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Ursula Edgington

Emotional
Labour
and Lesson
Observation
A Study of England's Further Education
Emotional Labour and Lesson Observation
Ursula Edgington

Emotional Labour
and Lesson Observation
A Study of England’s Further Education

123
Ursula Edgington
Cambridge, Waikato
New Zealand

ISBN 978-981-10-2989-9 ISBN 978-981-10-2991-2 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-2991-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016955423

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017

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of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
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For my husband, Justin. Without his
continued support, my learning journey,
including this book, simply would not have
been possible. And to all my students, many
of whom, over the years, have inspired me with
their resilience and creativity and motivated
me to seek out ways to be a better teacher.
Foreword

Observations of classroom practice are a ubiquitous feature of teachers’ profes-

sional lives nowadays. Whether it be in a formative context as part of a
teacher-training qualification, or as a summative source of evidence for quality
assurance purposes, there is no denying that observation has become an important
multifunctional tool in education. Many existing publications have to date focused
on the procedural aspects of the observation process with much less discussion of,
or consideration given to its wider impact on teachers’ identities, particularly in
relation to their emotional experiences and the subsequent repercussions for teacher
self-esteem and self-efficacy. This is certainly one of the distinctive features of
Emotional Labour and Lesson Observation: A Study of England’s Further
Education, a book which provides a fascinating psychosocial account of the lived
experiences of a group of practitioners.
Through a series of detailed case studies, this book is able to examine in depth the
real impact of performative-oriented approaches to observation on the emotional
selves of the teachers whose professional lives it charts. Adopting a poststructuralist
and psychoanalytical approach to exploring and explaining teachers’ perceptions of
observation is certainly a novel approach, and it adds some much needed colour to the
conventional monochrome accounts of the topic. Viewing observation through these
particular lenses means this book is able to illuminate aspects of the emotional
experiences of staff involved in observation and in so doing shed new light on a
common area of practice that has been largely under-theorised and under-researched
for many years. Using a range of theoretical constructs from the domains of
post-structuralism and psychoanalysis equips the author with a set of conceptual tools
with which to make sense of how teachers experience observation as emotional beings
and ultimately how it affects them and their professional practice. It makes a very
valuable contribution to the growing literature on the topic of classroom observation.

February 2016 Dr. Matt O’Leary

Reader in Education
Birmingham City University, UK

vii
Preface

Interest in emotion work and in the emotional labour of teaching and learning in
different educational sectors is a growing area of research interest. It is particularly
relevant within the context of Further and Higher Education sectors where many
researchers are themselves based. This book presents research based in England’s
Further Education sector where increasing emphasis on marketised systems means
accountability and audit cultures have become embedded within everyday teaching
practice. Uniquely, this book explores micro-level issues of the managerial policies
regarding classroom lesson observations; the profoundly emotional, philosophical
aspects within the processes of these situations, which research asserts causes stress
and anxiety for many staff.
For those interested in researching the subject of classroom observation, a small
number of ‘how-to’ guides exist, aimed at helping teaching staff and management
with the practical aspects of preparation and stress management before and during
these events. Most of this literature is based in schools rather than post-compulsory
sectors. There are also chapters about lesson observations within teacher-training
textbooks which aim to support new teaching staff entering education, or staff
development. However, this research provides very little in-depth discussion of the
philosophical and psychosocial aspects of observations. This book illuminates
contextualised individual experiences of lesson observations, within the increasing
pressures of a global, marketised education system. Drawing on psychosocial
theoretical concepts exploring the interplay of hidden or ‘underground’ micro- and
macro-elements of teaching and learning contexts, this book argues how the
presence of an observer fundamentally alters the dynamics of a classroom. This is
because the observer embodies a witness to emotional labour that is an unarticu-
lated personal act which paradoxically is not measurable, nor perceived as of great
value. So, it is not necessarily the performativity that creates the stress and anxiety
in an observation, it is the individual’s perception of this performativity and how it
relates to a wider consideration of their emotional labour in the classroom. For this

ix
x Preface

reason, this book puts forward a case for ending the formal, graded method of
lesson observations, in favour of a developmental, holistic approach that is sensitive
to the emotional nuances of the individuals involved as well as the social and
historical contexts of the institutions in which they are situated.
Because of the diverse use of lesson observations as a tool for staff development
and quality assurance policies, educational researchers, policymakers, teachers and
managers from many different sectors and backgrounds will find this book valuable.

Cambridge, New Zealand Ursula Edgington

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent, UK, who provided me

with financial support in the form of a three-year full-time PhD scholarship award in
2010. The outcomes from that research project form part of the data presented in
this book. My sincere appreciation also goes to the British Sociological Association
(BSA) and the British Educational Research Association (BERA), who provided
additional academic and financial support during my fieldwork and later during the
dissemination of my findings.
I would also like to thank Nick Mackey, a passionate and highly skilled edu-
cator, whom I was lucky enough to have as my mentor many years ago during my
teacher-training. Nick was a constant source of inspiration and admiration and
encouraged me to reflect on aspects of my teaching which would eventually
become integral to this book. I am also grateful to Dr. Matt O’Leary whose work in
this area was thought-provoking and his support of my own research was a
tremendous encouragement, including writing the foreword for this book. Thanks
also go to Professor David James who generously gave his time to discuss the
theoretical framework for this research and whose own research outputs from the
ESRC project ‘Improving Learning Cultures in Further Education’ (2007) were
invaluable and motivating resources. Discussion with members of the Higher
Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) Teaching
and Learning Group (TATAL) has also been extremely helpful when sharing and
discussing aspects of my teaching philosophy reflected in this book. Numerous
individuals also contributed to my writing through discussions which were valuable
in different ways. Special mentions are necessary for the academic assistance of
Drs. Darren Ambrose and Carrie Birch and also Professors Simon McGrath and
Tom Wengraf. On a personal level, Krysia Saul was my valued critical friend;
I miss her constant reassurance during my learning journey.
A sincere thank you also goes to the participants involved in this research—
without whom this book would not have been possible.

xi
Contents

Part I Researching Lesson Observation: Aims, Contexts

and Theory
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Accountability and Performativity in the Global Tertiary Education
Sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Aims and Rationale for This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
About the Author: Insider Researcher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Structure of This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2 Lesson Observation: Policies and Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Lesson Observation: Global Commercialisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Observations in New Zealand’s Education System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Observations in Australian Tertiary Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Lesson Observation Policies in England: Why They Are Relevant . . . . . 23
Teaching Qualifications and FE Staff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
The Political Context of Lesson Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
The Historical and Sociopolitical Context of the UK FE Sector . . . . . . . 28
Education’s ‘Responsiveness’ to Political and Economic Needs . . . . . . . 30
Changes and Incorporation: Socio-Economic
and Historical Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
New Labour’s ‘Social Inclusion’ Agenda and FE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Assessment and Performativity in England’s Further Education . . . . . . . 34
Stress and Anxiety of Graded Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3 Theoretical Concepts of Lesson Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
A Summary of the History of Emotions in the Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . 49
The Emotional Labour of Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

xiii
xiv Contents

The Theoretical Concepts of Bourdieu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Social, Educational and Cultural Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Professional Habitus and Embodied Dispositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Field and Doxa: The Rules of the Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
The Potential for Tensions: Illusio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
The Value of Bourdieu’s Theoretical Concepts to This Research . . . . . . 61
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
4 Subjectivity and Objectivity in Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Symbolic Interactionism and Psychoanalysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Subjectivity Versus Objectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Performativity and ‘Authenticity’ in Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Sartre and Authenticity: ‘Bad Faith’ and Shame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Psychoanalytical Perspective: Self-identity and Emotions . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
The Emotions of Teaching and Learning:
Bourdieu and Psychoanalysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Performativity, Power and Playfulness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Methodology of the Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Part II Findings, Conclusions and Future Directions

5 Findings from the Research Study: The Observees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Outline of This Chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Introduction to Participants—‘The Teachers’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Table A: Teacher/Lecturer (Observee) Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Framing the Context of Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Rewards and ‘Hidden’ Emotional Labour in FE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Performativity, Ethics Work and Emotional Labour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Embodied Emotion and Teaching in FE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Psychoanalytical Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Anxiety and Stress in Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Feelings of Shame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Teachers Seeking Recognition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
The Emotional Labour of Professional Habitus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
6 Findings from the Research Study: The Observers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Introduction to the Managers: ‘The Observers’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Table B: Manager (Observer) Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Contents xv

‘Jumping Through the Hoops’. Observers’ Perceptions

of the Performativity of Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Playing the Numbers Game ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
… Whilst ‘Ticking the Boxes’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Relationships, Space and the Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Importance of Mentorship in Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Stress and Workload: ‘Most of the Time We Are on Our Knees’ . . . . . . 159
Tensions and Conflict Within the Professional Habitus . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
FE’s Constant ‘State of Flux’: Hope/Lessness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
‘A Fish Out of Water’: Feelings and Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Avoiding Fear of Shame by Being ‘Top of the Game’ . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
‘Letting It Go’: Surviving the Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
7 Conclusions and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Overview of Research for This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Summary of Outcomes and Implications for Policy and Practice . . . . . . 176
The Lived Emotional Experiences of FE Staff Within
Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 177
What Contributes Towards Interpretations of Meanings
of ‘Performativity’ for FE Staff Within Observations? . . . . . . . . .... 180
Personal Learning Experiences and Better Understandings
of the Emotions Involved in an Observation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 183
How Might These Issues Be Addressed in Order to Improve
Teaching and Learning in FE? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 185
The Complexities of Performativity: A Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 187
Reflections: Researching This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... 192
The Limitations and Weaknesses of the Research
Within This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Methods: Interpreting the Narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Strengths of This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
8 Final Thoughts and Looking to the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Observing Teaching: What About the Students? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Future Directions for Observations in FE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Reflections and Suggestions for Further Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Appendix A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Abbreviations

ALI Adult Learning Inspectorate (UK)

