This is a 6000-word essay that I submitted for a course in EFL University, Hyderabad. Read Part II here.
Neil Nagwekar
H00MAELI20190056
The Long 18th Century (LIT 144)
Professor Prakash Kona
30 May 2021
The Art of the Smart Rant
Several salient features of contemporary modern life found their origin around the 18th century. The most popular English dictionary of its time, the birth of political economy, the rise of periodicals, novels and letters that catered to the educated middle-class, a trio of revolutions, the rise of colonial influences and the death knell for feudal systems all occurred in this period. This transition away from the ideological hegemony of European courts and churches was undoubtedly a necessary one. For the most part, societies were used to succumbing to truths offered by lords, kings or religious heads. These institutions held a unified, illusory authority over truth, but over time, became oppressive and obsolete. Their disintegration was correlated with the growing trend of identifying truth through methodical, refined, empirical and democratic techniques. However, the void left by church and monarch led to power struggles among different factions—a struggle which, today, has perhaps intensified.
Jurgen Habermas noted, in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, how the rise of the first European bourgeois classes also occurred in this period, and how this was coupled with “the authority of the better argument” (Habermas 36). Coffee houses in Britain, table and literary societies in Germany, salons in France, etc. formed enclaves where opinions became more emancipated from class or stature. A person’s ancestry did not matter as much as their expertise or experience on the relevant subject. Gradually, problems pertaining to governance, wealth or culture became the purview of the public sphere, instead of remaining the monopoly of church and state.
A number of professions emerged that were specializations—art criticism, letter writing, medicinal expertise, journalism, jurisprudence, etc. are but a few examples. In this way, as European history progressed, cold, calculated and objective thought came to be considered more just and desirable. Arguments that stemmed from pure sophistry, sentiment or subjective reasoning began to be undermined for arguments that could be verifiable and testable.
However, this suggestion may mistakenly lead one to believe that the ‘better argument’ had adapted a wholly rational character. This was not entirely the case. In Germany, a dialectical opposition was formed between Reason and state-governed Publicity, which was won by Reason. In Britain, it took the Glorious Revolution to radically change the standing of monarchy and the public sphere. Even this ‘public sphere’ did not include the entire working class, middle class and upper class into one equal entity (even though this was constitutionally the case), but led to a verticality in hierarchy among its own members. The so-called ‘public’ was in truth the educated classes of doctors, officers, pastors, etc. who had the ability and willingness to succeed in the ‘better argument’. The fourth estate, legislature, etc. began to be curated in favour of these educated bourgeois middle-classes, who became the real carriers of the entire public. Habermas notes:
A political consciousness developed in the public sphere of civil society which […] ultimately came to assert itself (i.e., public opinion) as the only legitimate source of this law. In the course of the eighteenth century public opinion claimed the legislative competence for those norms whose polemical-rationalist conception it had provided to begin with (Habermas 54).
The phrase ‘polemical-rationalist’ appears paradoxical, since a polemicist is often accused of irrationality. However, the 18th century witnessed several examples of arguments being presented in this format. This was partly due to the development of fundamentally incongruous ideologies. After all, the rationality of a political economist is logically pitted against a communist, while an expert in astrology is logically pitted against an expert in astronomy. In such cases, only a polemical rhetoric can determine superiority. Such arguments symbolized a society whose humans began to discount the essential malleability—or temporary nature—behind every purported ‘truth’, and instead posited their own truths as standards of objectivity. To use an example, a Christian and an atheist tended not to unite on a common opinion (whether it was Christianity, atheism or secularism), but argued over their points of view with their constructed polemic-rationalities, before becoming smarter Christians and smarter atheists.
When the expert polemical-rationalist members of the public sphere were unable to accept the fundamental absurdity behind their own postulation, and were unable to understand nor tolerate the train of thought behind alternative conclusions, the hostility led to a struggle to claim ‘truth’, without realizing its essential absence. This led to the pitting of different ideologies—and their different definitions of truth and lies—against each other.
Of course, before the eighteenth century, this was also the case. However, from this period onward, the primary difference was that the hostility between alternate ideologies began to be transmuted on a literary, verbal or discursive level, rather than a violent one. As human thought became more subjective, as techniques of survey and data analysis turned more refined, as time passed, as bodies of literature and historical events increased, the search for truth intensified and, therefore, the polemical-rationalist nature of arguments deepened. The aim of this paper is to trace the very origins of these polemical-rationalist methods that attempted to secure the ‘best argument’. Through an analysis of some of the most popular 18th century works, the techniques of presenting postulations as truth are examined, and so are the techniques to counter those postulations. The works examined include a poem, a biographical record, a satirical essay and a periodical.
The Smart Rant
By 1734, Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man (henceforth Essay) was published in its entirety. Essay is a philosophical poem, and was initially published anonymously. This, in part, was because Pope had made several enemies and critics after the polemic nature of The Dunciad (1727) and Epistle to the Right Honourable Richard Earl of Bulrlington (1731). Pope was a satirist and moralist, and many of his writings invariably antagonized trends, political parties and value-systems which he considered as immoral. This not only made him a fickle figure among European public spheres, but it also meant that the artist often casted a looming shadow over his art.
However, another major reason for the formation of Pope’s enemies, was that the philosophy itself was too orthodox for the emergent values of eighteenth-century England. The epistles of Essay deride a society that is prideful, individualistic and overly rational—that attempts to move beyond its ‘rank’ in theist hierarchy. It implies a wish to return to times when God was respected and feared, when individuals were comfortable in their imperfectability, when wit was employed within a certain humility, or when the public believed in Thomist notions about humans being eternally inferior to angels and God.
