T. S. Eliot was immediately accepted as one of the qualified philosophers in the letter of June 23, 1916 by Prof. J. H. W oods in the Department of Philosophy, Harvard University immediately after the completion of Eliot’s doctoral dissertation, Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy 01 F. H. Bradley in April, 1916. Eliot, however, did not go back to U.S.A., which was clearly understood by Eliot himself as the critical decision to give up the bright future as a prominent scholar and to face severe financial difficulties because of the expected problems of the relationships with his own parents in U.S.A. The literary turn of Eliot’s main attention from philosophy is explained in this essay through the examination of Eliot’s doctoral dissertation itself. 1 think Eliot could not accept Bradley’s absolute idealism fully, even though he could not reject it completely. Eliot is not a relativist to give up the whole Bradley’s absolute idealism, i.e. metaphysics, but a relative idealist not to reject blatantly nor to accept, without any condition, the probabi1ity of transcendental experience, i.e. the presence of the Absolute in this world. His dilemma in the study of Bradley’s idealism, the most important philosophy at that time as Eliot thought, led him to the poetry. As Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction is a little different from Postmodernism especially in the view that it did not deny completely the present necessity of metaphysics or the Project of Englitenment, Eliot’s philosophical position is quite similar to that of deconstruction. Eliot’s poetry and literary criticism, which have been regarded as one of the representative cases of Modernism, is discussed in this essay in terms of deconstruction, one of the major literaη criticisms of Postmodernism. 1 think Eliot has to use the ironic language or logic in his literary work, for he has to use the language or logic of Modernism for his already achieved postmodern thought against his manifested intention.

• 이만식(경원전문대학) | Man-Sik Lee