerned with imitating or
teaching or pleasing, because he is concerned with all three; but that these theoretical
concerns flow directly out of his view of the poet.
2. It is not the rules on decorum but the visionary imagination of the poet that
becomes the source and end of poetry.
3. Poetry is the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”
4. Wordsworth’s nature poetry is less a reflection on nature than on the feelings
and ideas excited in the poet as he contemplates nature.

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 5. Even in his more narrative poems, Wordsworth asserts that it is the feeling that
gives importance to the action and not vice versa (as Aristotle had taught).
B. Nevertheless, there is a mimetic element in Wordsworth’s theory.
1. Wordsworth often wrote on rural subjects, not so much because the country
made him feel good, but because in such a setting he felt men were more in touch with
elementary feelings and durable truths.
2. It was these essential passions, this emphatic, unmediated kind of life that
Wordsworth wanted to capture and embody in his poetry.
3. For Wordsworth, the city and court life of the 18th century poet was artificial,
insincere, phony, and out of touch with the wellsprings of our humanity. Wordsworth
looked both to the freer life of the country and within his own heart for real passions
and truths.
4. He agreed with Aristotle and Sidney that poetry is more philosophical than
history because it deals with both the specific and the general.
5. Self-expression is not an end in itself, but a means to reach the truth, the
universal, the permanent.
6. In describing his own feelings, the poet is describing the feelings of all men.
C. Just as Wordsworth sought to imitate the life and passions of his native Lake
District, so he sought to imitate the simple, direct language of the country.
1. He rejected the fake poetic diction of the 18th century, with its deliberately
contorted syntax and artificial “poeticisms.”
2. He adopted a more natural, less affected, style that mimicked the syntax of
good prose—“the real language of men.”
3. Seventeen years later, Coleridge would object to the above phrase, saying
that Wordsworth went too far in his praise of rustic manners of speech.
4. Wordsworth, however, tempered his expressivism with a mimetic focus by
asserting that the poet should not slavishly imitate the rustic, but, through a process of
selection, purge natural speech of its grossness.

III. Just as he redefines poetry, so does Wordsworth offer a new vision of the
poet.
A. The questions “What is a poem?” and “What is a poet?” are synonymous.
1. Just as poetry is to be written in the “real language of men,” so
is the poet to be a “man speaking to men.”
2. The poet is not to be viewed as a different creature: he is of
the same kind as all other men, though he does differ in
degree. There is no such thing as a “coterie of poets,” as
thought of in the 18th century.
B. The poet possesses a more organic, comprehensive soul than do other
men.
1. He has more lively sensibilities and is more in touch with his
feelings.

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 2. He needs little stimulation to experience deep emotions;
indeed he is able to feel absent pleasures as if they were
present.
3. He rejoices in his own spirit of life and seeks to discover that
joy in the world around him. If it is not there, he will create it.
4. He has a rich store of memories he can tap for poetic
inspiration and the ability to relieve his memories and the
emotions attached to them.
5. He can sustain an inner mood of tranquility and pleasure.
C. The poet is a lover of his fellow men; he honors “the native, naked dignity
of man” by humanizing all things in accordance with the human heart.
1. He is a friend of man who binds all things with passion and
love.
2. Whereas the scientist seeks truth as an abstract idea, the
poet “rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend
and hourly companion.”
3. If science ever becomes so familiar an object that it takes
on flesh and blood, so to speak, it will be the poet, not the
scientist, who will help transform and humanize it into a
kindred spirit.
Wordsworth ascribes to the poet—and poetry—a new kind of social function.
Wordsworth warns against the ill effects of urbanization/industrialization.
The massing of men into cities and the repetitive drudgery of
their jobs produces in them an ignoble “craving after
extraordinary incident” and a “degrading thirst after
outrageous stimulation.”
Their senses have grown dull, and they need grosser, more
violent and more scandalous stimulants to satisfy their
blunted psyches.
Wordsworth calls this state of emotional and spiritual
deadness, this loss of ability to be moved by simple beauty
and truth, “savage torpor.”
Wordsworth saw it as the role of poetry to restore this lost ability.
Poetry, by enlarging and refining our sensibilities, has the
power to re-humanize us, to bring us back into the human
community.
Poetry restores our child-like wonder, revives our ability to
take joy and delight in the natural world and in the quiet
beatings of our heart.
Considering this new social function, poetry is more, not less,
necessary in an industrialized age than in a rural, pastoral
age.
Although Wordsworth rejects the refinement and wit of the
18th century, he promotes a new aristocracy of sensitivity.

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 Though poetry does instruct, it exists first and foremost to give pleasure.
It is through pleasure that poetry draws us back into touch
with our world, our fellow man, and ourselves.
The pleasure that poetry gives is no mere entertainment and is
not to be scorned: it is the very spirit through which we
know and live.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Biographia Literaria

Abstract

In this chapter, we shall focus on the most erudite of English Romantic poets:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge understood well the German mind that he
interpreted and adapted German philosophy to English Romantic theory. We shall
discuss the difference between the natural philosopher and the transcendental
philosopher, between primary imagination and secondary imagination, between nature
and mind.

Of all the English Romantic theorists, Coleridge was the most erudite.
He possessed a photographic memory. He also spoke Latin, Greek, Hebrew,
German, French, and Italian.
He not only imported German philosophy and theory to England but also
interpreted the finer points of German philosophy and theory to the more pragmatic
English.
Biographia Literaria is Coleridge’s Poetics, and is very much influenced by
German theory. Indeed, his reading of Kant and Schilling has been so accurate that he
has been accused of plagiarism. Despite a series of almost verbatim paraphrases,

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however, his work yet offers a unified, compelling, original synthesis of literary theory
that renders accessible many German abstractions.
At the heart of his philosophical and theoretical views lies a vital distinction
between two opposing yet complementary types of thinkers: the natural philosopher
and the transcendental philosopher.
A. The natural philosopher begins his journey, his theoretical and aesthetic
education, with nature (object) and moves upward toward mind
(subject).
1. His starting point is empirical, a posteriori, observations; his
method of reasoning is induction; and his goal is general laws
and truths.
2. His purpose, he writes, is to effect “the perfect spiritualization of
all the laws of nature into laws of intuition and intellect.”
3. The natural philosopher who does not complete his journey
risks falling into the dead-end of materialism: the belief that all
that exists is matter and that the spiritual is an illusion.
4. Wordsworth is a true natural philosopher, as evinced by Lyrical
Ballads, because he transforms the natural into the
supernatural, the mundane into the exotic, observation into
mystical perception.
B. The transcendental philosopher begins his journey with a transcendent
mind (subject) and moves downward toward nature (object).
1. His starting point is intuitive, a priori, truth: that is, abstract,
non-empirical ideas that are logically groundless, but only
because they are the ground of everything. Vide Kant’s
“groundless ground.”
2. To begin such a metaphysical journey, the transcendental
philosopher must first purge his mind of all sensation by
assuming “an absolute, scientific skepticism.”
3. From this point, the transcendental philosopher moves
downward toward the sensual realities of the physical world.
4. His ultimate goal is to incarnate the universal in the concrete.
5. The transcendental philosopher who does not complete his
journey risks falling into the abyss of idealism: the belief that the
objective, material world has no separate existence—no
integrity of its own, but is only a projection of our subjective
perceptions.
6. Coleridge is a true transcendental philosopher, as evinced by his
contribution to Lyrical Ballads, by his treatment of supernatural
events in such a way as to render them natural.
7. Whereas the natural philosopher is essentially Aristotelian, the
transcendental philosopher is essentially Platonic.

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 C. If both philosophers successfully complete their journeys, they will meet
in the middle at a metaphysical nexus point of the general and the
particular.
1. Indeed, neither journey is complete until a fusion of the subject
and object, mind and nature, is achieved.
2. As a Romantic, Coleridge saw the imagination as the faculty
most qualified to effect this “marriage” of subject and object.
3. He coined the word “esemplastic” (Greek for “to shape into
one”), to describe the imagination’s power to fuse opposites.
4. Whereas 18th century theorists tended to use the words
“imagination” and “fancy” interchangeably, Coleridge asserted
that they were distinct powers.
5. While “fancy” is lesser, limited power that can only shift images
around into new patterns, “imagination” is freer, more vital. It
can recombine ideas and images at will to create new, higher
unities.
6. Only the imagination has both the perceptive power to see
similitude lurking within dissimilitude, unity in the midst of
diversity, and the synthetic power to fuse and reconcile
opposites into one.
II. The idea of the fusion of opposites that is so vital for both the transcendental
and natural philosopher lies behind most of Coleridge’s literary theory.
A. It gives us the key to understanding Coleridge’s famous distinction
between the primary and the secondary imagination.
1. Primary imagination occurs when our own individual (subjective
consciousness is passively inspired by the absolute self-
consciousness of God.
2. Artists who make use of this creative power are essentially
“divine ventriloquists,” poet-prophets who receive direct
inspiration from above and respond passively with a song or a
poem.
3. Though all Romantics yearn for this direct inspiration, Coleridge
yet hails the secondary imagination as the true source of poetry.
4. Whereas the primary imagination is passive, the secondary is
active: “it dissolves, dissipates, diffuses, in order to recreate.”
5. It takes the raw material given it by inspiration, breaks it down,
and then reshapes it into a new and vital form.
6. It is precisely this esemplastic power of the secondary
imagination that enables it to create organic wholes, symbols,
and concrete universals.
B. Working from the Aesthetic theories of Aristotle, Kant, and Schiller,
Coleridge fashioned and organic theory of poetry.
1. A poem is an almost-living organism in which the whole not only
contains each part but each part contains the whole.

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 2. The seed within the apple contains within itself the potential not
only for another apple but for an entire grove of apple trees.
3. Coleridge’s definition of a poem includes the criterion that it
give equal pleasure in the whole as it does in each part.
4. In an organic whole, there is a dynamic, incarnational
relationship between form and content, as if the content of the
poem had created its own form.
5. Ideas and images are fused and dissimilitude is resolved into
similitude.
6. One way to test if a poem is organic is to ask if anything can be
added to or taken away from it; if it can, the poet has obviously
neither fully realized his purpose nor achieved a complete fusion
of parts and whole.
7. Coleridge revolutionized the study of Shakespeare by
demonstrating that his plays are not the uneven products of an
inartistic genius but organic wholes in which each part functions
within the whole.
C. Unlike many theorists before him, Coleridge privileged symbols over
allegories, for he felt they came closer to the ideal of the organic whole.
1. In an allegory, an abstract notion (the inner struggle between
good and evil) is merely translated into a picture language (the
devil on one shoulder, the angel on the other).
2. There is no essential link between the idea and the picture: one
simply stands in for the other, with the picture remaining merely
that.
3. In a symbol, however, the abstract notion (the salvific blood of
Christ) is seen in and through they physical symbol (the
communion wine).
4. In the symbol, specific and general, temporal and eternal,
concrete and universal meet and fuse in an almost mystical,
incarnational way.
D. Coleridge, echoing Aristotle and Kant, uses the phrase “concrete
universal” to denote the highest forms of organic wholes and symbols.
1. To call a poem a concrete universal is to say that, within the
microcosm of the poem, a universal idea has been fully realized
in a concrete form.
2. Just as Christ, via the esemplastic power of the Incarnation,
became both fully Man and fully God, so the concrete universal
effects a full fusion of an abstract, non-physical idea and a
specific, physical image.
3. The mystical, reciprocal relationship that forms within such
poems is timeless; it is as if the concrete image descends and
dwells within the image.

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 John Keats
Negative Capability and the Egotistical Sublime

"....several things dovetailed in my mind, and at once it struck me, what quality went to
form a man of achievement especially in literature which Shakespeare possessed so
enormously—I mean negative capability, that is when man is capable of being in
uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason—"

—John Keats (1795-1821)

The Romantic poet John Keats formulated the phrase “Negative Capability” in a
letter to his brothers George and Thomas on 21 December 1817. In this letter he defined
his new concept of writing:

I mean negative capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties,

mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason— 61
61
Critical Theory Since Plato, p. 494.

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 It actually means 'being capable of eliminating one's own personality, in order to
enter vicariously into the heart and soul of another person—a quality Shakespeare
possessed so enormously, says Keats.

It looks, on the face of it, as if the kind of genius Keats is thinking about, simply cannot
make up his mind, and that is partly the case; but the reason he cannot make up his
mind is because his own identity is precarious, and he is continually being invaded by
the identies of other people. The person of fixed opinion, such as Wordsworth, enjoys,
or perhaps suffer from, 'egotistic sublime'. instead, they'd try and complicate, or explain
what couldn't be explained: truth, beauty, the holiness of the heart's affections,
imagination, love.

Whereas poets who possess negative capability are capable of entering the lives of
other beings and see the world from their perspectives, those possessing the egotistical
sublime would always mediate their visions of the world through their own strong,
dominant personalities.
Shakespeare had negative capability, but Wordsworth and Milton had none.
To link Wordsworth to the egotistical sublime is not to say that he is arrogant
or selfish, but that his personality is such that is both draws all things to
itself and colors all things by its perceptions.
Coleridge, too, noted that, even in his poetic studies of others, Wordsworth is
a spectator from without. In other words, Wordsworth had sympathy but
no empathy.
Keats’ desire to move out of himself is not so much a rejection of, as an antidote to,
the Romantic belief that things are as they are perceived.
The strong focus on the poet and his perceptions often leads to the Romantic
disease of over-self-consciousness: the poet thinks so much that he loses
his ability to feel and experience the world directly.
Romantic theory is a balancing act between the desire for an unmediated
vision of nature and an equal and opposite desire to shape nature in
accordance with the poet’s perceptions.
The anti-Romantic turn we will encounter in Module 5 will reject this struggle
in favor of a more impersonal, objective view of poetry that uses Keats’s
negative capability as springboard.
There is another vital aspect to negative capability, and this one offers a contrast to
Coleridgean theory.
The phrase appears briefly and enigmatically in a single letter of Keats.
According to Keats, poets like Shakespeare who possess negative capability
are “capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any
irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
They are able to rest of mysteries and paradoxes without needing to
reach after fixed answers or resolutions.

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 They are able, both philosophically and aesthetically, to suspend
their powers of judgment and reason and receive passively.
Such poets take such direct joy in the powers of the imagination
that they receive “as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an
Imogen.”
Coleridge, says Keats, on the other hand, could not remain content with half-
knowledge; he had to solve the mystery, resolve the paradox.
Coleridge was not content merely to receive passively; he sought an
active, shaping imagination.
Unlike Keats who worshipped the spirit of great art, Coleridge
worshipped a God who is the embodiment of the concrete
universal.
Whereas Keats is almost postmodern in his refusal to judge or
freeze truth, Coleridge offers a more traditional view of art as
revelation. Willing suspension of disbelief is something that an
audience has; Keats’s refusal to freeze or judge truth is a trait
the poet must have.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

“A Defense of Poetry”

Abstract

This chapter attempts an in-depth look at two of the unique and powerful arguments
that Shelley presents in his defense of the moral and social usefulness of poetry.

I. Shelley’s Defense of Poetry gathers together all the key Romantic theories.
A. He treats fully the Romantic privileging of imagination over reason.
1. In the 18th century, theorists celebrated analysis for its ability to
study, to calculate, and to discern the differences between
things.
2. Shelly the Romantic championed synthesis for its ability to shape
and color, to perceive value, and to discover and even create
similitude.
3. Shelley also turns Plato on his head by asserting that reason
(analysis) is to imagination (synthesis) as the shadow is to the
substance.
4. It is poetry that is most real, poetry that comes closest to the
infinite; science (reason) is a passing, temporary thing with no
integral unity.
5. “Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in
man.”

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 B. Shelley describes in detail the nature and ramifications of Romantic
inspiration.
1. The true poet is like an Aeolian harp: a small stringed instrument
that produces natural music when the wind blows through its
strings.
2. In like manner, inspiration blows through the poet, causing him
to create.
3. Though Shelley, like Wordsworth and Coleridge, does state that
the poet modulates the wind of inspiration, he nevertheless
presents the poet more as a passive recipient of imagination
than as an active artisan.
4. No poet can say, “I will compose poetry”; instead, only when the
unpredictable spirit of inspiration falls upon him can he create.
5. This, however, causes much angst, for inspiration leaves as
quickly as it arrives; the poet is like a “fading coal” that burns
out even as it burns.
6. If only we could hold on to that fire, we would be like gods, but
alas, its departure is as mysterious as its arrival.
C. Still, while it lasts, inspiration transforms the poet into a poet-prophet.
1. Like all the Romantics, Shelley exalts the poet as a sort of divine
conduit.
2. The poet transforms all that he perceives by bringing it into
harmony with beauty and the good, with “the eternal, the
infinite, and the one.”
3. He removes the twin veils of mystery and familiarity to reveal
Truth. Thus, Romantic poetry can be called apocalyptic.
4. He does so in solitude, far from the city, yet he is not alone; for
each poet contributes a stanza to the eternal poem that is still
being written.
5. Just as each poet-prophet is linked to this greater poem, so are
all the poets of a given age linked to a single, “all-penetrating
spirit.”
6. Shelly felt so strongly the influence of this unifying spirit which
he called zeitgeist.
7. Shelley saw himself and his fellow poets as trumpets of this
spirit.
II. Although not wholly original, he nevertheless incorporates into his Defense
three unique concepts.
A. Shelley’s Defense is not just an abstract apologia.
1. He wrote his Defense in direct response to Thomas Love
Peacock’s “The Four Ages of Poetry,” a satirical essay that argued
that the growth and progress of society was slowly rendering
poetry obsolete.

