Culture and Messianism: Disinterestedness in Arnold

This article proposes a reconsideration of Matthew Arnold's concept of disinterestedness in the context of the later writings of Kant and of recent discussions of messianism, in particular Giorgio Agamben's study of St. Paul. It argues that disinterestedness in Arnold is a form of what Kant calls "moral fanaticism" based on the preservation of self-consciousness as the foundation of ethical and political obligation. By contrast, Arnold's most important early poems explore the possibility that consciousness might be self-interested and might seek a basis for moral and political action in the call to go beyond self-conscious experience. The following attempts to prepare the ground for such a reassessment of Arnold's early lyric poetry by analyzing the way the theory of the disinterestedness of culture involves a turn away from the direction the early poetry was beginning to take.