Influences & Contemporaries, c. Permanence & Change
The Lost Passages of Permanence and Change

Burke identifies the main concepts he will cover in this section, specifically "orientation," "trained incapacity," and "technological psychosis." This section will show how orientation interferes with its own revision and how a society’s ways of life gives rise to only partial perspectives.

This section argues that all living things interpret signs and base their actions on these interpretations. Burke begins his argument with the assumption that "all living organisms interpret many of the signs about them" (5). This interpretation of signs, conscious or unconscious, often results in a revised judgment even for a fish. Burke applies this assertion to people, writing that the greater critical capacity of people results in an increase in the range of solutions as well as problems. People interpret the character of events and also interpret their interpretations.

Burke gives the example of how chickens can be conditioned to respond to a ringing bell, even when this does not benefit them. Burke argues that this shows that "the devices by which we arrive at a correct orientation may be quite the same as those involved in an incorrect one" (7). This example shows that words derive meaning out of past contexts.

Burke introduces Veblen’s concept of "trained incapacity" on page 7. Trained incapacity means "the state of affairs whereby one’s very abilities can function as blindness" (7). For example, chickens that are conditioned to interpret the sound of a bell as a signal for food suffer from this training if the sound of a bell results in punishment.

Burke positions the notion of "trained incapacity" as one that avoids the (then) current debate that discusses orientation in terms of "avoidance" and "escape" (8). These terms, Burke asserts, make a critic look objective when in fact he/she is not.

Burke goes on to show that we select means based on how we interpret the world and that how we interpret the world is shaped, in part, by our training. This training may lead one to misjudge situations and choose the wrong actions. As a result, "their training has become an incapacity" (10).

Burke introduces the terms "scapegoat mechanism" (a device of the ignorant) and "rationalization" (the opposite of reasoning) and then rejects them writing that "if the question of orientation can be discussed without them, there is less likelihood of confusion" (11).

Burke recaps Pavlov, Watson and Gestalt’s experiments to show how orientation, means selecting and trained incapacity interanimate each other. Burke goes on to argue that events take character by a "linkage of outstanding with outstanding" (14). The accumulation and interworking of such characters is an orientation, which forms the basis for expectancy. As a result, a sign gets significance from the past that makes predictions about the future. Burke links this process to his definition of orientation, which is " a bundle of judgments as to how things were, how they are, and how they may be" (14). To respond, we have to use orientation, which makes judgments about how the world is, how the world may become, and what means we should use to reach this result.

Burke goes on to show how the "scapegoat" is error in interpretation that results from trained incapacity. To prove this, Burke offers the example of a how the economic misery of "the Whites" can be interpreted as resulting from "the Negros" because "an interpretation of an economic structure is not very ‘outstanding’ in comparison with a simple perception of a difference in color" (15). Such an interpretation results from faulty linkage. A different orientation would entail a different linkage. It would " link the outstanding economic distress with an outstanding defect in the economic system itself" (16).

In this section, Burke introduces Freud, and is fairly critical of the Freudian take on "rationalization" because it fails to consider that a thief’s motives are "rational" within the context of his/her orientation. Burke writes that people attempt to increase their accuracy of determining actions by verbalizing a theory of motives.

Burke underlying meaning here is that orientation shapes motives; orientation frames how we see the world, and this worldview shapes our motives for acting.

Burke begins by telling a lengthy story, the goal of which is to establish that there are lots of different theories, of psychoanalysis in particular, and all of them have different standpoints (or orientations). Burke asserts that "to discover in oneself the motives accepted by one’s group is much the same thing as to use the language of one’s group;" both are "self-deceptive" because motives, like language, are not "right" or "wrong" but simply the result of orientation. However, when living conditions change, orientation is impaired and we are open to a new theory of motivation (21).

Burke goes on to show that "every orientation involves a pleasure principle, but not as something opposed to a reality principle" (21). The pleasure principle causes people to make decisions based on the perceived reality of possible pleasure. However, according to Burke "the characters which we formulate under the guidance of the all-embracing pleasure principle may be wrong or insufficient" (22). In this case, people "alter their reading" of a given sign (or alter their perception of reality).

If people persist in faulty orientation despite punishment, it is because the "greater complexity of their problems, the vast network of mutually sustained values and judgments, makes it more difficult to perceive the nature of the reorientation required" (23). This failure results from trained incapacity because the authority of their earlier faulty ways interferes with the adoption of new ways.

The Strategy of Motives

Here, Burke argues that when making an argument, a writer seeks to "translate it into a system of motivations which will be cogent with his reader" (24). These motivations, and this argument, might be so inherent in the writer that he/she might think of them as "natural" when, in fact, they are constructed and socialized. Burke offers a rather disparaging example of a scientist engaged in such strategy.

Burke restates his definition of motive, writing that "a motive is not some fixed thing, like a table which one can go and look at. It is a term of interpretation" (25). Motives are not fixed, absolute, or tangible, but instead, motives are philosophical, and therefore, difficult to identify. Burke writes, "any set of motives is but part of a larger implicit or explicit rationalization regarding human purpose as a whole" (26). Motive are not evasive, but instead motives are molded to fit our orientation.

Burke uses points made about motive in the previous section to now advance the idea that "introspective words for motives are rough shorthand descriptions of discrepant and conflicting stimuli" (30). That is, motives are methods for verbalizing and capturing multiple stimuli (or "a complex set of signs, meaning, or stimuli not wholly in consonance with one another" (31)). Burke shows how motives give us shorthand ways of speaking about complex issues within our given orientation, writing that "since we characterize a situation with reference to our general scheme of meanings, it is clear how motives, as shorthand words for situations, are assigned with reference to our orientation in general" (31). Therefore, motives are characterized within our general scheme of meaning.

Burke goes on to note that the meaning of stimuli (which informs motive) is determined by its context, writing that "stimuli do not posses an absolute meaning" (35). Instead, the contingent meaning of stimuli is shaped by our vocabulary. Therefore, "different frameworks of interpretation will lead to different conclusions of what reality is" (35).

Burke argues that interest plays a large part in communication although the "fact that something is to a man’s interest is no guaranty that he will be interested in it" (38). In short, we see as a person’s interests is different from what he/she is interested in.

Burke goes on to add John Dewey’s concept of "occupational psychosis" to his definition of interests, writing that according to Dewey "a tribe’s ways of gaining sustenance promote certain specific patterns of thought which, since thought is an aspect of action, assist the tribe in its productive and distributive operations" (38). Therefore, the way that a culture produces itself is reflected in many, seemingly unrelated, practices of that culture. These psychoses (or pronounced characters of the mind) give indicators to a culture’s likes and dislikes, as well as a general method of behavior.

In this section, Burke breaks down the "occupational psychoses of the present" which include "capitalist, monetary, individualist, laissez-faire, free market, private enterprise, and the like" and are best revealed in "the professionalization of sports" and "the flourishing of success literature" (40-41).

The Technological Psychosis

In this section, Burke argues that there are three ways that humans have rationalized the world around them: magic, religion, and science. Burke defines all three, and then argues that the mode currently operating is the technological psychosis. Burke defines the technological psychosis as one which is "in its basic patterns, contributing a new principle to the world. It is at the center of our glories and our distress" (44). This psychosis attempts "to control for our purposes the forces of technology" (44) and "its genius has been called experimentalism, the laboratory methods, creative skepticism, organized doubt" (44).

Burke goes on to show the position of Marx and Nietzsche in the history of the technological psychosis.

