burke variations on providence

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The University of Notre ame

Variations on "Providence"Author(s): Kenneth BurkeSource: Notre Dame English Journal, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Summer, 1981), pp. 155-183Published by: The University of Notre DameStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40062490.

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VARIATIONS ON "PROVIDENCE"Kenneth Burke

Since the time when I began planningto write some "variationson thetheme of 'Providence,'" there have been some developments which de-cided me to say much more by way of introductionthan I had originallyintended. In particular, Wayne C. Booth's admirable volume, CriticalUnderstanding:The Powers and Limits of Pluralism, has been published,and some of his astute comments that bear upon my work have helped meto clarify my position, which comes to a focus methodologically in whatI would call a distinctionbetween History and Logology. Happily, the dis-tinction is not "invidious." That is to say, the Logologer could not properlyask anyone to make an either-or choice between these two ways of specu-lating on the subject of "the human condition." And the more informa-tion historians have presented in organized form, the better suppliedLogology is with the kind of documents and admonitions that are mosthelpfulfor its kindof perspectives.

Logology, Historiography, HistoricismHowever, Logology would have to propose an invidious distinction

between Historiography,a noble calling, and Historicism, a kind of ex-cess caused by a kind of insufficiency.Historicism would not be contentwith writinghistory;it would go further,and hold that we are nothing butthe productsof the particularage in which we happen to live (or, as Hei-degger puts it, to be "thrown") Logology, on the other hand, would startfrom a generic definition of our specific nature as human beings. What,then, is the "substrate"of which we are historical manifestations?The term "Logology" itself has two meanings, one theological, onepurely secular. In its theological meaning, as attested in the OED, itmeans "the Doctrine of the Logos," of Christ the Word, as narratedin theBook of John. In its other meaning, "logological" is synonymous with"philological,"referringto "words" in the wholly secular sense, an em-pirical position which can make no judgmentabout either the Tightnessor

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wrongnessof theologicaldoctrine.Logology, as I thususe the term (mean-ing etymologically "words about words") starts from a definition thatapplies physiologically (I am sure you all will agree) to every humanbeing except, as per the Book of Genesis, our first ancestors. Namely:our history and prehistory, viewed logologically, from the standpoint of"wordsabout words," is the written and/or unwrittenstory of a biologi-cal organism that is gestated as a wordless foetus in a maternalbody, isborn wordless, and develops out of its infancy (that is, its state of word-lessness) while acquiringa verbal mediumwhich, in effect, builds up a setof duplicates for its nonverbal environment (in Spinoza's terms an ordoidearum to match an ordo rerum, though his "order of things" includesmuch personalistic content not reducible to terms of the sheerly non-symbolic) .All told, Logology would classify this necessarily imperfect duplica-tion as a distinctionbetween two realms of nonsymbolic motion and sym-bolic action (for symbol-systems in the history of culture also includesuch mediumsof expressionand communicationas music, painting,sculp-ture, dance, etc.). The strictly empirical mode of placement here wouldbe analogous to the traditionalmetaphysicalor theological pair: body andmind, matter and spirit, though not identical with them. In this respectLogology's main foes would be the Behaviorists, who monisticallyreduceany such dualistic distinction between motion and action to but a matterof degree, whereasLogology would be emphatic in viewing the distinctionbetween physiologicalbehaviorand verbal behavior as qualitative,a mat-terof kind.

Logology would also emphasizean empirical analogue of the Thomisticprincipium individuationis. For the Summa Theological word "matter"as the "principleof individuation,"Logology's correspondingterm wouldbe "nonsymbolic motion." At parturitioneach human physiological or-ganism becomes a separate being, a biological organism with its ownunique sensations, pleasures and pains (local to itself, as focused by thecentrality of the nervous system). Each such individual lives and dies asa materialthing, like other animals in the realm of motion.But unlike all other earthly animals (to our knowledge) the humankind is genetically, physiologically, materiallyendowed with the ability tolearnthe kind of language which Logology would call "symbolicaction,"and which monistic reductionists would call "verbal behavior." ThusLogology would not considerexperimentson laboratoryanimals adequateto encompass a studyof the humananimal.A few further introductoryremarks are needed. For Logological pur-



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poses, the metaphysical design of Leibniz's "monadology" can be givensheerly empiricalanalogues,thus:Throughout the Universe, in the realm of natural motion, at every in-stant there is an infinite number of DISCRIMINATIONS taking place.An obvious instance: a quantityof H2Ois in the liquid form of water. Thetemperaturedrops, and at a "criticalpoint" the liquid "discriminates"bybehavingas a solid, ice. Or the temperaturerises to a critical point wherethe liquid becomes a gas, steam. Presumably every cell of our body ismakingdiscriminationsof some sort, in the processes of metabolism, therealm of material motions, by which the body exists as a physiologicalorganism.Obviously, we areaware of but few such discriminations.Insofar as weare aware of discriminations, let us call that condition "consciousness."By the "unconscious"would be meant the processes within and about usthat we are unawareof, includingeven our wnawareness,our unconscious-ness, of the ways wherebywe are conscious.I don't see how Behaviorists (and I delight in haggling with them inmatters of this sort) could possibly rule out such an obvious discrimina-tion, in theirmissionaryzeal to find no room for "consciousness."But that brings me to my ultimate Logological dispute with the Be-haviorists.They would rule out "mind"?Then how about defining"mirid"this way: By "mind" is meant "the human being's genetically (that is,physiologically) endowed ability to acquire the special arts of verbalbehavior."

One more point, and I think I can round out this introductionby tyingour modes of symbolicity in with my opening Logological distinction be-tween Historyand Historicism.I take it that the kind of aptitude for what is called "verbal behavior"(which also includes the acquiring of symbol-systems generally, such asmusic, painting, sculpture, dance, etc.) can be posited as the differentiathat defines us empiricallyas our specific kind of animal. Such "arbitrary,conventional"symbol-systemshave come and gone since the days of pre-history when our kind began developing these aptitudes, the ability to doso being groundedin the body as a physiologicalorganism. This minimumequivalentof what in metaphysicsor theology would be called "mind"or"spirit" would involve a social or collective medium. Anthropologistswould assign it to the realm of "culture" as distinct from "nature,"thoughin its primitivestages the two realmsmight not look much differentfrom each other, as adjoiningthings seen from a distance seem to merge.As our terms for images, concepts, ideas, properties, attitudes, para-



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digms, perspectives, situations, processes, relationships, etc. took form,they became in effect a universe of their own. Also, the mediums usingthese purely symbolic devices made possible the kinds of attention andcommunication that gradually led to the invention and distribution oftools (with correspondingmethods and attitudes). And thus we now con-front the gradual accumulation of man-made new-things that constitutewhat we call the institutionsof "technology."Radiations of the Subject

This subjectlends itself to so many "radiations,"so many "crossroads,"as one thing leads to another, that it is advisable for me to foretell fromthe start where these observations about foretelling plan to end up. By"radiations" have in mind incidental encounters of this sort: The thoughtof Providence as prescience, foresight,foreknowledgecan comprisemani-festations as various as Divine Fore-Ordination (Predestination, eternaldamnation as "correlative"to "life eternal"), insurance against risk ofloss (a side-roadthat in turncould lead to modes of investment as differ-ent as those treated in a stockbroker's market report and the kind of"hedging" o the ends of eternalsalvationconceived of in "Pascal'swager,"Pascal'sexceptional genius along the lines of the esprit de geometrie hav-ing enabled him to work out the mathematicsof the odds in the combina-tions of cardsthathappenedto be in one's hand whengambling) ... or theprinciple of "sacrifice"implicit in all trade, which "sacrificesgoods" ofone sort for the benefit to be gained by acquiringin exchange "goods" ofanother sort whereatanother almost glorious side-road turns up, as theimitation of sacrifice in classic tragedy is seen to be a grand stylizing ofsuch barter, while the story of the sacrifice in terms of which the Chris-tian Churchis rationalizedconceives of a divine ransom in this regard. . .and also along the line we encounterBehaviorist projects promising tech-niques of prediction and control. Or there is belief and there is creditetc.

