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Irving Babbitt: Fifty Years Later*

Babbitt and the Problem of RealityClaes G.Ryn

PERHAPSTHE MOST original and fruitful ofthe insights of Irving Babbitt pertains tothe relationship betw een will an d imagina-tion. His explication of that relationsh ipforms at once a compelling diagnosis ofthe ills of th e present ag e and a deeplychallenging stat em ent of the prerequisitesfor a restora tion of W este rn life an d let-ters. In Babbitts under stan ding of the in-teraction of will and imagination lies notonly an important contribution to ethicsand aesthetics but also a highly significantingredient for a new the ory of knowledge.The present inquiry into Babbitts ideaswill be governed by the question: Howdoes man achieve a grasp of reality? Dif-feren tly put: What is the criterion of reali-ty? One only hints at Babbitts answer bypointing to th e cooperation of w hat hecalls the ethical will and the ethical i-

*The three papers that follow were firstpresented a t an interdisciplinary confer ence com -memorating the fifiiethanniversary of Irving Bab-bitts death in 1 933. Held a t The Catholic Universi-ty of America in November 1983, the conferencewa s sponsored by its Department of Politics, TheMarguerite Eyer Wilbur Foundation, and The In-tercollegiate Studies Institute. These paperswill appear in a book which examin es the criticalsignificance of Babbitts achievement and is in-tended fo r publication by The Catholic Universityof America Press, Washington, D.C.

magination, for both of these ideas hav ebee n poorly und erstood by most of hiscommentators. Explaining Babbitts viewof th e relationship between will an d i-magination in the search for reality re-quires bringing som e clarity to eac h of thetwo subjects while keeping the main ob-jective in sight.According to Babbitt, attempts bymodern philosophy to solve the problemof k nowled ge rest on a vain belief inabstract rationality as the way to truth.Th ese attem pts signify a failure to under-stand that in the end man will attachhimself only to a standard of reality thathas immediacy and concreteness, that is,one that is firmly established in ex-perience. Thinking specifically of th efailure of epistem ology, Babbitt is mo vedto t h e sweep ing and indiscriminate state-m e n t t h a t m o d e r n p h i l o s o p h y isban krup t, not merely from Kant, but fromDescartes. Babb itts doctrin e of theethica l an d aesthetica l basis of manssea rch for reality is, among o the r things, acontribution to the deve lopm ent of a newtheory of knowledge.

It should be stated that probably theweakest part of Babbitts work is his no-tion of reason. Except for sca ttere d ideaspointing in a different direction, reason isusually ra the r vaguely assumed by Babbitt

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to be a pragmatic and analytic faculty. Ithelps man to discriminate between illu-sion and reality by breaking up the in-tuitive wholes of imagination into constit-uent parts an d by scrutinizing the internalconsistency of those parts. But reason isalso seen by B abbitt as incapable of g r a s ping what is most fundamental in humanconsciousness, the primordial tension be-tween the One and the Many. lt is thenatu re of reason to att ribu te reality only towhat is reified and formally consistent.The pa rado x of dualism of which man isnevertheless directly aware is for Babbittth e scandal of reason . Mans most im-portant contact with reality, therefore, isnot reason but unmediated, direct ex-per ienc e of life.Like almost all of h is con temporaries,Babbitt never systematically considersthat p art of mode rn ep istemology which isperhaps best exemplified by BenedettoCroce. Genuinely philosophical reason,Croce argues, is in fact fully compatiblewith m ans imm ediate self-awareness. Farfrom violating the dualistic facts of actualexperience by insisting on some formalconsistency, philosophical reason findsreality in our concrete experience of theWhole and gives i t reflective self-awareness. Croce agrees with Babbitt thatlifeis a oneness that is always changing,but contrary to Babbitt he does not regardthis intuited reality as being beyond thegrasp of reason . Philosophy is th e concep-tual ally of e xp erien ce . Reason do es notha ve to flee from th e contradictions of life,for its logic is dialectical. Studen ts of Bab-bitt should tak e note of th e many fruitfulparallels between him and Croce and canlearn from Croces logic wi thout acceptinghis highly questionable Hegelian monismand historical metaphysic.The organic unity of philosophicalreason and direct experience is itself alarge and difficult subject, and the em-phasis here m ust be on th at side of th eproblem of reality which most occupiesBabbitts attention. It should be kept inmind th at Babbitts ethical-aesthetical doc-trine is eminently compatible with theview of reason just described, may indeed

require it as a natural supplement.2I

INSTEAD OF TAKING ideas on authority,modern man proposes to submit them toth e test of experience . Babbitt is willing toaccept this challenge a nd to ado pt wh at hecalls the positive and critical spirit. H ealso insists tha t w hat is typically meant byexpe rience in t he modern world is ar-tificially restricted. Babbitt accusesrepresen tatives of t he m ode rn project ofbeing incomplete positivists. They arenot really attentive to the full range ofhuman experience but arbitrarily selectfragments of it or distort it throughmethodological reductionism. Babbittpoints out that human experience, nowand o ver th e centuries, provides a vast ar-ray of eviden ce regardin g th e nature ofman , including eviden ce of a universalmoral order. This experience must be ex-amined on its own ground.Because he uses a poorly chosen phrase,a m ore co mp lete positivism, to describehis own respect for experience, Babbittmight appear to endorse a m ore completedevo tion to the gathering of empiricaleviden ce in th e ordinary m odern sense. Inactuality, the ex per ienc e with reference towhich Babbitt would judge the validity ofideas is mans direct aw areness of theWhole, of the One and th e Many in in-dissoluble interaction. Our most fun-dam ental aw aren ess of reality is at oncesynthetical and analytical. One grows inunde rstandin g of that Whole, not throughthe accumulation of d ata in the em -pirical sense, but by acquiring a firmergrasp of the oneness or unity of life th atabides in th e midst of ch an ge and diversi-ty. Questions regarding reality are bestanswered by those wh o have let their ownexperience be enriched, ordered, and in-terp rete d by tha t sens e of the universalthat emerges fr om the human heritage oflife and letters. So-called empirical dataare arbitrarily separated from this moref u n d a m e n t a l a n d c o n ti n uo u s c o n -sciousness of th e Whole.