Burke then introduces Veblen’s concept of "cultural lag" which argues that institutions (and the ethical values they uphold) that are developed to fix past situations may become a "menace" if the situations changes. He applied this concept of "cultural lag" to technological psychosis writing that a problematic approach to question of value seems part of the technological psychosis, specifically in the "individualism" (47) that we currently value.

Here, Burke gives examples of occupational psychosis in literary criticism. Burke states what is useful about Dewey’s "occupational psychosis" (it "may serve admirably to indicate how imaginative superstructures rise above productive patterns") and then critiquing Dewey’s notion stating that "other psychoses can be readily imagined" and that "I do not believe that it could very well serve as the basis of critical discriminations" (48).

Because "a way of seeing is also a way of not seeing" (49), Burke asserts that Dewey’s "occupational psychosis" and Veblen’s "trained incapacity" are interchangeable. In the next section, Burke chooses Veblen’s concept as "more serviceable" because he plans to discuss style or, in other words, the "communicative medium (as affected by the ‘master psychosis,’ the technological)" (49).

Burke defines style as "ingratiation" or the "attempt to gain favor by the hypnotic or suggestive process of ‘saying the right thing’" (50). How style is judged/accepted depends upon the audience.

Here, Burke illustrates how various groups have attempted style. For example, writers have "harkened unto themselves…hoping that there would be enough overlap upon other lives to establish a bond" (53).

Burke then uses trained incapacity to look at the converse of the situation, writing that "the dilemmas of poetry might argue the advantages of something else" (54). These advantages are the "conceptual use of language" and "strict definition" (55). Under this way of thinking, "rhetoric became synonymous with falsity" (55).

Burke argues that we need terms defined in helpful ways. Burke gives an example of a flock of geese whose habitats become diverse to show how their communicative abilities would become ineffective. Burke goes on to argue that if these geese became endowed with speech, they would immediately insist on creating a system of definitions that made distinctions between these various habitats.

Burke moves on to argue that human language is really a terminology rather than a language as a result of the "aesthetic departmentalism of the last century" (56).

As part of his discussion of language, Burke shows how meaning is also achieved by violating traditional use of definitions, as Dante did by using vernacular (57).

Burke goes on to show how newspaper writing is an example of technological psychosis as carried beyond strictly scientific communication. In this example, "the appeal of the informative here is clearly bolstered by psychotically engendered needs" (57).

To wrap up this section, Burke asserts that communication disorders can either be overcome or gone around. Poets have tried to "persist despite their linguistic disorders" (58). Scientists and technologists have "turned the defect into a virtue" and created symbols that "one can respond to by looking them up in a book" (58).

Burke refers to Sir James Frazer’s distinction between magic, religion, and science, writing that according to Frazer, magic and positive science assumes that nature operates through immutable laws, and that correct techniques on the part of the practitioner can make the world do one’s bidding. On the other hand, according to Frazer, religion assumes that powers superior to humans direct and control the course of nature and human life. Religion has an arbitrary principle that cannot be coerced, but instead, is propitiated (60).

Burke goes on to state that magic morphed into propitiatory magic, which then became religion. Burke uses this example to show that "as a point of view approaches the condition of almost complete embodiment, it may naturally be expected to reveal more clearly and call forth the correctives with it in turn requires" (62). Under this thinking, as scientific rationalization nears the ideal, "we might more easily perceive what was lacking in the scientific ideal and frame our corrective philosophy accordingly" (62). Burke states (irkedly) that one who challenges "the vested interests of the scientific rationalization is suspected of a strong hankering to sink back into the Dark Ages of human thought" (63). He goes on to argue that philosophic correctives to scientific rationalization have had to show some "superficial affinity" with religion, but this has been ineffective (63). According to Burke religion has feebly attempted to remold itself by the criteria idealized by science.

Burke believes that a "corrective rationalization" for science must move toward the humanistic or poetic since this is what the scientific criteria has minimized in favor of dominance. Burke refers to poetry instead of religion because it has not been institutionalized and cannot be accused of "backsliding" (65).

Burke calls for a "concentration point" of human desires as the corrective of the scientific rationalization. This is "a rationale of art" that is "not, however, a performer’s art, not a specialist art for some to produce and many to observe, but an art in its widest aspects, a art of living" (66).

Burke situates this section as one that is between the first, which discusses "orientation" in general, and the third, which will discuss a "new" orientation. This intermediate section will "deal with the state of transition itself" (69).

Burke argues that the state of transition is highly emotional, and he uses "piety," the "yearning to conform with the ‘sources of one’s being,’" and "impiety" to analyze this state (69). This intermediate stage involves a "shattering" with "perspective by incongruity," and Burke plans to look at this process within the context of psychoanalysis, which uses "planned incongruity (69). In addition, Christ and St. Paul will be compared within the frame of creating new meaning.

In this section, Burke begins to illustrate what he means by "piety." Burke starts this section by arguing that piety is not a strictly religious matter; instead, Burke plans to use Santayana definition of piety, which is "loyalty to the sources of our being" (71).

Next, Burke distinguishes between magical and utilitarian meaning to show that the same event, such as cutting down a tree, can be interpreted by using either a magical or utilitarian frame (72).

According to Burke, piety should 1) show a marked affinity with childhood experiences, and 2) suggest why "piety can be painful, requiring a set of symbolic expiations…to counteract the symbolic offences involved in purely utilitarian actions (74).

Burke clarifies his definition of piety by writing that "Piety is the sense of what properly goes with what" (74), or in other words, piety is "to exemplify a sense of the appropriate" (75). Burke goes on to say that piety is a "schema for orientation" (76) and as such, it can be right or wrong. For example, "vulgarity is pious" if this crassness reveals "the presence of a morality, a deeply felt and piously obeyed sense of the appropriate" (77). Burke uses the ideas of integration, which shows "great conscientiousness" (77), and interaction, which are the linkages to a particular way of seeing that informs one’s character (78), to refine his definition of piety and to show how piety depends upon one’s orientation. However, one’s orientation results in one’s experience which lessens the ability to change.

Here, Burke discusses how the attempt to reorganize one’s orientations from the past could be seen as impious (80). Burke gives the example of how an evangelist who asks his audience to alter their orientations to illustrate this feeling of impiety. Basically, Burke is trying to show that creating a "new orientation, a revised system of meaning, an alter conception as to how the world is put together" (81) feels impious because it challenges our sense of piety which is based on orientation.

Burke makes a distinction here between necessitous and symbolic labor, writing that necessitous labor is a job (or more utilitarian) while symbolic labor is a "calling" and "is fitted into the deepest lying patterns of the individual" (82). Therefore, "symbolic labor is more pious" (82). Burke uses examples of a climber, a Rockefeller, journalists, and psychologists to illustrate his point.

In this section, Burke argues that "Distinctions between emotion and logic, intuition and reason, however well they may serve in other connections, need not concern us here" (84). Determining whether a person is logical or not to much help in discussing orientation, because what may seem illogical to us, may seem logical to an actor within the frame of his/her pious orientation (86).

Burke identifies Nietzsche’s "perspective by incongruity" as a useful term in thinking about the establishment of perspectives.

Perspective by Incongruity offers a historical perspective of a word by "violating the ‘properties’ of the word in its previous linkages" (90). Nietzsche developed Oswald Spengler’s use of the term by establishing his perspectives "by a constant juxtaposing of incongruous words" (90). TS Eliot’s reference to American college’s "decadent athleticism" is an example of perspective by incongruity because he offers "a casual moral revaluation or perspective by putting the wrong words together" (91).

