George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950): from realism to mysticism

In my post on Gary Sloan, I linked to his interesting article:

George Bernard Shaw: Mystic or Atheist?

At the same time I discovered this book review by a leading ideologue of the Communist Party of Great Britain:

Dutt, R. Palme. "Back to Plotinus," Labour Monthly, July 1921, Vol. I, No. 1.
Review of: Back to Methusela: A Metaphysical Pentateuch, by Bernard Shaw.

Both of these articles deal with Shaw's regression to mysticism. For a general critical study of Shaw's weaknesses, see:

Caudwell, Christopher (pseudonym of Christopher St. John Sprigg). "George Bernard Shaw: A Study of the Bourgeois Superman," Chapter 1 of Studies (1938), in Studies and Further Studies in a Dying Culture, introduction by Sol Yurick. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971. [Reprint of Studies in a Dying Culture (1938) & Further Studies in a Dying Culture (1949)]

One can get a usable snapshot of Shaw's life, work, and development from Wikipedia.

Several decades ago I noted discrepancies between and in Shaw's works. The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891) was soberly down-to-earth, puncturing the illusions of ideals and idealists. Man and Superman (1903), perhaps the summa of Shaw's philosophy, manifests Shaw's characteristic intermixing of nonsense about the life force into otherwise harshly realistic, often cynical, exposes of social reality.

I lack the patience to enumerate Shaw's crackpot views on various subjects. A couple years ago I stumbled on to his piece on Lysenkoism, in which Shaw shows his regret that Lysenko gave vitalism a bad name:

Shaw, George Bernard. "The Lysenko Muddle," Labour Monthly, January 1949.

Gary Sloan & "The Liberator" articles

The web site The Liberator is all over the place and has no specific politics. It claims to support free speech and oppose political correctness. Many of its articles are on freethought topics.

The most interesting articles are by English professor emeritus Gary Sloan. I will point out just a few for now.

I mentioned Shelley: Angelic Atheist (October 13, 2003) in my last post on Percy Bysshe Shelley, and The Book of Job and J.B.: Faith vs. Reason in a recent post.

Note Sloan's article on "Moby Dick" (November 14, 2001).

Sloan portrays Melville as viscerally anti-Christian. Melville eschews rosy optimism and prospects for amelioration, thinking not only man evil but God too. Sloan sees Melville as covertly in sympathy with Ahab. Whale-talk is allegorical god-talk. Sloan concludes:

After Moby Dick, Melville began to slough off the neo-Calvinism and slither toward agnosticism. Still, a part of him always longed for the custodial Papa Above of his boyhood.

This is not exactly profound or thorough analysis, but I think in its simplicity it captures a sizable chunk of Melville's motivation.

As it turns out, I've encountered Sloan before on the subject. He published an article in the Summer 2002 (Volume 22, No. 3) issue of Free Inquiry. I responded with an unpublished letter to the editor:

FEEDBACK: Melville the "Atheist"

For many years, I've had mixed feelings about George Bernard Shaw, his affinity for crackpot ideas and his ruining his realistic outlook with mysticism. I never examined the evolution of Shaw's perspective, though. Sloan's review is therefore useful:

George Bernard Shaw: Mystic or Atheist?

Check out the other articles on literary figures.

From Job to J.B.

I thought everyone had forgotten this play. I still remember it from high school; well, actually only these key lines:

I heard upon his dry dung-heap
That man cry out who cannot sleep:
"If God is God He is not good,
If God is good He is not God;
Take the even, take the odd,
I would not sleep here if I could
Except for the little green leaves in the wood
And the wind on the water."

— Nickles, in J.B.: A Play in Verse by Archibald MacLeish [The Pulitzer Prize play, 1959] (New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1958), p. 18.

But I'm not the only who remembers this play:

The Book of Job and J.B.: Faith vs. Reason by Gary Sloan (July 2003)

I think Sloan left out something important about the conclusion. J.B. rejects God, but he rejects "Satan" as well; more precisely, he rejects nihilism. In spite of suffering, J.B. learns to stand on his own two feet, to find dignity in his autonomy, not in God or circumstance.