Editing T. S. Eliot’s Conception of Culture (section)

==== A Class System ====
Though culture is generally the concern of only a small minority (often the high class which is most responsible for its production and custody), it is for the benefit and disposal of and subject to influence by all its members, and should be regarded as property of the whole of society — as any culture in the possession of few tends to deprecate. Eliot draws from Dr. Mannheim’s Man and Society to discuss the natural tendency of this culture-creating high class or “elite” to reorganize when class distinctions dissolve and society reorders itself based on qualifications other than birth — when aristocratic societies transform into mass-societies. The idea of a classless society does not entice Eliot as much as it does other philosophers and sociologists, and he draws a distinction between domination, having negative connotations, and governance, in which the ablest minds find the most expression in the workings of society. If examined in light of its limited purpose, the culture-creating class might necessarily be a good thing, and forcibly removing the dominant class might result in instability, its function never really wholly taken over by any other group.
 Thus, the culture of such a class must not be disregarded as being superfluous to society as a whole, but instead as an aspect of society, valuable in itself and as enriching of the lower levels as it is of the higher. After all, most craftsmen and artisans during the Middle Ages were not men of noble rank, au contraire.
Cultural cohesion, then, arises not from strict demarcation of the diverse cultures of groups but by the participation, mutual appreciation, overlapping of and shared interests. Drawing from the state of Western society, he remarks that “progress of civilization” may result in the further specialization of culture groups and the dissolution of classes, so that “religious thought and practice, philosophy and art, all tend to become isolated areas cultivated by groups in no communication with each other” — in which case, overall cultural disintegration is inevitable. In a hypothetical situation wherein the elite class is formed by plucking certain children out of their cradles and conferring upon them a uniform, democratic, yet thorough education, Eliot imagines that such a class would bond solely with each other through professional interest, and lack the social cohesion and continuity that undergirds such a group, were it to evolve organically. This is not so much a defense of an aristocratic or unequal society, but the recognition of their essential function — their role in the formation of a society with a continuous gradation of cultural levels, creating a more conscious and specialized culture.

He contends that “artistic sensibility is impoverished by its divorce from the religious sensibility and the religious by its separation from the artistic;” and society itself is impoverished by a loss of culture.
 To me this is reflected in many ideals of Indian culture, such as reflected in the typical conception of Indian art as a subsidiary and derivative mode of religious, intellectual and philosophical discourse, its aesthetic comprehension being central to its metaphysical existence, and even, the fulfillment of the loftier aims of puruṣārtha.