Burke Variations On Providence

The University of Notre Dame
Variations on "Providence"
Author(s): Kenneth Burke
Source: Notre Dame English Journal, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Summer, 1981), pp. 155-183
Published by: The University of Notre Dame
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VARIATIONS ON "PROVIDENCE"
Kenneth Burke
Since the time when I
began planning
to write some "variations on the
theme of
'Providence,'
"
there have been some
developments
which de-
cided me to
say
much more
by way
of introduction than I had
originally
intended. In
particular, Wayne
C. Booth's admirable
volume,
Critical
Understanding:
The Powers and Limits
of Pluralism,
has been
published,
and some of his astute comments that bear
upon my
work have
helped
me
to
clarify my position,
which comes to a focus
methodologically
in what
I would call a distinction between
History
and
Logology. Happily,
the dis-
tinction is not "invidious." That is to
say,
the
Logologer
could not
properly
ask
anyone
to make an either-or choice between these two
ways
of
specu-
lating
on the
subject
of "the human condition." And the more informa-
tion historians have
presented
in
organized form,
the better
supplied
Logology
is with the kind of documents and admonitions that are most
helpful
for its kind of
perspectives.
Logology, Historiography,
Historicism
However, Logology
would have to
propose
an invidious distinction
between
Historiography,
a noble
calling,
and
Historicism,
a kind of ex-
cess caused
by
a kind of
insufficiency.
Historicism would not be content
with
writing history;
it would
go
further,
and hold that we are
nothing
but
the
products
of the
particular age
in which we
happen
to live
(or,
as Hei-
degger puts
it,
to be
"thrown")
.
Logology,
on the other
hand,
would start
from a
generic
definition of our
specific
nature as human
beings. What,
then,
is the "substrate" of which we are historical manifestations?
The term
"Logology"
itself has two
meanings,
one
theological,
one
purely
secular. In its
theological meaning,
as attested in the
OED,
it
means "the Doctrine of the
Logos,"
of Christ the
Word,
as narrated in the
Book of John. In its other
meaning, "logological"
is
synonymous
with
"philological," referring
to "words" in the
wholly
secular
sense,
an em-
pirical position
which can make no
judgment
about either the
Tightness
or
156 burke Journal
wrongness
of
theological
doctrine.
Logology,
as I thus use the term
(mean-
ing etymologically
"words about
words")
starts from a definition that
applies physiologically (I
am sure
you
all will
agree)
to
every
human
being except,
as
per
the Book of
Genesis,
our first ancestors.
Namely:
our
history
and
prehistory,
viewed
logologically,
from the
standpoint
of
"words about
words,"
is the written
and/or
unwritten
story
of a
biologi-
cal
organism
that is
gestated
as a wordless foetus in a maternal
body,
is
born
wordless,
and
develops
out of its
infancy (that is,
its state of word-
lessness)
while
acquiring
a verbal medium
which,
in
effect,
builds
up
a set
of
duplicates
for its nonverbal environment
(in Spinoza's
terms an or do
idearum to match an ordo
rerum, though
his "order of
things"
includes
much
personalistic
content not reducible to terms of the
sheerly
non-
symbolic)
.
All
told,
Logology
would
classify
this
necessarily imperfect duplica-
tion as a distinction between two realms of
nonsymbolic
motion and
sym-
bolic action
(for
symbol-systems
in the
history
of culture also include
such mediums of
expression
and communication as
music,
painting, sculp-
ture, dance, etc.).
The
strictly empirical
mode of
placement
here would
be
analogous
to the traditional
metaphysical
or
theological pair: body
and
mind,
matter and
spirit, though
not identical with them. In this
respect
Logology's
main foes would be the
Behaviorists,
who
monistically
reduce
any
such dualistic distinction between motion and action to but a matter
of
degree,
whereas
Logology
would be
emphatic
in
viewing
the distinction
between
physiological
behavior and verbal behavior as
qualitative,
a mat-
ter of kind.
Logology
would also
emphasize
an
empirical analogue
of the Thomistic
principium
individuationis. For the Summa
Theological
word "matter"
as the
"principle
of
individuation,"
Logology's corresponding
term would
be
"nonsymbolic
motion." At
parturition
each human
physiological
or-
ganism
becomes a
separate being,
a
biological organism
with its own
unique sensations, pleasures
and
pains
(local
to
itself,
as focused
by
the
centrality
of the nervous
system).
Each such individual lives and dies as
a material
thing,
like other animals in the realm of motion.
But unlike all other
earthly
animals
(to
our
knowledge)
the human
kind is
genetically, physiologically, materially
endowed with the
ability
to
learn the kind of
language
which
Logology
would call
"symbolic action,"
and which monistic reductionists would call "verbal behavior." Thus
Logology
would not consider
experiments
on
laboratory
animals
adequate
to
encompass
a
study
of the human animal.
A few further
introductory
remarks are needed. For
Logological pur-
Variations on "Providence" 157
poses,
the
metaphysical design
of Leibniz's
"monadology"
can be
given
sheerly empirical analogues,
thus:
Throughout
the
Universe,
in the realm of natural
motion,
at
every
in-
stant there is an infinite number of DISCRIMINATIONS
taking place.
An obvious instance: a
quantity
of
H2O
is in the
liquid
form of water. The
temperature drops,
and at a "critical
point"
the
liquid
"discriminates"
by
behaving
as a
solid,
ice. Or the
temperature
rises to a critical
point
where
the
liquid
becomes a
gas,
steam.
Presumably every
cell of our
body
is
making
discriminations of some
sort,
in the
processes
of
metabolism,
the
realm of material
motions, by
which the
body
exists as a
physiological
organism.
Obviously,
we are aware of but few such discriminations. Insofar as we
are aware of
discriminations,
let us call that condition "consciousness."
By
the "unconscious" would be meant the
processes
within and about us
that we are unaware
of, including
even our
wnawareness,
our unconscious-
ness,
of the
ways whereby
we are conscious.
I don't see how Behaviorists
(and
I
delight
in
haggling
with them in
matters of this
sort)
could
possibly
rule out such an obvious discrimina-
tion,
in their
missionary
zeal to find no room for "consciousness."
But that
brings
me to
my
ultimate
Logological dispute
with the Be-
haviorists.
They
would rule out "mind"? Then how about
defining
"mirid"
this
way: By
"mind" is meant "the human
being's genetically (that is,
physiologically)
endowed
ability
to
acquire
the
special
arts of verbal
behavior."
One more
point,
and I think I can round out this introduction
by tying
our modes of
symbolicity
in with
my opening Logological
distinction be-
tween
History
and Historicism.
I take it that the kind of
aptitude
for what is called "verbal behavior"
(which
also includes the
acquiring
of
symbol-systems generally,
such as
music, painting, sculpture,
dance, etc.)
can be
posited
as the differentia
that defines us
empirically
as our
specific
kind of animal. Such
"arbitrary,
conventional"
symbol-systems
have come and
gone
since the
days
of
pre-
history
when our kind
began developing
these
aptitudes,
the
ability
to do
so
being grounded
in the
body
as a
physiological organism.
This minimum
equivalent
of what in
metaphysics
or
theology
would be called "mind" or
"spirit"
would involve a social or collective medium.
Anthropologists
would
assign
it to the realm of "culture" as distinct from
"nature,"
though
in its
primitive stages
the two realms
might
not look much different
from each
other,
as
adjoining things
seen from a distance seem to
merge.
As our terms for
images, concepts,
ideas, properties,
attitudes, para-
158 burke Journal
digms, perspectives, situations, processes, relationships,
etc. took
form,
they
became in effect a universe of their own.
Also,
the mediums
using
these
purely symbolic
devices made
possible
the kinds of attention and
communication that
gradually
led to the invention and distribution of
tools
(with
corresponding
methods and
attitudes)
. And thus we now con-
front the
gradual
accumulation of man-made
new-things
that constitute
what we call the institutions of
"technology."
Radiations of the
Subject
This
subject
lends itself to so
many "radiations,"
so
many
"crossroads,"
as one
thing
leads to
another,
that it is advisable for me to foretell from
the start where these observations about
foretelling plan
to end
up. By
"radiations" I have in mind incidental encounters of this sort: The
thought
of Providence as
prescience, foresight, foreknowledge
can
comprise
mani-
festations as various as Divine Fore-Ordination
(Predestination,
eternal
damnation as "correlative" to "life
eternal"),
insurance
against
risk of
loss
(a
side-road that in turn could lead to modes of investment as differ-
ent as those treated in a stockbroker's market
report
and the kind of
"hedging"
to the ends of eternal salvation conceived of in "Pascal's
wager,"
Pascal's
exceptional genius along
the lines of the
esprit
de
geometrie
hav-
ing
enabled him to work out the mathematics of the odds in the combina-
tions of cards that
happened
to be in one's hand when
gambling)
... or the
principle
of "sacrifice"
implicit
in all
trade,
which
"sacrifices goods"
of
one sort for the benefit to be
gained by acquiring
in
exchange "goods"
of
another sort
-
whereat another almost
glorious
side-road turns
up,
as the
imitation of sacrifice in classic
tragedy
is seen to be a
grand stylizing
of
such
barter,
while the
story
of the sacrifice in terms of which the Chris-
tian Church is rationalized conceives of a divine ransom in this
regard
. . .
and also
along
the line we encounter Behaviorist
projects promising
tech-
niques
of
prediction
and control. Or there is belief and there is credit
-
etc.