AoC Association of Colleges (UK)
AP Advanced Practitioner (a common term for lecturers in FE who have
advanced teaching qualifications and experience, and therefore often
hold mentor roles to support other staff)
APQN Asian Pacific Quality Network
AQA Academic Quality Agency (New Zealand)
CPD Continuing Professional Development
CTLL Certificate in Teaching in the Lifelong Learning Sector (City &
Guilds, 7304)
DTLL Diploma in Teaching in the Lifelong Learning Sector (QTLS)
EEC European Economic Community
ERO Education Review Office (New Zealand)
FE Further Education (sometimes referred to as tertiary education)
FEFC Further Education Funding Council
HE Higher Education (commonly university institutions, but can also
take place in FE)
HEA Higher Education Authority (UK)
HERDSA Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia
HMI Her Majesty’s Inspectorate
IfL Institute for Learning (UK)
INQAAHE International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher
Education
ITT Initial Teacher-Training
KPIs Key Performance Indicators
LSC Learning and Skills Council (UK)
MSC Manpower Services Commission (UK)
NCB National Coal Board
NHS National Health Service (UK)
NPM New Public Management

xvii
xviii Abbreviations

NVQ National Vocational Qualification (UK)

NZQA New Zealand Qualification Agency
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Ofsted Office for Standards in Education (UK)
OTJ Overall Teacher Judgement (New Zealand)
PFI Public/Private Finance Initiative
PISA Programme for International Student Assessment (from the OECD)
PMS Performance Management Systems
PTLLS Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector (City & Guilds
7303)
QA Quality Assurance
SAR Self-Assessment Report
SMT Senior Management Team
TAFE Technical and Further Education (Australia)
TEC Tertiary Education Commission (New Zealand)
(T)ESOL (Certificate in Teaching) English for Speakers of Other Languages
UCET Universities Council for the Education of Teachers (UK)
UCU Universities and Colleges Union
VET Vocational Employment Training
 Part I
Researching Lesson Observation:
Aims, Contexts and Theory
Chapter 1
Introduction

Abstract This chapter serves as a general introduction to this book’s topic: an

exploration of the emotional aspects of lesson observations. I begin with an
examination of aspects of accountability and performativity and what these mean
within a twenty-first-century global educational environment. In the second section,
I discuss the rationale for this book, its development and objectives. The lived
experiences and emotions of teachers within the context of observations are an
under-explored area, and this book aims to illuminate these important facets of
teaching and learning practice. In the penultimate section, I explain my own author
role as ‘insider researcher’, and the part this played in researching and writing this
book. As a qualified and experienced Further Education (FE) teacher myself, this
provided challenges and benefits in trying to deconstruct and analyse elements of
the research which were often unspoken or hidden behind everyday practice, policy
or assumptions. Finally, I describe the structure and format of this book, including
the presentation of the findings.

Accountability and Performativity in the Global Tertiary

Education Sector

Worldwide, education sectors are pressurised by New Right, neoliberalist politics.

Drawing on a metaphor from Roberts (2007), these ‘tentacles of the market’
increasingly emphasise the commercialisation of educational environments through
various measurable outputs (Roberts 2007, p. 350). Tensions are inevitable when
assumptions are made about the validity of these data, or when these data are left
unproblematised or unquestioned by individuals and organisations involved in
presenting these outputs. Hence, when an ideology of learning as intrinsically
emancipatory collides with an accountability agenda, debates centre on attempts to
‘draw a straight line’ between learning outcomes and teacher effectiveness
(Skourdoumbis and Gale 2013, p. 894). One important strategy that tries to deliver
outputs that measure teacher effectiveness—for teachers at every stage of their
career and within all sectors—is formal, alpha/numerical-graded lesson

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 3

U. Edgington, Emotional Labour and Lesson Observation,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-2991-2_1
4 1 Introduction

observations. These are widely used in many different educational environments to

measure and improve the content and quality of pedagogical delivery and support
professional development. However, using judgemental quantitative methods in an
attempt to assess the quality of teaching is problematic, for as O’Leary and Wood
(2016) point out:
‘performative models of observation seek to reduce the complex processes of classroom
interaction to a superficial set of skills and behaviours in an attempt to quantify what is
debatably unquantifiable in a consistently reliable way’. (p X)

Formal lesson observation policies take many forms. In the UK, schools and
tertiary1 or Further Education (FE) institutions comply with demands from stake-
holders and inspectorates for self-assessment reports (SARs) that, in turn, fulfil
public-sector funding requirements. The inspectorate (UK Office for Standards in
Education: ‘Ofsted’) conduct regular evaluations of institutions, in line with
specified (and frequently changing) standardised criteria. For example, the fol-
lowing is taken from a 2015 document ‘How do Ofsted inspectors evaluate teaching
in the FE and skills sector?’:
• Inspectors will also conduct formal observations of teaching, training or
assessment activities. These should be of sufficient length to ensure the inspector
has enough evidence to form clear judgements and give a grade.2 The inspector
will usually provide feedback to the person observed. This will normally include
the grade awarded, with a short summary of the strengths and areas for
development. Other forms of learning activity that are not teaching or assess-
ment sessions may be graded; for example progress reviews.
• Inspectors will conduct short, focused observations of activities. These will
usually last approximately 15 min and have a specific focus, for example learner
support, the use of information and learning technology, attendance, or per-
sonalised learning. Inspectors will not normally give feedback to the person
observed following these sessions.
• The lead inspector will give the provider overall feedback on the quality of
teaching, training and assessment, but they will not produce a profile of the
grades awarded.
• The lead inspector may, in discussion with the provider, select one or more
learning sessions or assessments for a joint observation. A joint observation
comprises an Her Majesty's Inspectorate (HMI) or additional inspector and a
member of the provider’s own observation team. The inspector will observe the
learning session jointly with the provider’s observer.

1
In some countries, (some) post-compulsory sector education is referred to as tertiary. However,
because this book is based on research from England, the term Further Education (FE) is used to
define this specific sector (described in full in Chapter 2). College is the term used to describe an
FE institution.
2
The specific detail of the grading structure is discussed below.
Accountability and Performativity in the Global Tertiary Education Sector 5

• At the end of the joint observation, the inspector will record a grade but will not
share this with the observer or teacher/trainer/assessor. It is the responsibility
of the provider’s observer to provide feedback to the person observed. After
leaving the teaching/training session the inspector will listen to the observer’s
recorded observations and proposed grade and then feedback to the observer.
[Ofsted 2016: Annex A (my emphasis)]
Each institution’s lesson observation policies, SARs and other measurements of
quality are based upon interpretations of Ofsted’s own documents like the extract
above. Strategies therefore vary between (and sometimes within) institutions. One
example of such a document—a lesson observation ‘Assessment Sheet’ based on
the Ofsted criteria (from my own teaching practice portfolio) is included in
Appendix A. This is the kind of document that would be used by a trained observer
(s) (e.g. an Advanced Practitioner3(AP) and/or manager) to prompt marks and
comments against the criteria. Observations of lessons are usually between forty to
fifty minutes, the result of which forms a designated overall grade for the teacher of
between 1 and 4: ‘inadequate’, ‘requiring improvement’, ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’.
Importantly, arbitrary quantitative statistics derived from these measurements are
perceived to have significance and to be comparable and controllable between
teachers,4 institutions and over time. This marketised model relies on regularly
updated ‘league tables’, constructed from\subjective measurements and analysis of
these statistics that allow parents, students and other stakeholders to compare and
contrast perceived efficiencies and effectiveness of each institution. This issue is
discussed fully in Chap. 4.
It has long been argued that reductionist surveillance strategies like formally
graded observations can decontextualise learning and deprofessionalise staff by
assessing only the externally observable (Jeffrey and Woods 1996;
Villeneuve-Smith et al. 2008). For instance, Grace (1985) pointed out his concern
that evaluation of teachers was more than a measurement of technicalities, but has
ideological and political dynamics. Specifically, research from the UK and USA
suggests the intrinsic evaluative and performative nature of some observation
policies is often bureaucratic and punitive in nature, creating unnecessary stress and
anxiety for staff (Halford 2013; O’Leary 2013). Alongside the requirements for
regularly performing lesson observation ‘success’, other neoliberal, audit culture
policies simultaneously force pressure on teachers’ and managers’ everyday roles.
For instance, reporting of student absence and participation is not necessarily

3
An AP is a staff member who usually has advanced teaching qualifications and many years’
experience. They would also have undertaken internal and external training in mentoring other
teachers, or perhaps be a qualified teacher educator (e.g. in partnership with a local university).
4
There are complex issues related to the interpretations of differences between the terms ‘teacher’,
‘lecturer’ or ‘tutor’ and other such roles. However, ‘teacher’ was a term more commonly used by
the participants of the research for this book, to describe their own identity (even though their
official role might have been ‘lecturer’). Therefore, the terms ‘teacher’ and ’lecturer’ are used
interchangeably throughout this book.
6 1 Introduction

straightforward and depends upon strategic dates for institutional and/or course
funding deadlines. Moderation and other reviews of student assessments can be
time-consuming and bureaucratic for staff nominated to undertake them.
Photocopies and other crucial learning administration are restricted by financial
constraints, and administrative support can be minimal. The artificial managerial
division of internal departments’ budgets means that failure to adhere to agreed
contractual agreements or reach specified objectives can result in fines.5 Overall, it
is widely understood how perceived failure in one or more of these areas can have
serious consequences, e.g. by placing an individual’s job at risk, especially in an
environment where the institution itself is sometimes under the microscope due to a
previous ‘inadequate’ judgement from Ofsted (Page 2014).
These pressures from the ongoing fallout from the global economic recession,
bring risks of redundancies and other financial burdens, contributing to an audit
culture that for many educationalists can be demoralising. Indeed, for some
(principles in particular), the pressure and potential impact of a ‘negative’ judge-
ment for their institution is so great that it may contribute to emotional and physical
harm to individuals, for example through clinical depression or even suicide
(Adams 2015; Ratcliffe 2014).
Participants in the research for this book described a wide range of emotions
about lesson observations: anger, resentment, shame, fear, disappointment, anxiety,
depression, joy and pride. But stakes are high, and understandably, some staff felt at
risk of being penalised (by themselves and others) if they revealed aspects of their
personal selves present in their teaching but at the same time ‘hidden’ (Honneth
2004). These negative feelings were exacerbated by institutional policies which
prevent a developmental approach to observations, ones which (for example) pre-
vent or discourage opportunities for professional dialogue about the objectives and
outcomes from the session, both before and after the event. There is an intrinsic
power struggle within these situations which is often unexplored. What I illustrate
in this book are my interpretations of the connections between the manifestations of
these emotions and the lived experiences of staff undergoing formal, internal lesson
observations, including some of the possible reasons for the tragic consequences
mentioned above.
This book outlines the need for a more sensitive and nuanced approach to
observations in FE. Whilst I fully acknowledge the requirement for an element of
explicit ‘evidence’ of teaching skills during an observation, this should not rule out
the inclusion of our humanness. This book demonstrates a need for a more holistic
approach. A deeper understanding of the inherent hidden or ‘underground’ aspects
to teaching and learning is required, and aspects of the contexts that are unique to
all individuals involved and that by definition cannot (and arguably should not) be
subjected to arbitrary assessment strategies like those ‘snapshots’ commonly uti-
lised by FE college management when observing a particular lesson.

