Kenneth Burke's Socio-Poetics: From Ontologism to Dramatism

When Michael Polanyi remarks that "Our believing is conditioned at its source by our belonging. And this reliance on the cultural machinery of our society continues through life" [Personal Knowledge, 322], one is entitled to ask: to what do we belong? From Polanyi's statement, it seems obvious that we belong to some sort of "cultural machinery." But what is that? The best answer that occurs to me is Shakespeare's:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages...
[As You Like It, II: VII].

The "seven ages" referred to in these lines are seven discrete stages of an individual life (from cradle to grave) outlined by the Bard in the lines which immediately follow. But that individual drama is played out in the course of a larger and more elaborate tragi-comedy--and it is the latter that Polanyi most likely had in mind when he spoke of "cultural machinery."

As an epistemologist, Polanyi's main task was to efface the Cartesian divide between mind and body. Yet he gestured repeatedly to the fact that embodied minds are also participants in social groups. This brings us full circle to Slavophile "ontologism": the assertion that there exists an "organic togetherness in cognition" that has to be accounted for [see the post of 3-18-12, below]. How best to do this? I suggest that we let the master metaphor of the drama be our guide. And if we do that, then we must find ourselves, sooner or later, confronting the genius of Kenneth Burke:

"People are neither animals nor machines (to be analyzed by the migration of metaphors from biology or mechanics), but actors and acters. They establish identity by relation to groups (with the result that, when tested by individualistic concepts of identity, they are felt to be moved by 'deceptions' or 'illusions,' the 'irrational'--for one's identification as a member of a group is a role, yet it is the only active mode of identification possible, as you will note by observing how all individualistic concepts of identity dissolve into the nothingness of mysticism and the absolute). If you would avoid the antitheses of supernaturalism and naturalism, you must develop the coordinates of socialism--which gets us to cooperation, participation, man in society, man in drama" [Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form, Berkeley: University of California Press (1973), 311].

Just as the individual mind is not divorced from an individual body, so individual bodies are not divorced from the collectivities in which they are embedded. Therefore, what an individual knows, or thinks she knows, is "conditioned at its source" by her belonging to a particular society and its culture. And, like the individuals who comprise them, societies enact dramas--indeed, they are dramas in which individuals (themselves elaborate sub-plots) play evolving roles.

Burke preserved Slavophile communalism and organicism but discarded Slavophile metaphysics and mysticism. In this respect, his thinking mirrored Tolstoy's quite effectively.

Slavophile "Ontologism" Re-visited

There is what I would term a "deep structural" similarity that obtains between the Slavophile emphasis upon "that realm of interior, pre-conscious, instinctual access to truth called 'intuition' or, in religious experience, 'faith' ... not faith in the sense of belief in clearly defined dogmas or propositions, but a kind of knowledge which precedes any abstract thought or 'reason'" [See Russian Philosophy, vol. 1, edited by James M. Edie, James P. Scanlon, and Mary-Barbara Zeldin; with the collaboration of George L. Kline, Chicago: Quadrangle Books (1965), 161-162] and, say, Sherman Jackson's notion of "Black Religion" as "a spontaneous folk orientation" upon which one constructs the architecture of a religious tradition and that serves to ground and inform an individual's understanding and expression of that tradition (in Jackson's case, Sunnism--see Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican, Oxford, 2005: 31-32).

Both point to what philosopher Michael Polanyi referred to as the "tacit dimension" of human cognition [See Michael Polanyi's books Personal Knowledge, The Tacit Dimension, and Meaning (co-written with Harry Prosch), all published by the University of Chicago Press]. Frustrated by the "failure of the positivist movement in the philosophy of science," Polanyi attempted to work out a "stable alternative" to Positivism's "ideal of objectivity" [Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, Chicago (1966), 25].

For Polanyi, all knowledge is "personal," which is to say (somewhat crudely) that the element of human subjectivity cannot be eliminated from human cognition--nor should it be. For if there were no subjective element in human cognition, there would be no genuine interest in anyone obtaining new information about the world. The desire to know engenders acts of self-assertion: an exploration of experienced phenomena in an effort to account for them in some way:

The sight of a solid object indicates that it has both another side and a hidden interior, which we could explore; the sight of another person points at unlimited hidden workings of his mind and body. Perception has this inexhaustible profundity, because what we perceive is an aspect of reality, and aspects of reality are clues to boundless undisclosed, and perhaps yet unthinkable, experiences [ibid, 68].

Or so we presume. This presumption constitutes what Polanyi called "the metaphysical grounds which underlie all our knowledge of the external world" [ibid].

We must be careful here and not mistake metaphysical propositions for indicative postulates. Since Plato (or perhaps Parmenides), it seems, we have been confused about the grammar of our articulate traffic with the world. Metaphysical propositions are not indicative postulates but subordinate clauses expressed in the subjunctive mood. Metaphysical speculation is a form of inquiry into possibility or potentiality. It inspires scientific exploration but is not, itself, scientific exploration, nor may it be permitted to substitute for scientific exploration.

