A Companion to Aesthetics

Second edition

Edited by Stephen Davies, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Robert Hopkins, Robert Stecker, and David E. Cooper

A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication

A Companion to Aesthetics

Blackwell Companions to Philosophy This outstanding student reference series offers a comprehensive and authoritative survey of philosophy as a whole. Written by today’s leading philosophers, each volume provides lucid and engaging coverage of the key figures, terms, topics, and problems of the field. Taken together, the volumes provide the ideal basis for course use, representing an unparalleled work of reference for students and specialists alike.

Already published in the series 24. A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages 1. The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, Edited by Jorge J. E. Gracia and Timothy B. Noone Second Edition 25. A Companion to African-American Philosophy Edited by Nicholas Bunnin and Eric Tsui-James Edited by Tommy L. Lott and John P. Pittman 2. A Companion to Ethics 26. A Companion to Applied Ethics Edited by Peter Singer Edited by R. G. Frey and Christopher Heath Wellman 3. A Companion to Aesthetics, Second Edition Edited by Stephen Davies, Kathleen Marie Higgins, 27. A Companion to the Philosophy of Education Robert Hopkins, Robert Stecker, and David E. Cooper Edited by Randall Curren 4. A Companion to Epistemology 28. A Companion to African Philosophy Edited by Jonathan Dancy and Ernest Sosa Edited by Kwasi Wiredu 5. A Companion to Contemporary Political 29. A Companion to Heidegger Philosophy (two-volume set), Second Edition Edited by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall Edited by Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit 30. A Companion to Rationalism 6. A Companion to Philosophy of Mind Edited by Alan Nelson Edited by Samuel Guttenplan 31. A Companion to Ancient Philosophy 7. A Companion to Metaphysics, Second Edition Edited by Mary Louise Gill and Pierre Pellegrin Edited by Jaegwon Kim and Ernest Sosa 32. A Companion to Pragmatism Edited by John R. Shook and Joseph Margolis 8. A Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory 33. A Companion to Nietzsche Edited by Dennis Patterson Edited by Keith Ansell Pearson 9. A Companion to Philosophy of Religion 34. A Companion to Socrates Edited by Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro Edited by Sara Ahbel-Rappe and Rachana Kamtekar 10. A Companion to the Philosophy of Language Edited by Bob Hale and Crispin Wright 35. A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism 11. A Companion to World Philosophies Edited by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall Edited by Eliot Deutsch and Ron Bontekoe 36. A Companion to Kant 12. A Companion to Continental Philosophy Edited by Graham Bird Edited by Simon Critchley and William Schroeder 37. A Companion to Plato 13. A Companion to Feminist Philosophy Edited by Hugh H. Benson Edited by Alison M. Jaggar and Iris Marion Young 38. A Companion to Descartes 14. A Companion to Cognitive Science Edited by Janet Broughton and John Carriero Edited by William Bechtel and George Graham 39. A Companion to the Philosophy of Biology 15. A Companion to Bioethics Edited by Sahotra Sarkar and Anya Plutynski Edited by Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer 40. A Companion to Hume 16. A Companion to the Philosophers Edited by Elizabeth S. Radcliffe Edited by Robert L. Arrington 41. A Companion to the Philosophy of History and 17. A Companion to Business Ethics Historiography Edited by Robert E. Frederick Edited by Aviezer Tucker 18. A Companion to the Philosophy of Science 42. A Companion to Aristotle Edited by W. H. Newton-Smith Edited by Georgios Anagnostopoulos 19. A Companion to Environmental Philosophy 43. A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology Edited by Dale Jamieson Edited by Jan-Kyrre Berg Olsen, Stig Andur 20. A Companion to Analytic Philosophy Pedersen, and Vincent F. Hendricks Edited by A. P. Martinich and David Sosa Also under contract 21. A Companion to Genethics A Companion to Philosophy of Literature Edited by Justine Burley and John Harris Edited by Garry L. Hagberg and Walter Jost 22. A Companion to Philosophical Logic A Companion to Schopenhauer Edited by Dale Jacquette Edited by Bart Vandenabeele 23. A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy A Companion to Relativism Edited by Steven Nadler Edited by Steven D. Hales

A Companion to Aesthetics

Second edition

Edited by Stephen Davies, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Robert Hopkins, Robert Stecker, and David E. Cooper

A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication

This second edition first published 2009 © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Edition history: Blackwell Publishing Ltd (1e, 1992)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A companion to aesthetics : edited by Stephen Davies . . . [et al.]. — 2nd ed. p. cm. — (Blackwell companions to philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–1–4051–6922–6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Aesthetics—Encyclopedias. BH56.C65 2009 111′.8503—dc22 2008051223

A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Set in 9.5/11pt Photina by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong Printed in Singapore

01 2009

Contents

Contributors xi Preface xv

Historical Overviews 1 art of the Paleolithic Gregory Currie 1 aesthetics in antiquity Stephen Halliwell 10 medieval and renaissance aesthetics John Marenbon 22 eighteenth-century aesthetics Paul Guyer 32 nineteenth- and twentieth-century Continental aesthetics Robert Wicks 51 twentieth-century Anglo-American aesthetics Stephen Davies & Robert Stecker 61

The Arts 74 architecture Edward Winters 74 dance Julie Van Camp 76 drama James Hamilton 78 drawing, painting, and printmaking Patrick Maynard 82 literature David Davies 85 motion pictures Noël Carroll 88 music and song John Andrew Fisher and Stephen Davies 91 opera Paul Thom 95 photography Patrick Maynard 98 poetry Anna Christina Ribeiro 101 sculpture Erik Koed 104

A 107 abstraction Robert Hopkins 107 Adorno, Theodor W(iesengrund) Paul Mattick 109 aesthetic attitude David E. Cooper 111 aesthetic education Pradeep A. Dhillon 114 aesthetic judgment Andrew Ward 117 aesthetic pleasure Jerrold Levinson 121 aesthetic properties Alan H. Goldman 124 aestheticism David Whewell 128 aesthetics of food and drink Carolyn Korsmeyer 131 aesthetics of the environment Allen Carlson 134 aesthetics of the everyday Sherri Irvin 136

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contents African aesthetics John Ayotunde (Tunde) Isola Bewaji 139 Amerindian aesthetics Anthony K. Webster 142 Aquinas, Thomas John Haldane 145 Aristotle Stephen Halliwell 147 art history David Carrier 149 artifact, art as George Dickie & Robert Stecker 152 “artworld” Anita Silvers 155 authenticity and art Theodore Gracyk 156

B 160 Barthes, Roland Mary Bittner Wiseman 160 Baumgarten, Alexander G(ottlieb) Nicholas Davey 162 Beardsley, Monroe C(urtis) Donald Callen 163 beauty Mary Mothersill 166 Bell, (Arthur) Clive (Heward) Ronald W. Hepburn 172 Benjamin, Walter Martin Donougho 174 Burke, Edmund Patrick Gardiner 177

C 179 canon Stein Haugom Olsen 179 catharsis Stephen Halliwell 182 Cavell, Stanley Timothy Gould 183 censorship Bernard Williams 185 Chinese aesthetics Marthe Chandler 188 cognitive science and art William P. Seeley 191 cognitive value of art Matthew Kieran 194 Collingwood, R(obin) G(eorge) Michael Krausz 197 comedy Noël Carroll 199 conceptual art Peter Goldie 202 conservation and restoration David Carrier 205 creativity Berys Gaut 207 critical monism and pluralism Robert Kraut 211 criticism Michael Weston 215 Croce, Benedetto Douglas R. Anderson 219 cultural appropriation James O. Young 222

D 226 Danto, Arthur C(oleman) David Novitz & Stephen Davies 226 deconstruction Stuart Sim 229 definition of “art” Kathleen Stock 231 Deleuze, Gilles Nicholas Davey 234 depiction Katerina Bantinaki 238 Derrida, Jacques Mary Bittner Wiseman 241 Dewey, John Thomas M. Alexander 244 Dickie, George Noël Carroll 247 Dufrenne, Mikel Wojciech Chojna & Irena Kocol 249 vi

contents E 252 emotion Malcolm Budd 252 erotic art and obscenity Matthew Kieran 256 evolution, art, and aesthetics Stephen Davies 259 expression Derek Matravers 261 expression theory Derek Matravers 264

F 267 feminist aesthetics Peg Zeglin Brand 267 feminist criticism Renée Lorraine & Peg Zeglin Brand 269 feminist standpoint aesthetics A. W. Eaton 272 fiction, nature of Robert Stecker 275 fiction, the paradox of responding to Alex Neill 278 fiction, truth in Paisley Livingston 281 fictional entities Diane Proudfoot 284 forgery Robert Hopkins 287 formalism Nick Zangwill 290 Foucault, Michel Robert Wicks 293 function of art David Novitz 297

G 302 Gadamer, Hans-Georg Robert Bernasconi 302 gardens David E. Cooper 304 genre Andrew Harrison 306 Gombrich, Sir Ernst (Hans Josef) David E. Cooper 308 Goodman, Nelson Catherine Z. Elgin 311

H 314 Hanslick, Eduard Malcolm Budd 314 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Gary Shapiro 315 Heidegger, Martin Robert Bernasconi 321 hermeneutics Joseph Margolis 324 horror Amy Coplan 328 Hume, David Theodore Gracyk 331 humor John Lippitt 334 Hutcheson, Francis Peter Kivy 338

I 341 iconoclasm and idolatry David Freedberg 341 illusion Robert Hopkins 343 imagination Roger Scruton 346 imaginative resistance Tamar Szabó Gendler 351 implied author Peter Lamarque 354 Indian aesthetics Kalyan Sen Gupta 356 ineffability David E. Cooper 360 Ingarden, Roman Wojciech Chojna 364

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contents intention and interpretation Colin Lyas & Robert Stecker 366 “intentional fallacy” Colin Lyas & Robert Stecker 369 interpretation Joseph Margolis 371 interpretation, aims of David Davies 375 irony David E. Cooper 378 Islamic aesthetics Oliver Leaman 381

J 384 Japanese aesthetics Yuriko Saito 384

K 388 Kant, Immanuel David Whewell 388 Kierkegaard, Søren Ann Loades 392 kitsch Kathleen Marie Higgins 393 Kristeva, Julia Laura Marcus 396

L 400 Langer, Susanne Thomas M. Alexander 400 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim Anthony Savile 402 Lewis, C(larence) I(rving) Paisley Livingston 405 Lukács, Georg Tom Rockmore 408

M 411 Margolis, Joseph Richard Shusterman 411 Marxism and art Tom Rockmore 412 mass art Noël Carroll 415 meaning constructivism Robert Stecker 418 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice John J. Compton 421 metaphor Samuel R. Levin 423 modernism and postmodernism Stuart Sim 425 morality and art Berys Gaut 428 museums Paul Mattick 431

N 435 narrative Stein Haugom Olsen 435 Nietzsche, Friedrich (Wilhelm) Julian Young 438 notations Stephen Davies 441

O 444 objectivity and realism in aesthetics Robert Hopkins 444 ontological contextualism Theodore Gracyk 449 ontology of artworks Nicholas Wolterstorff 453 originality George Bailey 457

P 460 performance Stephen Davies 460 performance art David Davies 462 viii

contents perspective John Hyman 465 picture perception Katerina Bantinaki 469 Plato Stephen Halliwell 472 Plotinus John Haldane 474 popular art Richard Shusterman 476 pornography Bernard Williams 478 pragmatist aesthetics Richard Shusterman 480 psychoanalysis and art Kathleen Marie Higgins 484

R 489 race and aesthetics Monique Roelofs 489 rasa Kathleen Marie Higgins 492 realism John Hyman 495 relativism Nicholas Davey 498 religion and art Robert Grant 500 representation Robert Hopkins 504 Ruskin, John Michael Wheeler 508

S 511 Santayana, George Morris Grossman 511 Sartre, Jean-Paul John J. Compton 512 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Andrew Bowie 514 Schiller, (Johann Christoph) Friedrich von Margaret Paton 517 Schlegel, August Wilhelm von Tom Rockmore 519 Schlegel, Friedrich von Tom Rockmore 520 Schopenhauer, Arthur Michael Tanner 522 science and art Anthony O’Hear 525 Scruton, Roger Anthony O’Hear 528 senses and art, the Robert Hopkins 530 sentimentality Deborah Knight 534 Shaftesbury, Lord Dabney Townsend 537 Sibley, Frank Noel Colin Lyas 538 structuralism and poststructuralism Stuart Sim 540 style Andrew Harrison 544 sublime Mary Mothersill 547 symbol Charles Molesworth 551 T 554 taste Robert Hopkins 554 technology and art John Andrew Fisher 556 testimony in aesthetics Robert Hopkins 560 text Richard Shusterman 562 theories of art Ronald W. Hepburn 565 Tolstoy, Leo David Whewell 570 tradition Anthony O’Hear 573 tragedy Susan L. Feagin 575 truth in art Eddy M. Zemach 578

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contents U 581 universals in art Kathleen Marie Higgins 581

W 586 Wagner, Richard Michael Tanner 586 Walton, Kendall L(ewis) Alessandro Giovannelli 588 Wilde, Oscar David E. Cooper 591 Wittgenstein, Ludwig Malcolm Budd 593 Wollheim, Richard Malcolm Budd 596

Index 600

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List of Contributors

Thomas M. Alexander Noël Carroll Southern Illinois University–Carbondale City University of New York Graduate Center

Douglas R. Anderson Marthe Chandler Southern Illinois University–Carbondale DePauw University

George Bailey Wojciech Chojna East Carolina University La Salle University

Katerina Bantinaki John J. Compton University of Crete Vanderbilt University (Emeritus)

Robert Bernasconi David E. Cooper University of Memphis University of Durham Amy Coplan John Ayotunde (Tunde) Isola Bewaji California State University–Fullerton University of the West Indies Gregory Currie Andrew Bowie University of Nottingham Royal Holloway, University of London Nicholas Davey Peg Zeglin Brand University of Dundee Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis David Davies McGill University Malcolm Budd University College London (Emeritus) Stephen Davies University of Auckland Donald Callen Bowling Green State University Pradeep A. Dhillon University of Illinois–Urbana–Champaign Allen Carlson University of Alberta George Dickie University of Illinois–Chicago (Emeritus) David Carrier Case Western Reserve University/Cleveland Martin Donougho Institute of Art University of South Carolina

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contributors A. W. Eaton Kalyan Sen Gupta University of Illinois–Chicago Jadavpur University

Catherine Z. Elgin Paul Guyer Harvard Graduate School of Education University of Pennsylvania

Susan L. Feagin John Haldane Temple University University of St. Andrews

John Andrew Fisher Stephen Halliwell University of Colorado–Boulder University of St. Andrews

David Freedberg James Hamilton Columbia University Kansas State University

Patrick Gardiner Andrew Harrison Magdalen College, Oxford University of Bristol (Deceased) (Deceased)

Berys Gaut Ronald W. Hepburn University of St. Andrews University of Edinburgh (Deceased) Tamar Szabó Gendler Yale University Kathleen Marie Higgins University of Texas at Austin Alessandro Giovannelli Lafayette College Robert Hopkins University of Sheffield Peter Goldie University of Manchester John Hyman The Queen’s College, Oxford Alan H. Goldman College of William & Mary Sherri Irvin University of Oklahoma Timothy Gould Metropolitan State College of Denver Matthew Kieran University of Leeds Theodore Gracyk Minnesota State University–Moorhead Peter Kivy Rutgers University Robert Grant University of Glasgow Deborah Knight Queen’s University, Ontario Morris Grossman University of Fairfield (Emeritus) Irena Kocol xii

contributors Erik Koed Joseph Margolis Independent scholar Temple University

Carolyn Korsmeyer Derek Matravers University at Buffalo Open University

Michael Krausz Paul Mattick Bryn Mawr College Adelphi University

Patrick Maynard Robert Kraut University of Western Ontario (Emeritus) Ohio State University–Columbus Charles Molesworth Peter Lamarque Queen’s College, City University of New York University of York Mary Mothersill Oliver Leaman Barnard College University of Kentucky (Deceased)

Samuel R. Levin Alex Neill City University of New York University of Southampton

Jerrold Levinson David Novitz University of Maryland, College Park University of Canterbury, New Zealand (Deceased) John Lippitt University of Hertfordshire Anthony O’Hear University of Buckingham Paisley Livingston Stein Haugom Olsen Lingan University University of Bergen

Ann Loades Margaret Paton University of Durham Independent scholar

Renée Lorraine Diane Proudfoot University of Tennessee–Chattanooga University of Canterbury, New Zealand

Colin Lyas Anna Christina Ribeiro Independent scholar Texas Tech University

Laura Marcus Tom Rockmore University of Edinburgh Duquesne University

John Marenbon Monique Roelofs Trinity College, Cambridge Hampshire College

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contributors Yuriko Saito Andrew Ward Rhode Island School of Design University of York

Anthony Savile Anthony K. Webster King’s College, University of London Southern Illinois University

Roger Scruton Michael Weston Independent scholar University of Essex

William P. Seeley Michael Wheeler Bates College University of Southampton

Gary Shapiro David Whewell University of Richmond Independent scholar

Robert Wicks Richard Shusterman University of Auckland Florida Atlantic University Bernard Williams Anita Silvers Corpus Christi College, Oxford San Francisco State University (Deceased) Stuart Sim Edward Winters University of Sunderland West Dean College

Robert Stecker Mary Bittner Wiseman Central Michigan University Brooklyn College, City University of New York

Kathleen Stock Nicholas Wolterstorff University of Sussex Yale University (Emeritus)

Michael Tanner James O. Young Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University of Victoria

Paul Thom Julian Young University of Sydney University of Auckland

Dabney Townsend Nick Zangwill Armstrong Atlantic State University University of Durham

Julie Van Camp Eddy M. Zemach California State University–Long Beach Hebrew University

xiv

Preface

Welcome to the second edition of A Companion to Aesthetics. Like the first edition of 1992, it consists primarily of short entries arranged alphabetically with the aim of covering as many topics and perspectives on aesthetics and the philosophy of art as possible. These include issues and authors prominent in both Anglo-American and Continental traditions and in both Western and non-Western thought about art. The goal is to provide an entrée to whatever issue in this increasingly vibrant field of inquiry a scholar, student, or layperson might desire to explore. There is also much that is new to this edition and that provides a more systematic under- standing of the discipline. Most prominently, there are six overview essays tracing the ori- gins of art in the Paleolithic period and the history of aesthetics in the West from ancient times to the present day. There is also a greatly expanded group of essays on non-Western thought about art including new essays on African, Amerindian, Chinese, Islamic, and Japanese aesthetics as well as an essay on the concept of rasa, crucial in Indo-Asian aesthetics. The first edition contained no essays on individual art forms, which is remedied here by 11 new ones. Also new is a table of contents listing all 185 essays so that readers can see at glance what is on offer in this volume and better navigate it. We have also expanded the list of short entries to reflect recent developments in aes- thetics. One of these developments has perhaps shaped this volume more than any other. This is a debate between those who believe that the concept of art is peculiarly Western and relatively recent in origin, arising in the eighteenth century, and those who think that it is found in almost every culture, is ancient in origin, and derives from practices directly tied to human evolution. As well as motivating a new entry on evolutionary aesthetics, the suspi- cion that the second of these views is more likely true provides one rationale for the scope of the overview essays and the decision to give considerable coverage to non-Western aes- thetics. Some proponents of the first view find support for it in the anthropology and socio- logy of art, while some proponents of the second view appeal to evolutionary psychology. This debate is symptomatic of a wider development in aesthetics, viz., the importation into aes- thetics of ideas from the sciences, especially from evolutionary theory, anthropology, psy- chology, and cognitive studies. This reflects a trend in philosophy generally to take a greater interest in developments in the empirical sciences and to see philosophy as continuous with those disciplines. A related development since the 1990s is the interaction between aesthetics and other areas of philosophy, including ethics, metaphysics, and the philosophy of mind and language. In part because of this interaction, there have been several “growth areas” in the discipline over the last 20 years, including the ontology of art, the multifaceted role of emotion in art, the role of pretense and make-believe in art, the interaction of ethics and aesthetics, feminist per- spectives on art and the role of race and gender in art, environmental and everyday aesthetics, the nature of pictorial representation, and the nature of literary interpretation. There has

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preface also been a burst of new work on certain art forms, especially music and cinema. Many new entries analyze these developments. Finally, we should mention that nearly every entry in the second edition is new in some way. Many of those carried over from the first edition have been revised and the rest have been updated to reflect new work done since their original appearance. We would like to thank Daniel Wilson and Jennifer Saul, and from Wiley-Blackwell, Jeff Dean, Tiffany Mok, Barbara Duke, Janey Fisher, and Jacqueline Harvey.

xvi

Historical Overviews

art of the Paleolithic In 1789 John Frere, Middle Stone Age, and then at stone artifacts as a Suffolk landowner, wrote to the Society of old as 1 million years before the present. Before Antiquities describing stone implements dis- doing so I will highlight two issues important covered in a quarry at Hoxne. He did not draw for an understanding of the origin of artistic attention to their appearance, focusing pre- activity, and provide a brief account of human sciently on the vast age suggested by their evolution. position under a layer of sand and sea shells, and below the fossil remains of a large, unknown biology and culture animal. They came, he surmised, from “a very There are different kinds of explanations to remote period indeed, even beyond that of the hand for the innovations we find associated present world” (Frere 1800). These objects are with the growth of art. One view has it that the now known as Acheulean hand axes: tools dramatic changes to artistic and other prac- made, in this case around 400,000 years ago tices we find in the Upper Paleolithic mark a (400k bp). Among them is a piece of worked development in human cognitive capacities stone, shaped as an elongated tear drop, consequent on biological change (Klein 2000). roughly symmetrical in two dimensions, with Another seeks the explanation in the nonbio- a twist to the symmetry which has retained an logical sphere, emphasizing, say, the relationship embedded fossil. In size and shape it would not between increasing group size and such variables have been a useful butchery implement, and is as efficiency of innovation or the growth in worked on to a degree out of proportion to any quantity and quality of children’s pretend play, likely use. While it may be too much to call it considered as a training ground for innovative an “early work of art,” it is at least suggestive activity. But the simple dichotomy between of an aesthetic sensibility. cognitive and cultural change breaks down if The origin of art is generally dated later we accept that human cognition is itself partly than this: 360,000 years later. While prehistory a function of the environment in which the is defined simply as that period of human habi- individual operates; on this view, the func- tation of a place for which there is no written tional architecture of mind can change without record, studies of prehistoric art have tended change in the underlying biology. Michael to focus on the Upper Paleolithic, that period in Tomasello (1999) has argued that the biolo- European prehistory associated with the entry, gical difference between a baby human and a around 40k bp, of Homo sapiens. The period baby chimp is small, and that what makes for ends with the Magdalenian culture of 18–10k most of the eventual difference in cognitive bp that gave us the cave paintings of northern power is that the human child is heir to a mas- Spain and southern France. These extraordinary sive fortune in retained cultural innovation and mysteriously situated products of ice age made possible by human tendencies to imitate Europe have generated vast art-historical specu- one another. (Other researchers have recently lation and are popularly represented as mark- suggested that chimps have more imitative ing the dawn of art. ability than previously thought, however.) Later we will look back into the more distant Further, cultural change may itself alter the past – as well as giving a brief sideways glance distribution of genes in a population, as has at Neanderthal neighbors – to examine the evid- been the case with increased lactose tolerance ence for aesthetic production in the African among cattle herders. One form that this change

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historical overviews may take is of especial interest. If, for example, art itself. In a philosophical move made partly changes to group size and pretend play inten- to accommodate these practices, it has been sify the degree of imaginative innovation in a asserted that what is art depends, not on the look population, and those who display this capa- of the object, but on its place in an institutional city in salient ways benefit in terms of survival structure, the “artworld.” A different accom- and reproduction, then individuals born with modation is offered by those who argue that art greater capacities for imagination will benefit is a historical concept in the sense that what we in ways they would not have done before the may legitimately count as art now depends on cultural change. This will change the pattern how the objects in question are related to the of genes’ relative contributions to fitness, and art of the past. Is it possible, for instance, to tell intensify the selection for imagination-relevant a coherent narrative that links this object genes. This effect – the Baldwin Effect – can look with the aspirations productive of earlier work? like Lamarckian evolution, since an acquired While we may choose carefully among these improvement in some ability can seem to give doctrines, together they offer something like rise directly to the inheritance of that ability (see the following challenge: while we can find in the Papineau 2005). very distant past objects which please us aes- Whatever humans do, they must have a thetically and which may have had a similar biological make-up that allows them to do it, effect on their makers and audience, we cannot but it is generally not profitable to seek specific on these grounds assume that these things associations between biological and cultural are art, especially when we do not find either change. The point, if there is one, at which any meaningful historical link between these we identify the first significant artistic activity objects and that which we antecedently recog- may be of no biological significance. Still, as we nize as art, or any developed institutions of art look further and further back into the evolu- in the societies that produced them. Further, tionary past, changes to brains and other bodily there are regular denunciations of the idea structures may be of special relevance in ex- that “art” is a concept we may apply to societies plaining the beginning of activities that suggest very different from our own. These arguments themselves as precursors of art-making. are often directed at our treatment of preliter- ate societies of the present and recent past, but art and the aesthetic have been taken up by paleoanthropologists On visiting Altamira Cave, Picasso is reported to who insist that “ ‘Art’ as a modern Western have said “We have learned nothing,” power- construct is anachronistic with the Paleolithic” fully encapsulating the thought that these (Nowell 2006: 244). great works represent what European art has This suite of objections cannot be replied to struggled to achieve in its painful path to – and here in detail; instead I will make the following beyond – pictorial realism. Thus the cave general remarks. First, the separation (if there paintings were easily incorporated into a con- is one) between the aesthetic and the artistic ception of “high art” that spoke to classical seems to be extremely recent and it can hardly and modernist sensibilities. More recent tend- be a criticism of any theory that it looks for con- encies in art practice and theory have ques- nections between art and the aesthetic in the dis- tioned this; to the extent that we take these tant past, when virtually all but the last 50 developments seriously, they undermine the years of art history reinforces that connection. assumptions that make it appropriate to see the It is true that our current and recent artistic prac- products of Upper Paleolithic cultures as art. tices and institutions are different from those of In a move which gained its impetus from preliterate societies of which we know any- Duchamp’s ready-mades of the early twentieth thing, and doubtless very different from those century, conceptual artists and others have of prehistory. This cannot be grounds for say- been in revolt against the idea that art involves ing that the concept “art” has no application to the production of beautiful or aesthetically other societies. It is allowed that peoples in all pleasing objects, opting instead for activities conditions and at all times have both technology which are in various ways provocative, especially and religion, though theirs may differ greatly by way of challenging our assumptions about from our own. A culture’s technology may be

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art of the paleolithic seen as underpinned by magical forces, or as sub- there is evidence of aesthetic activity that mass- ject to the will of gods. Religions may be poly- ively predates any evidence of symbolic behavior. theistic and suffused with magical elements in ways that make them far distant from the sys- human ancestry and prehistory tematic and official doctrines some of us sub- The most recent common ancestor of humans scribe to today. Our art is not obviously more and chimpanzees lived some 7 million years distant from that of the Upper Paleolithic than ago in Africa. We have evidence for about 20 Anglicanism is from the religion of, say, the San species on the human side of this divide (the people of southern Africa well into the twentieth hominina); all evolved in Africa, and only one has century – a system of belief that, it has been survived, ours (Homo sapiens). Around 2.5 mil- suggested, is the best model we now have for reli- lion years ago (2.5m bp) several coexisted; the gion in the Upper Paleolithic (Lewis-Williams pathway of our own descent through these 2002). Anyway, opponents of aesthetic ap- species is not well understood. At this time, proaches to culture find the extreme clash of human species – Homo ergaster, called erectus in artistic conceptions they are looking for only by Asia, and Homo antecessor – moved into Asia and failing to compare like with like: they compare Europe. Some time around 200k bp anatomically the beliefs and practices common among mem- modern humans evolved in Africa. By 80k bp bers of preliterate societies with the notions they had moved into the Middle East, and by of a contemporary cultural elite whose formu- 40k bp into Europe and Australia. In Europe they lations correspond hardly at all to conceptions lived alongside Homo Neanderthalis, a much of art, beauty, and the aesthetic in the rest of earlier immigrant species, which disappeared their populations. around 30k bp. This highly selective suspicion about art and Our period is the Old Stone Age, or the aesthetic may derive from the thought that Paleolithic, which begins around 2.5m bp with appeal to aesthetic values is an explanatory the production of crude stone tools created by dead end. But ethical ideas and practices are regu- striking. At this time there were several species larly subject to interrogation using economic of hominina living: our own relatively large- and other models without their ceasing thereby brained ancestor Homo habilis, together with to count as values. Treating Stone Age objects species of an older genus, Australopithecus, as aesthetic, and even as art, is not inconsistent which had smaller brains and larger teeth. with trying to understand them in a broader eco- While it is fair to assume that Homo habilis was nomic, demographic, cultural, and evolution- an early toolmaker, these other species may ary perspective – as we shall see. Sometimes have been also. Styles of tool-making did not emphasis on the aesthetic dimension of Stone change until around 1.5m bp when Homo Age cultures is associated with the discredited ergaster introduced the Acheulean technology idea that early people produced these objects to that involved taking off small flakes from the sur- fill their leisure hours (Lewis-Williams 2002: 42). face to produce a symmetrical implement. This Again, this is by no means a burden that an technology went with the African emigrant advocate of the aesthetic approach must carry. communities to Europe and Asia: Frere’s hand Certainly, we ought to question the anthropo- ax, found in England, is a late example. No logist’s assumption that the “symbolic” is an clear evidence of culturally determined differ- explanatory category always to be preferred to ences in style is available for the Acheulean the aesthetic, and one which is to be invoked industry. Around 300k bp the Acheulean gave any time we find something with no apparent way to the Levallois industry marked by the pre- utilitarian function (d’Errico et al. 2003: 18). shaping of a stone core from which flakes are It is unclear, for example, why early musical successively struck. This time marks the begin- practices or bodily adornments should be ning of the Middle Stone Age (called the Middle assumed to symbolize anything. Depictive paint- Paleolithic in Europe), where we find the shap- ings such as we find in the Upper Paleolithic ing and marking of shells and soft stone, the represent things, but it is a further step to con- making of hafted weapons, and clear indica- clude that they are symbolic. This is a particu- tions of cultural variation in production. With the larly relevant point given that, as we shall see, Late Stone Age (Upper Paleolithic in Europe)

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historical overviews from 40k bp, we have increased economy and com- various times, rather than a series of animals plexity in stone tool manufacture, evidence of laid out in space. There is a bison with the tailored clothing, sophistication in hunting, head twisted to one side, looking out of the and greater population density. The Upper picture plane. It has been said that the use of Paleolithic begins with the Aurignacian culture natural surface features of the rock that are in western Europe from about 40–28k bp; this suggestive in shape of the animals then painted culture has been said both to represent a signi- on them is a feature of later Magdalenian ficant qualitative shift in sophistication (some- depiction, but this technique is found at times called the cultural Big Bang) as compared Chauvet also. Chauvet was impeccably treated with that of the Middle Stone Age, and to be asso- from the moment of its discovery and may ciated exclusively with the Homo sapiens new- deliver important clues to the purpose of the comers into Europe. Both of these claims are depictions. disputed. The Paleolithic is conventionally At Chauvet, as at other, later, sites, there are reckoned to end about 10k bp after the last puzzling aspects to the execution of the work; glaciation and with the beginnings of farming. figures are sometimes painted one on top of another, with no apparent regard to overall does art begin in the upper paleolithic? coherence; some depictions are so placed Schematic outline depictions of animal parts they can hardly be seen at all; elsewhere great have been found from times early in the Upper trouble has been taken to enhance viewing Paleolithic, around 35k bp, in the Aurignacian conditions for a particular work; anamorphic period. Given that the cave paintings at representation occasionally defines a specific Altamira and Lascaux are dated around 15k bp, viewing point. The animals often have a “float- it was once possible to believe that the Upper ing” quality; the creatures seem to stand in no Paleolithic enclosed the development, over physical place and legs are generally schemat- many thousands of years, of pictorial style from ically represented. Nor is there generally any nar- crude Aurignacian to mature Magdalenian. rative content to the picture, an Aurignacian But in 1994 paintings were discovered at depiction of two rhinos face to face at Chauvet Chauvet Cave in southern France, many with being a possible exception. Human figures are the same startling realism, fluidity, and indi- rare in cave art and, when they occasion- viduality of style as those found at Lascaux. ally appear, are schematically represented, in Some of the Chauvet cave pictures were marked contrast to the sometimes sharp indi- quickly dated at 31k bp. These dates have been viduality of the animals. In addition to the questioned, largely on the grounds that the depictive representations there are various depictions in the cave have stylistic features geometrical markings for which it has been in common with known work from the difficult to find an interpretation. Some of these Magdelanian, while being, it is claimed, at features are addressed by theories to be odds with the other evidence available of the described later. Aurignacian (Pettit & Bahn 2003). We await the It is worth bearing in mind that photo- outcome of this debate; I will assume the dat- graphic reproduction gives no idea of what ing is correct. viewing in situ is like, sometimes in places very At Chauvet Cave there is a predominance of difficult of access, in acoustically resonant large, fierce animals that contrasts with the chambers, lit only, as they then would have later (Magdalenian) representation of hunted been, by flickering torches. Nor can the effort species, creating difficulty for theories that of these depictive projects be easily exagger- explained cave paintings as ritual invocation of ated; the surface of the wall was often elaborately magic to aid hunters: a view associated particu- prepared; heat to 1000 °C was needed for cer- larly with Abbé Breuil who, in the first half of tain ochre preparations; at Lascaux, wooden the twentieth century, was a dominant figure scaffolding has been used to get the artist to the in the study of prehistoric art. There are groups required height. of animals occluding one another; a group In addition to their dramatic cave paintings, of horses thus displayed has been argued, the Aurignacians provided grave goods for the intriguingly, to represent a single animal at dead, used bodily adornment, and crafted their

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art of the paleolithic artifacts according to an aesthetic of skillful before about 20k bp. It is to be emphasized that and sometimes witty representation: a popular new discoveries in any of these places could item, mass produced by the standards of the day, radically alter the picture. Turning to sculp- was a spear-thrower shaped as an animal in ture, a puzzling item is the so-called Berekhat the act of defecating. From 34k bp there is Ram figurine, a small piece of basalt reminiscent an exquisite horse in ivory from Vogelherd, of a female head and body, dated prior to 200k Germany. From 28–30k bp there is a human bp. The most likely hypothesis is that the nat- figure with the head of a lion carved in ivory; ural shape of the rock suggested the human from 28–25k bp a tiny limestone figure of form, and this has been made slightly clearer by a grotesque human female; from 25–23k bp a deliberate but minimal abrasion and incision bas relief in limestone of a woman. Chimeric (d’Errico & Nowell 2000). figures speak of a developed imaginative sense; If the Berekhat Ram figurine does represent one depiction at Chauvet seems to be a bison- an early attempt at mimetic representation, headed man. the idea does not seem to have caught on; we Recent research has chipped away, some- have no other such objects from the period, or what, at the artistic uniqueness of the Upper any time before 35k bp. And while sophisti- Paleolithic. There is evidence from earlier cated tool-making in stone and bone is visible periods and distant places, as well as intriguing in the Middle Stone Age, the various innovations evidence of activity among the Neanderthal found there were not preserved and accumulated people whose habitation of Europe greatly pre- in the way they were in the Upper Paleolithic; ceded that of Homo sapiens. At Blombos Cave they make their appearance and are absent (southern Cape) we have perforated shells, from the later record (Zilhão 2007). What may which are most likely personal ornaments, as be distinctive about the Upper Paleolithic are well as many thousands of ochre crayons, two its robust patterns of cultural and technolo- with systematic, apparently abstract mark- gical reproduction, which helped communities ings, all reliably dated at around 74k bp. to turn individual innovation into sustained Perforated shells claimed to have been used as practices. beads have now been reported from north If the Aurignacians had aesthetic precursors African sites dated to 82k bp and 100–135k bp. they may also have had contemporary com- Pigments of various kinds are found in layers petitors. The recent consensus has been that datable much earlier even than this, possibly Neanderthal symbolic activity, such as it was, around 400k bp, and some scholars are willing was merely imitation of Homo sapiens neighbors. to infer their use in aesthetic activity, perhaps But the argument is put that there are small but bodily adornment. significant amounts of ornamental material, In one respect the Upper Paleolithic does, such as perforated animal teeth, from the time on current evidence, cling precariously to a before Homo sapiens entered Europe, and that significant first: depiction. Here we need to much in evidence thereafter cannot be explained distinguish between work in two and three simply as low-level imitation (Zilhão 2007). dimensions; the situation as regards sculp- Something needs to be said about arts other ture is a little ambiguous. The earliest two- than the visual. Pieces of hollow bone with dimensional depictions we have in an African holes in them have been interpreted as wind context are those from Apollo 11 cave instruments; in many cases it is likely that the (Namibia): a number of freestanding slabs of rock holes were made by carnivores. The earliest on which animal figures have been painted: instruments we can be confident of are from rhinoceros, zebra, large cat. There is a sugges- Isturitz (France) and Geissenklosterle (Germany), tion that the last of these is a hybrid with some of which have likely dates of 35–30k bp. human legs, but this is far from certain. Dating D’Errico et al. (2003) argue that these instru- has been disputed, but 26k bp remains ments are sophisticated and must emerge from the most likely, compared with 35k bp for a long tradition of musical development of the Upper Paleolithic. Agreed dates for the which we currently have no artifactual evid- Australian context are hard to find, but there ence. Storytelling is undatable earlier than the is little direct evidence for depictive marking written record, but if the cave paintings of the

5

historical overviews

Upper Paleolithic have religious or magical lava) from Olduvai is dated at 1.2m bp (British associations as many suppose (see below), Museum, P&E PRB 1934.12-14.49); another narrative must have been in place by then. from the same place, dated at 800k bp, is an Indeed, it is probably much older; as old, per- extraordinarily crafted piece of quartz with haps, as language. If, as some suppose (Dunbar amethyst bands, a difficult material to work 1996), language began as social cement, the (British Museum, P&E PRB 1934.12-14.83). narrative form may have been in place very early Size and shaping are often not consistent with in its development, since gossip – telling A practical use, and indeed many such objects about the doings and motives of B – is naturally are found with no evidence of wear. There are conveyed in narrative. Since the function of examples, as with the Hoxne axe, of an appar- gossip is as much to manipulate as to inform, ently intentional twist to the symmetry and a the earliest narratives may have included retained fossil. In addition to the standard tear- deliberate falsehoods. The ability to construct a shaped hand ax there are dagger-like ficrons and plausible but false narrative seems to require cleavers with a transverse cutting blade; a imaginative capacities of some kind, but we recent find in the UK has located one of each, can only speculate as to how and when the described as “exquisite, almost flamboyant,” construction of highly elaborated and even and so placed as to suggest their having been avowedly fictional narratives emerged, and made by the same individual (Wenban-Smith what the precise cognitive preconditions for 2004). The obvious question is “why hominids them were. went to all that bother when a simple flake Returning to the visual domain: Can we find would have sufficed?” (White 2000). evidence of aesthetic production even earlier One answer is that hand ax technology was than the perforated shells and marked crayons partly an investment in the creation of some- of 70–135k bp? Recalling John Frere and his thing pleasurable to look at, and for that a sim- hand ax, we find evidence of a very deep history ple flake does not suffice. Now there is another of aesthetic production: a history so long that question. When we find creatures investing it makes the Upper Paleolithic look positively scarce resources in an activity, we want to contemporary. This history extends back long know what is adaptive about it. So what is before our species emerged, long before lan- adaptive about making beauty? One answer is guage developed, long – apparently – before that costly signals may benefit both parties in a any genuinely symbolic activity of any kind. communicative situation when the evident The first stone tools were made by Homo cost of the signal is a reliable indicator of some habilis; we find stone artifacts at African sites relevant quality in the signaler. Gazelles pursued going back to 2.5m bp, the so-called Oldowan by predators may stop their flight to leap in the technology. Before about 1.4m bp we do not find air; this stotting behavior, which puts the prey anything aesthetic about them; they are simply at greater risk, indicates the strong likelihood stones on which a cutting edge has been made, that the prey is healthy enough to escape with with no attention to anything but practical a margin for safety; the chase – costly to both need. It seems likely that people at this time used in energy and likely get the predator nowhere both the cores and the flakes cut from them, the – may then be broken off. cores for dismembering and smashing bones, and If overworked hand axes are reliable signals, the flakes for cutting off meat. what do they signal? There is a range of pos- It is with the Acheulean industry first sibilities here: the best known takes us from attributed to Homo ergaster and beginning natural to sexual selection, those forces shap- around 1.4m bp that we see objects with a ing reproductive advantage by conferring a deliberately and systematically imposed sym- certain degree of attractiveness as a mate. Ax metry, created by removing flakes all over the construction requires significant spatial skills to stone’s surface. Some are finely shaped, thin and produce a symmetrical object; skill at resource highly symmetrical in three dimensions, with location; and time, which in turn implies gen- flakes taken off by using, successively, stone, eral efficiency and security in social matters. antler, and wooden implements. One elegantly Marak Kohn and Steven Mithen (1999) sug- elongated piece in phonolite (green volcanic gest that symmetrical, aesthetically wrought ax

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art of the paleolithic production was a means of reliably advertising figures, painting, and drawing, with mastery of these qualities to prospective mates. Supposing realist techniques that capture the spirit of these creatures already possessed a tendency to fierce lions and gentle horses. There is for this like their conspecifics better if they did or made period no record, as yet, of anything like the likable things, one mechanism to ensure that the painful steps toward naturalistic representation maker seems attractive is to ensure that the prod- that brought Western art to the Renaissance. ucts themselves are pleasing. None of this How did the discovery, or the invention, of assumes that our ancestors saw hand axes as depiction come about? signs of fitness; all that is required is that they The possibility of depiction depends on the admire the hand axes in ways that enhance the phenomenon of seeing-in, our capacity to see a maker’s chance of reproducing. Costly displays figure or a face in the pattern of lines and colors may secure other advantages: social power on a surface (Wollheim 1980: supp. essay V). within the group, or better resources from care- We can also see a person’s face in the shape of givers. While finding direct evidence for any of a pebble, or a head in a sculptured piece of these hypotheses may be difficult, the import- clay. Seeing-in depends partly on the fact that ant point is that the emergence of capacities the human visual system, like any perceptual for skillful, nonutilitarian production is by no mechanism, is subject to false positives. The means inconsistent with Darwinism. visual system uses the input from the eyes to Attentiveness to the visual form of artifacts identify the object seen, and may come up with will not explain much about the particular the answer “person” when there is in fact no per- direction that aesthetic styles and genres have son there but instead merely a pattern of lines subsequently taken; our story is merely one on a surface or a shaped solid which triggers the about the source of a river the subsequent visual system’s person-recognition capacity. detailed course of which cannot be predicted Being able to recognize something goes with from its starting point. But once a tendency to being prone to misrecognize it. make pleasing things, and to contemplate the This does not mean that pictures create illu- things and their making, is established, other sions of the presence of depicted objects; it is the evolved capacities will feed into determining visual system, a subpersonal mechanism, that the shape of these activities. Evolutionary psy- is fooled, not the person in the gallery who pos- chologists have emphasized the importance sesses the mechanism. The agent knows full of habitat choice in the survival of our species, well that there is no person really there, and and it is to be expected that pleasure would information from the visual system serves accrue to us on contemplating those scenes merely to help the person recognize the content most likely to have nurtured us during the of what is depicted. Animals are also subject to Pleistocene. A popular form of landscape art is false-positives; birds and fish will flee when said to be the beneficiary of this preference. shown the outline shapes of their predators. What then of our liking for mountainous and But this is not seeing-in, since the bird or fish inhospitable scenes of the sublime? The situ- does not realize that this is not really a preda- ation here parallels the relation between ethical tor. Great apes are capable, however, of seeing preference and tragedy: we enjoy the good out- the contents of pictures without always being comes of comedy but also – in different ways – fooled into thinking that the content is actually the bad ones of tragedy. The most we ought to present, and some human-reared apes have say is that our sense of what is and is not a hos- shown a capacity to sort pictures by subject pitable environment contributes to the kind of matter. If the capacity to see things in pictures pleasure we take in a scene; it does not mark is one we share with our ape relatives, it is the divide between what is aesthetically pleas- likely to be much older in our lineage than ing and what is not. 40,000 years. The capacity for seeing-in is not enough to depiction and the symbolic make one capable of depiction – something On current evidence, there was no systematic other great apes do not seem to be capable of. practice of depiction, in two or three dimensions, You need to be able – and motivated – to pro- before 40k bp. By 30k bp there was carving of duce arrangements of lines or colors within

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historical overviews which things can be seen. Creatures who are tributed to experiences of magical connection to able to see things in other things do not need the other world. Lewis-Williams then suggests depictions in order to have the experience of that these altered states explain the origin of seeing-in; we see people’s faces in clouds, frost, depiction. These states include ones in which and many other natural phenomena. Indeed, mental images appear to be projected onto so prone are humans to recognize a face that a external surfaces; people, he suggests, reached pattern on a pebble very vaguely resembling out to “touch” and preserve these images, pro- the arrangement of eyes, nose, and mouth ducing image-like marks on soft surfaces – the will produce the experience of seeing a face in first depictions. This accounts, says Lewis- the pebble’s surface. And there are other such Williams, for the strange geometrical markings, stimuli around: footprints and animal hoof which correspond to imagistic experiences marks, which constitute photograph-like typical of such altered states. One question impressions of the things of which they are that arises here is whether the development traces; protuberances on cave walls which are and understanding of a capacity for depiction in the shape of an animal (as noted, the cave is likely when the people concerned were artists exploited these shapes); shadows taking mind-altering drugs and thought thrown by sun and firelight (many caves con- themselves in the presence of magical beings. tain “shadow” depictions, where paint has Lewis-Williams offers a plausible account of been sprayed on the wall over which a hand has some opportunities for seeing-in. But this is not been placed). We may assume that people what needs explaining, since, as I have indicated, have a very long history of attending to objects people would have had such opportunities on within which things could be seen. It is sur- many occasions prior to the development of prising then that we have not found stones shamanistic culture. whereon someone has chipped a vaguely face- This approach associates the development like arrangement of marks. Yet we know that of pictorial art with the growth of relatively for 1 million years our ancestors worked skill- sophisticated cultural practices such as story- fully in stone to shape it both for use and – telling and religion. An entirely different ex- apparently – for aesthetic pleasure (see above). planation is offered by Nicholas Humphrey Whitney Davis (1986) has argued that it was (1998), who notes striking similarities between the sheer accumulation of nondepictive marks the paintings at Chauvet (and other Upper on surfaces that provoked seeing-in and led Paleolithic sites) and the precocious drawings to the invention of depiction during the of a young autistic girl, Nadia, whose depictions Upper Paleolithic. But it is not the experience of have been extensively documented. Like the seeing-in that needs explaining; that can be cave painters, Nadia tended to draw one thing assumed to be available, and common, well on top of another, and sometimes produced before the Upper Paleolithic. Rather it is the apparently chimerical figures; this may have invention of ways deliberately to create some- been due simply to the fact that her focus thing in which something else can be seen. on detail at the expense of gestalt left her vul- This seems to have been surprisingly elusive. nerable to changing tack midway through a pic- Other explanations of depiction focus on cul- ture. Nadia’s drawing declined as she acquired tural developments in the Upper Paleolithic. It language, consistent with the idea that having has long been suggested that cave art was con- a language-based schema of knowledge about nected with magical and religious practices. things derails the attempt to reproduce the Partly on the basis of ethnographic studies of way they look, a capacity typically developing living hunter-gatherer communities and their children acquire only by painful and cultur- shamanistic practices, David Lewis-Williams ally scaffolded learning. While it is generally (2002) has argued that these caves were assumed that language was fully developed by thought of as boundaries between the natural the Upper Paleolithic, Dunbar (1996) and and supernatural worlds, where the images, Mithen (1996) have suggested that it did not often in relief and dramatically illuminated evolve as a whole, but in stages corresponding by the movement of a torch, and seen under to the mind’s then distinctive modular structure, conditions of altered psychological states, con- with “social language” first off the blocks.