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More than anywhere else, mandiscovers the essen ce of reality in ethicalaction. Such action, Babbitt contends,realizes the ultimate meaning of life an d isits ow n reward, An admirer of Plat0 an dAristotle, especially the latter, Babbitt is atthe sa m e time critical of the G reek tenden-cy to equate virtue and intellectualknowledge. He sees in Christianity adeep er ethical wisdom, mo re fully attunedto th e centrality of will and to the need fo rman to take on the discipline of a higherwill. As a representa tive of th e Orientrather than the more intellectualisticWest, Jesus of N aza reth doe s not presentman with a new philosophy, to b e testedon abstract intellectual grounds. Jesusasks men to follow him, that is, to performChrist-like actions. Genuine religion andmorality, Babbitt argues, are most impor-tantly an exercise of good will, a path ofstriving. Without in some way enteringupon that path, and thus undertaking agradual transformation of cha rac ter, theindividual will be unable to perceive therea lity of t he path , which is first of all areality of practice.

As against theories which tend to makeof m oral virtue a prob lem of intellection,Babbitt stresses the human proclivity formoral procrastination, the lethargy or in-tractability of the will that keeps the in-dividual from moral action. Theorizingabo ut the na ture of mo ral virtue will notbring the individual much closer tounderstand ing those values, unless he alsohas some exp erience of them in concreteaction. Philosophizing about the good caneasily beco me an excuse or pretext for notdoing what is always m ore difficult, nam e-ly, getting on with th e task of good action.Th e cru x of the ethical life, Babbitt argues,is not acquiring definitive theoreticalknowledge of the goo d, which is beyondman, but the ability to act on whateverethical insight one does have. With grow-ing strength of characte r and the perform -an ce of new good ac tions, the light ofreality streaming forth from them willgrow. Theoretical doubts regarding theexistence or na ture of the universal goodwill tend to evaporate. Summarizing the

contribution of the Christian teaching ofthe Incarnation to solving the problem ofknowledge, Babbitt observes: The finalreply to all the doubts that torment thehum an hea rt is not som e theory of con-duct, however, perfect, but the man ofcha rac ter. The man of good action em -bodies, or incarnates, in himself thereality of the eternaL 3Babbitt agrees with Aristotle that trulyvirtuous action finds its own justification inthe sa tisfaction of happ iness, which m ustbe carefully distinguished from passingmo me nts of m ere pleasure. In thespecifically religious sphere, the result ofmoral striving is peace. In bo th cases, mancomes to know concretely something ofthe ultimate purpose and meaning ofhuman existence. What is meant by happiness or peace cannot be understood byanyone wholly lacking in personal ex-pe rienc e of mo ral action. The happy life ofthe mean described in The NicomacheanEthics is achieved gradually, not simplythrough intellectual deliberation, butprimarily through ethical action thattransform s charac ter. Volumes of goodethical philosophy will mean little to theirreader unless the terms used find referentsin personal life and help the reader betterto unde rstand his own exp erience . What istru e of h um anis tic self-understand ing istru e a lso of religious self-understanding. InBabbitts words, Knowledge in mattersreligious waits upon will.4 To submitquestions of truth or falsity to the test ofexp erience m eans to judge them ultimate-ly from the point of view of lifes comple-tion in good action. The final criterion ofreality is for Babbitt that special type ofwilling that by its very nature satisfiesmans deep est yearning. This is the mean-i n g of h i s s t a t e m e n t t h a t t h eepistemological problem, though it can-not be solved abstractly or metaphysical-ly, can be solved practically and in termsof actual c o n d u ~ t. ~As the supreme maxim for a modernrespect for experience Babbitt proposesthe wo rds of Jesus, By their fruits shall yeknow them. Thinkers who are hostile toall traditional authority and who blindly

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reject the insights common to the greatreligious and ethical system s of mankindwill produce certain practical conse-quences. As their ideas are put into prac-tice, these theorists will bring upon oth ersan d th em selves a se nse of lifes absurdityand misery. Those, on the other hand,wh o ar e willing to underta ke so me of theaction called for by th e older traditions, ifnot accep t the literal me aning of inheriteddogmas, will grow in a sens e of th eultimate reality an d happiness of life. If ab-solute knowledg e must forever elude man ,Babbitt writes, w e may still de term ine onexperimental grounds to wh at degree anyparticular view of life is sanctioned orrepudiated by th e natu re of things andrate it accordingly as more or less real.6

I t may be noted in passing tha t in stress-ing th e ultimacy of the prac tical criterionof reality, Babbitt sometim es unduly dis-counts, or at least app ear s to discount, thecontribution of reason to mans searc h forreality. Speaking of the path of religiousstriving, he says, The en d of this path andthe goal of being can no t be form ulated interms of the finite intellect, any mo re thanthe ocean can be put into a cup. Thisstatement would appear to push intellec-tual humility to an extrem e. Yet, if reasonis so utterly powerless as Babbitt here in-dicates, by what faculty is he observingan d articulating the shortcomings of thefinite intellect? In his essay on theDhammapada and in other p laces, Babbittdoes formu late th e na tur e of the religiouspa th and goal of be ing. Does he then nothave at his disposal a reason which ismore powerful and more comprehensivethan th e finite intellect mentioned in thequotation? All of the arg um ents and con-cepts presented in his various books-thepractica l criterion of reality, the higherand the lower will, the tension betweenthe One and the Many, etc.-assume an in-tellect cap able of significant observation.Babbitt is not merely using the sort ofpragm atic intellect of which he takes ac-