That said, we must be equally mindful that we do not attempt to eliminate our embodied subjectivities (i.e., our personality, our humanity) from our science. This is the nature of the Cartesian error that has impoverished our thinking for the last 500 years.

Linguistic confusion and an over-zealous ascetic reductionism are the tragic hallmarks of Western rationalism--the "fly-bottle" that Tolstoy's disciple, Ludwig Wittgenstein, aimed to help us escape from. We have yet to find our way.

Polanyi's notion of "personal knowledge" and H. Gene Blocker's article "The Truth About Fictional Entities", The Philosophical Quarterly (Vol. 24, No. 94, January 1974, pp. 27-36) suggest fruitful approaches for making our escape--on Blocker, see the post of 02-12-12 (below).

Tacit thought "forms an indispensable part of all knowledge," therefore, "the process of formalizing all knowledge to the exclusion of any tacit knowing is self-defeating" [Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, 20].

But what is it that we "know" tacitly? Polanyi writes: "Our believing is conditioned at its source by our belonging. And this reliance on the cultural machinery of our society continues through life" [Personal Knowledge, 322]. Such "accidents of personal existence" may have the effect of reducing "all our convictions to the mere products of a particular location and interest." However, they may also serve as "concrete opportunities for exercising ... personal responsibility" towards the claims we take to be both justified and true [ibid].

Polanyi regards the latter approach as one's epistemological "calling." It is a calling to make tacit knowledge explicit and, in the event, achieve epistemological candor--such as the kind modeled for us by Sherman Jackson and the Slavophiles.

Ontological Investigations

The fundamental problem with ontological discourse is that it purports to be a science of "Being as such" rather than a science of beings. The former, then, is properly a metaphysical conceit; the latter, the sciences of nature.

Everyone who ventures into this area becomes mired in broad generalizations that quickly lose their cogency. A theory of "every thing," or what makes everything what it is, is bound to fail. And yet, it stands to reason that, if we can speak of things as "being," we should be able to articulate what it is about such things that warrant the predicate.

Consequently, some of the most impressive minds that humanity has ever produced have been lured into the trap of ontological discourse--only to find themselves stuck like Br'er Rabbit in the arms of the Tar Baby. Paradoxically, it seems that not everything that "stands to reason" can be rationally articulated.

In the 19th century, a group of Russian thinkers (known collectively as Slavophiles because of their distinctive theories about Russian history and culture and what they believed to be Russia's unique world-historical "destiny" as an arbiter between Europe and Asia) developed interesting approaches to the science of ontology. Unlike what was on offer in Europe at the time, Slavophile approaches to ontology were "anti-rationalistic, anti-positivistic, and anti-materialistic" Russian Philosophy, vol. 1, edited by James M. Edie, James P. Scanlon, and Mary-Barbara Zeldin; with the collaboration of George L. Kline, Chicago: Quadrangle Books (1965), 161. While he remained aloof from Slavophile circles, Lev Tolstoy's writings evidence the influence of their ideas upon him. Feodor Dostoyevsky, on the other hand, would appear to have become, over time, an unapologetically convinced Slavophile. The importance for Slavophile thought of German Romanticism and Idealism can hardly be overestimated.

"The most unifying and best known theme of this philosophy ... was explicitly formulated by [Alexis Khomyakov (1804-1860)] under the term sobornost ... [or] an organic conception of ecclesiastical consciousness ... [that] defined the Church not as a center of teaching or authority but as a 'congregation of lovers in Christ'" [ibid., 161].

This meant that Christians are united to one another "'organically' rather than 'organizationally.' The Church is not an authority which can force obedience but a free union of believers who love one another. The only source of faith (the highest and truest kind of knowledge) is the consciousness of believers in their collectivity. No Council or Church pronouncement [is binding] unless it is ratified by the community of believers" [ibid., 161-162]--a view that bears striking resemblance to the Sunni concepts of iman, umma, and 'ijma (and which may owe something to them).

While the Slavophiles clearly developed their ideas in an ecclesiocentric fashion, their conceptual apparatus has wider application. Epistemologically, "like the German Romantics, the Slavophiles do not emphasize the clear and distinct ideas of abstract thought but that realm of interior, pre-conscious, instinctual access to truth called 'intuition' or, in religious experience, 'faith.' This is not faith in the sense of belief in clearly defined dogmas or propositions, but a kind of knowledge which precedes any abstract thought or 'reason'" [ibid]. The Slavophiles were convinced that Western Christianity had "lost this kind of 'faith'" and, consequently, had "developed a 'rationalistic' and 'juridical' view of Christian truth and thus cut itself off from the living source of religion. [Therefore, they asserted that] knowledge (in the highest sense) and the possession of truth are not a function of individual consciousness but are entrusted only to the collectivity. [The historian of Russian philosophy V.V. Zenkovsky named the Slavophile] theory of knowledge ontologism. As opposed to Western rationalism, ontologism considers 'rational' cognition to be a secondary and derived form of knowledge, based on and flowing from a more fundamental, more primitive contact with reality which is pre-cognitive. [The ontological implication of this theory of knowledge resides in the notion of an] 'organic togetherness in cognition' which characterizes the solidarity of true Christian believers, particularly within Orthodoxy. As long as a man is vitally inserted in this sobornost, he is in the truth ... whenever, through pride, he attempts to discover the truth by relying on his own powers of reason, in isolation from the collectivity, he falls into error" [ibid].