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art of the paleolithic

Drawing these thoughts together, Humphrey and that its characteristics are not explicable argues that the cave artists, while not autistic, in terms of just one of these factors. Nor is it had minds as radically different from ours as mandatory to hold that the symbolic must Nadia’s was from the typically developing have primacy over the aesthetic, in the sense child’s. Language, he suggests, was at that of carrying the greater explanatory burden, time only partly developed, being social, and not or corresponding to a deeper, more urgent, or yet available to the “natural history” module. phylogenetically older motivation. If the evid- That way we can see the cave painters as ence of the Acheulean technology is anything having a Nadia-like capacity for linguistically to go by, the order of priority is likely to be the unencumbered naturalism in depicting the other way around. Indeed, aesthetic sensibility animal world, while the absence of convincing may play its part in explaining the develop- human figures from the corpus is explained by ment of symbolic culture. If aesthetic sense is a the derailing effect of their intact social (inter- sensitivity to “good making,” as the costly sig- personal) language. Humphrey’s suggestion is naling hypothesis suggests, the design-like fea- highly revisionary, since it places a lower tures of the natural world can be expected to bound on fully developed language later than trigger aesthetic responses and to create illusions the naturalistic school of cave painting. Also, the of purpose, leading to ideas of magic and reli- supposed transition from a modular to a gen- gion. Nor, finally, is the idea of an irreducibly eral-purpose mind cannot now be invoked, as aesthetic motive to be written off as a roman- it is by Mithen, to explain the cultural break- tic belief in our enduring recognition of the throughs of 40–30k bp (but see Currie 2004: value of beauty. Aesthetic preference may be ch. 12). Nonetheless, Humphrey’s observation basic – people seeking aesthetic experience that the pictorial sophistication of cave paint- simply for the pleasure it brings – and at the ings cannot be proof of the modernity of their same time fully and naturalistically explicable makers’ minds is well taken. And for reasons I in terms of, say, the entirely contingent way that will come to immediately, his challenge to sexual selection has shaped our tendencies to received wisdom is very welcome. be delighted. Part of Humphrey’s challenge is to the pre- sumption that the Upper Paleolithic represents art and the aesthetic the transition to a “symbolic” culture wherein Implicit in the above account is a budget of decoration of grave sites, cave walls, and problems to which philosophers of art may implements speaks of a richly meaningful con- contribute some clarification, but which are nection to a spiritual world, the values it empirical and on which we shall expect the imparts to us, and the narratives we tell of it – sciences to lead the way. Among them are things scarcely possible without a language questions about what explains, and what is that integrates thought about the natural and explained by, the aesthetic sensibilities of Stone the social. Over the last 100 years there have Age peoples. Other questions concern the ways been regular if not very successful challenges to in which aesthetic activity was organized, the idea that cave art and its associated artifacts understood, and integrated with other activities. have spiritual or symbolic meaning. Labeled What sense, within this framework, should by its enemies “art for art’s sake,” and hence we give to the familiar question “When did woundingly associated with “fin-de-siècle art begin?” If we allow that not all aesthetic decadence” (Halverson 1987), this challenge has making is art-making, we might try to decide often taken the form of a general denial of whether there is some significant shift in the meaning to these artifacts. While this position pattern of human aesthetic activity which does not strike me as obviously wrong, it is identifies a point at which “art” becomes a sen- important to see that it is the extreme end of a sible label to apply. Given the contested nature spectrum of views that make explanatory of the concept “art,” agreement on this will not appeal to the idea of the aesthetic. We might hold be easily found. I suggest we take our cue from instead that a certain object provides aesthetic the two sets of questions distinguished above, pleasure as well as having some symbolic func- and look at the archaeological record for evid- tion (or indeed a function of some other kind), ence that aesthetic activity has, at certain

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historical overviews times and places, become a community practice, Humphrey, Nicholas. 1998. “Cave Art, Autism, and reflected upon in communal discourse and to the Evolution of the Human Mind,” Cambridge some extent institutionalized through division Archaeological Journal, 8, 165–91 (with commen- of labor. It is likely always to remain a matter taries and replies from Humphrey). of very indirect inference as to whether such con- Klein, R. G. 2000. “Archaeology and the Evolution ditions were met in the Upper Paleolithic or of Human Behavior,” Evolution of Anthropology, 9, 17–36. Late Stone Age. Kohn, Marak & Mithen, Steven. 1999. “Handaxes: Products of Sexual Selection,” Antiquity, 73, For information on the Acheulean industry 518–26. and a digital archive of images see http:// Lewis-Williams, David. 2002. The Mind in the Cave: antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/marshall/marshall.html. Consciousness and the Origins of Art. London: For Blombos see http://www.svf.uib.no/sfu/ Thames & Hudson. blombos/. For Apollo 11 see http://images. Mithen, Steven. 1996. The Prehistory of the Mind. google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.klaus- London: Thames & Hudson. dierks.com/images/Namibia_Karas_ApolloXI_4.j Nowell, A. 2006. “From a Paleolithic Art to pg&imgrefurl=http://www.klausdierks.com/Chr Pleistocene Visual Cultures,” Journal of Archaeo- logical Method and Theory, 13, 239–49. onology/1.htm&h=629&w=799&sz=199&hl=en = = = Papineau, D. 2005. “Social Learning and the &start 40&um 1&tbnid Od2Z-c2KOVJV_M: Baldwin Effect.” In Cognition, Evolution, and Ration- &tbnh=113&tbnw=143&prev=/images%3Fq%3 ality. A. Zilhão (ed.). London: Routledge, 40–60. Dapollo%2B11%2Bcave%2B%26start%3D20%2 Pettit, P. & Bahn, Paul. 2003. “Current Problems of 6ndsp%3D20%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa Dating Palaeolithic Cave Art: Candamo and fe%3Dactive%26sa%3DN. For Chauvet see Chauvet,” Antiquity, 77, 134–41. http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/ Tomasello, Michael. 1999. The Cultural Origins of chauvet/en/. For Lascaux see http://www. Human Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/. For University Press. Altamira see http://museodealtamira.mcu.es/ Wenban-Smith, F. 2004. “Handaxe Typology and Lower Palaeolithic Cultural Development: Ficrons, ingles/index.html. Cleavers and Two Giant Handaxes from Cuxton,” artworld ; cognitive science and Lithics, 25, 11–21. See also “ ” White, M. 2000. “The Clactonian Question: On the art; definition of “art”; evolution, art, and Interpretation of Core-and-Flake Assemblages in aesthetics; function of art; picture perception; the British Lower Palaeolithic,” Journal of World universals in art. Prehistory, 14, 1–63. Wollheim, Richard. 1980. Art and Its Objects. 2nd edn. bibliography Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Currie, Gregory. 2004. Arts and Minds. Oxford: Zilhão, João. 2007. “The Emergence of Ornaments and Oxford University Press. Art: An Archaeological Perspective on the Origins Davis, Whitney. 1986. “The Origins of Image of ‘Behavioral Modernity’,” Journal of Archaeolo- Making,” Current Anthropology, 27, 193–215. gical Research, 15, 1–54. d’Errico, F. et al. 2003. “Archaeological Evidence for gregory currie the Emergence of Language, Symbolism, and Music: An Alternative Multidisciplinary Perspective,” Journal of World Prehistory, 1, 1–70. d’Errico, F. & Nowell, A. 2000. “A New Look at aesthetics in antiquity Although “aesthet- the Berekhat Ram Figurine: Implications for the ics” is a word of Greek derivation (aisthêtikos, adj.: Origins of Symbolism,” Cambridge Archaeological “relating to perception”), there is no specific Journal 10, 123–67. ancient usage, nor any explicit branch of Dunbar, Robin. 1996. Grooming, Gossip and the ancient thought, which corresponds to the Evolution of Language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard modern sense of the term. When Baumgarten University Press. Frere, John. 1800. “Account of Flint Weapons coined the word for the sensory cognition of Discovered at Hoxne in Suffolk,” Archaeologia, 13, beauty, he was aware of a Greek philosophical 204–5. contrast between the perceptual and the “noetic” Halverson, J. 1987. “Art for Art’s Sake in the or intellectual. But that contrast is employed by Paleolithic,” Current Anthropology, 28, 63–89. thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle without any

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aesthetics in antiquity necessary reference either to beauty or to the song has the capacity to induce states of rapt group of arts (poetry, music, painting, etc.) enthrallment, even quasi-magical “enchant- that have become central to modern aesthetics. ment.” Such emotional intensity, sometimes To conclude from this, however, that there conceived as a quasi-erotic longing in response was no aesthetics tout court in antiquity would to the beauty of words and music, defies easy be premature. definition and can involve a mixture of pleasure Greco-Roman culture produced, in fact, a and pain: Sappho’s songs of “bittersweet” erotic complex tradition of reflections both on beauty memory and desire are a salient illustration of and on the principles of poetic, musical, and this sensibility. In early Greece, musico-poetic figurative art forms. These reflections emerged performances themselves frequently incorpor- within and between various frameworks of ate reflections on their own seductive power. thought: poetics, rhetorical theory, cultural Ideas of rapt absorption and deep emotional critique, systems of metaphysics, as well as engagement remain a premise of most ancient technical treatises (outside the scope of this forms of aesthetics; notions of aesthetic dis- article) on painting, music, and architecture. On tance, detachment, or “disinterested” judg- any nondoctrinaire understanding of the con- ment are largely foreign to antiquity. From an cept, antiquity plays a formative, influential early date, Greek culture also looks to the role in the history of aesthetics. The challenge power of song to disclose some kind of “truth.” is to trace the ancient phases of this history But this is a problematic expectation: in in a spirit that can identify affinities and con- Hesiod, perhaps contemporary with Homer, tinuities without forcing the past into the mold the Muses proclaim that “we know how to tell of the present, and to recognize that the status many falsehoods that resemble the truth, and of ancient aesthetics is important in part precisely we know, when we choose, how to utter the because of its refusal to constitute a single truth” (Theogony 27–8). These much debated domain of thought. lines elude stable interpretation; they imply the difficulty, for human singers and audiences, of archaic origins knowing where “inspired” truth begins and Many of the questions, problems, and ideas ends. Moreover, they suggest that even “false- which stimulated ancient impulses in aesth- hoods” may have the divine power to draw etics were generated by the “song culture” of audiences into engrossing world-like semb- archaic Greece (eighth to sixth centuries bce) – lances of truth. Archaic Greece laid the basis for a culture in which poetry, music, and dance a lasting tension between an aesthetics of were a major means of expressing religious, truth and an aesthetics of compelling fiction. political, ethical, and erotic values, often in By around 500 bce, comparisons between special social contexts such as festivals and poetic and figurative art emerge as one means feasts. Homeric epic, with its narrative of a dis- of articulating proto-aesthetic considerations tant world of heroic myth, contains resonant about representation and expression. The poet images of the psychological potency of song. Simonides described poetry as “speaking paint- These include the remarkable scene where ing,” painting as “silent poetry” (Plutarch, Odysseus, though paradoxically overcome by Moralia 346f). Such comparisons, positing a “grief” when hearing a song about his own shared category of image-making but marking prominence as a warrior, feels a profound need differences of capacity between verbal and to repeat the experience (Odyssey 8.62–92, visual media, became common (e.g., Plato, 485–531): song reveals his life to him in a Republic 10 and Aristotle, Poetics 25 employed new light. In archaic Greece generally, song at them) and later gave rise to the tradition of its finest is regarded as a gift from the gods: a ut pictura poesis, “just as with painting, so with gift, often, of “inspiration” by the Muses (which poetry” (the Latin phrase from Horace, Ars can still leave room, however, for human Poetica 361), the tradition which Lessing’s skill), but also a quality of radiant loveliness Laocoön set itself to overhaul. Convergence on (sometimes called charis, inadequately trans- a cohesive concept of representational art was lated “grace”) which emanates from anything strengthened by the idea of mimesis, whose touched by the divine. Whatever its sources, origins are obscure but which came to be

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historical overviews applied to pictorial, poetic, choreographic, poetic arts. This use of the term is particularly musical, and some other kinds of representation. prominent in Plato’s Republic, but it is not ori- The translation “imitation,” though standard, ginal there. In Aristophanes’ Frogs, for instance, does scant justice to the ways in which Greeks the creative activity of tragic playwrights is used interpretations of mimesis to wrestle with called mousikê. problems, in modern terms, both of represen- The nature and implications of mimesis are tation and of expression. The status of mimesis most extensively and intricately explored in intersects, moreover, with issues of truth and this period by Plato and Aristotle. But there are falsehood/fiction, especially in poetry, and dif- traces of a wider culture of discussion on the sub- ferent versions of mimesis cover a spectrum ject. In Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.10.1–8, a stretching from “world-reflecting” realism to partly fictionalized collection of memories of “world-creating” idealism (Halliwell 2002). Socrates, the latter asks the painter Parrhasius While much of archaic Greek culture was whether his “imaging of the visible” can prepared to ascribe special truth-telling powers include depiction of strictly nonsensory quali- to poets, whether resulting from divine support ties such as a person’s “character”: Parrhasius or human insight (or both), some philosophers at first resists but is brought round by a sug- raised objections. Heraclitus poured scorn on the gestion that such qualities might be shown belief that Homer and Hesiod possessed any “through” physical expressions, especially on the authentic wisdom; Xenophanes (a rare Greek face. In a further conversation, Socrates asks the critic of polytheism), writing in verse himself, sculptor Cleiton how he “renders the sense of complained that these same poets had attri- life” in his figures. In both cases, the philosopher buted gross immorality to the gods. The import- probes the (blurred) boundary between repre- ance of such polemics is twofold: they imply that sentation and expression. He asks how “colors representational art is open to scrutiny on and shapes” can be seen as conveying nonsen- epistemological and ethical grounds, and they sory properties and meanings; and there are show the development of what Plato would intimations of a view which will be spelt out in later call “the ancient quarrel between philo- a later period (see below on Philostratus), that sophy and poetry” (Republic 10.607b). mimetic effects require imaginative coopera- tion from viewers prepared to project signific- classical frameworks and debates ance onto the appearances of a work. Mimesis In the classical period (fifth to fourth centuries uses material media to produce readable bce), Greek attitudes to poetry, music, painting, semblances of a world (whether real or fictive), and sculpture did not lose contact with their a process that could be either celebrated archaic roots but became open to new forms of for what Greeks sometimes called its “soul- (partly) rationalistic theorizing and judgment. drawing” allure (psychagôgia) or distrusted for There is an increasing tendency to recognize a its speciousness. family of figurative and musico-poetic prac- Too much should not be made of the lin- tices, each of which typically counts as a technê guistic fact that the sense in which poetry, or specialized expertise (see below) and whose music, and painting could count as “arts,” common feature is mimetic depiction, simula- technai (plural of technê), does not coincide tion, or enactment of world-like properties with the generalized modern usage of “art.” (things “resembling the truth,” in the Greek It is true that the concept of technê, a skill phrase). This is apparent in the classification of or expertise based on rationally expoundable mimesis in the opening chapters of Aristotle’s principles, can be used of activities as diverse as Poetics; and when in that work Aristotle shoemaking and medicine. But its implication aligns poetry with “the other mimetic arts” of mastery of materials and practices in a par- (8.1451a30), he clearly assumes familiarity ticular domain does still contribute one strand with a well-established category. It was also of modern usage; beyond that, modern usage possible to characterize part of this category itself is problematic, since it masks widespread with the term mousikê, literally “art of the disagreement about what constitutes “art.” Muses,” a word which could denote music Furthermore, the unitary notion of art that per se but also a larger consortium of musico- emerged in the eighteenth century is a synthesis

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aesthetics in antiquity of the category of “fine arts” or beaux-arts, and external force channeled through the artist’s that grouping closely matches the “mimetic mind. Throughout antiquity, in fact, thinkers of arts” of Aristotle’s Poetics: a fact made explicit many persuasions continued to operate with in Batteux’s pivotal work, Les beaux-arts réduits models of creativity that balance elements of à un même principe (1746). learned skill against more instinctive, “natural” Nonetheless, even in the classical period abilities (Horace’s Ars Poetica 408–18 is a itself the question of whether the makers of standard specimen). Modern dichotomies of mimetic works did possess a special expertise “technique” and “originality” have inherited was a focus for competing views. The claim similar underlying concerns. was unproblematic in certain respects: no one Another evolving issue in the classical doubted that sculptors or professional instru- period concerned the status of poems, paintings, mentalists could reliably exercise identifiable etc. in relation to truth and falsehood. The competences. But older Greek notions of the debate is made harder to follow by sometimes skill of poets, in particular, had tended to blur blurred distinctions, in particular between the distinction between technical facility (e.g., historical-descriptive and ethical-normative in versification) and cognitive insight. Such truth: both kinds could be ascribed (or denied) to ambiguities became entangled in an overlapping the traditional stories (“myths”) which formed set of debates about the creative sources, the a large part of the subject matter of Greek art. qualities, and the value of poetry. In the fifth A longstanding awareness of the uncertainty century, the atomist philosopher Democritus of poetic truth, seen above in Hesiod, developed described Homer as having been “endowed into a set of fluid arguments. Pindar, himself a with a god-like nature” but as having used it poet, could detect quasi-historical “falsehoods” to “build a beautiful construction of words”: in Homeric myth while nonetheless recogniz- the proposition combines the ideas of a special ing their beguiling appeal (Nemean 7.20–3): (though perhaps metaphorical) gift and a this is not outright censure but an indication meticulously cultivated expertise. Somewhat of ambiguity about what matters in poetry’s differently, in a famous passage of Plato’s creation of impressive paradigms of human Apology (22a–c) Socrates explains how he experience. The historian Thucydides is hesitant interrogated poets to see if they could explain about using Homer as factual evidence for the what their works meant; he concluded that past (e.g., 1.10.3), yet he does rely on him up they could not, and inferred that they had to a point; at the same time, he contrasts produced their works (which he accepts are temporary poetic gratification with the perma- “beautiful”) not by rational expertise but by nence of historical truth (2.41.4). Thucydides nonrational intuition or inspiration. seems almost to resent the indeterminacy of In his Ion, Plato foregrounds these issues in poetry’s contents. But during this same period a way that is deliberately, provocatively polar- there were also attempts to move toward ized between discursive knowledge and divine something like a positive conception of fiction inspiration. The dialogue avoids a decisive as a special language game that falls between answer: it includes a lyrical evocation of inspi- simple truth and falsehood. ration as involuntary “possession” or mad- One such attempt can be glimpsed in the ness; but it also presses for an account of “the sophist Gorgias, who described tragic drama art of poetry as a whole” (532c), leaving the as a paradoxical “deception” in which “the impression that an interlocutor more acute deceiver [i.e., the successful playwright] is bet- than Ion might get closer to meeting Socrates’ ter than the non-deceiver, and the deceived challenge. Aristotle, in the Poetics, thinks he [i.e., the enthralled spectator] is wiser than is doing just that. The Poetics is built on the the undeceived” (Plutarch, Moralia 348c). An premise that poetry (like painting) is a teachable anonymous treatise of around the same date technê; and while Aristotle still allows for ex- (late fifth century), adducing “the arts (technai) ceptional creative excellence, such as Homer’s, and the works of the poets,” states that “in he understands this in terms of powers of tragic poetry and in painting the best person is imaginative vision and emotional concentration the one who deceives the most by making (Poetics 17), eliminating any supposition of an things that resemble reality” (Dissoi Logoi 3.10).

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historical overviews

In both these texts, the notion of “deception” drama (alternatively: banal, immoral decad- seems to combine a work-centered concept of ence). The arguments move back and forth fiction (the presentation of an artfully invented between “technical” details and larger cultural world) with an audience-centered notion of mentalities: it is no accident that Frogs influ- compelling psychological involvement. enced Nietzsche’s conception of tragedy’s history In another of his writings, the Encomium in Birth of Tragedy, including its alleged “death” of Helen (an imaginary defense speech for the at the hands of the rationalist Euripides. heroine), Gorgias uses poetry as a prime exam- Although the contest in Frogs is a comic tour de ple of the power of language to overcome force, it shrewdly exposes the challenge, even the soul with emotion: he clearly has tragedy the impossibility, of “objective” aesthetic judg- again in mind when he speaks of the fear, pity, ment (Dionysus’ eventual decision is an arbitrary and grief induced by poetry “at the affairs of whim). It uses its own comic aesthetic (of others.” Gorgias ascribes a comparable power exaggeration, irony, absurdity) to emphasize to images; they enter the eyes and imprint both that an art form can change radically over themselves on the mind with the same kind of time and that its values cannot be divorced irresistible effect (including erotic desire) as from the expectations of its audiences. Frogs words. What is more, he gestures toward, was designed to stimulate a theatrical public used without working out systematically, a con- to arguing over the meanings and merits of ception of both language and vision as turning plays. all experience into a kind of narrative-cum- Among much else, Frogs is a reminder of emotional construction of the world. He speaks the need to avoid homogenization of classical of vision “painting images in the mind” and he Greek aesthetics. Disagreement about funda- leaves the impression that all language aspires mental values was part of the culture. Much of to the intense condition of poetry. Whatever the debate revolved round a tension between the status of this controversial work, the competing ideas of what mimetically created Encomium of Helen gives the flavor of a sophis- “worlds” might offer their audiences: on the tic milieu of thought in which quasi-aesthetic one hand, an intense immediacy of experience, enthrallment becomes a kind of lens through an imaginative immersion in the structured which to see life as a whole. universe of the individual work; on the other, It has sometimes been thought that a work the disclosure of truths which might inform by Gorgias might have been a source for the and edify experience outside the work as well. contest of tragedians in the second half of This pair of ideas, which could be set against one Aristophanes’ Frogs (405 bce). This is doubtful, another or combined in various ways, forms part but Frogs is certainly a vibrant testimony to the of the backdrop to the two most important aesthetic debates surrounding one particular philosophies of art of the period (and of anti- art form, tragedy, in the agonistic theatrical quity as a whole), those of Plato and Aristotle. culture of classical Athens. The play picks up the The complexity of thoughts about poetry, problems, indicated above, of calling poetry music, and visual art in Plato’s dialogues has a technê: by making the contest range from too often been translated into monolithic hos- the choice of individual words to the putative tility to these cultural practices. But careful political messages of whole plays, Aristophanes reading uncovers a subtle dialectic between throws up a set of puzzles about what kind of suspicion of claims for art’s self-sufficiency and “expertise” the creation of tragic drama might recognition of the psychological power of its be. Set in Hades (thereby applying a sort of resources. At Republic 10.596d–e, for instance, “test of time” to the genre), the competition painting is notoriously compared to the passive turns playwrights of different generations, mirroring of appearances. Historians of aes- Aeschylus and Euripides, into representatives thetics usually present this as a fixed Platonic of different artistic standards (as seen from tenet. But not only do we encounter different both sides, by their advocates and opponents): views in other dialogues – see, for example, grand, heroic, uplifting Aeschylean theater the stress on compositional selection, design, (alternatively: bombastic, portentous obscurity) and beauty at Gorgias 503d–e – earlier in the versus realistic, rhetorical, “modern” Euripidean Republic itself, Socrates used painting as a

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aesthetics in antiquity metaphor for idealistic philosophical vision, human experience. At the same time, Aristotle acknowledging the existence of figurative art is emphatic that the cognitive experience of which does much more than replicate the mimetic works brings with it powerful emo- surfaces of things (see esp. 5.472d, 6.500e– tions and perhaps even the potential to make a 501c): an art, indeed, whose beauty of form can lasting difference to the emotional dispositions be “full” of ethically charged expressiveness of individuals. (3.400e–401a). So an alert reader of the Insofar as anything like a standard model of whole dialogue is primed to treat book 10’s aesthetic experience emerges from the debates mirror analogy not as an unequivocal rejection of classical Greek culture, it can be character- of painting but a rhetorical provocation to ized as the engaged imaginative contemplation readers to grasp the need for a better justi- of the artistically shaped universe of a mimetic fication of visual (and, by analogy, poetic) work. From such a perspective, beauty tends to mimesis than the mere “semblance” of the real. count not as a separate category of value but A comparable point emerges from Socrates’ rather as completeness of excellence of the rel- explicit request for a new defense of poetry evant kind: a beautiful song or statue, therefore, later in the same book: after supposedly is one which satisfies whatever the observer confirming the banishment of poetry as sub- takes to be the most important criteria of value versive of rationality, he voices a cautious but (including formal unity, finesse of detail, emo- fervent hope for a way of harmonizing the tional expressiveness, ethical idealism) appli- “bewitchment” of poetic language and feeling cable to such an object or performance. Even with an ethical conception of how best to live when distinct criteria of beauty are stipulated, (607–8). Plato’s dealings with mimetic art they normally function in this way. When, for never reach a definitive conclusion. instance, in Poetics 7 Aristotle says that beauty Aristotle’s was the most influential response resides in the ordering of parts in relation to one to Plato’s challenge to elaborate an aesthetics another, together with the appropriate magni- that could unite intense pleasure and emotion tude for the object in question, he makes it with philosophically acceptable truth. In the clear that he is specifying conditions that allow Poetics he undertakes this task principally with something to be appreciated as the thing that reference to tragedy and epic, but with clear indi- it should be. He thus thinks of a beautiful body cations that his principles could be extended to as relative to the changing tasks of different other mimetic art forms as well. Aristotle’s periods of life (Rhetoric 1.5). In the case of a tragic position on poetic “truth” is complicated. Clearly plot, his direct concern in Poetics 7, beauty is he does not require, though he allows for, inextricably related to mimesis of a unified empirical truth in poetry: the objects of mime- structure of human action of a certain kind sis, according to Poetics 25, include the actual, and is therefore not independent of representa- the hypothetical, and the ideal. Like Pindar tional and expressive value. This is in keeping (above), Aristotle can explicitly admire the with Aristotle’s general construal of unity of Homeric use of “falsehood” (Poetics 24), by poetic form as a principle of intelligibility. which he means the artful design of scenes It is only when the human sphere is tran- that are emotionally convincing despite under- scended that more abstract ideas of beauty lying inconsistencies. Aristotle takes poetry to come into play in Greek culture. In a passage be a representation of “life” (Poetics 6), yet he of Plato’s Republic 5 (475–6), “lovers of beau- does not equate this with sustained realism tiful sights and sounds” addicted to drama, (Poetics 8) but connects it to what he counts as music, etc. are contrasted with the true philo- poetry’s quasi-philosophical capacity to incor- sopher who loves only pure beauty “in itself.” porate “universals” into its narrative structures. Comparably, in Plato’s Symposium the ulti- He believes, moreover, that mimesis is a mate vision of beauty stands at the top of a spir- medium of understanding (Poetics 4). All this itual ascent that leaves beautiful artworks, seems to yield the inference that poetry is together with the human scene as a whole, not a duplication of actual particulars but far behind. Yet even here it is significant can nonetheless be “true to” the essential that Diotima’s account figures the mystical patterns of causality and significance in vision as contemplation of a symbolic natural

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historical overviews panorama, “the vast ocean of beauty” (210d), Doctrines 12). Tragedy, for instance, could rather as in Plato’s Phaedrus the soul’s vision of have no value for an Epicurean. ultimate reality, including beauty, is pictured in But this critique of a mythological world- terms of a celestial festival (247–8). Even these view, a critique that follows in the older tradi- important Platonic gestures toward a kind tion of Xenophanes and Plato, itself implies of transcendent “aesthetic” require metaphors that poetry can have a cognitive-cum-emo- from embodied experience to convey their tional impact on its audiences’ beliefs. It does not significance. look, then, as though poetry could give pleasure to an Epicurean without a judgment on its philo- hellenistic developments and beyond sophical content. One possibility is that poetry The Hellenistic period, conventionally dated could be made a medium for Epicureanism from the death of Alexander the Great (322 itself. Epicurus seems both to have anticipated bce) to the first century bce, sees a consider- and to have resisted this: he thought that only able diffusion of Greek thought and values the Epicurean philosopher could discuss music across an expanded cultural landscape. In the and poetry correctly, but that he would not second half of this period and beyond, when take writing poetry seriously himself (Diogenes Rome becomes politically dominant in the Laertius, Lives 10.120). But in the first century Mediterranean world, that diffusion translates bce Lucretius’ great poem, De rerum natura, itself increasingly into a Greco-Roman phe- reverting in this respect to the practice of some nomenon. During this extended stretch of of the Greek Pre-Socratic philosophers, showed antiquity, earlier Greek paradigms of mimetic art, that an Epicurean aesthetic could marry philo- beauty, and criticism were both maintained sophical content with poetic form for overtly and reworked by new types of thinking. On persuasive purposes. Despite their defining em- the philosophical side, the most important phasis on the criterion of pleasure, Epicureans development was the growth of Epicureanism could not advocate pure aestheticism, it seems, and Stoicism. The contrast between the two where representational art was concerned. schools marks a divergence between strong In practice, Epicurean attitudes to art were not tendencies toward aesthetic hedonism and inflexible. Epicurus himself, while dismissive of aesthetic cognitivism. But there are complica- the cultural prestige of poetry, music, etc., none- tions to this contrast. theless said that the true philosopher would Epicureanism provided a complete philosophy be a “lover of spectacle” capable of enjoying of life on the basis of just two main tenets: one, the great Dionysiac festivals at which, among an atomic physics (all reality is reducible to other things, drama was standardly performed atoms and void); the other, the principle that (Plutarch, Moralia 1065c): this seems like a the only criterion of human value is pleasure pointed retort to the idealism of Plato’s devalu- (including freedom from pain and care). This ation of “lovers of beautiful sights and sounds” framework encouraged a downgrading of the (see previous section). While uncertainties capacities of poetry, music, and other tradi- remain about the nuances of Epicurus’ pro- tional art forms. Epicurus himself (341– nouncements in this area (Asmis 1991), our best 270 bce) rejected a system of education built chance of understanding the intricate moves around them, partly because such education was of which an Epicurean aesthetics was capable superfluous to the simple pleasures of the best comes from the writings of Philodemus (first life, partly because poetry in particular propa- century bce): many of those writings, found on gated false myths about the gods (who, accord- charred papyri from Herculaneum (engulfed ing to Epicurus, do not actively interfere in by the great eruption of Vesuvius in the year 79), human lives) and the afterlife (which has no exis- are currently being expertly reconstructed. tence, since death is the end of individual iden- The extensive but difficult fragments of tity and consciousness). To escape traditional Philodemus’ polemical treatise On Poems suggest Greek pessimism (“best never to be born”) or to that his own position stood poised between con- free oneself from fear of death, much myth- ceptions of poetic excellence as self-contained based poetry (and visual art) had to be rejected form and attempts to equate poetic value with (Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus 126–7; Principal intellectual or moral benefit. Philodemus takes

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aesthetics in antiquity poetry to provide the mind with a pleasure De officiis 1.98, deriving from the Greek Stoic that depends on the combination of carefully Panaetius) is not original with the Stoics; chosen thought with well-matched language; Aristotle, as we have seen, had propounded a he sees style and content as integrated and similar view. But in the hands of Stoics the idea equally important. He accepts poetry as an carries a larger impetus to integrate all aspects art in its own right, but he keeps it compat- of reality into a single vision of value; “beauty,” ible with Epicureanism by making it a kind of in Stoic vocabulary, is always synonymous mimetic echo of “useful” (i.e., philosophical) with “goodness” per se. discourse. Some have discerned in Philo- Such a perception of beauty required a good demus, who himself wrote elegant epigrams, an deal of actively interpretative “seeing”; the vision aesthetic in which poetic form and matter are was available only to those in possession of full “organically” fused, a sort of Hellenistic “New wisdom. Thus Marcus Aurelius (Meditations Criticism.” 3.2) claims that all sorts of natural phenomena, Philodemus also wrote a polemical treatise even those which look unattractive in isola- On Music in which he contested the common tion, can manifest a special beauty and appeal, view (shared by Pythagoreans, Platonists, even a sort of enthralling quality, to the eyes Aristotelians, and at least some Stoics) that of those who have a “deeper conception” of the music was a species of (mimetic) expression, unity of nature. When he adds that such a per- using audible “likenesses” or correlates of emo- son will take as much pleasure in nature itself tions to shape and convey ethically contoured as in graphic or sculptural representations of it, feelings. For Philodemus the materialist, music he voices an aesthetic not of sensual appearances is nothing but “irrational,” that is, meaningless, but of nature as a system of harmonious signi- patterns of sound; it merely “tickles the hearing”; ficance. And he accordingly indicates that this and when it accompanies poetry, any emo- way of reading the natural world is closed to tional effect on the soul stems entirely from the those who do not possess the Stoic key to the thoughts contained in the words. Once mime- system. sis (whether as representation or expression) has Stoics took over from earlier philosophy, been denied to music, we are left with an art that especially Plato’s Timaeus (where the visible for the Epicurean Philodemus, anticipating world is a temporal image of eternity made Hanslick, amounts to pure (tonal) form whose by the “demiurge,” the divine craftsman), the experience is restricted to an auditory pleasure notion of the cosmos as the “work of art” cre- without any significance beyond itself. ated by the ideas in god’s mind (e.g., Seneca, Among Philodemus’ many targets in On Epistles 65). This brought with it the implica- Music were Stoic thinkers who regarded tion of human artistry as the rationally pur- music, as well as poetry and painting, as pro- posive production of objects possessing both viding fundamentally cognitive experiences “utility” (i.e., for Stoics, moral value) and that could enhance perception and judgment beauty. Although such a model of productive art of reality. Much of the primary evidence for could be purely analytical, as in Aristotle’s Stoic aesthetics has not survived; treatises on conception of the artisan working from an idea poetry, for instance, by the first three heads in his mind (Metaphysics 988a4, 1032a32), of the school – Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes, and Stoics, like some Platonists and, subsequently, Chrysippus – have been lost. But the holistic cast Neoplatonists (see below), developed the model of Stoic thinking makes reconstruction easier into an aesthetic of metaphysical idealism, than it might otherwise have been. Stoics were regarding the meaning of an artwork, like the powerfully committed to seeing the cosmos as significance of the cosmos itself, as residing not a rational, providential unity, permeated by in sensory appearances as such but in the an active, divine “spirit.” They therefore had truth encoded in its beautiful form and readable reason to regard both the natural world and by a philosophically attuned mind. At the the products of mimetic art as valuable insofar same time, the holistic mentality of Stoicism as they were reflections or expressions of treated beauty, whether in nature or in repre- the goodness of the cosmos. The idea of beauty sentational art, as integrating appearance and as a harmonious conjunction of parts (Cicero, meaning, not splitting them apart.

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We can glimpse some of the consequences of contemplative engagement with the truth. this stance in Stoic treatments of poetry, the art Cleanthes, who wrote poems himself on which, because of its cultural-cum-educational themes from Stoic theology and ethics, appears prestige and its capacity to be (re)interpreted more capable than Strabo of recognizing the philosophically, interested them more than need for a philosophical aesthetics to treat any other. Stoics were highly assertive, even the possibilities of an art form as more than a interventionist, readers. They employed a functional vehicle for things which could exist repertoire of critical techniques – including just as well without it. One brief report of allegorical interpretation, to reconcile anthro- Cleanthes’ position, speaking of how the “com- pomorphic deities with their own more pressed necessity” of poetry can intensify abstract conception of the divine, and even, on meaning and its impact on the mind, occurs occasion, the active “rewriting” of certain pas- in Seneca the Younger (Epistles 108.10). It sages – to maximize the utility of poetry for remains a major but unresolved question philosophical purposes. In this respect the whether Seneca’s own tragedies, with their Stoics were responding to a Platonic challenge extraordinarily stark evocations of human suf- to show that moral “benefit” and poetically fering and depravity, should count as expressions aroused pleasure could work together. But of a Stoic aesthetics (and therefore ethics). Are their response sometimes involved an almost they poetic enactments of the Stoic doctrine of total privileging of the cognitive-cum-moral the need for virtuous independence from all over the emotional. the passions, with their deleterious attachment A remarkable illustration of this can be to “externals”? There is no doubt that other found in the Stoic geographer Strabo Stoics saw the genre that way: Epictetus is a case (c.64 bce–21 ce). At the start of his Geography in point (Discourses 1.4.24–7). To sustain such (1.1–2), he repudiates the view that poetry a view apparently means making the tragic offers a psychological captivation of its own theater a form of aversion therapy, as Marcus and argues that Homer is a fundamentally reli- Aurelius Meditations 11.6 does. There is, how- able purveyor of historical, geographic, politi- ever, an enigma here. If those aspiring to Stoic cal, and other scientific knowledge. For Strabo, virtue can witness in tragedy the false values that reading Homer is (or can be) a quasi-philo- lead to extreme suffering, do they do so by sophical exercise in tracking an essentially passing through but beyond pity and fear, or by veridical, which is not to say always literal, resisting such feelings altogether? It remains picture of reality. He concedes in passing the per- unclear whether Stoics wanted to reinterpret the missibility of an element of creative invention emotional experience of tragedy or replace it with or fiction; he recognizes, as other Stoics did, a didactic alternative (Halliwell 2005: 405–9). the importance of poetic “composition” and This may reflect a general tension between style; and he allows that poetry can provide cognition and emotion in their thinking about some pleasures that are not reducible to truth. poetry. But he firmly subordinates such considerations One final development in Hellenistic aesth- to the imperatives of his Stoic agenda, even etics deserves mention here. Both Stoics and though his position requires him to admit that Platonists probably contributed to it, though the the emotional charge of poetic myths makes details are uncertain. This is the emergence of them most suitable as instruction for minds a concept of creative imagination that becomes incapable of dealing with philosophical know- associated in some texts with the term phanta- ledge in a purer form. sia. Much attention has been paid in this There are suggestions elsewhere of a more respect to Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of nuanced Stoic conception of poetry. Among Tyana, a third-century work containing a pas- these is the view ascribed to Cleanthes (c.330– sage (6.19) in which phantasia is said to be 230 bce) that, while philosophical prose can ade- capable of giving artistic form to “even what it quately state the truth of religious doctrines, has never seen,” while mimesis is said to be poetry has additional resources of language, restricted to “what it has seen.” But it is prob- including its rhythmical-cum-musical organ- ably exaggerated to see this contrast as repre- ization: these bring the mind closer to a vivid senting a radical break with older traditions of

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aesthetics in antiquity thought. Those traditions had always allowed, speech and word order), the work breaks the even within the parameters of mimesis, for bounds of those traditions with its concept of a representation and expression of the imagin- sublimity “beyond persuasion” which produces ary or the idealized; see, for instance, the ideal- a transfigured, quasi-ecstatic state of conscious- istic beauty of painting at Plato, Republic ness in those who experience it. Longinus 5.472d, or the schema of different objects of opens up a kind of transcendental aesthetic mimesis in Aristotle, Poetics 25 (both cited whose possibilities were further developed, but earlier). Philostratus’ text pits two kinds of rep- also modified, in the eighteenth century, not least resentation against one another, and it uses by Burke and Kant. mimesis in a narrower sense (qua empirical Longinian sublimity is a quality of language, realism) to sharpen the contrast. But it does so thought, and feeling which cuts across genres; specifically in connection with images of the it is common to all the greatest writings, divine and cannot therefore be taken as the for- whether prose or verse. The impact it makes on mula for an entire aesthetic of visual art. the minds of readers or hearers is described in As it happens, another passage from terms that go beyond anything found earlier Philostratus’ book (2.22) actually uses the in antiquity. Particularly striking is the claim in vocabulary of mimesis to denote a fundamen- chapter 7 that the sublime induces the mind to tally imaginative capacity required not just feel “that it has itself given birth to what it has by makers but also by viewers of visual art: in fact heard,” and the formulation in chapter viewers must use their own mental image- 9 that sublimity is “the echo of greatness of forming powers to project and fill out the mind.” The quality Longinus wants to define is significance of what they see. This idea, echoed therefore a kind of creative resonance of the mind by Lessing in Laocoön, makes imagination a itself: it “echoes” from its creator in the express- process in which the artist’s source of ideas ive intensity of language, and then re-echoes in must be complemented by the actively inter- the mind of the receiver. But Longinus stresses, pretative response of the beholder. This is a prin- not least in chapter 3 (on failure to achieve ciple borne out in the descriptions of (probably sublimity) and chapter 8 (on the five sources of fictional) paintings, the Imagines, also written by the sublime), that this is a matter not of gener- someone called Philostratus (whether the alized, amorphous feeling, but of moments of same person remains uncertain). This work, concentrated elevation of mind whose content influential in the Renaissance, frequently car- can be directly grasped in thought and emotion. ries the notion of active interpretation beyond And Longinus is no subjectivist: he treats the the optically possible, for example, by project- authentically sublime as triumphantly inter- ing movement onto figures in the paintings. subjective, a great connector of minds. What is at stake in both the Philostratean texts A further dimension of the treatise’s mentioned is the workings and limits of creative aesthetic philosophy can be brought out by imagination. But that is a subject on which specific contrast with Burke. In chapter 9, some Greek thinkers, as the next section will Longinus cites a passage from Iliad, book 17 show, adopted more far-reaching positions. where Ajax pleads with Zeus to disperse the thick mist which shrouds the battlefield: “kill toward transcendence us at least in the daylight,” he screams to the The treatise On the Sublime (which survives sky-god. Here as elsewhere, Longinus associates incomplete) was possibly the work of Cassius the sublime with heroism; Ajax’s self-affirmation, Longinus, a rhetorician and Platonizing philo- demanding the right to fight and die with sopher of the third century. Most scholars unflinching courage, is treated as manifesting doubt this, however, and posit an anonymous a capacity within the mind itself to transcend author (often called “Pseudo-Longinus”) of the material limits. When Burke cites the same first century. I use the name “Longinus” here passage in his Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful agnostically. Whatever the truth, the treatise is (iv.14), he uses it, by contrast, to reinforce the a remarkable document. While grounded in “terrible” associations of darkness, which is the traditions of rhetorical analysis (discussing itself here the source of the sublime. One thing the persuasive effect of such things as figures of this illustrates is how the Longinian sublime is

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historical overviews forcefully positive and (self-)creatively elevating: Everything in Plotinus’ Enneads belongs to a it is not incompatible with an atmosphere of unified, hierarchical cosmos, in which reality “fearful” grandeur, but it is always located in the emanates creatively from the ultimate source of greatness of mind which asserts itself in the being (the One) through the levels of “intel- face of such things. Even where extreme states lect” and “soul”; part of soul is nature, which of suffering are depicted, the sublime redeems produces a spatiotemporal world within the these by finding ways of expressing exhilarat- negative receptacle of matter. It is significant that ing nobility and defiance, and thereby arousing Plotinus frequently uses the vocabulary of a joyous exhilaration in the minds of those “mimesis” for the way in which, within his who contemplate it. system, every lower element reflects and tries to Longinus’ aesthetic thrusts into the realms of assimilate itself to a higher element: every the metaphysical. In chapter 35, a key passage level, other than the One itself, bears the image with both Platonic and Stoic overtones, he or imprint of its source. A key dynamic of pronounces that humans have been made to be Plotinus’ worldview is therefore a process by “spectators” of the entire cosmos; great writers which reality is constantly aspiring to model itself are “demigods” whose visionary powers exer- on, and return to, its divine origin. Whatever cise this potential, and enable others to exercise the larger philosophical implications of this it, to the highest degree. (Longinus, more than picture, it sets the scene for a view of mimetic any other ancient, foreshadows later ideas of art as a potential medium of expressiveness “genius.”) In fact, the mind can do more than that can reach beyond representation of the contemplate the cosmos: it can exceed it in material world. thought. Longinus’ treatise is replete with reli- This can best be seen at Enneads 5.8.1, gious language for experience of the sublime. But where Plotinus tries to explain contemplation in as bold a move as is to be found anywhere of the beauty of intellect by an analogy with in the history of aesthetics, it ultimately articu- sculpture. A beautiful statue is made beautiful, lates something like a divinization (half-literal, he says, by the “form” imposed on it by the half-metaphorical) of the creative mind. For maker’s skilled art; but the form exists in the Longinus, the greatest moments of literature, sculptor’s mind before it is in the work (see whatever their subject matter, somehow inter- “Hellenistic developments,” above), and there is nalize the greatness and beauty of the cosmos a beauty “in the art” itself prior to, and finer within the infinite spaces of the mind itself. than, that of the particular statue. This exem- This idea seems to represent a translation of reli- plifies a more general Plotinean principle, that gious impulses into an aesthetic paradigm everything creative is superior to what it creates. where both truth and “ecstasy” are encountered So the beauty of the visible derives from, and in direct experience of the unlimited creativity draws the viewer toward, a higher beauty. of language. Furthermore, Plotinus defends arts that pro- If the aesthetic effectively subsumes the theo- duce likenesses of nature (“imitate” it, on the logical in Longinus, the reverse is the case in conventional translation) by proposing, first, some of the texts of Neoplatonism, the broad that they belong to the larger mimetic pro- phase of revitalized interest in Plato’s work cesses of reality (nature itself is a mimesis which flourished from the third to the sixth of higher principles), and, second, that they century. One of many strands in this move- are not limited to producing simulacra of ment was a rethinking of questions about appearances: “they return to the principles at mimesis, art, and beauty raised in Plato’s dia- the root of nature itself” and employ imagina- logues. The two most important positions to tion to add beauty to what they depict. So emerge on the subject were those of Plotinus Plotinus both accepts and reinterprets artistic (205–70) and Proclus (412–85). Both mimesis into an aesthetic of expressive, beauti- thinkers created complex philosophical sys- ful form produced by acts of skillful but also intu- tems of their own. The aesthetic component in itive creativity. their work cannot be separated from their Unfortunately Plotinus does not develop his overarching metaphysics; only some pointers aesthetic of the mimetic arts in much further can be given here. detail. Passing hints sometimes suggest that he

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aesthetics in antiquity did not regard all such art as possessing the Timaeus (see earlier), to regard poetic mimesis kind of value envisaged in 5.8, but also that as akin to the “cosmic” mimesis by which nature other factors complicate his position (such as itself embodies images of a transcendent, eter- acceptance of allegorical meaning in some nal reality. poetry, 1.6.8). But together with Plotinus’ gen- Overall, then, Proclus’ use of the concept of eral commitment to a Platonic conception of mimesis fluctuates in weight and significance. beauty as capable of drawing the soul up the But there is no doubt that his dominant aim hierarchical ladder of reality, Enneads 5.8 is is to find ways of reading poetic images of the enough to delineate a philosophy of artistic material world as symbolic microcosms, intima- form not as an idealism of enhanced appearances tions of a higher realm. It is hardly surprising, but an idealism of spiritual expressiveness. therefore, that despite his relative inaccessibil- This feature of his thought was to exercise ity Proclus has appealed to some modern devo- some influence not only on the Middle Ages tees of a transcendentalist aesthetic, including (partly via Augustine) and on Renaissance Emerson. Such an aesthetic marks the furthest Neoplatonism, but also on later thinkers too, reach of the trajectory of Greek ideas that this including Coleridge and Goethe. essay has tried to trace: a trajectory which, for Where Plotinus has little to say directly all its variations of emphasis and evaluation, was about poetry, Proclus expends much energy centrally preoccupied with the relationship on the subject; in particular, he elaborately between the psychological immediacy of repre- reworks the Republic’s two critiques of poetry. sentational art and the meanings that might be His main aim is (or becomes) to resolve the found in (or beyond) it by its contemplatively “ancient quarrel” between philosophy and engaged audiences. poetry, to effect a reconciliation between Plato and (in particular) Homer. He does this partly See also aristotle; burke; catharsis; plato; by arguing that there is more to poetry than its plotinus; theories of art; tragedy. literal meaning, and partly by reconfiguring some of the critical terms in Plato’s various bibliography treatments of poetry. The result is a tripartite Asmis, E. 1991. “Epicurean Poetics,” Proceedings of scheme of types of poetry: “inspired” (capable the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, 7, of conveying divine truth through symbols 63–93. and allegory), “knowledge-based” (capable of Beardsley, Monroe C. 1966. Aesthetics from Classical educating the soul in contemplation of noetic Greece to the Present. New York: Macmillan. essences), and “mimetic” (tied to depiction of the Büttner, Stefan. 2006. Antike Ästhetik. Munich: C. H. phenomenal world and its human passions). Beck. But there are complications. For one thing, Bychkov, O. & Sheppard, A. 2009. Greek and Roman these types do not seem to be entirely intrinsic Aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. to poetry; they depend on the varying intellec- Carchia, G. 1999. L’estetica antica. Rome: Editori Laterza. tual capacities of its readers. In part at least, Coulter, J. A. 1976. The Literary Microcosm: Theories Proclus’ scheme is an account of different of Interpretation of the Later Neoplatonists. Leiden: ways of interpreting poetry and the different Brill. cognitive states they entail. (There is a partial Halliwell, Stephen. 2002. The Aesthetics of Mimesis. parallelism here with Augustine’s famous Ancient Texts and Modern Problems. Princeton: typology of methods of interpretation.) One Princeton University Press. implication of this, which Proclus sometimes Halliwell, Stephen. 2005. “Learning from Suffering: seems happy to admit, is that all poetry, even Ancient Responses to Tragedy.” In A Companion to that which is “inspired,” retains what he Greek Tragedy. J. Gregory (ed.). Oxford: Blackwell, counts as a mimetic surface, that is, a prima facie 394–412. Lombardo, G. 2002. L’estetica antica. Bologna: il representation of the world. Proclus draws Mulino. attention to the fact that in this sense Plato Nussbaum, Martha C. 1993. “Poetry and the himself is a highly mimetic writer and shares this Passions.” In Passions and Perceptions. J. quality with Homer. In places he is also prepared, Brunschwig & M. C. Nussbaum (eds.). Cambridge: like Plotinus and under the influence of Plato’s Cambridge University Press, 97–149.

