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Reserve Text From Andrew Milner, John Milton and the English Revolution Chapter 2: The World Vision of Revolutionary Independency We have already noted that Goldmann's sociology of literature has, as one of its main aims, the establishment of an ideal typology of possible world visions, and we have rejected the formalistic implications of such a typology. Nonetheless, it remains possible to retain Goldmann's central categories, on the condition that we understand the world vision as a concrete form of consciousness, rather than as a formal maximum possible consciousness. Goldmann points to the existence of five main world visions which have dominated human thought since the break-up of feudalism: dogmatic rationalism, sceptical empiricism, the tragic vision, dialectical idealism, and dialectical materialism. (1) |
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What primarily concerns us here are the two main world visions of classical bourgeois thought, the rationalist and the empiricist. In a sense both rationalism and empiricism form part Of a wider world vision, that of bourgeois individualism, in that they each posit as their central category the isolated individuals this is as true of Locke and Hume as it is of Descartes and Leibniz. But whereas rationalism constructed a system of uni- versal mathematics, of logical necessities, empiricism based itself, much more pragmatically, on the observed contingencies of the sensible world. Thus, for example, Hume attacked the whole concept of cause and inserted in its place the mere fact of empirical correlation.(2) Goldmann's sociology contrasts the growth of con- tinental rationalism with that of English empiricism, so much so that empiricism almost becomes the English disease. And indeed it is a truism that the English national cuIture has been characterised by an all-pervading empiricism, an ideological preoccupation with what is, to the exclusion of all consideration of alternative possibilities. Goldmann explains the genesis of English empiricism in terms of three main factors: firstly, that English bourgeois society was born out [51] of a class compromise between the bourgeoisie and the nobility, and that such circumstances necessarily gave birth to a more pragmatic and less radical world vision than did those which prevailed, for example, in France, where a long class struggle kept the bourgeoisie in radical opposition to the nobility; secondly, that the consequent absence of rationalist traditions itself militated against the emergence of rationalist philosophies; and thirdly, that the great English philosophers, Locke, Berkeley and Hume, wrote in a situation in which the bourgeoisie had already effectively assumed power, and that, in consequence, their work becomes the expression of a world vision based on the facts Of bourgeois society, rather than on the a priori necessity for its creation.(3) In general terms, we would accept this analysis, though we should add that the English class compromise between the 'bourgeoisie' and the 'nobility' occurred on the basis of the transformation of the English nobility into a landed bourgeoisie. Thus English bourgeois ideology is characteristically pragmatic and empiricist, but it is nonetheless a genuinely bourgeois ideology, and not, as Perry Anderson suggests, an ideological capitulation to the aristocracy. To argue, as Anderson does, that utilitarianism is a 'crippled caricature' of a bourgeois ideology, and that the 'hegemonic idealogy of this society was much more aristocratic combination of "traditionalism" and "empiricism", intensely hierarchical in its emphasis, which accurately reiterated the history of the dominant agrarian class'(4) is patently false. Utilitarianism was, and in many respects still is, the hegemonic ideology in English society. And what ideology could be more 'bourgeois' than that of utilitarianism? What possible role could there be for the rational utility-maximising individual in a traditional feudal society? We have, then, accepted the general characterisation of the English bourgeois world vision as empiricist. However, we must add that the predominance of empiricism in English bourgeois thought only dates from the Restoration in 1660, and more especially the Glorious Revolution in 1688, and that the revolutionary crisis of the mid- seventeenth century witnessed the creation and subsequent de- struction of an indigenous English rationalism. The social basis of English empiricism was, as we have noted, the coincidence of an already established bourgeois economic power with a gradual, pragmatic growth of bourgeois political power (in the sense of an Increasing bourgeoisification of the political system, in which the constitutional monarchy became progressively more 'constitutional' and the House of Commons became progressively more important [52] than the House of Lords). But the mid-seventeenth-century revolu- tionary crisis witnessed an alternative pattern of development. Whole sections of the bourgeoisie turned to the task: of a revolutionary transformation of the English feudal state machine into a fully- fledged bourgeois republic. And this conflict gave rise to a rationalist world vision, which contrasted the irrational present with the perfect rational institutions, modes of behaviour, etc., to which the revol- utionary bourgeoisie aspired. That world vision found political fern in Revolutionary Independency, and it was, of course, the failure of the independence enterprise which led the English bourgeoisie to the political strategy of gradualism and the world vision of empiricism. Nonetheless, the decades of the revolutionary crisis and its immediate aftermath do indeed witness the emergence of an indigenous English rationalism, which has, as its major intellectual spokesman, the poet John Milton. This is not, of course, an entirely original proposition. The association between Protestantism, capitalism, and rationalism is almost as old as sociology itself. It is to be found, for example, in both Engels's Introduction to Socialism: Utopian and Scientific and, of course, Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.