Natural and Technological PowersSince Technology figures so notably in all the secular "radiations"of

our key term, before moving on I would quote some paragraphswhichgive the gist of my historicalspeculations in the spirit of Logology. (Theywerepublishedin the Winter1978 issue of CriticalInquiry) :



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Let's go to the very center of the issue, namely: the relation between"natural"powers and "technological" power. "Natural" powers can doonly what they are doing. If it can rain, it is raining. If all that naturecould bring about in a certain region at a certain time is a state ofdrought, there is the irrefutable evidence, an actual state of drought.When there can be an earthquake, there is an earthquake. Nature "un-aided" can manifest only the combination of conditions that add up toexactly what they do add up to in relation to one another.But introduce the symbol-guided techniques of technology, and na-ture can be made to undergo quite startling anthropomorphizing trans-formations. Unaided nature, under present conditions, couldn't haveproduced our present vast arsenals of atomic bombs. Such instrumentscould not have been brought into existence ("created") without thesavoir-faire of human prowess, which has thus in effect been sculptingits self-image in the materials of nonhuman nature, in effect leavingsigns everywhere announcing, "Kingkill Kilroy was here."By placing the whole stress upon the flat distinction between super-natural and natural terms for discussing the "descent of man," Dar-winism deflected attention from the critical distinction between humananimals and other animals, a distinction which, though grounded in thehuman animal's sheer physiology, made possible the realm of tech-nological counter-nature, which began to take form with the first inno-vations of instruments and corresponding methods but has developedat a greatly accelerating rate since the start of the industrial revolution(page Henry Adams on the "law of the acceleration of history," giventhe turn from the "Virgin"to the "Dynamo") .

Vico's"Providence"in effect De-ChristianizesVico's New Science offers a handy way into this discussion, includingthe fact that his work has so many radiations when looked back upon inthe light of subsequent developments. Logologically considered, his no-tions of "Providence" are seen to embody theological connotations ofsuch Foresight, even while primarily furthering secular variations on thesame theme. Also, at the roots of Christian theology (which is ardentlymonistic atop its Trinitarian aspect) there is what might be called an am-

bivalently "a-theistic" attitude, or latitude, as compared with polytheisticnomenclatures. (The point is discussed on pp. 406-08, in my Language asSymbolic A ction.) In pagan polytheism :

any motive, habitat, natural power, institution, or means of livelihoodcould by linguistic abstraction become a "god." Often the process washardly more than the effect we get by capitalizing a word, writing"Thunder" instead of "thunder," plus mythic personifying of such



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160 burke Journalabstractions.Where we might go from "finance" o "Finance,"poly-theismcouldreadilygo a stepfurther, o the personalgod,Plutus.

Thus whereas Christian moralists have warnedagainstthe evil tendencyto "make gods" of our ambitions, the early Greek philosopher Thalespiously proclaimedthe world "full of gods," and (as Aristotle reports inthe De Anima) "he said that the magnethas a soul in it because it movesthe iron." In Vico, the notion of God's will as "Providentially"motivating(fore-ordaining) the course of history gets a partially de-Christianizedslant by introducing a different dimension. In particularVico's study ofGreek and Roman history had led him to a secular theory of culturalcycles in general.And thus, althoughhe did treatof historicaldevelopmentin terms of "Providence,"it was a term applied in a theory of similarun-foldings local to differentpeoples without relation to the all-importantre-demptiverole of the Christian sacrifice in the design.His religious, heroic, philosophic (scientific) stages, with relapses intobarbarism,anticipatethe kind of cycles that Spenglerwas later to develop;it was a patternthat implicitly allowed for Spengler'sschematizingof the"contemporaneous" n ways wherebythe same stages of differentculturalcycles would be analyzed (analogized) as "contemporaneous"with eachother. And he introducedthis notion: the rulers of each stage themselvesbring about conditions that lead to their own undoing, thus giving rise tothe next phase. This prime irony was rhetoricallyrelished by the Marxistdialectic.With regardto the present discussion, I recall a passage which I havereferredto elsewhere in words of my own; but I cannot rememberexactlywhere it is in Vico's New Science, hence I cannot cite it as accuratelyas Iwish I could. The design (viewed Logologically) is:

Humansare by naturecruel. Add Foresight,Providence,and theircrueltybecomes ransformedntothe"artsof defense."Humansarebynaturegreedy. Add Foresight,Providence,and this greed becomestransformedntothe "artsof commerce."Humansareby naturevicious[mean?overbearing?arrogant?"ambitious" n a bad sense? here'swhereI wishI couldverifythewording].AddForesight,Providenceandthecorrespondingransformations the "artsof statecraft."I have not yet been able to quote this passage more accurately.But in

any case, the account is accurate enough to substantiate my conclusionthat Vico's treatment of the relation between Divine Providence and thecorrespondingenactments in the antics of human society involves a con-siderable step in the direction of modern social science and away from



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theological answers to questions about "The Providence of God" as pro-poundedin the two greatThomist texts.Eliot'sQuartetsn theLightof Vico

Though Logology qua Logology can make no judgments about thepossible truth or falsity of theological doctrine, it is obvious to Logologythat the termsof Vico's perspective, near the beginning of the EighteenthCentury, do with "Providence" as a qualitative step much the same asBlake's doctrine of Imagination (near the end of the century) does, inadding a dimension that distinguishes ideal human motivation (and cor-responding"vision") from that of the sheerly "natural."I shall say moreaboutBlake's position (which was impatientwith the pious cult of Natureinvolved in the high value Wordsworthplaced upon the role of the Imagi-nation) . But firstI would take this opportunityto cite a case where I wasobviously aimingat a variant of the distinction that Vico's usage suggests,thoughI did not mention it because I did not know of it at the time.I am referringto a section, "Eliot: Early Poems and 'Quartets,'" inmy Rhetoric of Motives. Here the equivalent of "Providence,"as a termthat stands for the introduction of a new generatingprinciple, is the spe-cific turn that is programmaticallyannounced in Eliot's public platform:"an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature, and a royalist inpolitics." (In For LancelotAndrewes, 1928.)Here is what I was trying to suggest in those pages: The poet's publicwas expected to interprethis variations on the characteristic"Prufrock"role in the early poems as a dramatic fiction. But the "Quartets"were adevout doctrinal statement of attitude by Mr. Eliot in person, not as anartist depicting an imaginary character for pure literary effect. Rather,they are expected to be read as wholly sincere, poems as direct in theirway as the Confessions of St. Augustine; otherwise the poet would be ahypocrite. Since Eliot's "Prufrock"poem was entitled "The Love Songof J. Alfred Prufrock,"I might bring out my point most bluntly by pro-posing, if it were not meant as personally sincere, some such grotesque"literary" itle as "Four Devotional Poems, by J. Alfred Prufrock, Esq.,Recently Reborn in Christ."It would be a title unfit quite to the point ofindecency. Hence, in the light of Vico's formula for "Providence"as gen-eratinga motivationalleap, what is involvedhere?As withGreek myth, or the Psalms of the Old Testament, poetry beginsin modes of expression such that religious and artistic motives and stylesare inextricably interwoven. We also recognize cultural developments