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historical overviews

Panofsky, Erwin. 1968. Idea: A Concept in Art Theory. practiced. Aesthetics, they believe, concerns J. Peake (trans.). New York: Harper & Row. beauty, especially as manifested in works of Russell, D. A. & Winterbottom, M. 1972. Ancient art (literature, painting, sculpture, architec- Literary Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ture, music). They recognize that, in this sense, Schaper, Eva. 1968. Prelude to Aesthetics. London: medieval authors did not produce explicit aes- George Allen & Unwin. thetic theories, but they themselves aim to stephen halliwell construct a medieval aesthetics from medieval theories about beauty and technical treatises about the different arts, often along with obser- medieval and renaissance aesthetics The vations about the medieval artifacts themselves. first and longer part of this entry looks at aes- Exponents of this Standard Approach include thetics in the Middle Ages (c.500–c.1500). Edgar de Bruyne, Erwin Panofsky, Wladyslaw The topic is not a straightforward one, since Tatarkiewicz, Rosario Assunto, and Umberto Eco. there is no body of arguments and theories I shall look at its two main elements in turn, that can be uncontroversially identified as before presenting the case against it made by medieval aesthetics. I shall describe the the Revisionists. Standard Approach to solving this problem adopted by most writers, and then a medieval theories of beauty Revisionary Approach advocated by some, Some theologians in the thirteenth-century according to which there was no aesthetics universities developed fairly elaborate theories in the Middle Ages, and finally present a New of beauty, usually in their discussions of God, Approach, which saves the idea of medieval his attributes, and their relation to created aesthetics and also links it closely to contem- things. Behind their treatments lay two import- porary developments in the field. The second part ant sources. One was a definition found in of the entry is devoted to the period 1500– Augustine and Cicero: beauty consists in the 1700. The period of “renaissance” is often congruence of parts along with delightfulness regarded as one in which, by contrast with the (suavitas) of color. The other was a passage in previous millennium, poets, painters, sculp- chapter 4 of On the Divine Names, a text that had tors, and architects revived the traditions of been issued under the name of Dionysius, the antiquity and gained a new consciousness of Areopagite converted by Paul, and so enjoyed themselves as artists. Moreover, the accepted great authority, although in fact it was the historiography of philosophy sharply distin- work of a fifth-century writer, influenced by late guishes at least the second of these two centur- Neoplatonism. God, says Pseudo-Dionysius, is ies as “early modern” as opposed to medieval beautiful because he transmits beauty to all philosophy. I shall consider whether these two things according to their own characteristics. apparent differences mean that renaissance The Beautiful and the Good, he adds, are the aesthetics needs to be approached differently same – all things desire them and there is from that of the Middle Ages. nothing that does not participate in them. On the strength of this passage, beauty was dis- medieval aesthetics: the standard cussed along with the group of “transcenden- approach tal attributes,” properties such as unity, truth, Many branches of contemporary philosophy, and goodness that all things were supposed such as metaphysics, ethics, and logic, existed to have simply in virtue of existing, and as distinct and recognized subjects in the according to the Standard Approach, many Middle Ages. Aesthetics did not, even under thirteenth-century thinkers regarded beauty some other name. Exponents of the Standard as itself a transcendental (Pouillon 1946; but see Approach believe that, nonetheless, there was below). a medieval aesthetics. They take as their start- In the first half of the thirteenth century, ing point an assumption about the nature of William of Auvergne, the followers of Alexander aesthetics, which is based on how modern aes- of Hales, and Robert Grosseteste each developed thetics – that is to say, the subject from c.1700 thoughts about beauty using these sources. to c.1950 – has usually been conceived and For example, Grosseteste used his metaphysics

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medieval and renaissance aesthetics of light as a way of explaining how all things form and bounded. Albert has thus found a possess the Augustinian marks of beauty, way of explaining Pseudo-Dionysius’ claim color, and symmetry. Like most medieval that everything is beautiful, but at the cost of thinkers, Grosseteste thought of color as an making this use of the word only loosely ana- effect of light, and he envisaged the whole uni- logical with its ordinary usage. verse in terms of light radiating out from its pri- When Ulrich of Strasbourg discusses beauty mal source. Since Grosseteste also believed in his De summo bono (“On the Highest Good,” that the universe is designed according to the c.1262–72; 1987–9: II.4), he follows his laws of geometry, it followed that everything teacher Albert’s idea that beauty is found in the in it is symmetrically proportioned. The three way forms inform their matter. But he does most important discussions, however, are not, like him, treat this as a type of metaphys- those from later in the century by Albert the ical beauty, different from beauty in the ordin- Great (1200–80) and two of his pupils, Ulrich ary sense. Although Ulrich accepts that all of Strasbourg (d.1272) and Thomas Aquinas things are beautiful, just as they are good, to (d.1274). They are all based on Aristotle’s some extent, they vary in the degree to which hylomorphism, according to which every par- they are beautiful, and some things are ugly ticular of a natural kind is analyzed as matter (although presumably also, in some respect, informed by a substantial form or essence, beautiful). This variable beauty can be spiri- which makes the whole the sort of thing it is (so tual or bodily, accidental or essential. Ulrich Fido is matter informed by the form of dog- says little about spiritual beauty, which is that ness); the matter–form concrete whole is then of noncorporeal things, such as souls or informed by various accidental forms (e.g., the angels, and their attributes, such as know- brownness of Fido’s fur, his having such and ledge. Accidental corporeal beauty, he says, is such a weight, his lying down). what fits Augustine’s definition, “congruence of Albert’s fullest treatment of beauty is in his parts and delightfulness of colour.” His idea commentary on Pseudo-Dionysius On the seems to be that any sort of physical object will Divine Names (c.1250; the section is printed, gain in accidental beauty if it displays the wrongly attributed to Aquinas, in Aquinas characteristics of symmetry and colorfulness, 1927: 417–43). Albert is therefore talking which it has through accidental forms of about the beauty that derives from God and in quantity (e.g., it has such and such dimen- which everything participates. Like Pseudo- sions) and quality (e.g., it is red and gold). Dionysius, he insists that beauty is the same as Essential corporeal beauty, by contrast, goodness, but he allows (question 1, article 2) depends on the relation between the substan- that conceptually (“by reason”) it differs in cer- tial form and the matter it informs. Ulrich tain ways. In especial, something is beautiful explains this idea in terms of a fourfold con- because of “the resplendence of the substantial sonance that is required for perfect beauty: in or accidental form over proportioned and disposition, quantity, the number of parts, and bounded parts of matter.” As an analogy for this the relation of each part’s size to the whole. He metaphysical conception of beauty he suggests gives the balance of humors in a human as an the way in which “a body is said to be beauti- example of consonant disposition – the prin- ful from the resplendence of color over propor- ciple seems to be that the internal physical con- tioned limbs” – a conception of beauty close to stituents of a given sort of thing need to be in Augustine’s definition. The unstated difference their proper proportions. Consonance in quan- between “beauty” in this common sense and tity means having a body of the right size for the in Albert’s metaphysical sense is that a body species of thing – if Fido is a toy poodle, then may fail to be beautiful, if the limbs are ill- for Ulrich he is far from beautiful. By missing proportioned or it lacks color. But a substantial one of the usual parts of the body, a thing is form or an accidental one by informing matter “deformed”: having all the usual parts is pre- is – Albert seems to suggest – “resplendent” requisite for perfect beauty. And if any part of over it, and the Aristotelian hylomorphism a body is out of its usual proportions, then that he is adopting would mean that, by being thing will lack perfect beauty. Ulrich, then, informed, the matter is proportioned to the sees essential corporeal beauty as greater the

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historical overviews more a particular corresponds to the general latter-day Brünnhildes, that blond hair and pattern of its species. blue eyes are ugly. Witelo (IV.148, edited in Aquinas sets out his ideas about beauty in Baeumker 1908) follows most of these views, but passing and even less systematically than he has an awareness of the cultural relativism Albert or Ulrich. Like both of them, he finds of judgments of beauty lacking in his source and beauty in the relationship between form and uncommon in the Middle Ages: matter and, like Ulrich, he distinguishes In many of these things, however, it is cus- things that are more and less beautiful, using tom that makes beauty. This is why each race Augustine’s definition of beauty to suggest his of humans considers its form of beauty as that criteria. He adds the suggestion that, although which in itself is beautiful and attains the end everything is both good and beautiful, a of beauty. A Moor approves of different colors thing’s beauty is related to its being contem- and proportions in human bodies or pictures plated, whereas its goodness is related to its than a Dane . . . desirability. This idea has been seized on by the exponents of the Standard Approach, as a war- treatises on the arts rant to discover in Aquinas an aesthetic theory There were technical treatises written in that anticipates aspects of Kant’s (e.g., see the Middle Ages on various of what are now Aquinas). Umberto Eco (1970) has made a called the “arts.” Music was considered to be a particularly ingenious, thorough – and unusu- branch of mathematics (along with arithmetic, ally self-conscious – attempt to construct a geometry, and astronomy), and there were theory about the beauty of art from Aquinas’s theoretical texts on it by two of the great late scattered remarks. ancient authorities, Augustine and Boethius. At much the same time as Aquinas was Boethius’s De musica was widely studied and writing, a Polish scientist Witelo was compos- glossed in the earlier part of the Middle Ages, ing his treatise on perspective, based on the and study of musical theory in this tradition con- work of an eleventh-century Arabic writer Ibn tinued in the arts faculties of the universities. al-Haytham, which had been translated into There were also many treatises on music of a Latin. Al-Haytham (II.3) thinks that an object more practical kind (almost all can be read at is visually beautiful if it has properties that www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tml/start.html) writ- have an effect on viewers so that the form ten throughout the period. Treatises on paint- seems beautiful to them. His, then, is a type of ing and the decorative arts were even more naturalistic theory. Certain sensory properties obviously technical manuals – a wide-ranging are such, he thinks, that viewers will be example is De diversis artibus (“On Different affected in the particular, undefined way that Arts”) written by a certain Theophilus, prob- makes them label what they see as beautiful. ably in the twelfth century, which discusses Of the simple characteristics of beauty, some, painting, pigments, glues, and varnishes, in such as color, are traditional, but most are books, on walls, and on panels, and then glass, pairs of opposites: so, for example, separate- ordinary and stained, and then metalwork. ness produces beauty – separate stars are more Aside from a theological passage on the gifts of beautiful than nebulae – but continuity produces the Holy Spirit, it has no pretensions except to beauty too – a meadow with continuous vege- instruct artisans how to perform their tasks. tation is more beautiful than one where it is There seems, however, to be an exception to the sparse. Al-Haytham also recognizes that these rule that medieval authors wrote only techni- properties produce beauty in combination, and cal manuals about the arts of building and dec- that there are certain, special harmonious oration. In the 1140s, Abbot Suger wrote an combinations that produce beauty, even when account of how he rebuilt St. Denis: De rebus in what are combined are not completely beauti- sua administratione gestis (“Of the Things Done ful. Al-Haytham’s categories are, in fact, just a under His Direction”). In a well-known essay way to organize certain strong preferences – but introducing his translation and commentary he takes no account of the possibility of cultural of this text (Suger 1946), Erwin Panofsky differences in the perception of beauty, and connects Suger’s description of the building confidently pronounces (III.7), to the dismay of and its ornaments with Neoplatonism and the

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medieval and renaissance aesthetics metaphysics of light. According to Panofsky’s at least, need not make – the radically histori- presentation, Suger reaches original solutions cist claim that historians of philosophy must to architectural problems, inspired by aesthetic organize their research according to the discip- ideas that manifest themselves in his writings. linary categories of the time they are studying. The treatises on poetry (often themselves The Revisionists could, for instance, distin- versified) which were written in the later twelfth guish between the case of philosophy of language and thirteenth centuries – the most famous of – not a medieval category, but a contempor- them is Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Poetria nova (after ary category to which, arguably, a body of 1199) – contain some general reflections on how medieval material belongs – and that of aes- a poet should go about planning and forming thetics. Their criticism is not that no one in the his poem, but they are mostly devoted to pre- Middle Ages engaged in aesthetics as a distinct senting the rhetorical figures which adorn branch of philosophical inquiry. They did not poetry. They too, therefore, are very definitely engage in it at all. It is simply not there to be craft manuals. There are, however, reasons to discovered and put together by contemporary think that at least one later treatise on poetry, historians of philosophy. Dante’s De vulgari eloquentia (“On Eloquence The Revisionists argue as follows: when in the Vernacular”) contains some interesting medieval thinkers discussed beauty, they were and original philosophical speculation about clearly not mainly considering the beauty of arti- language (see Dante 2007: xv–xix). facts. Their theories of beauty were usually framed in a theological context, and consid- the revisionary approach: there is no ered beauty as a property of natural things cre- medieval aesthetics ated by God. (Ulrich of Strasbourg’s theory is a The claim made by exponents of the Standard good example: most of it makes little sense Approach is that, from these elements – theor- except with regard to members of natural ies of beauty and discussions of individual kinds). Moreover, even the view that medieval arts – they can derive a medieval aesthetics. thinkers elaborated an independent theory Usually they also make use of medieval artifacts of beauty needs to be scrutinized. Aquinas, themselves as evidence for their theoretical whose theory of the beautiful has been treated accounts, since they are held to reflect the as central in medieval aesthetics, makes only aesthetic ideals in concrete form. Panofsky’s some brief, scattered remarks on the subject Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (1957) is (Speer 1990). And the claim that beauty was the most striking example of this side of the considered one of the transcendentals can be approach. He traces a pattern of intellectual questioned (Aertsen 1991), since it is not con- development, leading to the comprehensive, sidered an independent attribute of all things, clear, and highly articulated synthesis of like unity, truth, and goodness, but rather as just philosophy and religion he claims to see in an aspect of goodness. Aquinas, which he finds exactly paralleled in As for the arts, the system of “fine arts,” architecture by the achievement in the Gothic which connects together (at least) poetry, cathedral of a unified space combined with a painting, music, sculpture, and architecture, clear differentiation of elements. did not exist in the Middle Ages (see Kristeller The Revisionists (such as Paul Oskar 1980). At this time, the “arts” were under- Kristeller, Andreas Speer, Jan Aertsen, and stood to be the seven liberal arts that formed the Olivier Boulnois), like the exponents of the basis of the medieval curriculum up to the end standard approach, describe aesthetics in of the twelfth century: the three linguistic arts characteristically modern terms, as the theory of the trivium – grammar, logic, and rhetoric – of beauty especially in art. But they believe and the four mathematical arts of the quad- that, understood in this sense, aesthetics did rivium – arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and not exist in the Middle Ages. Their objection is music. The arts of poetry were related to gram- not merely to the way in which the Standard mar, and the study of music, but only in the the- Approach takes material of disparate kinds oretical tradition of Boethius, was part of the and various origins and assembles it into quadrivium. But, not only the visual arts, but medieval aesthetics. They are not making – or, the practice of writing and performing music

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historical overviews and, indeed, poetry, were considered as crafts it grew up in the eighteenth century and was – practical skills. Such skills were much less practiced up until the mid twentieth century, esteemed than the pursuit of knowledge which was centered on beauty as found in through the arts. In his Didascalicon, from the works of art. But modern aesthetics is not mid twelfth century, Hugh of St. Victor takes an contemporary aesthetics. Both the Standard unusual step by adding seven “mechanical” Approach and the Revisionist one are based on arts to the seven “liberal” (1961: II.21–8): an understanding of aesthetics nearer to Croce here, along with agriculture, sailing, weaving, or Collingwood than to the subject as it is now hunting, and medicine, Hugh has “theatrical studied, at least by Anglophone philosophers. knowledge” (though this includes gymnastics Today’s looser approach to the coherence of and athletics); and, as one of the subdivi- the subject may allow a place for medieval dis- sions of armatura, literally “arms-making” but cussions, without forcing them into an alien extended to making any sort of artifact, he mold. includes, along with other types of construction, Beauty, especially natural beauty, is indeed sculpture and painting. It is not simply, how- studied by some aesthetic philosophers today, ever, that the “fine” arts were not distin- but only a few wish to insist on an important guished and grouped in the way they are now. connection between art and beauty. It is there- Any sort of human artifice was considered to be fore wrong to exclude medieval discussions of subordinate to what was natural – that is to say, beauty from aesthetics, in its contemporary created. Artifice recovered a certain dignity by meaning, because medieval philosophers too following Augustine’s view that the human did not make a connection between beauty makers depended on ideas in the mind of God and human artifacts. As for the medieval lack (Boulnois 2008: 342–4), but it remained on a of a conception of works of art, many philoso- lower level than nature. phers today deny that there are any intrinsic The fault of the Standard Approach, then, lies properties that distinguish works of art from at a deeper level than that of intruding aes- other things. When contemporary philoso- thetics, a theoretical consideration of beauty in phers consider individual first-order topics in art, into a period where it was not practiced. aesthetics, such as representation, expression, It rests on taking medieval artifacts as if they style, intention, narrative, humor, metaphor were works of art, a type of entity that had no and symbolism, truth and fiction, the question place within the categories of medieval cul- of what, if anything, constitutes a work of art ture. Interpreted carefully, the very sources does not usually play an important part in that have been used to present medieval artifacts their discussions. They base their analyses as artworks tell the opposite story – as for around poems, or pieces of music, or paintings, instance with a recent presentation of Suger’s or sculptures – for the most part simply taking text on St. Denis (Suger 1995), which shows that what is uncontroversially accepted as art with- his account fits into the context of his political, out attaching any theoretical weight to this liturgical, historical, and ecclesiological ideas, concept. It would, therefore, seem reasonable to and has nothing to do with envisaging his regard medieval treatments of, for example, building as a work of art. representation in pictures and sculptures, or The Revisionists conclude that we should, metaphor and symbolism, or truth and fiction therefore, abandon the idea of medieval aes- and narrative in poetry, as being topics in thetics altogether. It is as empty a subject as aesthetics. medieval nuclear physics or biotechnology. It remains true, as the Revisionists insist, that aesthetics does not constitute a distinct a new approach to medieval aesthetics area in medieval philosophy. Each of the Should we accept the Revisionists’ conclu- inquiries that can be described as “aesthetic” fits sion? Their arguments against the Standard into some other, particular context – for exam- Approach are, collectively, very powerful, but ple, analysis of beauty into theological treatment their position has one important weakness: of God’s relation to his creatures or else into like the Standard Approach, it understands optics, pictorial representation and symbolism aesthetics as modern aesthetics – the subject as into other, again mainly theological, contexts,

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medieval and renaissance aesthetics and metaphor into semantic theory as developed texts, and the aims a reader should have are con- within logic. Yet, just because of these very dis- sidered. Important writers include Augustine similarities, rather than in spite of them, there in late antiquity, John Scottus Eriugena in is something to be gained both for historians of the ninth century, William of Conches in the medieval philosophy and contemporary aes- twelfth, Aquinas and Bonaventure in the thir- thetic philosophers by making a link between teenth, Dante in the fourteenth. contemporary aesthetics and these medieval (2) Music is very often discussed separately discussions that belong to so different an intel- from the other arts in contemporary aesthetics. lectual context. For the medievalists, there is the In the Middle Ages, the distinction was even chance to understand the texts as philosophy in sharper, because music was seen as a type of a way that is hard to do without connecting mathematics. Did medieval thinkers’ freedom them to the questions that seem philosophic- from the preconception of music as like paint- ally important to us now (even if this process ing or literature give them a valuable insight ends by showing us the radical difference of that may have become hidden? It would be some medieval problems, questions, and interesting, especially, to investigate whether, answers). For contemporary aestheticians, the in the theoretical tradition of writing about connections medieval thinkers made between music in the Middle Ages, there is reflective topics now in aesthetics and metaphysics, material which could counter the tendency logic, politics, and theology should help in among some aestheticians now to concentrate questioning how much the way in which they on music’s supposed role in expressing or approach topics is narrowed by a conception arousing emotion. of aesthetics as a unitary discipline they no (3) Metaphor is another topic considered in longer themselves accept. Maybe the medieval aesthetics today. Strangely, perhaps, to modern thinkers’ understanding of the philosophical eyes, the treatment of metaphor in medieval problems raised by the sorts of artifacts we writing on literature tends to be disappointing regard as works of art was in some respects (Lorusso 2005), but there is, by contrast, a improved by their lack of aesthetics as a cat- variety of sophisticated analyses in logical egory, and this is a lesson that philosophers of texts (see Ashworth 2007). art are now ready to learn. (4) Indeed, in the Arabic tradition, poetics and What this New Approach proposes is, there- rhetoric were considered to be part of the logical fore, in principle not a view about how to curriculum (see Black 1990). It was thought that go about writing the history of medieval aes- there was a whole range of different types of syl- thetics – there is clearly no such history to logism, ranging from the demonstrative syllo- be written – but a series of research projects on gisms of scientific discourse treated in the Prior bodies of medieval material, linked by subject and the Posterior Analytics to the imaginative syl- or theme, where the questions raised can be logisms of poetry. It has recently been argued related interestingly, and perhaps provoca- (Kemal 2003) that the great Arabic philoso- tively, to those discussed by contemporary aes- phers, al-Fârâbî, Avicenna, and Averroes, built thetic philosophers. None of these projects has this idea into a full account of the aims and value yet been carried out, and in most the ground has of poetry and its place in a well-ordered com- hardly been prepared. Here are just a few of munity. The theory touches on many ques- them: tions debated in aesthetics now, ranging from the problem of fiction and truth to the moral dan- (1) Questions about interpretation and gers of and justification for literature. meaning in artifacts, especially literary, are (5) Aestheticians today are interested in the considered in contemporary aesthetics. There problem of representation: at its simplest, what was much thinking in the Middle Ages about does it mean to say that a picture represents the interpretation of texts, both the Bible and a certain landscape or a statue a certain person? classical pagan texts, and also visual images and Throughout the Middle Ages, there was soph- natural objects. At times, the discussion moves isticated debate about images and their rela- to a level of abstraction on which questions tionship to reality (a fascinating treatment is about authorial intention, the meaning of given in Boulnois 2008). It centered around a

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historical overviews theological problem: to what extent do images work of God alone, and artifacts, the work help – or hinder – us in knowing God? But it also of humans. In his Platonic Theology, written involved issues in philosophy of mind, such as 1469–74, Marsilio Ficino (2004: XIII.3) Aristotle’s view that we cannot think intellec- shows the soul’s domination over the body tually without an accompaniment of mental from the way in which humans fashion “all the images. The discussion often concerned pic- world’s materials . . . elements, stones, metals, tures or figurative language: the very fact that plants and animals” into many forms and this concern was not in the context of what is figures, which include not just fabrics and now regarded as aesthetics should make this buildings, but also pictures and sculptures. area of thought especially valuable to investig- Moreover, it became common to associate ate with the discussions of contemporary aes- poetry, painting, sculpture, and music, and to thetics in mind. consider them as noble activities, very different from the work of craftsmen (Kristeller 1980: aesthetics from 1500 to 1700: 180–6). Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), for a renaissance in aesthetics? example, was keen to argue that painting is Readers may be surprised to see aesthetics in the superior to poetry, sculpture, and music. By sixteenth and seventeenth centuries treated as casting the argument in this way, he suggests an appendage to medieval aesthetics. The deci- that, though others might not accept the pre- sion cuts across the accepted periodization, eminence of painting, the special links between both in philosophy and in the arts. Historians it and sculpture, music, and poetry were gener- of philosophy tend to make a sharp distinction ally accepted (Leonardo da Vinci 1989: 20–46). between the period of early modern philo- Overall, to speak of “works of art” is not the sophy, beginning in the seventeenth century, anachronism with regard to the sixteenth and and what went before. In the history of litera- seventeenth centuries that it is for the Middle ture, the visual arts, and architecture (though Ages. Thinkers of the renaissance did, therefore, less so for music), the break is usually seen unlike medieval philosophers, have one of the as one occurring a century or so earlier, as conceptual prerequisites for formulating aes- medieval styles and aspirations gave way to thetic theories in the modern style. But this those of the renaissance. Both of these changes preparedness did not in fact result in an aes- promise, at first sight, to have implications thetics on modern lines from the renaissance for aesthetics. Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, and or seventeenth century. The characteristic Leibniz are often considered, unlike the medieval concentration of seventeenth-century philoso- thinkers, to have engaged in a rationally based phers on epistemology and the new scientific philosophy, separate from theology and linked understanding of the physical world made to the new science, and so to have established mainstream philosophy less accommodating a tradition that leads directly to contemporary to topics with links to aesthetics than medieval philosophy. Renaissance writers, painters, philosophy, with its strong leaning to questions sculptors, and architects did not differ from about language and meaning. Renaissance their medieval predecessors merely by using philosophy – the work of those thinkers in new styles, which were heavily influenced by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries strongly ancient models. They also had a new, and far influenced by the new availability of Plato and more elevated, conception of their role and the a whole range of other classical philosophy – independent value of what they produced. For seems more promising, but also turns out to dis- these reasons, it might seem that the special appoint. For example, Agostino Nifo (d.1538) methodology proposed above for making it wrote a book De pulchro (“On the Beautiful”). It possible to talk at all of aesthetics in the Middle turns out to be concerned with the beauty of the Ages is unnecessary from the period from 1500. human body and linked to the debate about There was, indeed, a significant change in Platonic love provoked by works such as the how writers and artists in the renaissance con- Symposium. Although it is an interesting philo- ceived their work. A new value was given to sophical question to consider how and why fabrication, which broke down the very sharp humans might be considered beautiful, Nifo is medieval distinction between creation, as the content to assert (ch. 37) that it is only in them

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medieval and renaissance aesthetics that is found the measure and balance of parts published, and it was succeeded by other, more that constitute beauty. And other important accurate versions. Fifty years later appeared aesthetic issues raised in passing – such as the first of the great renaissance commentaries (ch. 17) whether beauty is an attribute of the on the Poetics by Francesco Robortelli. Along object deemed beautiful or of the representation with commentaries, in Latin and the vernacu- (species) of it in the beholder’s mind – are given lar (the first was Lodovico Castelvetro’s, pub- similarly cursory treatment. lished in 1570), were written treatises on poetic Renaissance aesthetics needs, therefore, to theory (Weinberg 1970 – collecting those be investigated in the same way as suggested from Italy), drawing on and considering prob- for the Middle Ages. But the field of material lems raised by Aristotle, but also influenced by on which research projects can be focused is the new knowledge of Plato and the need to wider. As well as the writings of philosophers, respond to his apparently low estimation of there is a rich and varied sixteenth- and poetry. Many of the debates in these works seventeenth-century literature of treatises involve issues still current in aesthetics, even or other discussions on the individual arts. if the terms in which they are framed seem Although not without precedent in the Middle antiquarian. For example, the argument over Ages, this literature is different in three whether Empedocles and Lucretius should be important respects. First, among its authors considered poets (see Hathaway 1962: 65–86 are painters, sculptors, and poets themselves and Aristotle, Poetics 1451b) brings up questions (Dante, here, is a forerunner). Second, the about the distinctions between art and nonart treatment of the visual arts is far more and between truth and fiction; and the dis- reflective and sophisticated than in any of the agreements over the meaning of “catharsis” medieval treatises. Leonardo da Vinci, in his (Poetics 1449b) led writers to think about discussion of painting and the other arts, or the emotive effect of drama and its moral Alberti, in his long treatise on architecture, justification (see below). or Vasari in his Lives of the Artists provide a In order to illustrate how renaissance dis- subtle account of the first-level features of cussions of literature can be usefully related to judgments in these areas, which they weave into the concerns of aesthetics, as practiced now, a historical and political framework. Gian I end by looking at two sample passages, both Paolo Lomazzo, a painter who turned to theor- from writings by literary practitioners. etical writing when he went blind, combines sidney s reversal of plato: art, morality, technical discussion with philosophical pas- ’ and representation sages indebted to Ficino in his Idea del Tempio della Pittura (“Idea of the Temple of Painting,” Sir Philip Sidney probably wrote his Apology for 1590). Third, there is the development of a tra- Poetry three or four years before his death in dition of Aristotelian literary theory. For the 1586. Cast in the form of an oration, it sets out history of aesthetics, it is the third point that is to defend poetry, in its various genres, against most important because, despite the speculative its detractors (the most eminent of whom, of interests in the background of some works in the course, was Plato) while freely admitting the visual arts, they do not contain much of the type shortcomings of the poetry of his own time in of abstract reflection that would link with the England – a strategy that, in itself, puts the concerns of philosophers of art, rather than art main part of his defense on a theoretical plane. historians or artists today. Sidney’s first main argument for the value The literary treatises are full of theoretical of poetry runs as follows: all the arts but poetry discussion. During the Middle Ages, Aristotle’s have nature as their object. For example, Poetics, though translated in the late thirteenth astronomers find out the order in which century, was almost never studied in the nature has established the stars, physicians are universities of western Europe. It was known concerned with the nature of human bodies, through a translation of Averroes’s para- and metaphysicians “build upon the depth of phrase commentary, which was occasion- Nature.” “Only the poet,” continues Sidney ally glossed but not widely studied. In 1498, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted Giorgio Valla’s translation of the Poetics was up with the vigour of his own invention, doth grow

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in effect into another nature, in making things imitation: when Homer gives a statesman’s either better than Nature bringeth forth, or quite speech, he is not drawing on the intellectual anew, forms such as never were in Nature . . . principles of good government but just on the Nature never set forth the earth in so rich a way statesmen in fact speak. Sidney argues tapestry as divers poets have done; neither with that poets are in fact able to draw on Ideas, pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling which he sees, in terms closer to Republic X flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too much loved earth more lovely. Her world is than to other texts, as the knowledge of how to brazen, the poets only deliver a golden. (1963: behave virtuously in different aspects of life 100–1) and positions in it (including that of ruler). Through their writing, poets can present these Sidney then turns to consider poetic presen- Ideas more directly than they are found in tation of humans, and he claims that nature nature – in particular, virtuous people – and so never produced examples of people so valiant, in a way that serves better the purpose of constant in friendship, or in every way excellent moral instruction and formation. In proposing as can be found in poetry. He makes the theory this theory, Sidney is therefore taking a position underlying his comments more explicit when both about what would now be called the he considers an objection to his position. His question of art and morality, and also about claims, it might be said, cannot be taken seri- representation. ously, because nature produces real things and the poet only imitations of them. He answers that corneille, aristotle, and the origins of what shows a poet’s or any artificer’s skill is not modern aesthetics the object produced but the mental concept Sidney was a leading English poet in a genera- (“Idea or fore-conceit”) of it. And, he suggests, tion quickly overshadowed by the next. Pierre when the poet introduces, for instance, an Corneille is recognized as one of the two great ideally just prince like Cyrus, he is doing more seventeenth-century French tragedians. When than nature might have done, because he he published an edition of his plays in 1660, bestows “a Cyrus upon the world to make he wrote long theoretical prefaces to each many Cyruses, if they will learn aright why volume. The second, the Discourse on Tragedy, and how that maker made him.” considers in detail how catharsis should be Sidney is drawing on a background of ideas interpreted in Aristotle’s Poetics. When Aristotle that are found in the literary theorist Julius presents his definition of tragedy (Poetics 1449b), Scaliger (d.1558) and Ficino, but he is giving, he ends by saying that a tragedy “through pity more pointedly than any of them, a response to and fear brings out the catharsis of [pity and Plato’s most direct criticism of poets. Despite fear].” This remark seems to be giving what he some resemblances, his theory is not one of the takes to be the proper effect of tragedy, and so sort suggested by the Neoplatonists (see esp. it is central to an understanding of his thought Plotinus, Ennead V.8.1), in which the world of on the area, and yet it is not at all clear what Ideas, as described in the middle books of the he meant, especially since, on the one other occa- Republic, is made graspable through artifacts. sion when he uses the term “catharsis” in a sim- Rather, Sidney is addressing himself to the ilar context (Politics 1341b), he refers back to argument of Republic X, where Plato uses a the Poetics – perhaps to a different version from rather different conception of Ideas. When that we have – as if there were a fuller expla- Plato condemns poets in Republic X for imitat- nation there. Scholars today are still divided ing an imitation, his point is that we learn about how to interpret the term, and in the six- skills, ranging from shoemaking to govern- teenth and seventeenth centuries, there were ment, by intellectually grasping the function of many conflicting views. Corneille begins his the task and so how it should be performed: it second Discourse by giving a confident account is these Ideas in virtue of which the particular of how to interpret Aristotle’s enigmatic remark. shoemaking or governing can take place. Quoting Aristotle’s assertion in his Rhetoric Whereas shoemakers or rulers imitate such that we pity those who suffer an undeserved mis- Ideas, poets merely imitate the external perfor- fortune and fear that the same thing may hap- mance of these imitators – an imitation of an pen to ourselves, Corneille says that pity is felt

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medieval and renaissance aesthetics with regard to the person we see suffering, and is willing to go beyond the usual insistence in fear with respect to ourselves. This distinction, his day that serious poetry and drama must he believes, shows how catharsis should be always instruct, as well as pleasing. understood: Tragedy and its purposes is still a subject Pity for the misfortune into which we see those like discussed on the borderline of aesthetics and us fall brings us to fear similar misfortune for our- literary theory, and philosophers are certainly selves, this fear to the desire to avoid it, and this concerned with the wider question of why we desire leads us to purge, moderate, rectify and even choose to witness representations (in drama or uproot the passion in ourselves which we see plung- pictures or films) of events that are harrowing. ing those whom we lament into misery before our But there is another reason for giving a place eyes, because of this common, but natural and in the history of aesthetics to Corneille’s second indubitable argument, that to avoid the effect it is Discourse. As is illustrated by the essay Of necessary to remove the cause. (1999: 96) Tragedy written less than a century later by If this were in fact Corneille’s view about how David Hume, perhaps the first great figure in tragedy works, then it would be no more worth modern aesthetics, one of the bases of this new quoting than many other of the interpreta- development was the discussion of traditional tions current at the time – perhaps, indeed, themes of literary theory in a freely speculative less so, because some of the renaissance and way, liberated from the need to interpret seventeenth-century writers produced consider- Aristotle. Corneille has not yet reached that ably more plausible readings than this overtly stage, but by turning his back on the Poetics and moralizing one. But Corneille does not himself thinking about tragedy in terms of how real audi- at all accept Aristotle’s theory. ences are affected by different types of plot and Aristotle, in his view, is wrong from the characters, he is taking a significant step to start, because tragedies do not purge the passions. making modern aesthetics possible. If they did, then the way he has described, he believes, is how it would have to happen. But See also twentieth-century anglo-american in practice, even the very few tragedies that meet aesthetics; aquinas; aristotle; catharsis; Aristotle’s condition of having a hero who is nei- plato; plotinus; religion and art. ther evil nor wholly innocent fail to have the bibliography effect he claims. Corneille takes the example of his own Le Cid. There the tragic misfortune is Primary sources brought about by a couple’s love for each Albert the Great. 1972. Super Dionysium de divinis other: we pity them, and this pity should – by nominibus (c.1250). P. Simon (ed.). Münster: the theory of catharsis as he has reconstructed Aschendorff. it – lead us to fear a similar misfortune and so Aquinas, Thomas. 1927. Opuscula omnia. 5 vols. purge in us the excess of love which is the P. Mandonnet (ed.). Paris: Lethielleux. cause of their downfall. “But I do not know Assunto, Rosario. 1961. La Critica d’Arte nel pensiero medievale. Milan: Il Saggiatore. that it produces fear in us, or purges us of this Corneille, Pierre. 1999. Trois discours sur le poème excess,” Corneille continues, “and I greatly dramatique. B. Luvat & M. Ecola (eds.). Paris: fear that Aristotle’s reasoning on this matter is Flammarion. no more than a beautiful idea, which is never Dante Alighieri. 2007. De vulgari eloquentia. Book I: brought to effect in reality” (1999: 99–100). Über die Beredsamkeit in der Volkssprache. R. Corneille goes on to propose a way of saving Imbach, I. Rosir-Catach, & T. Suarez-Nani (eds.). Aristotle, by understanding him to mean that Hamburg: Meiner. the purgation is achieved by either pity or fear. Ficino, Marsilio. 2004. Platonic Theology, vol. iv. M. In his discussion, however, Corneille uses this J. B. Allen & J. Hankins (eds. & trans.). Cambridge, formula to explain the workings of, on the one MA: Harvard University Press. Hugh of St. Victor. 1961. The Didascalicon of Hugh of hand, tragedies that teach morally by showing St. Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts. J. Taylor an evil person punished (and so make us fear (trans.). New York: Columbia University Press. to be evil) and, on the other, of tragedies that Ibn al-Haytham. 1989. The Optics of Ibn al-Haytham. simply cause pity, without morally instructing. Books I–III: On Direct Vision. A. I. Sabra (trans. & Despite initial appearances, therefore, Corneille comm.). London: Warburg Institute.

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Ibn al-Haytham. 2001. Alhacen’s Theory of Visual Eco, Umberto. 1986. Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages. Perception: A Critical Edition, with English Trans- H. Bredin (trans.). New Haven: Yale University lation and Commentary, of the First Three Books Press. (Translation of a section, “Sviluppo del- of Alhacen’s “De aspectibus,” the Medieval Latin l’estetica medievale” in Momenti e problemi del- Version of Ibn al-Haytham’s Kitâb al-Manâzir. A. l’estetica (1959); Eco has published an updating: Arte Mark Smith (ed.). Transactions of the American e bellezza nell’estetica medievale. Milan: Bompiani, Philosophical Society, 91(4); 91(5). 1987.) Leonardo da Vinci. 1989. Leonardo on Painting: Hathaway, Baxter. 1962. The Age of Criticism: The Late An Anthology of Writings by Leonardo da Vinci Renaissance in Italy. Ithaca: Cornell University with a Selection of Documents relating to His Career Press. as an Artist. M. Kemp (ed.). M. Kemp & M. Walker Kemal, Salim. 2003. The Philosophical Poetics of (sel. & trans.). New Haven: Yale University Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroës: The Aristotelian Press. Reception. London: Routledge Curzon. Nifo, Agostino. 1549. Augustini Niphi medicis libri Kristeller, Paul Oskar. 1980. “The Modern System duo De pulchro, primus. De amore, secundus. Lyons: of the Arts.” In Renaissance Thought and the Arts. apud Godefridum & Marcellum Beringos. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 163–227. Sidney, Philip. 1973. An Apology for Poetry. G. Lorusso, A. M. (ed.). 2005. Metafora e conoscenza. Shepherd (ed.). Manchester: Manchester Univer- Milan: Bompiani. sity Press. Panfosky, Erwin. 1957. Gothic Architecture and Suger. 1946. Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of Scholasticism. London: Thames & Hudson. St.-Denis and its Arts Treasures. E. Panofksy (ed.). Pouillon, Henri. 1946. “La Beauté, propriété trans- Princeton: Princeton University Press. cendentale chez les scolastiques (1220–1270),” Suger. 1995. De consecratione. G. Binding & A. Speer Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge, (eds.). Cologne: Vertrieb Abt. Architekturgeschichte. 15, 263–329. Ulrich of Strasbourg. 1987– 9. De summo bono, Speer, Andreas. 1990. “Thomas Aquin und die II.1–4. A. de Libera (ed.). Hamburg: Meiner. Kunst: Eine hermeneutische Anfrage zur mittelal- terlichen Ästhetik,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, Secondary sources 72, 323–45. Aertsen, Jan A. 1991. “Beauty in the Middle Ages: Speer, Andreas. 1993. “Vom Verstehen mittelalter- A Forgotten Transcendental?” Medieval Philosophy licher Kunst.” In Mittelalterliches Kunsterleben and Theology, 1, 68–97. nach Quelen des 11. Bis 13. Jahrhunderts. G. Ashworth, E. Jennifer. 2007. “Metaphor and the Binding & A. Speer (eds.). Stuttgart and Bad Logicians from Aristotle to Cajetan,” Vivarium, Cannstatt: Fromman & Holzboog, 13–52. 45, 311–27. Speer, Andreas. 1994. “Kunst und Schönheit: Assunto, Rosario. 1961. La Critica d’Arte nel pensiero Kritische Überlegungen zur mittelalterlichen medievale. Milan: Il Saggiatore. Ästhetik.” In “Scientia” und “ars” in Hoch- und Baeumker, Clemens. 1908. Witelo: Ein Philosoph Spätmittelalter. I. Craemer-Ruegenberg & A. Speer und Naturforscher des XIII. Jahrhunderts. Münster: (eds.). Berlin: de Gruyter, 946–66. Aschendorff. Tatarkiewicz, Wladyslaw. 1970. History of Aesthetic, Black, Deborah L. 1990. Logic and Aristotle’s vol. ii. The Hague: Mouton. (Translation by A. & A. “Rhetoric” and “Poetics” in Medieval Arabic Czerniawki of Historia Estetyki, vol. ii. Estetyka Philosophy. London: Brill. Sredniowieczna.) Blunt, Anthony. 1940. Artistic Theory in Italy Weinberg, Bernard (ed.). 1961. A History of Literary 1450–1600. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Criticism in the Italian Renaissance. Chicago: Boulnois, Olivier. 2008. Au-delà de l’image: une University of Chicago Press. archéologie du visuel au Moyen Âge, Ve–XVIe siècle. Weinberg, Bernard (ed.). 1970. Trattati di poetica e Paris: Seuil. retorica del cinquecento. Bari: Laterza. De Bruyne, Edgar. 1998. Études d’esthétique médiévale. john marenbon Paris: Albin Michel. (Reprints, with new intro- duction and afterword, both the Études of 1946, and L’Esthétique du moyen âge of 1947, trans. as The eighteenth-century aesthetics Alexander Esthetics of the Middle Ages by E. B. Hennessy. New York: Ungar, 1969.) Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–62) coined the Eco, Umberto. 1970 [1956]. Il Problema estetico in term “aesthetics” in 1735 in his master’s the- Tommaso d’Aquino. 2nd edn. Milan: Bompiani. sis, Philosophical Meditations on Some Matters (The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas. H. Bredin Pertaining to Poetry. But the field had hardly (trans.). London: Radius, 1988.) waited for this baptism to commence, and the

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eighteenth-century aesthetics entire century saw extensive publication in of a prosperous bourgeoisie, whose wealth and aesthetics, not only in Germany but also in leisure created the opportunity for indulgence France and Britain (even though the new name in both the fine arts and in nature as a site for the field was not incorporated into English for recreation and appreciation as opposed to until the nineteenth century). Historical peri- mere toil, a demand for the theorization of odization is always somewhat arbitrary, and these new pleasures, and the wealth to support the boundaries of eighteenth-century aesth- a cadre of writers to undertake this theorization. etics are debatable, especially at the later end, It might be conceived of as the attempt to where typical eighteenth-century modes of argue for the possibility of common cultural thought continued in Britain past 1800 while ground in an increasingly stratified society, ideas more characteristic of nineteenth-century or conversely as the attempt of the newly thought began to appear in Germany during the empowered bourgeoisie to establish its cultural 1790s. Here eighteenth-century aesthetics will hegemony over other strata of society (for be treated as extending from 1709 to 1810, from alternative liberal and Marxist accounts, see the first publication of The Moralists (subse- Ferry 1993 and Eagleton 1990). This entry, quently incorporated into his Charackeristicks however, will eschew any historical explanation of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times) by Anthony of the flourishing of aesthetics in the eigh- Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671– teenth century and confine itself to describing 1714), to the publication of the Philosophical some of the main issues and accomplishments Essays of Dugald Stewart (1753–1828), then of the period. emeritus professor of moral philosophy at the A common view of the period assumes a University of Edinburgh. During these 101 widely shared consensus that aesthetic experi- years, a vast number of books were published ence consists in a disinterested contemplation by philosophers, divines, critics of art and liter- of the forms of objects, whether of nature or ature, and men of letters in general (in spite of of fine art, producing a pleasure that can be the fact that writing about aesthetics by no expected to be shared by all who have troubled means took place only in the exclusively male to refine their taste in readily specifiable and universities of Britain and Europe, the texts of accessible ways, and that the disinterested eighteenth-century aesthetics were nevertheless character of aesthetic experience and judg- produced only by men) that can be considered ment grounds the autonomy of art, or the free- part of the literature of aesthetics because they dom of artistic practices and projects from deal in a reflective and analytical way with criticism and constraint from external theoret- the origins, objects, value, and intersubjective ical or practical standpoints, especially from validity of human experiences of nature and art moral, political, or religious standpoints. Sug- that cannot be simply subsumed under the gestions of such a view can be found in Francis categories of knowledge on the one hand or Hutcheson (1694–1746) early in the century prudential and moral action on the other and in Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) toward its hand. While many of the texts of this century end, but Hutcheson’s aesthetic theory was have fallen into obscurity, several have become not widely accepted, Kant’s is far more com- cornerstones of subsequent aesthetics, and plicated than this caricature suggests, and many of the issues discussed in both better- there were many alternatives to every element and lesser-known works of the period have of this supposed consensus. This entry will aim remained central to the field. to convey a sense of the wealth and variety of Any number of explanations might be views that were offered on the central issues offered for the immense outburst of activity in aesthetic theory during the century rather in aesthetics during this period. It might be than to regiment them under some simplistic thought of as the theoretical response to the scheme. Borrowing titles from the period, revival of the arts after their puritanical sup- views about the objects and organs of aesthetic pression in the seventeenth century, especially experience and judgment will be discussed in Protestant areas such as Britain and the under the heading “The Pleasures of the German regions where much of the activity Imagination,” views about the possibility of took place. It might be associated with the rise intersubjective validity in judgments of taste

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historical overviews under the heading “The Standard of Taste,” and was employed as both a physician and a polit- views about the relations between aesthetic ical adviser by his grandfather, the first earl, experience and morality under the rubric “The Shaftesbury was a Neoplatonist who held that Aesthetic Education of Humankind.” the true, the good, and the beautiful are all manifestations of the harmonious order of the the pleasures of the imagination universe and of the divine intelligence that is its One author who might fit the caricature of source, the former of which may initially be eighteenth-century aesthetics as reducible to apprehended by our senses but the latter of a formalist theory of beauty is Denis Diderot which is ultimately apprehended by our own (1713–84), or at least the Diderot who in 1752 intellect, while Hutcheson in fact hewed more wrote the article “On the Origin and Nature of closely to Locke, holding that our apprehension the Beautiful” for the great Encyclopedia that he of beauty is an immediate, sensory response to edited with Jean le Rond d’Alembert (1717– a variety of relations that may be subsumed 83). In this article Diderot termed “beautiful” under the general conception of “unity amidst “everything that contains the power of awak- variety,” and which are analogous but by no ening the notion of relation in my mind,” means identical to the forms of unity amid regardless of what that relation might be, thus variety that are the objects of knowledge on the relations among the various parts of a building, one hand and of moral sentiment on the other. the sounds of a piece of music, “the relations Hutcheson thus recognized a wider variety of apparent in men’s actions” or among the parts objects of aesthetic response and drew a firmer of “the works of nature”: differences in the distinction between the organs of aesthetic nature of the relata might give rise to names response and our other capacities than did of different species of beauty, such as moral Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury introduced the concept beauty, literary beauty, musical beauty, or of disinterestedness in his moral philosophy, natural beauty, but none of these differences arguing that our approbation of virtuous affects the real character of beauty, which is actions is not interested or mercenary, that is, simply “the ease with which we grasp” any based on an expectation of an increase to our relations “and the pleasure that accompanies own happiness from such actions in this life or their perception” (1966: 54–5). But most the- the next (e.g., Moralists II.2; 1999: 268–9), orists of the period offered more complicated and suggested that our pleasure in a beautiful catalogues of the sources of aesthetic pleasure scene in nature is also not interested in the than that (as did Diderot himself in his famous sense of being founded in an expectation of Salons, Diderot 1995). pleasure from the personal use or consumption The variety of eighteenth-century concep- of those natural objects (III.2; 1999: 318–19). tions of both the objects and the organs of aes- But Shaftesbury did not intend disinterestedness thetic experience – about what we respond to to be the explanation of our pleasure in beauty, in such experience and by means of what only a consequence and therefore a sign of it; capacities we do so – is already evident in a com- the explanation of our pleasure in beauty is parison of the views of Shaftesbury and Francis that in apprehending something beautiful we Hutcheson: although Hutcheson originally apprehend an instance of “nature’s order in presented his 1725 Inquiry into the Original of created beings” and beyond that “the source and Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (divided into two principle of all beauty and perfection” (III.1; treatises, the first Concerning Beauty, Order, 1999: 298). More fully, Shaftesbury held that Harmony, Design and the second Concerning in taking pleasure in beauty we respond to a hier- Moral Good and Evil) as an explanation and archy of principles of form or unity: in works of defense of the principles of Shaftesbury, there are nature or human art, the immediately perceiv- many differences between their positions, a able unified form of the object, but that is only fact that Hutcheson tacitly acknowledged by “dead form”; in the case of works of art, the dropping the reference to Shaftesbury from the “forms which form, that is, which have intelli- title page of the second and later editions of his gence, action and operation,” that is, human book. Although his education was supervised by artistry, but then in both cases the ultimate the empiricist John Locke (1632–1704), who source of form, “that third order of beauty, which

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eighteenth-century aesthetics forms not only such as we call mere forms but one object and another. Under this rubric even the forms which form” (III.2; 1999: 323). Hutcheson treats the beauty of representa- Although the immediate object of our pleasure tional works of art, where we appreciate “a in a beautiful object may be the form perceived kind of unity between the Original and the by our senses, the ultimate object of our plea- Copy” (IV.i; 2004: 42), as well as works of sure is the divine source of that form, inferred nature where our “fruitful Fancy” finds resem- by our intellect. Hutcheson, by contrast, even blances of all sorts of things (IV.iv; 2004: 44), though unlike Shaftesbury he was actually and also our appreciation of artistry, where a minister, and was certainly a pious man, we take pleasure in “Correspondence to offered a more empiricist and less theological aes- Intention” and the successful execution of a thetic theory. Hutcheson held that our pleasure “Design” by “curious Mechanism” or skill in beauty is a feeling that accompanies our (IV.vii; 2004: 45). Thus Hutcheson both separ- “complex Ideas of Objects” that are “Regular” ates the order that pleases us in beautiful or “Harmonious,” as opposed to the pleasures objects, whether of nature or fine art, from the that accompany “the simple Ideas of Sensation” order of the universe as a whole, while at the (I.viii; 2004: 22); indeed, sometimes he went so same time recognizing a greater variety of far as to identify the property of beauty with the beauties than did Shaftesbury, including the pleasurable “Idea rais’d in us” (I.ix; 2004: 23), beauty of form in objects, the beauty of content although in practice, like anyone else, he often in objects, whether intended as in works of art spoke of beauty as the order in an object that or imputed as in works of nature, and the produces pleasure in us rather than as the beauty of artistry. (On Hutcheson’s aesthetics, feeling of pleasure itself. Hutcheson argued see Kivy 2003.) that our apprehension of beauty “is justly Other authors recognized an even larger called a sense,” because although our pleasure variety of objects of aesthetic experience. A is a response to the order that we find in seminal text was the series of essays on “The objects, it “does not arise from any Knowledge Pleasures of the Imagination” written by the of Principles, Proportions, Causes, or of the English critic Joseph Addison (1672–1719) Usefulness of the Object, but strikes us at first and published in June and July of 1712 in the with the Idea of Beauty” (I.xiii; 2004: 25). Spectator, the journal that he coedited with Because the beauty of an object pleases us Richard Steele (1672–1729) from 1711 to independently of any such knowledge, no 1714 that would become the model for “moral “Prospect of Advantage or Disadvantage” can weeklies” throughout Europe. By “pleasures of “vary the Beauty or Deformity of an Object” the imagination,” Addison meant pleasures (I.xiv; 2004: 25): our pleasure in a beautiful that “arise from visible objects, either when we object is disinterested because it is immediate and have them actually in our view, or when we call therefore precedes any possible calculation of up their ideas into our minds by paintings, advantage or disadvantage. Hutcheson goes statues, descriptions, or any the like occasion,” on to argue that it can be empirically ascertained and he held that such pleasures that “what we call Beautiful in Objects . . . seems to be in a compound Ratio of Uniformity do not require such a bent of thought as is neces- and Variety” (II.iii; 2004: 29), but we do not sary to our more serious employments, nor, at the respond to it as a part of the larger order of the same time, suffer the mind to sink into that negli- universe or as a sign of the divine intelligence gence and remissness, which are apt to accompany our more sensual delights, but, like a gentle exer- that has created the universe. Hutcheson then cise of the faculties, awaken them from sloth and introduces a complexity into the objects of aes- idleness, without putting them upon any labour or thetic appreciation that Shaftesbury had not difficulty. (Addison & Steele 1965: no. 411) recognized: he divides beauty into “Original or Absolute,” where what we respond to is uni- Addison did not use the term “disinterested- formity amid variety perceived within an object ness,” but by describing the pleasures of the taken by itself, and “Relative or Comparative,” imagination as a “gentle exercise” of our where we take pleasure in the uniformity amid mental faculties falling between our “serious variety that we perceive in a relation between employments” and merely “sensual delights,” he