Natural and
Technological
Powers
Since
Technology figures
so
notably
in all the secular "radiations" of
our
key term,
before
moving
on I would
quote
some
paragraphs
which
give
the
gist
of
my
historical
speculations
in the
spirit
of
Logology. (They
were
published
in the Winter 1978 issue of Critical
Inquiry)
:
Let's
go
to the
very
center of the
issue,
namely:
the relation between
"natural"
powers
and
"technological" power.
"Natural"
powers
can do
only
what
they
are
doing.
If it can
rain,
it is
raining.
If all that nature
could
bring
about in a certain
region
at a certain time is a state of
drought,
there is the irrefutable
evidence,
an actual state of
drought.
When there can be an
earthquake,
there is an
earthquake.
Nature "un-
aided" can manifest
only
the combination of conditions that add
up
to
exactly
what
they
do add
up
to in relation to one another.
But introduce the
symbol-guided techniques
of technology,
and na-
ture can be made to
undergo quite startling anthropomorphizing
trans-
formations. Unaided
nature,
under
present
conditions,
couldn't have
produced
our
present
vast arsenals of atomic bombs. Such instruments
could not have been
brought
into existence
("created")
without the
savoir-faire
of human
prowess,
which has thus in effect been
sculpting
its
self-image
in the materials of nonhuman
nature,
in effect
leaving
signs everywhere announcing, "Kingkill Kilroy
was here."
By placing
the whole stress
upon
the flat distinction between
super-
natural and natural terms for
discussing
the "descent of
man,"
Dar-
winism deflected attention from the critical distinction between human
animals and other
animals,
a distinction
which,
though grounded
in the
human animal's sheer
physiology,
made
possible
the realm of tech-
nological
counter-nature,
which
began
to take form with the first inno-
vations of instruments and
corresponding
methods but has
developed
at a
greatly accelerating
rate since the start of the industrial revolution
(page Henry
Adams on the "law of the acceleration of
history," given
the turn from the
"Virgin"
to the
"Dynamo")
.
Vico's "Providence" in effect De-Christianizes
Vico's New Science offers a
handy way
into this
discussion, including
the fact that his work has so
many
radiations when looked back
upon
in
the
light
of
subsequent developments. Logologically
considered,
his no-
tions of "Providence" are seen to
embody theological
connotations of
such
Foresight,
even while
primarily furthering
secular variations on the
same theme.
Also,
at the roots of Christian
theology (which
is
ardently
monistic
atop
its Trinitarian
aspect)
there is what
might
be called an am-
bivalently
"a-theistic"
attitude,
or
latitude,
as
compared
with
polytheistic
nomenclatures.
(The point
is discussed on
pp.
406-08,
in
my Language
as
Symbolic
A
ction.)
In
pagan polytheism
:
any
motive, habitat,
natural
power,
institution,
or means of livelihood
could
by linguistic
abstraction become a
"god."
Often the
process
was
hardly
more than the effect we
get by capitalizing
a
word,
writing
"Thunder" instead of
"thunder,"
plus mythic personifying
of such
160 burke Journal
abstractions. Where we
might go
from "finance" to
"Finance,"
poly-
theism could
readily go
a
step
further,
to the
personal god,
Plutus.
Thus whereas Christian moralists have warned
against
the evil
tendency
to "make
gods"
of our
ambitions,
the
early
Greek
philosopher
Thales
piously proclaimed
the world "full of
gods,"
and
(as
Aristotle
reports
in
the De
Anima)
"he said that the
magnet
has a soul in it because it moves
the iron." In
Vico,
the notion of God's will as
"Providentially" motivating
(fore-ordaining)
the course of
history gets
a
partially
de-Christianized
slant
by introducing
a different dimension. In
particular
Vico's
study
of
Greek and Roman
history
had led him to a secular
theory
of cultural
cycles
in
general.
And
thus, although
he did treat of historical
development
in terms of
"Providence,"
it was a term
applied
in a
theory
of similar un-
foldings
local to different
peoples
without relation to the
all-important
re-
demptive
role of the Christian sacrifice in the
design.
His
religious, heroic,
philosophic (scientific) stages,
with
relapses
into
barbarism,
anticipate
the kind of
cycles
that
Spengler
was later to
develop;
it was a
pattern
that
implicitly
allowed for
Spengler's schematizing
of the
"contemporaneous"
in
ways whereby
the same
stages
of
different
cultural
cycles
would be
analyzed (analogized)
as
"contemporaneous"
with each
other. And he introduced this notion: the rulers of each
stage
themselves
bring
about conditions that lead to their own
undoing,
thus
giving
rise to
the next
phase.
This
prime irony
was
rhetorically
relished
by
the Marxist
dialectic.
With
regard
to the
present discussion,
I recall a
passage
which I have
referred to elsewhere in words of
my own;
but I cannot remember
exactly
where it is in Vico's New
Science,
hence I cannot cite it as
accurately
as I
wish I could. The
design (viewed
Logologically)
is:
Humans are
by
nature cruel. Add
Foresight,
Providence,
and their
cruelty
becomes transformed into the "arts of defense." Humans are
by
nature
greedy.
Add
Foresight,
Providence,
and this
greed
becomes
transformed into the "arts of commerce." Humans are
by
nature vicious
[mean?
overbearing? arrogant?
"ambitious" in a bad sense?
-
here's
where I wish I could
verify
the
wording].
Add
Foresight,
Providence
-
and the
corresponding
transformation is the "arts of statecraft."
I have not
yet
been able to
quote
this
passage
more
accurately.
But in
any case,
the account is accurate
enough
to substantiate
my
conclusion
that Vico's treatment of the relation between Divine Providence and the
corresponding
enactments in the antics of human
society
involves a con-
siderable
step
in the direction of modern social science and
away
from
theological
answers to
questions
about "The Providence of God" as
pro-
pounded
in the two
great
Thomist texts.
Eliot's
Quartets
in the
Light
of Vico
Though Logology qua Logology
can make no
judgments
about the
possible
truth or
falsity
of
theological doctrine,
it is obvious to
Logology
that the terms of Vico's
perspective,
near the
beginning
of the
Eighteenth
Century,
do with "Providence" as a
qualitative step
much the same as
Blake's doctrine of
Imagination (near
the end of the
century)
does,
in
adding
a dimension that
distinguishes
ideal human motivation
(and
cor-
responding
"vision")
from that of the
sheerly
"natural." I shall
say
more
about Blake's
position
(which
was
impatient
with the
pious
cult of Nature
involved in the
high
value Wordsworth
placed upon
the role of the
Imagi-
nation)
. But first I would take this
opportunity
to cite a case where I was
obviously aiming
at a variant of the distinction that Vico's
usage suggests,
though
I did not mention it because I did not know of it at the time.
I am
referring
to a
section,
"Eliot:
Early
Poems and
'Quartets,'
"
in
my
Rhetoric
of
Motives. Here the
equivalent
of
"Providence,"
as a term
that stands for the introduction of a new
generating principle,
is the
spe-
cific turn that is
programmatically
announced in Eliot's
public platform:
"an
Anglo-Catholic
in
religion,
a classicist in
literature,
and a
royalist
in
politics."
(In
For Lancelot
Andrewes, 1928.)
Here is what I was
trying
to
suggest
in those
pages:
The
poet's public
was
expected
to
interpret
his variations on the characteristic "Prufrock"
role in the
early poems
as a dramatic fiction. But the "Quartets"
were a
devout doctrinal statement of attitude
by
Mr. Eliot in
person,
not as an
artist
depicting
an
imaginary
character for
pure literary
effect.
Rather,
they
are
expected
to be read as
wholly
sincere, poems
as direct in their
way
as the
Confessions
of St.
Augustine;
otherwise the
poet
would be a
hypocrite.
Since Eliot's "Prufrock"
poem
was entitled "The Love
Song
of J. Alfred
Prufrock,"
I
might bring
out
my point
most
bluntly by pro-
posing,
if it were not meant as
personally
sincere,
some such
grotesque
"literary"
title as "Four Devotional
Poems, by
J. Alfred
Prufrock, Esq.,
Recently
Reborn in Christ." It would be a title unfit
quite
to the
point
of
indecency.
Hence,
in the
light
of Vico's formula for "Providence" as
gen-
erating
a motivational
leap,
what is involved here?
As with Greek
myth,
or the Psalms of the Old
Testament, poetry begins
in modes of
expression
such that
religious
and artistic motives and
styles
are
inextricably
interwoven. We also
recognize
cultural
developments
162 burke Journal
whereby
the sacred and the
profane,
as with much
big
business in the cur-
rent entertainment
industry,
become
quite
distinct. And there is a notable
intermediate area where
religious
attitudes survive
vestigially
in estheti-
cized form. The traditional use of Greek
myth
in Western
poetry
is an ob-
vious
example
of this
turn,
which
gets impressive lyrical expression
in
Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Wordsworth's variant involves verse em-
bodying
a
literary
cult of nature that is conceived as
divinely
infused. Even
so hilarious a medium as
Aristophanic comedy
has
important
affinities of
this
sort, owing
to the association of
phallic
rites with
supernatural powers
of
fertility.
