T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot was born in 1888, in Missouri, USA. He moved to England in 1914 and spent most of his life in Europe. Eliot considered himself an Englishman and became one officially in 1927. He was mostly known for his poetry and was seen as one of the most important poets of the 20th century. Moreover, Eliot also wrote several essays, plays, critiques, among others. Some of his work looks closely at the meaning of culture, like his essay Notes Towards The Definition of Culture (1943).
T. S. Eliot
Notes Towards The Definition of Culture
In Notes Towards The Definition of Culture, more specifically in his chapter “The Three Senses of Culture”, Eliot looks at the main ways in which the term culture is used.
Eliot starts his essay by saying that our definition of culture should vary greatly according to “whether we have in mind the development of an individual, of a group or class, or of a whole society.” (Eliot, 1998, p. 21). The author believes that what defines an individual’s culture is the culture of the group he belongs to, and what defines the group’s culture is the culture of the society that the group is a part of. Hence, the culture that a certain society has is the most important element, once it influences all the other cultural elements of that society.
Furthermore, the author talks about the existence of several components that people perceive as being part of the cultural realm.
If we look towards a notion of culture connected to the idea of civilization, it would be considered important for a cultured individual to have manners and a certain refinement and civility. This way, the term becomes more associated with social classes, once each individual will be considered superior if he/she presents more refinement and civility.
Furthermore, there is also a notion of culture connected to the idea of learning something, of becoming more knowledgeable. This notion of culture as wisdom is better associated with the scholar: the one who is dedicated to studying a particular subject.
In addition, Eliot tells us that we may be specifically thinking about “philosophy in a wider sense” (Eliot, 1998, p. 23) when talking about culture. What he means by this is not necessarily philosophy as a discipline, but rather the way people generate, construct and manage abstract ideas. The way they organize their process of thought and the way they propel it in the world. This idea of culture is more connected to what we call an intellectual. The intellectual can be seen as someone who is good at articulating his thoughts and who reflects in a profound manner about a variety of topics. Eliot tells us that the term intellectual was being widely used in an inappropriate manner at his time. This is something that we can still see nowadays, as during the present time an individual is easily considered an intellectual without much reflection.
Likewise, the author refers to the arts as another realm seen as culture. When talking about the arts, the person who has culture is either the artist or the amateur (the one who seeks an understanding of the arts).
Moreover, Eliot tells us that, while all of these elements should evidently be seen as culture (they are all perfect realms which reflect humanity and its creations), they are usually not seen as such together. That is to say that people tend to either perceive culture as one thing or the other, but rarely as a group of things. While all of the activities that were previously mentioned are part of culture separately, the term culture is never complete with just one or two of them: it needs all of these elements to become a whole. Therefore, a truly cultured individual should encompass all of these different notions within himself/herself. He/she should not only excel at being polite or at knowing about paintings or music. He/she should present a broad knowledge of all the fields that are considered a part of culture: such an individual obviously does not exist. One is never a truly cultured individual, since one never truly grasps all the elements which are part of culture. Eliot tells us:
“If we look at the several activities of culture (…), we must conclude that no perfection in any one of them, to the exclusion of the others, can confer culture on anybody. We know that good manners, without education, intellect or sensibility to the arts, tends towards mere automatism; that learning without good manners or sensibility is pedantry; that intellectual ability without the more human attributes is admirable only in the same way as the brilliance of a child chess prodigy; and that the arts without intellectual context are vanity. And if we do not find culture in any one of these perfections alone, so we must not expect any one person to be accomplished in all of them; we shall come to infer that the wholly cultured individual is a phantasm; and we shall look for culture, not in any individual or in any group of individuals, but more and more widely; and we are driven in the end to find it in the pattern of society as a whole” (Eliot, 1998, p. 23).
Consequently, when talking about culture, we should not only look at individuals and groups but mostly at the whole of society. An individual should not be so presumptuous as to believe he/she is truly cultured, once he/she only knows a very limited amount of the whole of knowledge that comprehends culture; even if he/she is a specialist, he/she is not a specialist in everything.
This does not mean that the elements of culture which an individual possesses should be overlooked. It means rather that we should look at them, but always having in mind a broader sense of culture at the level of society. It is the junction of all cultural phenomena and areas of knowledge that create culture. Therefore, each one of these knowledgeable individuals end up playing a part in the definition of culture, as what they produce is indeed a part of culture: “it is only by an overlapping and sharing of interests, by participation and mutual appreciation, that the cohesion necessary for culture can obtain.” (Eliot, 1998, p. 26).
Now, even though no one is truly cultured in a complete sense, we may indeed distinguish within societies different levels of culture and different ways in which it is seen. These notions are dependent upon the group of a certain individual. This way, the several groups end up coexisting and creating ever changing dynamics, which destroy and create new cultural notions along the way.
It seems to me at this point that we may conclude that culture is a rather organic process – it is influenced by the inconstant development of society, its highs and its lows: tradition and novelty join each other in an ever-changing process of creation and destruction.
Bibliography
ELIOT, T. S. (1998), Notes Towards The Definition of Culture, London: Faber & Faber Limited
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