Eliot Agonistes: Betwixt Poetry, Philosophy, and the Harvard Option

During Eliot’s six-year pursuit of a doctorate in philosophy at Harvard, he was privately ridiculing such mentors as F. H. Bradley, Henri Bergson, Josiah Royce, and Irving Babbitt, most notably in his journal, The March Hare. The crucial issue was their promotion of “the Absolute” (sometimes called “the ground of being),” a concept that Eliot found unable to cope with the sufferings relating to sex and death that are hugely prominent in Eliot’s poetry. Despite these misgivings, he continued his studies in philosophy, earned his doctorate from Harvard, and received an offer to teach the subject there. He kept that offer dangling until his literary career prospered and he could throw Harvard away. Later, his conversion to Christianity, not philosophy, solved the naturalistic problems of sex (he avowed chastity) and death (he believed in the supernatural). Eventually, he taught literature, not philosophy, at Harvard.