There are crude
vestiges
in
soap opera.
Introduce the rationale of
religion
into
any
vexatious or
exacting
situa-
tion,
and
you
can
notably modify
the
quality
of the motives in terms of
which
you
confront that situation.
Thus,
in
early days
when believers
assumed that the Second
Coming
was near at
hand,
an insomniac could
have transformed his burden into a rite of
watching
and
waiting,
that
is,
keeping vigil.
And there are at least traces of a different motivational
quality
if some bore or nuisance of a
neighbor
is referred to not as a bore
or a
nuisance,
but as one's "cross to bear."
Along
that line I would
say: By
his conversion Eliot didn't
simply
abandon the kind of
attitudes,
or
temperamental
habits that he
gave
for-
mal
poetic expression
to in the
poetry
of his
early
Prufrock
days.
He re-
tained
them,
but in a
critically
reconstituted form. It would be like the
difference between
dieting
because of
obesity
or
indigestion
or
high
blood
pressure,
and
dieting
as a matter of
principle.
For a
seeing
in
ways
of our
own,
we can refer in advance to the
place
where we consider
how,
with
St.
Augustine, theology's
views on
predestination
could well accommo-
date even the sack of Rome. For the
design
was
comprehensively
devel-
oped
over
many years
under
pressure
of
many
varied needs.
"Providentially,"
one
might say
in
good
faith:
Implicit
in the
gesture
of the somewhat
precious, literarily elegant
lament that was embodied in
Eliot's
way
of
adopting
and
adapting
the skillful
stylistics
of Jules La-
forgue
there were the
beginnings
of its
transfiguration
in terms of the out-
right theological perspective
intrinsic to the
"Quartets."
Once we
stop
to consider the two
stages
in this
light,
the first
stage
being
not abandoned in the second
stage,
but
transformed (as
the ana-
logue
of Vico's "Providence" in effect added to the second
stage
a kind
of
"grace"
that
"perfected"
rather than "abolished" the "nature" of
stage
one)
we see that Eliot has said as much in his own terms.
Consider,
for
instance,
the
opening
lines:
Variations on "Providence" 1 63
Time
present
and time
past
Are both
perhaps present
in time
future,
And time future contained in time
past,
a
design repeated
more
formulaically
in the second
poem,
"In
my begin-
ning
is
my end,"
which is also stated in reverse. There are
many
variants,
for instance this
repetition
of the same
term,
but with shifted connotations:
The
only hope,
or else
despair
Lies in the choice of
pyre
or
pyre
To be redeemed from fire
by
fire.
Or the rock of the
parched
desert in "The Wasteland" can become the
rock of
religious fortitude;
talk of a rose
garden
can refer to memories of
a secular
sort,
then take on dimensions of a somewhat
mystic unfolding
and enfoldment. Or consider the
upgrading
of
"turn,"
as we turn from
its incidence in "Prufrock"
(1917)
and "Ash
Wednesday" (1930),
while
one
might,
in the
light
of
hindsight,
note the
incipiently punning predes-
tinations
("rock"
and
"pure
frock")
in the
syllables
of the
poet's early
surrogate.
Denis
Donoghue's
Thieves
of
Fire
Logology being by
definition
quite
"word-conscious,"
the
subject
of
"Providence" can
readily
radiate into
speculations
about
Prometheus,
whose name is
etymologically
a
synonym
for
"foresight."
And this hero-
ically enduring Titan,
whose
sufferings,
like those of the Christians'
God,
marked him as a sacrificial victim in behalf of humankind's
welfare,
also
belongs
in our commentaries because of his
mythic
association with the
beginnings
of
Technology.
And there are further
grounds
for
turning
next
to this
figure
because we can
approach
the
subject through
a
highly sug-
gestive
book
by
Denis
Donoghue,
Thieves
of Fire,
the
printed
version of
several T.
S.
Eliot Memorial Lectures entitled "The
Prometheans,"
a
name he
gives
to members of a
literary
tradition with which Eliot was
quite programmatically
at odds. Denis
Donoghue presents
the case thus:
It is
proper
to
say
of the Promethean intervention in human
history
that it was a once-for-all
affair,
as a result of which we know we can't
go
home
again:
the intervention is historical and
irrevocable,
its chief
characteristic is that it cannot be deleted. Theft of the divine
power
of
knowledge
made reflection
possible
and therefore
necessary;
it made
men
self-aware, self-conscious,
it made the human race a multitude of
164 burke Journal
reflexive animals. But the
gift
of consciousness is
stolen,
it introduces
division into consciousness
itself,
as a mark of
guilt.
. . . Consciousness
is stolen fruit or stolen
fire,
in either form the
original
sin,
source of a
correspondingly original guilt.
Men take the harm out of it
by
convert-
ing
some of its
energy
to a
pious
end,
the
knowledge
of
God,
or its secu-
lar
form,
the
knowledge
of Nature. But
forgiveness
is never
complete.
. . . The reflexiveness of
mind,
which is in one sense its
glory,
is in an-
other a token of its
criminality,
its
transgression
at the source. . . . The
theft also
gave
men the
power
and the habit of
self-expression by
re-
course to
symbols;
it allowed them to mediate between two kinds of
experience lately
sundered
-
nature and
man,
or as we would now
say,
nature and culture. . . . Above
all,
Prometheus made
possible
the
imag-
inative enhancement of
experience.
The sometimes
quaint book, Mythology,
of Thomas Bulfinch
(1796-
1867)
brings
out the related set of
implications regarding
the role of
Prometheus :
With this
gift
man was more than a match for all other animals. It en-
abled him to make
weapons
wherewith to subdue
them;
tools with
which to cultivate the
earth;
to warm his
dwelling,
so as to be com-
paratively independent
of
climate;
and
finally
to introduce the arts and
to coin
money,
the means of trade and commerce.
Grammar
being
what it
is,
and
myth being nothing
if not
grammatical,
Prometheus had a brother
Epimetheus. They
were thus related as
pro-
logue
is to
epilogue,
as
Forethought
is to
Afterthought.
And it was After-
thought
to whom Pandora
(which
means
"giver
of all" as an
epithet
applied
to
Earth,
and "all-endowed" as a
proper
name,
and whose box
was to raise so much trouble when
things got loose)
was sent down as the
first
woman,
and was welcomed
by After-Thought despite
the admonitions
of
Fore-Thought. Logology
needs but
put
all these
pieces together
in one
bundle in connection with the fact
that,
as Bulfinch
says,
when "there
escaped
a multitude of
plagues
for
hapless man,"
there was left but one
good.
But it was a
strongly
futuristic
one,
thus at least on the
slope
of the
providential: hope.
Related Observations Anent
Logology
I
particularly
relish that
because,
though
the
tinkerings
of
Technology
have been almost
fabulously profuse
in the
proliferation
of man-made
instruments, methods,
and world-wide
interrelationships
that are con-
stantly getting
out of
order,
at the same time there is
always
an
equal pro-
fusion of
hopeful
assurances
that,
with but a bit more
tinkering,
all will be
in order.
Along
with its
great multiplication
of
things, Technology prom-
ises us that in time there will be a
pill
for
everything. Logology,
I
fear,
has
but what most
people
would
probably
consider a
dreary
substitute for
hope; namely:
the
futuristically
slanted
methodological engrossment
in
the
tracking
down of
implications,
which
may
amount to
translating
the
grand
oracular
utterance,
"Know
thyself"
into
"Spy
on
thyself."
Myths
are more
hospitable
to several
meanings
than are the
dogmas
of
theology,
the definitions of
philosophy,
and the
mathematically precise
measurements of science. Thus besides the relation of Prometheus to fire
as a
prime
material
power
in the
shaping
of human
destiny,
there is the
fiery
Promethean truculence as
depicted
in the
only tragedy
that survives
from the
trilogy
of
Aeschylus
-
and
Donoghue
takes off from that in se-
lecting
the four turbulent
geniuses,
Milton, Blake, Melville,
and D. H.
Lawrence whom he selects to discuss as his
examples
of the
type,
the
epi-
thet
being
one which Rimbaud
applied
to "the
poet"
in
general.
I see them as
variously responsive
to motivational situations which are
poignantly responsive
to notable
changes produced by
the
increasing pace
of
technological
advance in the state of Counter-Nature that could not
have
emerged
in their times without the accumulated
operations
of
pecu-
liarly
human inventions. These
developments
could be said to have been
mythically
foretold as a tortured Titan's
gift
of stolen fire to humankind
(thus
human nature's
prowess
in
transforming
the conditions of nonhu-
man nature
by
both intent and
accident,
that
is,
the
hopes
in a new
order,
along
with the
hopes
of
controlling
the riot of new disorders that arose as
unintended
by-products
of the
innovations)
. For I would hold that there
is an ironic kind of
predestination
let loose but concealed
here,
in a tacit
assumption.
I would call it the "instrumentalist
fallacy,"
which
prevails
not
by being
affirmed but
by being
overlooked in
particular
cases, although
whenever
it is mentioned
people
are
quite likely
to
agree
in
general
that it is a
fallacy.
The "instrumentalist
fallacy" (or perhaps "quandary")
is the un-
stated
assumption
that
any improvement
in instruments or methods is to
be evaluated
solely
in terms of its nature as that
improvement.