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 2. Shelly counters by arguing for the moral and social uses of
poetry.
B. “The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.”
1. Poetry, by awakening and enlarging the mind, both leaves us
open and receptive to beauty and love and enables us to move
out of ourselves.
2. It sensitizes us to the needs of others, allows us to put ourselves
in their place (empathy) and see the world from their
perspective (negative capability).
3. He cannot conceive what the moral state of our world would be
had Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton never lived—they are our
true moral teachers.
4. It is poetry that impels us to rise above base and selfish desires,
that inspires in us virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship.
C. Poetry is actually more useful and necessary in an age of progress.
1. At present, we have more political knowledge, more
philosophical ideas, more scientific facts and figures than we
know what to do with.
2. We have bitten off more than we can chew.
3. Discrete facts and ideas are of no use to us or to society until we
can arrange and conceive those facts in terms of higher laws and
ideals.
4. We need the creative faculty, the poetic imagination, to
synthesize this sea of discrete facts into something tangible,
knowable, human.
D. It is the poets who are the greatest creators and innovators of society.
1. Like Sidney, Shelley asserts that poets are the originators of
language, the inventors of the arts, the architects of law and
religion.
2. He goes beyond Sidney, however, when he ascribes to poets and
almost godlike status: they are an influence that “is moved not,
but moves.”
3. They are an apocalyptic force, ever purging and renewing our
words, our thoughts, our perceptions, and our dreams.
4. Poets are “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

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 The Poetics of W. B. Yeats in A Vision

Each time a student asks me to name someone who has fashioned a perfect
poetics, I unhesitatingly and quickly give out the name of Yeats.
The importance of William Butler Yeats as a major poet cannot be disputed. Even
during his lifetime, fellow Irishman James Joyce described Yeats as “the greatest poet
Ireland had produced and the greatest of contemporary English poets. 62 Richard Ellman
makes no bones about it: Yeats is the 20th century’s greatest poet.63
What outstanding talents did Yeats possess that stood him in good stead head
and shoulders above the rest of 20th century poets? The answer is poetics. And A Vision
is his poetics.
Let us first attempt to give a brief background of the honing of the sensibilities of
the poet. Later we shall take up his poetics.
Although Yeats produced his major works between the ages of fifty and seventy,
many of the sources of his materials, drawn from an earlier century (the 19 th), were
never changed. Indeed, it is difficult to appreciate the major poems, many of them
shrouded in Irish folklore and legend, without studying the early Yeats and the temper of
the times that contributed to the formation of his poetic sensibilities.

The Sligo Imprint

W. B. Yeats belonged to an Anglo-Irish family. As a boy, he had often sailed the
Sligo Bay and the waters of Northwestern Ireland. The country scenery, the 19 th century
62
Stanislaus Joyce, My Brother’s Keeper, p. 180.
63
Richard Ellman, Yeats: The Man and the Masks, vide back cover of the book.

148
air, the avenues of trees in mists, and the strange stories of old men on evenings under
the Celtic moon must have cut deep impressions on the boy, because he, as later poet,
would go back to these images long after he had left Sligo Bay.
Yeats’s father was a painter of the pre-Raphaelite tradition. He, too, must have
influenced the boy, because the son in fact held the brush before the pen. His father’s
studio impressed the boy so much that when he grew up and had saved a little money,
he bought himself a ruined Norman Castle in Galway with the intention of devoting his
life to painting. He called this castle “The Tower.”
Yeats did not shine as a student. He was badly educated in Dublin and in London,
and was academically unprepared to enter Trinity College. Formal education did not
interest him, and it contributed little in honing his poetic sensibilities. It was the summer
vacations in his grandparents’s home in Sligo County that fascinated him. There was
romance in these journeys.

Holidays in Sligo were eagerly anticipated: they added to the feeling of

not belonging to any world but his own. . . . Rathlin, the mist-covered Donegal
cliffs, men from Tory Island coming alongside with lobsters, talking Irish, and if it
was night, blowing on a burning sod to attract attention. . . . He began to climb
mountains, went sailing with local folk, listened to the tales of sailors and fisher-
boys, and rode the red pony to Rathbroughan to play with the Land Agent’s
children at sailing toy boats in the river there.64

Later, many of the images in his poetry would draw from the Sligo background.

Pre-Raphaelite Yeats

Before he wrote the major poems, Yeats wrote according to the dying pre-
Raphaelite tradition, his early poetry branching out into two main directions: the
artificial ballads based on Irish folklore and legend—

When I play with my fiddle in Dooney,

Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnest,
My brother in Mocharabuiee.65

—and the densely symbolic personal lyrics, often love poems.66 Notice the
hushed, sleepy tone brooding everywhere in the following poem:

Far off, most secret, and inviolable Rose,

Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those
Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre,
64
Norman A. Jeffares, W. B. Yeats: Man and Poet, p. 18.
65
W. B. Yeats, “The Fiddler of Dooney.” Collected Poems, p. 71.
66
Spender and Hall, p. 367.

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 Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir
And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep
Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep
Men have named beauty. The great leaves enfold
The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold
Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes
Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of the Elder rise
In Druid vapour and make the torches dim;
Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him
Who met land walking among the flaming dew
By a grey shore where the wind never blew.
And lost the world and Emer for a Kiss;
And him who drove the gods out of their liss,
And till a hundred morns and flowered red
Feasted, and wept the barrows of his dead;
And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown
And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown
Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods;
And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods,
And sought through lands and islands numberless years,
Until he found, with laughter and with tears,
A Woman of so shining loveliness
That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,
A little stolen tress. I, too, await
The hour by thy great wind of love and hate.
When shall the stars be blown about the sky?
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
Surely the hour has come, thy great wind blows,
Far-off most secret, and inviolable Rose?67

Poems in this category seem to have been placed in a closed Arcanum where a
symbolic rose is worshipped. The air in the Arcanum is heavy, the decoration over
elaborate, rich, and weird. The whole experience is intoxicating and uncanny, albeit
pleasant, like mists descending upon thick woods.68 The poems in this category
foreshadow the mystical aura of the later major works.

Natural Expression

Although Yeats continued writing personal lyrics, he eventually came up with the
belief that a poem must be a “personal utterance.”69

67
W. B. Yeats, “The Secret Rose.” Collected Poems, p. 67.
68
Spender and Hall, loc. cit.
69
Ibid., p. 364.

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 If I can be sincere and make my language natural, and without being
discursive . . . I shall . . . make my life interesting, be a great poet. 70

This is going to be so, because for Yeats the voice of the poet is the voice of the
man, and therefore that voice must possess no “artiness” about it.

We should write our thoughts in as nearly as possible the language we

thought them in, as though in a letter to an intimate friend. We should
not disguise them in any way; for our lives give them force. 71

Poetry is memorable speech, and speech came from the man. Therefore, the
poet’s poems were unique “personal utterances” which could not have been written by
anybody else. The paradox is that the more personal a poet became, the more the
poems would become “public speeches.”72 This, too, confirmed another of his poetic
theories: the poet eventually and inevitably became public only after he had become
private.73 It is probably another way of saying, “find your own voice first.” When Yeats
found his in Responsibilities (1914)—with a little help from Ezra Pound—the style
became drier and more concrete. There were no more Celtic Twilights.

The Background of A Vision

The Victorian Age was a paradoxical age. It was an age of material success, but it
was also an age which saw children wasting away in the coal mines. It was an age of
commercial prosperity, but it saw tubercular women coughing out blood in steaming
sweatshops. It was an age of science and technology, but it was an age that denied
education to all but the rich and influential. It was an age of prosperity and poverty, of
righteousness and hypocrisy, of splendor and squalor. Indeed, it was the best of times, it
was the worst of times.
All over Victorian England and Western Europe, young men of the “new thought”
began to question the materialistic, rationalistic universe painted by Darwin and
Lamarck. Both men offered little to western man but evidence of his own mediocrity.
The “new science” that they had introduced disproved all orthodox conceptions of
creation and had threatened every traditional mode of thinking. The young rebelled
against this kind of thinking. Yeats was one of them. At the end of the 19 th century, his
rejection of positivist science was so strong that he hated it with a “monkish hate.” 74 The
fact that he could not find the answers in Christianity made matters worse. And Victorian
religion of the Anglican type was just as bad. The old evangelicalism of the desiccated
Church provided nothing but dogmas and pat interpretations that over-simplified the
human predicament. To him, the priests were no worse than the scientists of the day in

70
Unterecker, p. 6.
71
Ibid., 9.
72
Spender and Hall, op. cit., p. 364.
73
Ibid.
74
Ibid., p. 6.

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perverting doctrines to suit their agendas. Priests were thwarting, instead of satisfying,
the true spiritual hunger of men.
Science had failed and religion had failed. Surely there was another way of
discovering the truth. Like the young Goethe, Yeats during this phase of his life was
“destitute of faith, yet terrified at skepticism,” a zealot in search of a creed.” 75

The Theosophical Influence

Because science was held suspect,76 and religion itself became demystified,77 a
new doctrine purporting to be an ancient one was being developed by a strange but
remarkable Russian lady who went by the name of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. The
movement called itself Theosophy.
A this time, Yeats had been reading Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, Mallarme,
Baudelaire, and Balzac in the dim hope of finding something in them, but he must have
felt like Keats’s “watcher of the skies” when he personally met Blavatsky in London. She
told him pointblank: “Man had never been an ape. Modern science is ancient thought
distorted, and modern religion ancient thought distorted.” 78 She attacked modern
Christianity, and accused the priesthood of engendering modern materialism, because
priests denied man the complexity of human experience.
Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. It appealed to him
immediately, because although it attacked materialist science, it used the “scientific
method” in its pursuit of the truth; although it repudiated atheism, it supported anti-
clericalism; and although it denounced modern man, it offered man the opportunity to
become god-like.79 Theosophy assured Yeats the validity of his anti-materialist, anti-
clerical misgivings. But most important, Theosophy accepted the realities of ghosts and
fairies. This time, he could incorporate all the fairy tales and folklores of his boyhood in
Sligo. Now he was equipped with the right weapons for his fight against materialism.
And now he was furnished with an occult tradition much more sensible and profound
than modern rationalist science and Christianity.
What precisely did Yeats find in Theosophy that attracted him to it? First of all,
the society made available to him the hidden side of things. One main reason why it was
founded was because Blavatsky and her group sought to penetrate the “unsolved
problems of science and psychology,” 80 Europe and America being at both extremes too
materialistic and too superstitious. Blavatsky proposed to reorient the West on the
teachings of Eastern Wisdom “in order to break the narrowness and rigidities of the
contemporary mental climate.”81
75
Ellman, p. 42.
76
George Bernard Shaw’s confidence in Lamarck’s contention that the giraffe had secured its long neck by
willing it was shared by a few.
77
Matthew Arnold’s pathetic assurances of the adaptability of Christianity had aroused little zeal.
78
Ellman, pp. 56-57.
79
The Theosophical Society Leaflet Number Two. Quezon City: The Theosophical Publishing House, n. d., p.
4
80
Ibid.
81
Ibid., 3.

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 Blavatsky’s contribution to modern thought is acknowledged by Indian author C.
Jinarajadasa, as “the first to build a bridge between religion, science, philosophy, and art,
and to construct that intellectual edifice in which thousands live today.” 82
Yeats himself would write of her:

A great, passionate nature, a sort of female Dr. Johnson, impressive, I

think to every man or woman who had themselves any richness . . .
almost always full of gaiety that, unlike the occasional joking of those
about her, was illogical and incalculable and yet always kindly and
tolerant.83

Blavatsky gave him access to her Isis Unveiled and to A. P. Sinnett’s Esoteric
Budhism.84 He also read Eliphas Levi’s History of Magic, and pored over these daily
because they gave him the ammunition to purify himself through meditation. On the
other hand, he simultaneously joined the Hermetic Students of the Golden Dawn in a
effort to quench his thirst for magic “through alchemical and psychic experiments” 85
which Theosophy had denied him.

Parfait Magicien des Lettres

Membership in the Golden Dawn was made available through his friend, Liddell
Mathers, later to become MacGregor Mathers, and finally MacGregor, translator of The
Kabbalah Unveiled. Yeats, who was seriously interested in magic, frequented the
Mathers house at Forrest Hill. The house became in his imagination “a romantic place.” 86
A word about “magic,” as Yeats perceived it: The word itself is derived from the
Persian “mag,” priest. The ancient Persian priests were called “Magi,” magicians. This
Magian cult of the Zoroastrian order became the nucleus of ancient occultism. Magic in
this sense meant “mastery of the occult forces of nature, a term indicating the existence
of such forces, and the possibility of mastery or control of them.” 87

The Problem of Obscurity and the Problem of Escapism

French Symbolism approximates the convictions laid out earlier above, because
symbolism affirmed that what was “reality” could not be found in the objective world,
which is just a reflection of the invisible world, but somewhere else. This was Platonism
revived, very well put by Yeats:

82
Ibid., 4.
83
Unterecker, p. 6.
84
“ It will be immediately seen that . . . only one [“d”] is found on the cover {of Sinnett’s book]. The basis
for this discrepancy lies in the Sanscrit root, Budh- to know, wisdom. The word Budha, means wisdom or
Vidya, divine knowledge.”—Sinnett’s Note to the Wizard Edition of Esoteric Budhism. Vide Bidliography.
85
Unterecker, p. 20.
86
Jeffares, p. 53.
87
William Walker Atkinson, pp. 63-64.

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 Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
Upon a ghostly paradigm of things.88

Plato taught that there were two worlds: the world of Becoming and the world of
Being. We perceive the world of Becoming through our senses, through “nature.” The
world of Being is the world of ideas, ideals, types, universals, and Forms. It is a
“paradigm” or pattern crudely reflected by things in the world of Becoming, a Form
(Plato’s term) which our senses cannot fully apprehend, hence “ghostly.” Thus nature is
like a foam, or “spume,” that plays upon an insensible pattern. 89
How did the Symbolists proceed in tapping the world of Being?
Yeats would answer this question by explaining not what the Symbolists did but
what they avoided. In reacting to Naturalism as being too specific, and Panassianism as
being too clear-cut, the French Symbolists rejected narration, description, and rhetoric
altogether. They differed from their Romantic forebears by avoiding the romantic traps
of sentimentality, didacticism, and direct statements. (Preminger, 836 ff.) Symbolist
poetry was poetry of indirection and of subtlety. The aim was toward indefiniteness of
language, with emphasis on connotation. The objective was not to declare, declaim,
depict, or transcribe, but merely to suggest the complexity and dilemma of human
experience. (Temple, 153)
Two counts were thrown against the Symbolists: that of obscurity and that of
escapism. The Symbolists admitted these consequences. They could not be helped. The
poet, withdrawing from the world in order to communicate “unique personal feelings,”
because he is expressing a private world, must necessarily be obscure and difficult.
(Brooks, Modern Poetry, 54) To arouse a response deeper than the realm of
consciousness, they used words for magical suggestiveness. The ideas, however, were
not delegated to the background. On the contrary, they believed that ideas were of
primary importance in poetry, except that they ought to be presented through symbols.
Intensity and complexity were to be achieved through syntax and images unified by one
main metaphor. A suggestive atmosphere pervades, as an inevitable consequence, for
one cannot pinpoint any definiteness in a symbolist poem.
Yeats wrote along this vein, and because he did so, he became heir apparent to
charges of obscurantism.

