I find the topic of this prompt quite difficult to respond to; if I am to respect the essential caveat of the proposition to limit my inquiry into style to the notion that the chosen method of artistic grace is a voluntary act on behalf of the author. The only way for me to reply to this prompt is to explain why I cannot. To think that Stein could write Stevens, or Plato, Peirce, is unimaginable, for an author has as little choice over the idiosyncratic nature of her style as she does in the selection of her parents. In holding that a particular style may be brought off through careful attention to its technique, we are essentially saying that Stein could have written like Stevens, or that Plato could have written like Peirce, if they had been so inclined. The vital motivation that the individual discovers in responding to the historical needs of her epoch as they confront her specifically is too bound up in technique for there to be any question of an author writing in a different style than her own. For example, James was a scientifically minded thinker with a religious temperament. In his writings he sought to provide justification for the possibilities of religious experience in a time when philosophy was infused with materialism by appealing to the “cash-value” benefits believers stood to gain by entertaining the religious hypothesis; and on a more personal level, James’s work may be viewed as a resolution to articulate a plan of action to conquer his own soul-sickness. C.S. Peirce was a conflicted individual who seemed to believe that human beings must become confident in their pursuit of objective truth by pursuing it collectively via the rigorous principles of clear-headed scientific investigation. He wrote at a time when the rationalism of Hegel threatened empirical investigation in science with highfalutin abstractions that neglected to verify theories through experimentation. Wallace Stevens wrote wildly imaginative and exotic poetry—almost Romantic in the emphasis he places on the sublime and the power of the human imagination—at a time when the pursuit of truth through the practices of organized religion was no longer a “live” hypothesis for people following the catastrophes of the World Wars in the first part of the twentieth century. Similarly, Gertrude Stein responded to the oppressive restrictions in early twentieth century society that prevented her from publicly expressing her love for another woman. The disjointed structure through we she relayed her abstruse and codified language exposes the arbitrary power society with which society imbues its language and utilizes it as a tool to enforce its prejudices. And Plato, he found certainty by striking the via media between the philosophy of his predecessors Parmenides and Heraclitus. In his book Irrational Man, William Barrett describes the how personal urgencies of Plato’s life manifest themselves in his philosophy:
As a young man, we are told, Plato had studied the doctrines of Cratylus, a follower of Heraclitus who had taught that all things were in flux and that there was no escape anywhere from death and change; the young Plato, tormented by this vision, desired at all costs a refuge in the eternal fro the insecurities and ravages of time. Hence the enormous attraction for him of the science of mathematics, which opens up a realm of eternal truths…Hence too the tremendous emotional force for him of the theory of eternal forms or Ideas, since these latter were an everlasting realm to which man has access.
In order to ask what possibilities are opened or foreclosed by an author’s choice of a particular style, it may be instructive to remember Miguel De Unamuno’s assertion that all philosophy is nothing more than a justification for our conduct and beliefs after the fact. We may also quote one of Nietzsche’s more famous maxims: “Every great philosophy so far has been the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.” In this way, there is no distance in style, only difference. In pragmatic terms, we might say that a writer’s style is nothing more than the vehicle through which she “harmonizes” the conflicts reality continually presents to her with the stock of beliefs that give her the confidence and strength to navigate through the universe. On this point James writes:
Any idea that helps us to deal, whether practically or intellectually, with either the reality or its belongings, that doesn’t entangle our progress in frustrations, that fits, in fact, and adapts our life to reality’s whole setting, will agree sufficiently to meet the requirement.
If Peirce cannot write poetry, it is because the medium does not lend itself to achieving the goals of logical analysis that are the methods through which he understands reality and the projects through which he articulates it. If Stein does not write like Plato, it is because the hypothesis of “The Good” is not live for her, so pursuing a dialectic that sets out to reveal this truth is not only impractical but impossible because it lacks the vital necessity that the pragmatists hold as an indispensable aspect of all our truths. In Pierce’s terms: there is no irritation of doubt to stimulate a struggle inquiry to attain belief in a truth that is not live.
I suppose the point I am trying to convey here is that style is not an intellectual or aesthetic preference. It is the handmaid to the urgent needs of the individual at those times in our lives when artistic creation serves as defense against the “swarming continuum” of reality that threatens to overwhelm us when we are confronted with ontological shock. James writes in “Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth”: “It is high time to urge the use of a little imagination in philosophy.” Indeed, but it is important to remember that imagination is never independent of the reality that serves as its inspiration.
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