But
every-
thing
has a nature of its
own,
and this
identity
is not reducible to its nature
as the function for which it was
rationally designed.
Thus so far as our
adaptation
to new
experiences
is
concerned,
the
Pandora's Box of accumulated Counter-Natural innovations,
which come
to seem like a "second
nature," may require
much more
analytic
research
and corrective
tinkering
than the instrumentalist
fallacy
admonishes us to
1 66 burke Journal
suspect.
We are accustomed now to
"impact
statements," preparatory
research
seeking
to foretell
(be provident
or
prudent
about)
the
possible
cultural and economic effects that some new construction
project may
have on the
surrounding
environment. But
thoughts
of
Technological
Accumulation as a realm of Counter-Nature lead us to ask whether Tech-
nology's critique
of itself
may
not
require
constant
speculative (analytic,
diagnostic, data-gathering)
research into the nature of its
impact.
Donoghue
on Blake
So much for
possible
ultimate
inquiries
into the relation between
Counter-Nature and the role of cantankerous "Promethean"
poets
whose
way
of
confronting
such matters
may
be so roundabout as to seem like
involvement in a
totally
different cultural
groove.
In
any
case,
when fea-
turing
the
primarily "literary" aspects
of the writers whom he selects as
examples
of the "Promethean"
temper, Donoghue
has done
enough,
and
amply,
in
pages vibrantly suggestive.
But I can't do his book
justice
in
detail,
for I have contracted to
keep moving
on as one
thing
leads to
another.
However,
here is an ideal
passage
to
help
me on
my way.
Blake,
he
says,
is "dedicated to the
primacy
of vision."
(Note
that
"primacy
of
vision" is another "Providence"
term.)
But this
faculty
is
a
strictly
human
power superhuman
in its
origin:
he feels no
loyalty
to
Wordsworthian
recognitions
and
acknowledgments,
that
is,
to the
Wordsworthian cult of
loyalty
to
nature,
since these are tokens of a
law that man has not established. Blake believes that the natural world
may
be redeemed
by
man's
imagination, may
be rendered human and
therefore
transfigured.
Wordsworth believes that the natural world is
already
blessed,
and that man has but to
recognize
that condition and
live
accordingly:
such a life would mean man's
redemption.
Blake's
most
complete
relation is to his own
imagination
... his relation to
the
given
world is defiant. ... In
Blake,
the Promethean
imagination
is
a form of
energy [which
is
projected]
into the otherwise
merely
natural
world.
This
visionary imagination
is "the
distinctively original power,
the
alpha
of human
history
... the secular manifestation of divine
powers
. . . God and the
imagination
are one." But not
only
does the notion of the
poetic imagination
as a creative
power provide
an aesthetic substitute for
the
theology
of Providence as a
principle
of Foreordination.
Viewing
the
foresight
of Blake's
prophetic gospel
now from the
standpoint
of histo-
riographic hindsight,
we can realize that an answer to his call for the tran-
scending
of natural laws
by peremptory
modes of
purely
human affirma-
tion was even then
taking shape.
For
already,
in
keeping
with what
Henry
Adams was to
propound
as the "law of the acceleration of
history,"
the
pace
of the Industrial Revolution was
beginning
to
speed up,
we
might
almost
say "traumatically."
The advances of
technology
had attained
a
stage
of
development
that invited
many
new
aspects
of
pure
sci-
entific
speculation
-
and the conditions were such that the
imaginings
could be
practically implemented,
even to the extent of
imperialistic
aggrandizement.
I have been told that I am
wrong
in
my
view of what
people generally
think,
with
regard
to the relation between
pure
science and
applied
sci-
ence. For I would stress the fact that the state of
technology
itself
pro-
vides the conditions which
open up
avenues of
"pure" speculation.
Instru-
ments and methods are like
images,
in
suggesting
new sets of
implications,
variants of the Gidean
formula,
"what would
happen
if . . . ?" a
species
of
gratuitous sophistication
not confined to Gidean ethical aberrancies.
Further on Counter-Nature
When Blake was
writing, developments
were
already
under
way
which
now
promise
such
transcending
of natural conditions as can be
provided
by
advances in
genetic engineering.
Such a realm of Counter-Nature is to
be
distinguished
from whatever
might
be called a
Supernatural
realm. For
whereas such a realm
is, by
definition,
outside the
natural,
the term
"Counter-Nature"
(to designate
the resources made
possible by
the an-
thropomorphizing genius
of
technology)
has the
etymological
ambiva-
lence of the Latin
preposition
contra,
from which the
prefix
"counter" is
derived. It can mean
"against"
both in the sense of
"opposed
to" and in
the sense of "in close contact
with,"
as in the sentence "To brace himself
he leaned
against
a
tree";
and the same
root, contra, gives
the
patriot
his
proud expression, "my country."
I
previously quoted
a
passage
in which I discussed the difference be-
tween "natural" and
"technological" powers. Perhaps
I should
say
more
on that
point,
which comes to a head in
my pleas
for the
term,
"Counter-
Nature." We are not concerned here
merely
with the choice of a word.
The
important thing
is: The
proposed
term
points up
a matter of deriva-
tion that is concealed when we have but the contrast between "natural"
and
"supernatural"
realms,
a contrast which the term "Counter-Nature"
is
specifically designed
to obviate. To
adapt
a bit more from the article I
already
mentioned:
168 burke Journal
The flat distinction between "ideas" as derivative "from the bottom
up"
according
to the
genealogy
of Marxist dialectical
materialism,
and
"from the
top
down" in
Hegel's
dialectical
idealism,
invites a kind of
"genetic fallacy" whereby
overstress
upon
the
origins
of some mani-
festation can deflect attention from what it
is,
regardless
of what it
came from.
The difference between
technological power
and raw natural
power
is
per
se evidence of the
way
in which the
transforming potentialities
of
symbolism's
"ideas" can "transcend" nature without
being
either ortho-
doxly supernatural
or rooted in a
Hegelian
Absolute. . . .
Though
the
change
from the human
organism's wholly
"natural" con-
dition,
as an animal like other
animals, began
with the most
primitive
uses of
language
in
assisting
the
development
of tools and in
reinforcing
the imitation of new
procedures,
I would assume that
only
within the last
two centuries the
implementing
of such inventiveness
(culminating
in
laboratory techniques
for the ever more efficient invention of further in-
ventiveness)
has
produced
a
revolutionary explosion
in the
correspond-
ing
realm of counter-nature
(usually
referred to as the
ability
of human-
kind henceforth to
guide
its own evolution rather than
being subject
to
the instincts and laws of natural
selection,
a
development
which Darwin
studied and which Marx heralded as the rise of "new needs" under mod-
ern methods of
production)
. I call that a realm of "counter-nature" in the
sense
that,
if all such man-made
equipment
were
suddenly gone, you'd
have to
try making
a
living
under "natural"
conditions, though
we be-
come accustomed to our "unnatural"
ways
as a kind of "second nature."
Once our kind of
physiological organism emerges
from
infancy (speech-
lessness)
into
familiarity
with a
symbol-system
such as a tribal
language
... it is characterized
by
a
property,
or
faculty,
that infuses all
experience
with its human nature
-
whence the
"anthropomorphism"
inherent in
what,
over half a
century ago,
I
quaintly
called "the
thing
added
-
the
little white houses in a
valley
that was once a wilderness."
By identifying
such
symbolic prowess
with an "entelechial
principle"
I have in mind the
notion that inherent in it there is the incentive to
"perfect"
itself
by
cover-
ing
more and more
ground.
For such a
potentiality
is
saying
in effect:
"Whatever the
nonverbal,
there are words for
it, ranging
all the
way
from
the
technically, scientifically
couched
analysis
of a situation or
process
to
a sheer
expression
of
attitude,
as with the
poet's feeling
that
spring
re-
quires completion
in a
springsong,
or a devout believer's
'gesture'
of rev-
erence in his
symbolic
act of
prayer."
The rudiment of
"Purpose"
in this
regard
I would
ground
in the
sheerly
physiological
needs for
food, shelter, sex, etc.,
but the
"anthropomorphic"
range
is the
empirical equivalent
of
unfinishedness,
what has been called
humanity's
"divine discontent." On the side of
symbolism,
it all
begins
with the
purely
formal fact that a sentence is
fully
a sentence
only
insofar
as it has a
meaning,
and such a
meaning
is its
purpose.
So we
"naturally"
start from there and aim to endow
everything
in nature with the kind of
"meaningfulness"
that a sentence has.
The
pragmatic perfecting
of the entelechial
principle
itself in terms of
mediation
( Vermittlung) by ingeniously extending
the realm of counter-
nature ever further into the realm of
nonsymbolic
nature is
(take your
choice)
either an overall human
purpose, particularly
in its attendant
needs to
worry
about its side
effects,
or a kind of
neo-Schopenhauerean
compulsion.
. . .
Logology
must confront
history,
first of
all,
not in terms of historical
change,
but in terms of the
question,
"What is it to be the
typically
symbol-using
animal?"
Cromwell on Providence and
Necessity
With
regard
to the term "Providence"
itself,
rather than its manifold
"radiations,"
here is an instance which does come close
(though
with a
difference)
to the Vico formula.
(I
discuss it in
my
Rhetoric
of Motives,
pp.