Kabbalistic Experiments and Studies

MacGregor made use of magical symbols and other paraphernalia in his

experiments. Yeats recalls the procedure:
He gave me a cardboard symbol and I closed my eyes. Sight
came slowly… imagined it. (Jeffares, 53)

88
W. B. Yeats. “Among School Children.” Collected Poems, pp. 212-214.
89
Cleanth Brooks, The Well-Wrought Urn.

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 Reconciling Blavatsky and MacGregor, Yeats let his mind swim in a flurry of
images, and the effect on his writing was such that his style became “more sensuous and
vivid.” (Jeffares, 53)
The following item, taken from the Ten Sephiroth by MacGregor, is an example of
the kind of Kabbalisitc material studied by Yeats during this period.
In their totality . . . Scandinavians. (Unterecker, 21-22)
The one great Tree was the Integral Adam, the Protogonos. (Later Neo-Platonists
would suggest a more coherent system than the one quoted above, but Yeats,
perennially in search of organic unity, would ignore them, as he poured deeper into the
symbolism of the Tree):
The tree which is mitigated (that is, the path of the Kingdom of . . .
good and evil). (Unterecker, 22)
Of what use were such studies? First of all, they gave Yeats a rich stock of
imagery from which to draw for the rest of his life. “Stocked with multiple, antithetical,
and secret meanings for trees, birds, roses, stars, and wells, Yeats delighted in
constructing puzzles which had not only clear over meanings but which could as well be
rightly interpreted in an almost unlimited number of ways.” (Brooks, Hidden God, 44)
Every symbol, every organ of the body had its correspondence in the stars. Therefore, all
occult symbols were attuned to the great universal law, and any interpretation of them
was “right.” The only danger was the tendency to oversimplify the meanings, to lay
things on the thin line of allegory. Following Aristotle, poetry, to Yeats, was mimesis, and
to imitate life was to reject oversimplifications. Simple, airtight interpretations carried no
universal convictions.

The New Myth

The esoteric readings proved to be both poetically useful and emotionally

satisfying. Henceforth, the mystical life was to become for him “the center of all that I do
and all that I think and all that I write.” (Jefferes, 22) This was going to be the first step
away from his agnostic father’s “intellectual leading strings.” (Jeffares, 22)
Studying and struggling to penetrate the secrets of the hidden world, his
obsession now was to search for a philosophy that may “prove to our logical capacity
that there is a transcendental portion of our being that is timeless and spaceless.”
(Brooks, Hidden God, 45)
Why did Yeats contrive the New Myth?
First of all, he felt that he was “robbed” of his religion. He wanted a system of
truth “that would leave my imagination free to create as it chose.” (Brooks, Modern
Poetry, 176) It was a search for a richer and more imaginative account of man’s total
experience which will provide continuity with the values and symbols of ancient
worship. He was looking for something more coherent than just a fairy tale, something
more objectively responsible to historical facts than mere subjective reveries.
As earlier stated, Christianity could not provide such an account, because it had
been denatured by Victorian compromises, and directly challenged by Darwin and
Huxley. Yeats himself compared the majority of bishops with bad writers as “being

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obviously atheists,” in the sense that as they tended to oversimplify the poetic
experience, they also denied the mystery of the human predicament, the missed the
drama of the human spirit. (Brooks, Modern Poetry, 174)
After his marriage to Georgie Hyde-Lees, both husband and wife lived for a while
in Ashdown Forest. Mrs. Yeats noticed that her husband was beset by personal worries.
Four days after their marriage, Mrs. Yeats tried to cheer up her husband by attempting
to fake automatic writing. To her astonishment, strange words, phrases, and sentences
started shaping up. The subjects were totally alien to her. Yeats, convinced that she had
tapped on something extraordinary, urged his wife to go on. They devoted some hours
to it daily. (Jeffares, 191) For almost a year, she had filled her notebooks with “spiritual
communications.” Yeats ceased to worry now, because he was engrossed in interpreting
the messages. After they left Ashdown Forest, Yeats wrote of his wife as “a perfect wife,
kind and unselfish. She has made my life serene and full of order.” (Jeffares, 192)
Later, Mrs. Yeats began to talk in her sleep. Yeats asked questions, codified, and
then arranged the answers. From the hundreds of notebooks, A Vision emerged.

THE LUNAR PARABLE

The publication of A Vision in 192590 marked the culmination of Yeats’s attempt

to find some system in which he could “believe.” Henceforth, A Vision would provide the
poems which he would write after his marriage with another dimension which they
otherwise lacked. William Van O’Connor explains:
By allowing . . . knowledge. (O’Connor, 237-38)
The final book became for him not reality, but a pattern for reality, “my lunar
parable.” (Unterecker, 24) The book is divided into three sections: historical,
psychological, and spiritual.
The explication of his thought relies heavily on the two diagrams below. Yeats’s
system bears close resemblance to Oswald Spengler’s cyclic theory of the seasons. But
while Spengler would talk about the springtime of a culture, the summer, etc., Yeats
would talk about the twenty-eight phases of the moon. The symbolism of his cyclic
theory, therefore, is drawn from the twenty-eight phases of the moon:

90
The first edition is dated 1925, but was published in January 1926.

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 Figure 1. Wheel of the 28 Phases of the Moon. From a woodcut by Edmund Dulac
(1937)

In the poem, “The Phases of the Moon,” (Collected Poems, 160-164) Yeats
suggests these interrelationships.
Twenty-and-eight the phases of the moon,
The full and the moon’s dark and all the crescents,
Twenty-and-eight, and yet but six-and-twenty
The cradles that a man must needs be rocked in:
For there’s no human life at the full or dark.
From the first crescent to the half, the dream
But summons to adventure and the man
Is always happy like a bird or a beast;
But while the moon is rounding towards the full
He follows whatever whim’s most difficult
Among whims not impossible, and though scarred,
As with the cat-o’nine-tails of the mind,
His body molded from within his body
Grows comelier. Eleven pass, and then
Athene takes Achilles by the hair,
Hector is in the dust, Nietzsche is born,
Because the hero’s crescent is the twelfth.
And yet, twice born, twice buried, grow he must,
Before the full moon, helpless as a worm,
The thirteenth moon but sets the soul at war
In its own being, and when that war’s begun
There is no muscle in the arm; and after,
Under the frenzy of the fourteenth moon,
The soul begins to tremble into stillness,

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 To die in the labyrinth of itself.

Basically, the premise is this: history runs through two-thousand-year cycles,

each cycle reversing the basic trend of the preceding cycle. (Brooks, Hidden God, 44) In
the figure above, Phases 1-8 symbolize the springtime of any culture, and 9-15 the
summer. Civilization reaches its zenith at Phase 15, and gradually declines from 16-28.
Yeats complicates his system by dividing the cycles into two sub-cycles of one thousand
odd years each.

Figure 2. Interpenetrating cones.

Yeats’s gyre looks like two superimposed cones facing outwards, the west part
being the solar, and its opposite the lunar. The figure above shows this pair of
interpenetrating cones. Here is Yeats’s explanation of a gyre in A Vision:
A line is a symbol of time . . . conflict. (A Vision, )
The gyres expand and contract, the zenith of each coinciding with the base of the
other. The cones symbolize the antithetical elements in man: the subjective and the
objective. Each man is to some extent subjective, though he may be predominantly
objective, and vice versa.
Civilization, too, has a simultaneous rise and decline of subjectivity and
objectivity. In the first half of each subcycle, the simultaneous rise and decline a-b and c-
d would take 500 years. In the same figure, a-b would be equivalent to Phases 1-15 of
the moon which is historically from 1 A.D. to 500 A.D., the Byzantine civilization under
Justinian the Great. In the same manner, c-d is equivalent to Phases 16-28, historically
from 500 A.D. to 1000 A. D., the Middle Ages. The symbolism is repeated in the second
half so that a-b and c-d which take 500 years to complete, and in which a-b is equivalent
to Phases 1-15, and equivalent in turn to the period from 1000 A. D. to 15 A. D., which is
the Renaissance, travels toward the 2000-year cycle which would reach its zenith in the
year 2000.
The poem, “The Second Coming” (Collected Poems, 184-85) is faithful to the
historical system set out in A Vision. The pattern of the double interpenetrating cones is
worked out more systematically with the inclusion of the paired metaphor of the circling
falconry of the first stanza.

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 Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worse
Are full of passionate intensity.
One way to see the poem’s relation to the historical system of A Vision is to
divide it into two parts: the first part says that great changes are taking place in the
world, and the poet says it in seven different ways. Lines 1-2 are about the metaphor of
falconry. Taken by themselves these lines are not recognizable as metaphor, but the next
line proclaims itself and the previous lines as metaphor, because as the gyre widens,
“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”
This image of the widening gyre is reminiscent of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Movement in Dante’s spiritual world is not in a straight line but in a spiral.

Figure 3. A Gyre

The Inferno, for example, relates how Dante and Vergil find themselves in the
eighth circle of Hell, seated on Geryon’s back. The image of Geryon is seen rising from
the dark pith with the body shaped like the path of a gyre upon a cone.91
Yeats, carefully vague, hints at the finality of it all. The falcon’s getting to where it
cannot hear the falconer is not literally an instance of things falling apart. In the real
world, there is revolution. So it is that the blood-dimmed tide of violence, or tide
dimmed by blood, is loosed unto our world to drown the “ceremony of innocence.”
Ceremony because only in ceremony are found the vestiges of the sort of order the
speaker knew, because only ceremony opposes all violence symbolized by the blood-
dimmed tide.

91
Vide Dante’s Vision of Hell in the Inferno, Canto xvii, any edition.

159
 That tide has moved: fanatical men have seized power—“the worst are full of
passionate intensity”—to rule a world in which the good have lacked all conviction.
Falcons ought not to get out of control, things ought not to fall apart. Anarchy and
bloodshed are abominable, and centers therefore ought to hold. Innocence is a good
thing and ought not to be drowned; the best ought not to lack conviction, and the worst
ought not to be dominated by passion.
The falcon may be interpreted as man himself losing touch with the real
Christianity of two millennia ago. The falconer can be the Christ Himself who began the
2000-year cycle.
The second part says that these great changes are comparable to the changes
brought about by the Advent, the Parousia. Why is the rough beast indifferent to the
desert birds who are “indignant?” Does this reveal that the Christ’s first coming was like
a nightmare to the people of 1 B. C.?
. . . but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle . . .
The poem closes with a question: what will these great changes bring?
What rough beast, its hour come round at last, “Slouches towards Bethlehem to
be born?”

A VISION: PSYCHOLOGICAL
Very early in his career, Yeats had already established for himself the following
set of psychological convictions:
1. That the borders of our minds are ever shifting, and that many minds can
flow into one another, as it were, and create or reveal a single mind, a single
energy.
2. That the borders of our memories are as shifting, and that or memories are a
part of one great memory, the memory of nature herself.
3. That this great mind and great memory can be evoked by symbols. (Wilson,
47-48)

The dangers of “personal utterance” were sentimentality, self-deception, and

self-pity. The problem was how to objectify the personal, to make it appear like
impersonal truth while at the same time retaining its emotive force. For this problem,
Yeats delved into materials compounded from popular psychology and mysticism, and
came up enumerating the faculties involved in his psychological system: the Will, the
Mask, the Creative Mind, and the Body of Fate; and divided these faculties into two sets,
each member of the pair being opposite the other.
The four faculties are not abstract categories of philosophy: the Will is anchored
in the memories of our present life; the Mask drawn from memories of “exaltations’ in
previous lives; the Creative Mind from memories of ideas displayed by actual men in

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their past lives or their spirits between lives; and the Body of Fate (derived from
without) is shaped from Daimon’s memory of events of past incarnations. (Wilson, 49)
Man is classified under the phase to which his Will belongs. The Mask is opposite
the phase. For example, if the Will is on Phase 17, the Mask is directly on its opposite,
which is Phase 3 (see Figure ). If the Will is on Phase 18, the Mask is on Phase 4, and so
on. The Creative Mind and the Body of Fate are paired in opposition in like manner.
This brings us back to a closer reading of “The Phases of the Moon.” In A Vision,
the first phase is said to be a state of complete plasticity, “when the body is completely
absorbed in its supernatural elements.” (A Vision, 38) Phase 15 is the full moon, the
phase of complete beauty. The Body of Fate of Phases 2 to 8, “From the first crescent to
the half” are “none except Monotony,” “Interest,” Search,” “Natural Law,” “Humanity,”
“Adventure that excites the individuality,” “The Beginning of Strength.” After the eighth
phase, man “follows whatever whim’s most difficult,” the phases becoming “Enforced”
from this point. Phase 9 is “Enforced Sensuality,” Phase 10 “Enforced Emotion,” etc. (A
Vision, 69)
Nietzsche is assigned to Phase 12; Baudelaire, Beardsley, and Dowson the 13 th, a
phase of complete sensuality which alone is responsible for their obsessions with
“metaphors, symbols, and images through which whatever is most morbid or strange is
defined.” (A Vision, 64)
Yeats, Giorgione, and many beautiful women fall “Under the frenzy of the
fourteenth moon” where “The soul begins to tremble into stillness,/ To die into the
labyrinth of itself.” (A Vision, 65)
The Phase of man, however, does not necessarily coincide with the historical
phase. Yeats, for example, assigns himself to Phase 17, but his historical phase is on
Phase 23. Shelley and Dante likewise belong to this phase. This interplay of tension is
intricate, for Yeats himself gave no tangible guide to follow as to how he would assign a
particular person to a particular phase. The point to consider is the fact that the
psychological system is founded on the conflict of opposites. Ultimate reality could be
found not in any one of them but in their interaction.
The implication of this Yeatsian conception is that man is really two men. There is
the “given” man, whether by birth or environment, and there is the significant man
“made” by the first. One proof of this split was the verbal distinction common in the 19 th
century between character and personality, the latter in some way the conscious
product of the former. This splitting up of the personality was dramatized later in
Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1885) and Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray (1890).
Stevenson’s distinction between the civilized Dr. Jekyll and the animalistic Mr. Hyde is
similar to that between Doran and his picture. Max Beerbohm’s Happy Hypocrite (1896)
takes up the same theme of a certain rake named Lord George Hell who falls in love with
an innocent girl and woos her behind the mask of a saint and under the name of Lord
George Heaven.
Not only in their works but in their personal lives was this movement working.
Oscar Wilde, because he was gay, led a double life. He felt the split acutely and founded
much of his art upon the tension between the pose and the real self, the importance of
being and of not being earnest. “The first duty in life,” he said, “is to assume a pose;

161
what the second is not one yet has found out.” (Ellman, 71) Lionel Johnson and Aubrey
Beardsley were poseurs. Even James Joyce, growing up in this atmosphere, felt
compelled to construct “the enigma of a manner.” (Ellman, 72) Walter Pater, who lived a
cloistered life at Oxford, wrote and rewrote his works so that his finished products
resembled as little as possible to the ones that had come initially into his head. (Ellman,
72) Mallarme fabricated a separate life from perverse syntax and verbal subtlety
divorced from common speech. Paul Valery’s Monsieur Teste and Madame Teste (the
former a stylist, mathematician, and symbolist; and the latter the sociable,
commonplace wife who understood him hardly at all) were easily recognizable as the
two parts of Valery’s own mind.
Now we may understand the prevalence at this period of the pseudonym, for the
pseudonym symbolized the duality which resulted from the dissociation of the
personality. Many of Yeats’s friends adopted pseudonyms: W. K. Magee changed his
Irish-sounding name to the more euphonic English-sounding John Eglinton; Oscar Wilde,
on leaving England, adopted the name Sebastian Melmoth in order to eliminate
“amiable, irrepressible Oscar” completely; William Sharp became Fiona Macleod, and so
did he fully assume the personality of a woman that he wrote under her name books in
a style different from his own, wrote in a feminine handwriting, and almost collapsed
under the strain of a double life; and of course George Russell, whose AE is derived from
Aeon, the name of the heavenly man, a state to which he aspired. (Ellman, 75) George
Bernard Shaw was in no way exempted from this movement, and even if he did not
assume a pseudonym, he approached the matter in another way. In his preface to an
early novel, Immaturity, he said that he was too shy to accept invitations that he had to
hide timidity under an arrogant pose. (Ellman, 75)
Interestingly, Yeats said that the purpose of the Mask was to make known one’s
real self. Reality was not to be found in the “given” me nor in the “made” me but in the
product born out of their struggle. Extroverts must flee their masks, but introverts must
choose their ideal opposites. In trying to become those impossible other selves, the
result is the dramatic tension from which art surfaces. Yeats puts it down for himself and
for all other artists:
Only the greatest obstacle that can be contemplated without despair rouses the
will to full intensity. (Unterecker, 18)
This is so because
“I take pleasure alone in those verses where it seems to me I have found
something hard and cold, some articulation of the Image, which is the opposite
of all that I am in my daily life.” (Unterecker, 18)
Yeats’s inclination to pose before the world as somebody different from what he
was, to hide his secret self, this sense of a bifurcated self, was not unique. Many of his
more sensitive contemporaries shared it, and if we think of the tendency as a general
one, we can avoid regarding Yeats as an anomaly: he merely systematized the
phenomenon in A Vision.