5
For example, booked rooms may be checked against actual physical location of a class at a
random time during the day.
Aims and Rationale for This Book 7

Aims and Rationale for This Book

Research into the pressures that a marketised, commercial model of education

brings to institutions is the subject of numerous and ongoing debates. In particular,
it is argued that education runs contrary to individuals’ values by becoming, for
many, a private enterprise rather than a public good (Ball and Youdell 2008).
However, the micro-level aspects of specific functions of this model are often
unexplored, especially from the perspective of teachers’ emotions. Throughout this
book, I investigate how teaching involves our unique (dis)embodied ‘performa-
tivity’ (Butler 1997) or ‘emotional labour’ (Hochschild 1983), which during an
observation is interpreted and judged by an Other. Usually, this is conducted by a
line manager or an experienced teacher, but equally it can be a peer (Allen and
Department 2002; Page 2014). Managerial observations in England’s education
sectors are focused on interpretations of regular Ofsted inspections—part of UK
Government surveillance and audit policies. Importantly, these policies are not
unique to England; for instance, amongst other countries, New Zealand’sEducation
Review Office (ERO) has been modelled on this approach (Thrupp 1998).
Observations can be positive, for teachers who enjoy the opportunity to ‘per-
form’ their skills and/or engage in collaborative continuing professional develop-
ment (CPD). For others, affective reactions to a perceived managerial intrusion into
their professional space can have a negative impact on their well-being and teaching
practice and in turn, their students’ progress. This is because, crucially, research
suggests that if a professional dialogue is absent during an observation, the op-
portunity for learning for both parties can be lost (O’Leary 2012), since learning
and reflexivity is difficult in an atmosphere without mutual respect (Knowles 1985;
Rogers 1986; Schӧn 1991). Indeed, arguably it is the intrinsic evaluative nature of
observations that potentially leads to manifestations of emotions within and beyond
the classroom, because they can be perceived as punitive and bureaucratic in nature
(Avis 2005). And as Lawson (2011) points out, sometimes this is because observers
may not be adequately trained to engage in judgements of teaching and learning.
Paradoxically, however, often these emotional aspects of observations are ignored,
perhaps because articulating feelings can be considered a weakness or even dan-
gerous territory (Lupton 1998).
If research suggests that observations sometimes provoke strong emotions, what
is the nature of these experiences and how can these be better understood to
enhance teaching and learning practices? What is it about the dynamics of a lesson
observation undertaken by a manager that is different to an experience of an Ofsted
inspection? What is meant by the terms ‘inauthentic’ and ‘performativity’ in the
context of an observation undertaken by management and what are teachers’ per-
ceptions of these terms? More importantly, how are both teachers’ and managers’
emotional experiences of observations related to these concepts? These are the
issues which remain unarticulated in the current literature but which I investigate in
detail in this book.
8 1 Introduction

International research on observations has focused mainly on schools or uni-

versities (Hatzipanagos and Lygo-Baker 2006). This book centres specifically on
research within England’s FE colleges which—as I explain—carries a complex
political–cultural context in terms of staff and students and space (James and Biesta
2007). Partly because of this context, this book draws on FE teachers’ own nar-
ratives, an aspect often neglected in the research (Colley et al. 2007). It also draws
on my own experiences as an FE teacher and ‘insider researcher’ (discussed in the
following section in this chapter). The research methodology employed when
researching this book is logically situated in a qualitative approach sensitive to
individual teachers’ emotions, something quantitative methods arguably cannot
offer (Silverman 2001). For this reason, I draw on in-depth, semi-structured,
auto/biographical interviews with FE teachers and managers (fourteen individual
participants) to uncover their (often concealed) lived emotional experiences of
observations. Full details of the innovative methodology used for the research are
available elsewhere (Edgington 2015); although for contextual purposes, I provide a
brief summary at the end of Chap. 4.
The rationale for this book is embedded in the methodology used to research it.
The methodology was linked to the research objectives with its underlying epis-
temology in placing the value of my participants’ views and lived experiences at the
centre of the research (Mills 1959). I take a phenomenological, hermeneutic
approach through interpretive theoretical frameworks. The semi-structured inter-
views consist of narratives from seven lecturers and seven managers6 from FE
institutions located in Central and South East England. Some of the participants
were known to me personally prior to the research7, and therefore arguably this put
the participants more at ease when talking about their emotional experiences in
observations. Recording individuals’ stories, analysing and interpreting these for
common and diverging themes have been claimed to be an effective way of illu-
minating insights into emotional experiences (Ochberg 2002; Wolcott 1994).
In this book, I am not attempting to provide comprehensive accounts of all the
possible emotional aspects of teaching and learning observations—due to the
diverse nature of the educational sectors and the types of observations undertaken
(e.g. virtual and face-to-face); this would be an impossible task. Nor am I fully
exploring the debate around types and contexts of emotions in teaching and
learning more generally (although I do draw on some of this literature). Notably, it
has been suggested that there is a concealed or ‘underground’ nature to teaching and
learning in FE in England (James and Diment 2003) that is under-researched.
Because of the hidden nature of these roles and the emotions that surround them, I
am therefore illustrating my interpretation of the complex and fluid nature of
emotions experienced by teachers and managers within formal, face-to-face lesson

6
As I explain later in this book, the terms ‘lecturer’ or ‘teacher’ and ‘manager’ can be ambiguous
because of the often diverse roles and duties of FE staff.
7
Where appropriate I have been explicit about these relationships in the ‘pen portraits’ at the
beginning of each analysis section.
Aims and Rationale for This Book 9

observation contexts. The theoretical concepts drawn upon in this research emerge
from the sociology of the emotions—more specifically, social constructionist and
psychoanalytical perspectives. It is crucial that alongside these interpretations I
constantly reflect on my own (concealed) presence within these data in an approach
that is explicit about my own positioning and potential impact on the outcomes
(Letherby 2000; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). Likewise, I encourage you, the
reader, to engage in your interpretations of these concepts throughout this book.
Having outlined the boundaries of this research and the objectives, below are
questions which the research for this book aimed to address:

• What are the lived emotional experiences of FE staff within lesson

observations?
• Research suggests that observations are ineffective because there is an
inherent ‘performativity’. What contributes towards interpretations of
meanings of this ‘performativity’ for FE staff within observations?
• To what extent might personal learning experiences and biographies of FE
staff contribute to better understandings of the emotions involved in an
observation?
• How might these issues be addressed in order to improve teaching and
learning in FE?

Drawing on specific examples from interview data with staff involved with
internal lesson observations, I present insights into the emotional impact of these
observations. I explain how concepts from the writing of Pierre Bourdieu can add
meaning about these emotions, and I furnish these ideas with psychoanalytical
notions; in particular, those from Object Relations theory (Elliott 2002), perspec-
tives of which are centred on interpretations of the possible private or ‘inner’
meanings of these conceptual ideas rather than explicit linguistic or articulated
issues. Finally, I bring these ideas together within an interpretative interactionist
paradigm (Denzin 1989) and illustrate how concepts of professional habitus and
narrative unconscious can add meaning to the research presented in this book.
I illustrate how it is crucial, for teachers and their practice, to raise awareness of the
complex and fluid nature of the emotions that surround observations. Indeed, how
these discussions could be beneficial to improvements in teaching and learning.
This is especially important when considering the increasing pressures on
employees within marketised education systems worldwide.
10 1 Introduction

