Robert Frost Ethics of Ambiguity

A Review by Kristen Moseley

You won’t need a philosophy degree to understand Robert Timmerman’s Robert Frost

Ethics of Ambiguity, but it wouldn’t hurt. In this book Timmerman takes what he determines to

be Robert Frosts ethical philosophy and frames it against the prevailing ethical philosophies of

the time in an attempt to see if Frost “fits” in any one category.

As one might guess, and as with any author as prolific as Frost, the answer is no. Any

author whose work has spanned as large of time as Frost would certainly undergo a

transformation in their thinking and understanding of the world. It is also assumed that any

author whose work spans this amount of time would be influenced by the great minds and

discoveries that are going on around them and it’s that influence that Timmerman reveals through

his comparisons.

But first, Timmerman must create for the reader a solid poetic identity for Frost and he

does so though the elements that reoccur in his works. Once he has established a guiding

principal to attribute to Frost, he can then compare it to a few of the ethical philosophies that

have gained and lost favor over the course of Frost’s life. It is akin to Frost’s comments about

nations from his Amherst Alumni Council Address from 1930, “Education by Poetry”, “First of

all, you have got to have the nations and then they can be as international as they please with

each other.” This line, interestingly, was interpreted by Timmerman in this text as meaning that

Frost was against the idea of nationalism. He says, “The one pattern of belief that Frost dismisses

is national belief, which in his view, is nearly always divisive and destructive of personal human

nature.” while Frost’s whole quote reads, “I have been where I came near getting up and walking

out on the people who thought that they had to talk against nations…”.
 As Timmerman goes through each of the most prominent ethics studies, he uses a

consistent pattern that works well. Each chapter starts with an explanation of his understanding

of the philosophy by using authors who are best known for their association with the movement.

In fact, each chapter is titled with the name of the movement, which would make this text easily

navigable for someone studying a particular philosophy and Frost’s interaction with it. Within

each chapter, there is a section titled “Frost and…” which then begins the work of exposing the

similarities and differences between the theories of that particular philosophy and Frost’s

philosophies.

It is in these subsections that the reader interested in analysis of Frost will revel.

Timmerman spends a substantial part of each chapter in this section, dissecting some of the most

famous and some of the least known Frost poems in order to show the subtlest distinction

between or alignment with a particular line of reasoning. In fact, at times it almost feels like

Timmerman is getting happily lost in the minutia of Frost’s poetry. In the poem “Two Look at

Two” where he spends three pages analyzing the poem, he comes to the conclusion that “…the

engendered pairing in nature has affirmed their own union”. He does not, however, tie the poem

or its meaning back to the chapter in which it is found: Existential Ethics”.

As far as the treatment of the ethical philosophies goes, it’s hard for the layman to be sure

that Timmerman is making valid assumptions about the different philosophies without having

studied these areas of philosophy in the past. His descriptions of the different lines of thought run

rather dry and, at times, a little confusing, jumping from one idea to another with the thinnest

segue.

What does work well is Timmerman’s use of these philosophies to pull out areas of

Frost’s work where we can see him exploring areas of ethical dilemma. The section on
Theological ethics, for example, allows for an exploration into Frost’s treatment of God. After an

explanation of Augustine’s theory that end with a synopsis that every action begins with a faith

act, he uses “Directive” as an example. Frost, according to Timmerman, lures the reader into

participation in the situation and then sets options into play. He says it is, “It is ultimately a poem

about human actions, although surely predicated upon a faith act”. Frost never, however, overtly

discusses God, as he would if he were a staunch adherent to the theological ethics philosophy,

although we do see how this poem and others that he cites, in their ambiguous way, probe the

human relationship with God but remain inconclusive.

While not necessarily an ethical issue there is an interesting area where we see the

influence of particular philosopher on Frost’s work. Early in the text, where Timmerman is

establishing some of Frost core principles, he introduces Santayana, who taught a philosophy

class that Frost was in, and whose ideas seem to align with those that Frost himself claims as his

own. Santayana said “Poetry is speech where the instrument counts as well as the meaning – for

its own sake and its own sweetness.” When compared a line in a letter to John Bartlett in 1913

where Frost says the he “…make[s] music out of what I may call the sound of sense” (Frost

Collected Poems, Prose and Plays, 664) it’s easy to see the artistic ideology that the two men

share. While we may not attribute Santayana with Frost’s development of his “sound of sense”,

it’s apparent that he found in Santayana a kindred spirit.

Ethics and Ambiguity is a text full of philosophical and poetic analysis. While

Timmerman may not reveal the intricacies of the various ethical philosophies as effortlessly as he

does the intricacies of Frost’s poems, he does provide the reader with a few new lenses through

which to view Frost’s work.