Eagleton’s Aesthetic Education
Terry Eagleton, Culture
Yale University Press, 192pp, £14.99, ISBN 9780300218794
reviewed by Rafe McGregor
Terry Eagleton is Distinguished Professor in the Department of English & Creative Writing at Lancaster University. He was a student of Raymond Williams at Cambridge and has, according to the publicity information from Yale University Press, published more than one book each year for the last 50 years. He is best known as one of the United Kingdom’s foremost public intellectuals, as a very influential Marxist literary critic, and as the author of Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), the 25th anniversary issue of which was recently published by the University of Minnesota Press. Unlike many literary theorists, Eagleton has shown an admirable willingness to engage with – rather than dismiss – both the work of contemporaries from different academic traditions and recognised authorities with opposing views. The Event of Literature (2012) was a fine example of the former, tackling literary aesthetics on its own terms, and Culture is a fine example of the latter, mining the work of philosophers and critics who are associated with conservatism for insight, specifically that of Edmund Burke, Johann Gottfried Herder, and TS Eliot. The slim monograph consists of six parts; five chapters and a conclusion. Eagleton’s clarity and precision are immediately obvious in the extended abstract masquerading as a (very) short preface: this is a book that examines the many and varied senses of ‘culture’ and it will conclude that ‘culture is by no means as central to modern societies as some of its apologists would imagine.’ The first chapter begins in a similar vein, delineating four main senses of culture, explaining the difference between the normative and descriptive uses of the term and the difference between culture and civilisation, and then exploring the relation between the normative/descriptive and culture/civilisation antitheses.
As the work progresses, Eagleton becomes increasingly concerned with culture as aesthetic achievement and civilisation as political organisation and reconceives the traditional question of aesthetic education in terms of the relationship between culture and civilisation. ‘Aesthetic education’ has almost as many meanings as ‘culture’ and may have greater opacity due to an essential misnomer: the term describes a moral education by aesthetic means rather than aesthetic education. The philosophical theory was introduced by Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, and popularised by Friedrich Schiller and the Romantics. The basic idea, broadly construed, is that aesthetic achievement is either a necessary condition for – or efficient cause of – political harmony and that the link between the aesthetic and the political is achieved through the moral such that one might state: no political harmony (civilisation) without aesthetic achievement (culture). Like most of Shaftesbury’s fascinating ideas, the theory was not fully-realised, but Schiller’s conception was more carefully constructed. He believed that conflict was resolved in the individual by means of exposure to beauty (in art or nature) and that this resolution elevated sensuous, selfish man to peaceful, philanthropic man, which in turn created a society that was harmonious in virtue of its constituent parts. One may think that Schiller’s theory is no more compelling than Shaftesbury’s original sketch and it is indeed heavily reliant on Immanuel Kant’s over-complicated transcendental idealism, but the idea that aesthetic experiences can contribute in some necessary rather than contingent way to political harmony has been pursued by a variety of philosophers, critics, and artists ever since.
For Eagleton, culture is not a logical necessity for civilisation along the above lines, but a moral imperative that provides a counterbalance to the kind of political power that was being demonstrated in the Reign of Terror while Schiller was writing his Letters Upon The Aesthetic Education of Man (1794). Eagleton clarifies Schiller’s approach by introducing another distinction – consensus/coercion – which can be mapped directly on to culture/civilisation such that culture encourages rule by consensus and civilisation rule by coercion. Eagleton notes the appropriation of culture by the Romantic nationalism of the early 19th century and the disastrous consequences for the modern world – nearly two centuries of almost continual war between nations conceived as natural rather than political phenomena (and, perhaps paradoxically, the exponential expansion of empires). Culture is both the cause of and the antidote to jingoistic nationalism: ‘For thinkers like Schiller, Coleridge and Arnold, culture is above all a force for reconciliation. It allows us to transcend our sectarian squabbles, converging instead on the ground of our common humanity.’ The potential for culture as a means of reconciliation was never greater than in the 20th century, when advances in technology and production created what is now known as the culture industry. The problem, as Eagleton sees it, is that popular culture was – and is – run under the capitalist imperative, being created as a commodity for consumption by the masses rather than as a product of the masses. In a similar manner to that in which Romantic nationalism distorted culture from a force for good to a reason for war, neoliberal capitalism has distorted culture to a means for profit.