About the Author: Insider Researcher

This book draws on an autobiographical interpretive approach where the presence of

the research/author is made explicit throughout the writing, including interpretations
of and reflections upon the data and the theoretical concepts used (Letherby 2000).
To be clear about the aims and rationale of this book, and my own place within it, it
is firstly necessary to summarise my own learning journey, so that the comparisons
and reflections are contextualised and are as transparent as possible. The episte-
mological approach of this book encourages the reader’s own reflections and
interpretations because context and reflexivity is integral to teaching and learning
and any educational research (Boud 1999; Boud et al. 1985; Brookfield 1986;
Linstead 1994; Schӧn 1991). I acknowledge through this section of this book how
my own ever-evolving perspectives of teaching and learning practice may impact
upon the analysis of the research presented here.
Like many FE teachers in England, my career took a circuitous route. My initial
hopes of a successful school education leading eventually to a rewarding career in
teaching took a long time to materialise. Financial pressures meant that, for the first
fifteen years after leaving school (with few qualifications), I was employed in a
series of what some might call ‘dead-end jobs’. Customer service, telephone sales,
accounts, insurance, travel agent, merchandising, you name it, I’ve probably done
it. Some jobs lasted two weeks, others a few years. None were challenging and
rarely did I have a manager who invested any time into discovering my true
potential or recognising my conscientious work ethic.
When my husband was offered a new job which involved a relocation from the
South East England to the Midlands, this seemed a good opportunity to begin an
educational journey that I hoped would lead towards a more fulfilling career. When
we settled in our new home, I enrolled onto an evening course in psychology whilst
working full time in a nearby insurance office. I had fun conducting experiments
such as the ‘Mozart Effect’ on my fellow work colleagues in our lunch hours.
Our FE tutor was enthusiastic but I frequently felt disappointed by her apparent lack
of knowledge when quizzed on things immediately outside the syllabus. (Later, I
developed first-hand experience of the difficulties these sessional FE tutors face.)
By the end of the short course, I was hungry for more learning and confident I could
progress further.
In 2000, I enrolled as a part-time university student. After the first two years, I
was disappointed with the English department who I perceived as somewhat
unsupportive to ‘mature’ students. I also suspected that I might actually be an
‘Epsilon-Minus Semi-Moron bred for menial labour’ (Huxley 1932) but needed to
know more about the social context—the how and why. So I migrated to the
sociology department where I felt much more ‘in tune’ with the academic nature of
the modules they offered. The call centres I had worked in provided an excellent
illustration of Foucault’s interpretation of a ‘Panopticon’ in ‘postmodern Fordism’,
and importantly, I recognised how in my sales jobs I performed a type of ‘emotional
labour’. For each module, I added context to my learning from my working-class
About the Author: Insider Researcher 11

background, and this further emphasised for me the importance that context has to
our learning processes (Knowles 1985; Mead 1969). During my studies, a job
opportunity arose at my university that suited my administration skills and expe-
rience. The potential to save valuable travelling time to/from evening classes was
too good to miss. I applied and got the job. Working full time whilst studying was
extremely challenging at times, but each module of the degree was fascinating and
assignment deadlines were met and new ones replaced them each term. My con-
fidence in this new academic environment grew.
Soon I transferred to an administrative position within the university’s medical
faculty. Within this work experience, together with modules I was completing at the
time on the ‘Sociology of Health and Illness’ and the ‘Sociology of Education’, my
life events developed new meaning. For instance, tragically, my brother-in-law was
the victim of a road accident that left him a tetraplegic aged only 21, and reading
Michael Oliver’s (1996) seminal book which questioned the deficit model of dis-
ability helped me make better sense of his situation and the challenges it posed for
those supporting him. I also realised that I had been a victim of an embedded social
structure that had gone virtually unquestioned (by me at least) for most of my life.
The polarising consequences of the English ‘eleven-plus’ examination haunted me
—as it does many adults in different ways. I felt pleased that I was beginning to
climb out of my ‘haze’ of naivety and into some kind of new awareness. However, I
was acutely aware of how others—some very close to me—were prevented from
achieving their potential simply because of the language they used or that others
used to negatively label them. My ambitions towards teaching took on a new
meaning in this light.
In response to government rhetoric and funding policies of the time, during my
undergraduate studies, my institution became more supportive of the challenges
mature students faced. Human resources contributed funds towards my fees, and
later I was given some extended leave to complete my qualification in Teaching
English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). After this achievement, I
undertook unpaid teaching work at an inner city community centre and rediscov-
ered my love of teaching which began for me in childhood ballet classes and later,
musical instrument workshops for teenage friends at school. For me, the particular
joy of teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) was how
autonomous it was, the government syllabus was flexible; I found it easy to create
ways to include music, newspaper articles or other everyday things that brought
context and fun to the learning experience. I found that students were surprised at
what they could achieve if they were encouraged and supported in a
non-judgemental, informal atmosphere. Strikingly, this was so different from my
own learning experiences at school.
I went on to specialise in post-compulsory education. The qualification provided
me with a placement teaching opportunity at a nearby inner city FE college and
closer contact with a broad range of teaching styles and subjects. My mentor was an
inspiration. To him, formative feedback, changing assessment styles, differentiation
and all the other educational terminologies that I had learned about during my
studies seemed an innate, embodied part of his practice and indeed a natural part of
12 1 Introduction

his personality. His enthusiasm was seemingly endless, and the students loved his
lessons. Being observed as part of my summative assessment for my qualification
was bound to be stressful, but if my mentor was due to observe me during a lesson I
felt like I was unaware of his presence in the room.8 Some of my most rewarding
lessons were when I was observed by my mentor or someone who I shared a similar
rapport with. This sparked my interest in how teaching within a lesson observation
impacts upon the teacher’s performance and therefore students’ learning.
After completing my MA studies, I taught at another FE college in a nearby
town. It had been a long time since I had not been actively engaged in studying and
working simultaneously. Due to my husband’s promotion, financial pressures were
lessened; I was able to teach part-time and without the added pressures of studying.
I had the ‘luxury’ of donating most of my spare time to creating and preparing
resources for my students, and then marking their work. New staff joined who were
completely new to teaching, and it was a joy to be able to guide them through the
educational literature in their new qualification. By now, the authors had become
familiar to me, and it was very rewarding to be able to provide help and support to
colleagues. I firmly believe that this peer support in the staffroom, which could be
defined a community of practice (Lave and Wenger 1999), is underrated and
under-researched and forms an integral part of the coping strategies of (student)-
teacher staff (lisahunter et al. 2011).
Some years later, the college where I taught had an Ofsted inspection. Hopes
were high that after a relatively poor report three years earlier, improvements had
made an impact and overall the rating would improve. I was confident that our
students’ needs came first and that the right policies were in place, and indeed, our
department achieved ‘Outstanding’ in the Ofsted report. Sadly, however, other
departments did not fare so well. This did not surprise me as the cooperation
between departments had been poor and the quality of some of the teaching I had
witnessed outside our faculty was less structured than the Ofsted criteria stipulated.
However, my colleagues and I were confident that we would now be called upon to
help the other departments improve. Surely, we were now the ‘gold standard’ which
others could learn from.
Unfortunately, this did not happen. Instead of being able to provide positive
suggestions, our department fell victim to a blame culture and treated like other
‘failing’ departments. Instructions followed that management’s new policies were
going to be enforced that would ‘root out’ poor teaching. Observations were the
primary strategy of what was, understandably, perceived by staff and the unions as a
‘witch hunt’. Instead of the supportive, informal, positive learning opportunity
experienced previously, observations would now be formally linked to disciplinary
procedures. In the interests of ‘objectivity’, the observer would be someone ‘un-
known’ to the teacher and would judge the lesson on an ad hoc basis. In short, we
would all be subjected to a 40 min ‘pass or fail’ test of our teaching.

8
A problematic phrase which becomes a recurrent theme in Part II in this book.
About the Author: Insider Researcher 13

I have written about this elsewhere (Edgington 2010), but it is important here to
emphasise the experiences which began the journey towards this research. Because
of the pressures instigated by these new observation procedures, stress levels
amongst staff increased. I saw close friends who I knew were competent, confident,
articulate, intelligent and well-qualified teachers, reduced to tears or vomiting as a
direct result of the stress from this policy. Significantly, despite all I had been
through, it was enough for me to question whether I wanted to remain in teaching.
After all the time I had spent and the challenges I had overcome to get to the job I
loved, I knew I was resilient enough to carry on. However, I also knew that many of
my colleagues were not as resilient as me. This made me angry. I was angry at the
management for allowing this situation to occur, but also I was angry at my col-
leagues. Why didn’t they speak up about the way they felt? Why did they call me
‘brave’ when I felt it was my duty to simply communicate the facts to management
about the anxiety and fear they were (presumably unintentionally) causing. There
was also little support from unions or other educational organisations. Without
guidelines from the authorities, it seemed we were at an impasse.
Fortunately, since these experiences, the situation at my previous workplace has
now changed for the better. However, disputes continue and observations at this
and other colleges continue to be a controversial and contentious issue for many FE
staff. The intellectual and emotional journey within this book is a culmination of
many objectives: firstly, it is a continuation of my personal lifelong learning
journey. Secondly, it is the opportunity to continue to be involved in research about
teaching and to further my understanding of the teaching and learning process.
Thirdly, it is an opportunity to meet a responsibility that I had taken upon myself for
the sake of both my students and my colleagues. My motives continue to be
founded on raising awareness about the emotional aspects of teaching and learning.
My past experiences during my various teachers’ training and continuing profes-
sional development (CPD) courses re-enforce the value of a teaching mentor who is
understanding and sensitive to a teacher’s emotions. By understanding the affec-
tivity around observations in FE, we may be able to understand the differences in
the emotional experiences and be more reflexive—both personally and sociologi-
cally—about our teaching practice. With this in mind, research into FE teachers’
life histories and emotional experiences is limited—hence this book is particularly
important.

