of a church’s symbolic practices (its rites and rituals) as placed in terms of its dogmas.
But though ideally the dramatistic approach heads in the study of religious forms, the social obstacles are obvious. First, in a nation of many faiths, there would be embarrassment in the mere singling out of any one doctrine for special study, in a secular school. Second, dramatism would also require a systematic concern with the misuses to which a religious terminology can be put, as when its spirituality becomes a sheer rhetorical shield for the least spiritual of special interests. And though, if nothing else were involved, a truly religious person might be expected to welcome any teachings, from whatever source, that help admonish against the misuse of religion, there are many kinds of susceptibility here that make such considerations unadvisable.
Consider, for instance, the frenzy with which Molière was attacked for his comedy, Tartuffe, his enemies proclaiming that religion itself had been slandered in his portrait of a religious hypocrite. And even though a dramatistic analysis of such matters would be much milder, since it would but “study” temptations that Molière sought to make dramatically salient, it could not go far without raising resentments that would militate against its own purposes, by intensifying the very passions it would assuage.
Fortunately, the main concern in a dramatistic treatment of religious language (and of the rites rationalized by such a language) resides elsewhere. There are broad principles of theological placement that can be studied, for instance, when one is studying modes of placement in general. Thus, when considering the formal relationship that prevails between “scene” and “act” in a systematic terminology dealing with such matters, one can include various theological pronouncements in a list that also includes various secular treatments of the same problem. And by such means, theological considerations can be introduced relevantly, without much risk of the embarrassments that might result if a class of secular students were to “index” any one religious terminology as thoroughly as they might index a novel or drama.
A dramatistic stress could not simply omit such subjects, however. For the position is based on the awareness that religious terminologies have charted with especial urgency and thoroughness the problems of “sin” and “redemption” as these take form against a background of hierarchal order. Here, then, are the grandest terminologies for the locating of the attitudes that, by our interpretation, arc grounded in the feeling for negativity, the “idea of no,” a symbolistic genius that makes itself felt in a variety of manifestations. Examples of such manifestations are sacrifice, mortification, penance, vicarious atonement, conversion, rebirth, original sin, submission, humility, purgation, in brief, “conscience”; thence secondarily in rejections, revolts, impatiences; and so with intermediate realms like indifference, betrayal, psychogenic illness, attempts to resolve social antitheses; and finally in the purely technical realm, as with the ability to know that the words for things are not the things, that ironic statements are to be interpreted in reverse of their surface meaning, and that the range of language can be extended metaphorically without error only if we know how to “discount” a metaphorical term.
There is a crucial paradox in the dramatistic approach to religion, however. For whereas it leads to an almost minute interest in the letter of the faith, requiring a particular stress upon the terms that specify doctrine, dogma, its approach to such elements is not doctrinal, but formal. That is, it does not ask: “Is such a doctrine literally true or false?” Rather, it asks, “what are the relationships prevailing among the key terms of this doctrine?” And: “Can we adapt the terminology to other terminologies, at least somewhat?” For instance, one might ask whether theological statements about “original sin” could fit with a purely secular notion that there is a kind of categorical guilt implicit in the nature of all sociopolitical order, with the malaise of its “degrees,” a malaise sharpened by the feeling for negativity, as embodied in the “rights and wrongs” or “yeses and noes,” of man’s linguistically heightened conscientiousness.
Such a secularly formal (or, if you will, “aesthetic”) approach to the literal particularities of dogma must be insufficient, as judged by the tests of advocates who would proclaim one doctrine and no other as the whole and only truth. But though educators, being concerned with preparations rather than fulfilments, might for their pains be classed among those “trimmers” who after death were denied even entrance into hell, since they could not wholly die through never having wholly lived, yet as regards the needs of education for the “global” conditions that technology is imposing upon us, precisely such a deflection seems particularly needed at this time. For it would seem to go as far as humanly possible toward the forming of such attitudes as are required if men of many different faiths are to participate in a common parliament of all nations and are to confront one another in an attitude better than mere armed neutrality, or in a diplomatic silence whereby all sorts of very important things are left unsaid. For though any specific measure can be debated in such a spirit, a world organization can flourish “positively” only in so far as all its members can work toward a frame of reference common to all.
It is the thesis of this essay that, since all divergent doctrines must necessarily confront one another as doctrinal “idioms,” a framework for the lot could be provided only by the perfecting of some terminology for the study of idioms in general. A terminology as so conceived must necessarily adopt some point of view in which all could share. And a formalistic view is such a one, at least in principle. We say “in principle,” since there are still valid points of disagreement as to whether a “dramatistic” species of formalism should be the kind to opt for. And Professor Benne, in this “dramatism,” would prefer a “tragic” to a “comic” one, for reasons he has explained in his article on “Education for Tragedy.” We only contend that a generally linguistic approach to the problem would be the proper counterpart of the purely pragmatic arrangements for having addresses at the United Nations translated into several languages and having choices among these translations made quickly available to the various delegates, with the help of machines.
The same considerations apply, of course, to purely “secular religions,” notably such political philosophies as capitalism or dialectical materialism. These, too, are terminologies of action, hence essentially “dramatistic” in structure—and whatever their vast disagreements, they can at least meet in terms of their nature as terminologies of action. Admittedly, such an approach is not enough to resolve specific issues that lead to blunt, head-on collisions. One cannot ask an educational method to do the impossible. But one can ask that it provide a positive equivalent for the area of commonalty which even opponents must share, if they are to join the same battle.
Where the various “persuasions” are brought together, what topic surely transcends them all but the question of persuasion itself? If one particular persuasion among the lot could triumph, then we’ll concede, however grudgingly, that such a result might be all to the good, though at the very least we’d want to suggest: The differences among the various areas of the world would soon give rise to new local emphases that, to many, would look like outright heresy, whereat the squabbles would begin anew. For such are the temptations to which the symbol-using species is prone, by reason of the nature of symbols. And, for these reasons, at least so far as the linguistic approach to educational problems is concerned, we believe that, faute de mieux, the nearest man will ever get to a state of practical peace among the many persuasions is by theoretical study of the forms in all persuasion.
It is regrettable that the author of the greatest rhetoric wrote his tract before the data on the great world persuasions were available to him. So, while Aristotle’s formal treatment of the subject remains, to this day, the greatest of its kind, regrettably he had but comparatively trivial examples of verbal wrestling to analyze (trivial, that is, as compared with the symbolic ways of the great world religions, both worldly and other-worldly, that took form since his time, or since the awarenesses available to him). But the principles remain intact; and they are in their very essence dramatistic; and a search for the forms of persuasion, as exemplified in later materials, might very profitably abide by the suggestions which his treatise provides. Nor should we forget that, elsewhere in his own work, he