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historical overviews suggested a way of characterizing the independ- failed to emphasize the importance of the sub- ence of aesthetic experience from straight- lime alongside the beautiful. (The concept of the forward cognition on the one hand and sublime was popularized by translations of the straightforward sensation on the other: eight ancient treatise “On the Sublime” by Pseudo- decades later, Kant would support his explicit Longinus, into French by Nicolas Boileau in claim that our pleasure in beauty is disinterested 1674 and English by William Smith in 1743; by distinguishing it from merely sensory see Longinus 1964, Monk 1935, Zelle 1995, and “agreeableness” on the one hand and our plea- Ashfield & de Bolla 1996.) sure in the conceptually mediated cognition In spite of this common division, there were of goodness, whether merely prudential or also great differences between the theories of moral, on the other (Kant 2000: §§2–5). Kant and Burke. Burke based his division on the Addison then took an equally influential step empirical psychology of the day, arguing that when he divided “those pleasures of the imag- there is an immediate and positive pleasure in ination which arise from the actual view and sur- anything that gratifies our fundamental passion vey of outward objects” into those proceeding for society and a negative pleasure at our “from the sight of what is great, uncommon, or escape from potential pain in the gratification beautiful” (Addison & Steele 1965: no. 412): the of our passion for self-preservation. The sublime pleasures of the sublime, the novel, and the is then “Whatever is fitted to excite the ideas of beautiful. By the great or the sublime he meant pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in whatever gives us “an image of liberty, where any sort terrible,” but does not actually harm the eye has room to range abroad, to expatiate us and therefore affords us negative delight at large on the immensity of its views, and to (I.viii; 1958: 39), and the beautiful is whatever lose itself amid the variety of objects that offer suggests the pleasures of society. Following themselves to its observation”; by the novel, Addison’s hint, Burke divides beauty into two what “fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, kinds, namely the sorts of features that we find gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of sexually attractive in members of our own which it was not before possessed”; and by the species and that thus ground specific sexual beautiful, whatever “immediately diffuses a relations (I.ix; 1958: 41–2) (his list of such secret satisfaction and complacency through beauties is actually a list of properties that men the imagination, and gives a finishing to any are supposed to find beautiful in women, such thing that is great or uncommon.” He divided as delicacy and smoothness; see III.xii–xviii), and beauties into two further kinds, those that the sorts of features that we find attractive in make members of a species beautiful to others other human beings generally or even in other of its own kind, especially creatures of one sex sorts of creatures (such as grace and elegance; to the other, and those that we find through- see III.xix–xxvi), and that can ground nonsex- out “the several products of nature and art . . . ual social relations. Burke goes beyond this in the gayety or variety of colours, in the sym- psychological account of the beautiful and metry and proportion of parts, in the arrange- the sublime to a more purely physiological ment and disposition of bodies, or in a just account, in which he argues that the pleasure mixture and concurrence of all together,” of the approach to but ultimate avoidance of pain among which the beauty of colors are particu- that is characteristic of the sublime stems from larly pleasing. the invigoration of our fibers (IV.vii; 1958: Addison’s scheme would be influential 136), while “beauty acts by relaxing the solids throughout the century. Sometimes the pleas- of the system” (IV.xix; 1958: 149). This sort of ure of novelty would disappear from the list, speculative physiology might seem to be a by- as when Edmund Burke (1729–97), in his way in eighteenth-century aesthetics, but it Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas would recur four decades later in the Letters on of the Sublime and Beautiful of 1757, and fol- the Aesthetic Education of Mankind by Friedrich lowing him Kant, would divide the sources of Schiller (1759–1805) – who began his career aesthetic appreciation into two main groups, as a student of medicine and physiology – in his those of the beautiful and the sublime, rather distinction between “melting” and “energizing” than three, but no one other than Hutcheson beauty, the former of which “restores harmony

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eighteenth-century aesthetics to him who is over-tensed” and the latter of out subsuming it under a concept, Kant called which restores “energy to him who is relaxed” this response “purposiveness without purpose,” (Letter XVII; 1967: 117). Burke would add “subjective purposiveness,” or “formal purpo- another crucial element to eighteenth-century siveness” (§12), but also identified this with aesthetics in the final part of his book, where he “purposiveness of form,” and thus held, with- argued that poetry works because its words out adequate argument, that beauty properly lies affect us with the same emotions that the in the “drawing” rather than color of works of actual view of the objects they describe or refer visual art (here Kant rejected Addison’s sug- to would affect us with (V.i; 1958: 165): in gestion of the preeminence of color among other words, literature works through the sources of visual beauty) or of “composition” association of ideas, or more precisely through rather than particular tones or instrumentation the association of emotions with signs: Burke in music (§14). Kant also supposed that under held that the emotion is immediately caused by ideal conditions, the same objects should pro- the literary sign, not through an intermediate duce the same free play of imagination and image of the object invoked by the sign. The asso- understanding in all who experience them, ciation of ideas would become a central part of thus that judgments of beauty could claim aesthetics in such subsequent works as the “universal subjective validity” (§8) and “exem- Elements of Criticism of 1762 by Henry Home, plary necessity” (§18), a point to be discussed Lord Kames (1696–1782) (about which more below. Kant then argued that our experience of shortly) and the Essays on the Nature and the sublime rests on a complex relationship Principles of Taste of 1790 by Archibald Alison between the faculties of imagination and reason (1757–1839) (see Dickie 1996). rather than imagination and understanding, While following Burke’s division of the a relationship that begins as a painful dis- objects of aesthetic response into the beautiful harmony but culminates in a pleasurable and the sublime, Kant rejected what he expli- harmony. Whereas Addison and Burke had citly called Burke’s “empirical” and “physiolo- divided beauty into two kinds, Kant (follow- gical exposition” in favor of what purported to ing many other writers, including Moses be an a priori and “transcendental” explanation Mendelssohn; see Mendelssohn 1997: 194) of our aesthetic responses and judgments: this divided the sublime into two kinds. In the consisted in the attempt to show that these experience of the “mathematical sublime,” the responses and judgments arise from the same imagination is initially stymied in its attempt faculties of mind that we use in ordinary theor- to apprehend all of some vast natural vista in a etical and practical judgment, but not from the single image, but we are then gratified by the ordinary, determinate use of these faculties sense (it cannot be a determinate conceptual- to satisfy specific theoretical or practical goals. ization if this experience is to remain aesthetic) Kant began with the analysis of judgments of that it is our own capacious faculty of (theor- taste about beauty. He contrasted the disinter- etical) reason that has set the imagination ested pleasure of beauty with the interested this impossible task (§§25–6); in the experience pleasures of the agreeable and the good (2000: of the “dynamical sublime,” the imagination §§2–5), as already noted, and argued that is initially threatened by the vista of some the pleasure of beauty is the effect of the “free mighty and destructive natural object, but we play” between the cognitive faculties of imagi- are then gratified by the sense that even the nation – the ability to have and recall particu- threat of physical injury or destruction cannot lar images of objects – and understanding – the determine or constrain our capacity to make ability to connect and unify such objects, ordin- moral choices on the basis of (practical) reason arily but not in this case by subsuming them alone (§28). Finally, paralleling Burke’s addition under particular concepts – with which we of poetry to his scheme through the mechanism may respond to the perception of an object of the association of ideas, Kant adds an account (§§vii: 9, 20; General Remark following §§22, of the beauty of fine art to his accounts of nat- 35). Because such an experience satisfies our ural beauty and sublimity with the argument general cognitive aim of finding unity in the that a work of art always “ventures to make sen- manifold of our experience of any object with- sible rational ideas,” such as moral ideas, but

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historical overviews does so, at least if it is a product of genius, by Novelty “and the unexpected appearance of means of a Objects,” Risible Objects, Resemblance and Dissimilitude, Uniformity and Variety, Congruity representation of the imagination . . . which by and Propriety, Dignity and Grace, Ridicule, itself stimulates so much thinking that it can Wit, and Custom and Habit as objects of aesthetic never be grasped in a determinate concept, hence pleasure (2005b: table of contents), the unify- which aesthetically enlarges the concept itself in an ing bond among all of these diverse qualities unbounded way, [and] then the imagination is creative, and sets the faculty of intellectual ideas being that all of them can stimulate pleasing (reason) into motion. (§49) “Perceptions and Ideas in a Train” (ch. 1). Natural objects can stimulate pleasing trains of A work of art that does this is one that contains ideas directly through such features, but works an “aesthetic idea,” that is, makes an idea aes- of (representational) art can double our pleasure thetic by stimulating the free play of the imag- through our awareness of the correspondence ination with an idea of reason rather than between the train of ideas stimulated by the artis- constraining the imagination by a rule-like tic representation and that which would be concept. The artist who can create such free play stimulated by the represented object: “Every in his or her own mind and express it through work of art that is conformable to the natural a publicly accessible work is a genius, but part course of our ideas, is so far agreeable; and of the genius of such a work is precisely that every work of art that reverses that course, it leaves room for and stimulates a free play of is so far disagreeable.” In other words, our the imagination in the minds of its audience, response to the correspondence between an including subsequent artists, rather than com- artistic representation and what it represents is pletely dictating their response. (On Kant, see itself another pleasing train of ideas. Guyer 1979, 1993, 2005.) However, the greatest addition of Kames’s Burke and Kant (for example) thus diversify Elements of Criticism to the diversity of objects Hutcheson’s focus on beauty alone with the of aesthetic response recognized in the eigh- addition of the sublime. Others enumerated teenth century lies in his recognition that an even greater variety of objects of aesthetic the arousal of our emotions through works of pleasure and, at least in the British tradition, cor- art is our most fundamental source of pleasure responding “senses” for them. In a prizewinning in them. Here Kames brings into the British Essay on Taste first published in 1759 (the tradition in aesthetics the central idea of the same year as the second edition of Burke’s French Abbé Jean-Baptiste Du Bos (1670– Enquiry), Alexander Gerard (1728–95), pro- 1742). Du Bos’s widely influential Critical fessor of philosophy (later of divinity) at Reflections on Poetry, Painting and Music, first pub- Marischal College, Aberdeen, enumerated seven lished in French in 1719 and translated into such objects and corresponding senses, namely English in 1748, held that “The arts of poetry “the sense or taste” of Novelty, Grandeur and painting are never more applauded, than and Sublimity, Beauty, Imitation, Harmony, when they are most successful in moving us to Ridicule, and Virtue (1978: part I). Three pity” (1748: part 1, 1). Du Bos argued that the years later, the Scottish justice Henry Home, “heaviness,” ennui, or boredom “which quickly Lord Kames, a distant relative of David Hume attends the inactivity of the mind” is displeas- (1711–76) and a founder of the society that had ing (part I, ch. 1, 5), and that we seek out all awarded Gerard’s prize, published his Elements sorts of amusements, including gambling, of Criticism, a book that went through six edi- bullfights, and the like, in order to relieve our- tions in Kames’s lifetime and remained a college selves of it through the stimulation of passions, textbook in the United States until well into but that many such means of stimulation can the nineteenth century. He carefully omitted have unacceptably high costs, such as financial a definite article from the title of his book to ruin. However, the representational arts can indicate that his list of aesthetic qualities was “separate the dismal consequences of our pas- intended to be open-ended, but even so he sions from the bewitching pleasure we receive went beyond Gerard in enumerating Beauty, in indulging them” because through their Grandeur and Sublimity, Motion and Force, “imitation of objects capable of exciting real

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eighteenth-century aesthetics passions” such arts can “contrive to produce “the most universal and favourite entertain- objects that would excite artificial passions, ments” because in our response to them “We sufficient to occupy us while we are actually enter deep into [the] concerns” of those they affected by them, and incapable of giving us after- depict, “take a side . . . partake of joys and wards any real pain or affliction” (part I, ch. 3, distresses,” and argued that a good tragedy, 21–2). Du Bos’s theory was that the depiction although it is obviously artificial, produces of various sorts of human conduct and their plea- even deeper emotions than we usually experi- surable or painful consequences in literature ence in ordinary life: or painting raise in us the very same sorts of pas- Tragedy is an imitation or representation of sions that seeing such events in real life would human characters and actions. It is a feigned his- raise, but within limits – we walk away from the tory, which commonly makes a stronger impres- theater once the tragedy is over – so that the sion than what is real; because, if it be a work of pleasure of the stimulation of our emotions is genius, incidents will be chosen to make the deep- not outweighed by the painful consequences that est impressions; and will be so conducted as to the sort of events depicted would have in real keep the mind in continual suspense and agitation, life. So artificial passions are not make-believe beyond what commonly happens in real life. By a emotions, but real, stimulating emotions kept good tragedy, all the social passions are excited. within bearable limits by the artificiality of (2005a: 17) their objects. But he resolved the threat of paradox in Du Bos’s conception of artificial passions tragedy – that we should find it painful rather was widely taken up. Moses Mendelssohn than pleasurable to observe the depiction of (1729–86), for example, who made his mark painful events – by distinguishing between with his writings on aesthetics in the 1750s long painfulness and aversion, arguing that “the before his famous work on Jewish emancipation moral affections, even such of them as produce (Jerusalem, 1783) and his leadership of the pain, are none of them attended with any German Jewish Enlightenment, argued against degree of aversion . . . Sympathy in particular Du Bos that it is not the sheer stimulation of our attaches us to an object in distress so powerfully emotions but rather our sympathy with the as even to overbalance self-love . . . Sympathy perfections revealed by characters even under accordingly, though a painful passion, is adversity that pleases us in drama, but agreed attractive.” From this he concluded that with Du Bos that the artistic challenge of tragedy can “seize the mind with all the differ- drama lies precisely in the fact that it must ent charms which arise from the exercise of both stimulate our passions through successful the social passions, without the least obstacle illusion yet at the same time keep those passions from self-love” (2005a: 18). In his chapter on in check by reminders that it is “artistic decep- “Emotions and Passions” in the Elements of tion” (Mendelssohn 1997: “On Sentiments,” Criticism, by far the longest chapter in the 75). Kames’s position was even closer to that of work, Kames puts the point by distinguishing Du Bos. He shared Du Bos’s view that mental between emotion, “an internal motion or agi- activity in general – “trains of ideas” – is a tation of the mind [that] passeth away with- source of pleasure to us, and, as already noted, out desire,” and passion, a motion or agitation enumerated a large variety of qualities of that is followed by desire (ch. 2; 2005b: 37), and objects that could stimulate such activity. But then arguing that works of art raise emotions he certainly agreed with Du Bos that the stimu- but not passions. They do this by what Kames lation of our emotions through the depiction calls “ideal presence,” their ability to make us of the actions and feelings of human beings “recall any thing to [our] mind in a manner so is the foremost source of our pleasure in distinct as to form an idea or image of it as pre- representational art. In an essay on “Our sent,” to raise in us “ideas no less distinct than Attachment to Objects of Distress” that began if [we] had originally been an eye-witness” and his 1751 Essays on the Principles of Morality to “insensibly transform” us into spectators, and Natural Religion and that itself began with which in turn produces in us the emotions (but a reference to Du Bos (2005: 11), Kames not passions) that the real object would and argued that “history, novels, and plays” are thereby engage our sympathy: “ideal presence

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historical overviews supplies the want of real presence; and in idea of parts with one another, this would seem to we perceive persons acting and suffering, pre- leave room only for a purely relational or for- cisely as in an original survey; if our sympathy mal theory of beauty as the object of aesthetic be engaged by the latter, it must also in some pleasure, like Diderot’s theory, but in practice degree be engaged by the former (2005b: Wolff interpreted perfection as the consensus of 67–9). Not all forms of fine art stimulate pleas- the parts of an object with its ground or, in the ing trains of ideas by representation of human case of an artifact, with its purpose, and sug- actions at all, and among those that do, not all gested a path for aesthetics with his illustrations. do it to the same degree, but “Of all the means Thus one of his examples of perfection was the for making an impression of ideal presence, perfection of painting, which consists in its theatrical representation is the most powerful” similarity to its intended object (2003: note (2005b: 71) because it combines the power of §129 to §404), and in a treatise on architecture words and the power of visual images to affect that he included in his Encyclopedia of Math- our feelings, and is thus more powerful than ematical Sciences, Wolff argued that works of either literature or painting alone – but Kames architecture have the dual aim of being both leaves no doubt that the enjoyment of emo- convenient for their intended use and formally tions stimulated by ideal presence is the great- beautiful as well, and that our pleasure in est of the enjoyments that art has to offer. works of architecture arises from our sensory There can be no question, then, that many perception of the joint satisfaction of both of these French and British writers in the eighteenth aims. century regarded the depiction of human Wolff’s recognition of the importance of util- action and the consequent arousal of emotion ity to our pleasure in architecture introduces yet as at least as important in our experience of the another entry into the eighteenth-century cat- fine arts as our enjoyment of forms or colors in alogue of aesthetic values. That will be dis- the naturally or artistically beautiful or our cussed shortly; here let us see how the German enjoyment of magnitude and force in the sub- tradition made room for the recognition of lime, and that it would thus be a profound the importance of the arousal of emotions in error to reduce eighteenth-century aesthetics to aesthetic experience in spite of the formalist the theory of the beautiful. This is true in the conception of beauty suggested by Wolff’s con- perfectionist tradition of eighteenth-century ception of perfection. This happens in the work German aesthetics as well. This tradition of Baumgarten and Meier. In his 1735 thesis began with Christian Wolff (1679–1754), on poetry, where he first defined aesthetics as and was carried on by Alexander Gottlieb the “science that guides the lower faculty of Baumgarten and his student Georg Friedrich knowledge” or “the science of how something Meier (1718–77), Moses Mendelssohn, and is to be cognized sensitively” (Baumgarten Johann Georg Sulzer (1720–79), the author 1983: §115), Baumgarten defined a poem as a of a massive encyclopedia of the arts and “perfect sensitive discourse” (§IX), or a verbal aesthetics (Sulzer 1994) which remains an artifact that maximizes the potential of sense per- unsurpassed source for eighteenth-century ception to fuse a great deal of particularized aesthetics. Wolff did not write a treatise on aes- “marks” or images together clearly yet without thetics, but he initiated the German tradition in marking the differences between them by gen- the subject by accepting the definition of sense- eral concepts (§XVII); thus “singular represen- perception as clear but confused cognition of that tations” – or representations of particulars which could at least in principle be known “are especially poetic” (§XIX). In Leibnizian clearly and distinctly from Gottfried Wilhelm terms, poems are or convey “clear but con- Leibniz (1646–1716), defining pleasure as the fused cognition.” In his large but uncompleted sensory perception or clearly but confused cog- treatise Aesthetica, the two extant volumes of nition of perfection (Wolff 2003: §404), which which were published in 1750 and 1758, he defined in formal terms as the consensus of Baumgarten generalized his earlier treatment of the parts of the relevant object with each other poetry into a theory of all art (although his (§152). If all pleasure is the sensory response to examples continued to be drawn exclusively perfection and perfection is just the agreement from poetry). Here he equated aesthetics as the

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eighteenth-century aesthetics science of sensitive cognition with the “theory (§177; Baumgarten is quoting from Longinus’ of the liberal arts, the theory of lower cognition, “On the Sublime”). And the latter phenom- the art of thinking beautifully, and the art of the enon is in turn a consequence of moral or analogue of reason” (2007: §1), and defined the emotional impact: what possesses “aesthetic “goal of aesthetics as the perfection of sensitive magnitude” is above all themes of great moral cognition as such,” which he in turn analyzed importance, or “aesthetic dignity” (§182). So, as consisting in “the consensus of thoughts in spite of the “logical” origin of Baumgarten’s among themselves insofar as we abstract from categories, emotionally significant content is their order and significance,” the “consensus of as important in his conception of aesthetic the order in which we reflect upon beautifully qualities as is perceptual form. thought things,” and the “internal consensus This is also clear in the works of of the signs with the order and the things” Baumgarten’s disciple Meier, who published (§§18–20). Here Baumgarten transformed a compendious German treatise based on Wolff’s conception of aesthetic pleasure as the his master’s lectures, The Foundations of All “sensitive cognition of perfection” into a con- Beautiful Sciences, in 1748–50, even before his ception of it as arising from the “perfection of master’s Latin treatise, but who both earlier sensitive cognition,” that is, he recognized that and later also published numerous essays the representation of things through images that demonstrate that the formalism of the rather than through concepts offers its own Baumgartian approach is superficial, and that particular opportunities and standards for the real aim of art even on this approach is emo- excellence and enjoyment, different from those tional impact. Thus, in one essay from 1751 offered by the project of the scientific analysis, Meier wrote that “The inner essence of the art classification, and explanation of things. In of literature consists in sensible representa- this way, Baumgarten made conceptual space tions and in affect, which can arouse affect, in for the new discipline of aesthetics. But his representations that impress lively images on our account of the nature of aesthetic excellence, as fancy and work on our heart and arouse pas- just outlined, seems highly formalistic, and sions. The poet must treat matters that work on this impression seems only strengthened by his the passions” (2002: iii.163). Another essay, more detailed list of aesthetic qualities as the from 1757, shows how the Baumgartian list of “analogues” of the perfections of “logical” or sci- aesthetic qualities includes emotional impact entific cognition. The latter include wealth or as well as formal features: in addition to range (ubertas), magnitude, truth, illumination wealth of representation, truth of cognition, (lux), certitude, and liveliness (vita cognitionis), liveliness and brilliance of cognition, certainty and so the aesthetic qualities include aesthetic of cognition, beautiful order, and beautiful de- wealth, aesthetic magnitude, aesthetic truth, signation, Meier includes in the second spot on aesthetic illumination, aesthetic certitude, and his list “the magnitude of cognition, or the aesthetic liveliness (2007: synopsis). Given the noble, the sublime, etc.,” the representation of logical origin of these concepts, they can be “great, upright, important, noble objects,” expected to concern various formal features of and, further down the list, the “touching” or artworks, and Baumgarten does give much “moving” (das Rührende), by which he means space to formal considerations. However, the that a “beautiful cognition must not please as concept of “aesthetic magnitude” in particular much as possible merely through itself,” that is, turns out to be more complex than that. The cri- its formal features, “but must also cause a suit- teria for this aspect of aesthetic quality include able satisfaction or dissatisfaction over its “the weight of the [represented] objects and object” (2002: iii.192–3). their significance, the weight and significance The more popular essays of Moses of the thoughts appropriate to these, and the Mendelssohn, first appearing in the same fruitfulness of taking both together,” and these years, also manifest the same emphasis on qualities are in turn measured by “what can emotional arousal within the Baumgartian hardly and not even hardly be banned from framework to which he too subscribed. The our mind, but which is rather constantly, work that first brought Mendelssohn wide- firmly, and indelibly preserved in our memory” spread attention in 1755 was entitled “On

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historical overviews

Sentiments,” and here Mendelssohn intro- the skill of a human artist is replaced by our even duced his conception of “mixed sentiments” as greater admiration of the divine artist. The central to aesthetic experience: we can take crucial point in all of this, however, is just that pleasure in the virtues of a depicted character Mendelssohn’s analysis is one more indication along with our pain at his misfortunes, and we that the eighteenth-century conception of the can take pleasure in the skill of the artist along aesthetic response includes far more than dis- with our pain at depicted events, and in both interested pleasure in the perceivable form of a ways combine pleasure in the perception of work of art or nature alone. perfections with displeasure in imperfections in As already mentioned, Wolff has included a way that is on balance pleasing, in which, utility among the sources of beauty in archi- indeed, “If a few bitter drops are mixed into the tecture. That is hardly surprising, since the honey-sweet bowl of pleasure, they enhance practical role of architecture is inescapable. the taste of the pleasure and double its sweet- But some theories counted utility, or at least ness” (1997: 74). In the “Rhapsody or additions the appearance of utility, as a source of beauty to the Letters on Sentiment” which he added to in arts beyond architecture. Hutcheson had the first collection of his essays in 1761, excluded utility as a source of beauty by means Mendelssohn provided a metaphysical frame- of his argument that the response to beauty is work for what might otherwise have been an immediate sensory response that leaves no merely an empirical observation by exploiting time or place for calculations of advantage. Wolffian perfectionism. He argued that every This position was rejected by George Berkeley representation “stands in a twofold relation” to (1685–1753) in his 1733 Alciphron, an attack “the matter before it as object . . . and then to on Shaftesbury that included an attack on this the soul or the thinking subject (of which it con- point in Hutcheson, who then defended his stitutes a determination),” and that there is position in the fourth edition of his Inquiry in potential for pleasure in perfection in either of 1738. Burke also rejected the idea that beauty these: we might or might not take pleasure in has anything to do with utility with the color- the perfection of the represented object, but we ful argument that the snout of a swine may be can also take pleasure in a good representation very useful to it in rooting for food, but is of it as “an affirmative determination” of the soul, hardly beautiful (1958: III.vi: 195); this fol- so even a “representation of evil” can be “a pic- lowed his rejection of the theory that beauty ture within us that engages the soul’s capa- arises from proportion, however, which could cities of knowing and desiring” and thus be a be taken as an attack on Hutcheson’s formalist pleasing “element of the soul’s perfection” that theory that beauty arises from a proportion can contribute to the overall pleasure of the expe- between unity and variety, and Burke’s own rience of the artistic representation of painful theory that beauty lies in properties that we objects or events (1997: 132–4). This is per- find socially and especially sexually attractive fectionism but not formalism. In a 1757 essay might well be thought to come closer to a util- “On the Main Principles of the Fine Arts and ity- than a form-based theory of beauty. Sciences” which he also included in his 1761 David Hume took a Solomonic position in this collection, Mendelssohn expanded this twofold debate by arguing, shortly after Hutcheson’s analysis of the sources of aesthetic pleasure reply to Berkeley but long before Burke’s into a fourfold analysis: in a work of art, we can Enquiry, that there are two kinds of beauty: potentially enjoy the perfections of the depicted “the beauty of all visible objects causes a pleas- object (or be dissatisfied by its imperfections), but ure pretty much the same, tho’ it be sometimes we can also enjoy the “faithfulness or similar- deriv’d from the mere species and appearance ity of the imitation” (the artistic imitation but of the objects; sometimes from sympathy, and also the mental representation of that), the an idea of their utility” (2000: 3.3.5: 393). By perfection of the artist who can produce such the former, Hume means “such an order and an imitation, and finally the pleasing effect of construction of parts, as either by the primary the harmonious mental representation on our constitution of our nature, by custom, or by own bodily condition (1997: 172–6). In the case caprice, is fitted to give a pleasure and satisfac- of natural beauty, of course, our admiration of tion to the soul,” or something like the beauty

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eighteenth-century aesthetics of form in the broad sense in which Hutcheson certain circumstances we take pleasure in the understood it; by the latter he means the appearance of utility, or as he himself says “the “great part of the beauty, which we admire idea of utility,” remembering that by “idea” either in animals or in other objects, [that] Hume means in the first instance a copy of a sen- is deriv’d from the idea of convenience and sible impression rather than something more utility,” such as “a shape which produces abstract and intellectual; and then it would be strength” in one animal, one that “is a sign of the fact that our pleasure is in an appearance agility in another,” or the “order and con- rather than in a reality, and in the activity of venience of a palace” as contrasted to “its mere the imagination with that appearance rather figure and appearance” (2.1.8: 195). About than in the actual use of the object, that makes the first kind of beauty, Hume thinks there is not the pleasure in the appearance of utility an very much that can be said, because “it is only aesthetic response. the effect, which [a] figure produces upon the Kant’s opening statements of his analysis of mind, whose particular fabric or structure ren- beauty suggests that he must have completely ders it susceptible of such sentiments” (“The rejected Hume’s account of the beauty of util- Sceptic”; 1987: 165; app. I; 1998: 87); he thus ity: his explication of the claim that “the satis- tacitly resists Hutcheson’s attempt to explain all faction that determines the judgment of taste is cases of beauty immediately perceived by the without any interest” is that “if the question is senses with some specific as a particular pro- whether something is beautiful, one does not portion between unity and variety (even if that want to know where there is anything that is is not itself terribly specific). But Hume offers or that could be at stake, for us or for someone a more elaborate discussion of the beauty of else, in the existence of the thing, but rather how utility, which can be taken as an attempt to we judge it in mere contemplation (intuition or explain what makes the recognition of utility reflection)” (2000: §2). However, Kant sub- in an object an aesthetic property rather than sequently accommodates Hume’s recognition a subject of merely practical approbation. of two kinds of beauty, although he does not The questions about the beauty of utility that explain the second variety in the same way Hume explicitly raises are why persons other Hume does. Kant distinguishes between “free than the owner of a useful object should take beauty” and “adherent beauty,” stating that pleasure in it, why anyone should take pleasure the former “presupposes no concept of what in a useful object that will not in fact be used, the object ought to be” but the “second does pre- and why anyone should take pleasure in an suppose such a concept and the perfection of the object that looks useful but is not actually object in accordance with it” (§16). His exam- so, such as a painting of a useful object. His ples of the latter include the beauty of humans, answers to these questions are illustrations of of animals such as horses, and of buildings his general theories of sympathy and imagina- such as churches, palaces, arsenals, or summer- tion: we take pleasure in the utility of an object houses, as contrasted to such beautiful things that belongs to someone else because through as some birds, crustaceans, designs à la grecque, sympathy we share the pleasure the other foliage for borders and wallpapers, and so on. takes in that object, because “the minds of men Since he does not simply reject adherent are mirrors to one another” (2.2.5; 2000: beauty as a kind of beauty at all, as his initial 235–6). And we take pleasure in useful discussion of disinterestedness might seem to objects that cannot actually be used (such as an have required, his theory must be that the athlete in chains) or in the nonuseful repre- recognition of the intended purpose of the sentation of a useful object because of the object that is inescapable in the case of adher- imagination’s tendency to generalize, or its ent beauty is not incompatible with the occur- tendency to pass from a cause (the object) to its rence of the free play of imagination and effect (pleasure in its utility) “without considering understanding that is the hallmark of the that there are still some circumstances wanting experience of the beautiful in general. There are to render the cause a complete one” (3.3.1; several ways in which this might be true: the 2000: 374). But we might interpret Hume’s intended purpose of the object might set con- theory more broadly to suggest that under straints on its form within which there is still

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historical overviews room for invention and free play, or the to the same degree. Hutcheson also argued requirements of satisfying the intended pur- that custom and education cannot be the pose of the object might themselves enter into original source of our aesthetic responses, a non-rule-governed yet harmonious interaction although they can modify them in various with the form of the object to which we ways; “But all this presupposes our Sense respond with a free play (see Guyer 2005: of Beauty to be natural” (VII.iii; 2004: 73). chs. 4, 5). Whatever the details, however, the Others saw the problem as more difficult. point remains that even Kant did not reduce Hume addressed it in his famous essay “Of the beauty to a simple quality of pure form, but Standard of Taste,” inserted at the last minute recognized a variety of kinds of beauty. in a volume of Four Dissertations in 1757, In sum, Francis Hutcheson’s reduction of along with his essay on tragedy, when it all cases of beauty to cases of uniformity amid seemed too dangerous to include his essays variety was not the norm but rather an on suicide and immortality. Hume presents extreme position in eighteenth-century aes- the problem of taste as a conflict – what Kant thetics, which more generally recognized a would subsequently call the “antinomy of variety of sources of aesthetic pleasure, includ- taste” (2000: §56) – between a “species of ing at least formal beauty, beauty in or con- philosophy” and a “species of common sense,” nected with the appearance of utility, the the former the inference that, since “Beauty sublime, the pleasures of emotional arousal is no quality of things themselves” but only through works of art, and pleasure in the a “sentiment” that “exists merely in the mind” recognition of artistic skill. and “All sentiment is right,” there is no hope of “a decision . . . confirming one sentiment, the standard of taste and condemning another,” the latter the view A central issue throughout the century was that some preferences are genuinely preferable that of the possibility of a “standard of taste,” to others, for example that “Whoever would or the rationality of asserting universal validity assert an equality of genius and elegance for judgments of taste in spite of the perceived between OGILBY and MILTON . . . would be variety in actual tastes (a variety obvious for thought to defend no less an extravagance, many reasons, including the increasing famil- than if he had maintained a mole-hill to be as iarity with cultures radically different from high as TENERIFFE” (Hume 1987: 229–31). European ones) and the fact that many Hume argued that the latter position is in fact accounts of beauty and other aesthetic proper- true, but that since the former position is cor- ties, such as Kant’s, implied that these qualities rect in assuming that aesthetic properties can- could not be subsumed under rules that could not be reduced to objective properties of objects ground noncontrovertible judgments. in accordance with any “reasonings a priori” or For Hutcheson, the possibility of consensus fixed rules, the distinction between reasonable in judgments of taste seemed nonproblematic. and extravagant preferences in taste can be He held that empirical evidence shows that made only by appeal to the consensus that all people like the same sort of quality in he assumes to obtain among the verdicts of objects of taste, namely uniformity in variety qualified critics throughout history (1987: (VI.iv; 2004: 63), that differences in their 238). Who those are, in turn, Hume believes can particular preferences for instances of this be settled by objective criteria – “questions of quality show only differences in their education fact, not of sentiment” (1987: 242). The “finer and exposure (VI.v; 2004: 64), which can be emotions of the mind” that constitute aesthetic corrected, or different associations of ideas, responses are, Hume holds, “of a very tender and which may make something naturally plea- delicate nature, and require the concurrence of surable unpleasant or vice versa (VI.xi; 2004: many favourable circumstances to make them 67), and which may or may not be correctible, play with facility and exactness, according to but which should not, apparently, trouble our their general and established principles,” and confidence that under ideal conditions, that is, qualified critics are those who have the delicate apart from such associations, all would find faculties necessary to experience these delicate the same degrees of unity amid variety pleasing emotions and who are also capable of the

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“perfect serenity of mind, . . . recollection of improveable” (II.iii; 1978: 91), and “Thus thought, [and] due attention to the object” taste, like every other human excellence, is of necessary for the optimal enjoyment of that a progressive nature; raising by various stages, object (1987: 232). More fully, Hume holds from its seeds and elements to maturity,” that qualified critics are distinguished by their although to be sure, “like delicate plants, liable “delicacy of imagination” (1987: 234), their to be checked in its growth and killed, or else “practice in a particular art” and careful and to become crooked and distorted, by negli- extended perusal of any “individual perform- gence, or improper management” (1978: 95). ance” or object (1987: 237), the extensive He then reduced Hume’s list of the qualities “comparisons between the several species and required for the “maturity and perfection” of degrees of excellence” they have been able taste, now transformed into targets for all of us, to make (1987: 238), and the “good sense” that into “sensibility, refinement, correctness, and the enables them to preserves their minds “free proportion or comparative adjustment of its separ- from all prejudice” or, more precisely, to ate principles” (1978: 95). In 1783, James approach any given work with the right “pre- Beattie agreed with Gerard in treating taste as judices” or presuppositions that are necessary to something that can be improved in all of us, but understand its intentions and its success in emphasized the diversity of the objects of taste realizing those (1987: 239–40). And the ver- and therefore amplified the list of the components dicts of such qualified critics are normative for of improved taste. He observed that “sublimity, the rest of us because although “Many men, beauty, and elegance, are not the only things when left to themselves, have but a faint and in art and nature, which gratify taste. There is dubious perception of beauty,” they are “yet also a taste in imitation, in harmony, and in capable of relishing any fine stroke, which is ridicule,” for example (2004: 161). Reflecting pointed out to them” (1987: 243). For Hume, especially the widespread recognition of the the consensus of qualified critics over time cre- centrality of the arousal of emotion in the ate a standard of taste not in the form of a set experience of art that had begun with Du Bos, of rules for the judgment of objects, but rather Beattie then wrote that in the form of a canon of objects of good taste, a set of objects that will bring the rest of us To be a person of taste, it seems necessary, that one increased pleasure. have, first a lively and correct imagination; secondly, Recent discussion of Hume’s proposal has the power of distinct apprehension; thirdly, the focused on whether his criteria for good cri- capacity of being easily, strongly, and agreeably tics are in fact objective, or rather whether affected, with sublimity, beauty, harmony, exact imitation, &c., fourthly, sympathy, or sensibility his solution is circular, allowing us to agree of heart; and fifthly, judgement, or good sense, on who the good critics are only if we which is the principal thing, and may not very have already agreed on what good art is (see improperly be said to comprehend all the rest. Kivy 1967; Korsmeyer 1976; Carroll 1984; (2004: 162) Townsend 2001; Guyer 2005: ch. 2; and Costelloe 2007). Hume’s Scottish successors, “Sympathy or sensibility of heart” is Beattie’s however, raised questions about the indirectness main addition to Hume’s list of the conditions of his approach and the adequacy of his list of for good taste; given Hume’s emphasis on sym- the qualities that a good judge of art must pathy in his own explanation of our enjoy- have. They sought a list of attainments by ment of beauty, one might have thought that means of which all could improve their taste, not Hume could have added it to his own list, criteria for a privileged class of critics, and although Beattie probably means something many authors also expanded the lists of attain- different by sympathy than Hume did, not the ments necessary for good taste in order to transmission of feeling from one enjoyer of an reflect their increasing recognition of the vari- object to another, but rather the “sensibility of ety of aesthetic qualities. Gerard’s 1759 Essay heart” to be moved by the plight or the prosperity on Taste provides a good example of the former of characters depicted or described in works of tendency: Gerard writes that “We are scarce pos- art, in other words, sensitivity to what Du Bos sessed of any faculty of mind or body that is not had called “artificial emotions.”

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As late as 1810, Dugald Stewart still fol- filled every division with many pleasures,” for lowed the model of enumerating criteria for in spite of the core of taste that is naturally the self-improvement of taste rather than for the widely shared, the many differences of rank and identification of qualified critics, and added the employment among human beings requires a idea that excessive refinement of critical capa- variety of objects of taste “in order that indi- cities actually gets in the way of the enjoyment viduals may be contented with their own lot, of many objects, so where taste “exists in its without envying that of others” (2005b: 720). highest perfection” we need to find “an under- In Kames’s view, then, commonalities of taste standing, discriminating, comprehensive, and make it possible to overcome social divisions to unprejudiced ...a love of truth and of nature,” a certain extent, but variations in taste also but also “a temper superior to the irritation of make it possible to accept social divisions that little passions” and hypercritical expectations cannot readily be overcome. of perfection in art (1811: 473). A further Another thinker whom many consider to response to the problem of taste among British have stood apart from the widespread search for authors was to recognize that there is also some standard of taste is Johann Gottfried good reason to expect and allow for some Herder (1744–1803), often regarded as the diversity of taste. In the concluding chapter on founder of cultural relativism. In a famous the “Standard of Taste” in the Elements of essay on Shakespeare published in a 1773 col- Criticism, Kames argued that there is a common lection On German Style and Art (Von deutscher nature underlying a common taste among Art und Kunst), which also included an equally mankind, thus that “with respect to the fine arts, famous essay on Gothic architecture by Johann there is less difference of taste than is com- Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), Herder monly imagined” (ch. 25; 2005b: 728). He argued that modern art could not be an imita- argued that such “uniformity of taste” is neces- tion of ancient art, for example Shakespeare sary in order to provide an audience for the could not imitate Greek tragedy, because the cir- laborious works of single artists and even to cumstances of life in Elizabethan and Jacobean make possible those works that require exten- England were so different from those of ancient sive collaboration, such as “sumptuous and Attica: “neither action, nor customs, nor lan- elegant buildings” and “fine gardens”; he also guage, nor purpose” in the two epochs have any- argued that shared objects of taste, such as thing in common (1999: 165), so the art of those “public spectacles, and . . . amusements that two epochs inevitably differs. This might suggest are best enjoyed in company,” offer at least that the taste of the two epochs must differ, so some resistance to “The separation of men into that the audiences of the later epoch could not different classes, by birth, office, or occupa- appreciate the works of the earlier epoch in the tion,” which, “however necessary, tends to same way and with the same intensity as its ori- relax the connection that ought to be among ginal audience. However, this does not seem to members of the same state” (2005b: 724). be Herder’s conclusion. Rather, he suggests However, like Hume, he also recognized that the that beneath the superficial differences in “Many circumstances [that] are necessary to their works, Shakespeare and, for example, form ...a judge” of fine art, including both Sophocles, had the same fundamental aim, to gifts of nature such as “delicacy of taste” and mirror their times in their art: “Shakespeare is gifts of fortune such as “education, reflection, Sophocles’s brother, precisely where he seems and experience,” all of which “must be pre- to be so dissimilar, and inwardly he is wholly served in vigour by living regularly, by using the like him. His whole dramatic illusion is gifts of fortune with moderation, and by fol- attained by means of this authenticity, truth, and lowing the dictates of improved nature,” are by historical creativity” (1985: 172). This in turn no means available to all, and thus that “The suggests that insofar as audiences at different exclusion of classes so many and numerous, times approach works of art with the same reduces within a narrow compass those who are underlying principle, they can equally appreci- qualified to be judges in the fine arts” (2005b: ate the success of superficially different works 727). But he then argued that it is a good thing at mirroring their own times and enjoy them that nature “hath wisely and benevolently equally. The differences among historically or

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eighteenth-century aesthetics geographically diverse cultures do not affect interests, charms, and so on (§§21, 35). Even the underlying principles of art, and therefore among those who have found Kant’s concept of do not preclude a canon of taste valid for different the free play of imagination and understanding times and places. (or imagination and reason, in the case of the Kant’s insistence on the possibility of uni- sublime) a convincing analysis of aesthetic versality in taste is much closer to the surface experience, Kant’s assumption that, because than that of Herder, his one-time student and we all have the same general capacities for later critic. Although Kant had many targets cognition, the very same objects that induce in his aesthetic theory, Hume was a more the state of their free play in one person can rea- important target for him than Herder (see sonably be expected to do so in all others as well, Guyer 2008: ch. 5 and, for the contrary view, even under optimal conditions, has certainly Zammito 1992): Hume’s Four Dissertations been contested (compare Guyer 1979: chs. was translated into German as early as 1759, 8–9 and Allison 2001: ch. 8). and Hume’s approach to the standard of taste Another issue that has been debated is was certainly one of Kant’s chief targets; whether Kant’s claims for the moral signific- indeed, Kant’s presentation of the “peculiarities” ance of aesthetic experience depend on the of the judgment of taste (2000: §§32–4) and the existence of an a priori ground for intersubjec- “antinomy” of the judgment of taste (§§55–7) tively valid judgments of taste (see Crawford are clearly modeled on Hume’s conflict 1974; Rogerson 1986; Guyer 1993: intro.). between the species of philosophy and com- But instead of pursuing that, we may turn here mon sense. Kant also follows Hume in holding to a broader discussion of eighteenth-century that, because judgments of taste concern our views about the relations between the aes- sentiment or feeling in response to objects, the thetic and the moral. standard of taste cannot consist in conceptu- ally formulated rules for the judgment (or pro- the aesthetic education of humankind duction) of objects of taste (the latter is the Hutcheson argued for the sense of beauty in core of Kant’s theory of genius in §§46–9). order to support his argument that there is a nat- But he did not think that Hume’s confidence ural sense of virtue and vice, or a moral sense, that many a person can appreciate the fine but did not argue for any direct moral value strokes that the critics point to him, or for that of aesthetic experience. In this he was not matter Hutcheson’s confidence that experi- paradigmatic, but rather an exception to the ence reveals at most a difference in degree in rule in eighteenth-century aesthetics. Another the kinds of things that all find pleasing, is exception to the general assumption of the sufficient to ground the reasonableness of moral value of aesthetic experience was Jean- claiming the assent of all to our own judg- Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) whose attack ments of beauty, our claim to speak with a on D’Alembert’s recommendation that Geneva “universal voice” when we make a judgment of drop its prohibition of the theater outdid its taste (§8). Kant insisted on an a priori founda- model, Plato’s exclusion of drama from the tion for the commonality of taste that is education of the guardians of his ideal Republic: asserted by an aesthetic judgment. He claimed Rousseau warned that allowing theater into to find such a foundation by means of the Geneva “would only serve to destroy the love argument – his “deduction of judgments of of work . . . render a people inactive and slack taste” – that because the response to beauty is . . . prevent it from seeing the public and private a free play of imagination and understanding, goals with which it ought to busy itself . . . it involves the same faculties that are involved turn prudence to ridicule . . . substitute a the- in cognition in general, and because every atrical jargon for the practice of the virtues,” normal human being is certainly capable of and “make metaphysic of all morality” (2004: cognition of any given object, we must all also 298). But most authors recognized some find the pleasure of beauty in the same objects, significant role for aesthetic experience in at least under optimal conditions when our moral development, even if Schiller’s claim imaginations and understandings can play that, if the moral and political problems of freely and are not distracted by irrelevant mankind are ever to be solved, “it must take the

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historical overviews aesthetic path, because it is through beauty insisted that the moral law can be (and is) that one makes his way to freedom” (Letter II; known by pure reason alone and that morally 1967: 8–9), or that the “aesthetic education of estimable action must be motivated by respect mankind” is the only path to its moral educa- for that law alone, he allowed that “the beau- tion, was extreme. Given the emphasis in most tiful prepares us to love something . . . without authors on the arousal of emotions through interest; the sublime, to esteem it, even contrary art, it was only natural for them to think that to our (sensible) interest” (2000: general the experience of art could be used to develop remark following §29), both of which we morally beneficial emotions; the emphasis on the must be able to do in order to act as morality sublime also led to an assumption of the moral commands; in the mature phenomenology value of aesthetic experience, since the experi- of moral action that he offered in his late ence of the sublime was commonly divided Metaphysics of Morals, on which the dictates of into an admiration for the magnitude of pure practical reason are always effected nature, which would lead to morally valuable through the cultivation and regulation of reflection on the greatness of the creator of appropriate natural inclinations, Kant stated nature, and an admiration for the moral mag- that a natural feeling for the beauties of nature nitude of depicted heroes, which would naturally is “a disposition of sensibility that greatly pro- lead to a desire to emulate them (e.g., see motes morality or at least prepares the way for Beattie and Ussher in Ashfield & de Bolla it: the disposition, namely, to love something 1996). Archibald Alison, for example, held . . . even apart from any intention to use it” that wherever the “objects of the material (“Doctrine of Virtue,” 1996: §17). In these world . . . afford us delight, they are always the remarks he suggested that aesthetic experi- signs or expressions of higher qualities, by ence is psychologically conducive to acting in which our moral sensibilities are called forth” accordance with morality. In other remarks, (1811: ii.437), and argued that it is of the he suggested that aesthetic experience could utmost “consequence in the education of the be cognitively relevant to morality: we take an Young, to encourage their instinctive taste for interest in the beauty of nature, Kant argued, the Beauty and Sublimity of Nature.” “It is to as a sign that nature is amenable to the real- provide them,” he continued, ization of our objectives in general, but foremost our moral objectives, an assumption we need to amid all the agitations and trials of society, with be able to make in order to pursue our moral one gentle and unreproaching friend, whose voice is ever in alliance with goodness and virtue, and objectives rationally (§42), and we take the which . . . is able both to sooth misfortune, and to beautiful as a symbol of the morally good reclaim from folly. It is to identify them with the because of analogies between our experience of happiness of that Nature to which they belong; to beauty and key elements of morality, especially give them an interest in every species of being between the freedom of the imagination in which surrounds them; and, amid the hours of aesthetic experience and the freedom of the curiosity and delight, to awaken those latent feel- will in moral action (§59). Kant never argued ings of benevolence and sympathy, from which all that aesthetic sensitivity is a necessary condi- the moral or intellectual greatness of man finally tion of morality, but he did argue that it is only arises. (1811: ii.447) insofar as aesthetic experience is conducive to Alison’s confidence in the value of the aes- morality that we have a right to demand taste thetic stimulation of moral sentiments depended from others “as if it were a duty” (§40). Even on his acceptance of the British view that if it is conceded that aesthetic sensitivity is moral sentiments are the foundation of virtue. conducive to morality, however, it is not evident After an early dalliance, Kant firmly rejected that all must enjoy the same objects of taste in the attempt to ground the principles of moral- order to derive these moral benefits, thus that ity on sentiment, but neither did he attack Kant’s analysis of the moral benefits of aes- the moral value of aesthetic experience like thetic experience depends on or contributes Rousseau did; he offered a more nuanced to the success of his deduction of judgments assessment of the moral value of aesthetic of taste (for a contrary view, see Savile 1987: experience (see Guyer 1993: ch. 1). While he ch. 6).