Structure of This Book

In the following chapter—Chap. 2, I explain the global perspective of lesson

observations, their purpose and development together with an explanation of the
different types of lesson observations used and the policies that surround them. In
particular, I highlight examples of the policies and cultures which impact upon
quality assurance and teacher development within other country’s tertiary educa-
tional environments, for example New Zealand.
14 1 Introduction

Chapter 3 outlines the theoretical context of this book. The concept of emotional
labour is introduced, and its value to understanding observations. Theoretical
concepts of teachers’ identity are also explored, underpinned by writings from
Bourdieu including social and educational capital, professional ‘habitus’ and
embodied dispositions, field and doxa of the classroom within the context of
observations.
Chapter 4 delves further into the philosophical and theoretical aspects of
observations, in particular, the philosophical debates around subjectivity and
objectivity and concepts of performativity and ‘authenticity’. It introduces some of
the psychoanalytical concepts which are valuable in the exploration of this topic
and are discussed fully in relation to the research data in chapters which follow.
Finally, it summarises the methodology of the research for this book (see Edgington
(2015) for further details).
Part II of this book explores the empirical data from the UK-based research
fieldwork for this book, first by positioning the participants through a brief ‘pen
picture’ of their biographies. In Chap. 5, an outline of the findings from the research
is presented, using the narratives from the autobiographical interviews of the lec-
turers who are observees. The analysis draws on the multidisciplinary theoretical
concepts described in Chaps. 3 and 4.
In Chap. 6, the research data are further explored through the presentation of the
observers’ narratives—these are participants with various degrees of management
responsibilities in overseeing the quality of teaching and learning within their in-
stitution and their staffs CPD. Again, the participants’ perspectives are located
within the theoretical framework presented in the Part 1 of this book and because of
the managerial roles of these participants, these narratives present interesting
comparative data to that discussed in Chap. 5.
Chapter 7 returns to the initial aims of this book and outlines the conclusions and
recommendations. It also summarises the strengths and shortcomings of this
research and the potential consequences for policy and practice. In particular, it
highlights the contrast between the educational environments summarised in Chap. 3
and the development of the marketised model of education. In this chapter, I assert
how the emotions wrapped up in teachers seeking personal recognition form an
intrinsic part of the potential for anxiety within the situation of observations. Also,
how the concept of emotional labour within the context of professional habitus can
provide some valuable meanings to the narratives from the research.
In Chap. 8, I conclude this book with some final thoughts in respect of the future
of observation policies in FE and potential implications for other institutions
worldwide. For example, with the significant increase in online learning environ-
ments, such as Massive Open Online Courses (‘MOOCs’), how will teaching and
learning, CPD and quality assurance surveillance strategies develop? How can
teachers play a part in this development? I conclude with a reflection upon my own
teaching practice and how I hope these outcomes can be utilised elsewhere.
NB. Throughout this book, I have included various reflections—my own and my
students—that illustrate examples of the theoretical points I make. These are
highlighted in shaded boxes and serve to encourage further reflection for the reader.
References 15

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Avis, J. (2005). Beyond performativity: Reflections on activist professionalism and the labour
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transferable. What one people takes over from another—in
“conversion” or in admiring imitation—is a name, dress and mask for
its own feeling, never the feeling of that other. The old Celtic and old
Germanic myth-motives have to be treated, like the repertory of
Classical forms possessed by the learned monk, and like the entire
body of Christian-Eastern faith taken over by the Western Church,
simply as the material out of which the Faustian soul in these
centuries created a mythic architecture of its own. It mattered little
whether the persons through whose minds and mouths the myth
came to life were individual skalds, missionaries, priests or “the
people,” nor did the circumstance that the Christian ideas dictated its
forms affect the inward independence of that which had come to life.
In the Classical, Arabian and Western Cultures, the myth of the
springtime is in each case that which we should expect; in the first
static, in the second Magian, in the third dynamic. Examine every
detail of form, and see how in the Classical it is an attitude and in the
West a deed, there a being and here a will that underlies them; how
in the Classical the bodily and tangible, the sensuously-saturated,
prevails and how therefore in the mode of worshipping the centre of
gravity lies in the sense-impressive cult, whereas in the North it is
space, force and therefore a religiousness that is predominantly
dogmatic in colouring that rule. These very earliest creations of the
young soul tell us that there is relationship between the Olympian
figures, the statue and the corporeal Doric temple; between the
domical basilica, the “Spirit” of God and the arabesque; between
Valhalla and the Mary myth, the soaring nave and instrumental
music.
The Arabian soul built up its myth in the centuries between Cæsar
and Constantine—that fantastic mass of cults, visions and legends
that to-day we can hardly even survey,[496] syncretic cults like that of
the Syrian Baal and of Isis and Mithras not only transported to but
transformed in Syrian soil; Gospels, Acts of Apostles and
Apocalypses in astonishing profusion; Christian, Persian, Jewish,
Neoplatonist and Manichæan legends, and the heavenly hierarchy of
angels and spirits of the Fathers and the Gnostics. In the suffering-
story of the Gospels, the very epic of the Christian nation, set
between the story of Jesus’s childhood and the Acts of the Apostles,
and in the Zoroaster-legend that is contemporary with it, we are
looking upon the hero-figures of Early Arabian epic as we see
Achilles in the Classical and Siegfried and Percival in the Faustian.
The scenes of Gethsemane and Golgotha stand beside the noblest
pictures of Greek and Germanic saga. These Magian visions, almost
without exception, grew up under the pressure of the dying Classical
which, in the nature of things unable to communicate its spirit, the
more insistently lent its forms. It is almost impossible now to estimate
the extent to which given Apollinian elements had to be accepted
and transvalued before the old Christian myth assumed the firmness
that it possessed in the time of Augustine.

IX

The Classical polytheism, consequently, has a style of its own

which puts it in a different category from the conceptions of any other
world-feelings, whatever the superficial affinities may be. This mode
of possessing gods without godhead has only existed once, and it
was in the one Culture that made the statue of naked Man the whole
sum of its art.
Nature, as Classical man felt and knew it about him, viz., a sum of
well-formed bodily things, could not be deified in any other form but
this. The Roman felt that the claim of Yahweh to be recognized as
sole God had something atheistic in it. One God, for him, was no
God, and to this may be ascribed the strong dislike of popular
feeling, both Greek and Roman, for the philosophers in so far as
they were pantheists and godless. Gods are bodies, σώματα of the
perfectest kind, and plurality was an attribute of bodies alike for
mathematicians, lawyers and poets. The concept of ζῷον πολιτικόν
was valid for gods as well as for men; nothing was more alien to
them than oneness, solitariness and self-adequacy; and no
existence therefore was possible to them save under the aspect of
eternal propinquity. It is a deeply significant fact that in Hellas of all
countries star-gods, the numina of the Far, are wanting. Helios was
worshipped only in half-Oriental Rhodes and Selene had no cult at
all. Both are merely artistic modes of expression (it is as such only
that they figure in the courtly epos of Homer), elements that Varro
would class in the genus mythicum and not in the genus civile. The
old Roman religion, in which the Classical world-feeling was
expressed with special purity, knew neither sun nor moon, neither
storm nor cloud as deities. The forest stirrings and the forest
solitude, the tempest and the surf, which completely dominated the
Nature of Faustian man (even that of pre-Faustian Celts and
Teutons) and imparted to their mythology its peculiar character, left
Classical man unmoved. Only concretes—hearth and door, the
coppice and the plot-field, this particular river and that particular hill
—condensed into Being for him. We observe that everything that has
farness, everything that contains a suggestion of unbounded and
unbodied in it and might thereby bring space as Ent and divine into
the felt Nature, is excluded and remains excluded from Classical
myth; how should it surprise, then, if clouds and horizons, that are
the very meaning and soul of Baroque landscapes, are totally
wanting in the Classical backgroundless frescoes? The unlimited
multitude of antique gods—every tree, every spring, every house,
nay every part of a house is a god—means that every tangible thing
is an independent existence, and therefore that none is functionally
subordinate to any other.
The bases of the Apollinian and the Faustian Nature-images
respectively are in all contexts the two opposite symbols of individual
thing and unitary space. Olympus and Hades are perfectly sense-
definite places, while the kingdom of the dwarfs, elves and goblins,
and Valhalla and Niflheim are all somewhere or other in the universe
of space. In the old Roman religion “Tellus Mater” is not the all-
mother but the visible ploughable field itself. Faunus is the wood and
Vulturnus is the river, the name of the seed is Ceres and that of the
harvest is Consus. Horace is a true Roman when he speaks of “sub
Jove frigido,” under the cold sky. In these cases there is not even the
attempt to reproduce the God in any sort of image at the places of
worship, for that would be tantamount to duplicating him. Even in
very late times the instinct not only of the Romans but of the Greeks
also is opposed to idols, as is shown by the fact that plastic art, as it
became more and more profane, came into conflict more and more
with popular beliefs and the devout philosophy.[497] In the house,
Janus is the door as god, Vesta the hearth as goddess, the two
functions of the house are objectivized and deified at once. A
Hellenic river-god (like Acheloüs, who appears as a bull,) is definitely
understood as being the river and not as, so to say, dwelling in the
river. The Pans[498] and Satyrs are the fields and meadows as noon
defines them, well bounded and, as having figure, having also
existence. Dryads and Hamadrayads are trees; in many places,
indeed, individual trees of great stature were honoured with garlands
and votive offerings without even the formality of a name. On the
contrary, not a trace of this localized materiality clings to the elves,
dwarfs, witches, Valkyries and their kindred the armies of departed
souls that sweep round o’nights. Whereas Naiads are sources,
nixies and hags, and tree-spirits and brownies are souls that are only
bound to sources, trees and houses, from which they long to be
released into the freedom of roaming. This is the very opposite of the
plastic Nature-feeling, for here things are experienced merely as
spaces of another kind. A nymph—a spring, that is—assumes
human form when she would visit a handsome shepherd, but a nixy
is an enchanted princess with nenuphars in her hair who comes up
at midnight from the depths of the pool wherein she dwells. Kaiser
Barbarossa sits in the Kyffhäuser cavern and Frau Venus in the
Hörselberg. It is as though the Faustian universe abhorred anything
material and impenetrable. In things, we suspect other worlds. Their
hardness and thickness is merely appearance, and—a trait that
would be impossible in Classical myth, because fatal to it—some
favoured mortals are accorded the power to see through cliffs and
crags into the depths. But is not just this the secret intent of our
physical theories, of each new hypothesis? No other Culture knows
so many fables of treasures lying in mountains and pools, of secret
subterranean realms, palaces, gardens wherein other beings dwell.
The whole substantiality of the visible world is denied by the
Faustian Nature-feeling, for which in the end nothing is of earth and
the only actual is Space. The fairy-tale dissolves the matter of Nature
as the Gothic style dissolves the stone-mass of our cathedrals, into a
ghostly wealth of forms and lines that have shed all weight and
acknowledge no bounds.
 The ever-increasing emphasis with which Classical polytheism
somatically individualized its deities is peculiarly evident in its
attitude to “strange gods.” For Classical man the gods of the
Egyptians, the Phœnicians and the Germans, in so far as they could
be imagined as figures, were as real as his own gods. Within his
world-feeling the statement that such other gods “do not exist” would
have no meaning. When he came into contact with the countries of
these deities he did them reverence. The gods were, like a statue or
a polis, Euclidean bodies having locality. They were beings of the
near and not the general space. If a man were sojourning in
Babylon, for instance, and Zeus and Apollo were far away, all the
more reason for particularly honouring the local gods. This is the
meaning of the altars dedicated “to the unknown gods,” such as that
which Paul so significantly misunderstood in a Magian monotheistic
sense at Athens.[499] These were gods not known by name to the
Greek but worshipped by the foreigners of the great seaports
(Piræus, Corinth or other) and therefore entitled to their due of
respect from him. Rome expressed this with Classical clearness in
her religious law and in carefully-preserved formulæ like, for
example, the generalis invocatio.[500] As the universe is the sum of
things, and as gods are things, recognition had to be accorded even
to those gods with whom the Roman had not yet practically and
historically come into relations. He did not know them, or he knew
them as the gods of his enemies, but they were gods, for it was
impossible for him to conceive the opposite. This is the meaning of
the sacral phrase in Livy, VIII, 9, 6: “di quibus est potestas nostrorum
hostiumque.” The Roman people admits that the circle of its own
gods is only momentarily bounded, and after reciting these by name
it ends the prayer thus so as not to infringe the rights of others.
According to its sacral law, the annexation of foreign territory
involves the transfer to Urbs Roma of all the religious obligations
pertaining to this territory and its gods—which of course logically
follows from the additive god-feeling of the Classical. Recognition of
a deity was very far from being the same as acceptance of the forms
of its cult; thus in the Second Punic War the Great Mother of
Pessinus[501] was received in Rome as the Sibyl commanded, but the
priests who had come in with her cult, which was of a highly un-
Classical complexion, practised under strict police supervision, and
not only Roman citizens but even their slaves were forbidden under
penalty to enter this priesthood. The reception of the goddess gave
satisfaction to the Classical world-feeling, but the personal
performance of her despised ritual would have infringed it. The
attitude of the Senate in such cases is unmistakable, though the
people, with its ever-increasing admixture of Eastern elements, had
a liking for these cults and in Imperial times the army became in
virtue of its composition a vehicle (and even the chief vehicle) of the
Magian world-feeling.
This makes it the easier to understand how the cult of deified men
could become a necessary element in this religious form-world. But
here it is necessary to distinguish sharply between Classical
phenomena and Oriental phenomena that have a superficial
similarity thereto. Roman emperor-worship—i.e., the reverence of
the “genius” of the living Princes and that of the dead predecessors
as “Divi”—has hitherto been confused with the ceremonial reverence
of the Ruler which was customary in Asia Minor (and, above all, in
Persia,)[502] and also with the later and quite differently meant Caliph-
deification which is seen in full process of formation in Diocletian and
Constantine. Actually, these are all very unlike things. However
intimately these symbolic forms were interfused in the East of the
Empire, in Rome itself the Classical type was actualized
unequivocally and without adulteration. Long before this certain
Greeks (e.g., Sophocles, Lysander and, above all, Alexander) had
been not merely hailed as gods by their flatterers but felt as gods in
a perfectly definite sense by the people. It is only a step, after all,
from the deification of a thing—such as a copse or a well or, in the
limit, a statue which represented a god—to the deification of an
outstanding man who became first hero and then god. In this case
as in the rest, what was reverenced was the perfect shape in which
the world-stuff, the un-divine, had actualized itself. In Rome the
consul on the day of his triumph wore the armour of Jupiter
Capitolinus, and in early days his face and arms were even painted
red, in order to enhance his similarity to the terra-cotta statue of the
God whose “numen” he for the time being incorporated.
 X