count, but also a mo re truly philosophicalreason, even though he is not reflectivelyaw ar e of its existence.Inasmuch as Babbitt regards ethical ac-

tion as the final answer to questions ofreality, it isnecessary to examine in somedep th his idea of the highe r will or innercheck, a subject poorly understood bymost of his interpre ters. Babbitts doctrineis summed up in these words: I do nothesitate to affirm that what is specificallyhuman in man and ultimately divine is acertain quality of will, a will that is felt inits relation to his ordinary self as a will torefra in. In most of Babbitts work th emain emphasis is on defining the higherwill in its humanistic manifestation. InDemocracy and Leadership, he explainsthat his interest in the higher will and thepower of veto it exercises over mans ex-pansive desires is hum anistic rather thanreligious.6 It is helpful to com pare Bab-bitts ideas regarding the humanistic roleof the higher will with th e traditional doc-trine of natura l law. Th e latter recognizesa standard of good intrinsic to human lifeto which m an h as access independen tly ofspecial revelation. But while the traditionof natural law tends to conceive of w hat isuniversal and norm ative in term s of prin-ciples of reason, Babbitt conceives of it interm s of will. In the ethical life the authori-ty to which man ultimately defers is not ase t of philosophica l propositions but aspecial pow er of will which finallytranscends efforts at exhaustive intellec-tual definition.

In the United States attempts to under-stan d Babbitts idea of a self-validatinghigher will have frequen tly cente red uponhis view of religion. H ence it is a ppropriate to elucidate his meaning withreference to that subject. Because Babbitttries to deal with religious truth in apositive and critical man ner , without rely-ing on dogm a, and because, like the tradi-tion of natura l law, he also ascribes a cer-tain moral autonomy to the humanisticlevel of life, his critics have accused him ofd e p r e c a t i n g r e l i g i o n a n d t h et r a n ~ c e n d e n t . ~Such interpretations missthe point of Babbitts approach to ethicalquestions. He explicitly state s, It is an er-ror to hold that humanism can take theplace of religion. Religion indeed maymore readily dispense with humanism

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than humanism with religion. Humanismgains greatly by having a religiousbackground . . . whereas religion, for theman who has actually renounced theworld, may ve ry co nceivab ly be all inBabbitt also spends much time ex-plicating th e specifically religious spirit ofotherworldliness. What he questions is notthe reality of t he div ine but th e necessity,and the prudence in modern intellectualcircumstances, of tying it closely to in-herited creeds or dogmas. Those whocomplain that Babbitt does not em brace aparticular theology ignore the differencebetween revelation and philosophic-

scientific observation, betw een devotionalliterature and scholarship. Although asharp, definitive distinction cannot bedra wn, special criteria of kn ow ledg e ob-tain for the scholar. The truth of religion,Babbitt believes, does not have to betaken on doctrinal authority; it can bejudged critically, by its fruits. If it werenecessary, in order to speak meaningfullyabout religion, first to adopt a particularformal creed-say, that of Christianity-allreal discussion with Jews, Buddhists, Hin-dus, and others would have to aw ait theirconversion to that creed. The obstacle toserious debate would b e ev en greater, forChristians themselves would have toreach agreement on the precise meaningof th e cre ed. But religious dogmas, Babbittpoints out, are in part an attempt to ex-press w hat is also a living reality of prac-tice and intuition. In ma tte rs of religion, asin matte rs of humanism , a vast body ofhistorical experience is available to thescholar which provides the basis for anecumenical know ledge and wisdom.Religious denominations claiming aprivileged insight beyond what can be ver-ified in the actual exper ience of mank indhave no reason to feel threatened bysuch philosophic-scientific examina-tion of the spiritual evidence, for they c anadd to the latter their own revelatory vi-sion. Babbitt freely adm its that theologicaldogmas may contain truth beyond whatcan b e estab lished critically on th e basis ofexperience. Many other things are true,

no d ou bt, in addition to what on e may af-firm positively; and extra-beliefs ar e inany case inevitable.11Babbitt recognizesthe possible value of dogmas and creed s inbringing forth the fruits of religion. Mansreligious symbols sometimes convey ade ep sense of the my stery beyondthemselves, and, as material for theethical imagination, they may inspire rightconduct. But religious symbols can alsosuccumb to fundamentalistic reification.Formalistic and literaliqtic hardening is asign tha t they ar e losing contact with reali-

Babbitt raises the important questionwhether ones religiousness is to bemeasured by the degree to which onebrings forth th e fruits of th e spirit or b yones theological affirmations.l3 Submit-ting to an external religious authority isnot necessarily an act of devotion. It mayexpress a flaw of cha racter in individualsof unstable and relativistic romantictemperament. Inner uncertainty and fluxcrave outer certainty and order. Babbittspeaks of the affinity of th e jellyfish for therock. Seemingly. pious adh eren ce to exter-nal norms may in fact signify an escapefrom what is more difficult, the actual im-provem ent of charact er. Behind thereverential pose there is then no genuineconversion, but all the m ore chronic self-pity and half-heartedness. Professions ofsinfulness can b e a delicious enjoym ent ofwhat, with ones lips, one feigns todeplore. At the extreme, faith becomeseverything, works nothing. PeterViereck, a thinker deeply influenced byBabbitt, says of th e pious intolerance ofcertain mo dern p roponents of religious or-thodoxy that it can be seen as an attemptby persons who are still at bottomrelativists to shout down that nagg ing in-ne r voice of doubt.14An individual who ismore secure in his own character will notfeel quite the same need to submit for-malistically to external authority. O bviously, Babbitts concern is not to doaway with authority; the importance ofsound leadership is a central theme in hiswork, His reservations here pertain todoctrinal and personal rigidity born of

