Moral Seriousness Research Articles

Eliot's <i>The Cocktail Party</i>: Comic Perspective as Salvation

T. S. ELIOT'S PLAYS, LIKE HIS POETRY, have always inspired critical extremes; few writers have had such loyal disciples or such violent detractors. The Cocktail Party (1949), the first of his post-war comedies, is no exception. Its problematical nature, one feels, is largely the result of Eliot's ambitious attempt to reconcile two seemingly incompatible elements: high moral seriousness and "light" comedy in the Noel Coward idiom. Thus, much of the discussion of the play has rightly centered on its comedy. In his final chapter to the third edition of Matthiessen's book on Eliot, C. L. Barber draws attention to the importance of the comic tone of the final argument between Edward and Lavinia Chamberlayne in the consulting room of Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly, maintaining that it is instrumental in showing the audience the absurdity of the life of pretense, and that it ultimately conveys "the comic sense that life is larger than personalities." But there is another important function of the comedy — an "internal" one — which has not yet been recognized: the all-important "salvation" of such characters as Edward (a salvation usually discussed only in religious terms) depends directly on their ability to develop and sustain a comic overview of life and a sense of their own potential absurdity. As Eliot makes clear in the play, laughter can occur only where there is detachment and objectivity, and detachment from self is the first requisite to salvation — Christian or otherwise.

Reform, violence, and personal integrity

The popular slogan that one ought to fight for what he believes right appears to point a way for persons to witness the moral seriousness of their interest in reform. But exactly what way does it point, and, in particular, does it enjoin resort to violence for the sake of what one believes right ? Pursuit of this question exposes some roots of our indecisive and often confused views about the acceptable means of revolution and reform and the eventual r61e of violence therein. Common understandings of ‘violence’ and ‘fight for’ do not carry us far. Further, there are doubtless differences in how the slogan's enjoinment of ‘fighting’ (and thus, if at all, of violence) is understood to be limited. These differences and the issues underlying them are exposed when we ask whether the slogan is to be understood to enjoin fighting or manners of fighting that might be called premature, gratuitous, or wasteful, and when we ask whether the ‘ought’ in the slogan is to be understood as, at best, a prima facie ought.

Moral Seriousness

What is it to be ‘morally serious’? In one sense, it is quite obvious that a man who stands by his moral principles with difficulty and in face of many obstacles, even to the extent of giving his life rather than denying these principles, is a morally serious person. He might be contrasted with a man who gives up or modifies his moral principles whenever their implementation becomes difficult, or threatens to harm his interests; and this person might be called morally frivolous. That is what moral seriousness is; but still, one might ask, what is it to be a morally serious man? What does it involve to be such a man? Is it just a sort of pathological obstinacy; even, perhaps, a misplaced conservatism in face of the facts, which clings to the principles it knows, whatever the cost? One cannot rule out such a possibility. But the martyr and the hero do not consider themselves to be merely obstinate. In the face of risk and even certain suffering, they typically regard it as of supreme importance to be obstinate in sustaining their principles. Something more is felt to be at stake than mere defence of the status quo.

Divine Necessity and Contingency: A Note on R. W. Hepburn

DIVINE NECESSITY AND CONTINGENCY: A NOTE ON R. W. HEPBURN DEATH-OF-GOD theology has probably run its course as a phenomenon capable of generating popular interest .1 The questions it raised, however, may be another matter. A theology that seeks to be pastoral will neglect this to its own detriment. One of the most challenging studies of the God-question that has appeared on the American scene in a good while is a set of eleven essays written by Ronald W. Hepburn and entitled Chri8tianity and Paradox.2 He proceeds under the assumption that theological discourse involves a critical exchange of views. An agnostic rather than an atheist, he has striven to make himself acquainted with the various types of justification that Christians offer for their theistic convictions. His own position of hesitancy is expressed as a reasoned alternative. Fruitful dialogue will not be initiated if silence is the sole reaction of believers to such a work. Neither God nor man is served that way. Furthermore, one is dealing with a serious and respectable treatment of the mystery that is at the heart of Christianity, that of the God whose good tidings the latter seeks to proclaim. First Hepburn treats a number of approaches that lay claim to direct and immediate experience of God.3 Then he turns his 1 This is at least the way Paul Van Buren sizes it up; cf. Theological Explorations (New York: Macmillan, 1968), p. 6. 2 Ronald W. Hepburn, Christianity and Paradox (New York: Pegasus, 1968). This book appeared originally in 1958 but is published for the first time in the United States with this edition. Its author contends, and rightly, that the interest in the God-question and religious language has surely not diminished in the meanwhile . 3 Ibid., ~4-59. He remains unconvinced when he studies the conviction of those who maintain that God can only be addressed and in no wise expressed. Of a theological audience that has grown accustomed to the Barthian distinction between knowing God and kn01ving about God, he asks incisively whether the two are not more complementary than antithetical. 150 DIVINE NECESSITY AND CONTINGENCY 151 attention to theistic evidences that take the form of demonstration or argument. To the latter a great deal of attention will have to be devoted by convinced theists, if they intend to enter into mutually profitable discussion with men of his calibre.4 God and Morality It is his contention that secular ethics does not by any means exclude moral seriousness. In other words, a life of dedication to noble ideals does not depend on a morality that is theistic in its roots. A way of 1iving worthy of man does not, he argues, demand as its sole possible foundation the existence of God. In working out this conclusion, he introduces a number of ideas that could well serve as the basis for a further attempt to clarify the issue at stake. He notes that few theologians today see moral principles as commands of God pure and simple. This means in practice that motivation seeks another source besides a divine imperative for a particular course of action. Goodness is the rational justification for obeying God; one obeys, even as a theist, because of a recognition that it is good to obey God's commands. Any other view, the reader is told, involves the worship of power as such.5 Obedience and its Motive Here not a few believers would have to disagree or at least express reservations. For they find themselves faced ultimately not with the question whether one obeys God because it is good to do so but rather whether goodness does not consist precisely in obeying God. This may be misconstrued, of course. But there is no need denying that a good deal of Christian tradition, Protestant no less than Catholic, has seen goodness the result of divine commands. Does God will any created good • There is no reason to think that the sole possible attitude the religious man can consistently take before the mystery of God is silence pure and simple. Even the assertion of His ineffability should bring this home, if the speaker will simply advert to...