Essay is, in several ways, the quintessential starting-point for this argument. This is because Pope’s philosophy is much more incongruous to the reality of today than it was to the reality of eighteenth century England. Today, it may be much easier to find flaws in Pope’s argument. Contemporary societies tend to be atheist where Pope is deistic, agnostic or pluralistic where he is rigidly Catholic, modern where he is traditional, Hawkingian where he is Newtonian, and value free-will and individuality wherever Pope values fate and submission. In addition, when one already knows how this argument may be falsified, it is clearer to see how the argument itself was worded.
Despite the vast incommensurability in time and thought, Essay employs several techniques that afford it a perfectly firm, rational grounding. The central argument is strengthened with step-by-step postulations having solid internal logic. An examination of a few examples from the first epistle may illustrate this point. The first stanza begins with the following lines:
What can we reason, but from what we know? Of man what see we, but his station here, From which to reason, or to which refer?
Phallocentric common nouns aside, this is a perfectly reasonable assertion. Indeed, this part of Pope’s philosophy is supported by a deep epistemological heritage in the 18th century itself, when Berkeley, Hume and Burke explored the curious relation between observation, experience, empiricism, appearance, reality, sense perception and the human mind’s assimilation of knowledge. Suffice it to say, any individual who makes assertions without credible, first-hand information is probably misinformed and irrational. Kant, for instance, never left Konigsberg, yet made bold assertions on entire native American and black cultures, which have today been rightfully identified as racist.
However, even within Pope’s perfectly rational standpoint, it is necessary to read the fine print. The use of ‘station’, in this regard, is interesting. Since this is poetry, a kind of art where interpretations can be liberal, a reader may ascertain that ‘station’ simply refers to the concrete topography of planet Earth—as opposed to heaven, hell or some transcendental realm. However, in the context of the three epistles, it is obvious that Pope also uses ‘station’ in relation to the theological standing of the human species. Pope believed in the Great Chain of Being—that there were five kinds of living organisms, and that a cosmological hierarchy existed among them. Plants were the lowest, followed by animals, followed by the human species, after whom followed angels and God. One of Pope’s arguments was that individuals, through some corrosive mix of pride and reason, falsely believed that they could utilize empirical and so-called objective methods to learn more than they were meant to know. They attempted to move beyond their predestined rank, a rank assigned by God.
In pride, in reas’ning pride, our error lies; All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies. Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes, Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell, Aspiring to be angels, men rebel:
Pope employs several narrative techniques to qualify what is, even for his own time, a far-fetched claim. He uses poetic metaphor and imagery (“Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made / Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade?”) to build his cosmological ideal. He pricks the consciences of prideful humans through clever allegories (“The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today, / Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?”). He uses expletives like “Presumptuous man!” and poses accusatory questions like “All this dread order break—for whom? for thee?” The smoking gun is the modified allusion to Milton. The phrase “vindicate the ways of God to man” replaces Milton’s “justifie the wayes of God to men”. The difference between ‘justification’ and ‘vindication’ is subtle, but the latter is a more polemic forward than the former. To be vindicated is to be perceived as the guilty party before being proved that you were innocent all along. This word presents God, the benevolent Creator, as an entity that has suffered wrongful injustice. It suggests that prideful, overly rational humans—who dared move beyond their rank and station—were the real criminals all along.
The reason that Pope’s logic can, feasibly, be immune from all rationalist criticisms, stems from his own discourse on rationality. If anyone attempts to falsify Pope’s theories, he may simply respond by saying that God has not given humans the rational faculties to understand His ways (“What can we reason, but from what we know?”). He may say that humans will always have incomplete knowledge of the universe because God has eternally placed them at a lower station. He may say that however hard humans try to infiltrate ranks and stations beyond their scope, they will remain ignorant pawns in God’s larger design. The fact that no evidence can prove Pope’s theist claim is, paradoxically, all the evidence he needs to support his claim!
It is important to note that even the metaphors, allegories, expletives, etc. are laced with truths. Oaks are indeed taller and stronger than weeds. English society was indeed much more ambitious and prideful around the eighteenth century. A person is indeed presumptuous when they draw conclusions without knowing the relevant facts. A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present notes that Pope even incorporated Newton—then, the poster boy for science and rationality—in his philosophy.
While An Essay on Man identifies the chief fault of humankind as the original sin of “pride” and espouses an ethic based on an ordered and hierarchical universe, it nonetheless depicts this order in terms of Newtonian mechanism and expresses a broadly deistic vision (Habib 291).
Pope’s metaphors and allegories may be true in and of themselves, but they are also designed to appeal to the affective side. They are polemically designed to make the Enlightened reader feel guilty about their prideful rationality. They are designed to make them feel humble in the potential face of a larger, cosmological order. Since Essay is not a philosophical treatise, but employs the more artistic medium of poetry, Pope has license to write in lyrical iambic pentameters and heroic couplets to hammer this point home. He has license to create imagery and novel metaphors to render his readers awestruck.
Pope’s points of view were too orthodox for his time and ours, but it must be noted that he clearly believed in the verisimilitude of his philosophy, which was why he went to great lengths to express them. Therefore, while the superficial goal of his narrative techniques was entertainment, the subliminal goal was getting people to agree with his philosophy. Essay, then, is an early example of how a healthy mixture of rational suppositions with techniques of rhetoric (figures of speech, metaphors, allegories, expletives, etc.) that are often polemical, can create a text with an illusion of objective truth. Essay, then, incorporates the two most important elements of the ‘smart rant’—firstly, it expresses the innermost beliefs of the artist; secondly, this expression employs a healthy balance of rational statements with ornamental, metaphorical, allegorical language, so that it appears not as the purely subjective ramblings of one person, but as a universal truism.
Henceforth, for convenience, these metaphors, allegories, etc. will be termed as ornamental language.
Originally written: 30 May 2021
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