Perspective by Incongruity is the revelation of something that is traditionally unseen by placing things together that are not "normally" found that way. By violating typical convention, a new perspective is garnered. (from C. Paul’s notes)

Although Nietzsche exemplified perspective by incongruity, Henri Bergson came nearest to a "central statement of incongruity as a system" (92). The major claim in this section is that language creates incongruity and, therefore, can create new perspective. Burke shows the inadequacies in language and need to develop incongruity when he writes,

In this section, Burke argues for the use of metaphor. Apparently, Bergson sometimes used metaphor instead of abstraction to describe a term. Bergson’s rationale that using metaphor is okay is that "when we describe in abstract terms we are not sticking to the facts at all, we are substituting something else for them just as much as if we were using an out and out metaphor (95).

Burke goes on to liken the uses of scientific analogy to the poet’s use of metaphor.

This section shows the limitations and usefulness of argument by analogy. Burke identifies the great danger of analogy as being "that a similarity is taken as evidence of an identity;" that we "take the common notable trait to indicate identity of character" (97). Yet Burke makes a case for argument by analogy, claiming that is more accurately reflects the way we think and that a dichotomy between analogical thought and logical thought is a false one.

A key issue in this section is showing the limitations of science and traditional experimentation. Burke argues that science does not have an agreed upon answer, but is, instead, an "assemblage of widely disagreeing scientists" (101). At the same time, Burke argues that traditional scientific experimentation can work, but can be tested needs to be more limited.

In this section, Burke shows that how we choose to classify things is based on our interests. Burke uses the following analogy to show how classification works, "The universe would appear to be something like a cheese; it can sliced in an infinite number of ways—and when one has chose his own pattern of slicing, he finds that other men’s cuts fall at the wrong places" (103).

Here, Burke shows how analogy, metaphor, abstraction, classification, interest, expectancy, and intention work together. The web of interrelation that Burke describes is complex. A few highlights include 1) when we attempt to extend classifications, we often hit upon analogical extension not sanctions by the previous usage of our group, 2) the analogical extension we find is determined by our interest (103), 3) we classify events together on the basis of a common abstraction shaped by our interests (104), 4) any educated action has necessarily been abstracted (105), 5) new situations by "analogical extension" require us to invent (105), and 6) these classifications depend upon orientation; when we "approach events with a new point of view" we will "reclassify them" (106).

This section mainly highlights the limitation of language, which depends upon orientation. Burke first argues that interpretation results from over-simplification and analogical extension. He writes, "we over-simplify a given event when we characterize it from the standpoint of a given interest—and we attempt to invent a similar characterization for other event by analogy" (107). Historical events are usually slanted by such interpretation.

Burke’s second point is that we are stuck in this pattern because conversions are restricted by "linguistic and conceptual categories already established" (108). Yet new interpretations are difficult to make because "once you take words as mere symbolizations, rather than as being the accurate and total names for specific unchangeable realities, you have lost the criteria of judgment" (110).

Lastly, Burke introduces "planned incongruity" again and shows how Hemingway effectively used it by retaining a "vein of congruity still partially intact" (110).

The main idea of this section is how "planned incongruity" can result in reclassification because a new perspective is introduced. Burke gives the example of gargoyles of the Middle Ages as on of "planned incongruity." Here, the artist violates one order of classification, but stresses another (112). Burke uses this gargoyle metaphor to interpret Spengler’s morphology (112), Marx’s formula or class-consciousness (113), the Super-Realists (113), dreams (113), and James Joyce (113) to show how new classifications emerge. Likewise, caricature and Dadaism are movements toward planned incongruity (115).

Burke argues that "planned incongruity should be deliberately cultivated" in order to "subject language to the same ‘cracking’ process that chemist now use in their refining of oil" (119). For example, we should study "mosquitoes for signs of wisdom" and look at human beings as "vermin upon the face of the earth" (120).

One technique for finding new knowledge is, according to Burke, deliberately depriving "ourselves of available knowledge in the search for new knowledge" (121). By removing familiarity, we are able to see events in a new way. New knowledge and reclassification also results from adopting a postulate known to be false (121) and imperfect matches such as giving "poetic terms for the concepts of science" (122).

Burke uses psychoanalysis to show how a change in language choice can change how one interprets a situation. Psychoanalysis does this by "offering a fresh terminology of motives to replace the patient’s painful terminology of motives….it exorcises the painful influences of a vestigial religious orientation by appeal to the prestige of the newer scientific orientation" (125). Therefore, psychoanalysis works by 1) introducing an "unfit, incongruous terminology" and 2) offering a substitute terminology that provides the patient with a "brand-new rationalization of motives" (128).

Burke, in this section, shows how Freud’s approach to psychoanalysis results from his orientation, which corresponds with the local orientation of his group. Professor McDougall argues that Freud’s approach is incomplete because it does not include disassociation. McDougall’s approach also distinguishes itself from Freud because it relies on a "forcible establishment of a harmony" that relies upon a "’master principle’…which forces the various conflicting sub-personalities into line"(130).

In this section, Burke argues that psychoanalysis is a process of naming, that by naming disorder, reconstructing piety, and being impious, psychoanalysts can solve problems. Psychoanalyst also give perspective by incongruity by "misnaming", by changing the perceived disorder into something manageable and treatable. Burke claims that Nietzsche and Swift longed for the ability to misname that "would enable [them] to call the monsters of [their] imagination old coats" (135).

Burke argues here that some psychoanalytic cases defined as a state of "repression" might really be only require "exorcism by misnomer." Burke writes that "the matter may not be one of active forgetting, but may involve the nature of attention in the first place….that the metaphor be tentatively shifted from a legalistic one suggesting repression to an optical one suggesting focus" (141). This way of thinking suggests that in order to be "cured" through renaming and the "impious devices of incongruity" (142).

Conversion and the Lex Continui

In this section, Burke argues that he has attempted to follow the lex continui, or a sort of logic marked by gradient linkages. He explains this gradient logic in these terms:

Psychology uses gradients as well although its "search for gradients is more complex and dubious" according to Burke (143). Burke writes that this method is inadequate in because it is not precise with identifying qualitative human experience.

Chapter Six

Meaning and Regression

In this section, Burke shows how one interprets signs creates reality and how this challenges the psychological theory of meaning and regression. To do this, Burke takes up the psychological term "regression" and shows how it might be incorrectly defined. Burke writes that

For Burke, signs seem to be a real and tangible thing that is capable of creating reality. The "rational" is an acting unit; it "brings forward demands." Burke makes this position clearer when he write that "meanings and stimuli merge—and you may assume that, if a certain stimulus has rightly or wrongly a danger-character, a danger response will result….danger-stimulus and fear-response are one—and to remove the latter you must redefine the first" (150). In other words, signs create meaning which create reality. If a person reacts to a "danger-stimulus" with a "fear response" they have not regressed, but instead are reacting rationally. To alter the cycle, the "danger-stimulus" sign needs to be redefined.

Here, Burke compares Christ with Paul, showing that Christ confirmed his value system while Paul converted his value system. For Christ, a scheme of values was temporarily threatened but then confirmed. Paul, on the other hand, had a revelation that "was marked by a radical shift in his scheme of values. Old linkages were ripped apart, new linkages were welded, brutally" (156). For Paul, something new was revealed to him, and new meaning was created. Burke likens Paul’s revelation to writing a great poem (or a bad poem), writing that the "poem is a sudden fusion, a falling together of many things formerly apart—and the very force of this fusion leads one to seek further experiences of the same quality" (158).