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neglect of the primacy of eth ical effort. Heoffers the educated guess that Buddhismwith its non-dogmatic religiosity has hadas many saints as Christianity. He addsthat it has been less marred than Chris-tianity by intolerance and fanatici~m.~An ethically maturing person may wellderive a heightened sense of reality fromth e rich religious traditions of ma nkind orof a particular church, but then becausetheir symbols and practices find referentsin actual experience and can expand anddeepen that experience.A per son of fundamentalist inclinationmay feel compelled to say that in religiousand moral matters we can defer only toGod, never to ma n, not even to w hat Bab-bitt calls mans higher will. That kind ofreaction to Babbitt is indicative ofmisund erstanding his argum ent or failingto view it in its own terms. To be able todefer to the autho rity of God, man m ustsom ehow be aware of that authority. Toexist for man as a living, concrete reality,the authority of God must hav e en teredhum an consciousness. To that exten t it isa part of mans self-awareness. It is to in-dicate the universal authority of thatpow er within human expe rience that Bab-bitt calls it mans higher self or h igher will.I f that use of words is objec ted to becauseit app ears to build up man at the e xpe nseof God, the effect of the com plain t is todraw attention away from th e experientialfacts themselves and to substitutesta tem en ts of faith for philosophical in-quiry. Babbitt is less interested in how tonam e the presence of the goo d than in ac-curately describing its observable in-fluence on man. What others, relying ontheological assumptions, might prefer tocall the work of divine gra ce in m an , Bab-bitt speaks of ecum enica lly an d non-dogm atically as the exercise of th e higherwill.Many modern Westerners would rejectChristianity beca use inherited creeds hav eno authority for them. According to Bab-bitt, the se W esterners must, if they are tobe true to the positive and critical spirit,still consider the experiential evidence. Inhis explication of th e prerequisi tes for

bringing forth th e fruits of th e spirit Bab-bitt not only prepares the way for amo dern re covery of religious and ethicaltruth but also for a recov ery that is as freeas possible of aesthe tic posturing and ofsecret reservations and doubts.1611

T O EXPLAIN THE relationship seen by Bab-bitt between will and imagination, it isnecessary to deal briefly with will ingeneral (ethical or unethical) as theenergy which carries all human activity,whether practical, philosophical, oraesthetical. Many words-desire, wish,aspiration, impulse, interest, inclination,passion, etc.-denote the fund am ental im-pelling power of will without which thelife of human society and culture wouldcease. Will is the generic, categorizedname for tha t infinity an d variety of im-pulse that orients the individual to par-ticular tasks. Whatever the dominantdisposition of a person a t a particular time,it is a manifesta tion of will. This is true alsoof theoretical, c ontem plative activity. Manis no less active when he is thinking thanwhen he is acting practically. Philosophiz-ing, too, must be maintained through theintent of will. In the moment when thedesire to obtain philosophical knowledgeis no longer strongest in a person, it isfollowed by either practical action or intui-tion (imagination). Which activity takesthe place of philosophizing depends on th edesire now dominant. In some momentswe wish me rely to im agine something ,that is, to become aesthetically active. Inthe latter case a desire is not enacted inpractice but inspires imagination. We maybecome absorbed in a daydream. Anaesthetically inclined and gifted personmay forget the original practical stimulusand enjoy a poetic vision. Whatever thekind of activ ity taking hold of m an , be itpractical or contemplative, it must be sus-tained by some desire, by wi11.7To understand Babbitt, it is important torealize tha t in on e sense will and imagina-tion are the same. A desire, in reachingthe human consciousness, is no longer

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some blind practical urge. Even a seem-ingly simple impulse to q uench ones thirstimmediately translates itself into imagina-tion. It becom es, for exam ple, the intuitionof c lea r, cool water passing dow n onesthroat. Without articulating itself in con-crete images, the desire to drink isun aw ar e of itself, inde finite, andpowerless to m ove th e individual. The in-tuition is potentially highly complex, forthe im agined act of dr inking must includea sense of the larger situation of life inwhich it is taking place. Particular short-range impulses of desire emana te from abroader disposition of character. What isexpressed in each intuitive transfigurationof desire is also a mo re comprehensive vi-sion of lifes possibilities. Different per-sonalities will be attracted to differentpossibilities. Babbitt explains that mendevelop such im agination as is pleasing totheir underlying orientations of c har acte r.

If will decides the direction of human ac-tivity, Babbitt also emphasizes that thehuman will is dualistic, forever torn be-tween higher and lower potentialities.Both of th ese poles of m ans be ing expressthemselves in imagination. Transfiguredinto more or less poetic intuition, thehigher or low er desires acquire the powerthat co mes with concreteness, sensual tex-ture, immediacy. As intuitions they arenot realized in practice; but, as living vi-sions of what life could be, they stir thehuman self, inviting practical action con-sonant with themselves. It has often bee nnoted in older Western philosophy thatwhat is highest in man cannot by itselfwithstand strong contrary passions. Platostresses the need for a power ofspiritedness (thymos) to enforce theautho rity of reason. Babbitt finds thehighest moral authority not in intellect butin will of a special quality. That will isnever present to man in its fullness. It is apotentiality for Good to be progressivelyrealized in co ntinuous tension with an op-posite quality of will. To become more ful-ly realized, the ethical will needs thepower of imagination to give it con-creteness and to draw the human willmore deeply into its own potentiality of