1
12ff.)
It is in connection with a
speech
delivered
by
Oliver Cromwell
before the House of
Commons, January
22,
1 655.
Cromwell refers to the Revolution as an instance of "God
manifesting
Himself." The fact that the Revolution succeeded is cited as
per
se evi-
dence of God's will. He sees in it a
"necessity" imposed by
"Providence."
The Vico touch
figures
thus :
Religion
was not the
things
at first contested for "at all": but God
brought
it to that issue at
last;
and
gave
it unto us
by way
of redun-
dancy;
and at last it
proved
to be that which was most dear to us.
Again,
after
asserting
that
"they
do
vilify
and lessen the works of God"
who accuse him of
"having,
in these
great
Revolutions,
made
Necessities,"
he
says:
There is another
Necessity,
which
you
have
put upon
us,
and we have
not
sought.
I
appeal
to
God,
Angels
and
Men,
-
if I shall now raise
money according
to the Article in the
Government,
whether I am not
compelled
to do it!
170 burke Journal
The role of "God" or "Providence" here
(as
we
may
refer either to God
as Providence or the "Providence of
God")
is stressed in answer to the
charge
that the success of the Revolution
depended upon
his
special
skill
as a
conspirator:
"It
was,"
say
some,
"the
cunning
of the Lord
Protector,"
-
I take it
to
myself,
-
"it was the craft of such a
man,
and his
plot,
that hath
brought
it about!"
And,
as
they say
in other
countries,
"There are five
or six
cunning
men in
England
that have
skill;
they
do all these
things."
Oh,
what
blasphemy
is this! Because men that are without God in the
world,
and walk not with
Him,
know not what it is to
pray
or
believe,
and to receive returns from God.
And he clinches matters thus:
If this be of human structure and
invention,
and if it be an old Plot-
ting
and
Contriving
to
bring things
to this
Issue,
and that
they
are not
the Births of
Providence,
-
then
they
will tumble.
More on Nature and Counter-Nature
Somewhere
(I forgot where,
and I've never been able to find someone
who could tell me
where)
in references to scholastic
theology
I ran across
a definition of God as "the
ground
of all
possibility."
It
always
seemed to
me
that,
if such a
"ground"
were not defined as
"personal"
or "intellec-
tual"
(a Being
Who
might
make Covenants with
us),
even a confirmed
atheist could
go along
with that definition. It's somewhat in the same
groove
with the definition of
politics
as "the art of the
possible."
I would introduce it here as a
bridge
to a
terminology
of a
quite
different
temper.
The secular
analogue
of what Cromwell calls "the Births of Provi-
dence" in connection with the success of a Revolution that
put
the de-
posed
monarch to death would
be,
in the Marxist nomenclature of dialec-
tical
materialism,
the
prime emphasis upon
the "necessities" of the "ob-
jective situation,"
the "scientific" instruction that the Revolution could
succeed
only
when the time was
ripe.
Logological
doctrine
goes along
with Cromwell and Marx
here,
in not-
ing
that
technological powers
can "succeed"
only
to the extent that
they
accommodate themselves to the "necessities" of the situation as "deter-
mined"
by
the natural conditions which are the material
"ground"
of their
operation.
"Fore-ordination" of some sort is
implicit
in the fact that the
foetus of one animal does not
develop
into the
offspring
of another. And
if the
presently emergent
skills of
biogenetic engineering develop
to the
point
where transformations of
exactly
that sort can be
proposed (with,
say,
further
insight
into the resources of recombinant
DNA),
the same
underlying
laws of motion that made such a
development impossible
with-
out the intervention of human
bioengineering
would still
circumambiently
prevail, just
as the natural conditions that made
possible
the accumula-
tion of 30 to 50 thousand chemical waste
disposal dumps (many
of them
toxic)
across the
country
were not "abolished"
by technologers'
"free"
acts when
setting up
a realm of Counter-Nature in those areas. Nature can
do no
wrong,
for whatever it does is nature. Its role as "Counter-Nature"
figures only
with reference to its man-made
plastic
effects
upon
nature.
At
present, only
with the aid of
symbol-guided technologic powers
could
sheerly
natural
powers
do a
grand job
of world-wide
genocidal pollution.
Incidentally, although
I can't resist
heckling
now and
then,
in
bringing
out the
suicidal-genocidal aspects
of
technological power gone wrong,
I
do not
judge my position
as outside the
technological
orbit. In
fact,
I take
it that
Logology's
wan
methodological analogue
of
HOPE,
its involve-
ment with "the
tracking
down of
implications,"
is at
every point following
implications
that
Technology
itself
brings
to the
fore, through
the
sugges-
tiveness of its
concepts
and
ideas,
of its
things
as a kind of
imagery,
and
particularly
with
regard
to
possible
relations between artificial Counter-
Nature and the
body's origins
in nature
old-style
-
origins
that are not
away
back and now
abandoned,
but are still
immediately
with us
every
time we breathe
-
and
they
had better
be,
unless each member of our
species
is to be
supplied
with an artificial
respirator
like those
provided
in
hospitals ("provided"
-
there's that word
again!), provided
for
patients
whose bodies suffer from the
privation
of an
aptitude
normal and natural
to our
species.
Logology
is
vigilant
with admonitions
(and corresponding perspec-
tives)
that the resources of
Technology
have
brought
into
being by exactly
those conditions
-
hence a whole new set of moot
questions
arises. It's
not inconceivable that full
technological development
could be the flower
of Western culture
gone
to seed in a desert of its own
making. Or,
other-
wise
put:
So far as I can make
out,
a
computer
has no more "sense of
principles"
than does a stone
rolling
down a hill. Its imitation of the "ra-
tional" is an "efficient" reduction of human "reasonableness" to the
edge
of
absurdity.
It can't
distinguish
one Ism from another. It could dis-
tinguish
between a Marxist and a non-Marxist
only
if one could
say
"shibboleth" and the other had to
say
"sibboleth"
-
or
by
some other such
distinction
purely
in the realm of motion
(as
those two sounds
are).
It's
172 burke Journal
useful,
but
quite dangerous
if too
many
decisions
(questions
of motiva-
tion)
are
delegated
to such devices as
surrogates
for "brains."
Marx's
Counterpart
of Divine Predestination
The Marxist dialectical
counterpart
of Divine Predestination
is,
of
course,
the
theory
of successive transformations in the nature of class
conflict,
with each
stage bringing
about the conditions that
prepare
the
way
for the next
stage.
Marx
explicitly says
that
although
the stress
upon
class conflict is
usually
associated with his
name,
he
got
such leads from
the
bourgeois
economists. His contribution was the version of
history
designed
to foretell
(I
have to check on the
specific
"Providence" word
he uses
here,
but I think it was
"prove")
the inevitable
development
of the
class
struggle
until the ultimate
stage
of class
society,
the
dictatorship
of
the
proletariate,
which would in turn
inevitably
lead to the abolition of all
class conflict.
On this score
Logology's
stress
upon
the
purely
verbal
(symbolic)
nature of the
negative points
out a
strategic
transformation of the dialec-
tical
design
in terms of which the various transformations of the class
struggle through
its successive
stages
are said to have taken
place.
When
turning Hegel's
idealistic dialectic into the
contrary
terms of dialectical
materialism,
Marx in effect "reified" the
negative,
as
though
it were real
in the sense of a material
thing.
The term
"Negativity,"
as
applied by
Hegel
to the
positive
world of material
"objects,"
was a
metaphysical
con-
cept
much like
Spinoza's
formula,
omnis determinatio est
negatio.
When
you scrap Hegel's
idealistic
rationale,
and
apply
the term
quasi-scientifi-
cally
to relations in the world of tumultuous historic
details,
much that is
actually
a matter of
opposition (as
with the
concept
of "class-conflict"
itself) gets
treated in terms of
"negation,"
as one
might loosely speak
of
rivals in a
game
or of
political
factions as
"negating"
each other whereas
a Marxist narrative of such historic transformations involves a vast wel-
ter of such
positive
details as characterize all actual contests
(that is, op-
positions).
And
although they may
be summed in terms of
"antithesis,"
that term itself is
etymologically
the Greek word that
corresponds exactly
to the Latin word
"opposition."
Thus,
a Marxist
history
of the
past
bristles with
positive descriptions
of
constantly changing oppositions,
or antitheses that lead to new
adjust-
ments,
or transformations
which,
in
keeping
with the same
etymological
root,
can be classified as
"syntheses."
In
brief,
old
oppositions
can be-
come transformed into new
compositions,
which are
positions
that lead
to new
oppositions, quite
as the
stages
of
growth
from seed to
sprout
to
stock to branch to bud to flower to seed are not a succession of
"nega-
tions" but a
sequence
of
transformations,
as
weights
in balance
(for
which
a
synonym
could be "in
opposition")
are not
"negating"
each other.
But hold! The dialectical
design
itself
undergoes
a notable transforma-
tion when it turns from the records of the
past
to
"providential"
discussion
of the
future,
which
by
the nature of the case can have no welter of
posi-
tive
documentary
details, empirical
data,
to write the
history
of
and thus
to write
history
with. Whereat lo! of a sudden a
genuine negative
enters
the
design.
