This is a 6000-word essay that I submitted for a course in EFL University, Hyderabad. Read Part I here.
Falsification
Pope’s contentions were falsified even in his own time. One of his central themes that was ridiculed was his notion of the destiny of the human race being prewritten—encapsulated by the line “Whatever is, is right”. Voltaire’s satirical novella Candide (1759) directly quotes this line, and uses ornamental language of his own to parody Pope’s optimistic sentiment. Voltaire shows that there is neither perfection nor order in the world, and his moral is that individuals must fend for their own meaning.
In addition, liberal thinkers like John Locke and Adam Smith promoted the importance of individualism and free will, which became more timeless ideals than Pope’s plea to submit to a Catholic God. The final nail in the coffin was a century later, when Darwin’s The Descent of Man (1871) scientifically falsified the Great Chain of Being. “Nevertheless the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, is certainly one of degree and not of kind”, is the most relevant sentence here (Darwin 105).
Part of Pope’s falsification process was also based on prejudice. Magill’s Survey of World Literature presents the position of the poet’s contemporary audience. It records how Pope, in his lifetime, was often regarded as “a small man in ill health, with a crooked back, spitting out vengeance on the world for his state of affairs” (Kellman 2056). This is undoubtedly a colourful and caricaturist perception of the poet as public figure. Even this criticism is not particularly irrational. Pope was indeed four feet and six inches tall, he was indeed hunchbacked and he was infamous for his biting wit. However, the facts themselves have been narrated in too polemic a manner, and presents Pope as a villainous, undesirous archetype; akin to Mr Scrooge or Tybalt. The use of words/phrases like ‘small man’, ‘crooked’, ‘spitting out vengeance’ are a few carriers of this stereotypical perception.
Needless to say, a construction of facts and ornamental language in this manner has not stood the test of time simply because it makes no attempt to be objective, and the usage of ornamental language is too polemical. Look at how today, Pope’s narrative on Wikipedia (the most popular encyclopaedia, even if far from the most reliable) employs the exact same facts to construct a much more sympathetic version of the poet. This shows, by today, how irrelevant the stereotypical description of the poet has become.
From the age of 12 he [Pope] suffered numerous health problems, including Pott disease, a form of tuberculosis that affects the spine, which deformed his body and stunted his growth, leaving him with a severe hunchback. His tuberculosis infection caused other health problems including respiratory difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes and abdominal pain. He grew to a height of only 1.37 m. Pope was already removed from society as a Catholic, and his poor health alienated him further.
Compare the stereotypical depiction of Pope with Samuel Johnson’s second volume of The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (henceforth Lives). Johnson is never overtly critical toward Essay. His work, after all is meant to be a biographical account and critical appraisal of English poets. He does not have the subjective liberties of the novella nor the epistle. Johnson is careful not to allow his personal emotions to interfere with an objective recording, even though, in Samuel Johnson’s Criticism of Pope in the Life of Pope, it is noted that “…he frequently shared opinion with Pope’s most hostile commentators” (Boyce 46).
When he records Essay, for the most part Johnson recounts anecdotes relating to publishers, translators and Pope. He reminds his readers of the confused relationship between Bolingbroke and Pope, which hints at Pope’s system of morality being faulty. He does not describe the moral system itself, and only mentions that “Pope was busy upon a system of morality; but this design was not discovered in the new poem” (Johnson 257). Despite Johnson’s most creditable efforts, a reading of Pope’s chapter in Lives provides involuntary hints of Johnson’s disapproval. Some of the relevant parts have been marked:
…philosophy and poetry have not often the same readers; and the essay abounded in splendid amplifications and sparkling sentences, which were read and admired with no great attention to their ultimate purpose; its flowers caught the eye, which did not see what the gay foliage concealed, and for a time flourished in the sunshine of universal approbation. So little was any evil tendency discovered, that, as innocence is unsuspicious, many read it for a manual of piety. (Johnson 259)
When Johnson says that poetry and philosophy do not have the same readers, the subliminal message is that Essay’s poetic crowd may have been too naïve to critique the philosophy. The clause after the semicolon (‘and the essay… ultimate purpose’) suggests that the poetic audience admired Pope’s ornamental language without assimilating the ‘ultimate purpose’. The strong implication is that if a seasoned philosophy reader picked up Essay, they would look past the frivolous ornaments of language to see that the philosophy was flawed. Similarly, when Johnson says that the poem was well received ‘for a time’, the implication is that its evil tendencies were eventually discovered, and it duly lost the universality that it had perhaps unfairly gained. It is important to note that Johnson only implies these things.