In this section, Burke shows that meaning is cyclical and that language is "weighted" by it’s location in history; he writes, "men do not communicate by a neutral vocabulary" (162).

First, Burke compares his era with Christ’s, arguing that they are somewhat parallel because both are marked by "discordancies of evaluation, many conflicting schemes of spiritual order, leading to much the kind of imperfect overlaps we find in perspectives today (160). Burke compares rival "saviors" to Christ with the "savior" that some believe science to be.

Burke goes on to show the lack of neutrality of meaning created within an era by writing that the golden rule, which appealed to the principles of "the lowest common denominator" (160), is not wholly "good" but instead reacting to the "vindictiveness" of an "eye for an eye" rule (160). Then, Burke argues that meaning is not neutral because the era that followed Christ, which was one of "skepticism and eclecticism" (161), was reacting to the orientation of the Christian era.

Burke argues here that capitalism has failed and should be replaced by communism. He believes that the "discordant ‘subpersonalities’ of the world’s conflicting cultures and heterogeneous efforts can be reintegrated only by means of a unifying ‘master-purpose’ with the logic of classification that would follow it" (163). The present has been "grossly mismanaged" because it has been build upon a structure of "economic warfare" (163). Burke hopes for an "associative, congregational state" (163).

In addition, Burke believes that our language, and therefore our ability to interpret and rationalize, reflects the failure of capitalism. He writes,

Burke introduces Part III as the section of Permanence and Change that will outline his "poetic solution" that approaches human motives in terms of action (as opposed to knowledge). He expresses here his view that language is "weighted" and carries meaning, thus uses of language are "ethical." He also grounds his solution in materiality and man’s status as a biological organism.

"Since the stress here is to be upon a ‘poetic’ solution . . . we call attention to the fact that the poet uses weighted words" (167).

"Such weightings in themselves are not poetic but ethical . . .and such ethical grounding of poetic communication splits into two aspects: (1) Things materially profitable can be interpreted as spiritually good; (2) Such ethicizing of the utilitarian can lead to notions of propriety that operate in their own right, even at the cost of material advantage" (167).

"Above all, the search is for arguments whereby Purpose may be restored as a primary term of motivation. Such a project is called a ‘Metabiology.’ The term is justified insofar as each biological organism has ‘purposes’ intrinsic to its nature (a specific nature which aims at some kinds of ‘good’ rather than others)" (168).

"Such concerns lead to the ‘solution’: the view of man as ‘poet,’ the approach to human motives in terms of action" (168).

In this section, Burke explains how the turn toward the scientific method divorced the "logical" and the "ethical," where the ethical is related to the discovery of purpose.

"An orientation is largely a self-perpetuating system, in which each part tends to corroborate the other parts. Even when one attempts to criticize the structure, one must leave some parts of it intact in order to have a point of reference for his criticism" (169).

An important concept that Burke will return to throughout this section is vis a tergo, which means "the force from behind" and refers to causality (170).

"The Catholic point of view had considered the Creator as active and participant in His creation – but the scientific point of view considered the universe as a fait accompli" (170).

"Gradually men came to make a sharp distinction between the ethical and the logical – and though there is a great complexity of factors involved here, much of the cleavage seems to have started from the distinction between teleological and mechanistic notions of causality. Those who felt that human beings were somehow in partnership with a cosmic Purpose took the individual sense of purpose as fact No. 1—and those who believed in the immutable stability of natural law began with objective data" (171).

"The logical seemed distinct from the ethical insofar as the objective data offered no evidence of purpose . . .for scientific method categorically makes the discovery of purpose impossible" (171).

"Hegel made the most ambitious attempt to dissolve the ethical-logical dichotomy by identifying the logic of history with the expression of a universal purpose" (171).

Efforts to return to essentials emphasize the "humanistic" as a basis of thought. The humanistic turn has pinpointed war or conquest as a salient motive for humans. Burke introduces concepts of action and cooperation as being on the other end of the spectrum from conquest.

"Nudism represents an attempt to return to essentials, to get at the irreducible minimum of human certainty, to re-emphasize the humanistic as the sound basis above which any scheme of values must be constructed." (172).

"Such efforts at simplification led many thinkers to situate the essence of human relationships in the sphere of the brutal . . .Philosophies of becoming made life look like a perennial battlefield. Such an attitude fitted the ideals of positivistic science, in laying stress upon the notion that man must patch up the discordancies between himself and his environments by reshaping the environment. He must not surrender to the environment that oppresses him; he must change it. This attitude amounted to a simple declaration of war: economic and military conflict increased enormously; instead of reason as the guide of conduct we got intelligence, which was a mere implement of will; and the emphasis upon the permanent yielded to an emphasis upon the transitional. Seen from this angle, empire-building, war, capitalism, positive science . . .and progress all seem to be of one piece, different words for the same process as named in different areas of our vocabulary (172-3).

"The mind is a social product, and our very concepts of character depend upon the verbalizations of our group. In its origins, language is an implement of action, a device which takes its shape by the cooperative patterns of the group that uses it" (173).

"Darwin himself had specifically recognized that the struggle for life gives rise to cooperative attitudes, that tenderness, charity, good humor are as truly factors in the survival of man as was any primitive ability to track and slay animals in the jungle. But this aspect of his doctrine was generally ignored – and the struggle for life was usually interpreted in a bluntly militaristic sense. As a result, the world seemed to be composed simply of harsh antitheses, impossible choices, like the choice between conquest and surrender. Happiness became associated with the search for prey, or with the feeling of triumph . . .A concern with sentiments became ‘sentimental’" (174).

"The search for a rebeginning was further stimulated by the feeling that we had radically broken with the past. In contrast with modern enlightenment, all previous schemes of adjustment looked like mere superstition" (175).

Burke addresses the futility of trying to separate inherent meaning and judgment in speech and refutes the idea that any speech can be "objective," i.e., doesn’t carry some weight of value or meaning in it.

Two functions in the communicativeness of speech: (1) "Speech is communicative in the sense that it provides a common basis of feeling"; (2) "it is communicative in the sense that it serves as the common implement of action" (175-6).

"By such an identity between the communion and action aspects of speech, the vocabulary of doing, thinking, and feeling is made an integer. But the great variety of new matter and new relationships which science and commerce had brought into the modern world had broken this integral relationship between thought and feeling in the communicative medium. Hence a paradox: Scientists attempted to make a neutral vocabulary in the interests of more effective action" (176).

"But speech in its essence is not neutral. Far from aiming at suspended judgment, the spontaneous speech of a people is loaded with judgments. It is intensely moral – its names for objects contain the emotional overtones which give us the cues as to how we should act toward these objects. . .Spontaneous speech is not a naming at all, but a system of attitudes, of implicit exhortations. . .An important ingredient in the meaning of such words is precisely the attitudes and acts which go with them . . .these emotional or moral weightings inherent in spontaneous speech tend to reenforce the act itself, hence making the communicative and active aspects of speech identical. Such speech is profoundly partisan" (176-7).

"Naturally, with such an information-giving ideal as the basis of scientific effort, and with science enjoying prestige as the basic ideal of modern effort, the poet often felt his trade in jeopardy . . .he communicated when he established a moral identity with his group by using the same moral weightings as they used. . .Add now the fact that this communalty of moral weightings was itself impaired, and you see the magnitude of his problems" (177-8).

