Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold Edition: Culture and Anarchy (Oxford World's Classics) PUBLICATION HISTORY The first book edition of Culture and Anarchy came out in 1869. The first chapter of the work was

originally entitled, "Culture and its Enemies," and was his last lecture as Professor of Poetry at

Oxford in June 1867; in July, this lecture was published in Cornhill Magazine. The essay spurred

a number of responses, and soon, Arnold's attempts to respond to these responses grew into a

sequence of essays in Cornhill published between January to August 1868. These essays would

later form the collection, Culture and Anarchy. Arnold added a preface, introduction, and conclusion to the 1869 book edition, but the essays

generally remained in their original forms. Later editions (1895, 1882, 1883) tended to omit many

of the specific personal and topical references since so much of Arnold's work was wedded to

debates and discourses immediately contemporary with original publication. My summary and

analyses are based on the 1869 book edition. SUMMARY/SCHEMA This schema summarizes Arnold's aspects of culture that will bring human society to greater

perfection, and the aspects of modern life that will bring human society towards anarchy.

TOWARDS CULTURE TOWARDS ANARCHY

-Sweetness and Light (Beauty and

Intelligence)

-Hellenising: a more holistic, internal,

intellectual transformation to see things “as

they truly are”

-Idea of eternal process, progress, vital

movement of thought

-Making reason and will of God prevail

-“best self” (collectively, everyone will

agree over values if everyone is cultivating

their best selves)

-need for ideas before action

-“right reason”

-ensuring “light” is not actually darkness

-allowing “consciousness to play freely and

simply” to cultivate disinterested views of

things and to avoid blind orthodoxies

-Critique as actionable and pragmatic

-State authority needed to reign in anarchy;

should not be afraid of State as long as it

expresses collective “best self”

-Fire and Strength

-Philistinism

-Hebraising: tendency towards action, fire,

strict adherence to rules

-“Machinery”

-Newspaper orthodoxies

-Middle class liberalism

-cultivating natural taste for “bathos”

-“Ordinary self”

-Random action, or fixed rules for action

without ideas behind them

-“Doing as one likes” as the middle class,

liberal doctrine

-“One thing needful”

-Fetishizing the production of wealth and

manufactures

-Mindless partisanship – rule bound

“liberals” and “conservatives”

-Fanaticism: nonconformists are perhaps as

rule-bound and counter to individual

thought as the Established Church

-“Clap-trap”

Preface: Arnold praises Bishop Wilson, critiques the provinciality of nonconformist religion and their

Hebraistic "sacrifice of all other sides of [their] being to the religious side," and idealizes

Elizabethan state's capacity to absorb sectarian conflicts. The Preface was written as a response to

the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Introduction: Arnold signals that he is not aloof from politics, as some of his critics would say: "I am liberal,

yet I am a liberal tempered by experience, reflection, and renouncement, and I am, above all, a

believer in culture." Chapter 1: Arnold defines culture as 1) the endeavor to learn and see things as they are and 2) the need

to make "things as they are" prevail in human society. Culture's motive is "the love of

perfection." Culture is necessarily an endless process. The present day is too "mechanical" and

concerned with "machinery," which becomes Arnold's catch-all metaphor for knee-jerk values

of the Puritan, middle-class liberal: industrialization, population growth, wealth, free speech,

religious ardor: "The Englishman is always too ready to believe--that the having a vote, like the

having a large family, or a large business, or large muscles, has in itself some edifying and

perfecting effect upon human nature." In this chapter, Arnold also explains the origin of the

phrase, "sweetness and light" in Swift's Battle of the Books, and explains how culture will enable

men to "look beyond machinery." Chapter 2: This chapter is largely a response to critics of his that believe that he has no pragmatism, and is

full of "moonshine." Arnold argues that present-day "actions" are often impractical because they

lack the proper intelligence, ideas or "light" to guide them. The English notion of "doing as one

like" will degenerate into anarchy, especially when adopted by the working class. He describes

this as an "anarchical tendency...to worship freedom."Arnold provides specific examples of

people from each of the three classes (aristocracy, middle-class, working class), describing them

according to Aristotle's concept of "mean" and "excess," ultimately saying that they all lack the

proper "light" to be "centres of authority." Finally, Arnold distinguishes between "ordinary

selves" (the "self" circumscribed by class interests, material pursuit, political orthodoxies) and

"best selves" (the "self" which seeks intellectual and internal knowledge of "things as they really

are"). The collective "best self" will then serve as the center of authority for an ideal state. Chapter 3: Arnold revises/expands his definition of the different classes; reassigning them the terms

of Barbarians for the aristocracy, Philistines for the middle class, andPopulace for the working

class. Barbarians are too externally refined (caring for such things as chivalry, and their bodies)

and not internally refined enough. Philistines tend to be too self-satisfied, reliant on machinery,

stiff-necked, and hence resistant to "light."The Populace is dangerous because it aspires to

Philistine's "doing as one likes" which will lead to anarchy. Ultimately, Arnold believes in a

"common humanity" in individuals from all classes, provided that he is "curious" about his

"best self." In the final section of the chapter, Arnold shows how the current state, literature,

religion, and politics all cultivate "ordinary selves" and tend to cater to humanity's baser "natural

taste for bathos." Chapter 4 Arnold defines how Hebraism and Hellenism have the same ends - so that "we may be partakers

in divine nature"and thus they should be balanced in our society. Hebraism's close relationship

with sin tends to make it too much about conduct and obedience, and not enough about seeing

this as they really are. In history, there has been waves of Hebraism and Hellenism (Renaissance -

Hellenistic; Reformation - Hebraistic). Arnold values the "tenacity" of Hebraism but suggests that

Hellenism is needed to make sure the "light" which this tenacity follows is not "darkness." Chapter 5:

The ruling forces of the day are "fire and strength" rather than "sweetness and light." Arnold

cautions against the doctrine of "one thing needful." For example, literal readings of St. Paul see

resurrection as rising to a new life after death; Arnold suggests the possibility of rising to new life

(new light, understanding of life) before death. He also offers the story of one Mr. Smith, who

committed suicide because of apprehensions about money loss, as a critique of the "one thing

needful" - Smith thought that middle-class values (of which wealth is key) were all that one

aspired to. Chapter 6: Arnold does his best here to offer practical examples whereby his critique might be useful. He

shows how the disestablishment of the Irish church, the Real Estate Intestacy Bill, and Free Trade

policy are all instances of knee-jerk, orthodox, mechanical liberalism. Arnold is against

partisanship because partisanship fosters orthodoxies; sometimes critique will tends toward the

"liberal" and other times, toward the "conservative." Arnold's "action" is thus critique.

Conclusion: In the conclusion, Arnold makes a plea for public order, and the strong regulatory arm of the

state. Since culture has not yet perfected people's internal frames of reference, anarchic

tendencies need to be quashed by the state.