Indeed, throughout the passage, Johnson’s praise for Pope’s ornamental language appears somewhat backhanded. The deeper implication is that Pope’s superb language concealed the essential hollowness of his moral system. Ultimately, it must be said that Johnson had the last laugh—not Pope, nor his stereotypical critics. Today, critics generally agree that in Essay, Pope’s theological worldview was a modification of Lord Bolingbroke’s metaphysical and natural views, and they concluded that it was not one of Pope’s stronger pieces.
It is important to note that this is not an issue of truths and lies. If one must debate that issue, then one must initially acknowledge that no individual can have authority over truth—especially on cosmological matters. Too often are scientific conclusions regarded as laws, when scientific theories are often replaced by better theories. Karl Popper, in Science as Falsification, explores the question of when a theory can be qualified as scientific. Some of his conclusions are interesting:
Every “good” scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is […] Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability, but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks. (Popper 3-4)
Under these conditions, Pope’s theory may be falsified rather easily. While it possesses what Popper may term a ‘strong explanatory power’—and while, like Marxian, Freudian or Adlerian theory, the whole world may appear littered with verifications once the theory is believed—the reality is that Pope’s Thomist order has been falsified by Darwin, and that the existence of a Catholic God has not been proven through a ‘risky prediction’. In addition, through Voltaire, Johnson, etc. Pope’s smart rant was falsified by smarter polemical-rationalist rants.
It is necessary to note that another important principle of falsification is accounting for the possibility that the future may falsify the present. After all, Newton was synonymous with truth until he was falsified by Einstein, and Einstein was synonymous to truth until he was falsified by Hawking. Therefore, the possibility remains, however slim, that the future may falsify Darwin, Johnson, etc. and validate Pope’s beliefs. Therefore, in the context of this argument, one must be wary to not suggest that Pope was categorically wrong and the others were categorically right—one may instead suggest that Pope, by rationality and ornamental language, was out-argued.
What needs greater analysis in this paper is not the fickle nature of what is wrong and what is right, but the mixture of facts and ornamental language that are used to construct an opinion into truth. Reality is of course a construct—but who constructs it? For what purpose is it constructed? How does one construct an opinion that closest resembles the truth? What makes one particular construct more truthful than the other?
Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1729) expresses other subtle features of falsification. The satirical essay was written in response to the Irish government’s incompetent handling of the poverty-stricken underclass. Swift, in a nutshell, suggested that poor parents sell their children to be eaten or flayed for clothing and accessories. He employs several techniques of ornamental language that have previously been thematically explored, such as describing begging mothers as ‘importuning every passenger’, or terming them as ‘breeders’ and ‘dams’. As with satire, Swift’s intent is clearer understood when one considers what is not mentioned. What are mentioned are the lengthy economic arguments, which are as rational as most economic arguments can be. Swift invokes the fluidity of commodity exchange, of import and export rules. He mentions how raising a child can become a profit rather than expense, and accounts in detail just how many children can benefit how many citizens. Swift reiterates that he has no children that are eligible for his proposal, in order to maintain the essay’s neutral, rational and inhumane demeanour. Its emphasis on economics, statistics and neutrality in the face of fire, mirrors political economists like Malthus.
