Excerpts from A Grammar of Motives, A Brief Summary of On Symbols and Society Ch. 9

9. Excerpts from A Grammar of Motives, xv-xxiii, 3-9, 15-20.

Introduction: The Five Key Terms of Dramatism

Here are the first two sentences of the book: “What is involved, when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it? An answer to that question is the subject of this book” (xv). A Grammar of Motives, takes a stab at answering those questions by discussing the “basic forms of thought” by which we exemplify or attribute our motives.

The key terms are act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose. The act is what happened. The scene is where or when it happened. The agent is who did the act. The agency is by what means the act was completed. And the purpose is why the act was accomplished. 

Burke’s method: showing application as argument (xv). These principles are easy, but useful. They’re always there for us, though we may take them far away from themselves. And just as a picture looks simple but becomes complex on analysis, so are the terms. [In my opinion, so is Burke—he’s easy to understand, but complex at the same time.]

The key terms can also be lenses, and are even treated as such in certain philosophic schools. Or at least the concepts are key concepts through which the world is seen, while certain philosophers themselves use different terms for the same concept. (On page xxi, Mead becomes act and Dewey Act + Scene.)

While perfectionists might try to use unambiguous terms or argue that a term is locked down to one meaning, as human beings, we can’t get away from ambiguity. Instead, however, since there’s something enigmatic about the universe anyway, this enigma will be revealed as we consider the terms for motives. The point is not to get rid of the enigma, but to use terms that “clearly reveal the strategic spots at which ambiguities necessarily arise” (xviii, italics in original). That is key. It also means we won’t be deceiving ourselves by thinking we're removing ambiguity when we really aren't.

Sometimes we’ll find a writer (or philosopher) who wants to destroy ambiguity so much that he traces a term and then blasts the term and its use because he wants to dissociate himself from some kind of a social or political situation in which the term was used. So there’s ambiguity in talking about ambiguity, “since he presumably feels purged and strengthened” (xviii). We can’t get away from some degree of ambiguity! There is always ambiguity! 

So, instead of saying that a term is ambiguous in order to relieve ourselves of its ambiguity, Burke wants to “study and clarify the resources of ambiguity” and “transformation” (xix), meaning how one term shifts through multiple meanings. We have to pay attention to that shifting so that we understand why we do the things we do. A transformation is when A becomes non-A. For example, the same word can mean something in one context but something slightly different in another context. When things are on common ground, they are potentially transformable [the principle of identification is implicit here, and is nearly everywhere in the Grammar].

Many things can be treated as if they were one of the five terms. War is an act, a scene, an agency, a purpose, and, if we talk about Ares or Mars, an agent or super-agent.

Terms are like fingers. Separate but one. In this book, the terms are fingers and the hand is Dramatism.

Dialectics and Metaphysics are not separate, but are necessary in any discussion of human motives. Motivation is a philosophy and can’t be solved by empirical science.

Ways of Placement

Container and the Thing Contained

The Scene—Act Ratio

The scene contains the act and the actors (agents), and there is a relationship between the two. [That’s so profound to me. Certain people are in certain places. And certain people do certain things in certain places. Certain things happen in certain places.]

Summary of Ebsen’s An Enemy of the People. Commentary on O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra. Hamlet: the scene influences us. Hardy. Virgil.

Acts are consistent with scenes. “Scene is to act as implicit is to explicit” (7). Characters can also be “scenes.”

The Scene—Agent Ratio

In this ratio, “the synecdochic relation is between person and place” (7). Certain people are in certain places. There is a margin of overlap between agent and scene. [Identification between the two (though Burke doesn’t use that term here).]

Range of All the Ratios

We’ve discussed 2 ratios, but 10 are possible. Since certain people do certain things, we should pay special attention. [That was, after all, Burke's opening question—“What is involved, when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it?” (xv).] 

Not only that, but whereas scenes contain agents and acts, the agent doesn’t really “contain” the act, except as if it were implicit. For Burke, the agent is the author of acts. [A certain kind of tree brings forth a certain kind of fruit, and a certain kind of fountain brings forth a certain kind of water.]

One may “deflect attention from scenic matters by situating the motives of an act in the agent” or by deriving an act from a scene. People do this all the time.

[It wasn’t the person, it was the weapon. Or it was the scene’s “fault.” Or it was the person. Or it wasn’t the weapon, it was the person. E.g. “Guns kill people.” “Guns don’t kill people, but people kill people.” “Only people from the bad areas of town own guns and kill people.” “It wasn’t the person's fault because anybody who {has x happen to him or her} would have done it.” etc.]

“In reality, we are capable of but partial acts, acts that but partially represent us and that produce but partial transformations” (19).

Attitude is [also] part of the agent (20).