“The poets of the
seventeenth century, the successors of the dramatists of the sixteenth,
possessed a mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind of experience.
They are simple, artificial, difficult, or fantastic, as their predecessors
were; no less nor more than Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, Guinicelli, or Cino. In
the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we
have never recovered;”
TS Eliot ‘The Metaphysical Poets’
Some of the earliest
prototypes of scientific method appear in the work of Francis Bacon in the early
17th Century. Shortly afterwards the English Civil War occurred and
Isaac Newton came of age. In political and scientific terms these events
foreshadow what we know as the ‘Enlightenment.’ In the Enlightenment reason and
science are given a prominence and authority (often in opposition to religion)
that still colours our mindset. However, this same moment is defined by TS
Eliot as a regrettable ‘dissociation’ of previously harmonised aspects of the human
person as demonstrated in the work of the poets of the times. For him 'thought' and 'feeling' are split asunder. There is a
watershed with Donne and Shakespeare on one side and Milton and Dryden and all
that followed on the other.
It could be argued that, before this watershed humans were disposed thus: human ‘being’ and human experience preceded the necessary rationalisation that goes with awareness. Human being consisted and still consists of a set of givens. These were the senses, sexual interest and sexual relation to others, a moral sense of fairness and unfairness, right and wrong, a sense of the beautiful and emotion. One could, perhaps, also add a spontaneous inbuilt predilection towards religion. It is these faculties which were brought to and experienced life. They were givens in our nature. Following on from (therefore ‘post hoc’) being and experience the process of rationalisation began. This was simultaneous with the process of putting experience into words and reflecting on it from a distance. Language in itself is a process of post hoc rationalisation. Another way of looking at this is to use human infancy as a temporal metaphor for ontological ordering. A pre-linguistic toddler screams with delight or bawls with fear or frustration at the experience its being is undergoing. As it acquires language it begins to be able to rationalise and vocalise with ever greater helpings of the growing self-awareness that distinguishes humans (language and self-awareness are in a sense two sides of the same coin) and to make ‘sense’ of its experience.
To then alter to using history as a metaphor, one could say that Shakespeare and Donne were at the peak of harmonious human adulthood (although Eliot makes clear that Italian medieval poets had attained a similar adulthood earlier of course). What happened after them represented an imbalance or disordering of the harmony and relationship between the givens of human experience and reason (often in its incarnation as science). This represented an alienation from our full selves. This would coalesce with what Eliot speaks of happening in the literary sphere. The Enlightenment began, progressively to give greater and greater prominence to reason and science, thus dethroning experience and enthroning reason and science as possible panaceas. It is notable that, in 1726, Jonathan Swift was aware of and critical of this process. In ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ he is already pillorying the newly-formed Royal Society in the guise of the ‘Projectors’ of Lagado with their outlandish, ridiculous and sometimes disgusting experiments. The Projectors even have a form of early computer called the ‘Engine’ which is supposed to churn out works of literature and philosophy at the turn (by a large number of scientific interns) of a set of handles. Here we have a satirised, early example of the scientisation of the humanities. Swift was already warning of the dangers of the Enlightenment.
As the 18th century progressed the apotheosis of reason and science occurred with Voltaire and the French Encyclopédistes. Reason and science were set squarely in opposition to religion perceived to be oppressive, obscurantist and primitive and, with political ideas of being able, through reason, to bring about a new world, the French Revolution occurred. This was the beginning of our modern ‘progressivism.’ In all of this reason led, the intellect detached from the givens of being which had previously preceded it. This is the mindset which is still natural to us today. We assume that any problem, and not only those in the sphere of the material world but also those ‘contaminated’ by the sphere of our humanity (art, literature, aesthetics, morality, economics, politics, sociology and psychology for example) can be solved by the intellect and sufficient doses of rationality and scientific method. Everything can and will be ‘explained’ and remedied thus sooner or later.