(6) But both of these works can be criticised on two major counts. In the first place, they, each fail to understand the full extent to which revolutionary Protestantism can be viewed as a fully-fledged rationatist world vision. Certainly, Weber recognises the 'rational- ization of conduct ·within this world (7) as one of the main con- sequences of Protestantism. But he is primarily concerned with Protestantism per se, considered as a religion, rather than with its nature as a rationalist philosophy, and its relationship to other rationalisms, And secondly, they each radically overestimate, indeed misunderstand, the importance of Calvinism in the general protestant undertaking. We shall seek to demonstrate below that the genuinely revolutionary dynamic in Protestantism comes to fruition precisely in so far as a rejection of Calvinism is effected. The recognition of the importance of Protestantism in shaping the form of Milton's poetic achievement is equally commonplace. But again, the rationalist core of Milton's Protestantism is rarely recognised. (8) We intend to show, then, that the English revolutionary crisis did, in fact, produce a irrationalist world vision. Furthermore, we intend to demonstrate that this world vision can be seen to develop in two stages: the first of these is the period of revolutionary victory and the programme of reason triumphant, the second the period of reaction and the problematic of reason embattled. And in each of these stages in the development of [53] English rationalism, John Milton towers over his contemporaries, as the intellectual embodiment of the maximum real consciousness o the English revolutionary bourgeoisie. Let us attempt a brief sketch of the structure of the rationalist world vision. As we have already noted, rationalism is, in the first place, a. form of individualism. For the rationalist the central datum is the discrete individual, and it is he, and he alone, who decides what is true and what is untrue. if this is so, then it follows that the individual must be, in the most profound sense, in possession of his own freedom, for if the individual's behaviour is in any sense determined, or con- tingent, then the centrality of the individual must give place to the centrality of some other determining agency. The rational individual must, then, be free from all forms of constraint, whether they be external (institutions, etc.) Or internal (non-rational elements within the individual personality, i.e. the passions). This implies, politically, an opposition to privilege and tradition, ontologically, a conception of man based on a radical dualism between reason and passion, and ethically, an opposition to passion. Since we are dealing with revel- utionary Protestantism, a specifically Christian form of rationalism, it would seem legitimate enough to ask where God stands in this system. The answer is surprising: since the discrete individual is the central datum of the system, there is logically no independent place for God whatsoever. And this is precisely what we find in revolutionary Protestantism: certainly, the existence of God is never doubted, but God is conceived as having no practical independent existence other than through the medium of the discrete individuals of which the universe is practically composed. Let us elaborate on each of these categories at a little more length. The central datum of the rationalist world vision, we have said, is the discrete individcral. Revolutionary Protestantism asserted this doc- trine, centrally and primarily, in its insistence on the individualistic interpretation of the Bible. For medieval Catholicism, the interpretation of truth was the function of the church; for Luther, Calvin and Knox it was the function of the individual. Hence the demand for an English translation of the Bible was one of the first posed by English Protestantism. But Revolutionary Independency went much further than any previous form of Protestantism in its insistence of the primacy of the individual. In the conflict between the Presbyterians and the Independents, the latter argued for religious toleration and against the re-establishment of a monolithic state church, whether Anglican or Presbyterian. And the theoretical basis [54] of this tolerationism was a belief in the capacity of the individual, free ~ from the tyranny of the state church, to distinguish truth from error. The most: famous of the tolerationist tracts is, of course, Milton's Areopagatica, (9) But there were many others'(10) And perhaps the most succinct statenaent of the Independent position is to be found in The Anctent Bounds: There are two things contended for in this liberty of conscience: first to instate every Christian in his right of free, yet modest, judging and accepting what he holds; secondly, to vindicate a necessary advantage to the truth, and this is the main end and respect of this liberty. I contend not for variety of opinions; I know there is but one truth. But this truth cannot be so easily brought forth without this liberty; and a general restraint, though intended : but for errors, yet through the unskilfulness of men, may fall upon the truth, And better many errors of some kind suffered than one useful truth: be obstructed or destroyed.(11) On the question of toleration, the Levellers and Independents were in full agreement: both the Independent Heads of Proposals and the Leveller Agreement of the People call for toleration of religious dissent. (12) The Parliamentary Independents were as committed to the cause of toleration as was the Army--witness Vane's amendment to the League and Covenant which sought, at a time of Presbyterian -- predominance, to retain some way open to toleration by insisting that I reformation was to be carried through 'according to the Word of i God', rather than simply according to the principles of Presbyterianism.