Work #1170 · Mid period

The Idea of a Christian Society

T.S. Eliot's 1939 prose lectures — proposal for a properly-Christian organisation of British political-cultural life

Thomas Stearns Eliot · 1939 · English · Prose lectures / Religious-political essay

Tradition: Anglo-Catholic / Religious-cultural conservatism

Eliot's 1939 prose lectures — proposal for a properly-Christian organisation of British political-cultural life

The Idea of a Christian Society (1939) collects T.S. Eliot's March 1939 Boutwood Lectures at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Written in the months before the Second World War, the book develops Eliot's mature religious-political-cultural position: the inadequacy of secular liberalism, the need for a properly-Christian-cultural society as alternative both to liberal individualism and to totalitarian collectivism, the proper role of an established religious-cultural elite. Major statement of mature-Eliot religious-cultural conservatism.

Author

Thomas Stearns Eliot

Editions cited

The Idea of a Christian Society (Faber & Faber, 1939); later collected in Christianity and Culture (Harcourt Brace, 1949) with the 1948 Notes Towards the Definition of Culture

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School Embodiments

Conservatism · 25%

Anglican Broad-Church · 15%

Liberal Theology · 10%

Critical Theory · 10%

Communitarianism · 15%

Natural Law · 10%

Mysticism · 5%

Historicism · 10%

Conservatism 25%

Major statement of religious-cultural conservatism — Eliot as paradigm twentieth-century cultural conservative.

"A liberal Christian society — a Christian society of free institutions and a free press — would represent the proper European political-cultural inheritance." (The Idea of a Christian Society)

Anglican Broad-Church 15%

Anglo-Catholic-Established-Church framework — though Eliot recognises the difficulty of identifying the Christian society with any actual institutional religion.

"What I am proposing is not the recovery of the religious-medieval society but the proper modern-Christian alternative to liberal individualism and totalitarian collectivism." (The Idea of a Christian Society)

Liberal Theology 10%

Engages — and substantially critiques — liberal-Protestant tradition.

"Liberal Christianity has accommodated itself to liberal individualism; the result is religion as private-personal preference rather than communal-cultural foundation." (The Idea of a Christian Society)

Critical Theory 10%

Critical-theoretical work on the inadequacies of mid-twentieth-century liberalism, though from religious-conservative rather than Marxist-radical position.

"Liberal society has hollowed out the moral-religious foundations that liberalism itself requires to sustain itself." (The Idea of a Christian Society)

Communitarianism 15%

Strong communitarian framework — society as properly-religious-cultural community, not as aggregation of liberal individuals.

"A society is not the aggregation of its individuals; it is the community of common-religious-cultural inheritance." (The Idea of a Christian Society)

Natural Law 10%

Natural-law-influenced framework — society as having properly-natural moral-religious foundation.

"What is required is not a particular set of policies but the recovery of the natural-religious foundations of common life." (The Idea of a Christian Society)

Mysticism 5%

Continued underlying religious-mystical framework — though the work itself is in political-cultural register.

"What the religious-mystical tradition has taught is the proper foundation for the religious-cultural-political work the proposal requires." (The Idea of a Christian Society)

Historicism 10%

Strong historicist sensibility — Christian-cultural society as historical-cumulative achievement to be preserved.

"The Christian society we have lost was not a single historical moment but a cumulative inheritance built up across centuries." (The Idea of a Christian Society)

Internal Tensions

Eliot's religious-cultural conservatism has been variously assessed — defenders see prescient warning about liberal-secular hollowing-out, critics see authoritarian-elitist religious-political sensibility.

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I. Time

The March 1939 pre-war moment of the Cambridge lectures.

Attributes

Extent: Infinite Ontological Status: Substantival Grain: Continuous Freedom: Non-Deterministic Traversability: Linear Direction: Uni-directional Dimensionality: One

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II. Space

The British political-cultural setting that Eliot addresses.

Attributes

Extent: Finite Ontological Status: Substantival Curvature: Flat Dimensionality: Three Locality: Local

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III. Matter

The embodied political-cultural community whose proper religious-cultural form Eliot proposes.

Attributes

Extent: Infinite Ontological Status: Substantival Conservation: Conserved Dimensionality: Three Locality: Local

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IV. Observer

Eliot the religious-cultural-conservative essayist as proper observer.

Attributes

Time Instance: Single Space Instance: Single Knowledge Extent: Partial Knowledge Retainment: Total Physicality: Embodied Agency: Active Number: Plural Metaphysical Agency: Personal

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V. Energy

The religious-cultural-political energies of pre-war British conservative-religious thought.

Attributes

Extent: Infinite Ontological Status: Substantival Conservation: Conserved Dispersibility: Irreversible

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VI. Information

The political-religious-cultural content of the lectures.

Attributes

Ontological Status: Substantival Cosmic Conservation: Conserved Personal Conservation: Conserved Granularity: Discrete

Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint

Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.

Moses Maimonides (Rambam)

Computed school proximity

The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.

77%

Anglican Broad-Church