Attitudes Toward Money

I recently had a piece published in the Kenneth Burke Journal. Here is the abstract:

Attitudes toward the pecuniary are peculiar. One reason we misunderstand money is because it defines and answers to both our animal nature (necessity) and our symbolic nature (property). In this paper I trace the genealogy of Kenneth Burke’s attitudes toward money in the “Epilogue: Prologue in Heaven” to show how Burke’s logological approach toward money is original and in tension with claims offered by competing, economic attitudes toward money. Money sits forever at the nexus of our animal and symbolic nature because it simultaneously holds the place of value and signifies what we value. By stressing animal limits and symbolic infinity, Burke invites us to ponder the extent of human cooperation and the boundaries of human strivings. As attitudes, these invitations reveal that Burke wanted to re-appropriate the money symbol to the realm of logology and religion – away from capitalism – to exhibit the potential justice at the heart of human experience. That justice, however, only inheres so long as the tension between animal and symbol is respected in our pursuit of needs through symbolic action. Burke strings the tension between animal and symbol along the lines of a conversation between The Lord and Satan. Along the way he shows us a Lord sympathetic to our money crimes as well as all others and a loyal opposition that laughs at our infirmities. In this way, Burke works to redeem human commerce from its worst propensities by showing its relationship to the Word.

You can read the complete article here. What follows is some background on Kenneth Burke that may be useful before reading:

Kenneth Burke was the most influential literary and rhetorical critic of the 20C. He was an American thinker through and through, influenced strongly by William James and Thorstein Veblen, but also Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Aristotle. He is best known for his invention of the Pentad, a way of seeing texts (and the world) using a model derived from the theatre. The Pentad is after the deepest understanding of human motives possible. Burke is after Yes, No, and Maybe, frames of acceptance, rejection, and acceptance/rejection. As Jim Aune taught me, the Pentad is Burke's way of looking at the world from a God's eye view. Burke is searching for a Grammar and a Rhetoric of Motives, a theory that captures how symbols motivate human being(s). The Pentad is best thought of as a reworking of classical rhetoric's theory of the topics (topoi) with a dramatic dimension. Every investigation of human motive, if it wants to be as complex as human motive, must see all five of the following at once as well as recognize how ratios between the five elements can develop to further explain motive. Each of the elements corresponds to a particular philosophy and the parts of a dramatic story.

1. ACT: What is being done? Realism: plot.
2. SCENE: What is the context? Determinism: spectacle.
3. AGENT: Who is doing? Idealism: character.
4. AGENCY: What is it good for? Pragmatism: diction.
5. PURPOSE: What are human beings striving for? Mysticism: thought.

In addition to the Pentad as a way of explaining human motive, KB presented a corresponding "Definition of Man," from an essay of the same name that defines man as:

1. Symbol using animals, implying that much of our reality is propped up symbolically. Symbol-use should contain no temptation for flattery because it includes symbol misuse.

2. Inventor of the negative: there are no negatives in nature. Everything in nature simply is what it is.

3. Separated from our natural condition by instruments of our own making.

4. Goaded by a spirit of hierarchy, moved by a sense of Order. One might say obsessed by order. Add to this, language is intrinsically hortatory (see Richard Weaver's essay, "Language is Sermonic").

5. Rotten with perfection. The goadings of hierarchy with which we poke one another, instead of actually perfecting us, are often a source of our greatest, most glaring imperfections.

KB's interest in combining complex analysis of human motives within the broad context of human affairs (what he called the "human barnyard") sprang from his experience as a youthful intellectual during the Great Depression. His earliest works, including Counter-Statement, Permanence & Change, and Attitudes Toward History exemplify a deep interest in symbols and the way symbols build systems of significance.

Because his project was begun in the midst of the Great Depression, KB was often preoccupied by the money symbol. My piece looks at money as a symbol, a symbol of symbols, and how it both distracts from and brings us to God (the Idea of Order). It examines Burke's preoccupation with money in a dialog he wrote between The Lord and Satan that appears as an epilogue or post-conclusion at the end of his book The Rhetoric of Religion. The "Epilogue: Prologue in Heaven," is an imagined conversation between The Lord and Satan that takes place before the world was created. I am looking for understanding of money as a symbol, a symbol of symbols, and how it both distracts from and brings us to God (the Idea of Order).

In some ways I mimic Burke's writing style, which some may find enlightening and others baffling. One critic, Joseph Frank, said, "The Rhetoric of Religion, like everything else that Mr. Burke has written, is highly original, brilliantly stimulating, infinitely suggestive, and ultimately baffling."