Anyone familiar with the "ontological prerequisites" for Leo Tolstoy's "world outlook" will find much that is familiar here [see A History of Russian Philosophy, vol. 2, edited by Valery A. Kuvakin, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books (1994), 384-393]. Richard Gustafson's Leo Tolstoy: Resident and Stranger, Princeton: Princeton University Press (1986), details Tolstoy's numerous debts to Eastern Christian thought.

Tolstoy appropriated much that he found attractive in Slavophile and Orthodox philosophy and cut it loose from its moorings in Russian parochialism and, thereby, exploited its universal (i.e., broadly humanistic) potential and appeal. In his hands, the "science" of ontology abandons the ambition to become a "theory of everything" or a theory of what makes everything what it is. Instead, Tolstoyan ontology is not a "science" but, rather, a rhetorical mode. It is an assertion that human beings share a common life and a common destiny (i.e., death). The implications of this assertion are, for Tolstoy, not so much epistemological as they are ethical. We are all in this together, would seem to be his "ontological" conclusion; therefore, it would behoove us to begin to order our lives in such a way that both acknowledges and does honor to our common fate.

The Tolstoyan ethic moves from this rhetorical "ontology" to a "deontological" morality, i.e., one that assents to the proposition that general and specific obligations are owed to others. It is, at its base, a sense of noblesse oblige. Such nobility, however, is not a matter of privileged birth but of common birth (i.e., every human being enters this world via natality). The Tolstoyan ethic is aristocratic in this limited sense and, in the event, mirrors the Qur'anic notion that every human being is both a khalifa and an 'abd, i.e., born to lead through service. For Tolstoy (as in the Qur'an), the "best" among us must truly be the best among us (see Qur'an 49:13).

Sherman Jackson and "Black Religion"

Surely one of the most interesting figures to emerge from the American Muslim community in the latter half of the 20th century is Sherman Jackson, an African-American intellectual of considerable depth, breadth, and moral passion. Jackson's work is rife with provocative arguments and stimulating ideas and deserves to be placed front and center in any consideration of what it means to be Muslim and American in the 21st century.

As an African-American thinker, Jackson is preoccupied with questions of race, and such questions have drawn him into the penumbral area of ontology with predictably unsatisfactory results: in his book Islam and the Blackamerican (Oxford, 2005), for instance, he argues against the notion of "ontological blackness" as a biological category (p. 13) only to affirm it on the next page as a sociohistorical one (p. 14). As I have argued repeatedly in this blog, ontology is a problematic "science" at best, but I do not think that Jackson's apparent muddle in this instance is fatal to his analysis. Moreover, if by "ontology" Jackson actually intends something other than metaphysics, his thinking on this issue may not be muddled at all--but, to this reader anyway, his intention in using the term is unclear.

Jackson's identification of "Black Religion" [BR] is most intriguing. Not to be confused with "African-American religion" as a whole, he stipulates that BR is best understood as a "subset of the aggregate of black religious expression in America" (Jackson, 2005: 29). It is a distinctive "religious orientation among Blackamericans ... the central preoccupation of [which] is the desire to annihilate or at least subvert white supremacy and anti-black racism" (ibid).

He then argues that

Black Religion has no theology and no orthodoxy; it has no institutionalized ecclesiastical order and no public or private liturgy. It has no foundation documents or scriptures, like the Baghavad Ghita [sic] or the Bible, and no founding figures, like Buddha or Zoroaster (ibid, 31).

Instead, BR is closer to "deism" or the "natural religion of Blackamericans, a spontaneous folk orientation at once grounded in the belief in a supernatural power outside of human history and yet uniquely focused on that power's manifesting itself in the form of interventions into the crucible of American race relations" (ibid, 31-32).

Here, I think, Jackson has allowed himself to be seduced by a myth of primordial primitivism that unnecessarily deprives his conception of the richness that admitting its connections to the utopian impetus of Near Eastern prophecy would otherwise provide. I am unsure why he would embrace such a myth, although I suspect that he is attempting to create a space for Blackamerican Islam in a playing-field that has been dominated (historically) by the Black Church. Personally, I think the victory here, if there is one, is Pyrrhic, but I have no real stake in the outcome of such intra-communal sparring.

What I most appreciate about Jackson's delineation of BR's "constitution" is this litany: "subversion, resistance, protest, opposition" (ibid, 32). These nouns reveal BR's methodological kinship with Etienne de la Boetie's anarcho-humanism and, likewise, Leo Tolstoy's--suggesting that BR, like Tolstoyanism, represents a prophetic attitude or "attunement" that serves as a foundation for the personal appropriation (see Jackson's interesting discussion of this term and its relationship to religious conversion, ibid, 28-29) of existing religious traditions.