goodness. In the perpetual struggle be-tween higher and lower possibilities of ex -istence, Babbitt argues, the imaginationholds the b alance of pow er. In this sen sehe agrees with Napoleon that imagina-tion governs m ankind.I8 To prevail, t heethical will must express its purposesthrough the m agnetic image ry of intui-tion.Co rrespo nding qualities of characterand imagination tend to beget and rein-force each other. An individual caught upin a lifeof pleasure-seeking is predisposedto be responsive to works of po etry whichare carried by a similar sense of lifespossibilities. As his personality is abso rbe dinto poetic vision of new hedo nistic thrills,his will finds satisfaction in it and deepensin its commitment. Moments of aesthe ticenjoyment tend to call forth correspon-ding attempts at practical realization ofdesire. Such transition to practical actionis never automatic-man is free to rejectev en st rong appeals of desire-but if ittakes place, it is not unexpected. The willthat now proceeds to practical actionbelongs to the same disposition ofcharacter that previously found aestheticen joym ec t in the vision of a hedonisticstate.A person more under the influence ofth e higher will has a different sense ofwhat brings g enu ine satisfaction. This per-son may well be enticed by a powerfulpoetic sta tem ent of a hedonistic existence;it richly embellishes and suppo rts his ow nm om en ts of hedonistic flight fromaristocra tic character. B ut, by virtue of h ispredominant orientation of personality,the hedonistic vision is likely also to cre ateuneasiness. He senses in it the expressionof a n ignoble, incomplete, and ultimatelymiserable s tate of soul, one in which h ehas sometime s participated.For a person in whom will of a n im-moral type is strongly entrenched and inwhom imagination attuned to that will iscontinuously reinforcing the sam e orien ta-tion of ch ara cte r, it may be quite difficultto change. Even a cultured individual ofpredominantly sound character will re-main to some extent susceptible to thestirrings of his lower will, especially if itfinds expression in vibrant, luxuriant

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poetic vision. Plato fe are d the influence ofwrongly inspired poets on souls still lack-ing in ethical maturity. Babbitt suggeststhat in the relatively good man, too, theimagination can becom e the ally of sec retdrives, which, in his better moments, hewould not indulge. If a person lets himselfbe drawn into intuitions which play uponand expand his more ignoble self, theimagination will help him conceal hismoral qualms. These become portrayed,perhaps, as sym ptoms of a ridiculous andnarrow-minded bourgeois puritanism.The now dominant desire, by contrast, isdepicted as the manifestation of a higherfreedom, above such petty notions ofresponsibility. A powerfully endowedimagination may paint even diabolicaldrives in alluring images. Were it not formans ability to fashion the potentialitiesof his own lower self in aesthetica lly en -thralling ways, that self would have littlepow er to influence men of cu lture. Themore creative a persons intuition, thegreater its influence, for good or evil.

I t is pertinent here to explain in whatsense the higher will can be described asan inner check. When ignoble,hedonistic intuition is pulling an individualinto itself or into practical action, he maybe suddenly stopped by moral uneasiness.What Babbitt calls the inner check is thetranscendent Good breaking into con-sciousness by arresting incipient activity.It affords man an opportunity t oreconstitute his intentions. What begins asa negative act, as moral censuring of apresent intention, may in the next mo-ment assert itself positively. In a person ofsome habitual responsiveness to thehigher will, the latter may be g iven the o pportunity to articulate itself in imagina-tion, for examp le, in the intuition of theultimate misery of th e hedonistic life asthe defeat of the prom ise of happiness. Atbest, this means th e purging of thepreviously dominant lower imaginationand with it the sustaining lower will.

In most men the interplay of will andimagination does not often result in intui-tions of a particularly poetic type. Theimagination usually works in spurts and at

the mercy of pressing practica l needs. Inthe poetically inclined and gifted person,on the other hand, the imagination maydetach itself from service to impulses ofthe moment and swell into an elaborate,finely harmonized vision of life. In art in-tuition synthesizes possibilities of huma nexistence according to the aesthetic re-quirement of beauty. Still, it must not beoverlooked that, even in the aesthetic in-tensification of a rt , intuition is at the sametime will. It em ana tes from an underlyingdisposition of chara cte r. The work of art isthe expression of a personality wh osese ns e of reality is the result of in-num erable acts of will in the past whichhave led the artist to explore somepossibilities of experience and neglectma ny others. The disposition of cha racterand sensibility which has been built upover th e years now selects the m aterial forthe aesthetic creation. By vir tue of his pastwilling, the artist is particularly sensitiveto some potentialities of human life, lesssensitive to oth ers. We know the will by itsfruits in imagination.Babbitt insists that, although art musthave a special aesthetic integrity andcoherence to be truly itself, what ispoetically expressed can differ greatly invalue. Art can be m ore or less profound ortruthful in its statement of lifespossibilities-truthful not in an intellectualsense but in an intuitive sense. Art rangesfrom works which capture with depth andfullness the es sence of human existence,with its anchor in a universal moral ord er,to works of a trivial and superficial type orof positively disto rting vision. Som e richlypoetic works exclude or disfigureelem ents of reality. For instance , it is notuncom mon for man t o crave refuge fromeverything mundane and uncomfortable.The individual sometimes allows himselfto be intoxicated by his imagination. Heloses himself in das F abelhafte. Intuitionsthat might disturb the escapist vision of apleasant, rosy existence a re not allowed toenter the poetic synthesis. The will at theroot of th e intuitive creation excludeswhat is not pleasing to it. Most works ofart reflect some such more or less

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deliberate contraction or distortion ofreality, betraying the bias and selectivityof th e will that c rea ted it. Tru ly grea tworks of art , by contrast, ar e open to all ofwhat life may contain. This requires a willpermitting contemplation of t h e moredisturbing an d painful dimens ions of ex-perience, as well as the potentialities forpleasures and happiness.A person used to finding the m eaning ofexistence in passing pleasures will tend toexpress in his art possibilities of ex-perience consonant with that sense ofwhat life has to offer. In so far as he hasany intuition of mo ral responsibility andallows it to enter his poetic vision, he islikely to express it according to his ac-custom ed hedonistic sensibilities, hence insome cynically distorted form. Theresulting poem will not convey mans ac-tual moral predicament. The poem willlack what Babbitt calls centrality.Although the hedonistic intuition may beaesthetically enthralling, it has n o depth ofvision. To the extent that the poem doesnot build up an entirely illusory intuitionof life, it offers mere ly fragm entary vision.