In the first generations of the Imperial age, the antique polytheism

gradually dissolved, often without any alteration of outward ritual and
mythic form, into the Magian monotheism.[503] A new soul had come
up, and it lived the old forms in a new mode. The names continued,
but they covered other numina.
In all Late-Classical cults, those of Isis and Cybele, of Mithras and
Sol and Serapis, the divinity is no longer felt as a localized and
formable being. In old times, Hermes Propylæus had been
worshipped at the entrance of the Acropolis of Athens, while a few
yards away, at the point where later the Erechtheum was built, was
the cult-site of Hermes as the husband of Aglaure. At the South
extremity of the Roman Capitol, close to the sanctuary of Juppiter
Feretrius (which contained, not a statue of the god, but a holy stone,
silex[504]) was that of Juppiter Optimus Maximus, and when Augustus
was laying down the huge temple of the latter he was careful to
avoid the ground to which the numen of the former adhered.[505] But
in Early Christian times Juppiter Dolichenus or Sol Invictus[506] could
be worshipped “wheresoever two or three were gathered together in
his name.” All these deities more and more came to be felt as a
single numen, though the adherents of a particular cult would believe
that they in particular knew the numen in its true shape. Hence it is
that Isis could be spoken of as the “million-named.” Hitherto, names
had been the designations of so many gods different in body and
locality, now they are titles of the One whom every man has in mind.
This Magian monotheism reveals itself in all the religious creations
that flooded the Empire from the East—the Alexandrian Isis, the
Sun-god favoured by Aurelian (the Baal of Palmyra), the Mithras
protected by Diocletian (whose Persian form had been completely
recast in Syria), the Baalath of Carthage (Tanit, Dea Cælestis[507])
honoured by Septimius Severus. The importation of these figures no
longer increases as in Classical times the number of concrete gods.
On the contrary, they absorb the old gods into themselves, and do so
in such a way as to deprive them more and more of picturable
shape. Alchemy is replacing statics. Correspondingly, instead of the
image we more and more find symbols—e.g., the Bull, the Lamb, the
Fish, the Triangle, the Cross—coming to the front. In Constantine’s
“in hoc signo vinces” scarcely an echo of the Classical remains.
Already there is setting in that aversion to human representation that
ended in the Islamic and Byzantine prohibitions of images.
Right down to Trajan—long after the last trait of Apollinian world-
feeling had departed from the soil of Greece—the Roman state-
worship had strength enough to hold to the Euclidean tendency and
to augment its world of deities. The gods of the subject lands and
peoples were accorded recognized places of worship, with
priesthood and ritual, in Rome, and were themselves associated as
perfectly definite individuals with the older gods. But from that point
the Magian spirit began to gain ground even here, in spite of an
honourable resistance which centred in a few of the very oldest
patrician families.[508] The god-figures as such, as bodies, vanished
from the consciousness of men, to make way for a transcendental
god-feeling which no longer depended on sense-evidences; and the
usages, festivals and legends melted into one another. When in 217
Caracalla put an end to all sacral-legal distinctions between Roman
and foreign deities and Isis, absorbing all older female numina,
became actually the first goddess of Rome[509] (and thereby the most
dangerous opponent of Christianity and the most obnoxious target
for the hatred of the Fathers), then Rome became a piece of the
East, a religious diocese of Syria. Then the Baals of Doliche, Petra,
Palmyra and Edessa began to melt into the monotheism of Sol, who
became and remained (till his representative Licinius fell before
Constantine) God of the Empire. By now, the question was not
between Classical and Magian—Christianity was in so little danger
from the old gods that it could offer them a sort of sympathy—but it
was, which of the Magian religions should dictate religious form to
the world of the Classical Empire? The decline of the old plastic
feeling is very clearly discernible in the stages through which
Emperor-worship passed—first, the dead emperor taken into the
circle of State gods by resolution of the Senate (Divus Julius, 42
B.C.), a priesthood provided for him and his image removed from
amongst the ancestor-images that were carried in purely domestic
celebrations; then, from Marcus Aurelius, no further consecrations of
priests (and, presently, no further building of temples) for the service
of deified emperors, for the reason that religious sentiment was now
satisfied by a general “templum divorum”; finally, the epithet Divus
used simply as a title of members of the Imperial family. This end to
the evolution marks the victory of the Magian feeling. It will be found
that multiple names in the inscriptions (such as Isis-Magna Mater-
Juno-Astarte-Bellona, or Mithras-Sol Invictus-Helios) come to signify
titles of one sole existent Godhead.[510]

