The Bloomsbury Group

In letters, memoirs, and journal entries, the Bloomsbury Group is often alluded to, by members and nonmembers alike, as a casual association of British intellectuals who converge for nothing more definite than the discussion of “ideas.” With no manifesto or doctrine to speak of, the Bloomsburries were bound to each other by personal integrity, a common interest in art and literature, and a thorough rejection of the strictures of Victorian morality. Their elitism, however, provoked criticism from outsiders, who accused them of being “narrow in their interests, loose in their view of morals, irreverent, unpatriotic, remote, and superior.” Insofar as they had a keen interest in abstract thought, upheld freedom of speech and sexual orientation, questioned the authority of tradition, and avoided conscription in the war, this assessment is accurate. And yet, they believed these views could all be rationalized as an outgrowth of the ethical philosophy of G.E. Moore.

Typically, there was no consensus on the meaning of Moore’s Ideal Utilitarianism, nor was there any overriding opinion of its actual influence on the group. For J.M. Keynes, “it was exciting, exhilarating, the beginning of a renaissance, the opening of a new heaven on a new earth […] nothing mattered except states of mind, our own and other people’s of course, but chiefly our own. These states of mind were not associated with action or achievement or with consequences.” What seems to have attracted Keynes most was that Moore’s philosophy, for him, “made morals unnecessary,” and replaced traditional notions of religion with a singular belief in one’s attitude towards oneself and the ultimate essence of things: love, the cultivation of aesthetic experience, and the pursuit of knowledge. General rules and conventions could not interfere, and a “Bloomsberry,” it was supposed, had no obligation to them. As Keynes defiantly states, “I am, and will always remain, an immoralist.” Leonard Woolf, however, disagreed with Keynes’s understanding of Moore’s philosophy, arguing that, on the contrary, it was intensely concerned with right behavior and what ought to be done. With faith in “common sense,” Moore impressed upon the Bloomsbury Group the duty to question “the truth of everything and the authority of everyone, to regard nothing as sacred and to hold nothing in religious respect.” This calculated irreverence turned them into astute observers of new trends and movements, while their aesthetic tastes became so rarefied as to compete with pure Epicureanism.

But as the twentieth century wore on, the conflict between a life of contemplation and a life of action assumed greater urgency. Bloomsbury, this essentially insular family of artists and intellectuals, became increasingly untenable, a judgment shared by the likes of Stephen Spender, W.H. Auden, and Christopher Isherwood. With a second world war on the horizon, the question of Bloomsbury’s legitimacy could no longer be avoided. For decades, its members had lived apart from the rest of the world, a “watered-down aristocracy […] decidedly unwilling to sacrifice their independence to the cause of the working-class struggle.” By the end of the 1930s, it seemed hopelessly outdated. One could no longer ignore concrete social and political developments, particularly if one had the power to affect or influence them. The new generation, preparing to succeed the old and to stake their claim to society, was acutely aware of this fact.