An Ideal of Greatness: Ethical Implications in Johnson's Critical Vocabulary

Imlac's description of true literary greatness in Rasselas, chapter X, is a statement with an elevated call for something more than the ordinary neoclassic propriety. The demand which emerges from his speech is for two salient criteria of greatness: power and comprehensiveness of mind in a writer's "knowledge of nature," and the deeply moral outlook of the writer who in his normative preoccupations "must be acquainted likewise with all the modes of life." The poet must survey the "inexhaustible variety" of the "appearances of nature": nothing in the outer world "can be useless ... every idea is useful for the enforcement or decoration of moral or religious truth"; but comprehensive knowledge is "only half the task of the poet": he is also obliged to "consider right and wrong in their abstracted and invariable state"; he must rise to the general and write "as the interpreter of nature, and the legislator of mankind." When Imlac speaks thus he voices Johnson's own longing for greatness; Johnson's "idea of poetry was magnificent indeed," Mrs. Thrale states, "and very fully was he persuaded of its superiority over every other talent bestowed by heaven on man." Still, Prince Rasselas, faced with Imlac's sweeping ideal of the poet's function, can only exclaim "Enough! thou hast convinced me, that no human being can ever be a poet." Imlac and Rasselas speak for two sides of Johnson's thought on literature; there is a yearning for impossible excellence, and a certain irony and self-awareness which does not allow the idealization to go too far. "No human being" can ever be a poet of this order because no human can ever deal always and fully with the infinitely strenuous ethical responsibility. Yet in all his critical writing Johnson gauges authors against such a model of the universal poet, and marks off deficiencies. This paper will explore his critical demand for vigorous intellection and a manly moral seriousness which interpenetrate to reinforce one another—his craving for the seamless fusion of ethical and literary qualities in a piece of writing—by examining a selection of his key critical terms.

The Art of Narrative in Fromentin's Dominique

In a letter at the end of his life, Fromentin makes this remark which so well sums up his own literary achievement: Ne faites pas trop grand, pas complique, rien qui soit trop difficile; 'a quoi bon?-mais d'excellent. 1 It is this quality of excellence, of poise and technical mastery attained by a practicing painter in varied prose genres,-the travel journal, novel, and art criticism-each requiring special aptitudes and attesting to a different creative impulse, that makes Fromentin's literary art such an appealing subject for critical study. Here we propose to examine in some detail certain prominent features of the author's mode of narration in Dominique, the fictional transposition of his own boyhood and young love. Action in the novel develops as a story told, but this device is complicated by there being more than one narrator. The guest of the prologue, who introduces us to Trembles and the elderly Dominique, recounts the latter's story as it has been confided to him by Dominique himself. He subsequently returns in the epilogue to comment upon what he has been told. The use of this intervening narrator deprives the action of any immediacy: Dominique recalls and selects in telling of his life, which in turn is reflected upon in the retelling by his confidant. The story comes to us filtered through a doubly contemplative medium, and an imaginative distancing 2 is thus achieved contributing to the novel's prevailing mood of gravity and moral seriousness.