A VISION: SPRITUAL

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 Although Yeats achieved unity of image in the Mask, the faculties involved in his
psychological system were not enough to make sense of what to him seemed a complex
and senseless world. Therefore, returning to magic92 again, he sought to locate the
“secret pattern” he so badly needed.
Another Yeatsian theory of poetic inspiration surfaced: Man, apart from being
influenced by the dead (and thereby being enabled to partake in Anima Mundi) may also
be influenced by the Daemon.93
The soul after the death of the physical body goes through a series of cycles until
it reaches a state of beatitude. If the cycle of human rebirths is not finished, the soul
receives the cup of Lethe and is reborn. This belief of Yeats owes much to his readings in
Platonism. He also held that the dead could communicate with the living under special
conditions. A passage from his essay, “Anima Mundi,” is enlightening at this point:
There are two realities: the terrestrial and the condition of fire. All power is from
the terrestrial condition, for there all opposites meet and there only is the
extreme of choice possible, full freedom. And there is
where the heterogenous is, and evil, for evil is the strain of one upon another of
opposites; but in the condition of fire is all music and all rest. (Brooks, Modern
Poetry, 191)
In the condition of fire, the soul “puts on the rhythmic or spiritual body or
luminous body and contemplates all the events of its memory and every possible
impulse in an eternal possession of itself in one single moment.” (Brooks, Modern
Poetry, 191)
The numerous gyrations the soul has to undergo, from the sensual/physical
world to the spiritual world, until it reaches the state of purification, is called the
Purgatorial Dance. “Sailing to Byzantium” illustrates this.
Byzantium on the Bosporus is the ancient city which was made the capital of the
Roman Empire in 330 A.D. The Emperor Constantine the Great named it after himself
during the time when Rome was being sacked by the barbarians, and called it the new
Rome.
The choice of Byzantium is explained by Yeats: in the Lunar Parable, the zenith of
Byzantine art is expected to reach dead center in the year 2000. Others have interpreted
it differently. R. P. Blackmur presents Byzantium as the heaven of man’s mind, and
Cleanth Brooks the heaven of man’s imagination. (Brooks, Modern Poetry, 189) Yeats
gives his own reason:
I think if I could be given a month of Antiquity and leave to spend it where
I chose, I would spend it in Byzantium a little before Justinian opened St. Sophia
and closed the Academy of Plato. I think I could find in some wine-shop some
philosophical worker in mosaic who could answer all my questions, the
supernatural descending nearer to him than to Plotinus even, for the pride of his
delicate skill would make what was an instrument of power to princess and

92
Yeats had always believed in the evidence of the invisible world as an active spiritual plane, and he
believed further that he had only to tap its resources.
93
The Daemon in Greek Mythology is any one of the secondary divinities ranking between gods and men.

163
 clerics, a murderous madness in the mob, show as a lovely flexible presence like
that of a perfect human body.
I think that in early Byzantium, maybe never before or since in recorded
history, religious, aesthetic and practical life were one, that architect and
artificers—though not, it may be, poets, for language had been the instrument of
controversy and must have grown abstract—spoke to the multitude and the few
alike. The painter, the mosaic worker, the worker in gold and silver, the
illuminator of Sacred Books, were almost impersonal, almost perhaps without
the consciousness of individual design, absorbed in their subjective matter and
that of the vision of a whole people. They could copy out of gold Gospel books
those pictures that seemed as sacred as the text, and yet seemed the world of
one, that made building, picture, pattern, metal-work of rail and lamp, seem but
a single image.
All about is an incredible splendor like that which we see pass under our
closed eyelids as we lie between sleep and waking, not representation of a living
world but the dream of a somnambulist. Even the drilled pupil of the eye, when
the drill is in the hand of some Byzantine worker in ivory, undergoes a
somnambulistic change, for its deep mechanical circle, where all else is
rhythmical and flowing, give to Saint or Angel a look of some great bird staring at
a miracle.94

Sailing to Byzantium

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress.
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

94
A Vision, pp. 191 ff.

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 O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.95

The poem is concerned with the terrestrial condition. The “That” in the first line
is not Byzantium but Ireland, the poet’s country, where the young, charmed by things of
the senses, are too blind to look beyond physicality to feel the subtleties of intellection,
the preoccupation of old men. One remembers the lines from another Yeatsian poem on
the subject of youth and old age:

Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young

We loved each other and were ignorant.96

The poet feels the distress of growing old. He looks at Ireland, as it celebrates
decaying bodies. The real birds, unlike the golden bird, sing to the body only, thus
distracting the young from the “Monuments of unaging intellect,” the really essential
things in life.
An old man is trifling, worthless, and to dare to sing even more pathetic, because
to the sensuous world he would only appear ridiculous. Therefore he comes to terms
with his lot, rejects the corruptible element, and accepts intellection. Byzantium is the
city for those whose sensual passions have been burned out by old age. The poet must
sing, then, not mortal songs of passion and of love, but hymns of the spirit. The soul
must “clap its hands” and sing louder than the flesh if it is to awake the fire-enwrapped
sages who, like the mythical phoenix bird, must be roused from the ashes of their “holy
fire,” “perne in a gyre,” and take him “Into the artifice of eternity,” the poet’s eternity.
He would therefore sail to this world.
Finally, “out of nature” at last, the soul strives for greater heights, trying to
prolong itself as long as possible in the higher realms. It would refuse to drink the Cup of
95
Collected Poems, p. 191.
96
“After Long Silence,” Collected Poems, p. 260.

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Lethe and drown itself once more in the River of Oblivion, and be born again. It would
rather be the permanent golden bird itself, immortal, beyond decay, unlike the real birds
of Ireland which are corruptible and must themselves die. The last stanza of the poem is
the poet’s acceptance of the incorruptible.

Byzantium

The unpurged images of day recede;

The Emperor’s drunken soldiery are abed;
Knight resonance recedes, night-walkers’ song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that a man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

Before me floats an image, man or shade,

Shade more than man, more image than a shade,
For Hades’ bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,

More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the star-lit golden bough,
Can like cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.

At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement flit

Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.

Astraddle on the dolphin’s mire and blood,

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 Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood,
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles on the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolpin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.97

The first stanza, like the first stanza of “Sailing to Byzantium,” talks about the
terrestrial condition being left behind, as the “unpurged images” of the world fade out
of view. Unlike the previous poem, however, the order of events at the moment of
transition is reversed. We are confronted first by the apparition of the walking mummy,
the golden bird, the purgatorial flames, and later, the spirits.
It is midnight in Byzantium. The first gong of midnight wafting from the cathedral
hushes the last night-walker’s song, and the streets are not emptied of drunkards.
There are two ways of looking at lines five to eight: the dome stands for
perfection. Man is far from being perfect because he is helplessly imprisoned within the
confines of his vacillations. The gyres have determined his nature—that of conflicts
between his subjective and objective emotions. Unlike the dome, man is unfinished. He
is constantly being pulled from side to side by the “fury and the mire of human veins.”
The dome, standing for purity and coherence, “disdains” incoherent man.
When the stars are seen clearly, the implication is that there must be no moon.
This is the dark phase of the moon, which is Phase One. The “moonlit dome” is the full
moon, Phase Fifteen. Phases One and Fifteen symbolize complete objectivity and
complete subjectivity, respectively, and therefore no human life is possible in either
extreme phases, because man is a mixture of both objective and subjective elements.
Man is “mere complexities” compare with the purity of Phases One and Fifteen; that is
why he is disdained.
The stalking mummy in the second stanza is twice refined from flesh: “Shade
more than man, more image than a shade.” The image of the bobbin suggests the
purified spirit, formerly like our present state, with a physical body, but now already
unwound by numerous human incarnations so that at last it is freed from drinking the
Cup of Lethe. The “superhuman” being has neither breath nor moisture in its mouth
because these are the properties of the physical body. To those ready for the Final
Dance, this is the force which would animate the weary souls gyrating on the “dancing
floor.” It may now free them from the round of metempsychosis.
Whether or not Yeats actually believed in the visions and communications in his
system is inconsequential, for what he was seeking was “world view” whose object was
“imaginative contemplation.”98 “Belief” was a different sort of thing, for when asked of A
Vision as to whether or not he actually believed in his system, he would answer by
asking in turn if the word “belief” as we used it belonged to our times.99
97
Collected Poems, pp. 243-44.
98
Cleanth Brooks, Modern Poetry and the Tradition, p. 202.
99
Ibid.

167
 Until the turn of the 20th century, Yeats lived in the dream-like world of the
Victorian Twilight, as evidenced by some of the poems which bear the hang-overs of the
19th century. Although this temperament had led him to indecisions, he also held fast to
some convictions, one of them being the problem of belief. To gain a better definition of
belief, as Yeats understood it, one has only to examine closely at the manner he had
written his poems, a method which is not unlike those of Blake or Shelley, or even of
Joseph Conrad:

If you suspend the critical faculty, I have discovered either as the result of
training, or, if you have the gift, by passing into a slight trance, images pass
rapidly before you. If you can suspend also desire, and let them form at their own
will, your absorption becomes even more complete and they are clearer in color,
more precise in articulation, and you and they begin to move in what seems a
powerful light. But the images pass before you linked by certain associations, and
indeed in the first instance you have called them up by their association with
traditional forms and sounds. You have discovered how, if you can but suspend
will and intellect, to bring up from the subconscious anything you already possess
a fragment of. Those who follow the old rule keep their bodies still and their
minds awake and clear, dreading especially any confusion between the images of
the mind and the objects of sense; they seek to become, as it were, polished
mirrors.100

This method almost led him at one time to believe that the dream-world was
more
real than the objective world. It was in this dream-world where the images from Anima
Mundi swam in abundance. He obtained such images in this manner:

I had found that after evocation my sleep became at moments full of light and
form, all that I had failed to find while awake; and I elaborated symbols of
natural objects that I might give myself dreams during sleep, or rather visions, for
they had none of the confusion of dreams, by laying upon my pillow or beside my
bed certain flowers or leaves. Even today, after twenty years, the exaltations and
the messages that came to me from bits of hawthorn or some other plant seem
of all moments of my life the happiest and the wisest. After a time perhaps the
novelty wearing off the symbol lost its power, or because my work at the Irish
Theatre became too exciting, my sleep lost its responsiveness. I had fellow-
scholars, and now it was I and they who made some discovery. Before the mind’s
eye, whether in sleep or in waking, came images that one was to discover
presently in some book one had never read, and after looking in vain for
explanation to the current theory of forgotten personal memory, I came to
believe in a great memory passing on from generation to generation.101
100
Yeats, Essays 1931-1936, p. 508.
101
Ibid.

168
 William Butler Yeats, like Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and even Albert Einstein in his
search for a unified field theory, attempted at a seemingly impossible synthesis in A
Vision—to unify art and life into one immense, achieved form, which is boundless yet
logical, complex and organic at the same time; the unity of culture and the unity of
Image: Leda and the Swan, the valley of flowers, the sad shepherd, the cloak, the boat,
the pair of shoes, the little Indian temple in the Golden Age, the peacock, the Stamper of
the skies, the falling leaves, the golden apples of the sun, the silver apples of the moon,
the Rose, the white birds, the fish and the silver trout, the pale brows, the polar dragon,
the hazel tree, the crooked plough, the Great Archer, the arrow, the withering of the
boughs, the green helmet, the great Olympus, the mask, the grey rock and the spade,
Eunuchs running through Hell, the Door of Death and the Door of Birth, the windy cap,
the hour before dawn and the dawn, the witch, the mountain tomb, Father Rosicross
sleeping in his tomb, the child dancing in the wind, the Magus, the dolls and coats,
swans and the rounded towers of Babylon, the fishermen, the hawk, the phoenix and
the drunkard, the squirrel and the worm, the bridge and the cat, Byzantium and the
Cormack’s ruined house, Helen and the burning of Troy, the Tower, the Sun and the
Moon in March, the burning house, the cave, the thorn tree and the well, the eagle and
the heron, the sea-gull and the hawk, the blind man and the unicorn, the blind man and
the poet (traditional images which he certified and validated by their alignment with his
life and experiences, resulting in a particular vital quality of multiple and enriched
recurrences and convergence of images)—and, like Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Einstein,
did not succeed, as no mortal has yet succeeded, A Vision served its purpose as he had
intended: being a last act of defence against the chaos of the world.102

Epilogue

Every time I am told to conform to mediocrity of the academic jargon so faddist

these days, I cannot help feeling like Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, who
when the monkeys told him “how great and wise and strong” they were, and how
foolish he was to wish to leave them, was told: “We are great. We are free. We are
wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in the jungle! We all say so, and so it
must be true.”
“This is true,” the monkeys would all shout together, “we all say so.” 103

102
Unterecker, op. cit., p. 43.
103
Rudyard Kipling. The Jungle Book. Harper Collins, 1894, p. 27

169
 Appendix A

The Euclidean Poetry of Alexander Pope

Abstract
I intend to introduce a “geometric” reading of Alexander Pope. To demonstrate this, I
shall put him side by side with Euclid, the ancient geometrician. My purpose in this
approach is to attempt to open up one more corridor in poetry interpretation. The corpus
of the paper will focus on Pope’s analytic mastery of the craft of poetry that is nothing
short of the precision of the mathematician. Euclid is chosen because in temperament
and in world-view, he appears to be Pope’s counterpart. Euclid is the Pope of geometry:
his flat, two-dimensional, static geometry is to Pope’s closed, end-stopped heroic
couplet. Although both Pope and Euclid belong to dusty, unborrowed books in the library,
a different reading may not only prove that they cannot be ignored, but the attempt
itself may broaden our critical horizons because of the foundations they have established
in poetry and geometry.
Tags: confinement, Euclidean geometry, parallelism and antithesis, sequentiality, exact
language, heroic couplet, phonetic engineering

ALEXANDER POPE’s analytical hold on his poetry was nothing short of the precision of
the geometrician. His concern for ordonance (a word he coined from the Latin ordo,
ordinis, a series, a line, a row, an order) was a technical, not a literary, issue. There is
none of the open-ended garrulity of Free Verse in Pope. He wove his words with
mathematical exactness, as “exactly” as a geometrician would set his lines in order. His
words are precise, technical—and “dry.”
Pope and Euclid were of the same temperament, except that Pope wrestled with
words and Euclid wrestled with space relationships. If Pope were the Euclid of poetry,
Euclid is the Pope of geometry. To understand Pope is to understand the literary
counterpart of the progression from flat-surface geometry to the concept of the three
right angled triangles on a sphere.
Let me tell you now everything I know about Euclid’s life.
Nothing.

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 Like Pope, all we know about Euclid is the fact that his work was his life, and his life his
work. Finding neither time nor inclination to socialize, the only biographical information
we have of him is his having flourished in Alexandria during the reign of the first Ptolemy
(306-283 BCE), and we know this bit of information only because he is mentioned by
Archimedes who was born just before the end of Ptolemy Soter’s reign. 104
Plato, of course, is an obvious influence, as shown in the manner in which Euclid
would arrive at postulates, although Euclid himself does not mention anything about
philosophy. But, surprisingly, Euclid does not mention anything on the nature of the
objects of mathematics either.
Aristotle is another obvious influence, as evidenced by the logical structure of
Euclid's work which reflects the views of Aristotle on definitions, basic assumptions,
proofs, and structures of proved propositions—key components of Euclid's Elements.
Here’s a very brief sketch of these fourfold components:
First, Euclid's basic assumptions are of two types: (1) Axioms are shared by all
sciences; and (2) postulates pertain just to the particular subject.
Second, Euclid's definitions show how various terms are to be used. They do not
assert the existence of the objects defined.
Third, any statement that is proved must be proved by an argument. 105
Lastly, diagrams play a crucial role in understanding propositions and their
corresponding proofs.

Euclid is credited with the founding of a school in Alexandria where, according to the
historian Pappus, Apollonius of Perga “spent a long time with the pupils of Euclid.” 106 The
proverbial story of Euclid’s reply to Ptolemy that there is no royal road in geometry
brings to mind a man who, like Pope, cared little for royal patronage. Pope, in fact,
repudiated “fulsome Dedicators,”107 those whose dedications were little more than
servile appeals for patronage. As Alexander Beljame says, “Pope was the first man of
letters to achieve financial independence as a result of the sale of his work through
publishers.”108 Like Euclid, he was beholden to no one except his work.

104
Edward A. Marziarz and Thomas Greenwood. “Euclid and the Elements,” page 233.
105
The statement means a sequence of logically linked statements where for each
statement there is a reason, and that reason can be a definition, an axiom, a postulate, or a
previously proved proposition.

106
Ibid., 233-4.
107
The quotation is from An Essay on Criticism (lines 592-595):
Leave dang’rous Truths to unsuccessful Satyrs,
And Flattery to fulsome Dedicators,
Who, when they Praise, the World believes no more,
Than when they promise to give Scribling o’er.
108
This piece of information is taken from Alexandre Beljame’s Le public et les Homnes de Letres en
Angleterre, 1883 by E. Audra and Aubrey Williams and put in as footnote in their book Alexander Pope:
Pastoral Poetry and An Essay on Criticism. Vide Bibliography.