The noble ideals of aesthetic education advanced by Shaftesbury, Burke, Herder, and Schiller have thus been mauled by both nationalism and capitalism and Eagleton’s conclusion links this to ‘the global decline of the universities,’ an event he regards as having a comparable significance to the collapses of the Berlin Wall and Twin Towers. The proposed link between the aesthetic education thesis and the defence of the humanities is the outstanding feature of Culture and transforms the work from an interesting addition to the literature on the relationship between aesthetics and politics to an essential part of that literature. Charles Dickens’ Hard Times (1854), published while Romantic nationalism was wreaking havoc across the globe, personified the philosophy of utilitarianism in the character of Thomas Gradgrind, a schoolmaster obsessed with the reduction of as many aspects of human being as possible to mathematical formulae and the reduction of education to what we would now call SMART criteria: specific, achievable, relevant, time-bound, and above-all measurable. Dickens’ caricature of utilitarianism has been rightly criticised, but his novel is more relevant than ever in the late capitalist era, where Gradgrind would probably have been elevated to a university chancellorship. Eagleton shows precisely why the latest White Paper on higher education is entitled Success as a Knowledge Economy: culture itself, firmly in the grip of neoliberalism via the culture industry, is no longer (if indeed it ever was) in a position to provide a counterbalance to capitalist civilisation in the way that Schiller hoped aesthetic education could prevent the recurrence of The Terror in Europe. Once aesthetic education has been found wanting in terms of potential for profit-making, the means by which that education is achieved – a means that includes most of the subjects within the humanities – is similarly devalued. The antidote is of course to defend the humanities, argue for aesthetic education, and reclaim culture from the culture industry. If Eagleton is correct, then the poison has already done irreparable harm and the continued decline of the world’s universities is inevitable.
Dickens’ critics accused him of setting up utilitarianism as a straw man in Hard Times, i.e. exaggerating a philosophical position and ridiculing the exaggeration rather than the reality, and Eagleton might be accused of the same in 'Postmodern Prejudices,' the second chapter of Culture. The gist is concisely summed up in a quote from Eagleton’s ‘If I were king for a day’ opinion piece in the Guardian in 2014: ‘A series of edicts will be issued against postmodern cant. Those who think diversity is a good in itself will be required to state their reasons for wanting six fascist parties rather than just one or two.’ It is far from obvious that any academics or public intellectuals hold such a view. Eagleton is critical of both Richard Rorty and Stanley Fish in his third chapter, but Rorty was one of the leading proponents of aesthetic education in the 20th century and Fish’s ‘Boutique Multiculturalism, or Why Liberals Are Incapable of Thinking about Hate Speech,’ published in Critical Inquiry (1997), provides an if anything more sophisticated argument against the kind of cultural relativism that irritates Eagleton. Perhaps Eagleton’s opponents are specified in his previous books on what is obviously a pervasive theme in his work, Why Marx Was Right (2011) and The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996). As it stands, ‘Postmodern Prejudices’ is something of a digression in an otherwise superlative cultural critique. Eagleton offers not only an argument for aesthetic education, conceived in terms of the relation between culture and civilisation, but a defence of the humanities based on the significance of aesthetic education in addition to a compelling account of how neoliberal civilisation is crushing both culture and the universities in which it once flourished.
As the work progresses, Eagleton becomes increasingly concerned with culture as aesthetic achievement and civilisation as political organisation and reconceives the traditional question of aesthetic education in terms of the relationship between culture and civilisation. ‘Aesthetic education’ has almost as many meanings as ‘culture’ and may have greater opacity due to an essential misnomer: the term describes a moral education by aesthetic means rather than aesthetic education. The philosophical theory was introduced by Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, and popularised by Friedrich Schiller and the Romantics. The basic idea, broadly construed, is that aesthetic achievement is either a necessary condition for – or efficient cause of – political harmony and that the link between the aesthetic and the political is achieved through the moral such that one might state: no political harmony (civilisation) without aesthetic achievement (culture). Like most of Shaftesbury’s fascinating ideas, the theory was not fully-realised, but Schiller’s conception was more carefully constructed. He believed that conflict was resolved in the individual by means of exposure to beauty (in art or nature) and that this resolution elevated sensuous, selfish man to peaceful, philanthropic man, which in turn created a society that was harmonious in virtue of its constituent parts. One may think that Schiller’s theory is no more compelling than Shaftesbury’s original sketch and it is indeed heavily reliant on Immanuel Kant’s over-complicated transcendental idealism, but the idea that aesthetic experiences can contribute in some necessary rather than contingent way to political harmony has been pursued by a variety of philosophers, critics, and artists ever since.
