T.S. Eliot: Culture and Anarchy:
James Matthew Wilson (Wiseblood Books, USD$8, 66 pages)
T.S. Eliot is probably the greatest literary and social critic of the 21st century, as well as one of its greatest poets. There is no shortage of treatments of his work, but James Matthew Wilson’s T.S. Eliot: Culture and Anarchy is a worthy edition to any library. Eliot was a perceptive critic because he approached art as a moral enterprise. Wilson says Eliot could not separate terms such as culture, literature, and morality because he “it was faith and theology that must serve as the foundation of our definition of everything else.” Eliot understood education is preparation for life and Wilson quotes Eliot stating “we are led to ask ‘What is Man?’; and if we define the purpose of education, we are committed to the question ‘What is Man for?’ Every definition of the purpose of education, therefore, implies some concealed or rather implicit philosophy or theology.” Indeed, Eliot recognized it is impossible to separate art or education from ethics and equally impossible to separate ethics from theology, for even irreligious ethical systems are either influenced or defined in their relationship to religion. Eliot eventually came to understand, in Wilson’s words, “a theology always and already underpins all our thought and, in failing to define those foundations properly, we had made an already confusing modern world unintelligible.” That is, without God, we are lost.
Wilson notes that by the 1930s, Eliot’s writing became more overtly political, and he saw similarities between “the liberal worldview of modern England and the statist fascism of Italy; both are moralities of a kind – of a kind that limits the scope of morality and the importance of the human person.” Absent a solid religious foundation, politics and the state will fill the vacuum, which in turn reduces the freedom of individuals because “that part of the social life which is independent of the State will be diminished to the more trivial.” That is, there must be a “common belief in something” and without the grounding of a thick religion that builds up community and common understanding about what is good, true, and beautiful – that is, a religion more than a personal inclination without public consequence – the State will fill the void. Wilson says that the civil religion, the thin religion that makes no demands on its adherents, is “subordinated” to political ends; there is no joy, nor any freedom, through such faith. Eliot thought a “religious sensibility” distinct from “religious faith” was protection against the totalizing nature of the modern state. Wilson explains that in his poetry and criticism, Eliot “re-describes the contemplation of eternity, the self-emptying of humility and repentance, the patience of toil and suffering,” which is only possible in a “life of devotion.” These, Wilson says, are a “discipline” which will help the faithful survive modernity.