Quevedo's Satire on the Use of Words in the Suenos

It is a commonplace to say that Quevedo is essentially a moralist; the general intention of the Suefios is to reveal the truth, which is often either concealed by human hypocrisy, or undetected because of human stupidity and ignorance. Quevedo asserts that the aim of his work is desengafio: a habla y a dice la verdad clara y lisa y lo que siente, sin rastro de lisonja; y si acaso escuece y pica . . . es porque cuanto se dice es verdad y desengafio. 1 A moral intention, of which other people were aware (188b) is also pointed out at the end of his prologue: ellos hallarain desengafios y avisos de lo que pasa en este mundo y ha de pasar en el otro por todos (189b). The ironical tone of some parts of this and other prologues is absent when he makes such assertions of moral seriousness. This interest in the truth is of course an aspect of Quevedo's general attack on falsehood and moral stupidity, a major theme of all his satirical writing. In the Suenios, sins are seen from the social and the personal point of view, that is, in their effect on the sinner and also on those whom he may deceive. Flattery, lying, slander, and different forms of deceit of self and others by means of speech, writing, and even prayer, are therefore of particular interest to

The Silence of the Buddha

THE SIXTH CENTURY B.C. marks the beginning of an intellectual renaissance in India. Radhakrishnan has said of this period, There many indications to show that it was an age keenly alive to intellectual interest, a period of immense philosophic activity and many-sided development.... It was an age full of strange anomalies and contrasts. With the intellectual fervour and moral seriousness were also found united a lack of mental balance and restraint of passion. .... When the surging energies of life assert their rights, it is not unnatural that many yield to unbridled imagination.' Another authority on Indian philosophy has written, Speculation was almost rampant in the period just preceding the time of the Buddha and an excessive discussion of theoretical questions was leading to anarchy of thought.2 One restraining influence in this period of speculation was Siddhdrtha Gautama, the Buddha, who by counsel and example discouraged abstract theorizing. When asked to express his view on a number of metaphysical problems, he remained silent. Thus, there came to be in Buddhism a group of problems which known as the avyikrtavast2ni--the undetermined, or unelucidated, or unprofitable questions. The most comprehensive list of forbidden speculations is found in the Brahma Jlda Sutta of the Digha Nikiya. Here listed sixty-two ways in which recluses and Brahmans ... reconstruct the past, and arrange the future. The Buddha says they are entrapped in the net of these sixty-two modes; this way and that they plunge about, but they in it; this way and that they flounder, but they included in it, caught in it.3 Buddhists warned to avoid the net altogether. Only ten of the questions raised in the Brahma IJla Sutta appear in the Lesser Milufikydputta Sermon which is Sutta 63 of the Maijhima Nikiya, yet these especially important, for with some alterations they constitute the avyikrtavast;ani. The Sutta opens as follows:

Kant's Agnosticism

I would like to begin by reminding you of an episode in the history of modern philosophy in this country which is not altogether without significance, and that is the revolt against the Hegelian absolutism which one associates with such writers as Bosanquet and Edward Caird by a very powerful collection of thinkers at once philosophical and theological, of whom perhaps the best known in philosophical circles is the late Professor A. E. Taylor and in theological circles that profound and passionate writer Peter Taylor Forsyth. I mention Taylor and Forsyth together. I knew Taylor: I did not know Forsyth personally, but to judge from the latter’s biography there was very little temperamental kinship between the two men. But both Taylor and Forsyth had this in common, that they welcomed Kant’s intense moralism. I well remember Taylor saying to me: ‘You know, MacKinnon, Kant is a very great moralist indeed. The Hegelian criticism of him is largely irrelevant. Hegel was a man without a conscience and could never understand anyone who took the moral struggle as seriously as Kant did’. Forsyth, too, in his writings found in Kant’s intense moralism—his insistence on the inescapable demand of the moral law—a rock firm to withstand the moral frivolousness that he supposed to be ultimately implicit in the Hegelian attitude; and certainly if any of you have read Bosanquet’s book, Some Suggestions in Ethics (a book well worth reading) you will agree, I think, that Bosanquet does leave little foothold for an ultimate moral seriousness—for the kind of almost existential engagement that seems involved in moral choice.

Sidney and Ariosto

Put off by the casual tone of the poet who in his Arcadia, a “trifle … triflinglie handled,” seemed to be guided only by the whim of his sister, readers are often unable to reconcile the sprightly air of the cavalier raconteur with the serious intent of the young defender of poets and poesy. But giving proper weight to Sidney's “poetry must teach as well as delight,” critics have come to concede his sober purpose in romance as well as in apologetic. Sprezzatura, courtly grace, conceals, however, not only moral seriousness but also equal seriousness in poetic plan and procedure. We must look in the Arcadia for the careful artist as well as the edifying teacher. We must try to discover there that strong rein of order which Sidney thought necessary to check the “high flying libertie of conceit proper to the Poet,” that art which “doth give the fashion,” the traces of that Dedalus whom “the highest flying wit” must have to guide him.