171
 Euclid was very much like Pope: mathematics was his life, and his life mathematics.
He cared little for self-aggrandizement. He did not even call his treatise geometry, but
described it simply as Elements.109
Euclid’s Elements, however, was so comprehensive yet inclusive that it displaced
all the earlier works on the elements of geometry, including that of Hippocrates of Chios.

Pope was like Euclid: he ate, slept, breathed, and drank poetry. If he had not been a
poet, he would have been forgotten, because without poetry, he was nobody—a
description that prompted Samuel Johnson to say, “of what could he be proud but of his
poetry?” (Warren, 43)—suggesting that apart from his poetry, Pope was nothing.
Jonathan Swift would later add his complaint that Pope was never at leisure for
conversation, because he had always “some poetical scheme in his head.” (Warren, 43)
When it came to self-discipline, Pope is the compleat role model. It is recorded how
Pope would sternly require his house helps to set his writing box upon his bed every
morning before he arose. Many a helper would be called from her bed more than four
times on winter evenings to supply him with paper lest he should lose a thought. A
good poet needs “time, diligence, and doing something every day,” he wrote. “Nulla dies
sine linea.” (Warren, 45)
Both Pope the poet and Euclid the geometrician took their work seriously. Oddly, they
shared the same style in “subduing” their craft. Euclid, for example, did not originate
geometry, but it was he who perfected the theorems of Eudoxus and Theaetetus,
bringing to irrefragable demonstration the things which were only somewhat loosely
proved by his predecessors. Pope did not originate the couplet, but it was he who
developed it to such precision that caused it to be well adapted to a number of
rhetorical devices such as paradox, irony, zeugma, syllepsis, and parison.
Pope could well have been defining congruencies in space. His censorious attitude
towards the imprecise was nothing short of acerb. He would not tolerate sloppiness. It
was not acceptable to him for poetry to be “crabbed, rough, and ill-proportioned.”
(Rogers, 10) A distinct professional competence is required, a solid control of language,
as precise and as exact as mathematics. Note the “exact” distinctions he draws between
Waller and Dryden, Racine and Corneille, Shakespeare and Otway:

Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join

The varying verse, the full resounding line,

109
Heath, Sir Thomas Heath (Translator). The Thirteen Books of Euclid’s Elements, page
5.

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 The long majestic march and energy divine.
Tho’ still some traces of our rustic vein
And splay-foot verse, remain’d, and will remain.
Late, very late, correctness grew our care,
When tir’d nation breath’d from civil war.
Exact Racine, and Croneille’s noble fire
Show’d us that France had something to admire.
Not but the Tragic spirit was our own,
And full of Shakespeare, fair in Otway shone;
But Otway fail’d to polish or refine,
And fluent Shakespeare scarse effac’d a line.110

What is suggested here is that Pope admired the “exact” language of the French
dramatists, and at the same time bewailed the irregular, unpolished beauties of
Shakespeare and Otway. We are not comfortable that a poet would put a high premium
on exactness. Exactness is a product of dry, technical skill, and has little to do with the
imaginative, creative faculties. We are even more disturbed to find Shakespeare himself
(and later Milton) included in Pope’s “black list” of “inexact” poets. The tendency is to
dismiss Pope as a stiff, limited, cold, and narrow creature, more critical than creative,
more mechanical than imaginative—“a little Aesopic sort of animal.” 111
For all our objections to Pope’s “odd ambition,” (Rogers, 9) to emphasize correctness,
preciseness, and exactness, his “crusade” bore good fruits. Pope devoted his entire life
mastering only one form: the closed, end-stopped, heroic couplet. He perfected it to
such an extent that because of its underlying symmetry, parallelism, and antithesis, it
remained firmly structured, like Euclid’s parallel axiom that causes ideas to fall into
pairings without any effort on the part of the poet.
One happy consequence of this discipline is the sequential nature of his poetry.

On this Foundation Fame’s high Temple stands;

Stupendous Pile! not rear’d by mortal Hands.
Or elder Babylon, its Frame excell’d.
Four Faces had the Dome, and ev’ry Face
Of various Structure, but of equal Grace.
Four brazen Gates, on Columns lifted high,
Salute the diff’rent Quarters of the Sky.
Here fabled Chiefs in darker Ages born,
Or Worthys old, whom Arms or Arts adorn,
Who Cities rais’d, or tam’d a monstrous Race;
The Walls in venerable Order grace:
Heroes in animated Marble frown,
110
This is taken from Imitations of Horace, Epistle 11, lines 265-281. In Alexander Pope: Imitations of
Horace. (Edited by John Butt) Vide Bibliography.
111
Quoted by W. H. Auden in “Alexander Pope.” In Alexander Pope (Edited by F. W. Bateson and N. A.
Joukovsky), p. 328. Vide Bibliography.

173
 And Legislators seem to think in Stone.112

Notice how the ideas appear to be forming a queue to gain admittance to the poem.
There is no struggle, no convoluted syntax. The poet makes his moves scientifically, and
with sure steps: he does not make a move unless he knows what the next step is going
to be. This sequentiality ofstructure accounts for this built-in security, this perspicuity.
Obviously, this is no mean feat.
Another happy achievement is the poetic neutrality of the heroic couplet. Because
the form is unassuming and inconspicuous, it could weave between sustained narrative
and epitaph with ease. There is no need for elaborate, formal preparations. The form
took care of that. In Windsor-Forest, for example, we find all these: a topographical
piece, a political panegyric, an economic forecast, a lyrical interlude, an Ovidian
setpiece, etc. (Rogers, 12) The poet could change gears easily because the poem is in
“neutral.”
Pope’s heroic couplet, by its very strucrure, is adaptable to a number of rhetorical
devices. According to W. K. Wimsatt, “the abstract logic of parallel and antithesis is
complicated and offset by rhetorical figures and rhyme.” (Rogers, 13) This is illustrated in
the following:

Then flash’d the living Lightning from her Eyes,

And Screams of Horror rend th’ affrighted Skies.
Not louder Shrieks to pitying Heav’n are cast.
When Husband or when Lap-dogs breathe their last,
Or when rich China Vessels, fall’n from high,
In glitt’ring Dust and painted Fragments lie.113

There is strong but fine satire in the second couplet with zeugma in the fourth line.
But the rime words are echoes of the sense of confusion dramatized by a mock-heroic
approach. Even the primness of the appearance suits the ironist’s purpose. Predictably,
everything falls into mathematical consistency.
Pope’s poetry, obviously, is not for dreamy-eyed readers. One has to be active and
awake all the time. The precision is not meant for ornament but to embody all the
intellectual commitment required by the poem. The couplet becomes a machine for
thinking alertly, an arena where one could display one’s skills in mastering the tools of
the art.
Pope’s precision shows in the minute delicacy of his verse movements. He explored
even the tiniest detail. There are no lose-knit metrical schemes. Within twenty syllables,
he could deploy a whole range of artifices. Within twenty syllables, he could contrive
ceaseless variations in order to produce rhythm, tone, and syntax—to surprise and
delight. The secret lay in his scientific, precise frame of mind. Everything just had to fall
112
From The Temple of Fame, lines 61-74. In The Poems of Alexander Pope (Edited by John Butt). Vide
Bibliography.
113
The Rape of the Lock, III, lines 155-160. In Alexander Pope: Selected Works (Edited by Louis
Kronenberger). Vide Bibliography.

174
into place. No extraneous word exists. In the words of I. Ehrenpeis, Pope made the
couplet “ a piece of phonetic engineering.” (Rogers, 13)

He look’d, and saw a sable Sorc’rer rise,

Swift to whose hand a winged volume flies;
All sudden, Gorgons hiss, and Dragons glare,
And tee-horn’d fiends and Giants rush to war.
Hell rises, Heav’n descends, and dance on Earth,
Gods, imps and monsters, music, rage and mirth,
A fire, a jig, a battle, and a ball,
Till one wide Conflagration swallows all.114

Note how the pace quickens or slows down at the will of the poet (line 6 has six
stresses, while line 7 has only four). Notice also the continuous interplay between the
precise metrical pattern and the syntax with its catalogues, suspensions, alliterative
effects, etc.

FOR ALL THE PRECISENESS, however, Pope’s world was, like Euclid’s a flat world. Because
he cared little for the outside world, his poetry, albeit “exact,” suffers from the
symptoms of long confinement. Although Pope worked well under this limitation, the
poetry still shows the stiffness and the narrowness of a person too long preoccupied
with only two things: himself and his craft. Pope is no model for versatility. He had
limited himself to a single verse form—and a limit of interests. He was not interested in
nature, in love, in visions. (Auden, 330) His poetry is the restrained world of a stuffy
drawing room.
It is interesting to draw parallels between Pope the neoclassic and Euclid the classic in
relation to this idea of “confinement.” Euclid’s idealizations, abstracted from experience,
for example, formed a rigid structure of such durability that, when subsequent sensory
experience contradicted it, the tendency was to question the validity of the sensory data
instead of the validity of the idealized abstractions. Once such set of idealized
abstractions were erected in the mind, we superimpose it upon all subsequent actual
and projected data, whether it fitted or not. This is the reason why Euclidean geometry,
the content of most elementary geometry books, was not expanded for almost two
millennia.
Take Theorem Fourteen, for example. According to Euclid, regardless of the shape or
size of any triangle, the sum of the three angles is always equal to a straight angle (180
degrees). Triangles are classified according to their sides. It is a basic theorem of Euclid
that the sum of the angles of any of the triangles below is equal to 180 degrees.

114
The Dunciad, A, III, lines 229-236. In Alexander Pope: The Dunciad (Edited by James Sutherland), pp.
176-177. Vide Bibliography.

175
 But is this the case in actuality? Euclid’s geometry is a two-dimensional, flat-world
geometry. Although precise on paper, it is not verifiable in the three-dimensional world
we live in. For example, if one surveyed a very large triangle and measured the angles
that formed it, she would come out with a measurement of more than 180 degrees.
How do we prove this? Simply by drawing an imaginary triangle on the globe with the
top at the North Pole and the base at the equator.

176
 The two lines that intersect the North Pole will form a right angle, but both sides of
the triangle, upon intersecting the equator will also form right angles! So instead of the
180 degrees, we have a triangle that contains three right angles, or 270 degrees.
According to Euclid’s Theorem Fourteen this is not possible, but here it is. In a word, the
three-dimensional world does not follow Euclid’s two-dimensional world, however
precise the latter may appear on paper.
One of the scientists to first question the validity of Euclid’s computations was Albert
Einstein. One of Euclid’s rules for the circle, for example, says that the area of a circular
ring equals the area of the outside circle minus the area of the inside circle, or A=πR 2 –
πr2, where R = the radius of the larger circle and r = the radius of the smaller circle.
Here is a sample problem to illustrate this: In a circular ring, the outside diameter is,
let us say, 8” and the inside diameter is 6”. Problem: what is the area of a cross section of
the ring?

Our elementary geometry solution would read this way:

177
A=

This is the “correct,” the “precise” formulation according to the flat, static world of
Euclid. But the world is neither flat nor static. The figure below is my attempt to
represent an inertial coordinate system:

Observe the diagram, paying attention to the two concentric circles again. Now
imagine the circle with the small radius and the one with the large radius revolving
around a common point in the center. Imagine that we are watching these revolving
circles from an inertial coordinate system.115 Over the revolving circles, let us draw two
identical concentric circles in our coordinate system. These are not revolving. In size and
in having a common center, they are the same as the revolving circles. This time, they
are not in motion. Let us then imagine ourselves motionless in our non-revolving circles
in contact with an observer on the revolving circles.
My purpose in giving this example is to show whether Euclid’s rule mentioned above
is verifiable for both the stationary observer and the revolving observer. So let us
proceed:
Suppose observer A (motionless) measures the radius of his small circle, and later the
circumference of the same small circle, and then notes the ratio between them. Next, he
does the same thing for the large circle. What happens is he will discover that it is the
same ratio that he found between the radius and the circumference of his small circle. In
other words, Euclid is validated here.
Now observer B (in motion) does the same thing. But then he does more. On top of
the two circles of A, he also measures the ratio between the radius and circumference of
his two identical concentric circles. After doing so, he finds all ratios identical save one—
115
Being in an inertial coordinate system means that our frame of reference is at rest relative to
everything, including the revolving circles.

178
the larger circle. When he begins to measure the circumference of his large circle, his
ruler “contracts.” Also, because the radius of his large circle is larger than that of his
small circle, the velocity of the circumference of the large revolving circle is faster than
that of the revolving small circle. The ratio now of the radius to the circumference of the
small revolving circle is not the same as the ratio of the radius to the circumference of
the large revolving circle. Euclid says this is not possible, but, then, here it is.

A SIMILAR PHENOMENON took place in poetry. Pope’s flat, static form of the closed,
end-stopped, heroic couplet could no longer limit and restrain the imaginative torrent
and forces of the next century. The Romantic Movement entered the scene, marked by
an eagerness to broaden horizons, to give free play to the imagination. The closed,
heroic couplet could no longer control the enthusiasm seeking expression in all
departments of life: in politics, in science, in art, etc.
This situation was dramatized by John Keats, one of the very first to censure Pope.
How could Pope be so numb—“Ah, dismal soul’d,” Keats would lament—

The winds of heaven blew, the ocean roll’d

Its gathering waves—ye felt it not. The blue
Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew
Of summer nights collected still to make
The morning precious: Beauty was awake!
Why were ye not awake? But ye were dead
To things ye know not of—we were closely wed
To rusty laws lined out with wretched rule
And compass vile; so that ye taught a school
Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and clip, and fit,
Till, like the certain wands of Jacob’s wit
Their verses tallied. (Zillman, 69)

These lines censure Pope and the Augustans for being mere craftsmen, incapable of
freeing their imaginations. A new form was in order. Ironically, the Romantics would
have to look farther back to the Elizabethans, the period immediately preceding Pope’s,
for inspiration. The inspiration behind Keats’s “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer,”
for example, is Chapman’s (an Elizabethan) and not Pope’s translation of Homer. Pope’s
translation had become too confined, too “correct,” too lifeless, and even if that
translation were the version taught in Keats’s school days, the young poet was in search
of a version that could approximate the real feeling of the original. (Zillman, 207)
Keats therefore was elated when his friend Charles Cowden Clarke had lent him the
1616 edition of Chapman’s Homer. He had never read anything like it. He read far into
the night, and then wrote his famous sonnet.
It is not easy to compare this enthusiasm unless we compare Pope and Chapman.
Here is Pope’s translation of one of Keats’s favorite episodes, the shipwreck of Odysseus,
in Book V, where the wandering hero is cast upon the shores of Phaeacia:

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 That moment, fainting, as he touch’d the shore,
He dropp’d his sinewy arms: his knees no more
Perform’d their office, or his weight upheld;
His swoll’n heart heav’d; his bloated body swell’d;
From mouth and nose the briny torrent ran;
And lost in lassitude lay all the man,
Depriv’d of voice, of motion, and of breath,
The soul scarce waking in the arms of death. (Zillman, 207 f.)

Here is Chapman’s version of the same episode:

Then forth he came, his both knees falt’ring, both

His strong hands hanging downe, and all with froth
His cheeks and nosthril flowing, voice and breath
Spent to all use; and downe he sunk to Death.
The sea had soakt his heart through all his vaines.
Dead wearie was he. (Zillman, 207)

Compare these lines with Pope’s—Pope’s are general while Chapman’s are concrete,
Pope’s are stiff in movement and idiom while Chapman’s move with fresh vigor and life
—and it is easy to understand what Keats meant when he said that his Homer was
nothing “till he heard Chapman speak out loud and bold,” thus ending the era of Pope.
Both Pope and Euclid no longer belong to the frequently borrowed books in the
library. We can mention the word “geometry” without thinking of Euclid, and mention
“poetry” without thinking of Pope. But their names are associated with foundations, and
our postmodern thought is built upon their common base. To let the world appreciate
what they did in an age no longer aware of their contributions takes a great deal of
effort. Euclid’s work is done, and Pope’s work is done. If new artificers weave words with
care, however, and new geometricians formulate mathematical symbols with precision,
it is because they step upon the solid, Euclidean base first laid by Pope and the Popian
base first laid by Euclid, upon both houses of poetry and geometry.