XI

Atheism is a subject that the psychologist and the student of

religion have hitherto regarded as scarcely worth careful
investigation. Much has been written and argued about it, and very
roundly, by the free-thought martyr on the one hand and the religious
zealot on the other. But no one has had anything to say about the
species of atheism; or has treated it analytically as an individual and
definite phenomenon, positive and necessary and intensely
symbolic; or has realized how it is limited in time.
Is “Atheism” the a priori constitution of a certain world-
consciousness or is it a voluntary self-expression? Is one born with it
or converted to it? Does the unconscious feeling that the cosmos
has become godless bring in its train the consciousness that it is so,
the realization that "Great Pan is dead"? Are there early atheists, for
example in the Doric or the Gothic ages? Has this thinker or that
been denounced as atheist with injustice as well as with passion?
And can there be civilized men who are not wholly or at any rate
partially atheist?
It is not in dispute (the word itself shows it in all languages) that
atheism is essentially a negation, that it signifies the foregoing of a
spiritual idea and therefore the precedence of such an idea, and that
it is not the creative act of an unimpaired formative power. But what
is it that it denies? In what way? And who is the denier?
Atheism, rightly understood, is the necessary expression of a
spirituality that has accomplished itself and exhausted its religious
possibilities, and is declining into the inorganic. It is entirely
compatible with a living wistful desire for real religiousness[511]—
therein resembling Romanticism, which likewise would recall that
which has irrevocably gone, namely, the Culture—and it may quite
well be in a man as a creation of his feeling without his being aware
of it, without its ever interfering with the habits of his thought or
challenging his convictions. We can understand this if we can see
what it was that made the devout Haydn call Beethoven an atheist
after he had heard some of his music. Atheism comes not with the
evening of the Culture but with the dawn of the Civilization. It
belongs to the great city, to the “educated man” of the great city who
acquires mechanistically what his forefathers the creators of the
Culture had lived organically. In respect of the Classical feeling of
God, Aristotle is an atheist unawares. The Hellenistic-Roman
Stoicism is atheistic like the Socialism of Western and the Buddhism
of Indian modernity, reverently though they may and do use the word
“God.”
But, if this late form of world-feeling and world-image which
preludes our “second religiousness” is universally a negation of the
religious in us, the structure of it is different in each of the
Civilizations. There is no religiousness that is without an atheistic
opposition belonging uniquely to itself and directed uniquely against
itself. Men continue to experience the outer world that extends
around them as a cosmos of well-ordered bodies or a world-cavern
or efficient space, as the case may be, but they no longer livingly
experience the sacred causality in it. They only learn to know it in a
profane causality that is, or is desired to be, inclusively mechanical.
[512]
There are atheisms of Classical, Arabian and Western kinds and
these differ from one another in meaning and in matter. Nietzsche
formulated the dynamic atheism on the basis that “God is dead,” and
a Classical philosopher would have expressed the static and
Euclidean by saying that the “gods who dwell in the holy places are
dead,” the one indicating that boundless space has, the other that
countless bodies have, become godless. But dead space and dead
things are the “facts” of physics. The atheist is unable to experience
any difference between the Nature-picture of physics and that of
religion. Language, with a fine feeling, distinguishes wisdom and
intelligence—the early and the late, the rural and the megalopolitan
conditions of the soul. Intelligence even sounds atheistic. No one
would describe Heraclitus or Meister Eckart as an intelligence, but
Socrates and Rousseau were intelligent and not “wise” men. There
is something root-less in the word. It is only from the standpoint of
the Stoic and of the Socialist, of the typical irreligious man, that want
of intelligence is a matter for contempt.
The spiritual in every living Culture is religious, has religion,
whether it be conscious of it or not. That it exists, becomes,
develops, fulfils itself, is its religion. It is not open to a spirituality to
be irreligious; at most it can play with the idea of irreligion as
Medicean Florentines did. But the megalopolitan is irreligious; this is
part of his being, a mark of his historical position. Bitterly as he may
feel the inner emptiness and poverty, earnestly as he may long to be
religious, it is out of his power to be so. All religiousness in the
Megalopolis rests upon self-deception. The degree of piety of which
a period is capable is revealed in its attitude towards toleration. One
tolerates, either because the form-language appears to be
expressing something of that which in one’s own lived experience is
felt as divine, or else because that experience no longer contains
anything so felt.
What we moderns have called “Toleration” in the Classical
world[513] is an expression of the contrary of atheism. Plurality of
numina and cults is inherent in the conception of Classical religion,
and it was not toleration but the self-evident expression of antique
piety that allowed validity to them all. Conversely, anyone who
demanded exceptions showed himself ipso facto as godless.
Christians and Jews counted, and necessarily counted, as atheists in
the eyes of anyone whose world-picture was an aggregate of
individual bodies; and when in Imperial times they ceased to be
regarded in this light, the old Classical god-feeling had itself come to
an end. On the other hand, respect for the form of the local cult
whatever this might be, for images of the gods, for sacrifices and
festivals was always expected, and anyone who mocked or profaned
them very soon learned the limits of Classical toleration—witness the
scandal of the Mutilation of the Hermae at Athens and trials for the
desecration of the Eleusinian mysteries, that is, impious travestying
of the sensuous element. But to the Faustian soul (again we see
opposition of space and body, of conquest and acceptance of
presence) dogma and not visible ritual constitutes the essence. What
is regarded as godless is opposition to doctrine. Here begins the
spatial-spiritual conception of heresy. A Faustian religion by its very
nature cannot allow any freedom of conscience; it would be in
contradiction with its space-invasive dynamic. Even free thinking
itself is no exception to the rule. After the stake, the guillotine; after
the burning of the books, their suppression; after the power of the
pulpit, the power of the Press. Amongst us there is no faith without
leanings to an Inquisition of some sort. Expressed in appropriate
electrodynamic imagery, the field of force of a conviction adjusts all
the minds within it according to its own intensity. Failure to do so
means absence of conviction—in ecclesiastical language,
ungodliness. For the Apollinian soul, on the contrary, it was contempt
of the cult—ἀσέβεια in the literal sense—that was ungodly, and here
its religion admitted no freedom of attitude. In both cases there was
a line drawn between the toleration demanded by the god-feeling
and that forbidden by it.
Now, here the Late-Classical philosophy of Sophist-Stoic
speculation (as distinct from the general Stoic disposition) was in
opposition to religious feeling. And accordingly we find the people of
Athens—that Athens which could build altars to “unknown gods”—
persecuting as pitilessly as the Spanish Inquisition. We have only to
review the list of Classical thinkers and historical personages who
were sacrificed to the integrity of the cult. Socrates and Diagoras
were executed for ἀσέβεια; Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Aristotle,
Alcibiades only saved themselves by flight. The number of
executions for cult-impiety, in Athens alone and during the few
decades of the Peloponnesian War, ran into hundreds. After the
condemnation of Protagoras, a house-to-house search was made for
the destruction of his writings. In Rome, acts of this sort began (so
far as history enables us to trace them) in 181 B.C. when the Senate
ordered the public burning of the Pythagorean “Books of Numa.”[514]
This was followed by an uninterrupted series of expulsions, both of
individual philosophers and of whole schools, and later by
executions and by public burnings of books regarded as subversive
of religion. For instance, in the time of Cæsar alone, the places of
worship of Isis were five times destroyed by order of the Consuls,
and Tiberius had her image thrown into the Tiber. The refusal to
perform sacrifice before the image of the Emperor was made a penal
offence. All these were measures against “atheism,” in the Classical
sense of the word, manifested in theoretical or practical contempt of
the visible cult. Unless we can put our Western feeling of these
matters out of action we shall never penetrate into the essence of
the world-image that underlay the Classical attitude to them. Poets
and philosophers might spin myths and transform god-figures as
much as they pleased. The dogmatic interpretation of the sensuous
data was everyone’s liberty. The histories of the gods could be made
fun of in Satyric drama and comedy—even that did not impugn their
Euclidean existence. But the statue of the god, the cult, the plastic
embodiment of piety—it was not permitted to any man to touch
these. It was not out of hypocrisy that the fine minds of the earlier
Empire, who had ceased to take a myth of any kind seriously,
punctiliously conformed to the public cults and, above all, to the cult
—deeply real for all classes—of the Emperor. And, on the other
hand, the poets and thinkers of the mature Faustian Culture were at
liberty “not to go to Church,” to avoid Confession, to stay at home on
procession-days and (in Protestant surroundings) to live without any
relations with the church whatever. But they were not free to touch
points of dogma, for that would have been dangerous within any
confession and any sect, including, once more and expressly, free-
thought. The Roman Stoic, who without faith in the mythology
piously observed the ritual forms, has his counterpart in those men
of the Age of Enlightenment, like Lessing and Goethe, who
disregarded the rites of the Church but never doubted the
“fundamental truths of faith.”