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Schiller, as already noted, did assert that (1766), in turn criticized by Herder in his aesthetic education is a necessary condition of first Critical Forest (1769) and his essay on successful moral development and the resolu- Sculpture (1778); the classification or “system” tion of the outstanding political tensions of of the fine arts, a topic for nearly every aesthetic modernity (for his analysis of the latter, see treatise in the century (see Kristeller 1965); esp. 1967: Letter VI). When he came to details, the nature of artistic creation or genius however, what he actually argued is that (Gerard 1966 [1774] was the target for Kant’s cultivation of the key ability necessary for theory); and more. Many of those topics are the appreciation of beauty, especially in art, engaged in individual entries; the topics dis- namely, the ability to be sensitive to both gen- cussed here are only the most general issues for eral principles and the particularities of the eighteenth-century aesthetics. object before one at the same time, is also con- ducive to the development of that ability for See also aesthetic attitude; aesthetic educa- application in both scientific and especially tion; aesthetic judgment; aesthetic properties; moral contexts. The appreciation of the beau- baumgarten; beauty; burke; formalism; func- tiful requires both “receptivity” and “activity,” tion of art; hume; hutcheson; kant; lessing; both sensitivity to particulars and the ability schiller; shaftesbury; sublime; theories of to abstract general principles out of particu- art. lars, and so does successful action elsewhere, but especially in morality: the “culture” or educa- bibliography tion of the human being “will therefore consist, firstly, in creating for his receptive faculty the Primary sources most manifold contacts with the world . . . Addison, Joseph & Steele, Richard. 1965 secondly, in acquiring for the determining [1712–15]. The Spectator. D. F. Bond (ed.). Oxford: faculty the utmost independence from the Clarendon. receptive and intensifying activity on the side Alison, Archibald. 1811. Essays on the Nature and of reason to the utmost. Where both these Principles of Taste. 2 vols. 2nd edn. Edinburgh: Bell & Bradfute. qualities are united, then will the human being Ashfield, Andrew & de Bolla, Peter (eds.). 1996. combine the utmost independence and free- The Sublime: A Reader in British Eighteenth- dom with the utmost fullness of existence” Century Aesthetic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge (Letter XIII; 1967: 86–7). But Schiller did not University Press. actually attempt to prove that this goal can Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb. 1983 [1735]. be accomplished only through aesthetic edu- Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema cation, and not directly through scientific pertinentibus. H. Paetzold (ed.). Hamburg: Meiner. or moral education, so all that he actually Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb. 2007 [1750–8]. proved, like Kant, is that aesthetic education may Aesthetica. D. Mirbach (ed.). 2 vols. Hamburg: be conducive to morality. But both certainly Meiner. Beattie, James. 2004. Selected Philosophical Writings. argued against Rousseau that the cultivation J. A. Harris (ed.). Exeter: Imprint Academic. of aesthetic sensitivity need not be in tension Burke, Edmund. 1958 [1759]. A Philosophical with the demands of morality, and under Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and proper conditions may be helpful to morality. Beautiful. J. T. Boulton (ed.). 2nd edn. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. * Diderot, Denis. 1966 [1752]. “On the Origin and Nature of the Beautiful.” In Diderot’s There are many other themes and issues in Selected Writings. L. G. Crocker (ed.). New York: eighteenth-century aesthetics worthy of dis- Macmillan. cussion, including the paradox of tragedy, first Diderot, Denis. 1995. Diderot on Art. J. Goodman (trans.). 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press. named by Du Bos and then discussed by Du Bos, Jean-Baptise. 1748. Critical Reflections on Kames, Hume, Mendelssohn, and many others; Poetry, Painting and Music. T. Nugent (trans.). 3 vols. the differences among artistic media, the sub- London: John Nourse. ject of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s (1729–81) Gerard, Alexander. 1966 [1774]. An Essay on critique of Winckelmann in his Laocoön Genius. B. Fabian (ed.). Munich: Wilhelm Fink.

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Gerard, Alexander. 1978 [1780]. An Essay on Taste. Schiller, Friedrich. 1967 [1795]. Letters on the W. J. Hipple (ed.). 3rd edn. Delmar: Scholars’ Aesthetic Education of Man. E. M. Wilkinson & E. M. Facsimiles & Reprints. Willoughby (trans.). Oxford: Clarendon. Herder, Johann Gottfried. 1985 [1773]. Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of. “Shakespeare.” Joyce P. Crick (trans.). In German 1999 [1713]. Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Aesthetic and Literary Criticism: Winckelmann, Opinions, Times. L. E. Klein (ed.). Cambridge: Lessing, Hamann, Herder, Schiller, Goethe. H. B. Cambridge University Press. Nisbet (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Stewart, Dugald. 1811 [1810]. Philosophical Essays. Press, 161–76. Philadelphia: Anthony Finley. Herder, Johann Gottfried. 2002 [1778]. Sculpture: Sulzer, Johann Georg. 1994 [1771–4; enlarged 2nd Some Observations on Shape and Form from edn. 1792–4]. Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste. Pygmalion’s Creative Dream. J. Gaiger (ed. & trans.). 4 vols. G. Tonelli (ed.). Hildesheim: Georg Olms. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wolff, Christian. 2003 [1751]. Vernünftige Gedancken Herder, Johann Gottfried. 2006 [1769]. “First von Gott, der Welt, und der Seele des Menschen. New Critical Forest.” In Selected Writings on Aesthetics. edn. in Metapysica Tedesca. R. Ciafardone (ed.). G. Moore (ed. & trans.). Princeton: Princeton Milan: Bompiani. University Press. Hume, David. 1987 [1777]. Essays Moral, Political, Secondary sources and Literary. Final edn. E. F. Miller (ed.). Allison, Henry E. 2001. Kant’s Theory of Taste: Indianpolis: Liberty Fund. A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Hume, David. 1998 [1751]. An Enquiry concerning Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. the Principles of Morals. T. L. Beauchamp (ed.). Carroll, Noël. 1984. “Hume’s Standard of Taste,” Oxford: Clarendon. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 43, 181–94. Hume, David. 2000 [1739–40]. A Treatise of Human Costelloe, Timothy M. 2007. Aesthetics and Morals in Nature. D. Fate & M. J. Norton (eds.). Oxford: the Philosophy of David Hume. London: Routledge. Oxford University Press. Crawford, Donald W. 1974. Kant’s Aesthetic Theory. Hutcheson, Francis. 2004 [1725]. An Inquiry into Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. Dickie, George. 1996. The Century of Taste: The W. Leidhold (ed.). Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Philosophical Odyssey of Taste in the Eighteenth Kames, Henry Home, Lord. 2005a [1751]. Essays Century. New York: Oxford University Press. on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion. Eagleton, Terry. 1990. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. M. C. Moran (ed.). Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Kames, Henry Home, Lord. 2005b [1785]. Elements Ferry, Luc. 1993. Homo Aestheticus: The Invention of of Criticism. 6th edn. P. Jones (ed.). Indianapolis: Taste in the Democratic Age. R. de Loaiza (trans.). Liberty Fund. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1996 [1797]. Metaphysics of Guyer, Paul. 1979. Kant and the Claims of Taste. Morals. In Practical Philosophy. M. J. Gregor (ed. & Rev. edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1997. Kant, Immanuel. 2000 [1790]. The Critique of Guyer, Paul. 1993. Kant and the Experience of the Power of Judgment. P. Guyer (ed.). P. Guyer Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. & E. Matthews (trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge Guyer, Paul. 2005. Values of Beauty: Historical University Press. Essays in Aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge Longinus. 1964 [1743]. Dionysius Longinus on the University Press. Sublime. D. A. Russell (ed.). W. Smith (trans.). Guyer, Paul. 2008. Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Oxford: Clarendon. Kant’s Response to Hume. Princeton: Princeton Meier, Georg Friedrich. 1999–2002. Frühe Schriften zur University Press. ästhetischen Erziehung der Deutschen. H.-J. Kertscher Kivy, Peter. 1967. “Hume’s Standard of Taste: & G. Schenk (eds.). 3 vols. Halle: Hallescher. Breaking the Circle,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 7, Mendelssohn, Moses. 1997 [1761]. Philosophical 57–66. Writings. D. O. Dahlstrom (ed.). Cambridge: Kivy, Peter. 2003. The Seventh Sense: Francis Cambridge University Press. Hutcheson and Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetics. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 2004 [1758]. Letter to 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon. d’Alembert on the Theater. In Collected Writings of Korsmeyer, Carolyn. 1976. “Hume and the Rousseau, vol. x: Letter to D’Alembert and Writings Foundations of Taste,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art for the Theater. A. Bloom, C. Butterworth, & C. Criticism, 35, 201–15. Kelly (eds. & trans.). Hanover: University Press of Kristeller, Paul Oskar. 1965 [1951–2]. “The Modern New England. System of the Arts.” In Renaissance Thought and the

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Arts: Collected Essays. Princeton: Princeton To delineate this famous principle’s proper University Press, 163–227. bounds, Kant distinguishes between two kinds Monk, Samuel. 1935. The Sublime. 2nd edn. Ann of pleasures, namely, those whose source and Arbor: University of Michigan Press. content is essentially sensory, and those that Rogerson, Kenneth F. 1986. Kant’s Aesthetics: The Role issue exclusively from our nonsensory, intel- and Form of Expression. Lanham: University Press lectual functions. He associates de gustibus non of America. Savile, Anthony. 1987. Aesthetic Reconstructions: est disputandum with sensory pleasures, since The Seminal Writings of Lessing, Kant and Schiller. people’s taste, hearing, visual, olfactory, and Oxford: Blackwell. tactile sensitivities differ physiologically, and Townsend, Dabney. 2001. Hume’s Aesthetic Theory: since these variations undermine meaningful Taste and Sentiment. London: Routledge. discussion about the shared, objective quality Zammito, John. 1992. The Genesis of Kant’s Critique of some food, drink, sound quality, color con- of Judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. trast, perfume, etc. Zelle, Carsten, 1995. Die doppelte Ästhetik der Among nonsensory pleasures, Kant recog- Moderne: Revisionen des Schönen von Boileau bis nizes a special kind of intellectually grounded Nietzsche. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler. pleasure that occurs when our mind is well paul guyer tuned toward knowing some object in a factual or scientific sense, that is, when we are dis- posed to categorize it as a thing of a certain kind nineteenth- and twentieth-century Con- and to locate it within our system of knowledge. tinental aesthetics sets forth from Immanuel This pleasure becomes salient, he believes, Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment – a when we reflect disinterestedly and exclus- master text that appeared one year after the lead- ively on the rational, systematic quality of an ing inspirational event of the age, the French object’s design, while disregarding what type of Revolution. Subsequent to France’s 1789 object it is. To appreciate a rose’s pure beauty, upheaval, Europe saw the rise of Napoleon, the we need know neither what kind of flower it is, advance of the industrial revolution, the devel- nor that it is a flower at all, since here, only the opment of photography, the emergence of the impact of the object’s design determines its life sciences, Charles Darwin’s evolutionary pure beauty. theory, Karl Marx’s communism, Sigmund Kant’s restriction of pure beauty to an Freud’s psychoanalysis, the twentieth cen- object’s spatial and/or temporal design may tury’s two devastating world wars, and the tur- seem austere and contrary to how we judge bulent events of 1968, all of which influenced an object’s beauty. In the case of the rose, we Continental aesthetics during this 200-year would ordinarily consider its formal design, period, as the Age of Progress passed into the but also equally its pastel color, its soft texture, Age of Language. its delicate aroma and perhaps its feminine or love-related symbolic quality. Notwithstanding kantianism and neoclassicism these associations, Kant has some sharp reasons Kant’s third Critique – the Critique of the Power for setting them aside in judgments of pure of Judgment (1790) – begins our presentation, beauty. although it lies thematically near the end of Specifically, his motivation and rationale is Kant’s philosophy. This work follows the epistemological: Kant needs to identify a set of Critique of Pure Reason (1781–7) and Critique of perceivable features that everyone can uni- Practical Reason (1788), which reveal the uni- formly recognize, and he realizes that this can- versal foundations of empirical knowledge and not include the charming qualities of tastes, morality respectively. The third Critique’s topic odors, sounds, or colors, since these vary with is beauty and teleology, and its aesthetics cir- individual structures of the tongue, nose, ears, cumscribes the principle, de gustibus non est dis- and eyes. More promising are intersubjectively putandum (there is no disputing about taste) invariant, geometrical and arithmetical fea- to establish universal foundations for object- tures, for whether you, or I, or someone else per- ive, discussion-amenable differences of opinion ceives a square as such, its four sides will be equal about pure beauty. and the notion of aesthetic balance will apply

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historical overviews to each of our experiences. By restricting judg- apply Kant’s aesthetics to social philosophy. ments of pure beauty to the contemplation of Schiller writes with distress in view of how the spatial and/or temporal forms, Kant estab- French Revolution degenerated into tyranny, lishes an objective, universally shared basis and he concludes that the 1793–4 Reign of for agreement and disagreement about pure Terror could have been prevented, had people’s beauty, and he shows how a thoroughgoing mentalities been more balanced between their relativism in reference to such judgments is instinctual and moral sides. To him, the French not necessary. revolutionaries were neither mature nor civilized The formal systematicity of purely beauti- enough to manage their newly found power ful designs is at the basis of some parallels responsibly. between judgments of pure beauty and judg- Hoping to foster a spiritual balance in future ments of moral value. First, Kant regards both generations, Schiller prescribes an “aesthetic types of judgment as universal, disinterested, education” that highlights the awareness of freedom-related, and based on an immediate beauty, assuming with Kant, that beauty satisfaction, and claims accordingly that beauty mediates between our sensuous and our moral is the symbol of morality. Second, the formal faculties. He believes that beauty can intro- systematicity of beautiful objects structurally duce a more idealizing and civilizing content into parallels the system of moral laws, and beauty sensation and instinct, while also providing symbolizes morality in this further sense. a concrete place for abstract, rational, moral Human beauty is among the most influential ideas to adhere, so they can come into closer con- intersections between beauty and morality tact with our sensuous, instinctual side. in Kant’s aesthetics. He observes that when we Schiller’s faith is that the cultivation of contemplate the beauty of a human form, but character through beauty will give rise to a judge it abstractly as a pure design without beautiful soul – a harmonious spiritual con- respecting that the form is specifically human, dition where instinctual and rational sides pure beauty and morality can clash. Human are coordinated and mutually supportive, and beings deserve unconditional respect accord- whose realization helps facilitate a social world ing to Kant, and if we do not aesthetically that is agreeable, nonoppressive and free. A appreciate a human being explicitly as a person with a beautiful soul acts with energy, human, we introduce the possibility of neglect- grace, composure, dignity, and proportion, ing our moral dictate to treat the humanity in and displays the threefold integration of nat- everyone as an end in itself, and not merely as ural instinct, beauty, and morality. Schiller a means to some other end. This would occur envisioned that a population of beautifully if the human form were decorated with purely composed people could promote an ideally beautiful designs that obscure or conflict with structured society, much as Plato imagined, natural, morally expressive, bodily forms, as and, indeed, Schiller’s celebratory impression of Kant believes happens in the case of heavily ancient Greek civilization underlies his model of tattooed faces. Human beauty requires that we the beautiful soul. always take the concept of the human being This neoclassical vision flows into G. W. F. into account, and that our judgment respect, Hegel’s Lectures on Fine Art, which were given depend on, or adhere to that concept, and not at the University of Berlin in the 1820s. Like contradict it. Schiller, Hegel espouses the integration of the Kant’s aesthetics has been described at some human personality and society, but within a length, since his association between empirical wider quest to organize all knowledge into a knowledge, beauty, and morality is the origin single, rational and living totality. Part of his of a long line of Continental aesthetic philo- insight is to realize that this grand integration sophizing. His influence predominates in the requires a historical perspective and philo- neoclassical tradition, and it also affects the sophy of history where each time period’s main history of romanticism and expressionism. ideas are set next to those of their predecessors The neoclassical influence is immediately dis- and successors to comprise a whole, much cernible in Friedrich Schiller’s writings, whose like a tree or animal that grows in successive Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795) stages. Hegel uses the bud–blossom–fruit

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nineteenth- and twentieth-century continental aesthetics image to convey his teleological ideas, and cultural values accords with Hegel’s end of art asserts that we contemporaries are, at least thesis and philosophy of history. to date, the most mature, self-aware beings the The ruling notions of the nineteenth cen- cosmos has yet produced. tury include those of historical progress and Within this developmental, quasi-biological goal-orientedness, and they express the form framework, Hegel regards beauty, along with in which the concept of “life” enters into the religion and philosophy, as expressive of a cul- cultural spirit at the end of the 1700s, as it con- ture’s highest interests. Following Kant and veys ideas of growth, developmental stages, Schiller, he arranges art, religion, and philo- ascending and descending patterns, organic sophy in a developmental sequence that begins unity, and, in some instances, dialectical with the sensuous sphere, and ascends gradu- development. Well within this optimistic atmo- ally in an increasingly reflective, conceptually sphere, Karl Marx develops a social theory abstract and nonsensory path. The three- based on material activity and economic rela- dimensional, sensuous expression of meta- tionships, claiming that after society passes physical knowledge is the task of art; the more through feudal and capitalistic stages, a future inward, feeling-oriented, mental-imagistic ex- communal, mature, and more realistic social pressions of metaphysical knowledge are the stage will emerge where exploitation and work of religion; fully abstracted, nonsensuous selfish profiteering will become a thing of the knowledge is the goal of philosophy. Ancient past. Greek culture was ideal for art’s realization; Art’s place within Marx’s historical progress Christian medieval Europe was the prime soil for compares to Hegel’s conception: the art of each religion. Philosophy’s era remains that of the historical time period expresses the social and French Revolution and thereafter. Such a economic realities of the time, either reinforc- schema explains why twentieth-century art is ing them or pointing beyond them in support highly philosophical, where we witness art of revolution and social change. Hegel and about art, writing about writing, painting Marx advocate different metaphysical theories, about paint, conceptual art, artworks that but they share the legacy of Kant’s ideal social make philosophical statements, and related order where harmony and respect prevails, artistic phenomena. and where a heavenly condition is held to be Perceivable, rational forms predominate in a virtual inevitability in an upcoming kingdom Hegel’s conception of beauty, and he describes of ends. ideally beautiful objects as standing before At the close of the nineteenth century, we their audiences like the statues of the ancient find Leo Tolstoy’s aesthetic theory continuing gods, filled with meaning, surrounded by a to resonate with the soon-to-fade notion of holy aura, and exuding tranquillity, content- historical progress. In What is Art? (1897), ment, emotional control, and inner bliss. Since Tolstoy writes that art’s main purpose is to his philosophy of history regards the human communicate emotion, whereas language’s is spirit as becoming more reflective after the to communicate ideas. The more effective an art- decline of ancient Greek civilization, and artis- work is at infecting others with the emotion the tic culture as giving way to a more inward, artist experienced, the better the artwork is as feeling-oriented Christian world as the pre- art. Invoking the communication of brotherly, dominant way to express the newly emerging Christian love through art, Tolstoy adds that the social interests, he states that in this day and age, more effectively an artwork conveys socially artworks lack the cultural impact they once integrating love, the better it is in terms of had. This is the “end of art,” not in the sense its content. He envisages a world united by that artistic production has ceased or will Christian values and maintains that art’s high- cease, but in the sense that art’s cultural est purpose is to convey those values. In the significance has been overshadowed by reli- course of this account, he celebrates folk art and gious and philosophical modes of expression. For popular art, and condemns elitist, socially divi- Hegel, natural science counts as a rudimen- sive art, which for him includes Beethoven’s tary philosophical mode of expression, so con- symphonies, opera, and ballet, whose usual temporary science’s role as a source of leading audiences are wealthy and privileged.

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During the twentieth century, neoclassical bodies in a sublime experience, Kant maintains ideals extend into the 1930s as one of the that we apprehend yet another aspect of our- cornerstones of the National Socialists’ theory selves that withstands all sensory limits and of art. Echoing Schiller’s beautiful soul with its threats – viz., our reason and moral essence – classical proportions, and adding content from and that signals how our moral constitution is Marx’s communist ideal with its strong con- unconditional, how it transcends the sensory nection to the earth and to work, the Nazis world, and how it renders the sensory world, life, advocate healthy bodies; willful minds; power- and death meaningless without its presence. ful, athletic men; and enduring, fertile women Kant associates morality not only with beauty who bear children and remain at home to but with sublimity, and his aesthetic theory raise them in a traditional family setting. aims to reinforce our moral awareness through They advocate these values, however, with an both types of aesthetic experience. extraordinarily prejudicial restriction to dis- Kant stands only at the outset of this devel- tinctively German versions of them, and a opment, however, for a sublime experience hard exclusion, not to mention murderous per- also creates psychological tension, typically secution, of competing aesthetic mentalities between our desire to protect ourselves from and individuals. Nazi aesthetics takes the com- danger and our desire for intense aesthetic bination of neoclassical and earth-centered experiences. In pursuit of the sublime, a person ideals to a vicious extreme, where the nine- will edge closer and closer to a thunderstorm or teenth-century Greek revival images related tornado to feel the thrill of the powerful natu- to bodily proportions, health, and balance ral energies, to the point where the strong like- between instinct and reason receive a nation- lihood of being hurt or, worse, death halts the alistic presentation, and where without reser- advance. Reason is no longer the center or end vation, all competing alternatives are marked of the sublime experience, for it becomes over- for subjugation or annihilation. shadowed by a life-invigorating enthusiasm that welcomes pain and danger to our physical sublimity and the rise of instinct wellbeing. The experience compares to that of Although progress is among the leading nine- the moth, whose excitement increases as it teenth-century historical themes, it is not the draws closer to a bright fire that, if it comes too most long-ranging in Continental aesthetic close, will also incinerate it. theory’s trajectory from the nineteenth into Sublime experiences accordingly promote a the twentieth century. To appreciate the origins conception of life that is more bursting with of this more sustained theme, we can recall instinct, feelings of expansion, irrationality, Kant’s theory of the sublime, and how life’s the surging of power, and unconscious energies. aspects accord not only with rationality, pro- No later than a decade after Kant’s third portion, systematicity, organic unity, and Critique, the notion of the unconscious enters development, but involve powerful and stand- into aesthetic theorizing in F. W. J. Schelling’s ing instinctual forces as well – forces that can description of the artistic genius in his System spin out of control at any given time within a of Transcendental Idealism (1800). Here, the developmental process. genius is a cosmic figure who embodies a pri- Kant observes that the experience of the mordial synthesis and “infinite contradiction” sublime arises in relation to objects perceived to of unconscious and conscious energies, and be very large or very powerful. Both lead us to who works those energies into the fabric of a apprehend our physical being’s limits, either great work of art. by bringing it to imaginative exhaustion, as Less than 20 years later, the unconscious when we try to trace the extent of infinite presents itself once more at the center of space or time, or by presenting it with possible Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy (c.1818) physical destruction and the loss of conscious- – a philosophy within which art is a vehicle ness, as when we encounter a threatening to achieve salvation from the frustrating pres- explosion, thunderstorm, whirlpool, precipice, sures of the unconscious, constantly driving or fall. Upon realizing the weakness of our Will. The Schopenhauerian artistic genius trans- imagination or the fragility of our physical cends the ordinary constraints of scientific

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nineteenth- and twentieth-century continental aesthetics reason to apprehend timeless truths, or Ideas, maintains that artistic activity, like meta- which he or she then reproduces in artworks to phor-filled dreams, is the refined, moderated, communicate to others, helping them toward legitimized, morally digestible expression of their own salvation. The goal is to spread meta- aggressive, reproductive, frightening, uncon- physical knowledge and tranquility through scious, repulsive, and socially confusing ener- the presentation of idealized images that lift a gies. His 1908 essay “The Relation of the Poet person out of the stream of mundane, persistent to Daydreaming” encapsulates his position. striving. Artistic activity and artistic perception Schopenhauer complements his aesthetics reveal basic psychological structures, and they of the visual and literary arts with an independ- express and dissipate psychological tensions. ent characterization of music as the direct Freud maintains that we all experience aggres- reflection of the Will, claiming that when we sion toward our same-sexed parent, for example, listen to music we experience an interplay of and that in the paradigm case of Shakespeare’s universal forces, fused with the detached forms Hamlet, the latter’s well-known hesitation to of human emotion. His theory of music is an bring his uncle to justice after the latter had instance in nineteenth-century Continental poisoned his beloved father and usurped his aesthetics where literalistic modes of thought are throne is easily explained, along with our satis- subordinated to artistic modes within the con- faction in reading the play (The Interpretation text of an aesthetic experience that conveys of Dreams, 1900). Throughout the work, metaphysical knowledge. Hamlet might want to kill his uncle to balance Friedrich Nietzsche revalues Schopenhauer’s the scales, but he also feels a positive attrac- metaphysical Will by venerating, rather than tion to him, for it is none other than his uncle deprecating, the feral, creative and destructive who does exactly what Hamlet unconsciously energies that surge through us, adding that always wished to do, namely, kill his father these energies can be artistically tempered, and marry his mother. Hence we find Hamlet sublimated, and civilized through our rational suspended in indecision throughout the play, powers of organization and idealization. In The torn between two opposing desires. Birth of Tragedy (1872), he states that ancient Freud’s and Nietzsche’s theories inform Greek art achieved this balance to perfection, the twentieth-century Surrealists of the 1920s echoing Schiller’s laudatory attitude toward and 1930s. As we read in André Breton’s the Greeks. In contrast to Kant, however, Surrealist manifesto of 1924, the Surrealists Nietzsche no longer describes the sublime as an are interested in freedom, and are intent on aesthetic indicator of reason and morality, but painting dreamscapes that arise from the as a way to present overwhelming natural unconscious and on supplementing these forces, both inner and outer, as manageably tem- with the psychoanalytically inspired methods pered by reason. Nietzsche wants to listen to, and of automatic writing. In such writing, one to feel the energies of life surging through all records the first, often seemingly random, things in what amounts to a maximally sublime, thoughts that enter one’s mind to reveal the virtually superhuman experience, without hav- psychological reality of one’s unconscious life. ing these energies break him into a thousand Virtual kin to the Dada artists who preceded pieces. Like Schopenhauer, he is concerned to them, the Surrealists likewise regarded ratio- explore what it feels like to be within another nality as an impediment to the expression of psy- person’s or entity’s perspective, and this leads chological truth, and as a sinister force in its him to downplay literalistic modes of expression instrumental guise as the genius behind military in favor of literary, metaphor-filled ones in the weaponry. majority of his works. Although the assumption is now often Sigmund Freud’s ideas on art closely follow questioned, emotion and reason have been Nietzsche’s, except that Freud translates them conceived as distinct and opposed forces for into a more clinical, psychologically oriented centuries. This division allows us to interpret framework. Freud similarly identifies an in- turn-of-the-century expressionism as a fur- stinctual source of life energy – later (c.1920) ther extension of Schelling’s, Schopenhauer’s, referred to as the “it” (das Es) or Id – and Nietzsche’s, and Freud’s combined interest in

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historical overviews nonrational energies. Schopenhauer’s theory the Novel.” Employing the notion of “hetero- of music is particularly revealing, since it glossia,” he emphasizes how literary works – anticipates Vassily Kandinsky’s view in Con- especially the novel – employ internal conflict cerning the Spiritual in Art (1911) that the between a variety of discourses to achieve their function of painting is to express subtle emotions, aesthetic impact. and that these emotions have a metaphysical or spiritual content. Kandinsky explores the ana- historical concreteness, hermeneutics, logy between music and color, where colors and modernity are the like a piano’s keyboard, our eyes, its The enthusiastic attention to life and its attend- hammers, and the soul, the piano itself that ant concepts that begins during the 1790s sounds with its many strings. Each color and becomes salient thereafter, helps define a has its symbolic and associative content for new spirit of an age within which we arguably Kandinsky, and he prescribes the use of color in still remain. The prevailing attitude involves painting as a means to convey emotion, con- surveying a subject – whether it happens to be sistent with how Tolstoy imagines the formal a rock, plant, animal, discourse, social structure, purpose of art. or academic discipline – and understanding it Martin Heidegger’s aesthetics enters at this in terms of its historical antecedents and pro- juncture as a twentieth-century version of the jected historical path. Historical order replaces position that art reveals metaphysical truth, abstract logical order, and instead of conceiv- and that this truth is not reducible to formulas, ing of some animal, for example, by means of concepts, or definitions. As he writes in “The a definition of the animal’s species, we con- Origin of the Work of Art” (1935, and later sider the animal in terms of its developmental revised), a Greek temple is a meaning-rich arti- stages, physiology, ancestors, and future fact that exudes and discloses the ancient potentialities. Greek world of which it was an integral part. Like When intensified, the focus on historical a person’s unconscious, this perpetually resonant considerations transforms into an attitude world is too complex and profound to be cap- where a privileged value attaches to the imme- tured in formulas or to be rendered fully diate moment, its rich perceptual detail, and explicit. The embodied Greek world discloses its inherent fluctuation, with the effect of sub- itself, but always only partially, as it stands ordinating more static, idealized, conceptual- shrouded in layers of mystery, owing to our ized and abstracted approaches to experience. finite location in history and our limited In nineteenth-century Continental aesthetics, knowledge. this attitude is discernible in a variety of the- Elaborating and enhancing Heidegger’s ories and movements that include Søren notion of “world” through a French phe- Kierkegaard’s 1840s characterization of the nomenological lens, are Mikel Dufrenne’s aesthetic mentality, Gustave Courbet’s Realist discussions in The Phenomenology of Aesthetic writings of the 1860s, the French Impres- Experience (1953), which also address the sionist painters’ 1870s emphasis on the imme- nature of aesthetic experience and the work of diately perceived moment, the Pointillist art. Dufrenne’s approach compares to, and is pre- painters’ emphasis on the same in the 1880s, ceded by the work of one of Edmund Husserl’s and the decadent movement’s lush, sensory finest students, the Polish aesthetician, Roman self-indulgence of the 1880s and 1890s. Ingarden, who is known for his 1931 study, The Despite their differences, these aesthetic per- Literary Work of Art. Ingarden analytically spectives share a preference for immediately stratifies the literary work of art into four perceivable subject matter, an attention to levels of signification, and characterizes aes- perceptual detail for its own sake, a tendency thetic value, and the work itself, as a poly- toward superficiality, a reluctance to present phonic harmony between these strata. grand philosophical ideas, and an increasing Contrasting with Ingarden’s proposal that disengagement from moral issues. They also literary value arises from a harmony between invert the academic hierarchy of genres pre- strata of meaning, Mikhail Bakhtin provides valent since the 1600s, where history painting an alternative in his 1934 article, “Discourse in is the most respected, followed by scenes from

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nineteenth- and twentieth-century continental aesthetics everyday life, portraits, landscapes, and, most The nineteenth century’s greater attentive- insignificantly, still lifes. ness to historical presence was a factor in Contributing to the perceptual atmosphere the widespread spiritual crisis that had been is the continued influence of morally and threatening traditional moral values since politically neutral scientific thinking, paradig- the beginning of that century. In the early matic during the seventeenth and eighteenth decades, efforts to resurrect Greek ideals in centuries, in its close attention to physical an attempt to reinvigorate the culture pre- phenomena and its mathematical, quantitative vailed in Germany. The initial spark was set by approach. Pointillism in French painting is an the eighteenth-century art historian, Johann example: resonating with the late seventeenth- Winckelmann, whose History of Ancient Art and early eighteenth-century British empiricist (1764) introduced an image of classical Greek theories of knowledge that took simple sensory and Roman sculpture into German culture impressions as foundational, later painters that was both informed and highly idealized. such as Georges Seurat (1859–91) and Paul Goethe, Schiller, Schelling, and later Nietzsche Signac (1863–1935) divide color analytically helped realize this renaissance, but hermeneu- into its elemental points, and juxtapose these tical reflections soon made it obvious that each points on the canvas so that they can mix visu- person is a child of his or her historical age, and ally in the eye for a more intense aesthetic that a complete Greek revival was impossible. experience. The French Impressionists used There seemed to be no choice but to be similar techniques. modern, for as historical awareness increases, Although academic painting sustained its traditional strategies for attaining salvation polished and idealizing presence during the lose their attractiveness: one cannot revive nineteenth century in figures such as Jean- the ancient Greeks, or the garden of Eden, or the Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and later William- days of the noble savage, for their times have Adolphe Bouguereau, it nonetheless gave way passed; neither can one live in the future, since to the Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and the future is never present. Otherworldly heav- Expressionist movements. Writing in 1945 ens also turn to gray, as their inaccessibility from a phenomenological standpoint in his undermines their believability. Only the pre- essay, “Cezanne’s Doubt,” Maurice Merleau- sent moment remains from which to derive Ponty describes Cezanne’s Post-Impressionist life’s value, and although this present is vibrant, works as prime examples of this down-to-earth it is continually reappearing, is permeated with attitude, citing his ability to attend closely to the accidental properties, is not moving clearly in immediately presented qualities of the visual any direction, and seems to be thin on reliable experience in his landscapes, portraits, and in universal structure, noticeably within the social particular, his still lifes. sphere. With a stronger emphasis on an indi- The discovery of photography (c.1826, vidual’s contingent existence, God becomes but becoming more popular by the 1840s) less of a reality, along with moral values and also influenced these developments insofar as expectations of salvation or punishment in an photographs capture the moment and present afterlife. Nihilistic feelings eventually emerge, the exact details of an object or scene. Photo- leading either to despair, to a decadent immer- graphy’s power to capture exact detail motiv- sion in sensory detail, to a compromising con- ated aspiring artists to break away from tentment with a middle class existence, or to an preconceived, cartoon-like procedures of how to effort to find salvation in creating something paint objects, and to paint them less schemati- absolutely new. cally in a more experientially faithful manner. Kierkegaard’s writings integrate these ideas Initially painting captured light effects better, illuminatingly. His description of the aesthetic but by the end of the century the availability character in Either/Or (1843) represents one and improvement of photographic methods led extreme: the self-centered aesthete revels in painters to explore the expressive powers of sensory detail, cares little for others, and is painting beyond what photographs could con- bored, cynical, and directionless. Complement- vey, and this contributed to the development of ing this is the religious character – described Expressionism. in Fear and Trembling (1843) and Concluding

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Unscientific Postscript (1846) – who, longing This dual-aspected hermeneutical aware- for contact with something absolute within a ness intensifies during the nineteenth century world of contingency, discovers the sublime and comes to a head in Martin Heidegger’s power of personal choice, and learns to savor Being and Time (1927), where he explains how the thrilling, anxiety-filled, nonrational experi- understanding always presupposes a set of ence of making ungrounded choices, or leaps of background assumptions that prefigure what- faith, that maximize creativity and personal ever we are trying to understand. Everyone is responsibility. born into a specific time period, culture, and lan- Implicitly postulated here is an absolute guage, and these factors constitute the back- freedom that enables one to interpret the world ground to any given interpretation. Even if we as one wills, to change one’s personality, one’s were to replicate the exact sonic stimuli that values, or one’s lifestyle. Jean-Paul Sartre later some musical audience member experienced strikes this existentialist keynote in his early three centuries ago, for example, this would philosophy, where he also combines an inter- not suffice to generate the same experience as est in appreciating sensory detail to its fullest and that of that past listener, for our contemporary sometimes most frightening aspects (Nausea, presuppositions about how music should sound 1938) with the presence of absolute freedom inevitably affect our experience. Heidegger (Being and Nothingness, 1943). articulates these considerations in 1927, and Kierkegaard prefigures Sartre’s existential- in 1960 his faithful student, Hans-Georg ism and reveals at a relatively early date (the Gadamer, develops them at length in the 1840s) an attitude that plots the course for hermeneutic and aesthetic theory he sets forth Continental aesthetic theories of the first few in Truth and Method – a book that incidentally decades of the twentieth century. This is the criticizes Kant’s aesthetics for not having modernist quest for what is new, where one rids secured a rich enough place for taste to be a oneself of antecedent trappings, tradition, and vehicle of knowledge. ornamentation. Individuality is paramount, This Heideggerian hermeneutical awareness and objective universal rules that predeter- tempers the modernist quest to produce a new, mine one’s possibilities, for the most part, are tradition-free art. Soon realizing that cultural absent. tradition and language inheres in everyone When the notions of freedom and con- from the start, later theorists appreciate that the tingency dominate the cultural atmosphere, quest for the “new” always launches from theories emerge that ground themselves on within a given historical context. The modern- changeability, accidentality, and ultimately, ist project can be achieved only partially, in artifactuality, in the sense that artifacts are not other words, and only by acknowledging the natural products, but human constructions, very materials of the given historical and lin- typically the result of plans freely projected in guistic context from which one aims to break view of the whole. Although the modernist free. Rather than attempting impossibly to aesthetic prescribes a sharp break from the invent an entirely new language from scratch, past, an undercurrent of hermeneutic awareness one would speak poetically with the language – much like the one that undermines the early one already has. nineteenth-century efforts to institute a Greek Theodor Adorno’s aesthetic theory grows revival – yields a more tempered attitude out of these concerns, as he observes initially toward the possibility of becoming thoroughly that the majority of accepted contemporary modern. The situation is paradoxical: it is artworks have a strong commodity function impossible to resurrect the ancient Greeks or any that implicitly reinforces objectionable capital- other cultural milieu, for we must be our own ist forces. Adorno argues that genuine artworks contemporaries; it is impossible to be exclu- are autonomous, are relatively uncommon, sively modern, for we always import the effects are critical of market forces, are not produced of past tradition, given how tradition is the by the culture industry, and are antagonistic soil from which our contemporary attitudes toward an instrumental conception of ration- grow, whenever or wherever we happen to be ality that is in league with economic exploita- living. tion. Whether such autonomous artworks can

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nineteenth- and twentieth-century continental aesthetics withstand the social pressure to become com- intensification of historical awareness and the modified and absorbed into the oppressive eco- associated emphasis on contingency and indi- nomic system remains a looming question for viduality, it is a short step to the idea that, if every him, but he upholds the liberating ideal of object can be seen as an artwork, what seems works of art that stand as unique, and that to be natural and fixed can be reframed as a defy reductions to formulas and preexisting human artifact. linguistic categories. He emphasizes unique- A year earlier, Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course ness, individuality, and freedom, as these chal- in General Linguistics (1916) was posthumously lenge universal generalizations, regulations, published, to great effect. Its ideas immediately and predictable constancies. changed the course of linguistic theory, and In the 1936 essay, “The Work of Art in the within several decades it captured the interest Age of Its Technical Reproducibility,” Walter of French structuralist and poststructuralist Benjamin adopts a contrary line by associating theorists. Saussure’s claim is that linguistic an artwork’s perceived uniqueness, historic- signs are arbitrary, and that meanings arise ally generated social authority, and aura, with primarily from the interrelationships between the exploitative capitalist forces of tradition. the signs, rather than from the signs’ objective Benjamin’s view is that when an artwork is referents. Linguistic meaning is consequently mechanically reproduced, its widespread dupli- artificial and artifactual and, if we assume fur- cation breaks down its aura of elitism, thereby ther that human consciousness and the social making the general public or proletarian popu- order rely on language, the upshot – consistent lation familiar with the work and undermin- with an existentialist emphasis on freedom – is ing its elitist pretensions. Popular tabloids that that nothing is written in stone, that we can publish raw and unflattering photographs of radically change social structures, and that movie stars, taken while they are at home, in untold possibilities await us. restaurants, on vacation, without make-up, in With respect to Continental aesthetic the- ordinary clothing, etc., erode personal auras ory, such assumptions contribute to a sweep- in a comparably leveling way. ing change in the set of aesthetic values that are The juxtaposition of Adorno’s and generally invoked when judging the quality of Benjamin’s views on mechanical reproduction works of art. In accordance with both the idea raises the question of how best to understand that we inherit a linguistic tradition and must the dynamics of revolutionary art, since, con- acknowledge its parameters, and the thought tra Benjamin, the mechanical reproduction of that breaking through such parameters is the artworks can also assimilate them into the pre- path to greater freedom and truth, thinkers vailing culture and undermine how they stand such as Roland Barthes distinguish between critically against the status quo. Benjamin also texts that adhere to conventional styles and claims that film is advantageous because its values, and texts that challenge conventions temporal quality opposes the ossifying employ- with a promise of greater freedom (S/Z, 1970). ment of static concepts. Since the film’s images Writing toward a liberating end about the pass by quickly, however, there is often little “death of the author” in his 1968 essay of time to reflect on them, and the audience can the same name, he contests the authority of absorb their presentation without reflection. a text’s author to determine its meaning, and This becomes problematic when the films have portrays the author as an oppressive force. a propagandist agenda. Finally, in his 1977 inaugural lecture at the Collége de France, he describes literalistic, artifactuality, language, and liberation categorizing language itself as an oppressive When the French artist Marcel Duchamp force and prescribes that we employ constant submitted an ordinary, mass-produced urinal shifting and playfulness to loosen language’s to the Society of Independent Artists’ exhibi- freezing grip on us. tion in 1917, held in Manhattan, he signaled Michel Foucault similarly upholds authors that within the right context any object can who use poetic language to break through the be interpreted as a work of art. If we couple rigidities of linguistic convention, as in Death and this notion with the nineteenth-century the Labyrinth: The World of Raymond Roussel

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(1962) and Maurice Blanchot: The Thought from break through established conventions with Outside (1966). Also a champion of freedom, their novel modes of presentation. Such ideas, Foucault urges in a later interview (1982) that despite their visionary and challenging quality, we can turn our lives into a work of art essentially cohere with the aesthetic quest through creative self-discipline. Underlying his for individuality, autonomy, uniqueness, and view of art as liberation as well is the assump- nonassimilability that we see in earlier theorists, tion that society is an artifact, that social as we witness his attempts to overcome the values are conventional, and that creative effects of tradition through a variety of devices artistry is at the forefront of releasing us from that violate standard expectations. a conventional, oppressive attitude. Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze Following Barthes and Foucault, Jacques together call for the replacement of traditional Derrida produces some novel interpretative aesthetic values associated with closure and construals within the field of literary criticism, definitiveness, with values related to expan- assigning to language a pervasive presence, sion and innovation. Judged in traditional such that the world as a whole assumes a text- terms, the most valuable works of art ought to like quality and subsequently becomes subject be unified, coherent, well planned, determin- to literary criticism. His approach encapsulates ate, perspicuous in meaning, and, as a rule, the tendencies in Barthes and Foucault that associated with beauty. Alternatively, when are antagonistic to rigid meanings, for Derrida judged with an interest in undermining con- understands every linguistic presentation – and vention for the sake of expanding personal, we can recall Heidegger’s meaning-exuding social, and all types of interpretative horizons, Greek temple here – as harboring meanings the most valuable works of art ought to display that are in excess of the manifest meaning. a multiplicity of meaning; resist closure; dis- What remains unsaid, or what is said but only perse efforts to define single and definitive peripherally, provide him with keys to a text’s meanings; exhibit wittiness, playfulness, inde- inexhaustible layers of implicit meaning. terminacy, evocativeness, and sublimity; while Husserl’s phenomenology notes that we also resisting absorption into an indiscriminate cannot apprehend any object without con- linguistic sea. From the standpoint of these sidering a wider context against which it is set. alternative values, a new, seemingly profound, According to Freud’s method of interpreting and imaginatively resonant but ultimately dreams, the most apparently insignificant mistaken and misleading work would remain detail in a dream can be the definitive one. aesthetically preferable to a polished, beautiful, Such ideas enter into Derrida’s theory of inter- understandable, semantically circumscribed, pretation, where he shows how any given plausible, albeit less resonant one. artwork’s or text’s context and peripheral ele- The aesthetics of the sublime is at the crux of ments involve meanings that are in fact central this transition, for it encourages the propaga- to the work. Since contexts are as important as tion of limit-experiences that bring us to the edge the manifestly highlighted elements within of our given, standard, expected, entrenched, this perspective, Derrida’s thought prohibits or ordinary perspective, and that promise a exclusionary oppositions, where for instance, one horizon beyond our present one. This promise might naturally wish to distinguish between combats the despair of facing the deathly pos- a painting and its frame, where the latter is sibility – as Jean-François Lyotard mentions in considered to be nonessential and outside of several essays on the sublime from the 1980s the work. – that nothing further will happen. The sublime In an assortment of highly original writings, indicates a contemporary preference for trans- Gilles Deleuze accentuates the aesthetic value of cendence, expansion, revaluation of old values, innovation and bold imagination, not only in his newness, originality, novelty, evocativeness, prescriptions for art, but in his own texts, which shock quality, and often enough, terror and he fills with linguistic inventions. He believes that outrage. Continental aesthetics gravitates to the best literary works, for instance, ought to this point, as we reflect on how the nineteenth- appear as a foreign language that nonetheless century aesthetics of beauty transforms into inhabits a familiar linguistic context, as they the early twentieth-century aesthetics of

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twentieth-century anglo-american aesthetics expressiveness, and how, later in the century, autonomous from other aspects of human life expressiveness transforms into the limit-break- and is to be appreciated in an experience that ing sublime. The latter is not new, original, or was similarly autonomous – aesthetic experience novel, since sublime experience has been with – was taking root. A third development was us ever since people began to gaze at the starry abandonment of the idea that the question skies with a sense of humility and awe. Its “What is art?” could be answered in terms of rep- contemporary attractiveness arises from its resentation or mimesis, as it had been for at least specifically linguistic versions, which dwell in the a century and arguably since ancient times. expansive disclosures of sheer creativity and This was prompted in part by the advent of the associated urge to speak differently. photography, in part by painting that aimed to distinguish itself from the photograph, and in See also eighteenth-century aesthetics; part by the recognition of instrumental music adorno; barthes; benjamin; deconstruction; as a supreme but nonrepresentational art deleuze; derrida; dufrenne; foucault; form. Hence there was a search for a new way gadamer; hegel; heidegger; hermeneutics; of defining art that accommodated modernism ingarden; kant; kierkegaard; marxism and and these other developments. art; merleau-ponty; modernism and post- modernism; nietzsche; psychoanalysis and expression theory art; sartre; schelling; schiller; schopen- One of these approaches defines art in terms hauer; structuralism and poststructural- of expression rather than representation. This ism; tolstoy. approach also had roots in late nineteenth- century thought but received much attention in bibliography the first half of the twentieth century. Its twen- Cazeaux, Clive (ed.). 2000. The Continental Aesthetics tieth-century exponents include most promin- Reader. London: Routledge. ently Benedetto Croce and R. G. Collingwood. Chytry, Josef. 1992. The Aesthetic State: A Quest for In 1898, Tolstoy proposed that art is con- Modern German Thought. Berkeley: University of cerned with the communication (or “infec- California Press. tion” as he called it) of an emotion experienced Croce, Benedetto. 1964 [1922]. Aesthetic: As Science of Expression and General Linguistic. D. Ainslie by the artist to an audience by means of exter- (trans.). New York: Noonday. nal signs. A work that fails to do this is not truly Eagleton, Terry. 1990. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. art, even if it is in a recognized “art” form. London: Basil Blackwell. Tolstoy also provided criteria for evaluating Hammermeister, Kai. 2002. The German Aesthetic artworks. These criteria are both formal and Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. substantive. An artwork is formally good if it Krukowski, Lucian. 1992. Aesthetic Legacies. is sincere, and it lucidly expresses an individu- Philadelphia: Temple University Press. alized emotion. The substantive criteria are Nochlin, Linda. 1971. Realism. Harmondsworth: moral, but not in a conventional sense. A work Penguin. is substantively good if it supplies the spiritual robert wicks message needed in its day and age, and this changes over time. In general, the function of art is to unite human beings in a common, twentieth-century Anglo-American aes- spiritually beneficial feeling. On Tolstoy’s thetics The twentieth century began with criteria, many works considered among the all forms of art dominated by a modernist greatest products of Western art, such as avant-garde that has its roots in the last third Shakespeare’s plays, Beethoven’s symphonies, of the previous century. Also inherited from and Wagner’s operas, are either not art at all the nineteenth century were several important or bad art. Many later expression theorists, ideas in aesthetics itself. One was a redefini- though they depart from many specifics tenets tion of aesthetics as the philosophy of art, or of Tolstoy, are remarkably influenced by him. at least an almost exclusive focus on art as the Thus Collingwood, the proponent of the subject of aesthetic inquiry. Second, via such expression theory who is now most read, agrees figures as Schopenhauer, the idea that art is with Tolstoy that it is essential to distinguish