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 Appendix B
Course Syllabus

Lectures

Note: These lectures have been recorded live and may be downloaded at
http://carlosaureus.blogspot.com

1. Introduction: What is Critical Theory?

2. Plato: Introduction
3. Plato: Republic (Books II, III, and X)
4. Aristotle: Introduction
5. Aristotle: Poetics
6. Horace: Ars Poetica
7. Longinus: On the Sublime
8. Plotinus: “On the Intellectual Beauty”
9. St. Augustine: Semiotics
10. Manlius Severinus Boethius: Consolation of Philosophy
11. St. Thomas Aquinas: Aesthetics and Hermeneutics
12. Sir Philip Sidney: “An Apology for Poetry”
13. John Dryden: “An Essay of Dramatic Poesy”
14. Alexander Pope: An Essay on Criticism
15. Edmund Burke: A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our
Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
16. Immanuel Kant: Introduction
17. Immanuel Kant: Critique of Judgment
18. Friedrich von Schiller: Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man
19. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Introduction
20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Philosophy of Fine Art
21. The Romantic Imagination
22. William Wordsworth: “Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical
Ballads”
23. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Biographia Literaria
24. John Keats: Negative Capability and the Egotistical Sublime
25. Percy Bysshe Shelley: “A Defense of Poetry”

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 Biographical Notes

Abrams, Meyer (Mike) Howard. (born July 23, 1912) is an American literary critic known
for works on Romanticism, in particular his books The Mirror and the Lamp and Natural
Supernaturalism. Under his editorship, the Norton Anthology of English
Literature became the standard text for many undergraduate survey courses.

Aquinas, St. Thomas (1225–1274). One of the two giants of the Middle Ages (the other
is Dante) whose Summa Theologica combines the philosophical rigor of Aristotle with
the theological consistency of the Roman Catholic Church. His notion of the four levels
of meaning greatly influenced Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Aristotle (384–322 BC). Greek philosopher who studied in ancient Athens under Plato
and wrote treatises on nearly every department of human life.

Augustine, St. (354–430). Born in North Africa, Augustine is the most influential of the
early Church Fathers. In his theological writings, which included meditations on
language, rhetoric, and allegory, he fused the ideals of Christianity and of Plato.

Blake, William (1757–1827). British Romantic poet who was also, I firmly believe, the
greatest painter Britain has yet produced. His deceptively simple Songs of Innocence and
Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul (1789, 1794) had a
strong influence on the Romantic belief that things are as they are perceived.

Boileau-Despréaux, Nicolas (1636–1711; pronounced bwa-LOW). French poet and critic

of the neoclassical period whose “Art of Poetry” helped set down the rules of decorum
for his age and had much influence on Pope’s “Essay on Criticism.”

Bloom, Harold (b. 1930). American professor and literary critic, long at Yale, who does
not fit neatly into any theoretical category. Author of The Anxiety of Influence.

Brooks, Cleanth (b. 1906). American professor and critic who perhaps most fully sums
up (and certainly is most fully identified with) the goals and methods of new criticism.
Author of The Well-Wrought Urn.

Burke, Edmund (1729–1797). British statesman, essayist, and literary theorist; one of
the first great critics of the French Revolution. Author of the influential Inquiry into the
Sublime and the Beautiful.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772–1834). British poet, essayist, and literary theorist; a
major figure of British Romanticism. One of the most learned men of his age, he is
credited with explaining German philosophy to the British. Co-conceived and wrote
Lyrical Ballads with his friend William Wordsworth; author of Biographia Literaria.

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Corneille, Pierre (1606–1684; pronounced Core-NAY). French neoclassical dramatist and
critic who sought in his plays and criticism to adhere to the rules of art laid down in
Aristotle and Horace (particularly the three unities). His famous essay on the unities had
a strong influence on Dryden’s “Essay of Dramatic Poesy.”

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321). Italian poet who made grand use of the medieval four
levels of meaning in his epic, The Divine Comedy.

Dryden, John (1631–1700). British poet, dramatist, and essayist whose famous “Essay of
Dramatic Poesy” helped establish the taste for neoclassical art.

Gorgias (c. 483–375 BC). Greek philosopher, teacher, and sophist who was both Plato’s
contemporary and his rival. A distant forerunner of deconstruction.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770–1831). German philosopher whose concept of

the dialectic influenced Marx and whose ideas on theology and the fine arts have had a
lasting impact.

Horace (65–8 BC). Roman poet and critic of the Augustan Age and a key founder and
proponent of the rules of neoclassical art. Author of “Art of Poetry.”

Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804). German philosopher whose epistemological theories of

art (expressed most fully in his Critique of Judgment) had a profound impact on
Romantic philosophers, theorists, and poets.

Keats, John (1795–1821). British poet whose collected letters contain fascinating insights
into literary theory: most notably, the notion of “negative capability.”

Locke, John (1632–1704). British empiricist whose epistemological theory of man as a

blank slate (tabula rasa) who acquires knowledge through (and only through) the five
senses had a profound influence on Edmund Burke.

Longinus (first century AD). Anonymous Greek literary critic who wrote On the Sublime.
It was long believed that Cassius Longinus (third century AD) wrote the work; we now
know he did not, but the name has stuck.

Plato (c. 427–c. 348 BC). Greek philosopher and founder of the Academy. His theory of
the Forms, his view of art as imitation, and his insistence (in The Republic) that the poets
be kicked out of his ideal state have had a profound impact on literary theory.

Plotinus (c. 204–c. 270). Greek neoplatonic philosopher who combined the mimetic
theories of Plato and Aristotle. His ideas greatly influenced St. Augustine.

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Pope, Alexander (1688–1744). British poet whose literary tastes (expressed most fully in
his Essay on Criticism) helped set the standards for British neoclassicism.

Racine, Jean (1639–1699). French neoclassical playwright who most perfectly embodied
in his tragedies the artistic rules and decorum of classical drama.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques (1712–1778). French philosopher and man of letters, an
innovator in the political, ethical, and educational spheres. Arguably the true father of
the modern world, Rousseau’s autobiography (Confessions) may be seen as the founding
document of Romanticism.

Schiller, Friedrich (1759–1805). German poet, dramatist, and theorist whose Letters on
the Aesthetic Education of Man and On Naive and Sentimental Poetry have had a lasting
influence on the history of literary criticism.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792–1822). British Romantic poet whose “Defense of Poetry” is
not only a key Romantic text but synthesizes nearly all the elements of literary theory
from Plato to Coleridge.

Sidney, Sir Philip (1554–1585). British poet and courtier; the very embodiment of the
Elizabethan Age. His “Apology for Poetry” is one of the great defenses of both the divine
power and social utility of poetry.

Wordsworth, William (1770–1850). British Romantic poet who co-authored Lyrical

Ballads with his friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge; his revolutionary “Preface to Lyrical
Ballads” helped to hasten the demise of neoclassical tastes and to usher in a new slate
of Romantic theories, methods, and concerns.

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 Glossary

Aeolian Harp: (Named after Aeolus, the Greek god of the wind) A “wind-powered”
musical instrument. A tiny wind harp made of silk threads stretched across an arched
twig like a bow. Hung in a windy spot, the strings give forth “natural” musical sounds
depending on the power of the wind. It is used as a metaphor for the way in which
inspiration blows over the poet and causes him to create. This view depicts the poet as a
passive recipient of imagination, rather than as an active craftsman.

Drawing of an aeolian harp from an article in

Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885.
(Public domain)

Aesthetic: On the simplest level, aesthetic signifies a concern with beauty and with
fostering a refined taste for and a critical appreciation of that beauty. Today, however,
aesthetic is often used by diachronically minded (historicist) theorists to label traditional,
synchronic theorists whom they consider “guilty” of evading historical forces and
material realities. That is to say, aesthetic is often used today of critics (especially the
new critics) who retain a belief that poetry exists in a self-contained world of its own,
untainted by crude historical forces and vulgar material realities. Aestheticians
(especially those influenced by Kant) grant poetry a special status that allows it to
transcend all boundaries of time and space and to escape the confines of all political
agendas and ideologies. Aesthetic can be used in both an ontological sense, to refer to
the beauty of an aesthetic object, and an epistemological sense, to refer to an aesthetic
(subjective) response to that beauty. For Kant the epistemologist, aesthetic judgments
are to be distinguished from cognitive (logical) ones: the former work through feelings
and are independent of all ends or concepts; the latter are based on ideas and lead to
the formulation of concepts and principles.

Allegorical: see fourfold interpretive system.

Allegory: see symbol.

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Anagnorisis (Recognition): A moment in a play when the hero makes a critical discovery,
the defining moment when the hero moves suddenly from a state of ignorance to a state
of recognition.

Anagogical: see fourfold interpretive system.

Anima Mundi. Yeats anticipated Carl G. Jung’s Collective Unconscious when he talked
about a “World Memory” or Anima Mundi from which he drew his images (Jung would
later call them archetypes).

Anti-essentialist: see essentialist.

Antithesis: see dialectic.

Anxiety of Influence: A phrase coined by modern critic Harold Bloom to define a specific
kind of artistic struggle (or agon) that he sees as underlying and propelling the history of
literature. Bloom’s thesis, influenced strongly by the Oedipal theories of Freud, is that
each new poet must overthrow the “strong” poet who has preceded him: a dialectical
view of poetic history that yet resists falling into the pit of Marxist materialism. Bloom’s
thesis is both compelling and disturbing.

Apollonian: In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche makes a distinction between two

philosophical-spiritual-aesthetic orientations that he calls the Apollonian and the
Dionysiac. The Apollonian (named for Apollo) is rational, intellectual, balanced, and
stoic; the Dionysiac (named for Dionysus) is intuitive, emotional, creative, and ecstatic.
Whereas Western metaphysics has traditionally privileged Apollo over Dionysus,
Nietzsche inverts this privileging, even as he calls for a higher fusion of these two sides
of man.

Archetype: A “symbol which connects one poem with another” and, by so doing, helps
“integrate our literary experience.” Archetypes are “associative clusters,” words or
images or rituals that carry with them a wealth of connotative meanings and emotions
that far exceed their denotative, scientific, descriptive meanings. Some well-known
examples are the pastoral archetypes of shepherds and gardens; the cyclical archetypes
of sun, moon, and harvest; and the heroic archetypes of quests and dragons. George
Lucas’s Star Wars trilogy abounds with archetypes as does Eliot’s Waste Land. In the
criticism of Frye, archetypes do not so much link poetry to the external world as they
link one poem to another in a complex series of literary allusions. For Frye, archetypes,
though polysemous in nature, all point back to a transcendent, logocentric center, an
aspect of Frye that has been criticized by both modernist and postmodernist theorists.

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Bathos: A term first coined by Longinus, it refers to a ludicrous descent from the exalted
or lofty to the commonplace. It is the sudden appearance of the pedestrian in a writing
that pretends itself to be sublime, but is in fact insincere, sentimental, mawkish, trite,
trivial, and bombastic. Not to be confused with Pathos (vide).
Beauty: Until very recently, beauty has been prized as one of, if not the, most vital
element of a work of art. Viewed ontologically, beauty has traditionally been defined as
a kind of higher harmony or balance or proportion: a reflection in our world of the
greater harmony of the cosmos. Viewed epistemologically, beauty is a mental response
to certain objects that produces within us sentiments of tenderness and affection. (Cf.
sublime.)

Canon: The Great Books of the Western world (i.e., those by Homer, Sophocles, Virgil,
Dante, Shakespeare, etc.) that have traditionally formed the core of humanistic studies.
Canonical critics believe that the works of the canon are aesthetically and essentially
superior and possess an inherent value that transcends the time and place in which they
were written; non-canonical (generally postmodern) critics view the canon as a product
of socio-political forces (cf. discourse) that determine what is acceptable (status quo) and
what is not.

Catharsis: In the Poetics, Aristotle argues that a well-constructed tragic plot will so move
our feelings of pity and fear as to produce in us a catharsis of those emotions. The word
catharsis may be translated in at least three ways (as purgation, purification, or
clarification), each of which suggests a slightly different understanding of the nature of
what might be termed the proper tragic pleasure. According to the purgation theory of
catharsis (most famously described in Milton’s brief preface to Samson Agonistes),
tragedy works on us like an enema or an emetic, cleansing us of our emotions of pity
and fear and leaving us more fit and able to face the rigors of life. According to the
purification theory of catharsis, tragedy does not so much purge our emotions as purify
them. Thus, whereas the former theory is therapeutic in nature, the latter is more
spiritual, suggesting that tragedy, like suffering, can strengthen our faith and resolve by
testing and trying them like gold in the fire. Finally, according to the clarification theory
of catharsis, tragedy sparks in us an intellectual response, a searing moment of perfect
clarity in which ill-defined emotions are carried up into a mystical realm of balanced,
harmonious rationality. The connections between the seemingly arbitrary chaos and
suffering of our world and the higher patterns and forces of the cosmos are made
suddenly visible in this realm.

Center: see decenter.

Close Reading: A method of explicating (or opening, unpacking) a poem that was
developed, taught, and propagated by the American new critics. All close readings rest
on the new critical assumption that the greatest poems do not present their ideas
directly, but through a complex deflection of meaning. The close reader, rather than
attempting to simplify or reduce a poem to its narrative and/or didactic meaning (its

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paraphrasable core), seeks to uncover its essential ironies, paradoxes, and ambiguities.
The best close readings reveal how, within the ironic synthesis of the poem, even ugly or
discordant elements can be so brought into equilibrium to form an eternal work of
aesthetic beauty and truth.

Concrete Universal: The aesthetic history of this paradoxical phrase can be traced from
Aristotle to Kant to Coleridge to the new critics. Put simply, to claim that a certain poem
is a concrete universal is to say that within the microcosm of the poem, a universal idea
has been fully realized in a concrete form. This notion is, of course, profoundly
incarnational and logocentric; like Christ (the ultimate Logos), who was both fully Man
and fully God, the concrete universal effects within itself a fusion of the physical and the
non-physical, the specific and the general, the image and the idea. Indeed, at its boldest,
the notion of the concrete universal asserts an aesthetic and metaphysical reality that
has since been problematized by modernists and rejected by postmodernists. This notion
is that, within the space of the poem, signifier and signified enter into a relationship that
is not only essential and timeless (as opposed to arbitrary and “langue-specific”), but
profoundly, almost mystically, reciprocal: i.e., the signifier is carried up into the signified,
even as the signified descends and dwells in the signifier. (Cf. symbol and organic whole.)

Daemon. In Greek mythology, the Daemon is any of the secondary divinities ranking
between gods and men. Man, aside from being influenced by the Daemon, may also be
influenced by the dead, and thereby partake in Anima Mundi (q. v.).

Decorum: A concept central to neoclassical art (especially that of Pope). The poet who
possesses decorum understands intimately the proper relationship (or fit) between form
and content. He prefers a serious, rational type of art that does not inappropriately mix
the high and the low, the serious and the comic. When Romantic poets and theorists
began to advocate the production of serious, meditative poems about low and rustic
subjects (as Wordsworth did both in his poems for and his Preface to Lyrical Ballads),
they rang the death knell of neoclassical decorum.

Defamiliarization: A term used to describe that mystical moment when the Romantic
(Wordsworthian) poet rips away the “veil of familiarity” from the everyday objects of
our world and thus allows us to see them afresh, with child-like eyes of wonder. Most
men, says Coleridge (paraphrasing Isaiah 6), have eyes but do not see; defamiliarization
opens our eyes to the mystery and beauty that surrounds us. The term was later used by
a theoretical school known as Russian Formalism.

Deus ex machina: “God from the machine,” was a crane-like device used in classical
Greek theater that would allow an actor to descend onto the stage in the guise of a god
or goddess. This device was used by dramatists as a way of resolving “from above” all
manner of difficulties and misunderstandings; thus, after weaving a veritable Gordian’s
knot of relationships in his Ion, Euripides has the goddess Athena descend in a basket
and unravel everyone’s true identity. (Note: the phrase deus ex machina is also used to

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refer generally to any situation in which the identity of a character is discovered “in the
nick of time” by an implausible or at least contrived means; e.g., a scar, a birthmark, a
childhood pendant, even a footprint.) Aristotle strongly disapproved of this device for he
felt it was an artificial way to end a plot; the plot, he felt, should be strong enough to
resolve itself in a manner consistent with necessity, probability, and inevitability. Indeed,
one of the reasons Aristotle favored Sophocles over Euripides was that the latter made
much use of the deus ex machina (although it should be noted that Sophocles makes
brilliant use of the device in his Philoctetes). Moliere offers a “serious parody” of the
device in his Tartuffe.

Diachronic: see Synchronic.

Dialectic: In the philosophy of Plato, dialectic refers to a process of question and answer
through which false notions are stripped away and the truth is revealed. In the
philosophy of Hegel, the conflictual nature of Plato’s dialectic is retained, but the whole
process is systematized and placed in a historical (diachronic) continuum. For Hegel, an
original idea (or thesis) produces, over time, its own opposite (or antithesis); these two
ideas then, through a process of struggle, transformation, and fusion, produce a new
and higher idea, called the synthesis. A generation later, Marx would co-opt the Hegelian
dialectic for himself, reducing Hegel’s historical yet transcendent approach to a strictly
historicist/materialist one. The resulting process, known as dialectical materialism,
preserves the movement from thesis to antithesis to synthesis, but reinscribes it in a
material continuum of economic forces and class struggle. Thus, whereas for Hegel it is
primarily aesthetic and transcendent ideas that progress through the dialectic, for Marx,
such ideas are but products of socio-political realities that are themselves produced by a
dialectical process in the economic strata of society.