XII

If we turn back from Nature-feeling become form to Nature-

knowledge become system, we know God or the gods as the origin
of the images by which the intellect seeks to make the world-around
comprehensible to itself. Goethe once remarked (to Riemer): “The
Reason is as old as the World; even the child has reason. But it is
not applied in all times in the same way or to the same objects. The
earlier centuries had their ideas in intuitions of the fancy, but ours
bring them into notions. The great views of Life were brought into
shapes, into Gods; to-day they are brought into notions. Then the
productive force was greater, now the destructive force or art of
separation.” The strong religiousness of Newton’s mechanics[515] and
the almost complete atheism of the formulations of modern dynamics
are of like colour, positive and negative of the same primary feeling.
A physical system of necessity has all the characters of the soul to
whose world-form it belongs. The Deism of the Baroque belongs with
its dynamics and its analytical geometry; its three basic principles,
God, Freedom and Immortality, are in the language of mechanics the
principles of inertia (Galileo), least action (D’Alembert) and the
conservation of energy (J. R. Mayer).
That which nowadays we call quite generally physics is in reality
an artifact of the Baroque. At this stage the reader will not feel it as
paradoxical to associate the mode of representation which rests on
the assumption of distant forces and the (wholly un-Classical and
anything but naïve) idea of action-at-a-distance, attraction and
repulsion of masses, specially with the Jesuit style of architecture
founded by Vignola, and to call it accordingly the Jesuit style of
physics; and I would likewise call the Infinitesimal Calculus, which of
necessity came into being just when and where it did, the Jesuit style
of mathematic. Within this style, a working hypothesis that deepens
the technique of experimentation is “correct”; for Loyola’s concern,
like Newton’s, was not description of Nature but method.
Western physics is by its inward form dogmatic and not ritualistic
(kultisch). Its content is the dogma of Force as identical with space
and distance, the theory of the mechanical Act (as against the
mechanical Posture) in space. Consequently its tendency is
persistently to overcome the apparent. Beginning with a still quite
Apollinian-sensuous classification of physics into the physics of the
eye (optics), of the ear (acoustics) and of the skin-sense (heat), it by
degrees eliminated all sense-impressions and replaced them by
abstract systems of relations; thus, under the influence of ideas
concerning dynamical motion in an æther, radiant heat is nowadays
dealt with under the heading of “optics,” a word which has ceased to
have anything to do with the eye.
“Force” is a mythical quantity, which does not arise out of scientific
experimentation but, on the contrary, defines the structure thereof a
priori. It is only the Faustian conception of Nature that instead of a
magnet thinks of a magnetism whose field of force includes a piece
of iron, and instead of luminous bodies thinks of radiant energy, and
that imagines personifications like “electricity,” “temperature” and
“radioactivity.”[516]
That this “force” or “energy” is really a numen stiffened into a
concept (and in nowise the result of scientific experience) is shown
by the often overlooked fact that the basic principle known as the
First Law of Thermodynamics[517] says nothing whatever about the
nature of energy, and it is properly speaking an incorrect (though
psychologically most significant) assumption that the idea of the
“Conservation of Energy” is fixed in it. Experimental measurement
can in the nature of things only establish a number, which number
we have (significantly, again) named work. But the dynamical cast of
our thought demanded that this should be conceived as a difference
of energy, although the absolute value of energy is only a figment
and can never be rendered by a definite number. There always
remains, therefore, an undefined additive constant, as we call it; in
other words, we always strive to maintain the image of an energy
that our inner eye has formed, although actual scientific practice is
not concerned with it.
This being the provenance of the force-concept, it follows that we
can no more define it than we can define those other un-Classical
words Will and Space. There remains always a felt and intuitively-
perceived remainder which makes every personal definition an
almost religious creed of its author. Every Baroque scientist in this
matter has his personal inner experience which he is trying to clothe
in words. Goethe, for instance, could never have defined his idea of
a world-force, but to himself it was a certainty. Kant called force the
phenomenon of an ent-in-itself: “we know substance in space, the
body, only through forces.” Laplace called it an unknown of which the
workings are all that we know, and Newton imagined immaterial
forces at a distance. Leibniz spoke of Vis viva as a quantum which
together with matter formed the unit that he called the monad, and
Descartes, with certain thinkers of the 18th Century, was equally
unwilling to draw fundamental distinctions between motion and the
moved. Beside potentia, virtus, impetus we find even in Gothic times
peri-phrases such as conatus and nisus, in which the force and the
releasing cause are obviously not separated. We can, indeed, quite
well differentiate between Catholic, Protestant and Atheistic notions
of force. But Spinoza, a Jew and therefore, spiritually, a member of
the Magian Culture, could not absorb the Faustian force-concept at
all, and it has no place in his system.[518] And it is an astounding
proof of the secret power of root-ideas that Heinrich Hertz, the only
Jew amongst the great physicists of the recent past, was also the
only one of them who tried to resolve the dilemma of mechanics by
eliminating the idea of force.
The force-dogma is the one and only theme of Faustian physics.
That branch of science which under the name of Statics has been
passed from system to system and century to century is a fiction.
“Modern Statics” is in the same position as “arithmetic” and
“geometry,” which, if the literal and original senses of the words be
kept to, are void of meaning in modern analysis, empty names
bequeathed by Classical science and only preserved because our
reverence for all things Classical has hitherto debarred us from
getting rid of them or even recognizing their hollowness. There is no
Western statics—that is, no interpretation of mechanical facts that is
natural to the Western spirit bases itself on the ideas of form and
substance, or even, for that matter, on the ideas of space and mass
otherwise than in connexion with those of time and force.[519] The
reader can test this in any department that he pleases. Even
“temperature,” which of all our physical magnitudes has the most
plausible look of being static, Classical and passive, only falls into its
place in our system when it is brought into a force-picture, viz., the
picture of a quantity of heat made up of ultra-swift subtle irregular
motions of the atoms of a body, with temperature as the mean vis
viva of these atoms.
The Late Renaissance imagined that it had revived the
Archimedean physics just as it believed that it was continuing the
Classical sculpture. But in the one case as in the other it was merely
preparing for the forms of the Baroque, and doing so out of the spirit
of the Gothic. To this Statics belongs the picture-subject as it is in
Mantegna’s work and also in that of Signorelli, whose line and
attitude later generations regarded as stiff and cold. With Leonardo,
dynamics begins and in Rubens the movement of swelling bodies is
already at a maximum.
As late as 1629 the spirit of Renaissance physics appears in the
theory of magnetism formulated by the Jesuit Nicolaus Cabeo.
Conceived in the mould of an Aristotelian idea of the world, it was
(like Palladio’s work on architecture) foredoomed to lead to nothing
—not because it was “wrong” in itself but because it was in
contradiction with the Faustian Nature-feeling which, freed from
Magian leading-strings by the thinkers and researchers of the 14th
Century, now required forms of its very own for the expression of its
world-knowledge. Cabeo avoided the notions of force and mass and
confined himself to the Classical concepts of form and substance—in
other words, he went back from the architecture of Michelangelo’s
last phase and of Vignola to that of Michelozzo and Raphael—and
the system which he formed was complete and self-contained but
without importance for the future. A magnetism conceived as a state
of individual bodies and not as a force in unbounded space was
incapable of symbolically satisfying the inner eye of Faustian man.
What we need is a theory of the Far, not one of the Near. Newton’s
mathematical-mechanical principles required to be made explicit as
a dynamics pure and entire, and this another Jesuit, Boscovich,[520]
was the first to achieve in 1758.
Even Galileo was still under the influence of the Renaissance
feeling, to which the opposition of force and mass, that was to
produce, in architecture and painting and music alike the element of
grand movement, was something strange and uncomfortable. He
therefore limited the idea of force to contact-force (impact) and his
formulation did not go beyond conservation of momentum (quantity
of motion). He held fast to mere moved-ness and fought shy of any
passion of space, and it was left to Leibniz to develop—first in the
course of controversy and then positively by the application of his
mathematical discoveries—the idea of genuine free and directional
forces (living force, activum thema). The notion of conservation of
momentum then gave way to that of conservation of living forces, as
quantitative number gave way to functional number.
The concept of mass, too, did not become definite until somewhat
later. In Galileo and Kepler its place is occupied by volume, and it
was Newton who distinctly conceived it as functional—the world as
function of God. That mass (defined nowadays as the constant
relation between force and acceleration in respect of a system of
material points) should have no proportionate relation whatever to
volume was, in spite of the evidence of the planets, a conclusion
inacceptable to Renaissance feeling.
But, even so, Galileo was forced to inquire into the causes of
motion. In a genuine Statics, working only with the notions of
material and form, this question would have had no meaning. For
Archimedes displacement was a matter of insignificance compared
with form, which was the essence of all corporeal existence; for, if
space be Nonent, what efficient can there be external to the body
concerned? Things are not functions of motion, but they move
themselves. Newton it was who first got completely away from
Renaissance feeling and formed the notion of distant forces, the
attraction and repulsion of bodies across space itself. Distance is
already in itself a force. The very idea of it is so free from all sense-
perceptible content that Newton himself felt uncomfortable with it—in
fact it mastered him and not he it. It was the spirit of Baroque itself,
with its bent towards infinite space, that had evoked this contrapuntal
and utterly un-plastic notion. And in it withal there was a
contradiction. To this day no one has produced an adequate
definition of these forces-at-a-distance. No one has ever yet
understood what centrifugal force really is. Is the force of the earth
rotating on its axis the cause of this motion or vice versa? Or are the
two identical? Is such a cause, considered per se, a force or another
motion? What is the difference between force and motion? Suppose
the alterations in the planetary system to be workings of a centrifugal
force; that being so, the bodies ought to be slung out of their path
[tangentially], and as in fact they are not so, we must assume a
centrifugal force as well. What do all these words mean? It is just the
impossibility of arriving at order and clarity here that led Hertz to do
away with the force-notion altogether and (by highly artificial
assumptions of rigid couplings between positions and velocities) to
reduce his system of mechanics to the principle of contact (impact).
But this merely conceals and does not remove the perplexities,
which are of intrinsically Faustian character and rooted in the very
essence of dynamics. “Can we speak of forces which owe their
origin to motion?” Certainly not; but can we get rid of primary notions
that are inborn in the Western spirit though indefinable? Hertz
himself made no attempt to apply his system practically.
This symbolic difficulty of modern mechanics is in no way removed
by the potential theory that was founded by Faraday when the centre
of gravity of physical thought had passed from the dynamics of
matter to the electrodynamics of the æther. The famous
experimenter, who was a visionary through and through—alone
amongst the modern masters of physics he was not a mathematician
—observed in 1846: “I assume nothing to be true in any part of
space (whether this be empty as is commonly said, or filled with
matter) except forces and the lines in which they are exercised.”
Here, plain enough, is the directional tendency with its intimately
organic and historic content, the tendency in the knower to live the
process of his knowing. Here Faraday is metaphysically at one with
Newton, whose forces-at-a-distance point to a mythic background
that the devout physicist declined to examine. The possible
alternative way of reaching an unequivocal definition of force—viz.,
that which starts from World and not God, from the object and not
the subject of natural motion-state—was leading at the very same
time to the formulation of the concept of Energy. Now, this concept
represents, as distinct from that of force, a quantum of directedness
and not a direction, and is in so far akin to Leibniz’s conception of
“living force” unalterable in quantity. It will not escape notice that
essential features of the mass-concept have been taken over here;
indeed, even the bizarre notion of an atomic structure of energy has
been seriously discussed.
This rearrangement of the basic words has not, however, altered
the feeling that a world-force with its substratum does exist. The
motion-problem is as insoluble as ever. All that has happened on the
way from Newton to Faraday—or from Berkeley to Mill—is that the
religious deed-idea has been replaced by the irreligious work-idea.
[521]
In the Nature-picture of Bruno, Newton and Goethe something
divine is working itself out in acts, in that of modern physics Nature is
doing work; for every “process” within the meaning of the First Law
of Thermodynamics is or should be measurable by the expenditure
of energy to which a quantity of work corresponds in the form of
“bound energy.”
Naturally, therefore, we find the decisive discovery of J. R. Mayer
coinciding in time with the birth of the Socialist theory. Even
economic systems wield the same concepts; the value-problem has
been in relation with quantity of work[522]] ever since Adam Smith,
who vis-à-vis Quesney and Turgot marks the change from an
organic to a mechanical structure of the economic field. The “work”
which is the foundation of modern economic theory has purely
dynamic meaning, and phrases could be found in the language of
economists which correspond exactly to the physical propositions of
conservation of energy, entropy and least action.
If, then, we review the successive stages through which the
central idea of force has passed since its birth in the Baroque, and
its intimate relations with the form-worlds of the great arts and of
mathematics, we find that (1) in the 17th Century (Galileo, Newton,
Leibniz) it is pictorially formed and in unison with the great art of oil-
painting that died out about 1630; (2) in the 18th Century (the
“classical” mechanics of Laplace and Lagrange) it acquires the
abstract character of the fugue-style and is in unison with Bach; and
(3) with the Culture at its end and the civilized intelligence victorious
over the spiritual, it appears in the domain of pure analysis, and in
particular in the theory of functions of several complex variables,
without which it is, in its most modern form, scarcely understandable.