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wherebythe sacred and the profane, as with much big business in the cur-rententertainmentindustry,become quite distinct. And there is a notableintermediate area where religious attitudes survive vestigially in estheti-cized form. The traditional use of Greek myth in Westernpoetry is an ob-vious example of this turn, which gets impressive lyrical expression inKeats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn."Wordsworth'svariant involves verseem-bodying a literarycult of nature that is conceived as divinely infused.Evenso hilariousa medium as Aristophanic comedy has importantaffinitiesofthis sort, owing to the association of phallic riteswith supernaturalpowersof fertility.There arecrudevestiges in soap opera.Introduce the rationale of religion into any vexatious or exacting situa-tion, and you can notably modify the quality of the motives in terms ofwhich you confront that situation. Thus, in early days when believersassumed that the Second Coming was near at hand, an insomniac couldhave transformed his burden into a rite of watching and waiting, that is,keeping vigil. And there are at least traces of a different motivationalquality if some bore or nuisance of a neighbor is referred to not as a boreor a nuisance,but as one's "crossto bear."Along that line I would say: By his conversion Eliot didn't simplyabandon the kind of attitudes, or temperamentalhabits that he gave for-mal poetic expression to in the poetry of his early Prufrockdays. He re-tained them, but in a critically reconstituted form. It would be like thedifference between dieting because of obesity or indigestionor high bloodpressure,and dieting as a matter of principle.For a seeing in ways of ourown, we can refer in advance to the place where we consider how, withSt. Augustine, theology's views on predestination could well accommo-date even the sack of Rome. For the design was comprehensivelydevel-oped over manyyears underpressureof many varied needs."Providentially,"one might say in good faith: Implicit in the gestureof the somewhat precious, literarilyelegant lament that was embodied inEliot's way of adopting and adapting the skillful stylistics of Jules La-forgue therewere the beginningsof its transfigurationn terms of the out-righttheologicalperspectiveintrinsic to the "Quartets."Once we stop to consider the two stages in this light, the first stagebeing not abandoned in the second stage, but transformed (as the ana-logue of Vico's "Providence" in effect added to the second stage a kindof "grace"that "perfected"ratherthan "abolished"the "nature" of stageone) we see that Eliot has said as much in his own terms. Consider, forinstance,the opening lines:



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TimepresentandtimepastArebothperhapspresentn timefuture,Andtime futurecontained n timepast,a design repeated more formulaicallyin the second poem, "In my begin-ning is my end," which is also stated in reverse. There are many variants,for instance this repetitionof the same term,butwith shifted connotations:

Theonly hope,or elsedespairLiesinthe choiceof pyreorpyreTo beredeemed romfirebyfire.Or the rock of the parcheddesert in "The Wasteland"can become therock of religiousfortitude; talk of a rose gardencan refer to memories ofa secular sort, then take on dimensions of a somewhat mystic unfoldingand enfoldment. Or consider the upgrading of "turn,"as we turn fromits incidence in "Prufrock"(1917) and "Ash Wednesday" (1930), whileone might, in the light of hindsight, note the incipiently punning predes-

tinations ("rock" and "pure frock") in the syllables of the poet's earlysurrogate.DenisDonoghue'sThievesof Fire

Logology being by definition quite "word-conscious," the subject of"Providence" can readily radiate into speculations about Prometheus,whose name is etymologically a synonym for "foresight."And this hero-ically enduringTitan, whose sufferings,like those of the Christians'God,marked him as a sacrificial victim in behalf of humankind'swelfare, alsobelongs in our commentaries because of his mythic association with thebeginningsof Technology. And there are furthergrounds for turningnextto this figurebecause we can approach the subject through a highly sug-gestive book by Denis Donoghue, Thieves of Fire, the printed version ofseveral T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures entitled "The Prometheans," aname he gives to members of a literary tradition with which Eliot wasquite programmaticallyat odds. Denis Donoghue presents the case thus:

It is properto say of the Promethean ntervention n humanhistorythatit was a once-for-allaffair,as a result of which we knowwe can'tgo home again: the interventions historicaland irrevocable,ts chiefcharacteristics that it cannot be deleted.Theft of the divinepowerofknowledgemade reflectionpossibleand thereforenecessary; t mademenself-aware, elf-conscious,t madethe humanracea multitudeof



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164 burke Journalreflexive animals. But the gift of consciousness is stolen, it introducesdivision into consciousness itself, as a mark of guilt. . . . Consciousnessis stolen fruit or stolen fire, in either form the original sin, source of acorrespondingly original guilt. Men take the harm out of it by convert-ing some of its energy to a pious end, the knowledge of God, or its secu-lar form, the knowledge of Nature. But forgiveness is never complete.. . . The reflexiveness of mind, which is in one sense its glory, is in an-other a token of its criminality, its transgression at the source. . . . Thetheft also gave men the power and the habit of self-expression by re-course to symbols; it allowed them to mediate between two kinds ofexperience lately sundered nature and man, or as we would now say,nature and culture. . . . Above all, Prometheus made possible the imag-inative enhancement of experience.

The sometimes quaint book, Mythology, of Thomas Bulfinch (1796-1867) brings out the related set of implications regarding the role ofPrometheus :

With this gift man was more than a match for all other animals. It en-abled him to make weapons wherewith to subdue them; tools withwhich to cultivate the earth; to warm his dwelling, so as to be com-paratively independent of climate; and finally to introduce the arts andto coin money, the means of trade and commerce.

Grammar being what it is, and myth being nothing if not grammatical,Prometheus had a brother Epimetheus. They were thus related as pro-logue is to epilogue, as Forethought is to Afterthought. And it was After-thought to whom Pandora (which means "giver of all" as an epithetapplied to Earth, and "all-endowed" as a proper name, and whose boxwas to raise so much trouble when things got loose) was sent down as thefirst woman, and was welcomed by After-Thought despite the admonitionsof Fore-Thought. Logology needs but put all these pieces together in onebundle in connection with the fact that, as Bulfinch says, when "thereescaped a multitude of plagues for hapless man," there was left but onegood. But it was a strongly futuristic one, thus at least on the slope of theprovidential: hope.

Related Observations Anent LogologyI particularly relish that because, though the tinkerings of Technologyhave been almost fabulously profuse in the proliferation of man-made

instruments, methods, and world-wide interrelationships that are con-stantly getting out of order, at the same time there is always an equal pro-



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fusion of hopeful assurancesthat, with but a bit more tinkering,all will bein order. Along with its great multiplication of things, Technology prom-ises us that in time therewill be a pill for everything. Logology, I fear, hasbut what most people would probably consider a dreary substitute forhope; namely: the futuristically slanted methodological engrossment inthe trackingdown of implications, which may amount to translatingthegrandoracularutterance,"Know thyself"into "Spyon thyself."

Myths are more hospitable to several meaningsthan are the dogmas oftheology, the definitions of philosophy, and the mathematically precisemeasurementsof science. Thus besides the relation of Prometheus to fireas a prime material power in the shaping of human destiny, there is thefiery Prometheantruculenceas depicted in the only tragedy that survivesfrom the trilogy of Aeschylus and Donoghue takes off from that in se-lecting the four turbulent geniuses, Milton, Blake, Melville, and D. H.Lawrencewhom he selects to discuss as his examples of the type, the epi-thet being one which Rimbaud applied to "the poet" in general.I see them as variously responsive to motivational situations which arepoignantlyresponsiveto notable changes produced by the increasingpaceof technological advance in the state of Counter-Nature that could nothave emergedin their times without the accumulated operations of pecu-liarly human inventions. These developments could be said to have beenmythically foretold as a tortured Titan's gift of stolen fire to humankind(thus human nature's prowess in transformingthe conditions of nonhu-man natureby both intent and accident, that is, the hopes in a new order,along with the hopes of controlling the riot of new disorders that arose asunintended by-productsof the innovations) . For I would hold that thereis an ironic kind of predestinationlet loose but concealed here, in a tacitassumption.I would call it the "instrumentalist allacy,"which prevailsnot by beingaffirmedbut by being overlooked in particularcases, although wheneverit is mentioned people are quite likely to agree in general that it is afallacy. The "instrumentalist allacy" (or perhaps "quandary") is the un-stated assumption that any improvementin instrumentsor methods is tobe evaluatedsolely in terms of its natureas that improvement.But every-thinghas a natureof its own, and this identity is not reducibleto its natureas the functionfor whichit was rationallydesigned.