"The proletarian morality advocated by Marx is an attempt to found such communalty of attitude upon a class basis instead of considering society as a homogeneous whole. It seeks to found a new system of partisanship – and in this sense, although it is considered scientific by its adherents, it tends to replace the strictly scientific hopes for a neutral vocabulary by a new weighted vocabulary, which would be moral, or poetic" (178).

Burke believes that certain needs and purposes are universal in the history of humanity, although he expects that these needs and purposes would be described differently from period to period as a result of changes in the social texture and circumstances.

The priesthood function: "the members of a group specifically charged with upholding a given orientation [who] devote their efforts to maintaining the vestigial structure" (179)

The prophet function: those who "seek new perspectives whereby this vestigial structure may be criticized and a new one established in its place" (179)

"Instead of noting the great variety of religious, metaphysical, ethical, and psychological lore, might we try rather to detect the strains which run through it all? Might we take the variations not as essential, but as contingent? Indeed, what could discovery by but rediscovery?" (181).

"Endless ‘discoveries’ are made by, ‘prophets,’ artists, humorists, caricaturists, manipulators of the grotesque, criminals, theorists, scientists, critics, what not. They are all, however, bunglingly, ‘answering a call.’ In one way or another they are symbolizing refusal. The ‘experimentally grope’ for something – and this something is simply the device of living and thinking by which the faulty emphases of their day may be rectified. . .Thus, every turn toward resimplification, at every point in history, may be expected to show marked similarities with the basic or ‘nudist’ attitudes of corresponding earlier periods" (182).

"Such vocabularies not being words alone, but the social textures, the local psychoses, the institutional structures, the purposes and practices that lie behind these words. . .The terms by which we communicate are always thus circumstantially founded. Might we not suspect, then, that even if one were talking about needs and purposes universal to all mankind one would necessarily state his position differently in different social textures?" (182).

Bentham’s "Table of the Springs of Action"

Burke believes that words do not have inherent value and meaning (as Bentham believes); rather, value and meaning is created cooperatively.

Benthan’s theory of words:

Neutral words – to speak of thirst, hunger, need for food, desire for food, religiousness

Censorial words – divided into eulogistic and dyslogistic

Eulogistic words – love of the pleasure of the social board, love of good cheer, love of knowledge, literature, science, devotion, holiness, sanctity

Dyslogistic words – love of gluttony, voracity, gormandizing, sottishness, impertinence, meddlesomeness, prying, superstition, bigotry, fanaticism, sanctimoniousness, hypocrisy (189)

"Speech takes its shape from the fact that it issued by people acting together. It is an adjunct of action – and thus naturally contains the elements of exhortation and threat which guide and stimulate action. It thus tends naturally toward the use of implicit moral weightings, as the names for things and operations smuggle in connotations of good and bad, a noun tending to carry with it a kind of invisible adjective, and a verb an invisible adverb" (191-192).

"It is precisely through metaphor that our perspectives, or analogical extensions, are made – a world without metaphor would be a world without purpose" (194).

". . .the close connection between tragedy and purpose. . .When somebody is straining to do something, look for evidence of the tragic mechanism" (195).

"Even if we assumed the most utilitarian basis imaginable as explanation for the rise of moral judgments, holding that when the ethically ennobled say virtue they mean promise of profit and when they say wickedness they mean threat of a loss, the conflicts of the tragic mechanism remain. For the tragic symbol is the device par excellence for recommending a cause. How could one better picture an issue in an appealing light than by showing that people were willing to be destroyed in behalf of it? . . .Thus, sacrifice is the thing that properly goes with value, even though the value originally arose from the most utilitarian conception of benefit" (196).

Nietzsche’s view: "Militaristic patterns may sometimes have bad results, sometimes good, but all cultural activity as we know it is erected upon them" (198). "By showing the underlying element of combat in all action, we do not thereby obligate ourselves to glorify a philosophy of combat. Action can be something qualitatively very different from combat; and it is perhaps only in moments of great stress, as in extreme personal anguish or under the present disorders of our economic system, that the purely combative emphasis must come to the fore" (198).

"Even our monsters of greed and ambition are moved by springs of conduct imbedded in notions of approval, distinction, accomplishment, that arise from one aspect or another of the group psychosis. Thought and action are too social in their very essence for even a despot to act without reference to the approbation of his fellows" (203).

Burke identifies "ethicizing" as a dominant way that humans think about instruments.

To ethicize is to see something external as "an absolute good-in-itself" (205).

"Ethicizing . . .is a ubiquity" (205).

". . .turning these instrumentalities of support or service into absolute external goods-in-themselves, and bestowing upon them the smile of sanction which projects the subjectively loved into the objectively lovable" (205).

"Though it is customary to deny that in our enlightened era we have ethicized machinery, I might cite two kinds of evidence to the contrary: (1) We have tended to consider machinery an absolute good, as witness the frequent identification between mechanization and progress; (2) We have been so impressed by the prestige of machinery that we attempt to carry the machine metaphor into other areas of investigation, assuming its absolute or universal interpretative value, as when we employ it to ‘explain’ kinds of biologic behavior totally different from mechanistic behavior" (207).

Burke identifies more examples of ethicizing treatments of instruments.

function => intrinsic goodness or evil ("deduces the intrinsic evil of the individual boss from the evil of his function") (210) This is illustrative of the ethical process (210).

"The concept of an egoistic-altruistic merger would simply indicate that egoism cannot exist without altruism. Or, otherwise stated: Egoism cannot operate unless it so transcends itself that it becomes qualitatively different" (211).

"There is a fundamental relationship between wealth and virtue which no ‘spiritual’ scheme must be allowed to deny by fiat. Propertyand proprietyare not etymologically so close by mere accident. Morals and property are integrally related. They are obverse and reverse of the same coin. They both equip us for living. There is an integral relationship between these two kinds of weapons, tools, or capital" (212).

"We are struck by the clear connection which could often be drawn . . .between virtue and service, despite the fact that the quotations themselves definitely ignored such relationships. When we learn that ‘industriousness has three graces for daughters – virtue, science, and wealth" . . .why plague ourselves further? Industry, virtue, science, and wealth are all clearly the instruments of good living. In a wider sense, they are all but the primitive need of food and shelter, culturally projected – and the sooner we unite them, the sooner we may prevent the ethicizing tendency from perpetuating evils while supposedly idealizing goods" (212-3).

Burke has discussed the pathetic fallacy earlier (though not with the same terminology) when he wrote that our orientations are self-perpetuating.

"Our interests shape our ‘perceptions’ of objects. This brings us close to the ‘pathetic fallacy’ in its purity: the tendency to find our own moods in the things outside us. And the equivalent for this, in the intellectual plane, would be the tendency to find our own patterns of thought in the texture of events outside us. The pathetic fallacy is obviously creative, or ethical" (214).

"Perhaps this is but saying, in an elaborate way, that all is yellow to the jaundiced eye, and that there are many unsuspected and unnamed kinds of normal mental jaundice whereby the internal finds its external counterpart. We may designate the process variously: as hallucination, sympathy, empathy, discover, metaphor, perspective, interest, bias, pathetic fallacy, personification, synecdoche, predisposition, psychosis. We might call it a mere analogical extension, as one invents external equivalents for his mental and emotional patterns. But in any case it is assertive, it is productive or creative – hence it is concerned with action, which is to say that it is profoundly ethical" (215).

