ON
LITERATURE
1. There are only two genres which are
absolute,
and these are the aphorism and the lyric poem, as pertaining to
philosophy-proper and to poetry-proper respectively.
The more absolute the philosopher, the more
he will adhere to aphorisms or maxims, as in the cases of La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère. This is par
excellence an
idealistic, not to say an aristocratic, mode of philosophy, and thus
its
employment in a materialist age will be the exception to the rule,
increasingly
so as relative civilization becomes extremist, in deference to
petty-bourgeois
criteria of literary progress. Anyone
who submits a volume of aphorisms or maxims (the two are approximately
the
same, though I tend to treat aphorisms as being longer than maxims but
shorter
than essays/essayettes) to a publisher
these days is
either a fool or a saint, since even petty-bourgeois philosophers, not
to
mention their bourgeois predecessors, steer clear of such flagrant
concessions
to philosophical absolutism. How is it,
then, that one of the best-known and most widely discussed works of
twentieth-century philosophy happens to be aphoristic?
(I am, of course, alluding to Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-philosophicus.) I think any cogent answer to this question
would have to take account of the fact that the milieu from which it
arose,
namely Habsburg Vienna, happened to be a very aristocratic one, and
that
Wittgenstein amply reflected this in his choice of, from the modern
standpoint,
an obsolescent or overly idealistic genre.
2. Between what might be called the
aphoristic
and poetic absolutes ... there exists a series of literary
relativities: some,
like essayettes and essays, stemming from
the
aphoristic absolute; others, like short prose and novels, aspiring
towards the
poetic absolute; one genre, the dialogue, approximately balanced
between the
two tendencies in a quintessentially bourgeois relativity.
For thinking in class-evolutionary terms, one
may define those genres which stem from the aphoristic absolute as
grand
bourgeois, and those, by contrast, which aspire towards the poetic
absolute as
petty bourgeois. And yet, the individual
treatment of any particular relative genre will depend on whether it is
in the
hands of a philosopher or an artist; for it sometimes happens that the essayette and the essay are treated in a
poetical way,
short prose and the novel, by contrast, in a philosophical way. But, by and large, each of these genres
either side of the dialogue is treated in a manner appropriate to its
station. In the case of petty-bourgeois
philosophy,
however, it is usually short prose and the novelette
that
serve as vehicles for philosophical expression, the essayette
and essay being more relevant to a grand-bourgeois epoch.
As to the dialogue, it, too, can be written,
despite its balanced chronological status, from either a philosophical
or a
poetical angle, depending on the type of author in question.
(Schopenhauer
wrote from a philosophical angle, Wilde from a poetical one.) But, like the essayette
and essay, it has less applicability to a petty-bourgeois age than
short prose
or a novel.
3. If a petty-bourgeois philosopher can
write
philosophy, relative to the age, in short-prose and/or novelistic
guise, could
one assume, in jumping ahead, that a proletarian philosopher should
write
philosophy, relative to the proletariat, in poetic guise, since poetry
corresponds to an absolute, and proletarian writing, like proletarian
society,
could not be other than absolutist in its definitive form?
No, I shall assume no such thing, because the
treatment of an absolute poetic genre in a philosophical way would
amount to a
contradiction in terms, unworthy of serious consideration.
Poetry, especially when proletarian, could
only be written poetically, in deference to poetic absolutism, not be
bastardized
through philosophical expression. That
poetry has
been bastardized, in this manner in the past, isn't altogether
surprising, since whenever philosophical criteria have predominated, as
in the
grand-bourgeois and even bourgeois epochs of creative evolution,
philosophy has
overflowed its bounds, so to speak, and invaded the realm of poetry, or
a
poetry susceptible to philosophical intrusion by dint of its own
relative
backwardness, as intelligible within a grand-bourgeois or bourgeois
epoch, and
consequent adhesion to appearance, manifesting in regular rhythmic and
rhyming
devices.
4. True poetic writing only becomes
possible in
a proletarian epoch, when poetry transcends appearance in a context of
maximum
essence, achieved through abstract rhythm- and rhyme-defying
arrangements
designed to free words from all forms of grammatical constraint and, by
implication, to elevate poetry from a relatively atomic to an
absolutely
post-atomic (free-electron) level of impression. Where
poetry,
enslaved to appearance, had
formerly expressed some quasi-philosophical meaning or described some
apparent
phenomenon, its absolutist manifestation would free it from such
expression and
elevate it to a kind of 'thing-in-itself' abstraction only capable of
impressing upon the reader some notion of the transcendent. It will become, in its absolute commitment to
essence, fully poeticized.