Thus so far as our adaptation to new experiences is concerned, thePandora'sBox of accumulatedCounter-Naturalinnovations, which cometo seem like a "second nature,"may requiremuch more analytic researchand correctivetinkeringthan the instrumentalistfallacy admonishesus to



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suspect. We are accustomed now to "impact statements," preparatoryresearch seeking to foretell (be provident or prudent about) the possiblecultural and economic effects that some new construction project mayhave on the surrounding environment. But thoughts of TechnologicalAccumulation as a realm of Counter-Nature lead us to ask whether Tech-nology's critique of itself may not require constant speculative (analytic,diagnostic, data-gathering) research into the nature of its impact.

Donoghue on BlakeSo much for possible ultimate inquiries into the relation betweenCounter-Nature and the role of cantankerous "Promethean" poets whose

way of confronting such matters may be so roundabout as to seem likeinvolvement in a totally different cultural groove. In any case, when fea-turing the primarily "literary" aspects of the writers whom he selects asexamples of the "Promethean" temper, Donoghue has done enough, andamply, in pages vibrantly suggestive. But I can't do his book justice indetail, for I have contracted to keep moving on as one thing leads toanother. However, here is an ideal passage to help me on my way. Blake,he says, is "dedicated to the primacy of vision." (Note that "primacy ofvision" is another "Providence" term.) But this faculty is

a strictly human power superhuman in its origin: he feels no loyalty toWordsworthian recognitions and acknowledgments, that is, to theWordsworthian cult of loyalty to nature, since these are tokens of alaw that man has not established. Blake believes that the natural worldmay be redeemed by man's imagination, may be rendered human andtherefore transfigured. Wordsworth believes that the natural world isalready blessed, and that man has but to recognize that condition andlive accordingly: such a life would mean man's redemption. Blake'smost complete relation is to his own imagination ... his relation tothe given world is defiant. ... In Blake, the Promethean imagination isa form of energy [which is projected] into the otherwise merely naturalworld.

This visionary imagination is "the distinctively original power, thealpha of human history ... the secular manifestation of divine powers. . . God and the imagination are one." But not only does the notion of thepoetic imagination as a creative power provide an aesthetic substitute forthe theology of Providence as a principle of Foreordination. Viewing theforesight of Blake's prophetic gospel now from the standpoint of histo-riographic hindsight, we can realize that an answer to his call for the tran-



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scending of natural laws by peremptorymodes of purely human affirma-tion was even then takingshape. For already, in keeping with what HenryAdams was to propound as the "law of the acceleration of history," thepace of the Industrial Revolution was beginning to speed up, we mightalmost say "traumatically."The advances of technology had attaineda stage of development that invited many new aspects of pure sci-entific speculation and the conditions were such that the imaginingscould be practically implemented, even to the extent of imperialisticaggrandizement.I have been told that I am wrong in my view of what people generallythink, with regardto the relation between pure science and applied sci-ence. For I would stress the fact that the state of technology itself pro-vides the conditions which open up avenues of "pure" speculation. Instru-mentsand methods are like images, in suggestingnew sets of implications,variantsof the Gidean formula, "whatwould happen if . . . ?" a species ofgratuitoussophisticationnot confined to Gidean ethical aberrancies.

Further on Counter-NatureWhen Blake was writing,developments were alreadyunder way whichnow promise such transcendingof naturalconditions as can be provided

by advances in genetic engineering.Such a realm of Counter-Nature is tobe distinguishedfrom whatevermightbe called a Supernaturalrealm. Forwhereas such a realm is, by definition, outside the natural, the term"Counter-Nature"(to designate the resources made possible by the an-thropomorphizinggenius of technology) has the etymological ambiva-lence of the Latin preposition contra, from which the prefix "counter"isderived. It can mean "against"both in the sense of "opposed to" and inthe sense of "in close contact with," as in the sentence "To brace himselfhe leaned against a tree";and the same root, contra, gives the patriot hisproudexpression,"my country."I previously quoted a passage in which I discussed the difference be-tween "natural"and "technological"powers. Perhaps I should say moreon that point, which comes to a head in my pleas for the term, "Counter-Nature." We are not concerned here merely with the choice of a word.The importantthing is: The proposed term points up a matter of deriva-tion that is concealed when we have but the contrast between "natural"and "supernatural"realms, a contrast which the term "Counter-Nature"is specificallydesigned to obviate. To adapt a bit more from the article Ialreadymentioned:



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168 burke JournalThe flatdistinctionbetween"ideas"as derivative"from he bottomup"according to the genealogy of Marxist dialectical materialism,and"fromthe top down"in Hegel'sdialectical dealism,invites a kind of"geneticfallacy"wherebyoverstressupon the originsof some mani-festationcan deflectattentionfrom what it is, regardlessof what itcame from.The differencebetweentechnologicalpowerand rawnaturalpowerisperse evidenceof the wayin whichthetransforming otentialities fsymbolism's ideas" an "transcend" aturewithoutbeingeitherortho-doxly supernaturalr rooted n a HegelianAbsolute. . .

Though the change from the human organism's wholly "natural"con-dition, as an animal like other animals, began with the most primitiveuses of language in assisting the development of tools and in reinforcingthe imitation of new procedures, I would assume that only within the lasttwo centuries the implementing of such inventiveness (culminating inlaboratorytechniques for the ever more efficient invention of further in-ventiveness) has produced a revolutionary explosion in the correspond-ing realm of counter-nature (usually referred to as the ability of human-kind henceforth to guide its own evolution rather than being subject tothe instincts and laws of natural selection, a development which Darwinstudied and which Marx heraldedas the rise of "new needs" under mod-ern methods of production). I call that a realmof "counter-nature"n thesense that, if all such man-made equipment were suddenly gone, you'dhave to try making a living under "natural"conditions, though we be-come accustomed to our "unnatural"ways as a kind of "second nature."Once our kind of physiological organism emerges from infancy (speech-lessness) into familiaritywith a symbol-system such as a tribal language... it is characterizedby a property,or faculty, that infuses all experiencewith its human nature whence the "anthropomorphism"inherent inwhat, over half a century ago, I quaintly called "the thing added thelittle white houses in a valley that was once a wilderness."By identifyingsuch symbolic prowess with an "entelechialprinciple"I have in mind thenotion that inherentin it there is the incentive to "perfect" tself by cover-ing more and more ground. For such a potentiality is saying in effect:"Whateverthe nonverbal,there are words for it, rangingall the way fromthe technically, scientificallycouched analysis of a situation or process toa sheer expression of attitude, as with the poet's feeling that spring re-quires completion in a springsong,or a devout believer's 'gesture'of rev-erence in his symbolic act of prayer."The rudimentof "Purpose" n this regardI would groundin the sheerly



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physiological needs for food, shelter, sex, etc., but the "anthropomorphic"range is the empirical equivalent of unfinishedness,what has been calledhumanity's "divine discontent." On the side of symbolism, it all beginswith the purelyformal fact that a sentence is fully a sentence only insofaras it has a meaning, and such a meaning is its purpose. So we "naturally"start from there and aim to endow everything in nature with the kind of"meaningfulness"hata sentence has.

The pragmaticperfecting of the entelechial principle itself in terms ofmediation ( Vermittlung) by ingeniously extending the realm of counter-nature ever further into the realm of nonsymbolic nature is (take yourchoice) either an overall human purpose, particularly in its attendantneeds to worry about its side effects, or a kind of neo-Schopenhauereancompulsion. . . .Logology must confront history, first of all, not in terms of historicalchange, but in terms of the question, "What is it to be the typicallysymbol-usinganimal?"