For Eagleton, culture is not a logical necessity for civilisation along the above lines, but a moral imperative that provides a counterbalance to the kind of political power that was being demonstrated in the Reign of Terror while Schiller was writing his Letters Upon The Aesthetic Education of Man (1794). Eagleton clarifies Schiller’s approach by introducing another distinction – consensus/coercion – which can be mapped directly on to culture/civilisation such that culture encourages rule by consensus and civilisation rule by coercion. Eagleton notes the appropriation of culture by the Romantic nationalism of the early 19th century and the disastrous consequences for the modern world – nearly two centuries of almost continual war between nations conceived as natural rather than political phenomena (and, perhaps paradoxically, the exponential expansion of empires). Culture is both the cause of and the antidote to jingoistic nationalism: ‘For thinkers like Schiller, Coleridge and Arnold, culture is above all a force for reconciliation. It allows us to transcend our sectarian squabbles, converging instead on the ground of our common humanity.’ The potential for culture as a means of reconciliation was never greater than in the 20th century, when advances in technology and production created what is now known as the culture industry. The problem, as Eagleton sees it, is that popular culture was – and is – run under the capitalist imperative, being created as a commodity for consumption by the masses rather than as a product of the masses. In a similar manner to that in which Romantic nationalism distorted culture from a force for good to a reason for war, neoliberal capitalism has distorted culture to a means for profit.
The noble ideals of aesthetic education advanced by Shaftesbury, Burke, Herder, and Schiller have thus been mauled by both nationalism and capitalism and Eagleton’s conclusion links this to ‘the global decline of the universities,’ an event he regards as having a comparable significance to the collapses of the Berlin Wall and Twin Towers. The proposed link between the aesthetic education thesis and the defence of the humanities is the outstanding feature of Culture and transforms the work from an interesting addition to the literature on the relationship between aesthetics and politics to an essential part of that literature. Charles Dickens’ Hard Times (1854), published while Romantic nationalism was wreaking havoc across the globe, personified the philosophy of utilitarianism in the character of Thomas Gradgrind, a schoolmaster obsessed with the reduction of as many aspects of human being as possible to mathematical formulae and the reduction of education to what we would now call SMART criteria: specific, achievable, relevant, time-bound, and above-all measurable. Dickens’ caricature of utilitarianism has been rightly criticised, but his novel is more relevant than ever in the late capitalist era, where Gradgrind would probably have been elevated to a university chancellorship. Eagleton shows precisely why the latest White Paper on higher education is entitled Success as a Knowledge Economy: culture itself, firmly in the grip of neoliberalism via the culture industry, is no longer (if indeed it ever was) in a position to provide a counterbalance to capitalist civilisation in the way that Schiller hoped aesthetic education could prevent the recurrence of The Terror in Europe. Once aesthetic education has been found wanting in terms of potential for profit-making, the means by which that education is achieved – a means that includes most of the subjects within the humanities – is similarly devalued. The antidote is of course to defend the humanities, argue for aesthetic education, and reclaim culture from the culture industry. If Eagleton is correct, then the poison has already done irreparable harm and the continued decline of the world’s universities is inevitable.
Dickens’ critics accused him of setting up utilitarianism as a straw man in Hard Times, i.e. exaggerating a philosophical position and ridiculing the exaggeration rather than the reality, and Eagleton might be accused of the same in 'Postmodern Prejudices,' the second chapter of Culture. The gist is concisely summed up in a quote from Eagleton’s ‘If I were king for a day’ opinion piece in the Guardian in 2014: ‘A series of edicts will be issued against postmodern cant. Those who think diversity is a good in itself will be required to state their reasons for wanting six fascist parties rather than just one or two.’ It is far from obvious that any academics or public intellectuals hold such a view. Eagleton is critical of both Richard Rorty and Stanley Fish in his third chapter, but Rorty was one of the leading proponents of aesthetic education in the 20th century and Fish’s ‘Boutique Multiculturalism, or Why Liberals Are Incapable of Thinking about Hate Speech,’ published in Critical Inquiry (1997), provides an if anything more sophisticated argument against the kind of cultural relativism that irritates Eagleton. Perhaps Eagleton’s opponents are specified in his previous books on what is obviously a pervasive theme in his work, Why Marx Was Right (2011) and The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996). As it stands, ‘Postmodern Prejudices’ is something of a digression in an otherwise superlative cultural critique. Eagleton offers not only an argument for aesthetic education, conceived in terms of the relation between culture and civilisation, but a defence of the humanities based on the significance of aesthetic education in addition to a compelling account of how neoliberal civilisation is crushing both culture and the universities in which it once flourished.