The greatest counterargument to Swift’s proposal (which is far from modest) is, of course, a moral one. Selling one’s own children to be eaten, as if they were sheep or swine, is an appalling suggestion that does not need to be qualified by rational parameters. Therefore, it is interesting to note how Swift avoids morality and focuses on economic, rational arguments. The only semblance of a moral argument is utilitarian, but even this is more of an interpretative conclusion by the reader; not emphasized by the author himself. This deliberate avoidance of a moral argument, paradoxically, may be designed to construct A Modest Proposal, above all else, as a moral appeal. Swift falsifies the inhumane neglect of the government and the overly rational prose of his peers by imitating their form and demeanour. He does so while proposing a plan that he knows modern British society will never find acceptable. He employs satire—a superb artistic tool for falsification—which obviously means that he does not want the proposal to be taken seriously. The proposal exists to falsify, to negate, but in its very falsification, it asserts truths that it never explicitly mentions—namely, that utilitarian, statistical measures for governance overlook the plight of underprivileged individuals and their families.
The main takeaway from A Modest Proposal, is that a smart rant which falsifies, in addition to denouncing the concerned subject matter as a lie, invariably asserts in its place an alternate truth.
Capital and the Blanks of Society
Now that the importance of the polemical-rationalist rhetoric in modern society has been assimilated, this paper concludes with some speculations on its effects on individuals who are continually nudged to adopt this skillset in order to climb the rungs of the bourgeois ladder. Addison and Steele were cognizant of these cultural shifts in the eighteenth-century, and it showed in the prose of the Spectator, which promised to aid its consumers in the art of argument. In No. 10 (12 March, 1711) Addison claimed that the paper would have “a good Effect on their Conversation” (Addison). In No. 10 (13 March, 1711) Steele denounced the “Common-Place Talker” as someone who promoted misogynist points of view with “Ornaments of insignificant Laughs and Gestures, [which] enforced his Arguments by Quotations out of Plays and Songs” (Steele). It is important to note that this Common-Place talker is not only presented as incorrect in his rationality, but also poor in his ornamentation. Steele, like Johnson, reminded his audience of the difference between hollow rationality and ornamental language.
It is clear that while the Spectator promises to educate its readership, an equal (if not larger) emphasis is placed on the ability to win the argument, or at least sustain an intelligent conversation. How rational a person’s argument inherently is, is but one half of the polemical-rationalist requirements. Rhetoric is the art of winning arguments, and for better or for worse, the bourgeois class were in prime position to be victors in such matters, due to their education, specialized occupations, etc. Irrational peoples, and/or those poor in polemical-rationalist rhetoric (whom Addison somewhat condescendingly terms the “Blanks of Society”) could not convince the general public about their views on health over doctors or physicians, who had education, experience and expertise on their side.
To a large degree this process was meritocratic, and thus may even be argued to be moral. However, the prioritization of expertise and exclusivity led to another interesting phenomenon, which may be better illustrated not with an example regarding intelligence, but of appearance. Steele, in No. 10 of the Spectator (20 March, 1711) recorded the existence of the ‘Ugly Club’. The title of the club was self-explanatory as to the appearance of their members. Steele noted that the laws of the club stated that no person could be a member if they did not have “visible quearity”; that they were eligible only if they had an ‘obliquity’ to their figure. These criteria pressurized the aspirants of the group, for if they were not ugly enough, then they were liable to face rejection. In fact, Steele even noted that “if there shall be two or more Competitors for the same Vacancy, caeteris paribus, he that has the thickest Skin to have the Preference”!
The Spectator recorded the beginning of the polishing of individuals into polemical-rationalist experts within a free-market milieu. This is interesting to examine, for it has visible effects three centuries from then. Habermas notes how, in the 18th century, the struggle for middle-class members became to survive under the rules of the just free market, to adhere to standards of profit and, if possible, rise up unwritten ranks of the newly forming public sphere. A Marxist analysis of alienated labour from the 18th century to the present may expand this analysis into interesting observations and parallels.