Cromwell n Providence ndNecessityWith regard to the term "Providence"itself, rather than its manifold"radiations,"here is an instance which does come close (though with adifference) to the Vico formula. (I discuss it in my Rhetoric of Motives,

pp. 112ff.) It is in connection with a speech deliveredby Oliver Cromwellbefore the House of Commons,January22, 1655.Cromwell refers to the Revolution as an instance of "God manifestingHimself." The fact that the Revolution succeeded is cited as per se evi-dence of God's will. He sees in it a "necessity" imposed by "Providence."The Vico touch figuresthus:Religionwas not the thingsat first contestedfor "at all": but Godbrought t to that issue at last;and gave it unto us by way of redun-dancy;and atlastit proved o be thatwhichwasmost dearto us.

Again, after assertingthat "theydo vilify and lessen the works of God"who accuse him of "having,in these greatRevolutions, made Necessities,"he says:There s anotherNecessity,whichyouhaveput uponus,andwe havenot sought.I appealto God, Angels and Men, if I shall now raisemoney according o the Articlein the Government,whetherI am notcompelled o do it



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The role of "God"or "Providence"here (as we may refer either to Godas Providence or the "Providence of God") is stressed in answer to thecharge that the success of the Revolution depended upon his special skillas a conspirator:

"Itwas,"say some,"thecunningof the LordProtector," I take itto myself, "it was the craft of such a man, and his plot, that hathbrought t about "And, as they say in othercountries,"Thereare fiveor six cunningmen in England hathaveskill;theydo all thesethings."Oh, whatblasphemy s this Becausemen that are withoutGod in theworld,and walknot withHim, know not what it is to prayor believe,andto receivereturns romGod.

And he clinches matters thus:If this be of humanstructureandinvention,and if it be an old Plot-tingandContriving o bringthingsto this Issue,and thatthey are nottheBirthsof Providence, thentheywill tumble.

Moreon NatureandCounter-NatureSomewhere (I forgot where, and I've never been able to find someonewho could tell me where) in references to scholastic theology I ran acrossa definition of God as "theground of all possibility." It always seemed tome that, if such a "ground"were not defined as "personal"or "intellec-tual" (a Being Who might make Covenants with us), even a confirmedatheist could go along with that definition. It's somewhat in the samegroove with the definition of politics as "the art of the possible."I would introduce it here as a bridgeto a terminologyof a quite differenttemper.The secularanalogueof what Cromwellcalls "theBirths of Provi-dence" in connection with the success of a Revolution that put the de-posed monarch to death would be, in the Marxist nomenclature of dialec-tical materialism,the prime emphasis upon the "necessities" of the "ob-jective situation," the "scientific" instruction that the Revolution couldsucceed only whenthe time was ripe.Logological doctrine goes along with Cromwelland Marx here, in not-ing that technological powers can "succeed"only to the extent that they

accommodate themselves to the "necessities" of the situation as "deter-mined"by the naturalconditions which are the material"ground"of theiroperation. "Fore-ordination"of some sort is implicit in the fact that thefoetus of one animal does not develop into the offspringof another. And



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if the presently emergent skills of biogenetic engineering develop to thepoint where transformationsof exactly that sort can be proposed (with,say, further insight into the resources of recombinant DNA), the sameunderlying aws of motion that made such a development impossible with-out the intervention of humanbioengineeringwould still circumambientlyprevail, just as the natural conditions that made possible the accumula-tion of 30 to 50 thousand chemical waste disposal dumps (many of themtoxic) across the country were not "abolished" by technologers' "free"acts when setting up a realm of Counter-Naturein those areas.Nature cando no wrong, for whatever it does is nature. Its role as "Counter-Nature"figures only with reference to its man-made plastic effects upon nature.At present, only with the aid of symbol-guidedtechnologic powers couldsheerly naturalpowers do a grandjob of world-wide genocidal pollution.Incidentally,although I can't resist heckling now and then, in bringingout the suicidal-genocidal aspects of technological power gone wrong, Ido not judge my position as outside the technological orbit. In fact, I takeit that Logology's wan methodological analogue of HOPE, its involve-ment with "thetrackingdown of implications,"is at every point followingimplicationsthat Technology itself bringsto the fore, throughthe sugges-tiveness of its concepts and ideas, of its things as a kind of imagery, andparticularlywith regard to possible relations between artificial Counter-Nature and the body's origins in nature old-style origins that are notaway back and now abandoned, but are still immediately with us everytime we breathe and they had better be, unless each member of ourspecies is to be suppliedwith an artificialrespiratorlike those provided inhospitals ("provided" there's that word again ), provided for patientswhose bodies suffer from the privation of an aptitude normal and naturalto our species.Logology is vigilant with admonitions (and corresponding perspec-tives) that the resourcesof Technology have broughtinto being by exactlythose conditions hence a whole new set of moot questions arises. It'snot inconceivable that full technological development could be the flowerof Westernculture gone to seed in a desert of its own making. Or, other-wise put: So far as I can make out, a computer has no more "sense ofprinciples"than does a stone rolling down a hill. Its imitation of the "ra-tional" is an "efficient"reduction of human "reasonableness"to the edgeof absurdity. It can't distinguish one Ism from another. It could dis-tinguish between a Marxist and a non-Marxist only if one could say"shibboleth"and the other had to say "sibboleth" or by some other suchdistinction purely in the realm of motion (as those two sounds are). It's



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useful, but quite dangerous if too many decisions (questions of motiva-tion) are delegated to such devices as surrogatesfor "brains."Marx'sCounterpart of Divine Predestination

The Marxist dialectical counterpart of Divine Predestination is, ofcourse, the theory of successive transformations in the nature of classconflict, with each stage bringing about the conditions that prepare theway for the next stage. Marx explicitly says that although the stress uponclass conflict is usually associated with his name, he got such leads fromthe bourgeois economists. His contribution was the version of historydesigned to foretell (I have to check on the specific "Providence"wordhe uses here, but I think it was "prove") the inevitabledevelopment of theclass struggleuntil the ultimate stage of class society, the dictatorshipofthe proletariate,which would in turn inevitablylead to the abolition of allclass conflict.On this score Logology's stress upon the purely verbal (symbolic)natureof the negative points out a strategic transformationof the dialec-tical design in terms of which the various transformations of the classstrugglethrough its successive stages are said to have taken place. Whenturning Hegel's idealistic dialectic into the contrary terms of dialecticalmaterialism,Marx in effect "reified"the negative, as though it were realin the sense of a material thing. The term "Negativity," as applied byHegel to the positive world of material"objects,"was a metaphysicalcon-cept much like Spinoza's formula, omnis determinatio est negatio. Whenyou scrap Hegel's idealistic rationale, and apply the term quasi-scientifi-cally to relations in the world of tumultuoushistoric details, much that isactually a matter of opposition (as with the concept of "class-conflict"itself) gets treated in terms of "negation,"as one might loosely speak ofrivals in a game or of political factions as "negating"each other whereasa Marxist narrative of such historic transformationsinvolves a vast wel-ter of such positive details as characterizeall actual contests (that is, op-positions). And although they may be summed in terms of "antithesis,"that term itself is etymologically the Greek word that correspondsexactlyto the Latin word"opposition."Thus, a Marxisthistory of the past bristleswith positive descriptionsofconstantly changing oppositions, or antitheses that lead to new adjust-ments, or transformationswhich, in keeping with the same etymologicalroot, can be classified as "syntheses." In brief, old oppositions can be-come transformed into new compositions, which are positions that lead



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to new oppositions, quite as the stages of growth from seed to sprout tostock to branch to bud to flower to seed are not a succession of "nega-tions"but a sequenceof transformations,as weights in balance (for whicha synonym could be "inopposition") are not "negating"each other.But hold The dialecticaldesign itself undergoes a notable transforma-tion when it turnsfrom the records of the past to "providential"discussionof the future, which by the nature of the case can have no welter of posi-tive documentarydetails, empiricaldata, to write the history of and thusto write history with. Whereat lo of a sudden a genuine negative entersthe design.The pasthas been a succession of class conflicts (oppositions) ,all capable of descriptionby research and organizationof details. But inthe ideal future,class conflict disappearsand is replaced by a state that isclass-less. Here is an outrightnegative, got by the abolition of classes.With regardto the bourgeois version of secular providence in foretell-ing the abolition of slavery,the Marxistdialectic interpretedthis develop-ment in accordance with the principle of transformation.That is, it diag-nosed the historic development as a change from slavery explicitly socalled to "wage slavery."But when confronting the possible future aftercapitalism, instead of asking what new kind of classification might de-velop out of the change in property relationships the Marxist dialecticabruptlychanged the rules and disposed of the issue by then, for the firsttime, introducingan absolute negative.

