To Worship Burning Art: T.S. Eliot's "Little Gidding" as the Organon of F.W.J. von Schelling's System of Transcendental Idealism

Abstract: Western philosophy has long been riven by debates over realism and idealism. T.S. Eliot entered this debate early in his career, ultimately turning to poetry as the relativizing solution to the problem. However, at the very closure of his poetic output, Eliot issues a subtly idealistic answer to the contradiction between realism and idealism. Surprisingly, this is not the idealism of F.H. Bradley that Eliot studied as a philosopher, but that of F.W.J. von Schelling. To that end, Four Quartets can be mapped onto Schelling's System of Transcendental Idealism . The opposition between realism and idealism that enervates both is in fact overcome through the same solution: the metaphysical incursion of the work of art. As a result, "Little Gidding" serves as a pinnacle of transcendental idealism, retroactively unifying ideal and real in a way that Schelling could point to but which only Four Quartets could enact.