In the 20th century, mechanized, monotonous, assembly-line forms of production—more alienating in nature—like Fordism or Taylorism were not uncommon. Before they were scrapped, in this period, this form of production did not care for the polemical-rationalist skillset of the subjugated individual. They were, to put it bluntly, simply expected to perform monotonous and repetitive labour, requiring little to no skill—like Mr Bucket screwing on caps at the toothpaste factory. Over time came the rise in technology and automation, which led to labourers being employed more for their skill. This was not a response to complaints on the monotonous, inhumane treatment of workers. It was, as Marx himself noted in Capital, a natural result of capitalist accumulation, and therefore a decision independent of any sympathies toward the worker’s alienation. Capitalist production was not adapting itself in response to its criticisms, but was simply following its natural evolution. Indeed, one could argue that capitalism, in affording humane conditions to their workers, counterbalanced this supposed gesture of generosity by employing only the most skilled workers. There was, therefore, an increased pressure on the worker to maintain and develop their polemical-rationalist skills in the relevant industry. Alienation in the 21st Century notes:
The Mckinsey report (2012) points out there is a “growing polarisation of opportunities in the labour market,” with strong demand for both the highest (IT, engineering) and lowest-skill jobs (like food preparation, caregiving), but decreasing opportunities for those in between (Zaykova)
With the rise of industries like Google or Facebook, the trend continued for a market for workers which, at first glance, appears to assuage the ill-effects of alienated labour. These industries focus on employing the worker as an individual instead of a mere possessor of a particular labour-power. Here, there is greater emphasis on the polemical-rationalist capacity of the potential employee. To use an example, if an individual is proficient at coding, that may not be the only factor in deciding their competence. What is also prioritized is the individual’s hobbies, interests, knowledge—all that constitute them as a human being with a healthy mixture of polemical-rationalist capacities. Therefore, if an individual has an interest in painting or philosophy (and, if we presume these skills to be unrelated to the job description), then they are pressured to maintain these very interests—to become supreme in these interests if possible—for they were part of the reasons behind the individual’s hiring. This necessity to be outstanding to be included, strongly mirrors the criteria for entering the Ugly Club as mentioned in the Spectator.
The result is that an individual is unconsciously coerced into capitalizing upon one’s own identity, in order to design themselves as a versatile, polemical-rationalist commodity for the labour-market. Now, it is not only the individual’s capacity for labour-power that is pertinent to their employment, but the individual as a whole. If two people apply for the same job and have equal qualifications for the job, but both of them have an unequal ‘general interest’ in, say, poetry; the person who is able to validate their own interests in more ways, is likelier to be handed the job. Hobbies are, thus, no longer accountable only to the individual, but are another means of hierarchizing one individual over the other.
This form of labour-market has been on the rise since the 18th century, and has ensured that the individual’s own free time becomes an opportunity to develop forms of labour that can be presented as a potential commodity to the capitalist—such as reading the Spectator, developing ‘correct’ opinions and holding one’s own in a battle of words. The division between a human’s labour-power as a commodity and the human being as a whole, then, begins to blur. The very skills of the individual are now perceived as a commodity, which can therefore dominate and act as a hostile object toward the individual, in the same way that Marx viewed the hostile relationship of the worker and the product of their alien labour.
The 18th century was the origin of English free-market forces that inculcated a rhetorical construct in any individual aspiring to rise up the social rungs. The works of Pope, Johnson, Swift, Steele and Addison are only a few examples of the perfecting of discourses that asserted the veracity of its own claims while, at the same time, falsified the claims of what they were fundamentally incongruous with. Depending on the testability of the rational arguments and the appropriate ornamentation of language, these points of view either dwindled or matured in coffee houses, table societies, etc. and subsequently entered the bourgeois public sphere through novels, letters, poems, etc.
A Marxist like David Harvey may observe that, as time passed, the modern world became a milieu littered with images, symbols and trends, that came and went without preamble or epilogue. As smarter and smarter rants constructed newer possibilities, the free-market organically opened newer industries to accommodate their experts. “For the labourers,” Harvey said, in Time-Space Compression and the Postmodern Condition, “this all implied an intensification (speed-up) in labour processes and an acceleration in the de-skilling and re-skilling required to meet new labour needs” (Harvey 285).
Therefore, in an emergent English free-market economy where pragmatism, self-development, competition and product differentiation became necessary morals, the aim of the common citizen (as well as the Blank of Society) became to amplify their polemical-rationalist capacities and carve unique skillsets to survive in a volatile milieu.
Originally written: 30 May 2021
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