Logologically, the issue would be sized up thus: The promises of theFrench Revolution were sloganized in keeping with Rousseau's distinc-tion between freedom (independence) and slavery (subjection). The in-adequacies of so blunt a distinction still figure, even after the step from"wage-slavery"has, by definition, been culminatively

taken. In a per-fectly socialized society that was functioning well, the individual citizenwould not be independent of his fellows (that should be an outgrownbourgeois ideal) . All are mutually interdependent upon the competenceand goodwill of one another. And the fictions of private property wouldbe replaced by the actualities of control (a development already quiteevident in the conditions of social labor, as contrasted with individualen-terprise,that are manifestedin the corporateorganizations of capitalism).Administrationis controlled not by the owners (the stockholders) butby the managers,who usually own but a small proportionof the stock. Infact, the more widely the stock gets distributed,the easier it is for insidersto keep control in their own hands, since the wider the distribution ofownership among small stockholders the harder it is for the owners tounite in the control of administrativepolicies which would bring a higher



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proportion of the corporation's profits to the owners, and less to themanagers.In the case of an ideal communist future,even if one grantsfor the sakeof the argumentthat it is working justly, there would still be grounds forcontending that such a social order should not be defined as individualindependence (freedom from subjection) but as mutual subjection of allto all in a way that is gratifyingto all. In fact, it's hardto imaginehow anysociety that would involve so extensive and manifold modes of interactionas advanced technology necessarily does could, by sheer definition, in-volve not maximumindependencebut maximuminterdependence,thoughthe wordspontaneously suggests a riot of problems.

Providence in St. Thomas AquinasAt this point we confront a majormoment, perhapsthe majormoment,in this rambling survey (necessarily "rambling,"since the "radiations,"or

"ripples,"that follow from the term "Providence" as starting point are somanifold, urgent, and directly or fragmentarilyrelevant to the "eschato-logical" aspects of the subject). The Marxist theory of history (past andpredicted) reminds us that "Providence"in the sense of thoughts on firstand last things is explicitly treatedin Question 22 of St. Thomas's SummaTheologica and in Chapter 64 of his Summa addressed "to the Gentiles."And behind those there are St. Augustine's major writings on matters of"Predestination." (I have especially in mind that astounding work ofgenius, The City of God. Recall also the burningwords on the Last Judg-ment in the last book of the New Testament.)But my Logological approachto a textpermitsme to make nojudgmentswhatever about the truth or falsity of Theological teachings. Hence I candiscuss such texts only as forms of "symbolic action" that are to be an-alyzed purely as examples of verbal behavior. Consider, for instance, thedoctrine of metempsychosis, "transmigrationof souls," in some Easternreligions. It implies differentrelations between the natural and supernat-ural orders than those propounded in connection with Western tradition.In the Eastern rationale,a person born subject to greathardshipsand pri-vations is thought to have merited these conditions as the result of evilways in his previous existence. And if he behaves better this time, he willmeritcorrespondinglybetter conditions on "his next time around,"whenhis soul will have migratedinto anotherbody.Obviously, a theological rationale of that sort would be at odds withthe Augustiniandesign of Predestination,involving Providential modes of



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Fore-Ordinationon God's partthat would call for quite differentterminis-tic behavioron the partof the author's text. And within the necessarycon-fines of Logology, I could not properlychoose between those two kinds ofeschatology. I could but observe how each design is worked out with re-gardto its own internalconsistency, and how it figuredin the shaping ofits believers' attitudes toward conditions in this world, a kind of specula-tion that would be sociologically relevant, whether one or the other orneither rationaleor Weltanshauung,or orientation or perspectiveor para-digmhappenedto be theologicallytrue.This position by no means belittles the gravity of the issues ultimatelyinvolved. But Logology, in the secular sense of the term, is by its owndefinitiontotally incapable of making a single statement about the realmof the supernatural.Its orbit being confinedto the study of the word-usinganimal (or, more broadly,the symbol-usinganimal) as born wordless andlearning language in "infancy," it can but make statements about theempiricalrealm of symbolic action, which does, however, include wordsfor the supernatural and in my judgment that Logologer is a poor oneindeed who is not profoundly impressedby the subtlety, profundity,bril-liance, and scope of the greattheologicalandtheologicallytingedtexts thatmark the historyof Westernthoughtand Western social organization.Meanwhile, these developments seem to be approaching a temporaryculmination of sorts in a state of affairs not Supernatural,but Counter-Natural,human nature'sself-portraiturevia the ingenious innovations im-posed by human enterprise upon the realm of nonhuman nature, thoughthere are the problemsthat Logology would sum up underthe head of the"instrumentalistfallacy," "instrumentalistquandary," the constantly re-curringtemptationto ignore the fact that every device or operation has anatureof its own, quite outside its nature as instrumentalto some particu-lar humanpurpose and lo thereis the Pandora'sbox of plagueslet loosein the multifariousgifts connected with the Prometheanfireand thus Pro-videntially implicit in the Greek myth of Technology's beginnings (nowspeeding up exponentially in what Henry Adams called "the law of theaccelerationof history").With regard to the nomenclature of Thomas's texts (viewed as whatthey Logologically are, to begin with, a set of terms dialectically adaptedto one another) the "radiations"that most directly suggest themselvesconcern the relations of these texts to Augustine, Aristotle, and DunsScotus; and, of course, the term "Providence" is integrally interwovenwith the other terms in the text concerning God and God's powers, plusthe fact that the key terms, "intellect," "will," and "good," in connection



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176 burke Journalwith Divine Providence must be used not literally, but analogically, ascompared with their application to the field of human psychology, wherethe term "prudence" (of the same derivation etymologically as "provi-dence") is, as I think Thomas indicates, a better fit because it applies to akind of judgment, or way of sizing things up, that would have no placein an all-seeing Intellect. However, in Q. 22, Art. 1, Thomas does offerreasons why, "though to take counsel may not be fittingto God, insofaras counsel is inquiryinto matters that are doubtful,"the term "prudence"can be applied analogously to God.The issue as to whetherIntellect precedesWill is much like the questionof procession in the three Persons of the Trinity. It is, by definition,not atemporalprogression,since the timeless nature of a SupremeBeing wouldprecludetemporalsuccessionamong such Powers.At first I logologically lined up the key terms thus: In God Providencewould necessarily be in itself an act of Creation, and hence of Fore-Ordination. For the very act of Foreseeing the Future would be tanta-mount to Creatingthat future. By definition a Divine Intelligence cannotbe wrong, and nothing that is understood by such a Timeless Intellect tobe there could have been there prior to the understandingof it; thus theunderstandingof it would be one with the willing of it, that is, the creatingof it. And since God is by definition simple, God's Intellect and His Willare one with each other and with God's Providence. Also, what is under-stood to be there and is willed to be there would also necessarilybe Good,since an act implies a purpose, and God's universal act of Creationwouldnecessarilybe Good, since as Aristotle says in the Nicomachaean Ethics,"The good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim."But here the act would be the creation of the good ratherthan the pursuitof it. Hence that would be supremely so in the case of God and in theBook of Genesis it is explicitly said that God found His Creation good.But there was the controversy with the Scotists, who would feature theWill (hence the Franciscanformula"Thegood is good becauseGod willedit,"as distinctfrom the Dominican formula,"God willed the good becauseit is good"). Also, Thomas added a qualification of this sort: God's Willis rational, hence it acts in keeping with the knowledge of the Intellect.Those who would feature the Will over the Intellect might hold that anyimputing of a motive for God's creative act implies a limitation of God'sfreedom. It is, by definition, a problem beyond the range of Logologicalcompetence; and in any case, the issue has been decided historically inThomas's favor.But an account of humans in purelytemporalsituationsinvolves a con-