"It [the pathetic fallacy] is forever at work molding the qualities of our experience, as it sometimes induces us to single out those aspects of events which immediately reflect our interests, and at other times it trains our attention upon the selection of such means as will make events reflect our interests. In this sense, all action is poetic" (215).

"However the universe may have originated, it is now to be considered as a set of celestial wheels which were fashioned long ago and were set going in a routine fashion, and we have but to discover the unchanging laws that underlie its operation. Here is an attempt to move definitely out of the poetic or creative field" (217).

"Instead of considering the universe as being created, the student of scientific causality considers it solely as having been created. He may adapt its course to his wishes by learning exactly what the original legislation was; but the act of legislation itself is finished. We could now retain the poetic metaphor only by considering ourselves as audience, or perhaps more accurately, critics. We attend the play, we comment upon its methods, but we do not write it" (218).

"And even if the universe is completed, our lives and our histories are constantly in the making. Though the materials of experience are established, we are poetic in our rearrangement of them. But the distinction may explain how a kind of conflict may seem to arise at times between logical and ethical approach. For the logical rationalization has tended to shape its accounts of the universal process without regard for the most characteristic patterns of individual human experience: the sense of acting upon something rather than of being acted upon by something. The spontaneous words for human motivation all imply the element of choice; but the scientific words imply compulsion" (218).

"One is ‘statistically’ a bourgeois, a hyperthyroid, a Nordic, an extravert, what you will. But until he is specifically indoctrinated with such a concept, it does not figure as a motive in his acts, so far as he personally is concerned" (219).

"It is probably that no neutral term could come into general use as a description of human motives or interests without slipping into the categories of ‘eulogy’ and ‘dyslogy’" (220).

"In our section ‘On Interpretation’ we attempted to show that man’s words for motives are merely shorthand descriptions of situations. One tends to think of a duality here, to assume some kind of breach between a situation and a response. Yet the two are identical. When we wish to influence a man’s response, for instance, we emphasize factors which he had understressed or neglected, and minimize factors which he had laid great weight upon. This amounts to nothing other than an attempt to redefine the situation itself" (220).

"Such considerations seem important as a way of indicating the issues that confront us when we attempt to disclose the ‘ultimate motives’ behind human conduct. For if there is one underlying motive or set of motives that activates all men there must be one underlying situation common to all men. It seems obvious that before we could establish the existence of a common situation or motive for all men, we should have to define the cosmic situation and man’s place in it" (221).

"Mysticism seems to cover a variety of manifestations, but in the main it seems to be an attempt to define the ultimate motivation of human conduct by seeing around the corner of our accepted verbalizations" (221-2).

"The mystic seeks a sounder basis of certainty than those provided by the flux of history. He seeks the ultimate motive behind our acts, that is, he seeks an ultimate situation common to all men" (222).

"The identity between motives and situations should suggest why the modern sciences of statistics tend to turn up conclusions of a strongly mystical cast. By examining a multitude of situations, individually distinct, the scientist attempts statistically to extract a generalization common to all. The mystic makes somewhat the same attempt by looking within and naming as the ultimate motive a quality of experience common to all" (222).

"We are perhaps most comfortable when we can derive our concepts of duty from contingencies alone, as when we open a window because the air is stuffy, or write a letter because it requires an answer. . .But at times like ours, where the entire commercial ethic shaping our contingent demands has brought us to extremities, a ‘’hand to mouth’ conception of duty is not enough. One must go in search of authoritative tests that lie deeper. One must seek definitions of human purpose whereby the whole ailing world of contingent demands can be appraised" (223).

Burke argues against the idea of causality. Any identification of causality, he explains, would be merely to (almost arbitrarily) pinpoint a single place in a cycle.

"It would seem obvious that any material point selected in an endless chain of ‘dialectically’ interacting material and spiritual factors must have been immediately preceded by a spiritual one" (225).

"Materials may determine the forms our enterprise takes, but they can hardly explain the origin of enterprise" (226).

"No given historical texture need be accepted as the underlying basis of a universal causal series" (228).

"Thought and action are integrally related to begin with . . .Such an observation would seem to justify the present mode of interpretation in accordance with which all of man’s historic institutions would be considered the externalization of biologic, or non-historic factors. It would suggest that the materials of invention are but the objective projection of subjective patterns grounded in our organic equipment. To be sure, the externalizing of these biologic patterns will bring forth by-products that raise important demands in themselves. . .Historic textures can be said to ‘cause’ our frameworks of interpretation in the sense that they present varying kinds of materials for us to synthesize – but the synthesis is necessarily made with reference to non-historic demands, the genius of the human body as projected into its ideological counterparts" (228).

"Whether you call the fundamental substance matter or idea seems of no great moment when you talk of mind and body with a hyphen, as mind-body" (229).

"In this respect, materialism, idealism, and dialectical materialism merge into a kind of ‘dialectical biologism,’ framed in keeping with the hyphenated usage, mind-body. . .But materialism, idealism, dialectical materialism, and ‘dialectical biologism’ may all be alike in this one notable respect: All four systems of verbalization may stress, in accord with science, the need of manipulating objective material factors as an essential ingredient to spiritual welfare" (229-30).

"It stops at a convenient point, and interprets this convenience as a cosmic reality" (231).

"The positivist, looking upon the universe as created, says that the last chapter flows inexorably from the conditions laid down in the first chapter. Lawrence would look upon the universe as being created. He would restore the poetic point of view. Behind the effrontery of his assertions, he seems to be saying simply that the last chapter is not caused by the first, but that all the chapters are merely different aspects of a single process" (231-2).

"The keystone of vis a tergo causality, when applied to the biological, anthropological, and sociological spheres, was an evolutionary relationship between organism and environment. In true individualistic fashion, the organism was considered as a separate unit more or less at odds with its environmental context . . .By this schema, the environment was causally prior. Yet it is obvious that any living genus possesses an authority of its own" (232).

"The entire attempt to distinguish between organism and environment is suspect. An environment gets its quality, nature, or meaning from the demands which a particular organism makes of it" (232).

"It seems hard to understand how we can select the environmental as the distinctly prior factor" (233).

"Another aspect of the positivist’s causal scheme is that it assumes complete rationality at the basis of biologic phenomena. Causality is conceived in a wholly mechanistic sense (machines being the perfect embodiment of the rational ideal). Behavior is interpreted quite as if it were as rational as a stone which, upon being pushed over a hill, obediently rolls toward the valley. But might we not avoid the whole question as to whether man is a rational or an irrational being by saying simply that man is methodical?" (233-4).

"Might we assume a constancy of message throughout history precisely to the extent that the biologic purposes of the human genus have remained a constant – and might we, attempting the sort of translation which Ogden and Richards advocate, suspect that our label of doctrines is much less varied in its essence than it appears on the surface, where it manifests only the shifting symbolizations of history and status? (234).

"Every system of exhortation hinges about some definite act of faith, a deliberate selection of alternatives. When this crucial at is not specifically stated, it merely lies hidden beneath the ramifications of the system. . .when considering war and participation, r war and action, as the two ends of a graded series, I have chosen action or participation as the word that shall designate the essence of this series. Or we might choose such words as cooperation and communication" (235-6).

"Here, in all its nudity, is the Jamesian ‘will to believe,’ It amounts in the end to the assumption that good, rather than evil, lies at the roots of human purpose. And as for those who would suggest that this is merely a verbal solution, I would answer that by no other fiction can men truly cooperate in historic processes, hence the fiction itself is universally grounded" (236).