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historical overviews between genuine art and various counterfeits speaking they should count as failed attempts that are often assumed to be art but actually are at art-making. not. For example, anything made for the purpose All three expression theorists assign to art a of amusement or giving pleasure (“amusement hugely important but incredibly narrow mission. art”), no matter how highbrow, is not art For Tolstoy, it is the uniting of human being properly so called. Like Tolstoy, many items in common, spiritually beneficial feelings. For assumed to be among the greatest artworks Croce, it is to create a symbolic expression of are not art at all according to Collingwood. an intense feeling – a presentation of the feel- The mark of true art is, of course, expression, ing itself rather than a statement about it. For by which Collingwood means something quite Collingwood, the mission of art is the self- specific. Expression is neither the production of knowledge that comes from the clarification of an indicator of what one feels, as when one sighs emotions, which is the “medicine for the worst in sadness, nor the intentional arousal of emo- disease of the mind, the corruption of con- tion in another. The expression of emotion is the sciousness” (1938: 336). It is not surprising coming to know in full specificity exactly what that so much of what is conventionally con- emotion one is feeling. It is the articulation sidered art falls outside the boundaries drawn of the emotion. The creative process by which by such theories, but this is indicative of a art comes into existence, for Collingwood, defect more in the theories than in the rejected consists in first becoming aware that one is works. feeling something and then gradually and fully spelling out what this is in one’s imagination. formalism Notice that on this account, the artwork is Formalism is another approach that attempts to fully realized within the artist’s mind. In con- accommodate the rise of modernism and the trast to Tolstoy, Collingwood thought that is rejection of mimetic theories of art. Clive Bell and where art exists. Roger Fry, the most famous proponents of for- However, Collingwood recognizes that vari- malism in the early twentieth century, were ous media – paint, bronze, stone or clay, the art critics and they were heavily influenced by written word, etc. – have an important dual role the developments in the visual arts, especially in art-making. First, although strictly speaking the paintings of Cézanne, Picasso, and Braque. an artwork exists in some mind, most notably (In the second half of the twentieth century, the the artist’s, the mental discovery typically standard-bearers of formalism were Clement occurs only in the process of an artist’s using a Greenberg, another art critic, and Monroe C. favored medium. Second, the product of this pro- Beardsley, a philosopher heavily influence by cess – for example, the paint on canvas – is the the school of literary criticism known as New means by which the emotion might be com- Criticism.) Through the lens of such works, municated to an audience. This occurs not by which these early formalists interpreted as arousing the emotion in them but by allowing totally devaluing representation in the service them to recreate the emotion in their own of exploring form, they reinterpreted the history imagination and thereby also express it in of art and developed a formalist aesthetic theory. Collingwood’s technical sense. This theory has two main points: a new Like Tolstoy and other proponents of the answer to the question “What is art?” and a expression theory such as Croce, Collingwood theory of aesthetic value. has an unconventional way of marking the According to Bell, a good theory of what art art/nonart distinction. Unlike Tolstoy but like is identifies a property that all artworks share. Croce, Collingwood has a hard time finding Though Bell did not make this point, that is a way to distinguish good art from bad. not enough, because if many other things also Anything that succeeds as expression as share this property, we have still failed to Collingwood understands it not only is art but pick out all and only artworks. It is somewhat also does exactly what a work of art is supposed plausible to suppose that art’s nature has to do and hence would seem also to be good something to do with form, once we reject rep- art. Collingwood sometimes speaks of failed resentation as its defining feature. But all sorts attempts at expression as bad art, but strictly of things that are not artworks also have a

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twentieth-century anglo-american aesthetics form in some sense or other. So we need to find many items widely considered art really are a property possessed by all artworks and not by not. That is counterintuitive. Also, for this very these other things. Bell’s solution to this prob- reason, he too has no place for bad art, since the lem is to say that what makes something a defining feature of art is also its most important work of art is the possession of significant form. good-making feature. This is a form that imbues what possesses it with Fry escapes these last two criticisms because, a special kind of value that consists in the unlike Bell, he does not attempt to define art in affect produced in those who perceive it. Bell calls terms of form. He is interested in identifying the this affect the aesthetic emotion. right way to appreciate visual art and in what A common criticism of Bell’s attempt to its value consists. He uses the form/representa- define art is that it is circular. He tells us that tion distinction to answer these questions. He art is significant form and this is to be under- argued that representation inevitably evokes stood as form that creates a certain experience subjective responses depending on the associ- in its audience, the aesthetic emotion, but ref- ations such features elicit in the individual erence to this emotion is not self-explanatory. viewer. The only way to escape this sort of sub- The aesthetic emotion, unlike fear and anger, jectivity is to focus on formal features. That is not a psychological state that everyone recog- is the correct way to appreciate art, and it is nizes. However, Bell tends, especially when what gives artworks their objective value. he first introduces his conception of art, to Fry’s argument has even more obvious problems explicate the relevant emotion as that which is than Bell’s. He assumes that the only way we caused by significant form. This clearly does can evaluate the representational properties of not help. painting is by creating subjective associations Some sympathetic interpreters of Bell about them. But there is no good justification attempt to show that he is not stuck in this for this premise. circle. They point to what Bell calls the In fact, while definitions of art in terms of form metaphysical hypothesis, which claims that have not won wide acceptance, formalism is par- the experience of significant form is much like ticularly weak as an all-encompassing account mystical experience. In both experiences, we of the value of art. This is because it has to treat encounter a more ultimate reality, which Bell the most salient feature of countless artworks liked to describe in Kantian terminology: we – their representational content – as irrelevant encounter the thing-in-itself. On this proposal, to their artistic value. They occur incidentally focusing on the explicit representation in art- for the sake of the forms that emerge from works distracts us from the more important them. Among the many problems with such an reality we gain access to through form. More account is that it implausibly distances works importantly, this view suggests a noncircular from the concerns of the artists who made account of the aesthetic emotion. It is the emo- them and the audiences who receive them. tion felt when one encounters ultimate reality. Before moving on from the topic of formal- There is a problem with this explication of Bell. ism, we note a view fashioned from both While it accurately represents his metaphysical formalist and expressivist considerations. hypothesis, it mislocates its place in Bell’s the- In 1942, Susanne Langer drew on the early ory. Bell recognizes the hypothesis is speculation, Wittgenstein’s picture theory of meaning, and he does not want to tie his definition of art Ernst Cassirer’s work on symbolic forms, and to its being correct. He stands by his definition Bell’s view that art is significant form in her even if his metaphysics is wrong. This implies Philosophy in a New Key, a study of expres- that whatever “significant form” does mean, it siveness in music. She distinguished two is not form that creates an encounter with ulti- opposed and exclusive modes of symbolism, mate reality. the discursive and the presentational. Dis- There are other problems with Bell’s theory. cursive symbolism is exemplified by language If there are paintings, sculptures, etc. that lack and mathematics. Here meaning is generated significant form, as Bell clearly believes, they according to the rule-governed combination of would not be artworks at all. Hence, like the units of significance. By contrast, presenta- expression theorists, Bell’s formalism rules that tional symbols take on their meaning by

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historical overviews sharing the form of what they signify, though practical or even theoretical concerns – are they realize this in their own, sometimes capable of being valid judgments of taste. very different, media. Music operates as a Edward Bullough was an influential early presentational symbol of the form of feeling, twentieth-century proponent of this idea. The according to Langer. That is, music expresses key concept in his view is that of psychical emotions by producing a dynamic, temporal distance. This is initially put forward as a structure that is an iconic transformation of variant of the disinterested attitude. We the sensational structure of emotional experi- achieve psychical distance when we put a ence. In Feeling and Form (1953), Langer phenomenon “out of gear with” practical extended her account to all the arts. Even concerns and personal ends which enables those that are explicitly discursive take their pri- us to perceive the phenomenally objective mary significance from operating as presenta- features it possesses (1912: 89). Bullough’s tional symbols of organic emotional processes famous example is a fog at sea that, from a and rhythms. practical perspective, is both inconvenient in Langer’s theory long remained popular with creating delays and dangerous in increasing music educationists, but is now largely ignored the likelihood of a collision. In contrast, when within analytic philosophy of art. Perhaps this one distances oneself from these practical con- is because the philosophies of mind, the emo- cerns one can appreciate the unique visual tions, and language that she adopts all look quality of the fog – its milky opaqueness, the way dated, and because the indescribable forms it blurs and distorts the shapes of objects – and inarticulable meanings that lie at the which produce in the observer an “uncanny heart of her theory remain basically obscure. mingling of repose and terror” (1912: 89). As More generally, despite attracting some atten- Bullough develops his idea of psychical dis- tion in the 1950s, semiotic approaches to tance, it becomes more differentiated from the aesthetics have sometimes been thought to traditional idea of disinterest. First, it turns out blur distinctions that should be clarified, such that one can be both under-distanced and as those between depiction and expression, over-distanced from the perceived object. In meaning and reference, extension and intension. fact, when it comes to the reception of art- works, the ideal is to be as little distanced as aesthetic theory possible without being completely without dis- A third large-scale theory of art that was tance (1912: 94). Second, distance is not only prominent in the first half of the twentieth a property of an appreciator’s attitude but also century is the aesthetic theory, the idea that art- a property of artworks. Some “in-your-face” works are aesthetic objects, and that their ones actually attempt to destroy distance while nature and value derives from special experi- other, unusually cool works create more distance ences they are capable of delivering. Aesthetic than normal. Bullough regarded under- and theory can be formulated with a formalist or an over-distanced works as aesthetically flawed. expressivist bias but part of its strength lies in A rather different aesthetic theory is pro- the fact that it need not have either slant. The posed by John Dewey in his book Art as general idea behind aesthetic theory leaves Experience, published in 1934. Perhaps the open just which properties of an object are starkest difference between Dewey and other aes- responsible for the distinctive aesthetic experi- thetic theorists is his insistence that aesthetic ence. This has given the theory staying power. experience is continuous with the “normal It is the only one to remain prominent in the processes of living” (1987: 16). Hence, there philosophy of art after 1950. is not the disengagement from practical and Another element often found in aesthetic theoretical pursuits that philosophers like theory concerns the attitude that we bring to Kant, Schopenhauer, and Bullough emphas- the situation in which an object is experienced. ize. Dewey insists that aesthetic experience This idea goes back to eighteenth-century has an instrumental value often overlooked or accounts of judgments of taste according denied by other theorists. For anything to have to which only those judgments that are human value it must serve the needs of human disinterested – that is free from bias, and from beings in coping with the world they live in.

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Dewey’s idea here seems be that intrinsically with it” (1974: 178). Stuart Hampshire asserted enjoyable aesthetic experience can help us that “works of art are gratuitous, something achieve a variety of other human ends: it can made or done gratuitously, and not in re- sensitize us to features of the environment sponse to any problem posed” (1954: 161). we might otherwise overlook; it can help us The most important English philosopher of art imagine more vividly the cognitive and emo- to emerge in this period is Frank Sibley. He also tional life of others; perhaps most important took the aesthetic theory of art for granted, for Dewey, it can “invigorate and vitalize us” in but what makes his essays important and the pursuit of whatever other ends we might influential is their rigorous, detailed investiga- have (Shusterman 2001: 98). There is a sim- tion of the logic and epistemology of the aesthetic ilar continuity between aesthetic and theoret- judgment. ical perspectives. Art, like science, functions to Sibley’s best-known paper is “Aesthetic order and make sense of experience. To use the Concepts” (1959). Here he distinguishes language of a later philosopher influenced by between nonaesthetic perceptual properties pragmatism, both are “ways of worldmaking” that anyone with normal vision can notice (Goodman 1978). (e.g., being a red patch) and aesthetic proper- All this might leave one wondering just ties that are also often perceptual but require what aesthetic experience is for Dewey. The taste, sensitivity, or special training to see (e.g., fact is that he is better at noting continuities than being balanced). Sibley’s main point in this sharply defining things. Doing the latter seems paper, however, is that while the aesthetic to go against the grain for him. Still there properties of artworks supervene on the non- are special features of aesthetic experience as aesthetic properties so that a change in the lat- Dewey conceives it. Aesthetic experience is an ter would lead to a change in the former, we can experience rather than just an undistinguished never validly infer the existence of an aesthetic segment in the flow of consciousness. It is property from the fact that it contains a set of whole in itself. Such an experience possesses nonaesthetic properties. For this reason, he unity and gives a feeling of closure. It is always claims that aesthetic disputes cannot be settled intense; we are most alive when having such by inductive or deductive reasoning from pre- experience. It always seems to have a positive mises about nonaesthetic properties to conclu- valence, and perhaps is always enjoyable. sions about aesthetic ones. Aesthetic properties These features make it valuable in its own have to be perceived to ascertain their exist- right apart from and in addition to the instru- ence in an artwork or other object. mental functions it serves. Do Sibley’s conclusions imply that aesthetic judgments lack objectivity and that there can aesthetic theory after 1950 be no general rules or reasons available to sup- As mentioned above, aesthetic theory port such judgments? In this and later papers, remained prominent in both Britain and the Sibley took up these questions and argued for United States after 1950. However, it was negative answers to both of them. Perceptual, developed in rather different ways in these two noninferential judgments can be objective, and countries. for that reason aesthetic judgments can have an In Britain, unlike the United States, the lead- objectivity similar to those about color. As for ing philosophers of the day did write about art reasons or rules, while nonaesthetic judg- and the aesthetic, if only occasionally. They ments never entail aesthetic ones, there are endorsed a highly eviscerated aesthetic theory, nontrivial entailments among aesthetic judg- which no doubt unintentionally but inevitably ments themselves. The existence of certain could only leave one to wonder how an artwork more specific aesthetic properties can provide could ever be seriously evaluated or be more reasons for more general aesthetic judgments. than a trivial diversion. Peter Strawson fol- That a work is graceful, balanced, or witty are lowed Kant in arguing against any rules by reasons to think it has aesthetic merit. Further, which artworks can be evaluated and added that there are always such reasons. But such reasons aesthetic judgment is devoid of any “interest in are capable of being defeated. Wit does not what [art] can or should do or what we can do entail overall goodness in a work. Rather it is

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historical overviews always a prima facie reason to think a work they all share but by family resemblance has a degree of aesthetic merit that might on or by their similarity to paradigm artworks, occasion be defeated in virtue of the way the it was held. These views were prompted wit interacts with other properties the work by Wittgenstein’s posthumously published possesses. Philosophical Investigations of 1953, with its In the United States, the most important skepticism regarding a metaphysics concerned proponent of the aesthetic theory was Monroe with Platonic essences. Although the explana- C. Beardsley, who wrote Aesthetics: Problems tory power of appeals to family resemblance in the Philosophy of Criticism in 1958. Unlike and the like have been questioned – after all, Sibley, whose work is characterized by subtle but family membership is not established in terms piecemeal exploration into the nature of the of resemblance – antiessentialism in aesthetics aesthetic judgment, Beardsley aimed for a has become a perennial theme. For many comprehensive theory of art. Despite its sub- people, there is something about art – its title, his book considers all the arts and many of creativity, volatility, self-consciousness, rebel- the issues of depiction, expression, interpretation, liousness – that is supposed to make it resistant and evaluation that continue to attract atten- to the strictures of definition. tion in the field, and he reviewed and acknow- Another part of Philosophical Investigations ledged the philosophical literature on these to attract the attention of aestheticians was topics. In subsequent books, he wrote on the his- the discussion of aspect perception, or “seeing tory of aesthetics and on literary criticism. as.” This stressed the extent to which how one In “The Intentional Fallacy,” an article sees an ambiguous figure is under the control coauthored with William K. Wimsatt in 1946, of the will. It seemed to some that this account Beardsley attacked forms of criticism that drew provided a model for aesthetic experience in attention away from the artwork to its artist. general (e.g., see Aldrich 1963 and, for a more Only what is manifest in the artwork should sophisticated use of the notion, Scruton 1974). be invoked in discussing, analyzing, and inter- And it seemed to others that pictorial repre- preting it, they maintained, in line with sentation, at least, could be analyzed as a vari- the New Critics of literary theory. This anti- ety of aspect perception; we see the painted intentionalist stance carried over to Aesthetics, surface as what it represents. But whereas an in which Beardsley consistently defended ambiguous figure can be seen under only one the autonomy of the artwork. In general, he aspect at a given time, we are simultaneously regarded reference to the circumstances of the aware of the painted surface and of what it work’s genesis as irrelevant to its appreciation. depicts, which is one reason why later theories In Aesthetics, he wrote of “aesthetic objects” of pictorial representation moved beyond the dis- and avoided “works of art,” and regarded the cussion of “seeing as.” value of art as tied to the pleasure its aesthetic Wittgenstein’s influence in aesthetics was contemplation provided. In these and other strengthened by the publication in 1966 of respects, Beardsley continued the aesthetic tra- notes taken in his lectures on aesthetics, psy- dition, and he was its most eloquent advocate chology, and religious belief. These rejected when it came under attack in the 1960s and the relevance of psychologists’ experimental 1970s. He differed from some aesthetic theorists, search for the causes of our aesthetic experience. however, in regarding art also as an important On the positive side, they emphasized the con- source of pragmatic value, and in this was text sensitivity and particularity of aesthetic explicitly influenced by John Dewey. judgments and the indescribability of aesthetic qualities. Meanwhile, some philosophers fol- wittgensteinian aesthetics lowed Wittgensteinian methods of “ordinary In the mid 1950s there was a rash of articles language philosophy” to investigate art and (by Morris Weitz, Paul Ziff, John Passmore, the aesthetic, which involved considering how W. E. Kennick, and W. B. Gallie) questioning art and the aesthetic are ordinarily discussed the possibility and usefulness of defining art. and explaining away philosophical puzzles as Artworks are related not by individually arising from misunderstandings or misapplica- necessary and jointly sufficient properties tions of the “grammar” of this discourse.

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Wittgenstein’s influence on aesthetics reflects ahistorical, psychologistic analysis of art and its his influence on philosophy more generally. appreciation was replaced with a historically For a time he was a dominant figure and his contextualized, sociological account of these ideas remain important to the present. But his matters. For Wollheim, this is apparent in his influence has waned over the decades, as stress on art’s historical character and, for philosophers of art adopted different appro- Goodman, it emerges from his account of art’s aches or considered different issues. He has identity as relative to the conventions of sym- remained a more prominent and respected bol systems and of art’s value as primarily cog- philosopher in Britain than in the United nitive. This strand is yet more obvious in his States. Ways of Worldmaking (1978), with its empha- sis on art as a mode of world-making and its cognitivism and contextualism recommendation that the question “When is In 1968, two significant monographs were art?” has more interest and merit than “What published. Richard Wollheim’s Art and Its is art?” Objects explores and rejects the idea that some Not everyone followed the trend, however. artworks are physical objects, touching on Art and Imagination (1974), by the British depiction, expression, and many other topics philosopher Roger Scruton, focused on the in the process. The influence of the later phenomenology of aesthetic experience rather Wittgenstein is apparent here, as Wollheim than the importance of art’s social context. emphasized that art is a form of life, and con- Nevertheless, Scruton also contested the tradi- cluded that it is essentially historical. He made tional characterization of aesthetic properties the aesthetic function of art central, but chal- as simple. With due homage to Wittgenstein, lenged the notion of the aesthetic introduced by he argued that aesthetic properties are, like Kant and, in the twentieth century, Bullough. aspects, complex and “emergent” from sim- Nelson Goodman’s Languages of Art addressed a pler, base properties. And above all, he stressed range of central topics – depiction, expression, how engagement with art and aesthetic prop- and appreciation – and, via a discussion of erties involves the imagination. Another symbol systems, provided a new approach to philosopher who began to explore the role of each. In addition, Goodman drew an ontological make-believe in our experience of art at this time distinction between singular artworks, such as was Kendall L. Walton (1973). He emphasized oil paintings, which are “autographic,” and more than Scruton the way make-believe must potentially multiple artworks, such as novels or be responsive to the historically variable con- symphonies, which are “allographic,” and he ventions of the relevant art tradition. developed an account of notation capable of The reorientation within analytic aesthetics explaining how allographic artworks can be from the individual contemplator to the social definitively specified by scripts and scores. setting of art’s creation and presentation, Though Wollheim’s and Goodman’s books are which dominated for the remainder of the cen- different in purpose, content, and style, with tury, had two aspects in its initial phase. One hindsight each can be seen to indicate a radi- was negative. It involved a sustained attack on cal change of orientation in Anglo-American the notions of aesthetic properties and aes- analytic aesthetics. That shift might be dated to thetic experience, at least as these had come to the decade between 1964 and 1974. In brief, be regarded earlier in the twentieth century. The it involved a move from regarding artworks as aesthetic theory that was challenged main- best appreciated as autonomous and isolated tained that aesthetic properties are “internal” to from their creators and from the circum- the items that possess them and thus are made stances of their creation (where this approach available through contemplation of that object includes the adoption of a psychologically for its own sake alone. Indeed, the theory held distinctive mindset, the aesthetic attitude), to that actively disregarding the intentions of the regarding their identities and appreciable item’s maker, the context of production, and any properties as depending on relations tying nonaesthetic functions the item might serve them to art traditions, conventions, practices, promotes – indeed, is perhaps essential – for its and artists’ intentions. In other words, an fullest aesthetic appreciation. The adoption of the

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historical overviews aesthetic attitude, a distinctive psychological if convincing, clearly count against the idea perspective that involves a distanced and dis- that an artwork’s aesthetically appreciable interested approach to its target, seemed to be properties reside solely in its appearance. By mandated by the aesthetic theory. describing perceptually identical pieces – that is, The positive agenda of the new direction pieces that might be mistaken for each other by in analytic aesthetics involved demonstrating a person who knows nothing of their functions what relations between the item and its or origins – that, nevertheless, possess strik- broader context are relevant to its aesthetic ingly different artistic features, Danto’s argument character. As part of this project, a sharper showed that those features depend for their distinction was drawn between the aesthetic character on relations they hold to matters qualities of humanly produced items, espe- lying beyond the work’s boundaries. As Danto cially works of art, and those of natural specified it, the other element in the relation is objects. The appreciable features of artworks – “an atmosphere of theory.” for instance, ones displaying influence, reference, The choice of the word “theory” was per- modes of treating the medium, the solution of haps unwise. It is too easily interpreted as technical problems, and the extension or repu- referring to a pseudophilosophical theory held diation of an art tradition – were represented as by the artist or critic about the nature of art. As being much richer than those traditionally emerged later, what Danto meant could better covered by the term “aesthetic.” In particular, be characterized as an atmosphere provided by it was argued that, for artworks, the art-historical the art-historical context in which the work context of their creation, the artists’ inten- is produced. And this fits with a point he also tions, genre membership, and individual styles stressed, following the art historian Heinrich are all significant not only in generating the Wölfflin, that whether something can be art work’s appreciable properties but in shaping at a given moment within the history of art its identity as the work it is. depends on who offers it and what has become Of the articles that heralded this change in art up to that time. Another aspect of the argu- direction, the most cited is Arthur C. Danto’s ment in Danto’s article proved too obscure to be “The Artworld” of 1964. This introduced a helpful. He invoked an “is” of artistic identity that term for the nexus of artists, audiences, critics, is supposed to be distinct from the “is” of iden- and the formal and informal institutions tity, existence, or predication. In addition, the through which they create, present, describe, article ended with a controversial claim: not only record, and appreciate art. Here and elsewhere do current artistic developments alter the art- Danto made use of what might be called “the historical conditions for the works that follow, argument from indiscernibles,” an argument thereby affecting the properties they may have, style with an ancient philosophical pedigree. they retrospectively alter the properties of That is, Danto described cases in which an works created formerly. This final thought was artwork is perceptually indiscriminable from not one that Danto developed or repeated. a nonartwork – for instance, Andy Warhol’s Related views were presented at much Brillo Boxes and the cartons in which Brillo the same time by Marshall Cohen, Stanley boxes are delivered to supermarkets – or in Cavell, Joseph Margolis, Kendall L. Walton, which two artworks are perceptually indis- and George Dickie. And it was Dickie who pro- criminable – his hypothetical example is of duced the most telling criticisms of traditional paintings of Newton’s First and Third Laws by aesthetic theory in a series of articles (1962, artists A and B – yet, despite the similarity in 1964, 1965, 1968) that challenge the idea their appearances, the one has aesthetically that aesthetic appreciation involves the adop- significant properties the other lacks. Whereas tion of a special frame of mind that dissociates A’s painting depicts the path of a particle its object from its social, practical context. through space, B’s shows where two masses Rather, close attention of the ordinary kind is meet, and whereas Warhol’s Brillo Boxes make required, and, in the case of art, familiarity some kind of comment on the material values with the appropriate artworld conventions is of the time, including the commodification of art, vital for locating and framing the object of the supermarket cartons do not. Such examples, appreciation.

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As already noted, these arguments led stressed that the artist works not so much as an philosophers to focus less on the state of mind agent of an institution but against the back- of the individual appreciator and more on the ground of a practice and, through work on social context in which art is produced and an artifact, achieves, rather than confers, the consumed. The outcome was Dickie’s institu- art standing of his or her works. As the title tional definition of art, first heralded in 1969 suggests, Dickie flaunts the circularity of his but achieving its fullest statement in Art and the account. By removing the emphasis on institu- Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis (1974). tional authority and structure, he avoids some According to the institutional definition, arthood objections to the earlier version of the theory but is a status conferred on artifacts by agents of the also loses much of its explanatory power, artworld. More specifically, an artwork is “(1) because it is less clear how the conventions an artifact (2) a set of the aspects of which has and social practices that are the background to had conferred upon it the status of candidate for the artist’s work play a role in the achievement appreciation by some person or persons acting of arthood. on behalf of . . . the artworld” (1974: 179– Dickie’s work stimulated interest in the de- 80). The status of art might be merited more or finition of art more generally. (For an account less according to the usual aesthetic or other and critical discussion, see Davies 1991.) In criteria, but what makes something art is that a series of articles from 1979–83, Beardsley it is dubbed as such by someone with the developed a definition in terms of art’s aesthetic authority so to declare it, and not whether it function: an artwork is either an arrangement deserves the title. of conditions intended to be capable of afford- A similar view was developed by the British ing an aesthetic experience with marked aes- philosopher Terry Diffey, also in 1969. The thetic character, or an arrangement of a type main respect in which his account differs from that is typically intended to have this capacity. Dickie’s is in maintaining that it is the artworld Definitions that make art’s aesthetic function public who collectively bestow the status of art. central to its nature have been regularly pre- Dickie, by contrast, holds that it is individual sented since Beardsley’s, a more recent exam- agents – almost always the artists who created ple being by Nick Zangwill (1995). Others took the works – who do this. But it should be noted up Danto’s suggestions regarding the histori- that Dickie’s is not a more elitist account on this city of art to produce recursive definitions with score, because he thought almost any member the form: something is art if it stands in the of the artworld could create art and thereby art-defining relation to earlier art, and the first count themselves an artist, and he characterized artworks were art because . . . According to the art institution as extensive and informal, not Jerrold Levinson (1979), the art-defining rela- confined to academies and professionals. tion is that of being intended for a type of The institutional theory caused considerable regard accorded to earlier art, whereas James debate among aestheticians, and this persists. Carney (1991) saw it as a matter of shared Among the major concerns is that the theory styles. Noël Carroll (1988), who claimed to tends to be circular and that it loses sight of be characterizing art’s extension rather than the point of art-making by attaching too much defining it, regarded as art those pieces that significance to provocative, anti-aesthetic works, can be fitted into a true narrative of the ongoing such as Duchamp’s Fountain. Meanwhile, it is unfolding of art practices. Inevitably, attempts far from clear that the artworld is institutional have been made to integrate or combine these in structure, so it is difficult to make sense of the different strategies for definition, as in Robert idea of agents acting on behalf of the institution. Stecker’s Artworks: Definition, Meaning, Value Also, art is made in other cultures and earlier (1997). Meanwhile, the antiessentialism of the times, often in connection with religious or polit- 1950s is also frequently revived, a recent ver- ical institutions, where it is even less plausible sion being Berys Gaut’s cluster theory (2000), to identify an autonomous, structured artworld. which maintains that different subsets of a Dickie revised his theory in The Art Circle: A cluster of features can be sufficient for some- Theory of Art (1984) in a way that downplayed thing’s being art, with no single feature being talk of baptismal acts of status conferral. He necessary.

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As well as stimulating attempts to define literally and that are used to convey an attitude art, arguments for the social character of art led toward a subject matter. also to interest in the ontology of art, which Beginning with “The End of Art” (1984), previously was a neglected topic. The Polish Danto developed a neo-Hegelian account of philosopher Roman Ingarden, whose works art’s historical essence. According to Hegel, art were not translated into English until the was one phase of spirit’s attempt to understand 1970s and 1980s, as well as both Wollheim itself, and when this phase was completed, and Goodman, contributed to this awakening, prior to the Christian era, art had fulfilled its but it was Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Works and historical destiny and in that sense its history Worlds of Art (1980) that focused on works came to an end. In a similar vein, Danto argued of art as cultural artifacts and stressed how, that art’s historical purpose was to provoke the rather than being passively contemplated, philosophical analysis of its own nature, and this they are used by their public for world projec- was achieved with Pop Art in the late 1960s. tion. Also in 1980, Jerrold Levinson described Such art could not be analyzed in terms of the identity of musical works as essentially mimesis, representation, or expression, and involving not only sequences of sound but also presented an appearance that did not distinguish their composer’s identity and their instru- it from nonart, so traditional theories of art mental means of realization. were defeated and a new account, such as the In the remaining decades of the twentieth cen- one Danto proposed, was called for. Danto’s tury, the ontology of art remained consistently observations that, in its posthistorical phase, art high on the agenda of debate, with Platonists could have nothing new to say and that any- arguing that artworks are abstract types that thing could be art do not sit comfortably with are discovered rather than created, ontological the other strand of his historicism, because contextualists arguing that they take their the significance of any given artistic gesture identity in part from relations they hold to depended as much on its art-historical location their context of creation, and relativists argu- after 1968 as before it. In any case, the histor- ing that they have an evolving identity that ical purpose Danto describes for art looks like alters with their ongoing interpretation. only one among many possibilities and a sec- Interest in the historical character of art re- ondary one at that, given art’s politico-social flected the influence of Danto’s The Transfigura- significance and use over millennia. tion of the Commonplace (1981). In this work, If The Transfiguration of the Commonplace was Danto developed some of the main themes of his the book of the 1980s, that of the 1990s was earlier papers. He emphasized how art, even as Kendall L. Walton’s Mimesis as Make-Believe: it came to resemble “mere real things,” like On the Foundations of the Representational Arts urinals and Brillo boxes, separates itself from (1990). Walton here built on his earlier work them, because it is “about” its nature in a way on the centrality of make-believe to the appre- that mere real things are not about theirs. ciation of art. His guiding idea was that artworks Inevitably, then, to be appreciated artworks are props in games of make-believe, just as must be distinguished from their material dolls or stuffed animals are in children’s games. substrate. Meanwhile, the identification of a Some of these games are authorized by the work’s subject and style depends in part on work’s author or by conventions of the work’s awareness of its art-historical location, includ- kind. For instance, the Sherlock Holmes stories ing the identity of its artist, because a given authorize the pretense that there is a brilliant element or feature can vary in its significance detective who lives on Baker Street in London. according to that location. Perceptually indis- Others are more optional or ad hoc. One of the cernible paintings by a child, a forger, and an basic virtues of this account is that it trans- established artist would possess very different cends the specific media through which art- characteristics, as would look-alikes created works are presented, applying equally well to within different art traditions or at a historical fictional literature, painting, and film among remove from each other. Somewhat obscurely, other art forms. The other basic virtue of the Danto compared artworks with metaphors; account is more important. Walton was able to they are rhetorical devices that are not to be read deploy his guiding idea to provide ingenious

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twentieth-century anglo-american aesthetics solutions to a wide array of issues raised by consideration of the “frame” or categories fictional representation. These range from under which nature is appropriately to be seeming paradoxes regarding our emotional brought for aesthetic appreciation. Another reactions to fictions – Why should we fear area of growth is in regard to the connection fictional monsters or pity the protagonists of between art and ethics. The interest here is not tragedy? – to questions about the ontological so much in the longstanding topics of porno- status of fictional characters, and to the nature graphy and censorship, but in art as a source of both pictorial representation and artistic of moral knowledge on the one hand and in expression. Walton’s reliance on the idea of the interaction of aesthetic and ethical value make-believe or pretense also raises general within the appreciation of art on the other. issues about the nature of the imagination and Meanwhile, beauty and the aesthetic, rather its role in human development and human life. than being driven from the debate by the 1960s attack on traditional conceptions of debate at the close of the century these, have been redescribed and reintroduced As in other areas of philosophy, there was a to the discussion. virtual explosion of publications in the final Intersecting with some of these trends is decades of the last century. For this reason, it the rise of feminist studies within aesthetics. is not possible to convey the variety of topics cov- Feminists discussed the social context of art in ered and the richness of the debate by high- political terms, noticing how women were sys- lighting a few books or seminal articles. We tematically excluded from creative roles while have already indicated how the definition and they were featured in art as passive subjects ontology of art became extensively discussed, but for the delectation of an audience assumed other trends and movements since the 1980s to be male. They addressed the role of art in should also be listed. confirming and shaping identity, gender, and The nature of artistic interpretation is sexuality. Again, this led to a questioning another topic reinvigorated by the emphasis of of claims made on behalf of traditional aesth- social and historical context. If work identity etics for the disinterested, distanced objectivity is context sensitive, it is very plausible that the of the aesthetic attitude, for the value of an meaning of a work would also be. That some established canon of masterworks, and for the such features are crucial in fixing meaning is connection claimed between creativity and now widely accepted, but which ones, even egocentric genius. Some feminists reversed or which contexts, is hotly debated. One debate pits challenged the ranking of fine art over craft, the context of creation against successive con- intellect over emotion, the sensory over the texts of reception as the ones that are crucial for sensual. Meanwhile, artworks created by understanding and appreciating works. Those women with art-political feminist agendas, who agree that the context of creation is the cru- along with attempts to develop styles of criticism cial one, disagree about which features of this based on feminist sensibilities, provided mater- are the meaning-fixing ones. Some give that role ial for theoretical debate and analysis. to the actual intentions of artists, while others Another movement matched elsewhere in give more weight to other contextual properties. philosophy was the naturalization of aesthetics, Philosophical aesthetics traditionally took in which philosophers drew on scientific stud- painting, poetry, drama, and literature as its ies of human nature, of the operation of the exemplars, but since the 1980s there has been brain, of cognitive, perceptual, and affective a major expansion in the discussion of music, systems, and of human evolution and child including rock and jazz, of film, and of the development, in explaining our relation to art mass and popular arts. Architecture, sculp- and nature. The growth of cognitive science, in ture, and dance remain comparatively under- particular, has proved relevant to philosophical represented in the discussion. discussions of creativity, emotion, imagina- The emphasis on art’s sociocultural loca- tion, language use, sympathy and empathy, tion, rather than leading to neglect of natural synaesthesia and metaphor, and of the prin- and environmental aesthetics, stimulated new ciples that govern our organization of sight and discussion there. Of leading concern has been sound. In some cases, the scientific data concern

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historical overviews art and are imported to aesthetics directly. See also aesthetic attitude; beardsley; bell; More often, empirical data that are more gen- collingwood; croce; danto; dewey; dickie; erally relevant to issues in the philosophy of expression theory; formalism; function of mind, epistemology, identity, emotion, ethics, art; goodman; langer; ontological contex- and politics are taken up and applied to the tualism; pragmatist aesthetics; scruton; creation, reception, and criticism of art. sibley; theories of art; tolstoy; walton; wittgenstein; wollheim. status within the profession Though art received the attention of famous bibliography Greek philosophers and, following Kant, fea- Aldrich, Virgil C. 1963. Philosophy of Art. tured in the work of many Continental philo- Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. sophers, such as Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Beardsley, Monroe C. 1958. Aesthetics: Problems in the Nietzsche, within Anglo-American academic Philosophy of Criticism. New York: Harcourt, philosophy of the twentieth century it was Brace & World. largely ignored and sometimes treated with Beardsley, Monroe C. 1983. “An Aesthetic disdain. George Dickie once explained how he Definition of Art.” In What Is Art? H. Curtler (ed.). first came to teach aesthetics: the course went New York: Haven, 15–29. Beardsley, Monroe C. & Wimsatt, William K., Jr. to the department’s most recent and junior 1946, “The Intentional Fallacy,” Sewanee Review, appointee. Unless they had a special passion 54, 468–88. for it, the most rigorously trained analytic Bell, Clive. Art. 1914. London: Chatto & Windus. philosophers hardly came across analytic aes- Bullough, Edward. 1912. “ ‘Psychical Distance’ as thetics at all. No one who hoped for academic a Factor in Art and as an Aesthetic Principle,” employment would highlight it as an area of British Journal of Psychology, 5, 87–98. specialty. Carney, James D. 1991. “The Style Theory of Art,” In his introduction to Aesthetics, Beardsley Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 72, 273–89. observed: “Aesthetics has long been contemp- Carroll, Noël. 1988. “Art, Practice, and Narrative,” tuously regarded as a step-sister within the Monist, 71, 140–56. Collingwood, R. G. 1938. The Principles of Art. philosophical family. Her rejection is easy to Oxford: Clarendon. explain, and partially excuse, by the lack of Croce, Benedetto. 1965. Guide to Aesthetics. P. tidiness in her personal habits and by her Romanell (trans.). New York: Bobbs-Merrill. unwillingness to make herself generally useful Danto, Arthur C. 1964. “The Artworld,” Journal of around the house. It is plain to even a casual Philosophy, 61, 571–84. visitor that aesthetics is a retarded child” Danto, Arthur C. 1981. The Transfiguration of the (1958: 11). Though he seemed here to lay the Commonplace. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer- blame for this situation at the door of aesthet- sity Press. ics, rather than at the narrow-mindedness of the Danto, Arthur C. 1984. “The End of Art.” In The Death profession, he believed aesthetics could raise of Art. B. Lang (ed.). New York: Haven, 5–35. Davies, Stephen. 1991. Definitions of Art. Ithaca: its game. Indeed, there can be no question that Cornell University Press. his book contributed enormously to its doing so. Dewey, John. 1987 [1934]. Art as Experience. And it is pleasing to think, as one surveys Chicago: Open Court. the many passionate debates in contemporary Dickie, George. 1962. “Is Psychology Relevant to aesthetics and the philosophy of art, that work Aesthetics?” Philosophical Review, 71, 285–302. in the area meets an appropriate standard for Dickie, George. 1964. “The Myth of the Aesthetic quality. Attitude,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 1, Yet if aesthetics has redeemed itself, as one 56–65. hopes, it remains marginal if not marginalized Dickie, George. 1965. “Beardsley’s Phantom within Anglo-American analytic philosophy, Aesthetic Experience,” Journal of Philosophy, 62, 129–36. though more so in the United States and Dickie, George. 1968. “Art Narrowly and Broadly Australasia than in Britain. What has gone, Speaking,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 5, perhaps, is the sense of guilt that once led tal- 71–7. ented philosophers to apologize for squandering Dickie, George. 1974. Art and the Aesthetic: An Institu- their gifts there. tional Analysis. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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Dickie, George. 1984. The Art Circle: A Theory of Art. Sibley, Frank. 1959. “Aesthetic Concepts,” Philoso- New York: Haven. phical Review, 68, 421–50. Diffey, T. J. 1969. “The Republic of Art,” British Stecker, Robert. 1997. Artworks: Definition, Meaning, Journal of Aesthetics, 9, 145–56. Value. University Park: Pennsylvania State Fry, Roger. 1956 [1928]. Vision and Design. New University Press York: Meridian. Strawson, Peter. 1974. “Aesthetic Appraisal and Gaut, Berys. 2000. “ ‘Art’ as a Cluster Concept.” In Works of Art.” In Freedom and Resentment. Theories of Art Today. N. Carroll (ed.). Madison: London: Methuen, 178–88. University of Wisconsin Press, 25–44. Tolstoy, Leo. 1930. What is Art? A. Maude (trans.). Greenberg, Clement. 1961. Art and Culture. Boston: Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beacon. Walton, Kendall L. 1970. “Categories of Art,” Goodman, Nelson. 1968. Languages of Art. New Philosophical Review, 79, 334–67. York: Bobbs-Merrill. Walton, Kendall L. 1973. “Pictures and Make- Goodman, Nelson. 1978. Ways of Worldmaking. Believe,” Philosophical Review, 82, 283–319. Indianapolis: Hackett. Walton, Kendall L. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe: Hampshire, Stuart. 1954. “Logic and Appreciation.” On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. In Aesthetics and Language. E. Elton (ed.). Oxford: Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Blackwell, 161–9. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical Invest- Langer, Susanne. 1942. Philosophy in a New Key. igations. G. E. M. Anscombe (trans.). New York: Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Macmillan. Langer, Susanne. 1953. Feeling and Form. New Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1966. Lectures and Conversa- York: Scribner. tion on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief. Levinson, Jerrold. 1979. “Defining Art Historically,” C. Barrett (ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. British Journal of Aesthetics, 19, 232–50. Wollheim, Richard. 1968. Art and Its Objects. New Levinson, Jerrold. 1980. “What a Musical Work Is,” York: Harper & Row. Journal of Philosophy, 77, 5–28. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 1980. Works and Worlds of Art. Scruton, Roger. 1974. Art and Imagination. London: Oxford: Clarendon. Methuen. Zangwill, Nick. 1995. “The Creative Theory of Art,” Shusterman, Richard. 2001. “Pragmatism: Dewey.” American Philosophical Quarterly, 32, 307–23. In Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. B. Gaut & D. McIver Lopes (eds.). London: Routledge, 97–106. stephen davies & robert stecker

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architecture If we think of a range of can- see the architect’s aesthetic solution to a prob- didates listed and proposed for admission to the lem that the design brief has presented. We do status of architecture, we would find that all not merely inhabit our built environment. We or most are buildings. Other designed objects, regard it as a repository of our values, and we desks, chairs, shoes, shirts, cars, and carpets see it as imbued with the standing that other might be included for candidature, but buildings works of art have in their respective fields. would occupy a central place within the list. Great buildings, works of architecture, are Let us then consider buildings. There are two accorded the status of great works of art. If ways in which we might think a building that is so, and we are to think of architec- beautiful: the first as a natural phenomenon, the ture as an art, we might consider the ways in second as a work of art. Human beings design which we are called on to appreciate its works. buildings within which to prosecute the com- Two interrelated questions present themselves merce of their daily lives. However, so too do immediately: (1) What does architecture have birds, badgers, bumblebees, and beavers. The in common with some or all of the other arts? nest, the set, the hive, and the dam are all in (What makes it an art?) (2) And what is pecu- some sense “built” by their occupants. More- liar to architecture as an art? (What makes it over, we think of these natural habitats as the art that it is?) beautiful. Why should we not think of our We have already begun to answer (1). In buildings along such lines? Or, conversely, separating architecture’s buildings from the why should we not think of nests, sets, hives, natural habitats of wild creatures we observed and dams as architecture? that our building – where that is to be consid- There is a single answer to both of these ered architecture – includes consideration of questions. We think of architecture as an art. the architect’s critical response to a perceived That is, we do not think of the buildings we aesthetic problem. The judgment of the archi- design, as architecture, being part of nature’s tect shows up in the building at which we look. beauty, and we do not think of the habitats Architecture, then, is a visual art. We need to constructed in the natural world as works of art. look at its works in order best to understand A creature’s nature is written into it. Its beha- what it is that the architect has done in build- vior is best understood as compulsive – determined ing this work. No natural habitat is properly by its genetic program. The birds and the bees observed under this condition. We might be have no conception of what they are doing as amused, awed, and amazed at the complexity they build, and no judgment enters into the and regularity to be seen in a hive. We might construction of nest or hive that might critically be dispirited, dejected, and disappointed at the and crucially alter the appearance of the crea- mess in which some sort of animal passes its life. ture’s refuge. We may look on such natural But we cannot heap praise or blame on the shelters as part of nature’s wonder, but nature animal for its judgment in its choice of envir- herself is blind to her beauty. Birds and bees do onment. For it makes no such judgment. not look at their work or consider its merits. They Our amazement or disappointment is directed are merely driven to inhabit. at nature as a whole and not at the individual By contrast, our regard for architecture is animal. shaped by consideration of what the architect Architecture, like the other arts, engages was doing when designing the building. We our understanding. This has persuaded some of

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architecture the linguistic nature of art. Art, some think, significance of the particular work within is intrinsically linguistic, and it is because it the framework of the art within which it is bears such meaning that it acquires the status placed. Since architecture is a visual art, our of art. The added feature of “reference” is what appreciation is directed toward the look of the elevates what would otherwise be a mere building. Hence, the significance of a work of building to the status of a work of architecture. architecture resides in its visual appearance. Nelson Goodman provides an account of three So architecture, like all the arts, requires routes of reference. These are: (1) denotation, appreciation, which consists in a pleasurable as when we come to regard the Sydney Opera contemplation shaped by our understanding of House as denoting sailboats; (2) exemplifica- the architect’s work. As with the other visual tion, as when we understand certain forms arts, which include painting and sculpture – and of modernist architecture as literally exem- distinct from the nonvisual arts such as music plifying their means of construction; and and literature – appreciation brings under- (3) expression, as when a building, say a Gothic standing and judgment into contact with the cathedral, metaphorically exemplifies proper- visual appearance of the work. ties it could not literally possess, say “soaring” We come now to our second question. and “singing.” It is because we follow these Among the arts, what is it that is special to archi- routes of reference that we come to understand tecture? For the sake of convenience, we can fur- the building at which we look (Goodman ther refine this question. What distinguishes 1988). The problem of such a view, however, architecture from the other visual arts? What is that it fails to account for the value we place is it that makes something architecture? on the building in virtue of the experience To that question we can say that architecture we undergo. It elevates the hamburger-shaped is constrained by the need to provide us with hamburger stand to the status of architecture, accommodation. Architecture, that is, serves and leaves us wondering if some great works a practical purpose, whereas the other arts of architecture are architectural works at all do not. Since our appreciation of architecture (Winters 2007). (There are some buildings that requires us to consider the sets of judgments that we seem to appreciate without readily being able the architect makes in designing a building, it to provide the required routes of reference.) is clear that fitness for purpose is one con- The view provides an account of elevation but straint that the architect must observe in the remains silent concerning evaluation. practice of design. This has prompted some to Understanding architecture is concerned think of architecture as an impure art, hampered with our experience of its works in ways that in its artistic ambitions by the need to serve the linguistic account leaves out of considera- some purpose. tion. In coming to understand architecture – in The purposefulness of architecture is not a order to appreciate it – we look at the work and burden but a defining characteristic. Purpose- consider the complex and interrelated sets of fulness provides the resistance peculiar to judgments that the architect has had to deal with the architectural project. “The light dove, in making a coherent and significant work. cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its Like all works of art, architecture requires aes- resistance, might imagine that its flight would thetic understanding as a component part of be still easier in empty space” (Kant 1964: 47). appreciation. Such appreciation is an enjoyed Of course, flight is impossible in empty space, understanding. That enjoyment is internal to air being the resistance required for flight. the special kind of understanding involved in aes- Representation (broadly construed) might be thetic appreciation, so that the critical dimen- considered a defining characteristic of paint- sion of understanding provides content and ing, its removal leaving dumb color and pattern, character to the enjoyment we gain from mere pleasantries. The struggle to create an contemplating a work. That may seem odd. image provides the resistance against which My enjoyment of marzipan does not require the artist can work, making sense of painting understanding. However, it should be clear as an artistic activity. So, in architecture the pur- that my enjoyment of a novel, film, or piece of posefulness of the building proves resistant to the music does consist in my understanding the architect’s efforts to organize our occupancy of

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the arts the environment. It is because we understand See also aesthetic pleasure; aesthetics of the that works of architecture are built for our environment; aesthetics of the everyday; purposes that we are able to value them as function of art; gardens; modernism and works of art. (That is why we wondered if cars postmodernism; technology and art. and carpets might be admitted as candidates for the status of architecture.) Such a view of bibliography architecture is not committed to functional- de Botton, Alain. 2006. The Architecture of ism. It says only that we are constrained in our Happiness. London: Hamish Hamilton. understanding of architecture by the fact that Forty, Adrian. 2000. Words and Buildings. London: buildings are made for our occupancy. It makes Thames & Hudson. no commitment to a style or method. The view Goodman, Nelson. 1988. “How Buildings Mean.” put simply commends the baroque, the rococo, In Reconceptions in Philosophy and Other Arts and and the postmodern, as well as the austere Sciences. Nelson Goodman & Catherine Z. Elgin. building designed as a result of functionalist London: Routledge, 31–48. polemic. Graham, Gordon. 2000. Philosophy of the Arts. 3rd edn. London: Routledge, ch. 7. Another essential feature of architecture Kant, Immanuel. 1964. The Critique of Pure Reason. is its public aspect. Architectural works of N. Kemp Smith (trans.). London: Macmillan. art impinge upon a public and ought to be Leach, Neil (ed.). 1997. Rethinking Architecture: designed in light of this fact. The character of A Reader in Cultural Theory. London: Routledge. a building, then, must regard a public who Scruton, Roger. 1979. The Aesthetics of Architecture. might have no choice in confronting it. Thus London: Methuen. the need for politeness in the work is written Scruton, Roger. 1994. The Classical Vernacular. into the discipline. Hence, works of architecture Manchester: Carcanet. are inappropriate vehicles for the expression van Eck, Caroline. 1994. Organicism in Nineteenth of the architect’s emotion or the representa- Century Architecture. Amsterdam: Architectura and Natura. tion of particular scenes. Architecture is neither Winters, Edward. 2007. Aesthetics and Architecture. a fully representational art nor yet a fully London: Continuum. expressive art. Architecture, rather, deploys Wittgenstein, L. 1980. Culture and Value. G. H. von allusion in the frames it provides for our daily Wright (ed.). Peter Winch (trans.). Chicago: commerce. “My ideal is a certain coolness. A University of Chicago Press. temple providing a setting for the passions edward winters without meddling with them” (Wittgenstein 1980: 3e). We think of architecture as provid- ing suitable surroundings for the activities we pursue in our public lives. If privacy is dealt dance The paucity of attention to dance by with in architecture, it is at the level of the aestheticians has long been lamented, but domestic interior. Indeed, the exterior/interior recent decades have seen increasing attention distinction serves well, up to a point, as a from several important vantage points. metaphor for the public/private. Its function- While familiar analyses from major art ality and its essential publicity are the two forms, especially music, literature, and visual art, features of architecture that mark it out as a can be extrapolated to dance, the uniqueness special art. Each of these aspects contributes of the central role of the human body suggests to its status as an art in which civic values that special approaches are needed. Studies are enshrined. Architecture, like ritual and in music inform our understanding of rhythm ceremony, brings people together in the pre- and harmony. Our attention to literature sence of shared value and it is within the elaborates the role of character and plot de- embrace of architecture that we are able to velopment. The visual arts address unique and feel at home. Hence, in pessimistic mood, nonverbal symbol systems of communication. Wittgenstein remarked, “Architecture immor- Dance draws on all these art forms in varying talizes and glorifies something. Hence there degrees, yet remains a special challenge in its can be no architecture where there is nothing complexity and its distinctive central use of the to glorify” (1980: 64e.) human body as instrument.