5. Although I alluded to the possibility of
a
proletarian philosopher a short while ago, in reality there can be no
such
person; for philosophy, dedicated when most closely itself, to the
classification and elucidation of the apparent, i.e. the world, cannot
outlive
a relative epoch or civilization, since it stems from the apparent
absolute and
can fulfil no useful purpose in an epoch or civilization exclusively
aspiring
towards the essential absolute. If,
however, the philosopher must be buried along with relative
civilization, then
the philosophical theosophist, who may in some sense be regarded as his
successor, stands as the root universal influence for an absolute
civilization,
which cannot come into being without his guidance, since he expresses
the
theories and beliefs by which it will live.
In transcending all relative genres, including literary ones, he
transcends the category of philosopher, which is rooted in the aphorism
and
inclined to the production of successive volumes of individualistic
philosophy. One could describe this
transcendence as signifying a convergence to omega on the level of
philosophy,
but that would entail the notion that the Transcendentalist, far from
being the
universalizing influence at the root of a future absolute civilization,
was the
climax to philosophical endeavour, and thus the ultimate philosopher. However, such a notion would hardly do justice
to the fact that the Transcendentalist's theories are incapable of
being
assimilated into relative civilization, but are very often
diametrically
opposed to what philosophical tradition has upheld.
Because the progression from
bourgeois/proletarian civilization to transcendental civilization
presupposes
revolutionary upheaval, the philosophical theosophist cannot stand at
the
climax of a relative tradition, as the ultimate philosopher, but
appertains to
the spiritual inception of a new civilization, antithetical in
constitution to
everything that preceded it.
6. By comparison with the philosophical tradition, the Transcendentalist's work marks a
more radical
development of philosophical thought towards essence.
In its earliest stages philosophy was
predominantly apparent, that is to say, concerned with a classification
and
description of the phenomenal world.
Metaphysics, as an attempt to understand and elucidate a world
beyond
appearances, only entered philosophy at a later date, and then very
gradually,
wherever civilization had attained to a fairly extensive degree of
urbanization
and acquired, in consequence, a metaphysical dimension.
There were, in the Christian West, different
stages of metaphysical development, corresponding to class-evolutionary
progress from grand-bourgeois Catholicism to petty-bourgeois mysticism
via
bourgeois Protestantism, and, not surprisingly, philosophy mirrored and
to some
extent anticipated this development, becoming, in due course, more
essential,
that is to say, less concerned with the phenomenal world and
correspondingly
more concerned with a noumenal one. However, in the mid-to-late nineteenth
century, there issued a materialist reaction against petty-bourgeois
metaphysics, which took the double form of a Marxist reaction against
Hegel and
of a Nietzschean reaction against
Schopenhauer - the
one leading, with the twentieth century, to Communism, the other ... to
Fascism. A similar reaction of
Wittgenstein against Kierkegaard, though subordinate in consequence to
each of
the other two, confirms the anti-metaphysical bias of late-nineteenth
and
early-twentieth-century philosophy, a bias that went on to develop, via
Jaspers
and Heidegger, into Sartrean
existentialism, which is
still, to all appearances, the leading tone of contemporary
petty-bourgeois
materialist philosophy.
7. The Philosophes
of the
Enlightenment signify a bourgeois reaction against bourgeois Protestant
and
grand-bourgeois Counter Reformation metaphysics, as do Voltaire and
Rousseau,
the two outstanding materialist philosophers of the eighteenth century. Descartes, Pascal, Berkeley, Hobbes, Hume,
Leibniz, Spinoza, and other such metaphysicians all came under attack,
much as
their grand-bourgeois predecessors had not escaped the scathing
criticism of
Bacon, Montaigne, Machiavelli, and other
such
sixteenth-century materialists. But the
Enlightenment led on, in due course, to the metaphysics of Kant and
Schopenhauer, Fichte and Hegel, Emerson
and Carlyle,
as well it might, since evolutionary progress within relative
civilization
passes from one class-stage to another, and petty-bourgeois metaphysics
had no
less of a right to exist, for a given period of time, than its
bourgeois and
grand-bourgeois precursors. The
contemporary materialist opposition to such metaphysics, however, will
be
superseded by the acceptance of proletarian metaphysics, which is what,
in
transcendental terms, the greater part of my work is essentially all
about. Thus does philosophy progress, in
a kind of zigzagging fashion, towards its culmination in an
anti-metaphysical petty-bourgeois
guise and subsequent (metaphysical) transformation into philosophical
theosophy
- the most essential of all philosophical developments!