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siderabledeparturefrom the theological nature of intellect, will, and fore-sight. Human "prudence," along with "remembrance of things past"(memoria praeteritorum) and an "understandingof the present" (intel-ligentia praesentium) from which we gather, conjecture "how to providefor the future" (de futuris providendis) is quite fragmentary,and halting,in contrast with the comprehensive powers of God, operating simulta-neously, "in no time," and omnisciently. Thus, in the NicomachaeanEthics (1111a) Aristotle lists the various ways in which we may not knowthe "circumstancesof an act," and to that extent we are not free, for "thatwhich is done ... by reason of ignorance is involuntary."If there are three salads, and we have a choice of one, and do not knowthat two of them happen to be contaminated, we are not really free tomake a "rational"choice unless we know which two of those salads weabsolutely must not choose. This is the sort of situation which wouldclearlyfit Engels's precept, probably an adaptationof Spinoza, that "free-dom is the knowledge of necessity." When we vote, we are "free" to casta ballot;but what do we know about the circumstancesof the act involvedin this vote, as a "free" choice? Several of our wars were fought underadministrations that had explicitly contracted to keep us out of war.There is no need to view such developments simply as cases of deception.When voting for the future, there is a sense in which nobody knows thecircumstancesof the act, except as confinedto the mere matterof markinga ballot. But by definitionthe case of a SupremeOmniscient Intelligence,with a Power of Providence that Foreknows down to the last detail, theAct of Predestination is absolutely free and one with Creation and itsmodes of Ordination.Thomas is quite explicit about the difference between the literal andanalogical uses of a term. But one can't formulate a general rule specify-ing exactly what the difference is in particularcases. Where speculationsinvolving such terms as Intellect, Will, and Foreknowledge (Providence)are concerned, we must keep in mind the observations in Aristotle'sNicomachaean Ethics to the effect that an act is "involuntary" nsofar asthe agent does not know enough about the "circumstances"of that act.For God's Powers of Intellect and Will are those of an absolutely omnis-cient Agent, in comparison with which the analogous competence of hu-man agents would be as the tiniest fraction of a fraction is to infinity.AndI would have us keep this consideration in mind because my theory ofLogology involves me in speculatively foretelling a purely temporal cul-mination,ourworld'sNext Phase, althoughthe design, like Marx's, makesno claim to tell of such ultimate eschatological fulfillments as are so



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powerfully and urgently, even aggressively, depicted in St. Augustine'sCityof God.St. Augustine's City of God

Whereasmy job is largelybut to ask just what are the temporalcircum-stances that might justify a tract on Logology as my symbolic act, inAugustine's case the issue was clear, and he treated of it with profusionand effusion of erudition and rhetorical drive enough to humiliate any-body who wants to advocate anything. I'd put his book in the same binwith the ardentapocalypse that the New Testament ends on.Augustine had long been emphatic in his resistance to any heresy thatlooks forward to an eventual unfolding whereby things will ease up forthe sufferers in Hell, who will eventually be judged to have suffered in-tensely enough and long enough. On that score, incidentally, GeorgeThomson, in his Aeschylus and Athens, offers ample grounds to assumethat the Prometheantrilogy was of that design. Thus the firstplay, the onethat survived and that Shelley was so delightedwith, startsthings out withZeus as a raw tyrant and Prometheus as a raw rebel, the plan being that,by the end of the third play, they both had eased up, and become recon-ciled. Lenin, along Marxist lines, foresaw a "witheringaway of the State"such that class conflict would eventually subside. And Shakespearehas inprinciple (symbolically) retiredfrom his role as a playwright,when Pros-pero abandoned his magic by freeing Ariel and Caliban, perfect surro-gates for the antitheses that drama feeds on. Viewed Logologically, theChristianthreat and/or promise of eternal Hell, going at top speed, andwith full force, is a "perfect"reflex of the primeethical distinctionbetween"do" and "don't,"two major "topics," which means in Greek etymology"places,"for which the Afterlife will establishplaces actually,actual loca-tions for those ultimate principles of discrimination, Yes and No, "per-fectly edified,"that is "comprehensivelystructured."And an ultimateirony with regardto the contrast between the Christianand Marxist theories of transformationwhereby "the Down shall be Up"(as foretold in The Sermon on the Mount and the CommunistManifesto)is that, in the Christiandesign those who bear witness (that is, who aremartyred,"martyr"being the Greek word for "witness") will thrive for-ever, whereas those who die for the MarxistRevolution will be "gone forgood." And the rewards of their effortswill be reapedby later generationswho suffered not at all for the Cause, an ironic situation whereby thepromises held out to the Revolutionary motivated by the rationale of



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dialectical materialism are in one sense much more "idealistic" (as modesof self-sacrifice) than those held out to the Christianmartyr.With regardto the design developed in The City of God (Book XXI,Chapter XXIII) besides quoting Biblical authority (Matthew, 25:6)Augustine offers an explanation which comes close to sheerly logologi-cal bookkeeping. In the passage quoted, Christ foretells both "eternalpunishment"for the sinners and "life eternal" for the saints. Augustinecomments:

If bothdestiniesare"eternal,"hen we musteitherunderstandboth aslong-continued ut at lastterminating, r both as endless.For they arecorrelative on the one hand,punishment ternal,on the otherhand,life eternal.And to say in one andthe samesense,life eternalshallbeendless,punishment ternalshall come to an end, is the heightof ab-surdity.Wherefore,as the eternal ife of the saintsshall be endless,sotoo the eternalpunishment f those who aredoomedto it shallhave noend.There are rationales that could allow for both these destinies, as werethe reprobatessimply to fade out of existence. But the design as Augus-tine knew it, he believed in with an implicit conviction that contributed

notably to the urgenteloquence of his presentation.The invasion of Rome by Alaric's barbarianhorde from the North hadbeen a startling event, though one could argue that it was but a newvariant of the many times when Rome's own armies returnedafter a vic-torious campaign, and the soldiers had to be paid off somehow, as usualwith such movements. Also, Alaric was a sort of border politician, wellacquaintedwith the ways of Roman imperialismand its bargainings.Andhe was even identified with a Christianheresy, the Arians who believedthat the Son followed the Father in temporal succession (for unlike bothJohannine and secular Logologists, they were unable to distinguish be-tween priorityin time and priorityin principle).The Gentiles, the non-Christian and non-Jewish citizens of imperialRome (which had traditionally erected a temple to every god of everydues-paying province, though that particular form of the "cujus regio,eius religio"design was fading fast) had bitterlyaccused the Christiansofbringingon the public disasterby their monotheistic disdain of the manypagan deities. But rather than merely defending his fellow-Christiansagainst these charges, Augustine in effect assumed the role not just of anaccuser, but of an educator by his version of the historical situation (histale of two cities, conceived after the design of the Chosen and the Repro-



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bates, though they were not locally separate populations as with othercities, but both kinds of citizens were scattered within each body politic) .And thanks to his eloquent command of what, within the conditions of thetimes, would be the most relevant and persuasiveerudition,he also wrote(we mightsay, borrowingfrom Cromwell,"byabundance") the very pro-totype of a history conceived in terms of Absolute Predetermination.Fittinglythe Last Judgmentof the Damned is the subject of the penul-timate book, the work ending in the sign of the Saints and their eternalblessedness. But as comparedwith the pageant-like,esoteric unfoldings inthe Book of the Apocalypse that ends the New Testament, the statuesquework is rather of a practical,even administrativenature, since Augustine,following his conversion, became as much engrossed in the correlationbetween doctrine and matters of ecclesiastical organizationas the writer,or writers, of the Pauline Epistles. He has a chapter, for instance, "Exam-ples from Nature Proving that Bodies may Remain Unconsumed andAlive in Fire," beginning with the fact that "the salamanderlives in fire,as naturalistshave recorded."Though Logology can make no judgmentdoctrinally about Augustine's doctrinal conclusions concerning a LastJudgment, it can wholly recognize the intellectual musculature of hisefforts in behalf of his Cause.