If , on the other hand , the hedonisticallyinclined poet permits the sudden intuitionof th e ethical will to expand an d deepen soas to come into its own, which assumesthat an orientation of will hospitable totha t new quality of imagination is assert-ing itself, his aesthetic vision will und ergoa transformation. A different sense ofwhat life may contain begins to arrangethe material of intuition. Only an imagina-tion which is sensitive to possibilities of ex-perience in their relation to what isultimately real can express the essence ofthe human condition. This does not meanthat all men of good cha racter can alsowrite and appreciate poetry. It does meanthat the m ost penetrating imagination canemanate only from a human soul attunedto the real ethical opportunities anddangers of existence.The unwillingness of m ost modernaestheticians to consider the ethical con-ten t of art leads Babbitt to stress that ques-tion in his own work. Observers insuffi-ciently attentive to Babbitts arguments

have concluded that for Babbitt the onlyvalue to be expressed in art is ethical. Oneinterpreter generally sympathetic to himhas suggested that according to Babbittl i t e r a tu re is e th ics touched byemotion. I 9 This is a misunderstanding.Babbitt regards literature not as ethics butas imagination, and as such it must meetthe aesth etic criteria of all gen uine poetry .Also, poetry cannot be confined to ethicalintuition. With its characteristic freshness,art should express a wide ran ge of possi-ble e xp erience . In Babbitts words, Art ofcourse cannot thrive solely, or indeedprimarily, on the higher intuitions; it re-quires th e keenes t intuitions of sense.What is distinctive about Babbittsaesthetics is his view that if art is to hav ehuma ne purpose, these intuitions of s ens emust com e under th e control of t he higherintuitions.20 This does not mean thatgreat art somehow dismisses or ignoresthe var iety of human experience. W hatdistinguishes great art is that it intuits thismultiplicity in its most significant aspe ct,that is, in its bearing on what ultimatelycompletes human existence. Without thissense of proportion , a rt must presentmore or less unreal and twisted visions oflife. Deeply pessimistic, cynical, or utopianview s of th e world reveal in their ownway th e self-serving, confining orientationof th e will tha t carries them. Poetry whichis not sensitive to the real term s of lifemay still cap ture acutely a nd vividly som eele ments of existence. I t may give fine ex-pression to feelings of absurdity an ddespair. T he ethical imagination is certain-ly not unfamiliar with such states. But inthe ethical imagination bursts of fragmen-tary insight found in lesser works of intui-tion ar e absorbed into a more com prehen-sive vision w hich d eepens and completesthe intution of t he Whole that they renderonly imperfectly. Feelings of absurd ityand despair are affirmed and expressed b ythe higher imagination, but through itthey are seen m ore deeply and clearly asth e man ifestations of life lacking ethicalorder. The ethical imagination synthesizesthe vast and varied potentialities ofhuman experience by creatively subsum-

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ing and arranging them under the intui-tion of that power in the world whichmak es for happiness.Because of his insistence tha t ar t is m oreor less profound in proportion as itpen etra tes to the ethical co re of existence,Babbitt has often been accu sed of favoringmoralistic or didactic art. Typically, thischarge has been made without citingspecific evidence. In so far as it does notsimply rest on willful ignorance ofBabbitts actual arguments, the chargeshows an inability to grasp the subtletiesof his reasoning. Babbitts view that greatart must have centrality is in fact in-distinguishable from his emphatic rejec-tion of didacticism. He writes, It is ingeneral easy to be didactic, hard toachiev e ethical insight.21 Th e mark ofgenuinely ethical art, Babbitt argues, isthat it is free from preaching. Sophoclesis more ethical than Euripides for the sim-ple reason that he views life with moreimaginative wholeness. At the same timehe is much less given to preaching thanEuripides.22

Equally unwarranted is the accusationt h a t B a b b i t t is a d o c t r i n a i r eneoclassicist in ae ~t he tic s.~ 3Babbitt doesdiscern an elem ent of truth in the classicalidea of imitation: ar t should express th euniversal. But he also endorses themodern idea of th e creativ e imagination.Great art freshly expresses the universal.Babbitt rejects the Greek conception ofthe imagination as an essentially passivefaculty: In its failure to bring out with suf-ficient explicitness [the] creafiue role ofthe imagination and in the stubborn in-tellectualism that this failure implies is tobe found, if anyw here, the weak point inthe cuirass of Greek p h il o ~ o p h y . ~ ~Babbittoften criticizes, and sometimes ridicules,neo-classicist an d formalist notions of ar t.H e warns that a purely traditionalhumanism is always in dange r of falling in-to a rut of pseudoclassic f o rr n al i~ m . ~ ~Even sym pathe tic inte rpre ters of Babbitthave misconstrued his notion of ethicalimagination. Neo-Thomist Louis Mercier,fo r instance, com pares it to the intellectusof Scholasticism.26 Although intellectus

may be understood as having a strong in-tuitive element, the parallel drawn byMercier is bound to be misleading. Babbittgoes to great lengths to show that whilethe ethical imagination grasps the univer-sal, it does not do so in an intellective , con-ceptual manner. Artistic intuition andthought are different modes of know inglife. The wisdom contained in great artdoes not result from reason controlling theimagination but is intrinsic to the mostpenetrating imagination. This wisdom isintuited universality. Genuine art, B abbittinsists, is free from clogging intellec-t ~ a l i s m . ~ ~What has been superficially interpretedas aesthetic moralism or didacticism inBabbitt is in fact his opposition to art thatdistorts life and loses its fullness. Heknows certainly as well as his critics thatart has its own aesthetic needs, which aredifferent from those of mo ral action an dphilosophy. He is fully aware that artdiscovers new a nd som etimes unexpectedpotentialities of ex isten ce an d thusliberates man from ever threatening

routinization and entropy. But primaryam ong the things tha t the highest form ofimagination creatively expresses is theethical purpose at the core of human life,thwarted or realized. Babbitt writes: Toassert that the creativeness of theimagination is incompatible with centrali-ty or, what amounts to the same thing,with purpose, is to assert that thecreativeness of the imagination is incom-patible with reality or at least such realityas man may attain.28Th e aestheticism oflart pour lart detaches art from thatdeeper stratum of order a nd direction inlife and leaves the imagination more orless free to wander wild in some empireof chimeras. 29It is possible to turn to the literary cred oof Pe ter Viereck for a succinct expressionof what is also Babbitts aesthetic theory.Viereck rejects both so apbox poetryand formalistic virtuosity. Why confinepoetry to this false choice between Agit-prop an d furniture polish? We have a thirdalternative: not the moral preachiness ofdidacticism, but th e moral insight of lyrical