Dionysiac: see Apollonian.

Disinterested: Disinterested, as opposed to uninterested, signifies an approach to

criticism (whether aesthetic or otherwise) that is removed, objective, and free from all
political agendas or ideologies (today, we would say non-partisan). The word was made
famous in Matthew Arnold’s definition of criticism as “a disinterested endeavor to learn
and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.” (Note: the phrase “the
best that is known and thought” is central to the traditional understanding of the
canon.) Objective theorists in general, and the new critics in particular, are great
advocates of Arnold’s notion of disinterestedness. To modern and especially postmodern
theorists, however, the whole concept of disinterestedness is an illusion; all poets and
critics create and write out of a reigning discourse and cannot achieve the necessary
aesthetic distance to speak disinterestedly. To the historicist, a claim of disinterestedness
is merely a veiled way of asserting the hegemony of the status quo. The historicist “faith”
that everything is political is diametrically opposed to the objective “faith” that certain
great writers (e.g., the authors of the canon) can so transcend their time and space as to
achieve the timeless state of disinterestedness.

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Dissociation of Sensibility: According to T. S. Eliot, during the seventeenth century, the
great metaphysical poets and writers of Britain (especially John Donne) were able to fuse
within their lives and their art the emotional and the intellectual. After the seventeenth
century, however, Britain (and Europe in general) fell into a dissociation of sensibility:
i.e., their intellectual and emotional sides began to pull away from each other, producing
either an overemphasis on the former (the eighteenth-century Age of Reason) or the
latter (the nineteenth-century Age of Romanticism). Schiller traces a similar division in
his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.

Egotistical Sublime: In the letters of Keats, the egotistical sublime is a quality possessed
by artists like Milton and Wordsworth whose poetic vision is always mediated through
their own strong, dominant personalities. Coleridge’s incisive comment that, in his
poetic studies of other people, Wordsworth is always a spectator ab extra (“from the
outside”) reinforces Keats’s notion that egotistical poets, though they may have great
sympathy, are lacking somewhat in empathy. (Note: Keats does not use egotistical in a
pejorative sense.) Keats contrasts Milton and Wordsworth with Shakespeare, that
chameleon poet who could lose himself completely in the lives of his characters.
Generally speaking, the opposite of egotistical sublime is negative capability.

Epistemology: see Ontology.

Episodic: see Plot.

Esemplastic: A word coined by Coleridge to express the imagination’s power to shape
and fuse seemingly discordant images into a single, unified whole. The word is
composed of three Greek words that mean, literally, “to shape into one.”

Expressive Theories: One of the four types of critical approaches defined in M. H.

Abrams’ The Mirror and the Lamp. Expressive theories explore the relationship between
poem and poet; they are epistemological in orientation and view poetry as essentially
subjective. Originating in the philosophical theories of Kant and reaching their fullest
expression in the work of the British Romantic poets, expressive theorists consider the
questions “What is a poem?” and “What is a poet?” to be nearly identical.

Fancy: see Imagination.

Figure: see Typology.

Formal Drive: see Spieltrieb.

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Formalist: To call a critic a formalist is to identify him with a theoretical orientation that
privileges form over content and that discovers in the aesthetic form of a poem
something that borders on the perfect and the transcendent. Mimetic formalists (like
Aristotle) believe that certain poetic forms are superior for they most fully capture and
embody higher truths. Pragmatic (epistemological) formalists (like Kant) hail form as a
pure, timeless end in itself, the ideal object for aesthetic (subjective) contemplation.
Expressive (Romantic) formalists (like Coleridge) champion form as a sort of altar on and
through which is enacted the marriage (fusion) of subject and object, concrete and
universal. Objective formalists (like the new critics) consider a poem’s form, rather than
its content, to be that which transforms the poem into a self-contained, eternal artifact.

Forms: In the metaphysics of Plato, the Forms are a series of unchanging, transcendent
Ideas that exist (pure and invisible) in the heavens and that serve as the patterns for all
earthly, material realities. The Forms exist in an unseen World of Being that cannot be
perceived by our senses, but can only be contemplated by the mind’s eye. All things that
we behold in our physical, sensual World of Becoming are, in fact, imitations of these
perfect Forms; they have no essential truth or reality of their own. (Cf. mimesis, logos,
and logocentrism.)

Four Faculties. Yeats has four faculties, or terms, in his psychology: the Will, the Mask,
the Creative Mind, and the Body of Fate. These four faculties are divided into two sets,
each member of the pair being opposite the other. The Will is anchored in the memories
of the present life; the Mask, from memories of exaltations in past lives; the Creative
Mind, from memories of ideas displayed by actual men in their past lives or in their
spirits between lives; and the Body of Fate, shaped from the Daemon’s memory of
events of past incarnations.

Fourfold Interpretive System: In the medieval church (and especially in the theories of
Thomas Aquinas), nearly every verse of scripture was believed to work on at least four
simultaneous levels of meaning: the literal (or historical), the allegorical, the moral, and
the anagogical. In Dante’s “Letter to Can Grande Della Scala,” for example, we see Dante
using this system as one of the bases for writing his Divine Comedy. “When Israel came
out of Egypt, and the house of Jacob from a people of strange speech, Judea became his
sanctification, Israel his power.” Taken literally, he writes, this verse refers to the
departure of the children of Israel from Egypt at the time of Moses; allegorically, it
signifies our redemption wrought by Christ; morally, it describes the conversion of the
soul from the grief and misery of sin to the state of grace; and anagogically, it foretells
the departure of the holy soul from the slavery of this corrupted body to the freedom of
eternal glory. Though this method of analyzing literature is spiritual in origin, the
concept of multiple levels of meaning working simultaneously has been used in all forms
of prosody.

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Gyres. Yeats’s image of the gyres resemble two superimposed cones facing outward, the
west portion being the solar, and its opposite the lunar. Here is my own representation
of this pair of interpenetrating cones:

These stand for the antithetical elements in man, the subjective and the objective.

Hamartia: see Tragic Flaw.

Hermeneutics: The theory and practice of interpretation.

Imagination: Though critics sometimes use the words imagination and fancy as
synonyms (as does Edmund Burke in his Inquiry), the Romantics (especially Wordsworth
and Coleridge) forged an important distinction between the two. The fancy, they argued,
was clearly the lesser power: though it does possess the ability to conjure up “fanciful”
objects, it must finally, writes Coleridge, “receive all its materials ready made from the
law of association.” The fancy, that is, works within fixed parameters; it plays, but on a
limited field. The imagination, on the other hand, is freer, more vital: it can recombine
ideas and images at will to create new and higher unities. Unlike the fancy, which can
only shift images around into new patterns, the imagination has both the perceptive
power to see similitude lurking within dissimilitude, unity in the midst of multeity, and
the synthetic power to fuse and reconcile opposites into one. It is primarily this
esemplastic power that enables the imagination to create organic wholes and concrete
universals.

Imitation: see Mimesis.

Incarnation: Though often used to refer specifically to the Christian belief that, in the
person of Jesus Christ, God took on human flesh (John 1:14), the word incarnation is
used more generally by logocentric aestheticians to refer to the power of physical,
temporal works of art to capture, encapsulate, and contain truths that are non-physical
and eternal.

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Intellectual belief: see emotional belief.

In Medias Res: In the middle of things. order to produce unified (rather than episodic)
plots, Aristotle favored a device by which tragedians would begin their play not at the
beginning (with, say, the birth of Oedipus), but in medias res (“in the middle of things”),
at a moment of tension and conflict out of which a dramatic reversal and/or recognition
is about to spring. The great epic poets (from Homer to Milton) also preferred to plunge
in medias res, rather than to begin ab ovo (“from the egg”). Though it is Horace who
really coined the term, Aristotle describes the device in his Poetics.

Literal: see four levels of meaning.

Lunar Parable: Yeats often referred to his work A Vision as “my lunar parable.” He made
it clear that it was not reality but a pattern for reality. The explication of his thought on
this relies heavily on the gyres (q. v.) and the diagram of the phases of the moon
below:116

Metempsychosis: In Yeats’s mythology, metempsychosis occurs if the cycle of human

rebirths is not perfected at the time of death. The soul then drinks the cup of Lethe, and
is re-born.

Mimesis: Greek for “imitation,” the word mimesis carries very different connotations in
the writings of Plato and Aristotle. For Plato, mimesis (in the literary sense) refers to the
fact that works of art are but imitations (i.e., shadowy copies) of the Forms. Indeed, they

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This is the Moon as ‘Queen of the skies’ and the archetype, in her different aspects, of all the ancient female
deities, as seen in this 17th century woodcut by Athanasius Kircher in Obeliscus Pamphilius (1650). Public domain.

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are imitations of imitations, since a painted chair is an imitation of an earthly chair,
which is itself an imitation of the Form of the Chair (“chairness”) that exists in the
heavenly World of Being. The same would hold true for a poem about love: the poem
reflects an earthly concept that is itself a reflection of the Form of Love. Thus, Plato
concludes, art is twice removed from the Forms (which is to say, twice removed from
reality) and therefore not a reliable source of truth or knowledge. (It should be added
here, however, that Plato, at times, describes poets as semi-divine madmen who are
inspired/possessed by the gods and sing their songs in a prophetic frenzy. This image of
the poet, though not necessarily flattering, does suggest that poetry can, in fact, be a
vehicle for apprehending divine truths. The fact, too, that Plato is the father of a
logocentric aesthetic that has granted to poetry the high status of incarnate vessels of
transcendent truths, mitigates his dismissal of art as but a faint copy of the real.) In
contrast to Plato, Aristotle saw the mimetic process of art as one that improves and
perfects on existing ideas rather than weakening and obscuring them. Thus, rather than
converting a Form into a shadowy imitation, the Aristotelian poet takes a shadowy idea
and gives it form. According to the Poetics, a great tragedian is one who can take an
episodic story (praxis) and, through the power of mimesis, convert it into a unified plot
(muthos). Mimesis, for Aristotle, is a sort of alchemical process that, by stripping a tale of
all its extraneous elements and concentrating and purifying those that remain, can
transform a base, vulgar story (e.g., about a man who killed his father and married his
mother) into a golden plot (e.g., about a man dedicated to learning the truth about
himself, no matter what the personal cost).

Mimetic Theories: One of the four types of critical approaches defined in M. H. Abrams’
The Mirror and the Lamp. Mimetic theories explore the relationship between the work
of art and the universe and judge its success on how close it approximates the true
nature of the logos. Mimetic theories are ontological and logocentric in orientation and
seek a kind of art that is pure and transcendent.

Muthos: see plot.

Natural Philosopher: see transcendental philosopher.

Negative Capability: This well-worn phrase appears, briefly and somewhat enigmatically,
in a letter of Keats. A poet who possesses negative capability (Shakespeare being the
supreme example) is able to do at least two things: to enter into the lives of other beings
and see the world from their perspective and to be able to rest in the midst of mysteries
and paradoxes without needing (philosophically or aesthetically) to reach after fixed
answers or resolutions. Though Keats was certainly not a deconstructionist, one could
argue that there is much similarity between negative capability and the
deconstructionist concept of aporia.

Non-canonical: see canon.

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Object: see subject.

Objective Correlative: This phrase appears, briefly and somewhat enigmatically, in an

essay by T. S. Eliot, “Hamlet and His Problems.” According to Eliot, an objective
correlative is an external object, situation, or chain of events that parallels (correlates to)
an internal emotion. Because emotions cannot be perceived by the senses and are even
difficult to express in language, the poet uses these physical objects and situations to
externalize and concretize a heretofore internal/abstract emotion. In keeping with his
depersonalized, anti-Romantic view of poetry, Eliot posits the poet not as the source of
these emotions but as the site, the artistic medium, where this fusion of external and
internal occurs.

Objective Theories: One of the four types of critical approaches defined in M. H.

Abrams’ The Mirror and the Lamp. Objective theories consider works of art to be self-
contained, self-referential artifacts that can be studied apart from poet, audience, and
cosmos alike. This view of art is linguistic in orientation and is almost wholly identified
with the theories of the new critics.

Ontology: Whereas ontology (“the study of being”) concerns itself with determining the
essence of things (whether natural or supernatural), epistemology (“the study of
knowing”) concerns itself not with the thingness of things but with how we know and
perceive that thingness. That is to say, ontologists focus on the object, while
epistemologists focus on the subject. To the ontologist, beauty is a quality that inheres in
a poem or painting; to the epistemologist, beauty is an emotional/intellectual response
that occurs within the mind of the person who experiences that poem or painting.
Mimetic and objective theories tend to be ontological; pragmatic and expressive theories
tend to be epistemological.

Organic Whole: In Romantic literary theory (particularly in Coleridge), a great poem is

considered to be an organic whole; i.e., an almost living organism in which the whole of
the poem not only contains all the parts, but each part contains within itself the whole
(just as the seed within the apple contains within itself the potential not only for
another apple but for an entire grove of apple trees). In fact, Coleridge’s definition of a
poem includes the criterion that it give equal pleasure in the whole as it does in each
part. If a poem is truly an organic whole, there should be a dynamic, incarnational
relationship between its form and its content. The form of the poem should not be
arbitrary or imposed from without; rather, the content of the poem should create its
own form. Within the poetic space of the organic whole, idea and image are fused, and
dissimilitude is resolved into similitude. An organic whole is essentially symbolic (rather
than allegorical) in that it allows abstract ideas to be perceived in and through particular
images. One way to judge if a poem is truly an organic whole is to ask if anything can be
added to or taken away from it. If parts can be added to or taken away from the poem
without changing its essential meaning, then the poet has obviously neither fully

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realized his poetic purpose nor achieved a complete fusion of parts and whole. The
concept of the organic whole dates back to Aristotle’s Poetics. (Cf. concrete universal.)

Peripeteia (Reversal): In a well-constructed Aristotelian plot, peripeteia is a reversal of

fate, when the fortune of the character moves suddenly from good to bad or from bad
to good. The best kinds of reversals are accompanied by recognitions.

Play Drive: see Spieltrieb.

Plot: In the Poetics, Aristotle makes a famous distinction between the story (praxis) and
the plot (muthos). Whereas the story, let us say, of Oedipus, concerns all those events
that took place from his birth to his death, the plot of Oedipus the King focuses on a
single day in the life of Oedipus when all the loose strands of his life come together in a
climax of great power. The story of Oedipus is a long disunified string of events that
moves through a series of disconnected episodes (i.e., it is episodic); the plot of Oedipus
is a unified poetic artifact in which each scene follows the previous scene in accordance
with necessity, probability, and inevitability. The playwright arrives at the plot, by
running the story through the mimetic process. For Aristotle, the plot (rather than the
characters) is the most vital part of a tragedy; indeed, it is the very soul of the play. (Cf.
in medias res, deus ex machina, unities, reversal, recognition, catharsis, tragedy, tragic
flaw, and mimesis.)

Polysemous: see Four Levels of Meaning.

Pragmatic Theories: One of the four types of critical approaches defined in M. H.

Abrams’ The Mirror and the Lamp. Pragmatic theories explore the relationship between
the work of art and its audience. Pragmatic theorists are concerned with the social,
didactic functions of art (with how it teaches and pleases), with the aesthetic rules for
poetry (see decorum), and with the intellectual and visceral impact of literature (see
catharsis, sublime, beauty). A gradual shift from ontological to epistemological concerns
may be seen in such theories. Both classical and modern studies of the nature and status
of rhetoric are pragmatic in orientation, as is the postmodern school of reader-response
criticism.

Primary Imagination: In Biographia Literaria, Coleridge makes a famous distinction

between the primary and the secondary imagination. According to Coleridge, the
primary imagination is a “repetition in the finite mind of the
eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.” The primary imagination establishes a
passive link between absolute self-consciousness (the I AM of God) and our own
individual self-consciousness. Artists who make use of this creative power are essentially
“divine ventriloquists,” poet-prophets who (like an aeolian harp) receive direct
inspiration from above and respond passively with a song or a poem. The secondary
imagination, on the other hand, is active: “it dissolves, dissipates, diffuses, in order to
recreate.” That is to say, the secondary imagination takes the raw material given it by

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inspiration, breaks it down, and then reshapes it into a new and vital form. (Cf. the
Aristotelian notion of mimesis.) Though Coleridge, like all the Romantics, often defined
himself as an aeolian harp inspired from without (see both his poem “Kubla Khan” and
his preface to that mystical product of the primary imagination), he also knew that it
takes the active, shaping force of the secondary imagination to create symbols, organic
wholes, and concrete universals. Indeed, in their autobiographies (The Prelude,
Biographia Literaria), both Wordsworth and Coleridge define the growth of the
poet/philosopher’s mind as moving from the primary to the secondary imagination:
from the passive reception of sensation to the mature recollection (Wordsworth) and
methodizing (Coleridge) of those sensations.