Henry Adams and SpenglerAmong such texts as we have been considering, all of which couldstrictlyor loosely be called "Predestinarian"after their fashion, two mod-ernones thatparticularly mpressedme (and both in much the same way)were The Educationof Henry Adams and Spengler'sDecline of the West.The distinction between a strongly agrarianway of life and the later cen-turies marked by the exponentially expanding scope of the "IndustrialRevolution" (summed up figuratively by Henry Adams in terms of "Vir-gin" and "Dynamo") had its analogue in Spengler'sdistinction between"culture"and "civilization" (which were related somewhat as the bodyin vigorous years in contrast with that same body when growing old, andconsequently marked by hardening of the arteries) ; a certain pliancy isgone.In an early book, {Attitudes Toward History, 1937) conceived under

the influence of those texts, and with that pattern in mind, I built arounda concept I called "the bureaucratizationof the imaginative."A plan orproject, in its early stages would have imaginative pliancy, but insofar asit gets organized (for which the dyslogistic synonym is my formula was



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"bureaucratized")it becomes rigidifiedby the accumulation of incidentaldetails. And considerations of that sort are implicit in my provisionalLogological schematizing with regard to the destiny of the relation be-tween language and Technology, due to Technology's radical role in gen-eratinga realm of Counter-Nature.I shall try to make this closing state-ment as brief as possible, by reductionto a series of propositions.Counter-Nature:"Fulfillment" via Technology

( 1) Whatevermay be the origins and end of human existence, Logo-logy contracts to say only what can be based on the definition of what, atthe very least, we undeniably are; namely: physiological organisms thatare born wordless, and normallylearn words duringthe early years of ouremergencefrominfancy (that is, "wordlessness")(2) Though the ability to learn such a medium (of "symbolicaction")is in us as individualorganisms,the medium itself is a social product, andis matured by its use in "contexts of situation" that are grounded in therealm of nonsymbolic motion, to which the realm of symbolism always,more or less directlyor indirectlyrefers.(3) We can learn language only because its nature is such that we canapply the same words to differentsituations; for we learn words by hear-ing them said again and again in differentsituations and all situationsintheirdetailsareunique.(4) Thus implicit in the applying of the same words to different con-texts there is a principle of analogical extension (which we also in somecases call a "metaphorical"extension) .

(5) Thus language both sharpens our attention to what a given situa-tion univocallyis (insofar as we have the exact words for it) ; or what it islike (in case the actual or imagined situation is straining at the outeredges of a given usage, hence relies upon the more latitudinarian,that is,analogical, aspects of speech). Or if something momentously new turnsup, the nature of attention made possible by language may help demar-cate it as a notable detail, worth repeatingand even improving.(6) We now have said enough to indicate how the kind of attentionmadepossible by languagecould help humans to single out the instrumen-tal aspects of situations (as with the explicit awareness that an operationperformedwith a rock in one's hand would be more effective than by thefist alone), to which add the fact that language lends itself so well to thecommunicatingof all such innovations, and hence to their distribution.(7) Whatever the interruptions n such distribution,the slow develop-



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182 burke Journal

ment at the starthas by now attained dimensions that, in the last two cen-turies,are more like an explosion thana growth.(8) The interaction between symbolic prowess and the products ofcraftsmanshipleads to an ever-increasing range of situations to serve asmaterial for analogical extension (like metaphor, the seeing of one situa-tion in termsof another) .(9) Each specialized nomenclature, with its corresponding modes ofattention and suggestion, is the technical equivalent of a vision, and thusgoads to furtherunfoldings, each tentative effort being like an answer toa call.

(10) The conditions broughtabout by the advances of symbol-guidedtechnology (that is, by man-made transformationsof nonhuman naturalconditions) have become an authoritative motivationaldimension in theirown right, generatingthe conditions that goad human enterprisersto thegeneratingof furtherconditions that in turn serve to perpetuatethe samecycle so far as the necessary materials are still available or further ad-vances in technology can bring other resources to fall within the range ofexploitationfor the given purpose.(11) Even the correcting of the problems produced by technologymust be accomplished by technological means; they cannot be solved byabandoning the technological way of life, since our modes of livelihoodare already so dependent upon its resourcefulness. The "second nature"of Counter-Natureis here to stay, culminatively.Environmentalismis butan intelligent species of technology'sself-criticism.(12) The Logological concept of our species as the "symbol-usingani-mal" is not identical with the concept, homo sapiens, the "rational"animal for whereas we are the "symbol-usinganimal" all the time, weare nonrational and even /rrational some of the time. Somewhat alongFreudian lines I take it that the very process of learning language long be-fore we have reached the so-called "age of reason" leaves upon us themarkof its necessarily immaturebeginnings;and only some of these canbe called "childlike" in the idyllic sense of the term. Also, since languagehas so many words for so many things that we don't know enough about,it often extends our ways of being stupid, and talkingout of order.(13) But implicitin its very nature there is the principleof completion,of perfection, of carryingideas to the end of the line, as with thoughts onfirst and last things all told, goads toward the tracking down of impli-cations. And "rationality" is in its way the very "perfection" of suchlanguage-infused possibilities. And what more "rational" in that respectthan our perfecting of instruments designed to help assist us in the



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tracking-down-of-implications, the rational genius of technology thusbeing in effect a vocational impulsiveness, as though in answer to a call?And how or why turn against the specifically human incitements to de-velop such astounding powers further and further?And where else canyou turnanyhow since, maybe like Creon in Sophocles' Antigone, even ifwe would retract our past decrees, we have already broughtabout a situa-tion which will drive on of itself. Maybe it's here to stay (and why not,when it is the very portrait of ourselves, ourselves flatteringlyenlargedeven?)- here to stay, regardlessof whetherto our greatbenefitor to con-siderable disaster. Yet there is also the fact that the resultant realm ofCounter-Nature, for all of its strivings toward perfection, is in itself, bythe same token, still imperfect. Above all, there is the problem of itsFREEDOM. In two hundred years our nation became technologicallythegreateston earth, thanks to THREE FREEDOMS, namely: THE FREE-DOM TO WASTE, THE FREEDOM TO POLLUTE, THE FREEDOMNOT TO GIVE A DAMN.Indicationsare that within the boundariesof that culturalfrontierall isnow settled, and accordingly, "The Dialectic" being what it is, we con-front a state of much new unsettlement. It is the claim of Logology that,for an ad interimdesign, our cultural task is to build a tentatively Provi-dential body of speculations around the specific question: "Just whatis involved motivationally in the possible likelihood that the realm ofCounter-Nature produced by symbol-guided (hence man-made) tech-nology is a kind of culmination, a fulfillment of specifically human self-engrossments,conceived as an ironic version (a burlesque?) of the 'ego-tistical sublime,' the mirror-imageof a spirit in this case materialized "And why "ironic"?Because any instrumenthas a natureof its own beyondits natureas an instrumentdesigned for a given purpose and therein liesthe Vast New Realm of Counter-Natureand its Unintended By-Products,to be studied with regardto its possible relations and disrelations to thenaturalorder, includingthe natureof our species as developed out of theprehistoricpast (a past bodily, physiologically still with us now) in rela-tion to the naturalorder.

burke variations on providence

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