The
past
has been a succession of class conflicts
(oppositions)
,
all
capable
of
description by
research and
organization
of details. But in
the ideal
future,
class conflict
disappears
and is
replaced by
a state that is
class-less. Here is an
outright negative, got by
the abolition of classes.
With
regard
to the
bourgeois
version of secular
providence
in foretell-
ing
the abolition of
slavery,
the Marxist dialectic
interpreted
this
develop-
ment in accordance with the
principle
of
transformation.
That
is,
it
diag-
nosed the historic
development
as a
change
from
slavery explicitly
so
called to
"wage slavery."
But when
confronting
the
possible
future
after
capitalism,
instead of
asking
what new kind of classification
might
de-
velop
out of the
change
in
property relationships
the Marxist dialectic
abruptly changed
the rules and
disposed
of the issue
by
then,
for the first
time, introducing
an absolute
negative.
Logologically,
the issue would be sized
up
thus: The
promises
of the
French Revolution were
sloganized
in
keeping
with Rousseau's distinc-
tion between freedom
(independence)
and
slavery (subjection).
The in-
adequacies
of so blunt a distinction still
figure,
even after the
step
from
"wage-slavery"
has, by
definition,
been
culminatively
taken. In a
per-
fectly
socialized
society
that was
functioning
well,
the individual citizen
would not be
independent
of his fellows
(that
should be an
outgrown
bourgeois
ideal)
. All are
mutually interdependent upon
the
competence
and
goodwill
of one another. And the
fictions
of
private property
would
be
replaced by
the actualities of control
(a development already quite
evident in the conditions of social
labor,
as contrasted with individual en-
terprise,
that are manifested in the
corporate organizations
of
capitalism)
.
Administration is controlled not
by
the owners
(the stockholders)
but
by
the
managers,
who
usually
own but a small
proportion
of the stock. In
fact,
the more
widely
the stock
gets
distributed,
the easier it is for insiders
to
keep
control in their own
hands,
since the wider the distribution of
ownership among
small stockholders the harder it is for the owners to
unite in the control of administrative
policies
which would
bring
a
higher
174 burke Journal
proportion
of the
corporation's profits
to the
owners,
and less to the
managers.
In the case of an ideal communist
future,
even if one
grants
for the sake
of the
argument
that it is
working justly,
there would still be
grounds
for
contending
that such a social order should not be defined as individual
independence
(freedom
from
subjection)
but as mutual
subjection
of all
to all in a
way
that is
gratifying
to all. In
fact,
it's hard to
imagine
how
any
society
that would involve so extensive and manifold modes of interaction
as advanced
technology necessarily
does
could, by
sheer
definition,
in-
volve not maximum
independence
but maximum
interdependence, though
the word
spontaneously suggests
a riot of
problems.
Providence in St. Thomas
Aquinas
At this
point
we confront a
major
moment, perhaps
the
major
moment,
in this
rambling survey (necessarily "rambling,"
since the
"radiations,"
or
"ripples,"
that follow from the term "Providence" as
starting point
are so
manifold, urgent,
and
directly
or
fragmentarily
relevant to the "eschato-
logical" aspects
of the
subject).
The Marxist
theory
of
history (past
and
predicted)
reminds us that "Providence" in the sense of
thoughts
on first
and last
things
is
explicitly
treated in
Question
22 of St. Thomas's Summa
Theologica
and in
Chapter
64 of his Summa addressed "to the Gentiles."
And behind those there are St.
Augustine's major writings
on matters of
"Predestination."
(I
have
especially
in mind that
astounding
work of
genius,
The
City of
God. Recall also the
burning
words on the Last
Judg-
ment in the last book of the New
Testament.)
But
my Logological approach
to a text
permits
me to make no
judgments
whatever about the truth or
falsity
of
Theological teachings.
Hence I can
discuss such texts
only
as forms of
"symbolic
action" that are to be an-
alyzed purely
as
examples
of verbal behavior.
Consider,
for
instance,
the
doctrine of
metempsychosis, "transmigration
of
souls,"
in some Eastern
religions.
It
implies
different relations between the natural and
supernat-
ural orders than those
propounded
in connection with Western tradition.
In the Eastern
rationale,
a
person
born
subject
to
great hardships
and
pri-
vations is
thought
to have merited these conditions as the result of evil
ways
in his
previous
existence. And if he behaves better this
time,
he will
merit
correspondingly
better conditions on "his next time
around,"
when
his soul will have
migrated
into another
body.
Obviously,
a
theological
rationale of that sort would be at odds with
the
Augustinian design
of
Predestination,
involving
Providential modes of
Fore-Ordination on God's
part
that would call for
quite
different terminis-
tic behavior on the
part
of the author's text. And within the
necessary
con-
fines of
Logology,
I could not
properly
choose between those two kinds of
eschatology.
I could but observe how each
design
is worked out with re-
gard
to its own internal
consistency,
and how it
figured
in the
shaping
of
its believers' attitudes toward conditions in this
world,
a kind of
specula-
tion that would be
sociologically relevant,
whether one or the other or
neither rationale or
Weltanshauung,
or orientation or
perspective
or
para-
digm happened
to be
theologically
true.
This
position by
no means belittles the
gravity
of the issues
ultimately
involved. But
Logology,
in the secular sense of the
term,
is
by
its own
definition
totally incapable
of
making
a
single
statement about the realm
of the
supernatural.
Its orbit
being
confined to the
study
of the
word-using
animal
(or,
more
broadly,
the
symbol-using
animal)
as born wordless and
learning language
in
"infancy,"
it can but make statements about the
empirical
realm of
symbolic action,
which
does, however,
include words
for the
supernatural
-
and in
my judgment
that
Logologer
is a
poor
one
indeed who is not
profoundly impressed by
the
subtlety, profundity,
bril-
liance,
and
scope
of the
great theological
and
theologically tinged
texts that
mark the
history
of Western
thought
and Western social
organization.
Meanwhile,
these
developments
seem to be
approaching
a
temporary
culmination of sorts in a state of affairs not
Supernatural,
but Counter-
Natural,
human nature's
self-portraiture
via the
ingenious
innovations im-
posed by
human
enterprise upon
the realm of nonhuman
nature, though
there are the
problems
that
Logology
would sum
up
under the head of the
"instrumentalist
fallacy,"
"instrumentalist
quandary,"
the
constantly
re-
curring temptation
to
ignore
the fact that
every
device or
operation
has a
nature of its
own,
quite
outside its nature as instrumental to some
particu-
lar human
purpose
-
and lo! there is the Pandora's box of
plagues
let loose
in the multifarious
gifts
connected with the Promethean fire and thus Pro-
videntially implicit
in the Greek
myth
of
Technology's beginnings
(now
speeding up exponentially
in what
Henry
Adams called "the law of the
acceleration of
history")
.
With
regard
to the nomenclature of Thomas's texts
(viewed
as what
they Logologically
are,
to
begin
with,
a set of terms
dialectically adapted
to one
another)
the "radiations" that most
directly suggest
themselves
concern the relations of these texts to
Augustine,
Aristotle,
and Duns
Scotus; and,
of
course,
the term "Providence" is
integrally
interwoven
with the other terms in the text
concerning
God and God's
powers, plus
the fact that the
key
terms, "intellect," "will,"
and
"good,"
in connection
176 burke Journal
with Divine Providence must be used not
literally,
but
analogically,
as
compared
with their
application
to the field of human
psychology,
where
the term
"prudence" (of
the same derivation
etymologically
as
"provi-
dence") is,
as I think Thomas
indicates,
a better fit because it
applies
to a
kind of
judgment,
or
way
of
sizing things up,
that would have no
place
in an
all-seeing
Intellect.
However,
in
Q. 22,
Art.
1,
Thomas does offer
reasons
why, "though
to take counsel
may
not be
fitting
to
God,
insofar
as counsel is
inquiry
into matters that are
doubtful,"
the term
"prudence"
can be
applied analogously
to God.
The issue as to whether Intellect
precedes
Will is much like the
question
of
procession
in the three Persons of the
Trinity.
It
is,
by
definition,
not a
temporal progression,
since the timeless nature of a
Supreme Being
would
preclude temporal
succession
among
such Powers.
At first I
logologically
lined
up
the
key
terms thus: In God Providence
would
necessarily
be in itself an act of
Creation,
and hence of Fore-
Ordination. For the
very
act of
Foreseeing
the Future would be tanta-
mount to
Creating
that future.
By
definition a Divine
Intelligence
cannot
be
wrong,
and
nothing
that is understood
by
such a Timeless Intellect to
be there could have been there
prior
to the
understanding
of
it;
thus the
understanding
of it would be one with the
willing
of
it,
that
is,
the
creating
of it. And since God is
by
definition
simple,
God's Intellect and His Will
are one with each other and with God's Providence.
Also,
what is under-
stood to be there and is willed to be there would also
necessarily
be
Good,
since an act
implies
a
purpose,
and God's universal act of Creation would
necessarily
be
Good,
since as Aristotle
says
in the Nicomachaean
Ethics,
"The
good
has
rightly
been declared to be that at which all
things
aim."
But here the act would be the creation of the
good
rather than the
pursuit
of it. Hence that would be
supremely
so in the case of God and in the
Book of Genesis it is
explicitly
said that God found His Creation
good.
