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ALVIN C. KIBEL
for good ,or
ill
must be guarded from our rationality, on the grounds
that reason
is
not suited to understand it-( the chief safeguard
be–
ing, for Eliot, surrender of our rationality to higher spiritual au·
thority). The various terms of New Criticism, then, would be equivalent
to the neutral terms of science, but instead of standing for what
we
know, they would stand for what we do
not
know, like a marginal gloss
saying, "No room here for further inquiry." (Mr. Righter arrives at
this conclusion by his own route: a critical term, like "texture," he
argues, "stands for the things left over when we have finished talking
about those things for which a vocabulary exists-something very
im·
portant but which somehow eludes words.") Such terms,
in
other words,
together with the methods of analysis accompanying them, would
in·
duce the high ethical surrender managed by Eliot's submission to the
church. They would prevent us from dealing with our perpetually
insufficient moral equipment, and so reducing prematurely, the charged
experience of poetry-making it accessible to us
as
if
it were neutral,
and putting aside the business of social or ethical judgment as an
in·
dependent concern.
In supporting his position, Mr. Righter uses a variant of G.
E.
Moore's argument against naturalism in ethics-that mode of reason·
ing according
to
which certain words, like "pleasure," "utility," and
So
forth, because they can be used in varying contexts to distingUish the
experience of value from experiences of other kinds, are therefore
synonymous with the word "good." M'oore's case rested upon the
as·
sumption that whatever is designated by the word "good"
prompts
the
experience of value, while the objects designated by words like
"pleasure" or "utility" do not. For M,oore, there was no invariable
connection between any set of empirical conditions and the experience
of value-no qualities of life that are inherently moral or inherently
immoral. Philosophers who commit what M,oore termed the naturalistic
fallacy really confuse the particular conditions which lead them to have
the experience of "good" with "good" itself, which is beyond arbitra·
tion. The coming of socialism, ,or the owning of a new motor-car, or
the reading of
Ulysses
may make possible for one person or
anoth~r
(perhaps for a whole generation ) the experience designated by "good,"
but that experience itself ought not to be identified with such fugitive
conditions. The implication of Moore's case was that the experience of
"good" is simply part of our human condition, and should be accepted,
whenever it occurs, as a
given-something
distinct from our
~nner
of
accommodating to it.
Moore's case for "gQOd" obviously parallels Eliot's for
"poetry."
Both take as an assumption that the experience of value either happens