"If one says that activity is merely a neutral quality rather than a good, I should answer that inactivity is categorically an evil, since it is not possible to the biologic process. To acquiesce in the methods that preserve humanity is per se to concede that life is a good, however perversely one may choose to verbalize such implications. Life, activity, cooperation, communication – they are identical" (236).

"To specifically link up the matter of cooperation with the ethicizing of the means of support: We may glimpse something of the relationship between individual minds and collective enterprise by noting the part which such unifying concepts as totem, godhead, nation, class, or group play in mental integration. The individual’s deepest means of support in the civic texture resides in such a communicative or cooperative bond. By it he is ‘transcendentally’ fortified. His personal solidity depends upon his allegiance to it" (236).

"Occupation and morality are integrally intermingled. This is obvious when occupation reaches the stage of preoccupation. For we are preoccupied with something which we value: A woman, a business, a book. We ethicize something when we act toward it as though it were in intrinsic good. And since the tests of goodness ultimately involve our welfare in some form or another, spiritual or material, present or future, we can be said to ethicize the serviceable. As has been pointed out, such notions of service can even lead to sacrifice" (238).

"In the business of means-selecting, instead of choosing the means with respect to the nature of the problem to be solved, one tends to state the problem in such a way that his particular aptitude becomes the ‘solution’ for it" (242-3).

"The graveness of his concern – his ‘altar’ – will lead him to seek similarly solemn things with which to surround it. Second, since style in literature as in social behavior is used for the purposes of ingratiation, the sense of guilt can quicken the sense of style by intensifying a retributive attitude. . . And way may also note the socially constructive character of guilt, since piety is a system-builder, impelling one to go farther and farther in such or appropriate materials that will go with his concerns, while the attempt to socialize this material for purposes of communication leads one far beyond the character of the initial stimulus" (246).

"Action is fundamentally ethical, since it involves preferences. Poetry is ethical. Occupation and preoccupation are ethical. The ethical shapes our selection of means. It shapes our structures of orientation, while these in turn shape the perceptions of the individuals born within the orientation. Hence it radically affects our cooperative processes. The ethical is thus linked with the communicative, particularly when we consider communication its broadest sense, not merely as the purveying of information, but also as the sharing of sympathies and purposes, the doing of acts in common as with the leveling process of communicating vessels" (250).

"It is hard to see why the encouragements of pseudostatement either should or could be confined to formal art; they must also extend to those informal arts we usually call life, experience, or action. They must show in our likes and dislikes, and in the choices and means-selecting implicit in such attitudes. We may admit a much wider range of ethical relativity than is customary; by observing how ethical norms tend to cancel one another, we may get that appearance of non-moral neutrality which is sometimes called logic – but in the end, this deviousness of scope does not eliminate moral attitudes, it merely makes the documentation behind them more complex. In the mimesis of the practical the distinction between acting and play-acting, between real and make-believe, becomes obliterated" (254-5).

"In the end, our pseudo-statements may have been so altered by the revisions which the recalcitrance of the material has forced upon us that we can now more properly refer to them as statements" (255).

"We make this distinction to justify our contention that all universe-building is ethical universe-building. The objection to Lawrence’s statements is that they have not yet undergone the scope of revision required by the recalcitrance of the material which would be disclosed were we to extend them into all walks of investigation. They have not been socialized, as the cooperation of an entire historic movement might have caused them to be in the past or might again cause them to be in the future. But our interests are essential in shaping the nature of our discoveries, tentatives, and revisions. And our interests are ethical" (256).

"The ethical bent from which one approaches the universe is itself a part of the universe. . .Our calling has its roots in the biological, and our biological demands are clearly implicit in the universal texture. To live is to have a vocation, and to have a vocation is to have an ethics or scheme of values, and to have a scheme of values is to have a point of view, and to have a point of view is to have a prejudice or bias which will motivate and color our choice of means" (256-7).

"But the ‘discoveries’ which flow from the point of view are nothing other than revisions made necessary by the nature of the world itself. They thus have an objective validity" (257).

*Be sure to read the footnote on the bottom of page 257 for a brief discussion of determinism and the introduction of a "point of view" into the universe.

On the fact formation process:

"We might expect the point of view to express itself first in fancy, metaphor, hypothesis, ‘vision.’ New lines of cosmological speculation may be opened up. Relevant inventions may follow, until eventually the point of view finds embodiment in our institutions and our ways of living. It may be expected to reveal itself first in the visionary categories, since here recalcitrance is at a minimum. It is metaphorical, a ‘perhaps.’ But as one goes farther afield, attempting more thoroughly to communicate his vision, new aspects of recalcitrance arise. One strategically alters his statements, insofar as he is able, to shape them in conformity with the use and wont of his group. At this stage his message is taken up and variously reworked by many different kinds of men – and by the time they have fitted it to the recalcitrance of social relationships, political exigencies, economic procedures, etc., transferring it from the private architecture of a poem into the public architecture of a social order, those who dealt with it in its incipient or emergent stages could hardly recognize it as having stemmed from them. But by now, surely, it would be so firmly established in our habits of thought that we could everywhere find it corroborated in ‘hard fact,’ particularly since the instruments of precision and thought by which we made our examinations were themselves shaped by this same point of view" (258).

"Our ultimate motive, the situation common to all, [is] the creative, assertive, synthetic act" (259).

"When one considers the universe as a Making rather than as a Made, discussing it from the ethical, creative, poetic point of view, there arises a similar need to explain a partial event by reference to a total event" (260).

"Essentially, it involves the selection of a purposive or teleological metaphor (the metaphor of human action or poetry) as distinct from a mechanistic metaphor (the vis a tergo causality of machinery) for the shaping of our attitude toward the universe and history. And it bases this choice upon the most undeniable point of reference we could possible have: the biological. It aims less at a metaphysic than at a metabiology, and a point of view biologically rooted seems to be as near to ‘rock bottom’ as human thought could take us" (260-1).

"The notion of life as a method would suggest that all the universe could likewise be designated as a method or aggregate of methods – in which case the selection of the biologic metaphor should not necessarily interrupt our rational investigations. For the methods of appeal in a poem can be analyzed, quite as we may analyze the methods of production in a machine. The exclusively mechanistic metaphor is objectionable not because it is directly counter to the poetic, but because it leaves too much out of account. It shows us merely those aspects of experience which can be phrase with its terms. It is truncated, as the poetic metaphor, buttressed by the concept of recalcitrance, is not" (261).

"Civilization" is "manifestations of the ethical or creative impulse" (262).

"The ultimate metaphor for discussing the universe and man’s relations to it must be the poetic or dramatic metaphor" (263).

"The poetic metaphor offers an invaluable perspective from which to judge the world of contingencies" (266).

"A study of communication, which necessarily emphasizes the social nature of human adjustment, should combine these methods, considering men as possessed, and men as the inventors of new solution – but these two frames would be subdivisions in a larger frame, men as communicants" (267).

"Once a cooperative way of life were firmly established in human institutions, I believe that the poetic metaphor would be the best guide in shaping the new pieties of living. By laying great emphasis upon the cultural value of style, it can lead toward the construction of a world based primarily upon the devices of ingratiation and inducement, which are necessary to the free and satisfactory play of sentiments" (268).