It could be argued that, before this watershed humans were disposed thus: human ‘being’ and human experience preceded the necessary rationalisation that goes with awareness. Human being consisted and still consists of a set of givens. These were the senses, sexual interest and sexual relation to others, a moral sense of fairness and unfairness, right and wrong, a sense of the beautiful and emotion. One could, perhaps, also add a spontaneous inbuilt predilection towards religion. It is these faculties which were brought to and experienced life. They were givens in our nature. Following on from (therefore ‘post hoc’) being and experience the process of rationalisation began. This was simultaneous with the process of putting experience into words and reflecting on it from a distance. Language in itself is a process of post hoc rationalisation. Another way of looking at this is to use human infancy as a temporal metaphor for ontological ordering. A pre-linguistic toddler screams with delight or bawls with fear or frustration at the experience its being is undergoing. As it acquires language it begins to be able to rationalise and vocalise with ever greater helpings of the growing self-awareness that distinguishes humans (language and self-awareness are in a sense two sides of the same coin) and to make ‘sense’ of its experience.
To then alter to using history as a metaphor, one could say that Shakespeare and Donne were at the peak of harmonious human adulthood (although Eliot makes clear that Italian medieval poets had attained a similar adulthood earlier of course). What happened after them represented an imbalance or disordering of the harmony and relationship between the givens of human experience and reason (often in its incarnation as science). This represented an alienation from our full selves. This would coalesce with what Eliot speaks of happening in the literary sphere. The Enlightenment began, progressively to give greater and greater prominence to reason and science, thus dethroning experience and enthroning reason and science as possible panaceas. It is notable that, in 1726, Jonathan Swift was aware of and critical of this process. In ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ he is already pillorying the newly-formed Royal Society in the guise of the ‘Projectors’ of Lagado with their outlandish, ridiculous and sometimes disgusting experiments. The Projectors even have a form of early computer called the ‘Engine’ which is supposed to churn out works of literature and philosophy at the turn (by a large number of scientific interns) of a set of handles. Here we have a satirised, early example of the scientisation of the humanities. Swift was already warning of the dangers of the Enlightenment.
As the 18th century progressed the apotheosis of reason and science occurred with Voltaire and the French Encyclopédistes. Reason and science were set squarely in opposition to religion perceived to be oppressive, obscurantist and primitive and, with political ideas of being able, through reason, to bring about a new world, the French Revolution occurred. This was the beginning of our modern ‘progressivism.’ In all of this reason led, the intellect detached from the givens of being which had previously preceded it. This is the mindset which is still natural to us today. We assume that any problem, and not only those in the sphere of the material world but also those ‘contaminated’ by the sphere of our humanity (art, literature, aesthetics, morality, economics, politics, sociology and psychology for example) can be solved by the intellect and sufficient doses of rationality and scientific method. Everything can and will be ‘explained’ and remedied thus sooner or later.
The historical process
that has gone on here can be aptly highlighted by a simple comparison between
two nations involved in it; France and Britain. France embraced and still, on
the surface of it, as it has to (the whole nation being founded on it) embraces the Enlightenment and the enthronement of reason.
Britain, naturally, remains sceptical of the possibility of perfectibility through
reason and embraces an empiricism which hankers after the previous and happier
ontological ordering where experience preceded (propter hoc) rationalisation.
It is interesting that an English radical like William Blake, at the height of
a French Revolutionary project for which he felt many sympathies, could not
help expressing his misgivings about the primacy of reason. This he made known
in the oppressive demiurge spirit of Law and Reason which he invented – Urizen (Your
Reason). This, largely satanic figure is depicted by Blake measuring the
universe with a pair of mathematical dividers in the same way as Blake also
depicts Isaac Newton. This suggests an unresolved ambivalence about Blake which
also manifests itself in his comments about Milton’s Satan whom he is unable to
resist describing as an attractive figure. Of course he was an attractive and heroic
figure, having been the brightest of angels, but this did not prevent his
descent into evil.
The reason that Eliot addressed this problem in the way that
he did is that, essentially, poetry is a form that should address the harmonised whole of human being rather than
simply the intellect or simply the feelings. We should apprehend and enjoy
poems with our senses, our rational and cognitive faculties and our emotions in
harmony and all at once as Shakespeare and Donne were able to. That we can’t is the result of a descent and a disordering brought about by
taking one perfectly good and necessary faculty and giving it unwarranted prominence in
comparison to the others. The faculty given such prominence is one which might give us the illusion of being able to control and order creation in any way we wish. To give our reason and intellect such prominence flatters us.
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