(l3) This insistence on the individual's right to in- terpret the Bible may appear, superficially at least, more akin to the scholastic emphasis on authority (in this case Biblical authority) than to rationalism. But such an assessment ignores the practical social logic ' of the argument. In asserting the individual's right to interpret the Bible, Independency in fact denied the validity of all other authorities, and firmly located the source of all truth, all knowledge, in the individual reason. Thus the Protestant appeal to Scripture becomes, in effect, an appeal to the individual reason. As Basil Willey observed, in an astute comparison between Protestantism and more orthodox 'rationalist' philosophies: 'The "inner light" of the Quakers ranks with the "Reason" of the Platonists, the "clear and distinct ideas" of ' Descartes, or the "common notions" of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, as [55] another of the inward certitudes by means of which the century was testing the legacies of antiquity and declaring its spiritual independence.'(14) Our second major rationalist category was that offreedom; freedom, firstly, from external (that is, political) constraints, and secondly from the internal constraints imposed by passion. Let us consider each in turn. That Revolutionary Independency, as a political force, was committed to a far-reaching attack on privilege and tradifian is almost self-evident. From the initial Parliamentarian opposition to the power of the bishops, and to the abuses of monarchical power, the Independents went on to launch a full-scale attack on the traditional institutions of England. They swept aside the traditionalist structure of the Parliamentarian Army and created the New Model Army, an army which, in its career structure, came as near to establishing 'equality of-opportunity' as has any subsequent English army; they abolished both the House of Lords and the monarchy (and in the process executed a king),' and 'purged' or dissolved parliaments as it pleased them; they broke the power of the industrial monopolies and smashed aside the constraints on improv- ing landlordism which the old feudal state machinery had imposed.(15) Perhaps the most famous of all Cromwell's words, 'I tell you, we will cut of this head with the crown upon it', expressed this mood with the utmost clarity. The Independents accepted no institution, no law, no tradition, as valid in itself, everything was tested against the criteria of reason and justice, and -that which was found wanting was discarded Indeed, one of the central features of Independency, which distinguishes it both from Presbyterianiasm an the right, and from the Levellers on the left, is its disregard for legality. Thus, for example, when the Independents set about the task of bringing the king to tjustice', they were attacked by both Presbyterians and Levellers for the unconstitutional manner in which they acted. The Levellers, of course, were no friends of the king, but they had persistently maintained, as had the Presbyterians, that many necessary liberties were already enshrined in English law: a central mode of argument in many of Lilburne's pamphlets is the reference to ancient law. And Lilburne had no doubts whatsoever that both Pride's Purge and the subsequent trial of the king were illegal acts. The Levellers, Lilburne tells us,'objected against their (i.e. the Independents) total dissolving or breaking the house and the illegality of their intended and declared trying of the King'. (16) And he goes on to contrast the Independents unfavourably with the grand rebels of the Dast, Korah, Dathan, [56] Abiram, the Anabaptists, John of Leyden and Knipperdolling, Jack Straw and Wat Tyler:
The Independent apologists did half-heartedly attempt to argue that Charles's execution was in accord with the law. But the main drift of their argument was to sweep aside the question of legality and to concentrate on the question of whether or not the execution was just. In Milton's words: 'What if the greater part of the senate should choose to be slaves, or to expose the government to Sale, ought not the lesser number to interpose, and endeavour to retain their liberty, if it be in their power.''(18) Thus did the Revolutionary independents deal with the majesty of the law. In the rationalist view of the world, the rational individual must be free, not only from external constraints, but also from the tyranny of his own passions. At the core of all rationalisms rests an ontology which sees in man a radical dualism between reason and passion. This dualism is no mere contingent factor in rationalism; rather, it is an essential component of any rationalist world vision in that it provides an explanation for the existence of unreason in the world. We have noted that rationalism takes as its central datum the discrete individual, and allows of no other factor in its interpretation of the world. It follows, then, that the existence of irrationalities (and to the bourgeois rationalist, the whole of previous human history is essentially irrational) must also be explained in terms of the faculties of the discrete individual. Hence, the category of' passion', the principle of the anti-rational within the individual man, is essential to the explanatory credibility of a rationalist system. And it fulfils precisely this role in the world vision of Revolutionary In- dependency. The Independents were characterised by a consistent soul-searching, a preoccupation with personal morality, and by a tendency to explain political behaviour, whether their own or that of their opponents, in purely personal terms. Thus, for example, [57] Thomas Collier contrasted the old political order with the new order coming into being in the following terms:' In respect of the persons ruling, they shall be such as are acquainted with, and have an interest in, the righteous God; that as formerly God hath many times set up wicked men to rule and govern ... so he will give it into