But there was the
controversy
with the
Scotists,
who would feature the
Will
(hence
the Franciscan formula "The
good
is
good
because God willed
it,"
as distinct from the Dominican
formula,
"God willed the
good
because
it is
good"). Also,
Thomas added a
qualification
of this sort: God's Will
is
rational,
hence it acts in
keeping
with the
knowledge
of the Intellect.
Those who would feature the Will over the Intellect
might
hold that
any
imputing
of a motive for God's creative act
implies
a limitation of God's
freedom. It
is,
by definition,
a
problem beyond
the
range
of
Logological
competence;
and in
any case,
the issue has been decided
historically
in
Thomas's favor.
But an account of humans in
purely temporal
situations involves a con-
siderable
departure
from the
theological
nature of
intellect, will,
and fore-
sight.
Human
"prudence," along
with "remembrance of
things past"
(memoria praeteritorum) ,
and an
"understanding
of the
present"
(intel-
ligentia praesentium) ,
from which we
gather, conjecture
"how to
provide
for the future"
(de futuris providendis)
is
quite fragmentary,
and
halting,
in contrast with the
comprehensive powers
of
God, operating
simulta-
neously,
"in no
time,"
and
omnisciently. Thus,
in the Nicomachaean
Ethics
(1111a)
Aristotle lists the various
ways
in which we
may
not know
the "circumstances of an
act,"
and to that extent we are not
free,
for "that
which is done ...
by
reason of
ignorance
is
involuntary."
If there are three
salads,
and we have a choice of
one,
and do not know
that two of them
happen
to be
contaminated,
we are not
really
free to
make a "rational" choice unless we know which two of those salads we
absolutely
must not choose. This is the sort of situation which would
clearly
fit
Engels's precept, probably
an
adaptation
of
Spinoza,
that "free-
dom is the
knowledge
of
necessity."
When we
vote,
we are "free" to cast
a
ballot;
but what do we know about the circumstances of the act involved
in this
vote,
as a "free" choice? Several of our wars were
fought
under
administrations that had
explicitly
contracted to
keep
us out of war.
There is no need to view such
developments simply
as cases of
deception.
When
voting
for the
future,
there is a sense in which
nobody
knows the
circumstances of the
act,
except
as confined to the mere matter of
marking
a ballot. But
by
definition the case of a
Supreme
Omniscient
Intelligence,
with a Power of Providence that Foreknows down to the last
detail,
the
Act of Predestination is
absolutely
free and one with Creation and its
modes of Ordination.
Thomas is
quite explicit
about the difference between the literal and
analogical
uses of a term. But one can't formulate a
general
rule
specify-
ing exactly
what the difference is in
particular
cases. Where
speculations
involving
such terms as
Intellect, Will,
and
Foreknowledge (Providence)
are
concerned,
we must
keep
in mind the observations in Aristotle's
Nicomachaean Ethics to the effect that an act is
"involuntary"
insofar as
the
agent
does not know
enough
about the "circumstances" of that act.
For God's Powers of Intellect and Will are those of an
absolutely
omnis-
cient
Agent,
in
comparison
with which the
analogous competence
of hu-
man
agents
would be as the tiniest fraction of a fraction is to
infinity.
And
I would have us
keep
this consideration in mind because
my theory
of
Logology
involves me in
speculatively foretelling
a
purely temporal
cul-
mination,
our world's Next
Phase, although
the
design,
like
Marx's,
makes
no claim to tell of such ultimate
eschatological
fulfillments as are so
178 burke Journal
powerfully
and
urgently,
even
aggressively, depicted
in St.
Augustine's
City of
God.
St.
Augustine's City of
God
Whereas
my job
is
largely
but to ask
just
what are the
temporal
circum-
stances that
might justify
a tract on
Logology
as
my symbolic
act,
in
Augustine's
case the issue was
clear,
and he treated of it with
profusion
and effusion of erudition and rhetorical drive
enough
to humiliate
any-
body
who wants to advocate
anything.
I'd
put
his book in the same bin
with the ardent
apocalypse
that the New Testament ends on.
Augustine
had
long
been
emphatic
in his resistance to
any heresy
that
looks forward to an eventual
unfolding whereby things
will ease
up
for
the sufferers in
Hell,
who will
eventually
be
judged
to have suffered in-
tensely enough
and
long enough.
On that
score, incidentally, George
Thomson,
in his
Aeschylus
and
Athens,
offers
ample grounds
to assume
that the Promethean
trilogy
was of that
design.
Thus the first
play,
the one
that survived and that
Shelley
was so
delighted with,
starts
things
out with
Zeus as a raw
tyrant
and Prometheus as a raw
rebel,
the
plan being that,
by
the end of the third
play, they
both had eased
up,
and become recon-
ciled.
Lenin, along
Marxist
lines,
foresaw a
"withering away
of the State"
such that class conflict would
eventually
subside. And
Shakespeare
has in
principle (symbolically)
retired from his role as a
playwright,
when Pros-
pero
abandoned his
magic by freeing
Ariel and
Caliban,
perfect
surro-
gates
for the antitheses that drama feeds on. Viewed
Logologically,
the
Christian threat
and/or
promise
of eternal
Hell, going
at
top speed,
and
with full
force,
is a
"perfect"
reflex of the
prime
ethical distinction between
"do" and
"don't,"
two
major "topics,"
which means in Greek
etymology
"places,"
for which the Afterlife will establish
places actually,
actual loca-
tions for those ultimate
principles
of
discrimination,
Yes and
No,
"per-
fectly edified,"
that is
"comprehensively
structured."
And an ultimate
irony
with
regard
to the contrast between the Christian
and Marxist theories of transformation
whereby
"the Down shall be
Up"
(as
foretold in The Sermon on the Mount and the Communist
Manifesto)
is
that,
in the Christian
design
those who bear witness
(that is,
who are
martyred, "martyr" being
the Greek word for
"witness")
will thrive for-
ever,
whereas those who die for the Marxist Revolution will be
"gone
for
good."
And the rewards of their efforts will be
reaped by
later
generations
who suffered not at all for the
Cause,
an ironic situation
whereby
the
promises
held out to the
Revolutionary
motivated
by
the rationale of
dialectical materialism are in one sense much more "idealistic"
(as
modes
of
self-sacrifice)
than those held out to the Christian
martyr.
With
regard
to the
design developed
in The
City of
God
(Book XXI,
Chapter
XXIII)
besides
quoting
Biblical
authority (Matthew, 25:6)
Augustine
offers an
explanation
which comes close to
sheerly logologi-
cal
bookkeeping.
In the
passage quoted,
Christ foretells both "eternal
punishment"
for the sinners and "life eternal" for the saints.
Augustine
comments:
If both destinies are
"eternal,"
then we must either understand both as
long-continued
but at last
terminating,
or both as endless. For
they
are
correlative
-
on the one
hand,
punishment
eternal,
on the other
hand,
life eternal. And to
say
in one and the same
sense,
life eternal shall be
endless,
punishment
eternal shall come to an
end,
is the
height
of ab-
surdity.
Wherefore,
as the eternal life of the saints shall be
endless,
so
too the eternal
punishment
of those who are doomed to it shall have no
end.
There are rationales that could allow for both these
destinies,
as were
the
reprobates simply
to fade out of existence. But the
design
as
Augus-
tine knew
it,
he believed in with an
implicit
conviction that contributed
notably
to the
urgent eloquence
of his
presentation.
The invasion of Rome
by
Alaric's barbarian horde from the North had
been a
startling event, though
one could
argue
that it was but a new
variant of the
many
times when Rome's own armies returned after a vic-
torious
campaign,
and the soldiers had to be
paid
off
somehow,
as usual
with such movements.
Also,
Alaric was a sort of border
politician,
well
acquainted
with the
ways
of Roman
imperialism
and its
bargainings.
And
he was even identified with a Christian
heresy,
the Arians who believed
that the Son followed the Father in
temporal
succession
(for
unlike both
Johannine and secular
Logologists, they
were unable to
distinguish
be-
tween
priority
in time and
priority
in
principle)
.
The
Gentiles,
the non-Christian and non- Jewish citizens of
imperial
Rome
(which
had
traditionally
erected a
temple
to
every god
of
every
dues-paying province, though
that
particular
form of the
"cujus regio,
eius
religio" design
was
fading fast)
had
bitterly
accused the Christians of
bringing
on the
public
disaster
by
their monotheistic disdain of the
many
pagan
deities. But rather than
merely defending
his fellow-Christians
against
these
charges, Augustine
in effect assumed the role not
just
of an
accuser,
but of an educator
by
his version of the historical situation
(his
tale of two
cities,
conceived after the
design
of the Chosen and the
Repro-
180 burke Journal
bates, though they
were not
locally separate populations
as with other
cities,
but both kinds of citizens were scattered within each
body politic)
.
And thanks to his
eloquent
command of
what,
within the conditions of the
times,
would be the most relevant and
persuasive
erudition,
he also wrote
(we might say, borrowing
from
Cromwell, "by abundance")
the
very pro-
totype
of a
history
conceived in terms of Absolute Predetermination.