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human ity. Poetry without ethical cen teris poetry without genuine humanity.Devotees of aestheticism do not un der -.stand, Viereck w rites, that you will c a pture beauty only by seeking more thanbeauty. Beauty which does not expressour essential humanity tends to lose alsoits beauty. What dehumanizes, de-lyricizes.30A poetic vision, whether created orrecreated by us, draws our whole per-sonality into itself. I t we have some moralch ara cte r, a part of our experience of th epoem is the reaction of our higher will tothe intu ition of life presented in it. To theextent that the intuition ignores orviolates the conce rns of the higher willand is censured by the moral uneasiness ofour participating self, a dissonance marsthe aesthetic vision. I f , by contrast, thepoem successfully renders th e pre sen ce ofthe higher will in the world, the intuitionexpresses our deepest humanity andpulsa tes in harm ony with reality itself. Fora mature literary critic to tak e acco unt ofthese reactions of his aesthe tically par-ticipating self has nothing to do withnarrow -minded moralistic censorship. Th ecritic is providing a statement regardingthe imaginative depth of th e poem .Irving Babbitt has long been vilified bythe aestheticians. Yet, in one of t he in-tellectual ironies of this cen tury , hisaesthetical position was belatedly con-firmed by th e philosophical authority w homore than perhaps anybody else in thiscentury had contributed to a neglect ofthe moral substance of. art-BenedettoCroce. Possibly under the influence ofBabbitt, whose New Laokoon (1910) hereviewed favorably, Croce substantiallyrevised the views h e had expressed in hisAesthetic (1902). Starting abo ut 1917, heincreasingly stresses the universal contentof imagination as such: In every poeticaccent, in every imaginative creation,there lies all human destiny - all thehopes, th e illusions, the sorro ws an d joys,the greatness and the wretchedness ofhum anity, the ent ire dram a of Reality. . ..It is therefore unthinkable that artisticrepresentation may ever affirm the mere

particular, the abstract individual, thefinite in its finiteness. Even more signifi-can t in the present conte xt, Croce acceptsBabbitts idea that there are degrees ofimaginative profundity and that artachiev es greatness in proportion as it ex-presses the ethical essence of hum an ex -istence. In great a rt, Croce argues in 1917,the w hole of the hum an spirit is intu itedsuch art has totalit&. That totality in-cludes mans ethical nature. Stating nowwhat had long been Babbitts view, Crocewrites: If the moral force is, as it certainlyis, a cosmic force and queen of the world. . . it dominates by its own pow er; and a rtis the more perfect, the more clearly itreflects an d expresses the developm ent ofreality; the more it is art, the better itshows the morality inherent in the natu reof things.31 It is hardly plausible tos u s p e c t C r o c e of d o c t r i n a i r eneoclassicism, moralism, or didacticism.Like Babbitt, he is reacting against poetrylacking proportion, depth, and fullness.

I I IIF IRVING BABBIIT does not sufficiently ex-plore th e logical dimension of knowledg e,including the epistemological basis of hisown co ncep ts, he ha s mo re of importanceto say about the ethical-aesthetical aspectof t he prob lem of rea lity. For him thehum an personality is turned tow ard reali-ty primarily through the interplay ofethical will and the type of imaginationthat it begets. Conversely, the unethicalwill and its corresponding imaginationdraw man into unreality. Were it not forth e possibly poetic quality of the low erimagination, it would have little power toinfluence civilized men. To reorient thewill of modern man, Babbitt teaches, it isnecessary to expose his decad ent, escapistimagination.Babbitts ethical-aesthetical doctrinesuggests that epistemology as ordinarilyconceived in the modern world must bethoroughly revised. Unfortunately, Bab-bitts conception of reason is not in-teg rated with his understand ing of theultimate criterion of reality. The latte r pa rt

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of his work requires a logical supplement.For reason to know reality and havehuman relevance, it must be able to alignitself with th e light tha t stre am s forth fromethical and aesthetical activity. And so itcan, according to Croce. Unlike thepragmatic and analytic intellect recog-nized by Babbitt, truly philosophicalreason gives reflective self-awareness tothe universal as it manifests itself in con-crete e x p e r i e n ~ e . ~ ~Is that not the samereason that formulated Babbitts variousideas abo ut life and letters? Justified reser-vations about Croce in so me ar eas do notpreclude learning from his logic.

It is not possible here to delve into theways in which reason and intuition con-verge and diverge. It might lead tomisunderstanding, however, not to bringup th e distinction betwee n historical reali-ty and th e sense of reality convey ed byart. According to Croce, the office ofphilosophy is to tak e acco unt of ex-perience in its simultaneously universaland historical aspect. The specificallyphilosophical crite rion of reality is thedirect perception of the difference be-tween will realized in practical action an d

will remaining in th e form of unrealizeddesire, more or less transfigured intoimagination.33 To exem plify, philosophicalreason records in existential judgmentswhat the ethical or unethical will haswrought historically. The events depictedin poetic intuition a re identified by reasonas not belonging to th e historical world. Atthe same time, philosophy registers poeticintuition as a historically existing activitycreating images of th at non-historicaltype.In Babbitts view, the question of realityis finally settled on non-intellectualgrounds. Most fundamentally, realitybecomes known through the exercise ofthe higher will, which brings forth bothpractical action and intuition. The ethicalimagination does not seek historical truth,but in its own nonconceptual manner itexpresses the core of reality. Babbittsethical-aesthetical doctrine discloses theimpotence of formal intellectual brillianced i v o r c e d f r o m e t h i c a l i n s i g h t .Epistemology can learn from Babbitt thatthe philosopher who wants to know reali-ty must partake of the cha rac ter of th egood man and t h e intuition of the grea tpoet.

Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism(Austin, Tex., 1977), p. 9. The Introduction to thisbook is only one of ma ny places wher e B abbitt callsatten tion t o the epistemological significance of hisethical an d aesthetical ideas. *On the need t o supple-men t Babbitts ethical-aesthetical id eas with a dialec-tical understanding of reason, see Claes G. Ryn andFolke Leander, Will, Imagination a nd Reason (forth-coming), which develops a general epistemology ofthe hum anities and social disciplines. Croces view ofreason is presented in Logic as the Science o f thePure Concept (London, 1917). 31rving Babbitt,Democracy and Leadership (Indianapolis, 1979). p.197. On the ultimacy of will in Babbitts thou ght, seeFolke Leander, Humanism and Natural ism(GBteborg, Sweden, 1937), Ch. X. For a discussion ofthe historical concretization of what is ethicallyuniversal, see Claes G. Ryn, History and the MoralOrder in Francis J. Canavan, ed., The EthicalDimension of Political Life (Durham, N.C., 1983).The Dhammapada, Translated and with an Essayby Irving Babbitt (New York, 1965), p. 109.sRousseau and Romanticism, p. 9. 6Democracy and

Leadership, p. 36. 7Rousseau and Romanticism, p.125. 8Democracyand Leadership, p. 28. gSee, for ex-ample, A llen Ta te, The Fallacy of Hum anism, in C.Hartley Grattan, ed., The C ritique o f Humanism(New York, 1930). A work of polemics rather thanscholarship, this article m isrepresents Babbitts posi-tion, as well as that of Paul Elmer More. More sym-pathetic to Babbitt in both tone and substance, butalso marked by failure to understand Babbitts ideaof the higher w ill, is T.S. Eliot, The Hum anism of Ir-ving Babbitt, in Selected Essays (New York, 1932).On this controversy and the meaning of the higherwill, see Claes G. Ryn, The Humanism of Irving Bab-bitt Rev isited, Modern Age, 21 (Summer 1977).ving Babbitt, Humanism: An E ssay at D efinition, inNorman Fo erster, ed., Humanism and America (PortWashington, N.Y., 1967; first published in 1930), pp .43-44. Similar statements are made by Babbittelsewhere, e.g., Rousseau and Romanticism, p. 287.It is not possib le here to go into Babbitts understa nd-ing of the relationship between humanism andspecifically religious life. For a discussion of that sub -ject which builds in par t on B abbitt, see Claes G. Ryn,

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"The Things of Caesar," Thought, 55 (December1980). IIDemocracy an d L eadership, pp. 250-51. T f .the similar argum ent of Eric Voegelin in TheEcumenic Age (Baton Rouge, La..1974). I3lrvingBab-bitt, On Being Creatioe (New York, 1968), p. xxxiii."Peter Viereck, Sha me and Gloryof the Intellectuals(New Y ork, 1965), p. 46 Viereck has in mind, amo ngothers, the clerical-minded T.S. Eliot, who is seen ashaving within himself also a romantic modernist. Cf.Rousseau and Romanticism, p. 205. l5On BeingCreatioe, p. xxxiv. 16Fora mo re detailed analysis ofBabbitt's idea of a higher w ill, see Folke Leander'sshort monograph, The Inner Check (London, 1974)and Claes G. Ryn, Democracy and the Ethical Life(Baton Rouge, La., 1978), esp. Part Two. "For adetailed explication of the voluntaristic basis of allhuman activity, see Benedetto Croce, ThePhilosophy of the Practical (New York, 1967). Thisedition is a reprint of th e partly unreliab le Englishtranslation of 1913. '8Democracy a n d Leadership, p.32. IgAustin Warren, New England Saints (Ann Ar-bor , Mich., 1956), p. 154. The phrase quoted by War-ren is from Matthew Arnold.201rving Babbitt, TheNew Laokoon (Boston, Mass., 1910), p. 227.21Rousseauan d Romanticism, p. 272. 22fbid.,p. 164.

23Thecharge is made by G.N.G. Orsini in BenedettoCroce: Philosop her of Art an d Literary Critic (Carbon-dale, I l l . , 1961), p. 219. 24Rousseauan d Romanticism,p. 30811. 25D emocracy an d Leadership , p. 57. 26SeeLouis Mercier, The Challenge of Humanism (NewYork, 1933), esp. pp. 161-70 and AmericanHumanism and the New Age (Milwaukee, Wis.,1948). 27Rousseau a n d Rom anticism, p. 170. Man'spast co nceptua l reflection on life does of course co n-tribute so methin g to the struc ture of a poetic vision,but ideas ar e absorb ed into art not in a conceptualbut an aesthetically transfigured form. 28Rousseauan d Romanticism, p. 203. 29Democracyan d Leader-ship, p. 171. On Babbitt's ide a of the imagination an don various misunderstandings of that idea, see FolkeLeander, "Irving Babbitt and the Aestheticians,"Modern Age, Vol. 6, No. 4 (1960). 30Peter Viereck,The Unadjusted M an (Boston, Mass., 1956), pp . 288,289. 31BenedettoCroce , Nuooi sagg i di estetica (Bari,Italy, 1920), pp . 126, 131. Th e latter quo te is from anessay on "The Character of Totality" first publishedin 1917. 32The distinction between pragmatic andphilosophical reason is developed a t length in Croce,Logic. 33Fora brief but penetrating explication of thephilosophical criterion of reality, see Croce,Philosophy of the Practical, Ch. VI.

babbitt and the problem of reality

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