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dance

The range of philosophical questions con- While theories of art as expression, repre- cerning dance is vast, as familiar debates in sentation, or communication have been fruit- Western aesthetics have been applied to dance. ful in understanding dance, formalism also What is the definition of “dance”? How does has been particularly helpful with regard to it comport with proposed definitions of “art” in twentieth-century plotless dance, from the general? Can we identify necessary and suffi- neoclassical ballets of George Balanchine to cient conditions of dance? With the interest in postmodern dance, as illustrated in the writing everyday movement, ritual, happenings, and of David Michael Levin. performance art, do institutional definitions of The proper object of criticism, a special focus dance better account for our understanding of Beardsley’s approach to aesthetics, also has of this art form than focusing on the essential drawn interest from philosophers looking at properties of the art object? dance, including George Dickie and Joseph The ontological status of dance as a per- Margolis. Dance presents a special set of com- forming art has been especially challenging plications because of rehearsal and performing for philosophers. Live bodies moving in space, conditions not perceivable during performance. typically with musical or rhythmic accompani- Aestheticians inclined to Continental and ment of some kind, resist familiar explanations phenomenological approaches have fruitfully from other art forms. The identity of individual pursued distinctive perspectives. Maxine Sheets- works of art in dance is also a special chal- Johnstone applies Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s lenge, not only because of the recent emer- work on phenomenology to dance to suggest gence of notation and techniques for recording that the expression of movement is really a movement, but also the still-evolving stand- form of thinking through the body. Sandra ards for what counts as a work in the dance Fraleigh uses existentialist thought to explain world community. dance, and shares the emphasis on dance as a Historic comments on the aesthetics of dance communicative vehicle for nonverbal thought. have been identified in the work of Plato, Susan Leigh Foster’s work spawned substan- Aristotle, Hegel, and others, although their tial interest from dance theorists, import- attention typically was limited and embedded ing poststructuralist criticism to highlight the in discussions of other art forms. In the twen- active role of audiences interacting with new tieth century, philosophers such as Monroe C. dance vocabularies and codes of contemporary Beardsley, Noël Carroll, Francis Sparshott, dance. Nelson Goodman, Susanne Langer, and Graham Recent attention to the body, especially in McFee focused with more precision on special feminist and Continental approaches to philo- issues in dance, especially expressive and com- sophy generally, has also addressed dance as a municative capacities of the art form. performing art from this broad perspective. Of all the arts, dance would seem to have the Pragmatist philosopher Richard Shusterman most natural expressiveness, as it uses the has taken up a focus on the body in the per- entire human body itself. Expression is not forming arts in what he calls somaesthetics, limited to metaphorical or hypothetical or emphasizing the role of our own physical ex- symbolic expression, for the body itself really periences as opposed to theorizing or verbal does express a range of human emotions and interpretation. attitudes in ordinary life. But this unique Work in cultural studies has broadened situation also raises questions unlike any other to performance studies, which emphasize the art form. What is the difference between the broader historical and cultural context of all per- expression of an emotion by a person in an art- formances in the arts, including dance. While work in dance and the expression of an emotion more traditional approaches have recognized by a person in an everyday life, nonart situ- those contexts, as in John Dewey’s emphasis on ation? Do the expressions in the artwork have ordinary experience in understanding art, recent a special presence or symbolism or universality trends in performance studies renew this broad that we do not experience when identical bod- emphasis for interpretative understanding. ily movements are completed by a person in Overdue attention to non-Western cultures ordinary life? has further enriched the exploration of the

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the arts cultural phenomenon of dance, as both a bibliography social activity and a performing art. While most Best, David. 1978. Philosophy and Human Movement. work in dance aesthetics still focuses almost London: Allen & Unwin. exclusively on the Western dance tradition, Cohen, Selma Jeanne. 1982. Next Week, Swan the landmark International Encyclopedia of Dance Lake: Reflections on Dance and Dances. Middletown: drew welcome attention to dance aesthetics in Wesleyan University Press. Fancher, Gordon & Myers, Gerald (eds.). 1981. African, Asian, and Islamic cultures and the Philosophical Essays on Dance. Brooklyn: Dance writing of Lois Lamya’ al-Faruqi, Frederick Horizons. Lamp, and A. C. Scott. Of special significance is Foster, Susan Leigh. 1986. Reading Dancing: Bodies and the integration of religious, cultural, and social Subjects in Contemporary American Dance. Berkeley: dimensions of dance, as well as its inter- University of California Press. disciplinary fusion with a broad range of other Fraleigh, Sandra. 2004. Dancing Identity: Metaphysics artistic expression. in Motion. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Given the marginalized status of the art form Press. for so much of its history, even today, thought- Lepecki, Andre (ed.). 2004. Of the Presence of the ful work in related disciplines that ventures Body: Essays on Dance and Performance Theory. Middleton: Wesleyan University Press. into philosophical dimensions has been particu- McFee, Graham. 1992. Understanding Dance. London: larly valued. In the eighteenth century, John Routledge. Weaver and Jean-Georges Noverre were theor- Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine (ed.). 1984. Illuminating ists and choreographers whose writing con- Dance: Philosophical Explorations. Lewisburg: stitutes some of the earliest focused attention to Bucknell University Press. the nature of dance. In the twentieth century, Shusterman, Richard. 2008. Body Consciousness: the philosophically informed work of dance A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics. historians Selma Jeanne Cohen and Sally Banes New York: Cambridge University Press. has been particularly valuable in this dialogue. Sparshott, Francis. 1988. Off the Ground: First Steps The philosophically sensitive criticism of such to a Philosophical Consideration of the Dance. Princeton: Princeton University Press. critics as Arlene Croce has focused on the rationale for evaluative standards used broadly julie van camp in the art form. Rudolf von Laban, a modern dance choreographer who developed today’s most important form of notation, also wrote drama In recent years, two seemingly in- extensively on the nature of dance, with special soluble issues have confronted the scholar emphasis on natural expressiveness. interested in particular works of drama. The first For philosophers who consider aesthetics to is the degree to which she should engage with be the study of criticism (“talk about talk about those features a work of drama might possess art,” as Beardsley said), the breadth and qual- because it was written for performance. Call ity of dance criticism has improved dramatically this the “constraint problem.” The second is in the twentieth century with such writers as whether, because of its peculiar history or Jack Anderson, Deborah Jowitt, Anna Kisselgoff, nature, drama is a stable literary category at all. Alan Kriegsman, John Martin, Marcia B. Call this the “instability problem.” The con- Siegel, and Carl Van Vechten. straint problem is an immediate question con- While dance has not yet achieved the cerning the relevant features for an analysis stature and importance of the major art forms or interpretation. The instability problem is a of music, literature, and visual art, its complex concern if artistic categories are not just taxo- nature and its historic ties to cultural and reli- nomic but are appealed to in explaining par- gious phenomena ensure that it will remain an ticular works of literature. These issues have intriguing if ever perplexing art form of inter- a common source, namely, the connections est to aestheticians. and disconnections between dramatic litera- ture and theatrical performance. So they are not See also music and song; definition of “art”; always distinguished. expression; feminist aesthetics; notations; “Drama” is also beset with definition problems. ontology of artworks; performance. First, “drama” cannot be defined as a basic form

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drama of literature, as it is sometimes taken to be, dis- source of one or more ingredients in a theatri- tinct from the two other basic literary forms, cal production by means of providing words poetry and prose. To mark the relevant dis- or, more generally, information that is to be pre- tinctions among basic forms of literature, one sented in some particular order. That is, I am must call attention to some aspect of their proposing that any given piece of writing may characteristic uses of language. For example, function either as a work of literature or as a poetry is often thought to be separable from script and I am not insisting that the script-like other writing because of its attention to the character of the writing be determined in only formal features of words in combination: one way. I allow that a dramatic work may not rhythm, alliteration, and meter in particular. be judged to be literature in anything more Likewise, prose is often thought to be separable than the fairly broad sense that it is written from poetic writing by being concerned mainly language. So some readers may judge a given with features of the senses of words, not with dramatic work as not having literary features their sensible features. Drama too is frequently and values in sufficient quantity to warrant said to be a separable basic form of literature. being called “literature” in either the sense However, what marks that distinction is the of belles-lettres or in the yet more restrictive sense manner in which its speakers are identified or of imaginative and creative art. But I define a individuated. Immediately we see this is a com- work of dramatic literature in terms of what it paratively odd term of contrast. The first two could be: it is prima facie literature in a more modes of contrast are clear enough, even if robust sense because it is language that can be they only mark relative emphases. But nothing read for the features and values of its writing. in poetry or prose, as demarcated above, is To stipulate that a work of dramatic literature clearly contrasted with what is ordinarily be script-like, however that is determined, taken to be the central mark of dramatic liter- allows that the object might have been written ature: the use of dialogue. Dialogue, even dia- for use in theatrical performance. Since there is logue set out with explicit speech prefixes, does theater without drama, without narrative, and not contrast with a concern for either the even without scripts of any kind, this stipula- forms of words or their senses. tion simply notes one possible alternative func- Second, “drama” cannot easily be distin- tion of a given piece of writing. guished as a more specific sort of artistic cat- Although this way of marking dramatic egory like “genre” or “literary kind,” where the literature has kinships with the foregoing comparison class would include lyric poetry, definitions, it is a more relaxed approach that epic, the novel, romance, short story, among has several advantages over those views. By others. Once again, what must be said about appealing only to typical marks of being script- drama to mark the relevant distinctions will like, it allows even greater scope for the fact be some aspect of its characteristic uses of that there is no clean way to distinguish language. Once again, the manner of its writ- dramatic literature from other forms, genres, ten representation of speech – the use of dialogue or kinds of narrative literature. And it allows for – is not the sort of feature in terms of which we the determination of any quality, and hence can contrast drama with these other genres or any positioning within/outside a literary canon, literary kinds. For example, there is no prin- to be decided or contested by readers on sub- cipled reason a lyric poem, even a sonnet, stantive grounds and not by philosophical could not be written in dialogue. This could be fiat. Further, because it distinguishes between one effective way to give voice to indecision in works of dramatic literature and scripts in poem or song. terms of their functions, it allows for judg- But suppose we think of a “dramatic work” ments deriving from literary and theatrical as any narrative writing that is both script-like analyses of the same piece of writing to overlap – typically but not exclusively written in dialogue but still to be aimed at different functions. – and actually read for any literary features Finally, it does not preclude the use of writing or values the work possesses. And suppose that is not typically script-like – ostensibly we think of a “script,” in contrast to a dramatic nondramatic literary texts – as scripts for work, as any writing that is actually used as a theater.

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In contrast to the definition problems, the The instability problem can be put this way: constraint and instability problems with which Does the historical fact, that where there is no we began initially appear quite insoluble. extraliterary institution of theater there is also These problems have to do with the connection no literature anyone calls “drama,” entail that between drama as a literary form, kind, or what counts as dramatic literature is unstable genre, and the extraliterary institution of the- or destabilizing? One might wonder why it atrical performance. should. The first poems were spoken aloud. It The constraint problem has two aspects. is reasonable to think some sort of nonliterary Seen from the side of literature, it can be stated institution of declamation preceded written this way: should the fact that a text is written poetry, since writing emerged in most cultures for performance constrain the critical interpre- well after poetic storytelling. And even were tations we can reasonably give it? The fact that that not the case, concerns with the formal it is performed in a specific place and over a features of rhythm and meter just are concerns specific stretch of time can always be said to con- with how language sounds when spoken. Yet strain the text on that occasion. But this allows poetry, as a literary type, does not seem to suf- that there is always more than one possible fer any instability for these reasons. Poetry can meaning to the text and that any given perfor- exist quite well where there is no institution of mance can realize only one of them. Moreover, declamation. Indeed that is now the case in without real information about prior productions many cultures. Still, one might think it less and given the historical and imaginative limits likely that dramatic literature could exist with- of actual literary critics, only a limited number out the institution of theater. Works of dram- of performance possibilities can actually be in atic literature not intended for performance do play in a literary analysis or interpretation of a exist of course. In western European literature, work of dramatic literature. Anyone who offers Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Cenci and Karl what is called “stage-centered literary criticism” Kraus’s The Last Days of Mankind readily come of dramatic texts – for example, B. Beckerman, to mind. But that sort of writing is exceptional A. C. Dessen, and J. L. Styan – attempts to con- in every culture that has dramatic literature. strain dramatic criticism so that it is respon- Most dramatic literature is written for public sible only to the possibilities of performance. performance in a theater. And theater is not But this now can seem seriously mistaken. literature – it has to do with more, less, and When seen from the side of theater the con- frequently other than language. We can now straint problem can be put this way: should set forth a simple argument for the claim that the fact that a script is written for perform- theater poses a deep problem for literature. ance constrain how it is used? The fact that Dramatic literature requires nonliterary action, it is written for performance can always be theatrical performance, in order to fully achieve thought to determine what gets said, in what its effects and meanings. But theatrical per- order, and maybe even by whom so long as the formance – because of its materiality and its performers agree to use the script in that way. corresponding modes of apprehension – resists In particular cases they may have good reasons being understood in purely rhetorical and dis- for doing so – reasons having to do with what cursive (i.e., in literary) terms. If we recognize can be achieved in the performance when it that dramatic literature cannot be clearly dis- is undertaken in this manner. But this entails tinguished from other literary categories, it is no logical demands, only aesthetic and, more- hard to see how those other categories could over, disputable demands that performers use be shown to be immune to the very same a script in that way. Put in those terms, the worry that theater poses for the category of attempt of H. Berger and others to conduct dramatic literature: in short, can any work of dramatic criticism by calling attention to the literature be analyzed fully and purely in liter- limits of what can be performed amounts to ary terms? The contingent facts of the history freeing literary criticism from the constraint of dramatic literature seem to render the cat- of what is possible in performance, but at the egory of dramatic literature itself unstable and apparent cost of treating the script as though it thereby to have a destabilizing effect on all of were not written for performance after all. literature.

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The solution I have offered to the definition performer over time. Whatever the case may be problems also shows us a way to defuse these with respect to the value of scripted perform- explosive and seemingly intractable debates ances over others, however, a script-driven recently occupying literary theory. It relaxes theater is likely to be a literary theater simply an implicit demand underwriting these problems, because it will produce some written scripts namely, the demand that we seek a way to that can – indeed, will – also be taken to func- take certain writings simultaneously as literary tion as works of literature. and as theatrical. Instead, I have held that a Finally, this maneuver allows us to reframe given piece of writing may be either a work of the constraint problem by noting first that liter- dramatic literature or a script, either a writ- ary analyses of any work of dramatic literature ing to be read for certain literary features and that also happens to get used as a script may values or a writing to be used in a quite differ- or may not be useful for performers, and by ent way. noting second that the dispute between stage- This relaxation in the definition of “drama” centered and text-centered literary criticism immediately undermines the main argument should be resolved, if at all, by appeal to some for the instability problem. If a bit of writing func- more general standard concerning the point of tions as a work of dramatic literature, then the the aesthetic appreciation of works of litera- relevant effects, features, and values to be ana- ture and what that standard requires. For lyzed and examined are exactly those analyzed example, were the standard to require that we and examined with respect to any other narra- first give literary works their richest possible tive literary work. Crucially, a work of dra- interpretations, we will favor text-centered lit- matic literature does not require theatrical erary criticism of works of drama. This might performance for the realization of those effects, be the case if the goal of aesthetic appreciation features, or values. The first premise in the is to maximize the aesthetic pleasure we can argument is false. And the argument for the gain from a literary work. However, were the claim that the category of dramatic literature is standard to require constraint by information unstable and destabilizing for all literature is about the intentions of actual (or hypothetical) unsound. authors, this would include the fact that Although this maneuver closes off the main their works were written to be performed and argument for the instability problem for dram thereby tend to push us toward some version of atic literature, it does not foreclose on what stage-centered criticism. We might think this if may be called a “literary theater.” The content we held an achievement standard for the aes- of a theatrical performance is not fully gov- thetic appreciation of literature. But determin- erned, deliverable, or retrievable by a written ing which of these, if either, is the right sort of text. Still, if we think of scripts as “scores for standard and imposes the right sort of restric- action” (Saltz 1991), we should also think of tions or requirements on the aesthetic appreci- them as providing particular orderings of ation of literary works is not within the scope the information an audience will encounter of this essay. (Stoppard 1999). Some scripts do this to excel- lent effect; and, in theater parlance, they “have See also literature; poetry; interpretation; legs.” Like some gymnastic or jazz routines, notations; performance. they are frequently repeated and approximated because – together with all the rest without bibliography which there is no performance – they yield Beckerman, Bernard. 1979. Dynamics of Drama: performances that take our breath away. It is Theory and Method of Analysis. New York: Drama arguable that writing can contribute to this Book Specialists. achievement for theater because it allows Bennett, Benjamin. 1990. Theater as Problem. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. greater control over the flow and order of Bennett, Benjamin. 1992. “Performance and the information than complex scenarios crafted for Exposure of Hermeneutics,” Theatre Journal, 44, improvisational sequences can or, perhaps, 431–47. even than is possible by means of scenarios Bennett, Benjamin. 2005. All Theater is Revolutionary and language passed down from performer to Theater. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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Berger, Harry, Jr. 1989. Imaginary Audition: Shake- ground. Thus its association with relatively speare on Stage and Page. Los Angeles: University of wet media. By contrast, drawing, like writing, California Press. is a matter of dragging markers over surfaces, Dessen, Alan C. 1995. Recovering Shakespeare’s along roughly linear paths. Significantly, unlike Theatrical Vocabulary. Cambridge: Cambridge painting, scratching or incising are common University Press. drawing techniques, which lead to printmaking. Hamilton, James R. 2007. The Art of Theater. Malden: Blackwell. Drawing thereby tends to work by dividing Laetz, Brian & Lopes, Dominic McIver. 2008. rather than concealing its ground, often by “Genre.” In The Routledge Companion to Film and defining distinct enclosures upon it. While Philosophy. P. Livingston & C. Plantinga (eds.). painting typically covers its tracks, drawing New York: Routledge, 152–61. leaves separately identifiable marks against Lamarque, Peter & Olsen, Stein Haugom. 2005. “The the reserved ground. Philosophy of Literature: Pleasure Restored.” In The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics. P. Kivy (ed.). the necessity of drawing Malden: Blackwell, 195–214. That drawing, assisted by painting, is a basic Meskin, Aaron. 2001. “Style.” In The Routledge Com- human activity may be argued by a few his- panion to Aesthetics. B. Gaut & D. McIver Lopes (eds.). 2nd edn. New York: Routledge, 489–500. torical observations. First, Homo sapiens is Saltz, David Z. 1991. “Texts in Action/Action in identified as an emerging species by its mental Texts: A Case Study of Critical Method,” Journal of and social capacities, and drawing practices Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 6, 29–44. provide much of the evidence for that. Locat- Stoppard, Tom. 1999. “Pragmatic Theater,” New ing the emergence of our species-defining lin- York Review of Books, 46, 14. guistic and similar “symbolic” abilities rests Styan, J. L. 1975. Drama, Stage and Audience. most directly on the evidence of prehistoric Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. drawings and paintings, already at levels james hamilton requiring no improvement. Second, drawing and painting, linking the most complex human sensory and motor sys- drawing, painting, and printmaking This tems of eyes and hands with other structures, introduction to the aesthetics of three great proved essential to much later thought, com- surface-marking fine arts focuses on drawing, munication, and production. Drawing is an with remarks on painting and printmaking indispensable means of design in most traditional organized around it. societies, where much of it, called “construc- Words for drawing reveal three main aspects: tional” drawing, is directly on the worked “drawing,” the physical action of dragging one materials, in order to shape them. Such work thing across another; the dessin/disegno group, disappears in the finished product – the guide- planning or design; and a link between drawing line in the saw kerf. and writing (graphêi). This mixture of connota- Third, industrialized society is even more tions of constructive foresight, close-contact dependent on drawings, usually of highly spe- physical action, and mental expression seems cialized forms. The modern may be marked out strikingly appropriate. from the traditional as that in which any arti- Drawing and painting have been closely fact must be drawn in order to be produced: related since prehistory and the difference in the process of conceiving, where it will be between them is often unclear, with countless sketched and resketched; in communicating variations of individual artistic practices. A about production (often as part of a contract); serviceable distinction may be found by briefly and in guiding it, as a way of relaying mea- characterizing painting. Color is a crucial surements between different sites for parts that factor closely associated with painting, of great must fit. Thereafter, diagrams guide use: no meaning, but regarding which difficulty in circuit diagrams, no modern world. Therefore, theorizing is legendary. Fortunately, painting philosophically, issues about drawing, having is best understood in terms of paint. Painting practical, ethical, social, and political dimensions, is covering surfaces by spreading layers of the are not restricted to aesthetics. However, aes- stuff, typically successive layers built up from the thetic matters are inextricable from them all.

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drawing, painting, and printmaking drawing in the fine arts and as a fine art and criticism that the very words for art in Given its importance to human cultures, it is some modern languages immediately suggest it. no wonder that drawing should not only be Drawing serves so widely for planning as to be among, but be considered to include, several fine associated with the “sketch,” something both arts. In some traditions, it is the art comprising tentative and instrumental in aid of another all design (disegno), especially architecture, finished object, including paintings. Even sculpture, and painting. In others, “the arts of before painting attained its artistic primacy, the brush” include calligraphy, thereby link- Michelangelo’s architectural, sculptural, and ing not only with painting but with poetry painting drawings were to him not worth and language generally. Overlapping traditions the paper they were on, which he reused, strongly associate design with geometry, and destroyed. Although from his time drawings that with constructional drawing: Euclid often came increasingly to be appreciated in the directs us how to draw a given shape. West for their show of the movements of Since drawing and painting as fine arts exist thought and hand, it was some time before at high levels in most cultures in which fine that tradition reflected something like an arts are recognized, we must avoid channeling Asian interest in process itself. our conceptions to the figurative, which is That came about largely through the not equally valued everywhere. Just as much medium of oil, whose blending and slow dry- purely utilitarian drawing is not of anything, nei- ing features reduced painting’s dependence ther is much artistic work, or only somewhat. on staged preplanning, with the result that This holds for such developed traditions as the painting assumed some of drawing’s process- Greek Geometric, much Islamic, and great calli- expressive properties. Drawing took renewed graphic cultures in which writing, drawing, and life from a series of new graphic processes – painting are scarcely separable. Therefore the engraving and etching, later wood-engraving, familiar path of investigating these great sur- then lithography – and the combination of the face-marking arts through representation goes older method of woodcut with movable type, awry – making it difficult to understand even all of which provided it with new “ontological” modern nonfigurative work within the largely status and wider currency, before the advent figurative tradition of the West. It is misleading of photography, and later photomechanical even to call the results of much fine drawing, printing, as surface-marking arts. painting, and printmaking “pictures.” Even regarding depictive uses, a second cau- aesthetic formalism tion concerns spatial studies. If modern cognit- Contemporary philosophy of these arts has ive research – following its interests – expands tended to focus on common issues of form, our understanding of drawing largely in terms representation, expression, and art status, with of spatial representation, philosophy of art needs less attention to their differences, such as color, to insist on a “bigger picture” of depiction. This material, procedure. In this it has followed is particularly important because since the concerns in the artworld, and in particular Renaissance an influential habit of thought modernism’s emphasis on aesthetic or immedi- conceives of pictures as basically perspectival pro- ate features of “the work itself” combined with jections onto flat surfaces of three-dimensional questioning age-old ideas of representation. situations derived from what is often termed “the The ancient referential or “pointing” conception real world,” however fantastic. This perspective of representation noted above suggested to conception interlocks with an even older one, some that representational interest could not according to which images, as “symbols,” refer be interest in “the works themselves,” but only or “point” like arrows to things other than in what they “referred to,” and was therefore themselves – an idea which seems flawed, as it nonaesthetic. Some aesthetic theories treat pertains to neither Mickey Mouse drawings, self-expression similarly, arguing that interest nor to well-known pictures (e.g., by Escher and in the works’ production, whether located in the Saul Steinberg) that depict themselves. artist or society, while important, is extrinsic. As a fine art, painting has so long been the Formalist philosophy has proved valuable for favored of the three in Western practice, history, several reasons. It draws attention to the

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the arts paramount issue of artistic form, and assists attention to it “for itself,” since that is what it access to nonfigurative art as well as to a is. This argument may appeal to research that diversity of world imagery, for modern audiences, stresses perceptual contexts, including those of for whom much subject content, process, and category. As shown by simple experiments, sight use may be esoteric, even unacceptable. organizes the shapes and colors depicting objects, Nonetheless several problems arise. Con- including their orientations and groupings – ceptually, the existence of such centrally literally deciding which way is up – partly representational arts as poetry and drama, according to subject-recognition categories. the statistical evidence of the three visual arts It may add that, as Kant observed, when we as overwhelmingly mimetic, and growing identify something in a bog as a board not a cultural skepticism about universalities and branch, we take its cause to be something museum “decontextualization” from social “with an end in view, to which it owes its contexts pose serious challenges to formalism. form” (2000: §43). Merely taking something to In addition, enormous growths in travel, the be an artifact greatly affects its appearance. museum world (entries outstripping those for This effect of artifact perception, the argument sports), and art-book publication make formal- may continue, is even greater with works of fine ism too practically restrictive for our irrepress- art, whose “end in view” includes appear- ible interest in contexts and creators. Finally, ing to us in certain ways. According to such the three modern visual art practices have arguments, aesthetic form could not be returned to figuration and to social contexts. entirely separable from either depictive con- tent or artists’ purposes. pictorial representation as art Even if effective, such replies do not yet Perhaps inspired by historian-theorist Ernst address how perception of subject matter in Gombrich’s Art and Illusion (1960), which pictures could be itself aesthetic or distinctively owed much to cognitive psychology, philo- artistic. Here common sense invokes artists’ sophical thought about representation in the “ways of seeing” subject matter, possibly also three arts has sought new starting points. introducing an expressive aspect. Consider the A beginning has been made in attempting to contrasts between flowers in a garden and provide, in various ways, a better definition of flowers as seen by Chao Meng-chien, Dürer, visual representation itself. Advances in cogni- Rachel Ruysch, Van Gogh, or Redon. Can tive research into the perception of space have philosophers not only articulate this reply but inspired philosophical work, though their rele- develop it in illuminating ways? Here treat- vance for art is always moot. However, a bat- ment of our three great marking arts, particu- tery of aesthetic-formalist challenges needed larly through drawing, may benefit philosophy response – challenges that do not presuppose of visual art in a number of ways. This might formalism’s positive theses. One is that, if what be shown by exploiting, in ways there is only Gombrich called “convincing representation,” or space here to sketch, the three connotations even representation itself, is neither necessary of drawing’s name with which we began: nor sufficient for art, how could it be artistically design, physical action, and mental, “sym- relevant? Another is how we are to distinguish bolic” content. interest in objects as depicted in pictures from Regarding design, much of visual art lies in interest in those objects themselves. A related form. And although there is much form that is challenge to artists’ self-expression is to distin- not shape, shape is a very significant instance guish interest in biography from interest in the of form. Drawing, with direct emphasis on product before us. finding interesting shapes, is an excellent place Philosophers have taken several courses in to investigate this difficult but most important response. Some reject formalism, even any matter. One clear meaning of a distinct “way focus on the aesthetic. Others accept aesthetic of seeing” in pictures is the shapes through constraints but try to show how interest in which depicted objects are presented to us. subject matter can meet them. One approach Existing theoretical traditions for understanding is to insist that, where a picture is representa- form as meaningful shape include the classical tional, attention to it as representation is geometrical or proportional mentioned above,

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literature the visual-dynamic (including gestalt), and the Rawson, Philip. 1969. Drawing. Oxford: Oxford depth-psychological. University Press. As to physical action, drawing provides ideal Taylor, Joshua. 1981. Learning to Look: A Handbook data for investigating how artists’ physically for the Visual Arts. 2nd edn. Chicago: University of formative actions – as intentional – can be evi- Chicago Press. dent in the products of those actions, and there- Willats, John. 1997. Art and Representation. Princeton: Princeton University Press. fore how complex mental and psychological Wollheim, Richard. 1987. Painting as an Art. attitudes can appear in, and guide understand- London: Thames & Hudson. ing of, their work. Unlike in real environments, objects in pictures can be experienced as patrick maynard “described” through artists’ physical actions. Finally, anthropology, as earlier noted, appreciates prehistoric drawing as evidence of literature The term “literature” has at least capacities for “symbolic thought”: the ability to three different senses. In the broadest sense, it conceive of situations in diverse ways, and to refers to any body of writing that has a shared share this rather than only to respond to them. topic. It is in this sense that we talk of the lit- The wealth of world drawing furnishes varieties erature on global warming. In the right context, of individuation and categorization of events almost any piece of writing can count as liter- and entities, their modes and parts, as well as ature in the broadest sense. The term is also used, qualification by temporal relations, causal however, to pick out narrower classes of writ- connections, mental and psychological states, ings that possess, or are claimed to possess, through narrative. Explanation of how there some qualities that we value. Often, when can be such distinct “ways of seeing” in differ- questions are raised about the nature of litera- ent works should begin to show how a few ture, our interest is in those writings that scratches on a surface can produce reference, might be studied in “literature” courses taught allusion, warmth, intelligence, even moral at colleges and universities. To be literature, greatness, without recourse to language – as in this “artistic” sense of the term, is to be a prelude to addressing the wider resources of literary artwork. But the term “literature” is painting for generating meaning. also often used with normative import in an extended sense, to include not only literary artworks but also writings in nonartistic gen- art of the paleolithic; abstraction; See also res – travel writing, essays, some works of philo- chinese aesthetics; cognitive science and sophy and history – that are taken to share art; depiction; formalism; perspective; with literary artworks some of the qualities for picture perception; technology and art. which the latter are valued. It is in this sense that Terry Eagleton (1983: 1) cites, as examples bibliography of seventeenth-century English literature, not Arnheim, Rudolf. 1974. Art and Visual Perception: A just the works of Shakespeare, Webster, Psychology of the Creative Eye. 2nd edn. Berkeley: Marvel, and Milton, but also “the essays of University of California Press. Francis Bacon, the sermons of John Donne, Gombrich, Ernst. 1960. Art and Illusion: A Study in the Bunyan’s spiritual autobiography,” and even Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Princeton: philosophical and historical works such as Princeton University Press. Hobbes’s Leviathan and Clarendon’s History of Ivins, William. 1978. Prints and Visual Communica- the Rebellion. Eagleton concludes that litera- tion. 2nd edn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ture in the extended sense is just “a highly Kant, Immanuel. 2000 [1790]. Critique of the Power valued kind of writing” (1983: 10), and thus of Judgement. P. Guyer & E. Matthews (trans.). culturally relative given the plurality of things Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maynard, Patrick. 2005. Drawing Distinctions: that are valued in different cultures. Varieties of Graphic Expression. Ithaca: Cornell Even if we agree with Eagleton that there University Press. is no objective criterion of literariness in the Podro, Michael. 1998. Depiction. New Haven: Yale extended sense, we can still wonder whether University Press. there are any distinguishing characteristics of

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the arts the literary artwork. While some would argue accepted features of artistic style are always that the notion of literary art is as culturally open to challenge by artists who produce art- inflected as the notion of literature in the works that deliberately depart from the extended sense, and that the distinction received style. We see this, for example, in the between literary artworks and other works of intentionally “flat” writing of French “new literature in the extended sense is a matter novelists” such as Alain Robbe-Grillet, and in of convenience and convention rather than of the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges, which principle, it is worth considering how a more deliberately adopt for fictional purposes the principled distinction between literary art- academic style of professional journals, complete works and other kinds of (valued) writing with scholarly footnotes and erudite refer- might be drawn (e.g., see Stecker 1996). ences. Furthermore, writers in fields that we Literary artworks might be thought to differ would not naturally classify as artistic – “new in their content, being fictional. But this is journalists” like Truman Capote, Norman clearly neither sufficient nor necessary for Mailer, and Tom Wolfe – can employ stylistic being a work of literary art. On the one hand, devices of the sort celebrated by the Formalists. jokes, thought experiments, and comic strips Some have concluded that there is no dis- are usually viewed as fictions, but not as liter- tinctive class of “literary artworks,” but only dis- ary artworks. On the other hand, some literary tinctive “literary” ways of reading texts – for works, such as works of lyric poetry, seem to be example, attending to the very features of nonfictional in their subject matter. “writing” to which the Formalists and the New This suggests an alternative criterion of Critics drew our attention. A text, then, is a literary art, namely, the style of a piece of literary artwork just in case we choose to read writing. Roman Jakobson, one of the Russian it in a certain way. Ways of reading might be Formalists, defined literature as organized vio- regarded as institutionalized and historically lence committed on ordinary speech. On such contingent sets of operations and procedures a view, literature in the artistic sense deliberately to which texts are subjected by those who departs from ordinary speech, and relies for belong to particular critical traditions. Michel its effects on this disruption. A related view Foucault associated the kinds of critical practices was defended by the American “New Critics,” celebrated by the New Critics with the con- who took as their focus the “literary use” of lan- temporary conception of an author. Certain guage – the use of distinctive rhythms, syntax, classes of texts, Foucault (1986) maintained, sound patterns, imagery, metaphor, tropes, become associated with what he termed the ambiguity, and irony. Literary artworks, it was “author function,” something we must reject in claimed, differ from other writings in their pos- order to allow greater freedom to readers and a session of these features, in virtue of which proliferation of interpretations of works. But they lend themselves to a particular kind of this seems to elide an important distinction close reading that focuses on relationships between something being a literary artwork, internal to the text. and its being treated as a literary artwork. Also, A first difficulty with such a view is that, the decision to adopt a particular strategy in even if we restrict ourselves to the field of reading a particular text seems to reflect a poetry, we can find parts of poems, and even prior expectation that the text in question is entire poems, that do not seem to commit any profitably approached through such a strat- violence on ordinary speech, but merely to egy, an expectation which seems to reflect, reflect it, and that are not distinctive in their use in turn, a prior classification of certain texts as of “literary language.” For example, there are literary artworks. contemporary “prose poems” that are com- This suggests that we might try to distin- posed entirely of what might pass as ordinary guish literary artworks from other texts not in prose and eschew standard prosodic conventions. terms of how they are or might be read, but in This testifies to a more fundamental problem terms of how their authors intended them to be with any attempt to characterize literary art read. Suppose that, as has just been suggested, – even poetry – in terms of stylistic features of there exist, in given cultural contexts, established the writing. In literature, as in the other arts, ways of treating certain classes of texts,

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literature corresponding to the sorts of reading strategies as an artistic vehicle serve to clarify this point. described by the New Critics. Perhaps such But most artistic vehicles do have distinctive reading strategies enhance the apprehension perceptible features that distinguish them from of certain sorts of “aesthetic” values through the other entities, and artists presumably confer reader’s attention to formal properties of texts. these features on their vehicles because they It could then be argued that works of literary are particularly apposite for the articulation of art are texts that are intended by their authors content in an “aesthetic” way, given the shared to furnish such values to readers who adopt the understandings within the relevant artistic relevant kinds of reading strategies (e.g., see community as to how one should “take” an Lamarque & Olsen 1994). This allows both for artistic vehicle. something being treated as a literary artwork Applying this to the distinguishing features when it is not (because the required general of literary art, we can say that literary texts intentions were not instrumental in its history demand, for their appreciation, techniques of making), and also for flawed or downright bad of reading that allow the texts to articulate works of literary art (where an author fails their content in particular ways. In the case of to produce something that readers find valuable poetry, for example, we are intended to take in the relevant ways when they adopt the account of a much fuller range of properties intended reading strategies). of the words used – their cultural resonance, The challenge then is to say what is distinc- their associations, their sounds, for example – tive about the ways in which literary artworks and we take account of what a given string of are intended to be read, especially given the words can be taken to exemplify, qua string, and broad disagreement in the scholarly community not merely of what the words “mean.” We also as to how such works should be read. Is there take the content articulated at more immediate any common core to the reading strategies levels to contribute toward the higher-order that have been proposed by literary theorists, and thematic content of the piece, the “point” of the will this allow us to distinguish an intention that piece that we expect to uncover in our reading. a work be read as literature in the artistic sense Furthermore, the higher-level content is not from the intention that a text be read as a work articulated explicitly, as might be the case if we of literature in the extended sense? were simply giving examples in support of a gen- Parallel questions arise concerning other art eral conclusion, but has to be determined by the forms. In the case of the visual arts and dance, reader through close attention to the lower- for example, theorists appeal to intended func- level articulatory functions performed by the tion to account for artworks that are perceptu- artistic vehicle. As with dance and visual art, ally indistinguishable from nonartworks. In then, it is our understanding, in encountering watching a dancer, we are expected to attend a poem, that we are supposed to attend to it in to her movements, however mundane, with a these sorts of ways that explains the different particular kind of care and intensity, and to kinds of functions that a given text performs if have an “artistic” interest in grasping the point it is taken to be the vehicle of a poetic artwork. of the movements. An instance of an artwork Of course, poems are only one kind of literary is intended to function as an artistic vehicle by artwork, and most of us are more familiar with means of which certain things are represented, prose works such as novels and performed expressed, or exemplified. The artist assumes that works such as plays. It would therefore also the receiver will know that she is supposed to be necessary to show how, for example, our treat the artistic vehicle in particular kinds of attempts to understand the narratives in ways. What makes something an artwork is not, fictional works of literary art require that we take per se, the elements of which it is composed account of the more thematic content of the or the way in which those elements are put work. together, but how the assemblage of elements In summary, then, it can be argued that that make up the artistic vehicle is intended to literary artworks are to be distinguished not function in the articulation of content. Cases in terms of their distinctive contents, nor in where the artistic vehicle shares its perceptible terms of their distinctive style or syntax, but properties with something that does not serve in terms of how they are intended to function

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the arts as vehicles for the articulation of content. The engage larger audiences and, thereby, enhance more manifest features of literary artworks – the financial feasibility of motion pictures. the prosodic structures of poems, the syntactic One screening could now accommodate 10, dislocation of certain works of which the 20, 100, and then more viewers at a time. And Formalists spoke, the use of certain figures of with the expansion of the potential profitability speech, of metaphor, and of ambiguity – are of motion pictures, the practice of motion- means whereby content is articulated, but can picture-making extended in every direction serve as such means only given shared under- – including fiction and nonfiction, poetic standings as to how the linguistic text is to experimentation, and so forth – until it became, be read. according to many, a (if not the) major art form of the twentieth century. See also drama; poetry; canon; foucault; Because the practice of motion-picture- intention and interpretation; interpreta- making represents such a large contribution tion; interpretation, aims of; text. to culture, it is a topic for many different branches of philosophy. However, the two cen- bibliography tral questions that philosophers have asked Eagleton, Terry. 1983. Literary Theory: An Introduc- about the motion picture are: what is a motion tion. Oxford: Blackwell. picture and can motion pictures be art? Foucault, Michel. 1986. “What is an Author?” In The Foucault Reader. P. Rabinow (ed.). New York: what is a motion picture? Pantheon, 101–20. Since we often speak in terms of “the philoso- Lamarque, Peter & Olsen, Stein Haugom 1994. phy of X” – as in the case of the philosophy of Truth, Fiction, and Literature: A Philosophical motion pictures – the first order of business, in Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doing the philosophy of whatever, is to define Stecker, Robert. 1996. “What is Literature?” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 198, 681–94. what the whatever is. One way of doing this is to say what conditions or criteria a candidate david davies has to meet in order to count as a member of the whatever. So, in our case, we want to know what features something must possess in order motion pictures Although presaged by to fall under the concept of motion picture. entertainments like the magic lantern, with First of all, a motion picture should be a its moving dissolves, and various visual toys, picture. But what is a picture? Let us say that such as zoetropes, motion pictures in the form a picture is a visual representation whose of photographic films broke onto the scene referents we recognize by simply looking – between 1889 and 1895. Initially, these without recourse to arbitrary codes or conven- motion pictures came in the form of kineto- tions – in cases where we are already capable scopes – viewing boxes into which customers of recognizing that kind of object or event in the peered, one at a time, in order to see short world outside of pictures. A picture of a horse clips of things like Annie Oakley shooting at tar- is such that I can recognize it as of a horse by gets. Kinetoscopes were developed by Thomas looking, where I am able to recognize that kind Edison and his assistant W. K. L. Dickson of thing – say, four-legged animals – in terms between 1889 and 1891 and the first of my ordinary powers of object recognition. kinetoscope parlor was opened in New York The earliest motion pictures were photo- on April 14, 1894. graphic. As we shall see, this led some people The next important event in the birth of to charge that they could not be art, because a the motion picture, as we know it, was the photograph, it was held, was merely the mech- development of motion picture projection by anical reproduction of reality. Photography the Lumière Brothers. They staged their first left no room for expression, imagination, or public screening of a series of short films on formal invention. It remained too tied to the real- December 28, 1895 in Paris. By screening ity that had given rise to the photograph. films instead of presenting them via individual Photography was too close to reality. Looking viewing boxes, the Lumières were able to at a photograph, moving or otherwise, is

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motion pictures allegedly tantamount to looking at the reality ontological categories – the slides to the cat- that gave rise to it. Thus, we need to pinpoint egory of still pictures and Oshima’s film to the the difference between looking at a horse and category of motion pictures. Likewise paint- looking at a photograph of a horse. ings, engravings, lithographs, photographs, Looking at a horse is different than looking and so forth are still pictures in contrast to at a photograph of the same horse insofar as the motion pictures. former experience comes automatically with a However, this raises the question of the dis- built-in, egocentric orientation to the horse, tinction between theater and motion pictures, whereas my experience of the photograph does since theatrical arrays are visual representa- not. By “egocentric orientation” I mean that on tions that are also detached displays (I cannot seeing the horse I can point my body in its orient my body toward Elsinore on the basis of direction and walk toward it. I cannot do that the production at the Guthrie Theater) which with a photograph of a horse. Suppose the have the capacity for movement and whose photo were taken on a space station orbiting the referents are recognized simply by looking earth. I cannot point my body to the location (I recognize Hamlet is a man by looking, not of the horse when the photo was snapped; the by deciphering a code, reading, or inferring). space between me and the horse as repre- So what differentiates theater from motion sented by the photo is discontinuous. For the pictures? space represented by the photo, like that of all Both theater and motion pictures are multiple- pictures, is a “detached display” – the place of instance arts. There can be multiple instances its referent is epistemically unavailable to me, of Hamlet being performed at the same time, just since it has been, so to speak, detached from the as there can be multiple, simultaneous perfor- spatiotemporal continuum that I inhabit. mances (screenings) of To Kill a Mockingbird Inasmuch as motion pictures are pictures, (1962). One way of characterizing this phe- then, they are representations, specifically nomenon is to say that dramas and motion detached displays, whose referents we recognize pictures are types that can sustain a multipli- simply by looking. But this is true of ordinary city of token performances, just as there is the pictures – including not only photographs but design of the $1 bill of which the singles in our paintings, engravings, and so forth. So the wallets are tokens. next question becomes: what is the difference Of course, saying that dramas and movies are between motion pictures and pictures sim- both multiple-instance arts does not help us to pliciter? Ordinary language alerts us to the key cut the difference between them. But if instead differentiae here. It is motion. We call them we concentrate on the way in which we get from motion pictures, or moving pictures, or just the types – Hamlet (the play type) and To Kill a movies in light of the fact that they possess the Mockingbird (the movie type) – to their respec- technological capacity to engender the impres- tive token performances, two philosophically sion of movement in viewers. striking contrasts begin to emerge. For exam- Note that the requirement here is only that ple, in order to get from the play type Hamlet, candidates for the status of motion picture a literary artifact that acts as a recipe for cook- have the capacity to deliver the impression of ing up performances of Hamlet, to the token per- movement. They need not literally do so. formance, we require the intentional activities There are motion pictures that do not move, of the playmakers in interpreting the play type such as Band of Ninja (1967) – a film by Nagisa and applying it in the thick of performance. Oshima of a comic strip. Perhaps one could But that which mediates the transit from the show the same comic strip, panel by panel or motion pictures type To Kill a Mockingbird to page by page, by means of a series of slides. token performances of it (screenings) is a tem- Nevertheless, the parade of slides would not plate, for example, a filmstrip or a DVD, that be a motion picture, since slides lack the tech- operates mechanically and/or electronically. nological capacity to provoke the impression So, although theater and motion pictures are of movement. Oshima’s film and a cascade of both multiple-instance or type arts, they never- slides might be indiscernible to the human theless differ fundamentally in the way in eye and yet they would belong to different which they generate token performances of

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the arts the relevant types. Theater does it through the say that all motion pictures are art, but that mediation of intentional states whereas motion some, indeed a great many, motion pictures pictures generate token performances by means are artworks. And yet, from the birth of the of engaging templates, which are tokens, movies and into our own times, there have mechanically (and electronically). been skeptics who contend that motion pic- A corollary of this, interestingly, is that the tures cannot be art. token performance of a theatrical token is a Their reservations usually rest on the work of performing art whereas a token per- assumptions that motion pictures are noth- formance of a motion picture (a screening) is ing more than moving photographs and that not. For running a template by the numbers photographs, moving or otherwise, cannot be through the appropriate mechanism, such as my artworks. Among the reasons that are offered DVD player, although it may involve routine for the demotion of photography, perhaps the technical competence, does not involve artistry. central worry is that photographs are nothing So far then, something is a motion picture more than mindless, mechanical reproduc- only if (1) it is a visual representation of the order tions of whatever stands before the camera. of a detached display, (2) whose subject we You press a button, you get a photo. The pro- recognize by merely looking, (3) which pos- cess is one of a series of sheer causal processes sesses the capacity to engender the impression with no opportunity for artistic expression. It of movement, (4) whose token performances are is like holding a mirror up to nature. Thus, generated by templates, and (5) whose token per- insofar as artistic expression is said to be the hall- formances are not artworks in their own right. mark of art, photographs, moving or other- However, this is not sufficient. Imagine a wise, cannot be art. mechanized tableau, as one might find at a This argument is plagued by a number of theme park, with a robotized Abraham Lincoln flaws. First, motion pictures are not just mov- delivering the Gettysburg Address. It would ing photographs. They include other dimen- meet the five conditions outlined above, but we sions, such as editing, relations between sound would not be disposed to call it a motion picture, and image, musical tracks, and so forth. since it is, rather, a moving sculpture. In order Therefore, even if the individual images (the to exclude such phenomena from the order of shots) in movies were photographs, artistic the motion picture, we should add that the expression might be available to the motion candidate in question be two-dimensional. picture maker in virtue of these other dimensions Some have argued that the addition of the of creativity. requirement of two-dimensionality to the for- Of course, another problem with the argument mula makes the definition of motion pictures is that, even if the individual shots are photo- too narrow, since it would exclude holographs. graphs, albeit moving ones, this would not Surely, it may be urged, if one could holo- preclude artistic expression. For photography graphically project the final gun battle of 3:10 itself possesses a wealth of strategies and to Yuma (2007) in three dimensions, that devices that may be deployed to expressive would be a motion picture. But would it? effect, including camera angles, image scale, Wouldn’t it be a moving sculpture, the very cat- lighting, color design, variable framing, camera egory that the addition of the requirement of movement, and so forth. Moreover, the cine- two-dimensionality was designed to exclude. matic image can be processed during the post- Against this, it may be objected that sculptures production period in many different ways that are not made of light. However, the objection can make an expressive difference (e.g., by is false, if one considers the light sculptures changing the hue of the image, or by adding of Dan Flavin. special effects, among other things). Moreover, this argument against the pos- are motion pictures art? sibility of motion picture art is being rendered Although motion pictures can discharge many technologically obsolete by the perfection of services – from surveillance to colonoscopies – computer-generated imagery, such as the CGI it is undoubtedly as art that motion pictures have mattes in movies like 300 (2006). By means of captured the global imagination. This is not to digital manipulation, images can be created

