Mike,
Perhaps I rationalize, looking away from philosophy some time ago and
turning back toward poetry, but I don't believe modern philosophy has
many (any?) answers. No philosopher today has produced a thoroughgoing
"system." Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Gadamer, et al don't tell us _what
_to think but strive instead to tell us_how_. Many of them concentrate
upon the interpretation of words and expressions. Matthew Arnold's poem
on the other hand falls into the _what to think_ category. Up until
1859 our ancestor's were happy with religious explanations. After Darwin
things changed. In Lovett and Hughes' /The History of the Novel in
England, / page 318 they write, "Both Meredith and Hardy lived in the
intellectual atmosphere of science, and are evidence of its penetration
into thought and style There are some hundreds of references to science
in Hardy's novels Both accepted the theory of evolution, but while
Meredith's reading of it gave hope of infinite achievement for man
through the development of his intellectual faculties, Hardy saw
consciousness as an adventitious circumstance in the cosmic process,
something for which nature had made no provision. In 1883 he wrote in
his diary: 'We [human beings] have reached a degree of intelligence
which Nature never contemplated in framing her laws, and for which she
consequently has provided no adequate satisfactions.' . . . It is to
him the fundamental principle of tragedy. He has declared explicitly
in his poetry the philosophy which is implicit in his novels. In his
poem on New Year's Day, 1906, he represents 'God' as asserting:
. . . . . . . . My labors, logicless,
You must explain, not I.
Sense-sealed I wrought without a guess
That I evolved a consciousness
To ask for reasons why.
Strange that ephemeral creatures who
By my own ordering are,
Should see the shortness of my view,
Use ethic tests I never knew
Or made provision for.
Hardy, like Meredith, bears witness to the advance of the nature sense
during the century after Wordsworth. In his noting of natural
phenomena, 'the business of the elements,' he was extraordinarily minute
and delicate. His senses were instruments of rare precision. And, like
Meredith, Hardy uses the symbolism of scene to express his philosophy.
Egdon Heath, in /The Return of the Native, /typifies the enduring force
of nature against which man vainly pits his puny strength. Only those
of the characters who accept it and live nearest to it, survive, while
Eustacia Vye, who represents opposition to it, brings ruin upon herself
and those about her. . . ."
There are plenty of philosophers who have told us what to think but as
far as I know, few of their conclusions are accepted today -- at least
conclusions of the sort Matthew Arnold generated when he wrote,
/"Ah, love, let us be true /
/To one another/ for the world, which seems
//
/To lie before us like a land of dreams, /
/So various, so beautiful, so new, /
/Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, /
/Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; /
/And we are here as on a darkling plain /
/Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, /
/Where ignorant armies clash by night."/
It is easy to place Arnold in Lovett and Hughes definition of Hardy's
philosophy. The whole educated world drew conclusions after 1859 and it
seems fair that these people must fall into either Meredith's camp or
Hardy's. Or, to hark back to Willliam James /Varieties of Religious
Experience,/ religious people fall into two categories: They are either
sick souls or healthy souls. Within the Christian framework, which
James assumed, they were either people who dwelt upon their own
sinfulness (sick souls) or were people who assumed God's forgiveness
(healthy souls) and moved on.
Taking Meredith's view we can generate a positive attitude about
evolution. Evolution isn't going to stop and we have every reason to
expect that man's mental abilities will benefit. Process Theology
deriving from Alfred North Whitehead's Process Theology takes the gist
of Hardy's poem and makes something positive from it. God didn't
/intend/ creatures who could "ask for reason why" but now that he has
asked them, God is learning from them. Humans along with God are evolving.
There are plenty of "healthy souls" out there but many take the view
that "sick souls" probably have the right idea: Better to be a sick
soul and be realistic than a "healthy soul" and be//naive.//There is no
room in nature, red in tooth and claw, for optimism. Watch the movies
based on comic book heroes if you wish, but if you want reality read
Matthew Arnold and Thomas Hardy. At least that's my impression. I
don't think that view holds up well when it is analyzed. You have to go
back into the constellation of presuppositions of the now-pessimistic
writer. Did he take a simplistic view of the Christian religion that
doesn't hold up well against scientific advancements? Is his simplistic
view the only one possible? Clearly it isn't but perhaps taking a more
liberal view of the Religion vs Science argument we can be religious if
we wish, or if we must. Then the world along with its beauty will
provide joy, love, light, certitude, peace, and help from pain. . . .
although in the last regard, having witnessed Susan's endurance of pain,
no thanks to the medical profession or the niggard insurance company
that paid them, there is considerable room for improvement.
I should note here that if I was an advocate of the Matthew Arnold view
I'd be in big trouble about now having just lost the "ah love, let us be
true to one another" person of my life. It might be possible to read
the poetry I've written over the last few months and come to the
conclusion that I have nothing left to live for. Susan's final illness
has been uppermost in my mind for a long time. Whenever the idea of a
poem occurred to me, even if I didn't start out with Susan as my focus,
the idea of her would creep in. There was a third novelist in the
chapter from the above reference, George Eliot. In her case she was
very good, according to Lovett and Hughes when she wrote about the
people and situations with which she was intimately familiar. But later
on when she became more ambitious and sophisticated her novels weren't
as good. I imagine I see something like that in Wallace Stevens and W.
H. Auden: When they teach in their poetry, they are teaching poetic,
religious or philosophical viewpoints current in their day. What will
happen to their poetry when the evolutionary machinery move us past
those viewpoints. Beyond that, what happens when language moves us past
the ability to understand them? I have been wrestling with Malory's
/Le Morte Darthur/. Mallory lived from 1405 to 1471 but who today can
read him without a lot of special education or at least a well-prepared
and annotated text? For that matter, Shakespeare living from 1564 to
1616 is extremely difficult. So who will read Stevens and Auden in four
or five-hundred years? Will anyone other than literary historians be
interested in their political or aesthetic theories? If I were a "sick
soul" I would be overwhelmed by the futility of writing anything at all.
Lawrence