Purgatorial Dance: In Yeats’s mythology, the soul, immediately after the transition called
death, goes through a series of cycles (dances) until it reaches a state of beatitude. Here
is my schematic diagram of this movement:

Purpureus Pannus (Purple Patch): A phrase coined by Horace in his “Art of Poetry” to
describe passages that are overly extravagant, ornate, or flowery so as to distract the
reader from the overall context and instead draw attention to the said passages.

Recognition: see Anagnorisis.

Reversal: see Peripeteia.

Secondary Imagination: see Primary Imagination.

Semiology: a synonym for Semiotics.

Semiotics: The science of sign systems.

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Sensuous Drive: see Spieltrieb (Play Drive).

Spieltrieb (Play Drive): In Schiller’s philosophy, the state of true aesthetic freedom is
achieved by Spieltrieb which mediates between the "material drive" (Stofftrieb) and the
"formal drive" (Formtrieb), thereby allowing both sides of our human psyche to be fully
integrated.

Story: see Plot.

Subject: In the language of German philosophy, the word subject is used to refer to a
thinking consciousness that perceives. The subject is contrasted with the object, a non-
thinking, unconscious thing that does not perceive but is, rather, perceived by a subject.
When aestheticians like Kant describe the pleasure and judgment of art as purely
subjective, they mean to say that the experience has nothing to do with the poetic
object per se, but exists wholly in the mind of the perceiving subject. The British
Romantic poets made much use of the German distinction between subject and object
and attempted in their poetry and theory to fuse or synthesize the two. Wordsworth, in
particular, sought, through the power of imagination, to effect what he called the
Marriage (or fusion) of Nature (object) and the Mind of Man (subject). Coleridge argued
that the first decision that the philosopher must make is whether to begin his search
from the subject (transcendental philosopher) or from the object (natural philosopher).

Subjective Universal: According to Kant’s Critique of Judgment, although our experience

of beauty is purely subjective (see subject above) and constitutes a free, disinterested
delight, it is nevertheless felt equally (universally) by all people. Though much attacked
by modern (particularly historicist) and postmodern theorists, the concept of subjective
universality is central to Kant’s Critique.

Sublime: According to Longinus, the sublime is a type of elevated language that strikes
its listener with the power of a thunderbolt, transporting him to a higher realm of
experience that transcends time and space. Although this definition would suggest an
epistemological approach to the sublime, Longinus tends to be more ontological,
defining sublimity more as a quality that inheres in certain lines of a poem. Edmund
Burke, on the other hand, took a purely epistemological approach to the sublime,
defining it not as an objective quality but as a subjective response. Thus, for Burke,
sublimity is that which inspires in us feelings of terror and astonishment. This is to be
contrasted with beauty, which invokes sentiments of tenderness and affection.
Traditionally, the sublime and the beautiful have been identified, respectively, with the
masculine and the feminine, a patriarchal gendering that has been criticized by
feminists.

Symbol: Romantic theorists tend to privilege symbol over allegory. For Coleridge, in an
allegory, an abstract notion (like the inner struggle between good and evil) is merely
translated into a picture language (the devil on one shoulder, the angel on the other).

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There is no inherent link between the idea and the picture: one merely stands in for the
other. In a symbol, however, the abstract notion (the salvivic blood of Christ) is seen in
and through the concrete, physical symbol (the communion wine). In the symbol,
specific and general, temporal and eternal, concrete and universal meet and fuse in an
almost mystical, incarnational way. (Cf. concrete universal and organic whole.)

Synthesis: see Dialectic.

Thesis: see Dialectic.

Tragedy: For Aristotle, tragedy is the greatest of literary genres; this classical view of the
high status of tragedy has dominated literary theory until very recently (when the
postmodern theory of text deconstructed the whole notion of generic hierarchies).
Interestingly, though most people think of a tragedy as a play with an unhappy ending,
Aristotle defines it as any play in which there is a reversal of fortunes (there are some
famous Greek tragediesmost notably Euripides’ Ionthat have happy endings.)
However, Aristotle’s stated preference for tragedies with reversals that go from good to
bad set the critical taste for subsequent Western theory.

Tragic Flaw: In the Poetics, Aristotle describes the proper tragic hero as a good man
whose downfall is brought about “not by vice or depravity, but by some error”
(“hamartia” in Greek). Hamartia, translated “error” here, may also be translated “flaw,”
to which later commentators have appended the word tragic (or, sometimes, fatal).
Aristotle makes it clear that this “tragic flaw” is not a vice, yet most readers tend to
think of it as such. Our tendency to do so has been influenced, no doubt, by
Shakespearean drama, in which the tragic heroes tend to suffer from a specific vice
(what Hamlet calls a “mole in nature”; e.g., the avarice of Macbeth, the jealousy of
Othello, the lust of Antony).

Transcendental Philosopher: In Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, the transcendental

philosopher is defined as one who moves (deductively) from subject to object, from
mind to nature, from a priori truths (i.e., assumed, non-
empirical foundational truths that are logically groundless only because they are the
ground of everything else) to the sensual realities of the physical world. To engage in
such a metaphysical journey, the transcendental philosopher must first purge his mind (a
la Descartes) of all sensation by assuming what Coleridge calls “an absolute, scientific
skepticism.” Coleridge contrasts the transcendental philosopher (who is essentially
Platonic) with the natural philosopher (who is essentially Aristotelian). Unlike the
transcendental philosopher, the natural philosopher begins with the object, with nature,
with a posteriori (i.e., empirical) observations and moves (inductively) upward toward
the subject, toward mind, toward those higher truths that do not change. The final goal
of the natural philosopher, writes Coleridge, is to effect “the perfect spiritualization of all

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the laws of nature into laws of intuition and intellect.” If both philosophers successfully
complete their journeys, they will meet in the middle: at a metaphysical nexus point of
the general and the specific that is exactly parallel to that self-contained aesthetic realm
that Coleridge labels, variously, as a symbol, an organic whole, or a concrete universal.
Transcendental philosophers who do not complete their journey toward the natural risk
falling into the abyss of idealism; natural philosophers who stop short of the
transcendent risk the even greater temptation of yielding to materialism. Coleridge, in
his poetry and criticism, was a confirmed transcendental philosopher; Wordsworth, on
the other hand, was the quintessential natural philosopher. Indeed, in the diverse
poems they contributed to Lyrical Ballads, Coleridge betrays his orientation by choosing
subjects of a supernatural character, then attempting to render them natural.
Wordsworth, on the other hand, betrays his orientation by selecting subjects from
nature, then presenting them in such a way as to throw over them the aura of the
supernatural. (Note: Coleridge’s distinction between the transcendental philosopher and
the natural philosopher may be fruitfully compared with Schiller’s distinction between
the formal drive and the sensuous drive.)

Tropological: see Four Levels of Meaning.

Two Realities: Yeats believed in two realities: the terrestrial and the condition of fire. All
power is from the terrestrial, for here all opposites meet. Evil is also in the terrestrial, for
evil is the “strain of opposites.” In the condition of fire is all music and all rest. After all
rounds of metempsychosis (q. v.) have been met, the soul goes to the condition of fire
where it puts on another body.

Unities: The Aristotelian notion of plot, which prescribes all great dramatic works to
adhere to the three unities of action, time, and place. It also prescribes focusing the play
around a single main action, a single location and a single intensely short time-span of
not more than twenty-four hours.

Willing Suspension of Disbelief: A phrase coined by the poet and critic Samuel Taylor
Coleridge to justify the use of fantastic, non-realistic elements in literature. Coleridge
suggested that if a writer could infuse a "human interest and a semblance of truth" into
a out of this world tale, the reader would suspend judgment concerning the
implausibility of the narrative. The phrase might also be used to refer to the willingness
of the audience to overlook the limitations of a medium so that these do not interfere
with the acceptance of those premises: the audience tacitly agrees to provisionally
suspend judgment in exchange for the promise of poetic experience.

World of Becoming: Plato taught that there were two worlds: the world of being and the
world of becoming. The world of being is the real world, the world of ideas, ideals,

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universals, the world of the Platonic Forms. The world of becoming is a reflection of the
world of being. It is the world of the senses, of shadows, of illusion, this world we live in.

World of Being: see World of Becoming.

Zeitgeist: German word which means “the spirit of the times” or "the spirit of the
age" refers to the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, political climate within a
nation or specific groups, along with the general ambience, morals, and cultural
direction or mood of an era. Its nearest English meaning is “mainstream” or “trend”.
Zeitgeist is also used to define a belief that, during certain ages, there exists a life force,
a fresh perspective that can be felt and perceived in the works of artists living at that
time.

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One: General

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_______________. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical
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Adams, Hazard (Editor). Critical Theory Since Plato. New York: Harcourt Brace
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_____________. Critical Theory Since Plato. Revised edition. New York:

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Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster
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Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. London: Oxford University
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Daiches, David. Critical Approaches to Literature. New York: Norton, 1956.

Guerin, Wilfrid L., et al. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. Fourth

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Holman, C. Hugh, and William Harmon. A Handbook to Literature. Sixth edition. New
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Kaplan, Charles, and William Anderson (Editors). Criticism: The Major Statements.
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“Popper, Karl.” The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Editor, Ted Honderich. New
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Wimsatt, W. K. and Cleanth Brooks. Literary Criticism: A Short History. Two Volumes.
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Two: Foreword, Preface, Introduction

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Culler, Johathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
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Three: The Classical Background (From Plato to Longinus)

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Burke, Kenneth. “On Catharsis or Resolution.” The Kenyon Review 21 (1959), 337–375.

Butcher, S. H. Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art. Fourth edition. New York:
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Else, Gerald F. Plato and Aristotle on Poetry. Editor: Peter Burian. Chapel Hill:
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Hodson, Geoffrey. The Hidden Wisdom of the Holy Bible (Vol. I). Wheaton, Ill.: The
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McKeon, Richard. “The Concept of Imitation in Antiquity.” In Critics and Criticism.

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Plato. The Republic. Translated by Desmond Lee. Second edition (Revised). London:
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_________. The Republic. Translated by Richard W. Sterling and William C. Scott. New
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Reichenbach, Hans (Translated from the German by Ralph B. Winn). From Copernicus
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Sophocles. Oedipus Tyrannus. Translated and edited by Luci Berkowitz and Theodore F.
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Four: The Medieval Worldview (From Plotinus to Thomas Aquinas)

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Augustine, Saint. On Christian Doctrine. Translated by D. W. Robertson, Jr.

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Bohm, David. Wholeness and the Implicate Order. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
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Callahan, L. A Theory of Esthetic according to the Principles of St. Thomas Aquinas.

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Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and

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Duffy, J. A Philosophy of Poetry Based on Thomistic Principles. Washington: Catholic

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Eco, Umberto. The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas. Translated by Hugh Bredin. Harvard
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Gilby, T. Poetic Experience: An Introduction to Thomist Aesthetic. London: Sheed and

Ward, 1934.

Gilson, E. Painting and Reality. New York: Pantheon Books, 1957.

Inge, William R. The Philosophy of Plotinus. New York: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2003.

Jackson, B. D. “The Theory of Signs in St. Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana,” in

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Maritain, J. Art and Scholasticism. New York: Scribner’s, 1930.

Noon, W. T. Joyce and Aquinas. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957.

O’Connell, Robert J. Art and Christian Intelligence in St. Augustine. Cambridge: Harvard
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Turner, W. “Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius.” In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New

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Five: The Neoclassical Tradition (From Sidney to Pope )

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Crane, R. S. “English Neo-Classical Criticism: An Outline Sketch.” In Critics and

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Robinson, Forrest G. The Shape of Things Known: Sidney’s Apology in its Philosophical
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Showerman, Grant. Horace and His Influence (1922). Reprinted by Cooper Square
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Six: Epistemological Bases of Romanticism (From Burke to Hegel)

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and Beautiful. Edited by James T. Boulton. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
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Engell, James. The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism. Cambridge:

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Kant, Immanuel. Philosophical Writings. Edited by Ernst Behler. New York:

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Schiller, Friedrich. Naive and Sentimental Poetry and On The Sublime.Translated by

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Spirit. West Sussex, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2009. (352 pages)

Seven: The Romantic Imagination (From Wordsworth to Shelley)

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Eight: The Poetics of W. B. Yeats in A Vision

Atkinson, William Walker. Mind Power. Chicago: Yogi Publication Society, 1940.

Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna. An Abridgement of The Secret Doctrine. Edited by

Elizabeth Preston and Christmas Humphreys. Illinois: Quest Books, 1966.

Brooks, Cleanth. Modern Poetry and the Tradition. Chapel Hill: The University of North
Carolina Press, 1939.

_____________ . The Hidden God. Yale University Press, 1963.

_____________. The Well Wrought Urn. New York: The Cornwall Press, Inc. 1947.

Ellmann, Richard. Yeats: The Man and the Masks. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1958.

Jeffares, Norman A. W. B. Yeats: Man and Poet. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1949.

Joyce, Stanislaus. My Brother’s Keeper. New York: Macmillan, 1958.

O’Connor, William Van. Sense and Sensibility in Modern Poetry. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1948.

Preminger, Alex (Editor). Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1965.

Simons, Emogene S. Introductory Course in Theosophy. Quezon City: Theosophical

Bookshop, n. d.

Spender, Stephen and Donald Hall (Editors). English and American Poets and Poetry.
New York: Hawthorn, 1963.

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Temple, Ruth Z. The Critic’s Alchemy. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1953.

The Theosophical Society Leaflet Number Two. Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing
House, n.d.

Unterecker, John. A Reader’s Guide to William Butler Yeats. New York: The Noonday
Press, 1959.

Wilson, Edmund. Axel’s Castle. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969.

Yeats, William Butler. A Vision. New York: Macmillan, 1961.

_________________ . Autobiography. New York: Macmillan, 1969.

_________________ . The Celtic Twilight. London: Lawrence and Bullen, 1902.

_________________ . Collected Poems. Toronto: Macmillan, 1956.

_________________ . Essays and Introductions. New York: Macmillan, 1961.

_________________ . Explorations. New York: Macmillan, 1962.

_________________ . Mythologies. New York: Macmillan, 1970.

Nine: Appendix (The Euclidean Poetry of Alexander Pope)

Atkins, J. W. H. English Literary Criticism: 17th and 18th Centuries. London: Methuen,
1966.

Auden, W. H. “Alexander Pope.” In Alexander Pope. Edited by F. W. Bateson and N. A.

Joukovsky. Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1971.

Beljame, Alexandre. Le public et les Homnes de Letres den Angleterre, 1883. In

Alexander Pope: Pastoral Poetry and An Essay on Criticism by E. Audra and
Aubre Williams. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1969.

Butt, John (Editor). Alexander Pope: Imitations of Horace. London: Methuen, 1961.

_____________. The Poems of Alexander Pope. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1963.

Crane, R. S. “English Neo-Classical Criticism: An Outline Sketch.” In Critics and

208
 Criticism. Edited by R. S. Crane. The University of Chicago Press, 1952.

Davis, Herbert. Pope: Poetical Works. London: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Dixon, Peter. Alexander Pope. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1972.

Heath, Sir Thomas (Translator). The Thirteen Books of Euclid’s Elements. New York:
Dover, 1956.

Keats, John. “Sleep and Poetry.” In The Art and Craft of Poetry by Lawrence John
Zillman. New York: Collier, 1972.

Knight, G. Wilson. The Poetry of Pope. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965.

Kronenberger, Louis. Alexander Pope: Selected Works. New York: The Modern Library,
1948.

Mack, Maynard, editor. Essential Articles for the Study of Alexander Pope. Hamdem,
Conn.: Archon Books, 1964.

______________. The Garden and the City. Toronto: The University of Toronto Press,
1969.

Marziarz, Edward A. and Thomas Greenwood. “Euclid and the Elements.” In Greek
Mathematical Philosophy. New York: Frederick Unger Publishing Co., 1968.

Quennel, Peter. Alexander Pope: The Education of Genius. New York: Stein and Day,
1969.

Rogers, Pat. An Introduction to Pope. London: Methuen, 1975.

Shelburn, George. The Correspondence of Alexander Pope. London: Oxford University

Press, 1956.

Sitwell, Edith. Alexander Pope. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1962.

Sutherland, James (Editor). Alexander Pope: The Dunciad. London: Methuen, 1963.

Tillotson, Geoffrey. Pope and Human Nature. London: Oxford University Press, 1958.

Warren, Austin. Alexander Pope as Critic and Humanist. Gloucester, Mass.: Princeton
University Press, 1963.

Zillman, Lawrence John. The Art and Craft of Poetry. New York: Collier, 1972.

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