Fittingly
the Last
Judgment
of the Damned is the
subject
of the
penul-
timate
book,
the work
ending
in the
sign
of the Saints and their eternal
blessedness. But as
compared
with the
pageant-like,
esoteric
unfoldings
in
the Book of the
Apocalypse
that ends the New
Testament,
the
statuesque
work is rather of a
practical,
even administrative
nature,
since
Augustine,
following
his
conversion,
became as much
engrossed
in the correlation
between doctrine and matters of ecclesiastical
organization
as the
writer,
or
writers,
of the Pauline
Epistles.
He has a
chapter,
for
instance,
"Exam-
ples
from Nature
Proving
that Bodies
may
Remain Unconsumed and
Alive in
Fire,"
beginning
with the fact that "the salamander lives in
fire,
as naturalists have recorded."
Though Logology
can make no
judgment
doctrinally
about
Augustine's
doctrinal conclusions
concerning
a Last
Judgment,
it can
wholly recognize
the intellectual musculature of his
efforts in behalf of his Cause.
Henry
Adams and
Spengler
Among
such texts as we have been
considering,
all of which could
strictly
or
loosely
be called "Predestinarian" after their
fashion,
two mod-
ern ones that
particularly impressed
me
(and
both in much the same
way)
were The Education
of Henry
Adams and
Spengler's
Decline
of
the West.
The distinction between a
strongly agrarian way
of life and the later cen-
turies marked
by
the
exponentially expanding scope
of the "Industrial
Revolution"
(summed
up figuratively by Henry
Adams in terms of "Vir-
gin"
and
"Dynamo")
had its
analogue
in
Spengler's
distinction between
"culture" and "civilization"
(which
were related somewhat as the
body
in
vigorous years
in contrast with that same
body
when
growing old,
and
consequently
marked
by hardening
of the
arteries) ;
a certain
pliancy
is
gone.
In an
early book, {Attitudes
Toward
History, 1937)
conceived under
the influence of those
texts,
and with that
pattern
in
mind,
I built around
a
concept
I called "the bureaucratization of the
imaginative."
A
plan
or
project,
in its
early stages
would have
imaginative pliancy,
but insofar as
it
gets organized (for
which the
dyslogistic synonym
is
my
formula was
"bureaucratized")
it becomes
rigidified by
the accumulation of incidental
details. And considerations of that sort are
implicit
in
my provisional
Logological schematizing
with
regard
to the
destiny
of the relation be-
tween
language
and
Technology,
due to
Technology's
radical role in
gen-
erating
a realm of Counter-Nature. I shall
try
to make this
closing
state-
ment as brief as
possible, by
reduction to a series of
propositions.
Counter-Nature: "Fulfillment" via
Technology
(
1
)
Whatever
may
be the
origins
and end of human
existence, Logo-
logy
contracts to
say only
what can be based on the definition of
what,
at
the
very least,
we
undeniably are; namely: physiological organisms
that
are born
wordless,
and
normally
learn words
during
the
early years
of our
emergence
from
infancy (that is, "wordlessness")
.
(2) Though
the
ability
to learn such a medium
(of "symbolic action")
is in us as individual
organisms,
the medium itself is a social
product,
and
is matured
by
its use in "contexts of situation" that are
grounded
in the
realm of
nonsymbolic motion,
to which the realm of
symbolism always,
more or less
directly
or
indirectly
refers.
(3)
We can learn
language only
because its nature is such that we can
apply
the same words to different
situations;
for we learn words
by
hear-
ing
them said
again
and
again
in different situations
-
and all situations in
their details are
unique.
(4)
Thus
implicit
in the
applying
of the same words to different con-
texts there is a
principle
of
analogical
extension
(which
we also in some
cases call a
"metaphorical"
extension)
.
(5)
Thus
language
both
sharpens
our attention to what a
given
situa-
tion
univocally
is
(insofar
as we have the exact words for
it) ;
or what it is
like
(in
case the actual or
imagined
situation is
straining
at the outer
edges
of a
given usage,
hence relies
upon
the more
latitudinarian,
that
is,
analogical, aspects
of
speech).
Or if
something momentously
new turns
up,
the nature of attention made
possible by language may help
demar-
cate it as a notable
detail,
worth
repeating
and even
improving.
(6)
We now have said
enough
to indicate how the kind of attention
made
possible by language
could
help
humans to
single
out the instrumen-
tal
aspects
of situations
(as
with the
explicit
awareness that an
operation
performed
with a rock in one's hand would be more effective than
by
the
fist
alone),
to which add the fact that
language
lends itself so well to the
communicating
of all such
innovations,
and hence to their distribution.
(7)
Whatever the
interruptions
in such
distribution,
the slow
develop-
182 burke Journal
ment at the start has
by
now attained dimensions
that,
in the last two cen-
turies,
are more like an
explosion
than a
growth.
(8)
The interaction between
symbolic prowess
and the
products
of
craftsmanship
leads to an
ever-increasing range
of situations to serve as
material for
analogical
extension
(like metaphor,
the
seeing
of one situa-
tion in terms of
another)
.
(9)
Each
specialized nomenclature,
with its
corresponding
modes of
attention and
suggestion,
is the technical
equivalent
of a
vision,
and thus
goads
to further
unfoldings,
each tentative effort
being
like an answer to
a call.
(10)
The conditions
brought
about
by
the advances of
symbol-guided
technology (that is, by
man-made transformations of nonhuman natural
conditions)
have become an authoritative motivational dimension in their
own
right, generating
the conditions that
goad
human
enterprisers
to the
generating
of further conditions that in turn serve to
perpetuate
the same
cycle
so far as the
necessary
materials are still available or further ad-
vances in
technology
can
bring
other resources to fall within the
range
of
exploitation
for the
given purpose.
(11)
Even the
correcting
of the
problems produced by technology
must be
accomplished by technological means; they
cannot be solved
by
abandoning
the
technological way
of
life,
since our modes of livelihood
are
already
so
dependent upon
its resourcefulness. The "second nature"
of Counter-Nature is here to
stay, culminatively.
Environmentalism is but
an
intelligent species
of
technology's
self-criticism.
(12)
The
Logological concept
of our
species
as the
"symbol-using
ani-
mal" is not identical with the
concept,
homo
sapiens,
the "rational"
animal
-
for whereas we are the
"symbol-using
animal" all the
time,
we
are nonrational and even /rrational some of the time. Somewhat
along
Freudian lines I take it that the
very process
of
learning language long
be-
fore we have reached the so-called
"age
of reason" leaves
upon
us the
mark of its
necessarily
immature
beginnings;
and
only
some of these can
be called "childlike" in the
idyllic
sense of the term.
Also,
since
language
has so
many
words for so
many things
that we don't know
enough
about,
it often extends our
ways
of
being stupid,
and
talking
out of order.
(13)
But
implicit
in its
very
nature there is the
principle
of
completion,
of
perfection,
of
carrying
ideas to the end of the
line,
as with
thoughts
on
first and last
things
-
all
told, goads
toward the
tracking
down of
impli-
cations. And
"rationality"
is in its
way
the
very "perfection"
of such
language-infused possibilities.
And what more "rational" in that
respect
than our
perfecting
of instruments
designed
to
help
assist us in the
tracking-down-of-implications,
the rational
genius
of
technology
thus
being
in effect a vocational
impulsiveness,
as
though
in answer to a call?
And how or
why
turn
against
the
specifically
human incitements to de-
velop
such
astounding powers
further and further? And where else can
you
turn
anyhow
since, maybe
like Creon in
Sophocles' Antigone,
even if
we would retract our
past
decrees,
we have
already brought
about a situa-
tion which will drive on of itself.
Maybe
it's here to
stay (and why not,
when it is the
very portrait
of
ourselves,
ourselves
flatteringly enlarged
even?)
-
here to
stay, regardless
of whether to our
great
benefit or to con-
siderable disaster. Yet there is also the fact that the resultant realm of
Counter-Nature,
for all of its
strivings
toward
perfection,
is in
itself, by
the same
token,
still
imperfect.
Above
all,
there is the
problem
of its
FREEDOM. In two hundred
years
our nation became
technologically
the
greatest
on
earth,
thanks to THREE
FREEDOMS, namely:
THE FREE-
DOM TO
WASTE,
THE FREEDOM TO
POLLUTE,
THE FREEDOM
NOT TO GIVE A DAMN.
Indications are that within the boundaries of that cultural frontier all is
now
settled,
and
accordingly,
"The Dialectic"
being
what it
is,
we con-
front a state of much new unsettlement. It is the claim of
Logology
that,
for an ad interim
design,
our cultural task is to build a
tentatively
Provi-
dential
body
of
speculations
around the
specific question:
"Just what
is involved
motivationally
in the
possible
likelihood that the realm of
Counter-Nature
produced by symbol-guided
(hence man-made)
tech-
nology
is a kind of
culmination,
a
fulfillment
of
specifically
human self-
engrossments,
conceived as an ironic version
(a burlesque?)
of the
'ego-
tistical
sublime,'
the
mirror-image
of a
spirit
in this case materialized!"
And
why
"ironic"? Because
any
instrument has a nature of its own
beyond
its nature as an instrument
designed
for a
given purpose
-
and therein lies
the Vast New Realm of Counter-Nature and its Unintended
By-Products,
to be studied with
regard
to its
possible
relations and disrelations to the
natural
order, including
the nature of our
species
as
developed
out of the
prehistoric past
(a past
bodily, physiologically
still with us
now)
in rela-
tion to the natural order.

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