the hands of the Saints'. (19) Or again, consider Adjutant Allen's account of the Independents' decision at Windsor in 1648 to discontinue negotiations with the king: And in this path the Lord led us not only to see our sin, but also our duty; and this so unanimously set with weight upon each heart that none was able hardly to speak a word to each other for bitter weeping, partly in the sense and shame of our iniquities; of our unbelief, base fear of men, and carnal consultations (as the fruit thereof) with our wisdoms, and not with the Word of the Lord. (20) When the Independents accused their enemies of sin (for example, the Leveller Walwyn was accused of being a drunkard and whoremaster (21) this was no mere propaganda ploy; since they themselves were in possession of reason, it had to follow that their opponents were under the sway of passion. Milton's explanation of popular opposition to republicanism is thus characteristically independent: If men within themselves would be governed by reason, and not generally give up their understanding to a double tyranny, of custom from without, and blind affections within, they would discern better what it is to favour and uphold the tyrant of a nation. But, being slaves within doors, no wonder that they strive so much to have the public state conformably governed to the inward vicious rules by which they govern themselves.(22) We noted, in our earlier brief sketch of the structure of the rationalist world vision, that rationalism is, in a strong sense, logically atheistic. Now atheism would seem a very strange charge indeed to level at men such as Cromwell, Vane, Ireton, Harrison and Milton. And, of course, we do not mean to suggest that any of them ever doubted t2le existence of God. However, what they did do was to deny the independent: presence of God in the world. Rather, God is present in the world only through the Elect, that is through the medium of certain discrete individuals. Divine plans are achieved only through the exercise of the rational free wills of men, and not [58] through any direct intervention of God in the world. We would argue that any genuine theism must maintain some sort of tension, some sort of separation, between man and God. For once God is liquidated into the reasons of particular individuals, then what remains of God? And in revolutionary Protestantism this tension, this separation, is abolished. In effect, Milton and Cromwell, and the Independents generally, identified themselves with God, and identified God with history. To quote Collier again:
He then proceeds to list such oppressions as denial of freedom of conscience, the use of the French language in legal proceedings, tithes, and free-quartering! Only a rationalist God could object to tithes--and, we might add, only a rationalist poet would presume to justify the ways of God to man. When James Nayler, an ex-member of Cromwell's Army, declared himself God, he did little more than carry the doctrine of election to its logica1 conclusion, We have here dealt with the problem of the status of God in the Protestant rationalist: system in only a cursory fashion. A more detailed analysis must await our discussion of the theory of election, in both its Calvinist and non-Calvinist forms, and of the general significance of Calvinism in the Protestant enterprise-to which we shall turn in the following chapter. Thus far we have been concerned to elucidate the structure of the Revolutionary Independent world vision as it developed in the years of triumph. But the break-up of the Protectorate and the Restoration in 1660 imposed upon the former Independents a new problematic: how to explain the triumph of unreason. Here we are faced with the problem that censorship effectively prevented ally public articulation of the revolutionary Protestant response to the Restoration. And not only censorship; the execution of the leading regicides was an even more effective obstacle to the articulation of opposition. But in Milton' great poems we do indeed find a systematic working out of such a response. In fact, there developed two alternative, but not incompatible, genuinely rationalist solutions to the problem of unreason triumphant. The first of these is the personal individualist response, which found its religious expression in the quietism of, for example, the Quakers. It is important to remember that this quietism was not an original feature of Quaker religion. As Alan Cole [59] observed: 'Pacifism' was not a characteristic of the early Quakers: it; was forced upon them by the hostility of the outside World.'(24) This theme of personal redemption, of stoic resistance to the irrationalities of the world, is central to that great literary monument to the: Protestant conscience, written by an ex-soldier in Cromwell's Army, John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. It is also of central importance in Milton's later poems but there it is combined with a second alternative response to the victory of unreason, the politico-historical response, which counterposes the future triumph of reason to its present defeat. We shall argue that it is this theme which becomes progressively more important: in Milton's later work so that, ultimately, he is obliged to work out a conception of history. The final expression of the revolutionary Protestant world vision, as it appears in Milton's work, is, then, embodied in a sense of the tension between particular defeats and the epic victory of the historical-universal. And this notion of the tension between the particular and the historical-universal, we will argue, represents a considerable advance beyond the simple dualisms of the earlier optimistic rationalism. But before we turn to a detailed examination of Milton's work, we must consider first the precise details of- the English revolutionary crisis which produced both the world vision of Revolutionary Independency and the literary and philosophical writings of John Milton. |
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