"For style is an elaborate set of prescriptions and proscriptions for ‘doing the right thing’ . . .In an era greatly marked by style and rite, we ‘succeed’ by acquiescing to its many non-competitive ways of being ‘right’" (268).

"Style is a constant meeting of obligations, a state-of-being-without-offense, a repeated doing of the ‘right’ thing. It molds our actions by contingencies, but these contingencies go to the farthest reaches of the communicative. For style (custom) is a complex schema of what-goes-with-what, carried through all the subtleties of manner and attitudes. Its ample practice in social relationships can take the place of competitive success because it is success" (269).

"An obedience to such customary values is not cowardice, but piety" (269-70).

Style’s problem: it "tends to become a competitive implement, as a privileged group may cultivate style to advertise its privileges and perpetuate them" (270).

"The ultimate goal of the poetic metaphor would be a society in which the participant aspect of action attained its maximum expression. By its great stress upon the communicative, it would emphasize certain important civic qualities to which both naturalistic and supernaturalistic rationalizations have given less attention than seems necessary to our modern urbanized ways of living. Meanwhile, alas! we are forced to live by economic patterns which reduce the cooperative aspects of action to a minimum" (270-1).

"An ethics involves one ultimately in a philosophy of being, as distinct from a philosophy of becoming, because it aims to consider the generic equipment of man as a social and biologic organism" (271).

"In subscribing to a philosophy of being, as here conceived, one may hold that certain historically conditioned institutions interfere with the establishment of decent social or communicative relationships, and thereby affront the permanent biologic norms. He may further hold that certain groups or classes of persons are mainly responsible for the retention of these socially dangerous institutions. And since we insist that a point of view requires, as its material counterpart, adequate embodiment in the architecture of the State, a philosophy of being may commit one to open conflict with any persons or class of persons who would use their power to uphold institutions serving an anti-social function. In such conflict, one’s natural mode of action will be that of education, propaganda, or suasion" (271-2).

"peaceful work as a propounder of new meanings . . .cultivating the arts of translation and inducement. He will accept it that the pieties of others are no less real or deep though being different from his, and he will seek to recommend his position by considering such orders of recalcitrance and revising his statements accordingly" (272).

Appendix: On Human Behavior Considered "Dramatistically"

KB wrote the Appendix after the initial publication of P&C; in it, he refers to a piece that he wrote in 1952. The appendix is written in a manner much more difficult to understand than the main text of P&C.

Dramatistic: terms grounded in theories of action rather than in theories of knowledge (274)

"Man being specifically a symbol-using animal, we take it that a terminology for the discussion of his social behavior must stress symbolism as a motive . . . However, man being generically a biological organism, the ideal terminology must present his symbolic behavior as grounded in biological conditions" (275).

"Property is a necessity," i.e., "rights and obligations" (275).

"The purely operational motives binding a society become inspirited by a corresponding condition of Mystery. (Owing to their different modes of living and livelihood, classes of people become ‘mysteries’ to one another)" (276), i.e. Mystery arises "from the social hierarchy," among other orders (277).

"Man’s specific nature as a symbol-using animal transcends his generic nature as sheer animal, thereby giving rise to property, rights, and obligations of purely man-made sorts" (283).

[Private property] must exist in function insofar as a certain cluster of expectancies, rights, material rewards, honors, and the like is normal to such-and-such a person, as distinct from all other persons, who carries out certain responsibilities or obligations duly recognized as such in his society" (279).

"The necessary nature of property in a complex social order makes for the ‘embarrassments’ of social mystery in men’s relations to one another, thereby giving rise to attitudes that pervade areas of thought not strictly germane to it" (282).

"As idealism could be said to have universalized, cosmologized, the relation between an original purpose and its corresponding embodiment in physical and human materials, so pragmatism would note how the particular choice of materials and methods in which to embody the ideal gives rise to conditions somewhat at variance with the spirit of the ideal. . .Where idealism stresses the mediatory step from end to means, (from purpose to agency) pragmatism stresses rather the step from agency to purpose (as it derives ends from the nature of the available means)" (282).

"The terms ‘Bureaucracy,’ ‘Hierarchy,’ and ‘Order’ all touch upon this realm of social mystery, because of their relation to Authority, and to canons of Propriety" (283).

Coleridge: "The two great moments of the Christian Religion are, Original Sin and Redemption’ that the ground, this the superstructure of our faith" (283).

"This paper is based on the assumption that a purely social terminology of human relations can not do better than to hover about that accurate and succinct theological formula, as we watch always for ways of locating its possible secular equivalents. Basically, the pattern proclaims a principle of absolute ‘guilt,’ matched by a principle that is designed for the corresponding absolute cancellation of such guilt," i.e., victimage (283-4).

"As with Coleridge’s two ‘moments,’ here is the very centre of man’s social motivation. And any scheme that shirfts the attention to other motivational areas is a costly error, except insofar as its insights can be brought back into the area of this central quandary" (285).

"Insofar as all complex social order will necessarily be grounded in some kind of property structure, and insofar as all such order in its divisive aspects makes for the kind of social malaise which theologians would explain in terms of ‘original sin,’ is it possible that rituals of victimage are the ‘natural means for affirming the principle of social cohesion above the principle of social division?" (286).

Hitler as example of the "’perfect’ victim, the material embodiment of an ‘idealized’ foe" (288).

"’Order’ as such makes for a tangle of guilt, mystery, ambition and vindication that infuses even the most visible and tangible of material ‘things’ with the spirit of the order through which they are perceived" (288).

"Mortification is a scrupulous and deliberate clamping of limitation upon the self. Certain requirements for the maintaining of a given social order attain their counterparts in the requirements of an individual conscience; and when the principle of such requirements is scrupulously carried to excess, you get ‘mortification.’" (289). KB also cites crime (an attitude of criminality versus an actual carrying out of the crime) as along a similar order of motives.

The relation between the attitude of criminality and the actual committing of a crime is like the relation between "original sin" and "actual sin." "Under certain conditions, the categorical motive may serve as the matrix for a corresponding personal motive" (290).

See KB’s paragraph on the "cathartic" promises to defeat the perfect enemy (291).

"Most in need of study, but hardest of all to study, or even to discern, are the ways whereby the very existence of a hierarchy encourages undue acquiescence among persons otherwise most competent to be its useful critics. This condition probably results much less from over-caution or obsequiousness than from the network of ‘proprieties’ that spontaneously accumulate about a given order" (291).

From Critical Responses to Kenneth Burke, 1924-1966. Ed. William H. Reuckert. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1969.

Blackmur focuses on Burke’s interest in language and the creation of meaning, writing Burke is "engaged largely in the meaning of meaning, and is therefore much bound up with consideration of language, but on the plane of emotional and intellectual patterns" (49).

Glicksberg identifies Burke as a serious, complex, literary critic, writing "He is the critic’s critic par excellence" (71). Glicksberg favorably reviewed Burke’s overreaching argument in Permanence and Change, stating that "the instrument of logic is wielded like a surgical knife cutting away diseased tissue" (72).

Glicksberg identifies the "least convincing" part of Burke’s work as attacking "the Goliath of science" (74). Glicksberg also comments on the failure of Permanence and Change to erect "no constructive system of his own" (79).

Rosenberg favorably reviews Burke’s belief in "the great role of poetry" that "works in relations to men’s needs and is not an ultimate in itself" (61). Rosenberg identifies Permanence and Change as a "pre-poem," forecasting that Burke will develop his ideas more fully.

Summary by Jennifer Novak and Gretchen Haas.