T. S. Eliot’s Philosophical Idea of “A Felt Whole” Applied in the Process of Artistic Creation

Abstract

Eliot’s philosophical idea of ‘a felt whole’ is crucial for the understanding of his early poetics of impersonality, for it served as the foundation of his key literary ideas and techniques such as tradition, objective correlative, dissociation of sensibility, and the mythical method. The idea originates from F. H. Bradley, the British philosopher, on whom Eliot wrote his doctoral thesis. What Eliot did is to apply Bradley’s metaphysical idea into his aesthetic practice, aiming for the fusion of the two apparently conflicting components of experience: emotion and thought. Eliot’s early career as a poet-critic is marked by his persistent pursuit of aesthetic experience that immediately catches, fuses, and transcends emotion and thought. The goal of such struggle is creation of a new self which presents our experience in this world as one and whole, what Bradley meant by the idea of ‘a felt whole’ at the initial stage of our experience.