8. Oriental philosophy, unlike its Western
counterpart, is still metaphysical, and on approximately
petty-bourgeois
terms. The essence of oriental
philosophy, now as before, is denial of the will in a Buddha-like
quiescence
stressing awareness as the only good worth pursuing.
This is not, of course, an erroneous
assessment of the good life, but it has the disadvantage of being
shackled with
traditional adherence to naturalistic criteria, including a more or
less
complacent acknowledgement of the 'divine Ground', the oriental
equivalent of
the Christian Father, the Judaic Jehovah, and the Islamic Allah. Nor is Buddhism absolved from the
contradictions arising from a confounding of this 'divine Ground' with
the
'Clear Light of the Void' or vice versa, so that alpha and omega, no
less than
in certain other world religions, are all-too-predictably exposed,
within the
relativity of human life, to the possibility of periodic interchange
and/or
substitution. So, despite the appearance
of absolutism, Buddhism, like Hinduism and Shintoism,
retains
a
relative integrity rooted in nature, which precludes its evolving
towards a proletarian absolutism and thereby embracing extensively
artificial
criteria, relevant to the technological aspect of long-term religious
evolution. Although yoga, meditation,
Buddhism, and other forms of oriental philosophy are in some ways
preferable to
the anti-metaphysical bias of contemporary occidental philosophy, the
fact that
no such anti-metaphysical philosophy has arisen in the East to
challenge and
discredit the traditional metaphysical integrity of oriental philosophy
(Marxism being a Western import) precludes the possibility of a higher
metaphysics eventually arising to replace both traditional metaphysical
and
anti-metaphysical philosophy alike.
Paradoxically, the Western attack on petty-bourgeois metaphysics
to some
extent served me as an incentive to work out a proletarian metaphysics
for the
future absolutist civilization.
9. The fact that, hitherto, poetry has been
written under the domination of literature in relative civilization
means that
it has been confined to either philosophical or pseudo-poetical guise,
depending on the epoch in question and the temperament or proclivities
of the
individual poet. As philosophy evolved
from its root aphoristic absolutism in a predominantly descriptive,
analytical,
interpretative relationship to the phenomenal world ... through
successive
bourgeois stages to its culmination in the novel, with a corresponding
shift of
emphasis away from the phenomenal towards the noumenal
(though subject, as already noted, to periodic materialist reactions),
so
poetry evolved from a predominantly descriptive stance in nature to an
increasingly instructive, expositional stance in the metaphysical, that
is to
say, from the apparent to the quasi-essential, from hymns to beauty to
intimations of truth ... considered as the divine goal of evolutionary
striving. This latter development,
however, is still inadequate from a purely poetic standpoint, but may
be
described, if somewhat colloquially, as 'the best of a bad job', since
the use
of appearance, i.e. grammatical constructs of an expositional nature,
to
intimate of essence marks, despite its inherent contradiction, a
significant
evolutionary improvement on the use of a more radical appearance,
employing
(besides the aforementioned ingredient) regular rhymes, metres, stanza
divisions, and other such traditional devices, to glorify the apparent,
i.e.
nature and natural beauty in general. So
while, during the later stages of relative civilization, poetry has
become more
essential, and therefore superior to what it formerly was, it is still
short of
being genuinely poetical, by dint of the fact that such a status
presupposes a
complete severance from the apparent in maximized essence, which is to
say,
total abstraction. For not until poetry
becomes abstract, in an absolutist age, will it have come into its own,
and on
terms diametrically antithetical to the absolutist inception of
definitive
philosophy as maxim or aphorism concerned not with essence but with
appearance,
as pertaining to the description and analysis of the phenomenal world. By contrast, genuine absolutist poetry will
provide, through impression, an intimation of the noumenal
world to come.
