1 Analyticity and Systematicity in Anglophone Aesthetics Taylor D. Enoch Submitted for the Examination of the Mphil Stud Degree
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Analyticity and Systematicity in Anglophone Aesthetics Taylor D. Enoch Submitted for the examination of the MPhil Stud degree September 2016 Department of Philosophy at University College London 1 2 I, Taylor D. Enoch, confirm that the work presented here is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated throughout the dissertation. Taylor D. Enoch | 01 September 2016 3 4 Abstract The scope of this project is threefold. Firstly, it is metaphilosophical, as it concerns a question of method. Secondly, it is aesthetical, as it concerns a question of method in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Thirdly, it is historiographical, as it draws from the corpus of the philosophy of art, aesthetics and art history, and considers these texts not only by way of their ideas but also by way of their history. This dissertation entertains a significant organizational shift by adopting and adapting a narrower scope of anglophone aesthetics (AA). This shift renders AA as biphasic, admitting of earlier (EAA) and later (LAA) phases, the ‘early-late distinction’, categorized by exemplary texts per phase. Upon investigation of these texts, the EAA-LAA shift poses a constitutive methodological shift, the Problem of Systematic Inconsistency (PSI), from non-systematicity to systematicity. This inconsistency, it is argued, is merely apparent, and is explainable as a swapping of priority between analytic and systematic methods from EAA to LAA, which holds systematicity of some sort to be implicit in EAA. To elucidate this, various modes of analysis and models of system are presented. From a formalist outlook, an historiographical examination of cubism is used to concretize the proposed solution to the PSI. Of particular focus is the shift from analytic (AC) to synthetic (SC) cubism, wherein it is diagrammatically shown that cubist ‘signs’ played an implicit role throughout AC like that described of systematicity throughout EAA. Comparison between realist and idealist art yields a key distinction, the ‘unitary-plenary distinction’, between two definitions of system in terms of the presence or absence of a privileged ‘kernel’. That both EAA and LAA entertained a realist plenary rather than idealist unitary systematicity, implicit in the former and explicit in the latter, is the solution to the PSI. 5 6 Acknowledgements This dissertation was inspired by a passing comment within an essay titled Method and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Art, published in October 2014, not one month after I had arrived to London from America. Thank you to Professor Sebastian Gardner for authoring that paper and for your supervision over the past two years; likewise to Dr James Wilson. Thank you to my fellow MPhil Studs for abiding my babbling on cubism in seminar -- thrice; likewise to Drs Fiona Leigh and Han Van Wietmarschen. Thank you to the Rockefeller Archive Center, especially to Mary Ann Quinn, for her help with the Isenberg archives. I have found a new genius to love in him. My grandest thanks, perhaps, go to Professor Richard Kamber, my gadfly, an instructor, sponsor, colleague, and friend, who inspired my entry into philosophy and aesthetics. And finally, thank you to my Family, who have shipped this American to England to think and to write on the Americans and the English and their arts. 7 8 Table of Contents Declaration................................................................................................................................... 3 Abstract......................................................................................................................................... 5 Acknowledgements..................................................................................................................... 7 1 AESTHETICS, ART, ANALYSIS, SYNTHESIS AND SYSTEM..................................................... 13 1.1 The Anglophone Aesthetics Programme............................................................... 13 1.1.1 Statement of the Early-Late Distinction.................................................... 16 1.1.2 A Primer on Anglophone Aesthetics and Analytic Philosophy............. 17 1.1.3 A Primer on Early Anglophone Aesthetics............................................... 21 1.1.4 A Primer on Late Anglophone Aesthetics................................................. 23 1.1.5 A Problem in Anglophone Aesthetics........................................................ 24 1.2 Statement of the Problem and Thesis.................................................................... 25 1.3 Analysis, Synthesis and System in Analytic Philosophy...................................... 27 1.3.1 A Primer on Analysis.................................................................................... 27 1.3.2 A Primer on System...................................................................................... 30 1.4 Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 33 2 ANALYSIS, SYNTHESIS AND SYSTEM IN CUBISM (c. 1907-1920s)....................................... 35 2.1 Cubism........................................................................................................................ 35 2.1.1 Cubism: a History and Philosophy.............................................................. 36 2.1.2 Cubism: a Case-Study.................................................................................... 39 2.1.2.1 A Note on Formalism................................................................. 40 2.1.2.2 Analytic Cubism (c. 1907-1912)................................................. 45 2.1.2.3 Synthetic Cubism (c. 1912-1920s)............................................. 47 2.1.3 Conclusion to ‘Cubism: a Case-Study’........................................................ 47 2.1.4 Statement of the Unitary-Plenary Distinction.......................................... 48 2.2 Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 51 3 EARLY ANGLOPHONE AESTHETICS (c. 1946-1965)............................................................. 53 3.1 Introduction............................................................................................................... 53 3.1.1 Isenberg (1950)............................................................................................... 53 3.1.2 Elton (1954).................................................................................................... 56 3.1.3 Margolis (1962)............................................................................................... 57 3.1.4 Barrett (1965).................................................................................................. 58 3.2 Analysis in Early Anglophone Aesthetics.............................................................. 59 3.3 System in Early Anglophone Aesthetics................................................................ 60 3.4 Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 60 9 4 LATE ANGLOPHONE AESTHETICS (c. 1964-1988)................................................................ 63 4.1 Introduction............................................................................................................... 63 4.1.1 Danto (1964)................................................................................................... 63 4.1.2 Goodman (1968)............................................................................................ 67 4.1.3 Wollheim (1968)............................................................................................. 72 4.2 Analysis in Late Anglophone Aesthetics................................................................ 76 4.3 System in Late Anglophone Aesthetics.................................................................. 76 4.4 Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 77 5 ANALYTICITY & SYSTEMATICITY IN EARLY & LATE ANGLOPHONE AESTHETICS....... 79 5.1 General Conclusion................................................................................................... 79 5.2 Restatement of the Early-Late Distinction............................................................ 79 5.3 Restatement of the Unitary-Plenary Distinction.................................................. 79 5.4 Restatement of the Problem and Thesis................................................................ 79 6 APPENDIX.................................................................................................................................... 83 7 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................................ 109 10 I believe we may say that the best work in the field is to be done, if it is done at all, by young and unknown people. These people will appear if and when graduate students become convinced that aesthetics is worth studying. The subject, analytical aesthetics, remains largely to be created. Arnold Isenberg, 1950: Analytical Philosophy and the Study of Art 11 12 CHAPTER 1 Aesthetics, Art, Analysis, Synthesis, and System 1.1 The Anglophone Aesthetics Programme Analytical or anglophone aesthetics (AA) names a philosophical programme which sought to reform traditional aesthetics and philosophy of art from its so-called