10. Although I referred, a short while ago, to the
materialist reaction against metaphysical philosophy, I do not wish to
leave
the reader with the impression that petty-bourgeois philosophy ceased
to be
written, in the twentieth century, along metaphysical lines; for that
would be
very far from the truth! On the
contrary, from being essayistic such philosophy became largely
novelistic, as
is only to be expected with the gradual evolution of philosophy away
from
appearance and further into essence, this requiring, if consistency was
to be
maintained between form and content, a corresponding advancement from
relatively philosophical to relatively literary genres, including works
of
short prose (the philosophical equivalent of short stories) and the
novelette. Characteristic of
petty-bourgeois philosophers with a metaphysical bent are Aldous
Huxley, Hermann Hesse, Henry Miller, André
Gide, and Jack Kerouac.
There were others, of course, with a non-metaphysical bent,
including
Sartre, Koestler, Faulkner, D.H. Lawrence,
and Camus. Generally
speaking,
I
would define those who, irrespective of their ideological bias,
also wrote essays as belonging to an earlier or lower stage of
petty-bourgeois
philosophy - one stemming, as it were, from the bourgeoisie. By contrast, those who only specialized in
novels and/or short prose I would define as belonging to a later and
higher
stage of petty-bourgeois philosophy - one aspiring, as it were, towards
the
proletariat. Thus Hesse,
Huxley,
and
Miller would correspond to the earlier stage, Kerouac, Faulkner,
and
11. All these petty-bourgeois philosophers,
regardless of whichever side or stage to which they would seem to
belong, have
taken theoretical speculation further into essence than their bourgeois
predecessors, and thus closer to poetry.
They may be defined, with reason, as pseudo-philosophers, since
philosophy-proper is concerned not with intimations of or theories
about the
Divine Omega, conceived as transcendent spirit, but with a catalogue
and
analysis of the phenomenal world ... as applying, in the main, to
nature. The fact that philosophy gradually
evolved
away from this root concern and abandoned its absolute form in the
process ...
is an indisputable fact. And we may
contend that the further away from phenomena it evolved, the more
pseudo it
became, especially from the bourgeois epoch to the current day. Yet philosophy-proper still survived on
something
approximating to its own terms by progressing from a critique of nature
through
a critique of morals to a critique of language; a progression, in other
words,
from the natural to the artificial via an ethical compromise. There was thus a kind of class evolution of
philosophy, within the Western context, from grand-bourgeois (Bacon) to
petty-bourgeois (Wittgenstein) via bourgeois (Kant) stages. And it was possible to retain the aphorism
throughout this evolution or, at any rate, even with its climax, as
Wittgenstein demonstrated. And yet, even
though such a thematic evolution had been possible, indeed inevitable,
the
critique of language becomes a pseudo-philosophy in relation to the
critique of
nature, that root concern of philosophical exegesis.
It is only 'genuine' philosophy in relation
to the novelistic writings of the pseudo-philosophers, both
metaphysical and
anti-metaphysical, though particularly with regard to the former.
12. Unlike philosophy, the evolution of poetry
began in the pseudo, as a description of and hymn to the beauty of
natural
phenomena, particularly nature and woman, and only gradually progressed
away
from a 'philosophical' bias, under the hegemony of philosophy, towards
a poetic
one, in which spiritual instruction began to outweigh the descriptive
element
and, in some cases, to entirely supplant it.
But even with this gradual progression towards essence, poetry
remained
pseudo, because composed from a relative angle, in accordance with the
dictates
of a bourgeois age and civilization, and thereby falling short of total
abstraction, the criterion of any genuine poetry. In
retaining
meaning, poetry was obliged to
remain expressive
in consequence of its enslavement to
appearance, the instructive approach to essence no less than the
descriptive
approach to appearance. Only when it
becomes impressive,
with
the development of an absolutist
civilization, will poetry be genuine - wholly genuine in total
abstraction, not
merely the least pseudo of poetic stages.
Mallarmé ten times over, so to
speak, with a
word sequence that intimates, as no instruction ever can, of the
transcendent. A word structure, in
short, that breaks the connection with appearance by depriving words of
their
meanings.