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music and song from scratch – and will be with increasing rock), or propagandize in favor of one kind regularity – thereby undermining the presup- or type of music above others (e.g., Adorno position that all motion picture images, in 1973). but it was Arthur Schopenhauer (1969) virtue of being photographic, are mindless in the nineteenth century who first argued for reproductions of reality. Instead, by means of the preeminence of music among the arts. In its computers, motion picture images can be as abstract character, he suggested, music is both divorced from what is as are paintings. a direct presentation of the will and a release from the will’s constant frustration. Undoubtedly See also photography; ontology of artworks; the rise of instrumental, abstract music con- technology and art. tributed to the growing status of music as an art at this time. bibliography Overall, the most persistent theme in the Allen, Richard & Smith, Murray (eds.). 1997. Film philosophy of music, and still the most dis- Theory and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University cussed, is that of whether and how music Press. expresses emotion, how it affects the listener, Carroll, Noël. 2008. The Philosophy of Motion how it compares in this respect with language, Pictures. Oxford: Blackwell. Carroll, Noël & Choi, Jinhee (eds.). 2006. The and whether it is thereby a source of value and Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures. Oxford: knowledge. The earliest, sophisticated argu- Blackwell. ment on the topic was offered in the mid nine- Cavell, Stanley. 1979 [1971]. The World Viewed. teenth century by the music critic Eduard Enlarged edn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer- Hanslick (1986), who argued that music sity Press. cannot express emotion because it cannot pos- Currie, Gregory. 1995. Image and Mind. Cambridge: sess or communicate the cognitive elements Cambridge University Press. essential to emotion. His views continue to Danto, Arthur C. 1979. “Moving Pictures,” Quarterly be championed by formalists, but a majority of Review of Film Studies, 4, 1–21. philosophers accept that music is expressive Freeland, Cynthia & Wartenberg, Thomas (eds.). 1995. Philosophy and Film. London: Routledge. and attempt to explain how this is possible. Gaut, Berys. 2002. “Cinematic Art,” Journal of Art and For instance, in the mid twentieth century, Aesthetic Criticism, 60, 299–312. Susanne Langer argued that music employs a Scruton, Roger. 2006. “Photography and Repre- distinctive mode of symbolism with which it sentation.” In The Philosophy of Film and Motion presents the form of feelings. A range of issues, Pictures. Noël Carroll & Jinhee Choi (eds.). Oxford: not only concerning music’s expressiveness Blackwell, 19–34. but also the character of emotion, continue to Wartenberg, Thomas & Curran, Angela (eds.). be presented: for example, whether expressive- 2005. The Philosophy of Film: Introductory Texts ness is a literal or metaphoric property of and Readings. Oxford: Blackwell. music, whether music arouses in listeners the noël carroll emotions it expresses, whether the emotions expressed are to be attributed to a hypothet- ical persona or solely to the musical sounds, music and song In ancient Greece, the whether emotions always involve cognitive Pythagoreans were interested in the principles commitments and as such are to be distin- of acoustics and suggested that the harmony of guished from physiological sensations, and proportions in music echoed a similar cosmic so on. harmony. The Greek philosophers focused on The ontology of musical works and their music’s effects on the character, attitudes, and relation to the performances that instance emotions of those who heard it (e.g., see them has become a growing area of discussion Aristotle’s Politics 8 §6). The consideration of since it first attracted attention late in the music in the context of cultural critique has twentieth century (Levinson 1980; Wolterstorff always been popular with philosophical pundits, 1980; Ingarden 1986), as have related topics, who deplore the impoverished nature and cor- such as whether musical works are discovered rupting influence of the day’s popular music (e.g., or created (Fisher 1991), what the criteria Adorno 1989 on jazz and Scruton 1997 on for authentic performance are, and whether

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the arts authentic performance is possible or desirable focused on classical music, but the works that (Kivy 1995; Davies 2001). The role of music in have most fascinated theorists have been fostering cultural identity has also been dis- “pure” or “absolute” music, that is, music cussed in terms of authenticity (Rudinow 1994; without text or story (as criticized in Ridley Davies 2001; Gracyk 2001; Young 2007). 2004). Yet, there is no doubt that songs are Further subjects covered under the heading musical works too, and, as Levinson (1987: of the philosophy of music include the nature 42) says, there “are defensible senses in which of the material elements of music (Scruton song might be said to be the most fundamental 1997; Davies 2001; Hamilton 2007), repre- music, the most natural music.” sentation or depiction in music (Kivy 1984; The focus on “pure” music results from the Davies 1994; Scruton 1997), musical pro- traditional preference of aesthetic theorists for fundity (Kivy 1990), the requirements for and high art and the elevation of “absolute” music nature of the listener’s appreciation of music in the nineteenth century to a supreme position (Kivy 1990; Davies 1994; Levinson 1997), among the arts. In instrumental music, such as notation (Davies 2001), differences between string quartets, music could attain complete live performance and recordings (Brown 2000a; aesthetic autonomy free from any external Davies 2001; Kania 2007), and improvisation constraints, including those that come with (Alperson 1984; Hamilton 2007). As well, any text setting. So, vocal music was demoted there are philosophically informed literatures on in this conception, and popular songs with music’s connection with education, health and texts connected to everyday life and emotion are therapy, the brain, language, evolution, and doubly impure, both as low art and because the technology. words can only limit the music. The use of Until recently, philosophers have focused their descriptors such as “pure” or “music in itself” accounts on Western, classical, instrumental (see Kivy 1990; Kania 2007) implies that such works of the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- music is more primary or fundamental than turies, considered from the perspective of the song, that it is music in its essential form. Yet, listener rather than of the performer (but see all writers (e.g., Kivy 2007: 203) appear to Godlovitch 1998), analyst (but see DeBellis concede that music did not originate that way. 1995), or composer. Careful and sympathetic We might regard song as a combination of consideration of the distinctive natures of more primary art forms, poetry and music. and aesthetics appropriate to medieval and This view may be based, however, on the ques- renaissance music, jazz (e.g., in Brown 2000b; tionable inference that songs are juxtaposi- Hamilton 2007), popular music (e.g., in tions of two forms because we can abstractly Gracyk 1996, 2001), and non-Western music consider the text or the music by itself. Is rep- has been more the exception than the rule, but resentational painting an impure art form this situation is changing. As yet, functional merely because one can intellectually abstract music – film music, work songs, devotional pure visual form from the representational music, dance music, lullabies, anthems – has image? Song is often regarded as text-setting, and attracted little interest, except in the cultural cri- art songs are almost always settings of pre- tique of muzak. And the definition of music has existing poetic texts, but this characterization is been largely ignored. significantly misleading for modern vernacular songs, which are typically offered as a unified songs structure of lyrics and music, both created Songs are the dominant subset of music that is together with neither intended to stand alone. sung. Wherever there is singing, there is song, One place the issue of how to conceptualize but not every case of singing – for instance, songs comes up is in considering how to evalu- opera, cantatas, and chants – is a case of ate them. Levinson (1987) suggests that the singing a song. Most music that people around relations of the text, the vocal line or melody, the world experience consists of songs, but in and the accompaniment determine how suc- spite of this universality, songs and song have cessful the song is as a song. However, this been overlooked in the philosophy of music framework may not be apt for rock music until recently. Not only have most accounts (broadly conceived to include rap, electronica,

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music and song reggae, etc.), where debate has sprung up thing” as a song and of the abstracted song about whether the criteria of evaluation echo “Something.” But are recordings, what Kania those for classical music (Frith 1996; Gracyk (2006) calls “tracks,” literally songs, or is this 1996; Davies 1999). If the primary works in rock merely a metonymic usage, like referring to are recordings (see below), the whole “wall of the score of a piece of music as “the music”? sound” on the recording created by the appli- cation of recording technology needs to be the core concept of a song included, and this is not simply a notated If “Revolution Nine” by the Beatles, the ex- accompaniment. Alternatively, if the abstract tended songs of Bob Dylan, Tin Pan Alley song is merely instanced in the recording songs, songs in musicals with long introductory playback, then we need a thinner notion of a verses (usually omitted when performed inde- song for the case of rock and popular music, a pendently of the musical narrative), Child bal- notion that omits a specific accompaniment lads, work songs, etc., all qualify, it is unlikely (Davies 2001; Kania 2006). Gracyk (1996, that there is a plausible formal definition of the 2001) has written an extensive aesthetics of rock core concept of a song. Nevertheless, it will be music, insisting that the primary work is the useful to outline elements that are typical, fre- recording and defending the quality and value quent, or salient in songs. Songs character- of the best rock music. istically involve a text that is sung. The text is set to one musical line, a main melody line, the many meanings of “song” which can involve call and response or verse and Philosophical examinations of vocal music chorus. (A song can be arranged in complex (Levinson 1987; Kivy 1998, 2007) have over- ways for multiple singers with multiple lines, but looked the difference between songs and other the basic song is usually simple – although not kinds of vocal music, such as operas and in art songs – and can be performed without the chants, and thus treat songs as if they do not complexity.) Also, a song is not typically part constitute a significant aesthetic category on of a larger musical work, and can be performed their own. Here it is helpful to keep in mind the by itself. (Songs in musicals can be detached from difference between “song,” used to refer to the their dramatic context.) general category of vocal music of all sorts, Vernacular songs – for example, karaoke, and its use as a count noun, as in “a song” or hymns, lullabies – are usually performable by the “the ten songs in the musical.” We can say larger community in that anyone can sing that an opera or chant is song but not that it is them. This feature gives them a wide-ranging a song. capacity to be made the individual expression Clearly the range of things to which we of any singer in performance. Even when they apply the count noun “song” expanded enorm- are regarded as personal expression, as in ously in the twentieth century. In jazz and popular music written by rock musicians and rock, purely instrumental works are univer- singer-songwriters, other performers are free sally called songs. “Song” has become the term to vary the meaning and expressive properties to apply to any short work of popular or mass of a given song, making it their own, as in culture music with or without lyrics. This usage Jimi Hendrix’s version of Dylan’s “All Along reflects the common use of “song” to refer to the the Watch Tower.” Their recording becomes instrumental melody of a song with lyrics. as much their creation as it is the original Another crucial extension of “song” occurs composer’s. in rock music. With groundbreaking record- With art songs, by contrast, the impetus is to ings by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Pink find the essential work specified in the score. Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, and many others, They are regarded as expressions of the composer the recording became a work of art in its own (or her surrogate: the singer) and they are right, not necessarily reflecting live perform- often difficult, requiring professional musician- ances. Whereas ethnographic recordings are ship to perform. That said, art songs – for of songs, the recordings of rock music (broadly example, the songs of Schubert or Charles Ives construed) are themselves called songs. We – are clearly songs; they set texts to accom- talk both of the Beatles’ recording of “Some- panied melodies and stand as autonomous

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the arts musical works. They have roots as deep in the original cultural context is lost. This suggests universal song tradition as do popular songs. that vernacular songs are “open texts” in a In rock, is the main artwork the core song that way that classical musical works are not. is instanced or manifested on the recording, or When we shift from the abstract song the specific recording of that song, or both? instanced or manifested in the recording to the There is reason to think the recording is the main recording song, the ontological picture changes. artwork, for it is only the recording that repre- The recording – say, the Beatles’ “Something” sents the abstract core song (words plus music) – can be imitated on other recordings or in within an overall sound work that produces live performance, but these are copies of the the meaning and expressive qualities that the recording, not interpretations. If the recording composer-performers intended. Somebody else is sampled and remixed, such would be a sort can take the abstract song and turn it into his of interpretation of the recorded work, but also or her own expression as a live singer, or a a derived and hence new work. So, this possi- group can create a new recording that “mani- bility does not imply that the recording song fests” the same abstract song. Ultimately, is an especially open work. Davies (2001: 14) – who holds that rock songs As a work with a stable artistic character are best thought of as works for studio per- and regarded by both producers and con- formance – sorts out the relation of song to sumers as a vehicle of self expression, the rock recorded work this way: “I believe that most recording has a claim to be an artwork going people conceive of rock recordings as (studio) per- beyond that of other popular songs. If Gracyk formances of songs, not as purely electronic is right that the primary text in rock is the non-performance works (that might manifest recording, the rock song’s claim to belong in the songs).”. By contrast, Kania (2006) defends category of artworks seems as strong as that of Gracyk’s notion that a paradigm song is “man- the art song. Against this thought, however, is ifested” in rock recordings. Gracyk’s (2001) point that popular recordings are mass art. As such, he argues, they are open interpretation of songs to a special interpretative pluralism; because One feature of vernacular songs is their public recordings are listened to in very different nature; they can be recognized and hummed by times and cultural contexts, they can be inter- many people as well as passed down to future preted in significantly different ways, as when generations. These features open up vernacu- a new generation takes a nonironic recording lar songs to a much wider range of interpreta- to be ironic. This calls into doubt the earlier sug- tions than is true of classical music and art gestion that they have a stable enough character songs. They may be performed in radically dif- to be artworks. Recording songs are prone to ferent ways, and as the meaning of the lyrics being recycled and used in ways unintended by may be partially lost or misunderstood, the the original artists (e.g., in car commercials). If result can be a performance with different and the arthood of rock songs is to be defended even incompatible expressive and other aes- against this observation, it will be necessary thetic properties from the original. Bicknell’s to show that some interpretations or uses of notion (2005), that singing in popular music recordings are mistaken or inappropriate, that involves self-expression of a public persona not “anything goes” when it comes to the or role, implies that within limits performers interpretation of recordings. can bring the song within the ambit of their own opera; poetry; adorno; cultural musical oeuvres. If the Beatles’ “Something” See also appropriation; expression; hanslick; langer; is performed by Frank Sinatra (as it was), mass art; notations; ontology of artworks; we should expect very different results from performance; popular art; schopenhauer; the Beatles’ original release, and when Paul scruton; wagner. McCartney performed it on the ukulele at a memorial concert for George Harrison, it bibliography became different again, an expression of love Adorno, Theodor W. 1973 [1948]. Philosophy of for a lost friend. Imagine what happens after an Modern Music. A. G. Mitchell & W. V. Blomster even greater period of time when more of the (trans.). New York: Seabury.

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Adorno, Theodor W. 1989 [1936]. “On Jazz,” J. O. Kivy, Peter. 1990. Music Alone: Philosophical Reflec- Daniel (trans.), Discourse, 12, 45–69. tions on the Purely Musical Experience. Ithaca: Alperson, Philip. 1984. “On Musical Improvisa- Cornell University Press. tion,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 43, Kivy, Peter. 1995. Authenticities: Philosophical 17–30. Reflections on Musical Performance. Ithaca: Cornell Bicknell, Jeanette. 2005. “Just a Song? Exploring the University Press. Aesthetics of Popular Song Performance,” Journal Kivy, Peter. 1998. “Speech, Song, and the of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 63, 261–70. Transparency of Medium: A Note on Operatic Brown, Lee B. 2000a. “Phonography, Repetition Metaphysics.” In Musical Worlds: New Directions and Spontaneity,” Philosophy and Literature, 24, in the Philosophy of Music. P. Alperson (ed.). 111–25. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Brown, Lee B. 2000b. “ ‘Feeling My Way’: Jazz Press, 63–8. Improvisation and Its Vicissitudes – A Plea for Kivy, Peter. 2007. “In Defense of Musical Imperfection,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Representation: Music, Representation, and the Criticism, 58, 112–23. Hybrid Arts.” In Music, Language, and Cognition: And Davies, Stephen. 1994. Musical Meaning and Other Essays in the Aesthetics of Music. Oxford: Expression. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Clarendon, 199–213. Davies, Stephen. 1999. “Rock versus Classical Levinson, Jerrold. 1980. “What a Musical Work Is,” Music,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 57, Journal of Philosophy, 77, 5–28. 193–204. Levinson, Jerrold. 1987. “Song and Musical Davies, Stephen. 2001. Musical Works and Drama.” In What is Music? P. Alperson (ed.). New Performances: A Philosophical Exploration. Oxford: York: Haven, 283–301. Clarendon. Levinson, Jerrold. 1997. Music in the Moment. DeBellis, Mark. 1995. Music and Conceptualization. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ridley, Aaron. 2004. The Philosophy of Music: Theme Fisher, John Andrew. 1991. “Discovery, Creation, and Variations. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University and Musical Works,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Press. Criticism, 49, 129–36. Rudinow, Joel. 1994. “Race, Ethnicity, Expressive Frith, Simon. 1996. Performing Rites: On the Value Authenticity: Can White People Sing the Blues?” of Popular Music. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 52, 127–37. University Press. Schopenhauer, Arthur. 1969 [1819/44]. The World Godlovitch, Stan. 1998. Musical Performance: A as Will and Representation. 2 vols. E. J. F. Payne Philosophical Study. London: Routledge. (trans.). New York: Dover. Gracyk, Theodore. 1996. Rhythm and Noise: An Scruton, Roger. 1997. The Aesthetics of Music. Aesthetics of Rock. Durham: Duke University Press. Oxford: Clarendon. Gracyk, Theodore. 2001. I Wanna be Me: Rock Music Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 1980. Works and Worlds of Art. and the Politics of Identity. Philadelphia: Temple Oxford: Clarendon. University Press. Young, James O. 2007. Cultural Appropriation and Hamilton, Andy. 2007. Aesthetics and Music. the Arts. Oxford: Blackwell. London: Continuum. john andrew fisher & stephen davies Hanslick, Eduard. 1986 [1854]. On the Musically Beautiful. G. Payzant (trans.). Indianapolis: Hackett. Ingarden, Roman. 1986 [1966]. The Work of Music opera includes in the widest sense an aes- and the Problem of Its Identity. J. G. Harrell (ed.). thetically diverse array of music theater in the A. Czerniawski (trans.). Berkeley: University of Western tradition from the late sixteenth cen- California Press. tury to the present day, including comic and seri- Kania, Andrew. 2006. “Making Tracks: The ous forms, with or without spoken dialogue, for Ontology of Rock Music,” Journal of Aesthetics and performance in large or small venues, indoors Art Criticism, 64, 401–14. or outdoors, to popular or elite audiences – Kania, Andrew. 2007. “The Philosophy of Music.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. E. N. Zalta along with several varieties of Asian music (ed.). Available at http://plato.stanford.edu/ theater. archives/win2007/entries/music/ Fundamental to any philosophical inquiry Kivy, Peter. 1984. Sound and Semblance: Reflections into an art form is the ontological question: on Musical Representation. Princeton: Princeton what must there be in order for there to be art University Press. of this kind? In the case of performing arts such

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the arts as opera, there is also the practical question: effects (though in contemporary music theater what must be done in order for there to be art other types of action may be substituted for of this kind? A philosophical consideration of some of these). Paramount among these is the these questions should begin by noting that act of singing. It is not just the sound of the audiences are able to attribute properties to an singers but their production of that sound that opera (as distinct from its performance); and they is the focus of interest in opera. The extreme are able to experience the opera in experienc- physicality that is unique to operatic singing ing its performance. If we think of what is per- can make watching an operatic performance a formed as the content of the performance, these little like watching an athletic event. observations should lead us to ask what kind Because of its representational potential, of existence the content of an operatic perform- operatic singing can be considered as having two ance has. aspects, corresponding to the vehicle and the Standardly, in Western aesthetics the content object of representation. The object is usually is thought of as an artwork – a particular kind thought of as spoken dialogue or monologue, but of musical work. But that thought may need it is sometimes itself a song, so that the vehicle some qualification in the light of two further at times becomes what Abbate (1991) calls a questions. First, if as Goehr (1994) argues, the “voice-object” independent of any representa- notion of a musical work was not widely used tionality. Singing is a topic that should be before 1800, what is the ontological status approached historically and from a cultural of pre-1800 operas, and what was it before perspective, because singing in the age of inti- 1800? Second, if some Chinese opera is per- mate theaters and small orchestras was differ- formed without the use of a score, are there oper- ent from what it became during the reign of atic works in that tradition? Both questions grand opera, and different again from what have received careful consideration by Davies it has become in the age of the microphone; (2001). furthermore, singing to a reverential Western The fact that the content of one performance opera audience is a different kind of act from can be repeated in another has led many singing to a rowdy audience in China. philosophers to think of the content of a per- Opera is a hybrid form; and there has been formance as a type whose tokens are its per- some philosophical reflection on hybrid art formances. However, philosophers disagree (e.g., Levinson 1984). The actions that an about what the relevant types are. Some (e.g., opera prescribes require diverse skills for their Thom 1993) say they are action types; some execution. When these diverse actions have to (e.g., Dodd 2007) say sound-event types. be executed by a single performer, the choice An opera may never have been performed, in is sometimes made to regard some elements of which case there is no such thing as what is per- the operatic mix (e.g., stage movement) as formed. Nonetheless, if the opera exists, there is being of secondary or negligible importance. a way of discovering what is to be done if the When operatic performances compromise on opera is to be performed (namely, by consult- such matters by using singers deficient in the ing whatever it is that “fixes” the opera – its relevant skills, many audiences experience score, a recording, or the overlapping memories the result as bad art. This phenomenon is not of an oral tradition). Thus we might think of uncommon in Western opera, though it seems an opera as a set of type actions under the that such compromises are less frequent in description “to be done if the opera is to be per- Chinese opera. formed.” On this view, the existence of an Opera is not only a hybrid but also a collab- opera implies not only the existence of types but orative art, at the level both of authorship and the existence of agents (its authors) who by of performance. Some philosophical work has taking certain actions specify what is to be been done on collaborative action in the arts, done in its performances. principally in film; it is yet to be extended into The actions involved in performing an opera the domain of opera. Among the key issues is the include the representation of characters and question whether in collaborative arts we should events through singing, stage movement, instru- speak of multiple authors, and the question of mental playing, and the creation of scenic how to define a successful collaboration.

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The common ontology shared by operas take on a particular urgency in the case of from different cultures and historical periods is many operas that have remained in the reper- accompanied by major aesthetic differences. If toire for a long time. On the one hand, the an opera is an action type comprising the rep- interpretation of these works may have become resentation of characters and events through stale with repeated performance. On the other singing, stage movement, orchestral playing, hand, much is known about their early per- and the creation of scenic effects, then different formance history. How then should modern kinds of opera can be distinguished according interpreters approach the performative inter- to the specific form that each of these elements pretation of these works? Some writers believe takes, the prominence given to each of them, and there is a case for recreating old operas in their relative subordination. “authentic” style; others oppose the idea of At times when paradigms of operatic com- authenticity, and argue that an element of position are under challenge (e.g., the various irony is necessary when staging those pieces in periods of Monteverdi, Gluck, Wagner, Berg, the standard repertoire whose plots now lack and the present time), significant creative plausibility or whose staging requirements choices regarding these matters must be made now seem gratuitously excessive. by librettists and composers. These choices are Philosophers have suggested a number of sometimes labeled “the problem of opera.” The features as being unique to opera. Clément problem is how to write an aesthetically good (1988) claims that there is a uniquely operatic opera, given opera’s hybrid nature and its re- way of representing women, especially the current liability to fall short of its aesthetic ideals. death of women. Abbate (1991) finds in opera One’s solution to the problem will depend on unique ways of propelling a narrative. The what one takes the elements in the operatic thesis of Tomlinson (1998) is that there is a mix to be, which of them if any should be uniquely operatic way of expressing different subordinated to others, and what one would historical modes of human subjectivity. Cavell count as a “satisfactory” way of combining (1994) suggests that it is not so much opera’s them. Some writers have thought of opera’s subject matter as the role music plays in its elements as music plus narrative (e.g., Abbate performance that sets it apart from the other arts. 1991); some as music plus drama (e.g., Kivy He sees opera as showing “the intervention or 1988). To some it has seemed as if all other supervening of music into the world as re- elements must be subordinated to the music; velatory of a realm of significance that either others have disagreed, making everything else transcends our ordinary realm of experience subordinate to the libretto. The combination or reveals ours under transfiguration” (1994: of these elements has also been thought of in 141). These claims and many others deserve a various ways – as synthesis (Wagner) or in considered interpretation in a yet to be written terms of alienation (Brecht). comprehensive philosophy of opera as a per- Even in times of “normal” opera, when forming art. paradigms of composition are apparently stable, the presence of conflicting aesthetic ideals See also music and song; notations; ontology within an existing paradigm may allow for of artworks; performance; wagner. the making of significant creative choices. For instance, some music historians argue that the bibliography conflict between romanticism and realism was Abbate, Carolyn. 1991. Unsung Voices: Opera and an undercurrent in the nineteenth century, Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century. and that one can detect elements of both ideals Princeton: Princeton University Press. in certain nineteenth-century operas. Cavell, Stanley. 1994. A Pitch of Philosophy: Auto- Because operas comprise specifications of biographical Exercises. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. what is to be done – specifications that can Clément, Catherine. 1988. Opera; or, The Undoing of never be exhaustive – they require interpreta- Women. B. Wing (trans.). Minneapolis: University tion in performance. Thus, as with any other of Minnesota Press. performing art, the performance of opera poses Davies, Stephen. 2001. Musical Works and Perform- practical questions of interpretation. These ances: A Philosophical Exploration. Oxford: Clarendon.

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Dodd, Julian. 2007. Works of Music: An Essay in with each development of this constantly Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. evolving technological family. Although Goehr, Lydia. 1994. The Imaginary Museum of photo-fidelity issues extend beyond the range of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of aesthetics, they not only overlap with them: Music. Oxford: Clarendon. they have become subject matter for recent art Kivy, Peter. 1988. Osmin’s Rage: Philosophical photography. Within philosophy, more atten- Reflections on Opera, Drama, and Text. Princeton: Princeton University Press. tion has been given to these topics than those Levinson, Jerrold. 1984. “Hybrid Art Forms,” specific to art, individual photo-aesthetics, or Journal of Aesthetic Education, 18(4), 5–13. the philosophical contents of particular works Thom, Paul. 1993. For an Audience: A Philosophy of or styles. Can we connect these two perennial the Performing Arts. Philadelphia: Temple Univer- concerns, art status and photo-fidelity, in a sity Press. better understanding, thereby clearing the Tomlinson, Gary. 1998. Metaphysical Song: An essay way for other developments of this field? on Opera. Princeton: Princeton University Press. paul thom what is photography? Photography is a set of technologies for using light and similar radiations to make physical photography presents philosophy with seri- images, permanent or transient, on receptor ous issues beyond aesthetics, rooted in ancient surfaces (chemical or electronic), by means problems of the power of visual images over of emitters and modulators of the radiation. our conceptions, feelings, and desires. In their Modulation includes refraction, diffraction, contemporary forms, these problems are inten- reflection, transmission, blocking, filtering, and sified by photography’s vastly expanding the like optical operations. The receptors are phys- range of pictorial subjects, its combination ical surfaces, marked either permanently or with other technologies, its wide and rapid dis- transiently as receptor screens. tribution technologies, and its distinctive kinds Crucial to its understanding is that photo- of vividness and authority. Although most such graphy, as “the art of fixing a shadow” – as topics must fall outside this essay, our work one of the first inventors, William Henry Fox bears on them. Talbot, called it – has many important uses, which combine in numerous ways. Shadows two issues themselves, as modulations of natural light, From the moment of the various break- show how this might be. While there is limited throughs that led to its invention, photography use of shadow-play as a kind of pictorial art, has had an uneasy status among the arts. In most of our use of shadows is for detecting fea- part this reflects its unsettled identity as a kind tures of our environments. As photographers in of image-making. In 1857 Elizabeth Eastlake particular know, the mere existence of a cast wrote of “a new form of communication,” which shadow – its shape, direction, and the sharpness “fills up the space between” messages and pic- of its edges – are features that carry information tures, while not being quite either – although about the light source, the nature and position she went on to ask whether “photographic of the shadow-casters, and the surfaces upon pictures” could be art. Replies have not divided which a shadow falls. From its beginnings simply between the pro and con that we will con- photography was pressed into similar uses, sider. Some have held that the idea of art independent of its uses for picture-making should be extended to include photography, (thus was daguerreotypy presented to the others that the term “art” has, over recent French academies). X-ray and spectroscopy decades, come to include exhibition photogra- are two well-known means employed in detec- phy. Still others have argued that photography tion, yet the spectroscopic bands registering constitutes a distinct but equal realm of pictor- the chemical composition of a star, even the ial arts, that it is greater than previous art, expansion of the universe, are not depictions even that it has helped usurp the idea of art. of these bodies. While there are many other Another set of questions concerning the important uses for such light-markings (e.g., veracity or realism of photography reemerges photo-reproduction: one of the earliest and of

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photography most continuing importance), “aesthetically” – much of that is ambiguous. Nevertheless, the we will consider photography mainly in terms mere fact of there being such potential evid- of images made to be looked at for the sake of ence about subjects seems to make our percep- the looking. Here depiction plays a major role. tion of photographs different from that of other depictions. photographic depiction Besides the detective, in some cases, another Shadows may also help us understand photo- factor related to the formative peculiarity of depiction. Suppose in a hand-shadow play an photo-depictions has long been noted. This is animal (depicted by the left hand’s shadow) the very causal connection between subject is grasped by a large hand (depicted by the matter and image: the subject’s having causally shadow of the right hand): we are to imagine affected the image by the action of light, which of the first shadow that it is an animal, of the likewise affects us when we look at it. As David second that it is a hand – maybe the hand that Hume observed, the connection between cause casts it. Both shadows depict in this nursery and effect is an even more powerful force in theater, but only the right depicts what casts “enlivening” our conceptions of things than it, a hand. These shadows each bear double is resemblance. He would likely have held that cognitive messages: one by their causal, produc- photos of things provide both sorts of linkages, tive means, the other through prompting our interwoven in that the causal connection imaginations. Each shadow evokes its fictional accounts for the resemblance. situation, while, like any shadow, also provid- ing information about the actual situations artistic objections: aesthetic and that produce it: the light source, “scrim,” and expressive screen. So much, literally, is child’s play, yet ideas The causal relationships that photo-depictive about photo-depiction have been confused by images typically bear to their depicted subject the failure to make correspondingly simple matter, which is the source of its evidential distinctions within photographic depiction. and contact connection values, has posed the As cinematography makes clear, photographs main obstacle to the acceptance of photography of things are commonly used to depict entities as art. Corresponding to two main components that were not photographed, or to depict of our ideas of fine art, two “classical” negative things that were photographed as other than arguments recur historically in the literature of they are. the subject – one aesthetic, the other expressive. Despite their role in perceptual detection, On the assumption that art is essentially shadows can be distorted and confusing. aesthetic, while “aesthetic” denotes value for its Puzzles about veracity in photographs would be own sake, the detective and contact functions like those about the “veracity” of shadows, of photography are judged too distracting to imprints, and like traces, except that, unlike allow sufficient attention to the photograph. shadows, photographs are normally consid- This argument can permit photographs a ered artifacts: entities made on purpose, for the degree of aesthetic interest, but accords most of purpose of being looked at. With most photos, that to its subject matter and therefore not to the main purpose is depictive display, which, as “the work itself.” A second, more influential, we observed, is a matter of getting people to argument concerns the expressive component imagine seeing things. It is easy to see why of art, which seems necessary for separating art most photography mixes this use with the evid- from the vast aesthetic realm of nature. ential. Such photography has always been The very word “artwork” labels works of principally a matter of deriving easy depictions art as artifacts – which indicates that they of things and situations, most of which would are deliberately contrived entities, typically to never have been pictured otherwise. But, given serve purposes. To perceive something as an arti- the nature of photo-optics, the causal process of fact, not as mainly natural or accidental, is making such depictions necessarily results in a therefore to apply to it certain intentional con- good deal of evidence about their subjects (as well cepts, concepts that strongly shape our experi- as other factors), willy-nilly, although – unlike ence of it. As the aesthetic argument urges, closely controlled technical uses of photography not everything we produce on purpose is for a

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the arts purpose; some things must be free of intrinsic emphasizes composition. For it to succeed, value. Even so, artifacts such as artworks are composition would have to be a relevantly understood purposefully, regarding their parts important aspect of the image, and also be and aspects. A song is sung for its sake alone; experienced as something done by the photo- still, its parts and aspects are experienced in grapher. Furthermore, to rank photography terms of what they do for the whole. We with other pictorial fine arts, this should go understand them in terms of why they are the beyond aesthetic results into a range of mental way they are and in terms of what they are states and attitudes, including conceptions and meant to be doing – thus intentionally. feelings. Such an argument appears best made Of course, many aspects of artifacts will be through actual photographic practice, by understood to have happened rather than to showing that individual styles have emerged, as have been done. “Exekias made me,” inscribed with other visual arts, and that we experience on a black-figure amphora, does not mean that these styles under the same sorts of mental the ceramist made the clay. Besides, like all attributions that we apply to other works of artifacts, many aspects of artworks are not art. The question is empirical, and seems to only natural but accidental – works differing as require answering in the affirmative. We do to how much they allow, invite, exploit. The cal- appear to distinguish some photographers’ ligraphic strokes of a Chinese artist show more works stylistically, and to characterize them of chance than do the words of the poem they in the required terms. If this has not always inscribe, not just because of the style but been clear, it is perhaps due to our consider- because they, unlike the words, are physical par- ing individual photographs in isolation. Lone ticulars – and not the lesser for that. This raises photographs can be striking, but appreciating a question of the extent to which we wish to them as artworks usually requires putting keep nature and artifice distinct in a given art. them in the context of the rest of the photog- Philosophical differences exist among traditions rapher’s work. Only then do their relevant and individuals regarding the relationships of characteristics emerge as both aesthetically purposeful human productions and natural valuable and as due to the photographer. processes. Photographers provide a philosoph- However, photography is not alone in this ically interesting array of such attitudes. respect. It is typical of many kinds of modern art- Intentional appearance is only a first step works that it takes time to identify what they toward expressiveness, and very few artifacts are have to offer as art. The perception of expres- considered works of fine art, or are meant to sion, like that of skill, often requires practice be. The standard case from expression against and guidance even to understand what has photographic art is that its products, being been done. automatically made, possess too few features that are explicable in terms of purposes for which they other aesthetics were put there, since most were not put there Compositional defense of photo-art need not at all: thus that they fail even at an artifactual approach the issue expressively. One example level. This may be considered consistent with is Robert Adams’s (1996) distinctly aesthetic photographs being highly worthwhile aesthet- defense, based on three principles: that the ically, even with their requiring aesthetic talent goal of art is beauty; that beauty exists in form, to select: “wildflowers” picked from a visual field. provided by artists in their compositions; The strategy for responding to this challenge and that form provides consolation regarding seems clear: to present some photographs as meaningfulness in life – given our anxiety works of human agency which uses photo- about its incoherence – so that suffering is graphic materials to perform productive pic- more tolerable. Accordingly, the best art pro- ture-making acts, acts that place the results duces “shapes nearest shapelessness,” providing sufficiently under an intentional understanding reassurance that the feared incoherence has that they can bear the kinds of mental, expres- been rendered coherent, and not merely sive meaning expected of works of art. avoided through detachment. Subject matter is This reply, as offered by photographers essential, since mere perceptual form, although such as Stieglitz, Weston, and Cartier-Bresson, pleasing, is not in this way consoling

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(although abstract forms can have subject goals. Questions of this sort already presuppose matter). In addition, beauty in art requires a notion of art that divorces artworks from “fresh intimations of form,” to reassure us that those activities and events and establishes new coherencies may continue to be found; art-making as an endeavor in its own right, one and art should display “apparent ease,” sug- that by definition is independent from any gesting that this is not too difficult. Therefore other goals and that, were it to be mixed with art is best when it deals with specifics of the other activities or goals, would have its art “commonplaces” in our lives – with concrete- status threatened. However, just as a notion of seeming incoherencies nearest to our experience. art that denied art status to (say) the Vietnam Photography, Adams holds, does all this best, Memorial in Washington DC in virtue of its in our time. serving a function beyond the purely artistic would be seriously defective, so a definition See also motion pictures; artifact, art as; of poetry that denied poetry status to beauty; depiction; expression; function of art; W. H. Auden’s Funeral Blues would be anemic scruton; technology and art; truth in art. at best. The intention to write a poem, therefore, is the intention to fit one’s work into a tradition, bibliography one in which, as happens to be the case, poems Adams, Robert. 1996. Beauty in Photography: are written for various occasions. Likewise, the Essays in Defense of Traditional Values. New York: poetic tradition is one in which various formal Aperture Foundation. means have been employed (alliteration, meter, Marien, Mary Warner. 2003. Photography: A rhyme schemes, etc.); a “transparent” poetic Cultural History. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. intention (i.e., one in which the poet is aware Maynard, Patrick. 1997. The Engine of Visualization: Thinking through Photography. Ithaca: Cornell of the character of her intention) would there- University Press. fore involve responding to the formal dimension Newhall, Beaumont. 1982. History of Photography: of the tradition in various ways (see Ribeiro From 1839 to the Present. 5th edn. Boston: Little, 2007). Brown. It has been argued that most, if not all, Trachtenberg, Alan (ed.). 1980. Classic Essays on philosophical issues that arise with respect Photography. New Haven: Leete’s Island Books. to poetry are rather pertinent to literature in gen- Walden, Scott (ed.). 2008. Photography and eral, so that a “philosophy of poetry” is not Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature. Oxford: needed beyond a philosophy of literature and Blackwell. criticism (Neill 2003). There are at least two patrick maynard problems with a philosophy of literature that sub- scribes to this view. The first is that what it amounts to in practice is, frequently, an undue poetry One of the most ancient art forms, focus on a particular literary genre, at the poetry, like other art forms, finds its roots expense of other forms that may have little to embedded in activities that are not necessar- do with it beyond sharing a medium in language. ily associated with art today, most notably Typically, the philosopher of literature today is religious rituals. Still, even while poetry is a reader of novels, with little to no knowledge now commonly enjoyed for its own sake, about the history of poetry or of the formal many poems continue to be made for specific devices that are its bread and butter. Despite life events: weddings, funerals, presidential best intentions, then, the philosophy suffers swearing-in ceremonies, anniversaries, and in virtue of the assumption that what works for so on. Their connection to such events may one works for all. Nevertheless, one could still call into question the art status of some poems; claim that there is no need for a philosophy of indeed, definitions of poetry (as is the case poetry in addition to a philosophy of literature with definitions of art in general) must provide – that is, so long as philosophers of literature are an account that establishes the art status of sufficiently well informed about the various poems while still acknowledging that some literary arts. However, here the second problem poems may be parasitic upon human activities rears its head. For while it may be true for and events that have no intrinsically artistic some issues that one philosophy of literature fits

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the arts all, some facts about poetry suggest that we of language, it is a question why tropes should might do better by compartmentalizing. These pervade poetry to the extent that they do. One include: (1) formal schemes; (2) figurative lan- answer focuses on tropes as a poetic medium guage (tropes); (3) the first-person perspective (and one may see schemes as a poetic medium of most poetry; and (4) the oral origins of poetry. as well; both tropes and schemes being ways in Perhaps the most obvious difference between which language can be used). That is, tropes poems and novels, short stories, essays, and plays such as metaphors encourage the reader to see is that in poetry the use of formal schemes is things differently, thus promoting a search for pervasive. The use of poetic schemes such as meaning within the work, and of a poetic mes- meter, rhyme schemes, alliteration, and paral- sage. While this may seem obvious, such an idea lelism is not a typical feature of the novel or the contrasts with the view that it is something essay. Accordingly, attention to those devices, external to the poem, namely the conventions and to how, and how well, they might be of reading, that foster in readers a search employed by the author, is not a feature of the for poetic meaning and poetic message (see literary criticism of novels or essays. The pres- Lamarque & Olsen 1994). While reading con- ence of formal schemes also has consequences ventions may help explain why, once familiar for how readers or listeners comprehend and with poems, readers may be more inclined to experience poems. Theories in pragmatics that read them in certain ways, they cannot seek to explain linguistic choices in the process explain why on a first encounter with poetry of communication sometimes see the formal- one may have a meaning- or message-seeking ization found in poems as cognitive hurdles attitude. In such cases, something internal to readers must surpass in order to arrive at a the poem must be doing the work: poetic poetic message (see Sperber & Wilson 1995). metaphors, similes, etc. challenge readers’ typ- However, it is just as plausible to see rhyme ical semantic associations, and thereby force schemes, for instance, as cognitive facilitators, an entertainment of novel ones and of what insofar as they may encourage readers or lis- significance they may have. teners to draw semantic connections between Most poetry has been and continues to be lyric phonetically similar words. Be that as it may, poetry (rather than narrative or dramatic), questions regarding the effects of formal and the lyric poem is almost invariably written schemes on the cognition and experience of in the first person. All of Shakespeare’s son- literary works arise with special urgency in nets, for instance, are written in the first person, poetry; even prose poems and so-called “free” and most of them explicitly indicate as much verse make extensive use of poetic schemes. in the first or second line. That lyric poetry is The same cannot be said regarding prose principally written in the first person (either works such as novels and essays. implicitly or explicitly) has immediate conse- A second aspect of poetry central to the art quences for how we experience poems, and in form is its use of tropes such as metaphor, sim- turn for how we evaluate them. This personal ile, metonymy, and many others. The flourish- mode of expression invites a personal mode of ing of philosophy of language in the twentieth engagement with the content of the work such century, with its general focus on issues of that the ideal engagement often involves some meaning and truth, led to a plethora of articles level of identification, on the part of the listener on metaphor in the 1970s and 1980s; today, or reader, with the impressions, thoughts, or developments in cognitive science are again feelings expressed in the work. The “I” of the bringing the issue to the fore. It is certainly lyric encourages our taking the poetic voice as true that metaphor (and figurative language our own, much as point-of-view shots in films in general) is not the exclusive domain of put us in the perspective of the protagonist. poets; people use tropes in everyday conversation Evidence that identification is a central char- frequently. It is also true, nevertheless, that the acteristic of our engagement with poems may most challenging tropes – the most novel and be found in the common practice of “appropri- frequently also the most difficult to parse – are ation,” where we borrow poems written by typically found in poems. While the question of others to express our own ideas or feelings. metaphor in general is an issue for philosophy While appropriation may occur with other art

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poetry forms, the practice is not widespread in any true or false independently of how they are other art form except the song lyric, which expressed, and could accordingly at least in shares historical roots and structural similar- principle be expressed otherwise (this too has ities with the lyric poem. Finally, subjective been contested, most famously in Brooks (though not necessarily critical or scholarly) 1947). This issue, while not peculiar to poetry evaluation of the quality of a poem is in part alone, emerges most pointedly in poems, and dependent upon the level of identification especially lyric poems since the modern period, resultant from one’s engagement with the inasmuch as the stability of texts enabled by work, where the greater the potentiality for printing has led to a certain “idolization” of the “appropriation,” the greater the likelihood of text, where these words and punctuation in subjective appreciation of the work. Mutatis this specific order make up a given poem, and mutandis, the less one is able to identify with a any alteration would violate its integrity as an poem (and consequently potentially to “appro- instance of the work. It is unlikely that there priate” it for personal use), the less one may be would have been a heresy of paraphrase for able to appreciate its qualities, no matter how the rhapsodes of antiquity; what was import- critically acclaimed the work may be. ant was not whether Zeus indeed had wide Finally, the ontology of literature has suf- brows or the thought could be expressed differ- fered because of insufficient attention to the ently, but whether the epithet fit the meter on particularities of the poetic tradition. Poetry a given line. has its origins in oral cultures, and scholars These considerations may not warrant a have long noted that in oral traditions the philosophy of poetry segmented from a more texts of literary works are considerably more fluid general philosophy of literature. They show than they have been since the invention of the nevertheless that a substantive philosophy of printing press. An ontology that is to account literature demands attention to the various for this aspect of early literature as well as particularities and histories of literary prac- for literature created since the early modern tices, and that the attention demanded by period must consequently be responsive to the poetry is sui generis among the literary arts. varieties of strictures on what makes a literary work. Literary works created within the context See also drama; literature; cognitive value of oral traditions do not rely on written texts and of art; criticism; expression; metaphor. so do not adhere to a strict word-by-word text type in the way that is common in modern bibliography literature. Rather, criteria such as story theme Aristotle. 1954. Rhetoric and Poetics. R. Roberts & and metrical structure individuate works in I. Bywater (trans.). New York: Modern Library. those contexts. Moreover, in such contexts Brooks, Cleanth. 1947. The Well Wrought Urn. New works are instantiated in their enunciations York: Harcourt Brace. rather than, as has been claimed, in the text Budd, Malcolm. 1995. Values of Art. London: Penguin. copies that are our usual means of access to those Hegel, G. W. F. 1975 [1835–8]. Aesthetics: Lectures works today. on Fine Art. 2 vols. T. M. Knox (trans). Oxford: Other questions that have commanded the Clarendon, vol. ii (esp. part 3, sec. 3, ch. 3, attention of philosophers relate to the truth “Poetry”). value of poetic statements: can the proposi- Kant, Immanuel. 1987 [1790]. Critique of Judgment. tions found in poems be said to be true, espe- W. S. Pluhar (trans.). Indianapolis: Hackett. cially when they are made by means of Lamarque, Peter & Olsen, Stein Haugom. 1994. metaphors (“Juliet is the sun”)? Much has been Truth, Fiction and Literature. Oxford: Clarendon. made of this question (see Budd 1995). On the Neill, Alex. 2003. “Poetry.” In Oxford Handbook of one hand, it may plausibly be thought that the Aesthetics. J. Levinson (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 605–13. value of a poem may at least in part depend on Plato. 1997. Ion and The Republic. In Plato: Complete the truth of the beliefs expressed in it, and, on Works. J. M. Cooper (ed.). Indianapolis: Hackett. the other, it may be objected that the manner Ribeiro, Anna Christina. 2007. “Intending to of expression is what gives a poem its value as Repeat: A Definition of Poetry,” Journal of a poem, especially insofar as beliefs should be Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 65, 189–201.

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Sperber, Dan & Wilson, Deirdre. 1995. Relevance and this relationship can sometimes play a role Theory. 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell. in our appreciation not only as a material con- Stecker, Robert. 2001. “Expressiveness in Music and dition but as a matter of specific artistic inter- Poetry,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 59, est. If the three-dimensional has a specific and 85–96. distinctive relevance in sculpture, it does not fol- anna christina ribeiro low from the properties of art materials.

perception sculpture Contemporary accounts of the Perhaps the nature of sculpture and the rele- nature of sculpture have sought to identify vance of the three-dimensional can be under- distinctive features of works of sculpture, or stood in terms of the sense modalities, or the our experience of them, that are nontrivially nec- content or structure of perceptual experience. essary and plausibly sufficient for their being Herbert Read, for example, argued that sculp- sculptures. They have focused variously on ture is an art of palpation. Yet there are many the physical properties of work materials, the instances of sculpture – most monumental involvement of specific perceptual modes, or sculpture being an obvious example – that perceptual phenomena, or the relationship to cannot be touched and are not intended to be, sculpture of a distinctive sensibility. An alter- and for which it is vision rather than touch that native is to understand the art of sculpture in is the primary mode of access. F. David Martin terms of the ways the use of materials features claims that the nature of sculpture lies in a in practices of producing and appreciating. phenomenon he calls “enlivened space,” with the space around sculpture a perceptible part of materials the work in virtue of its location in a space There is a commonsense thought that sculptures continuous with our own. Susanne K. Langer are three-dimensional art objects as distinct holds that a unique feature of the art of sculp- from, for example, the two-dimensional pic- ture is the way the content of our experience of torial arts. The sculptor Naum Gabo asserted space is structured or organized in our experi- that sculpture is three-dimensional eo ipso. ence of the work, such that “a piece of sculp- The problem with this idea is that all embodied ture is a center of three-dimensional space. It is artworks, including pictorial works, are three- a virtual kinetic volume, which dominates dimensional in their material construction. the surrounding space, and this environment Sculptures may typically be less flat than derives all proportions and relations from it, as paintings, but the nature of sculpture cannot the actual environment does from oneself ” lie in physical three-dimensionality per se. (1959: 91). Robert Hopkins (2004) concurs with Alternatively it could be argued that whereas Langer, and puts this down to the fact that, sculptures and paintings are all made of three- unlike pictures, sculptures do not incorporate dimensional materials, three-dimensional a perspective on what they represent. This properties are artistically relevant to our appre- leaves the represented world of the sculpture ciation of sculptures but not for paintings incomplete and able to interact with the world (where only the two-dimensional surface prop- of the gallery in the way characterized by erties count). Robert Vance, for example, Langer. However, while much sculpture may argues that “sculptures are objects designed in indeed “impact” into the space of the apprecia- three dimensions” and that “what counts for tor, this is not a universal feature of sculpture. sculpture is real occupancy of space” (1995: Some frontal sculptures, and works such as 224, 217). Yet other kinds of artworks are statuary high on buildings, may be intended to also designed and fashioned out of three- be viewed from a distance and direction, and dimensional materials, and their “real occu- often do not seem to fill or energize space, or form pancy of space” matters to us in appreciating an experiential kinetic spatial center in any them. Paintings, and even photographs and way specific to the art. Furthermore, some other pictorial arts, take their appearance and sculptures do have a perspectival structure embody their two-dimensional properties in and offer us a “complete” world into which virtue of their three-dimensional construction, we look from our own space (e.g., some of the

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sculpture works of Giacometti). On the other hand, times play a role in our appreciation of other some paintings, including pictorial works, can kinds of art – we might also imagine the thick- create an apparent space that imposes itself ness and resistance of the paint in its applica- upon us, or form a kinetic center around which tion to the canvas, or the mass and density of our experience of the space of the work and its its final hardened state, or in viewing a picture location is structured (e.g., some color-field imagine its represented features as being expe- and trompe-l’oeil painting). The apparent rienced by ourselves, perhaps as features of space of either kind of work can seem (or can our own bodies. Nor, with respect to Rogers’ be represented) as continuous or discontinu- notion of “sculptural thinking,” is it unusual in ous with, as dominating or dominated by, the pictorial arts to think with or through our own. three-dimensional spatial concepts or forms, not only in relation to represented forms but also, sensibility when the properties of the paint on the canvas Another approach is to suppose that a dis- are of special practical interest, the material tinctive sensibility is required in the produc- construction of the work. tion or appreciation of sculpture. Read (1956), for example, suggests that sculpture requires the practice involvement of a specifically plastic sensibility, A problem that faced accounts of the kinds central to which are perception from depth to addressed earlier was that the features of art- surface and the synthetic realization of the works that they identify are either trivially mass and ponderability of the object as if held necessary or not plausibly sufficient to account within the hand. Robert Vance (1995) argues for their being sculptures. An alternative is to that sculptures are dependent on the apprecia- understand sculpture in terms of the place of a tor’s bodily self-awareness in a way that differs distinctive “sculptural” way of using materials significantly from the pictorial, evoking non- as an artistic medium within practices of pro- propositional imaginative identification with duction and appreciation (Koed 2005). What the sculpture, feeling the work’s apparent separates painting and sculpture is not the qualities as if they belonged to the appreciator’s dimensionality of the art materials, or whether own body. L. R. Rogers (1962, 1963) proposes three-dimensional space is represented or pos- that “sculptural thinking” differs qualitatively sesses one or other quality in perception, but from the kind of thinking involved in other the way in which representation (for example) kinds of art in its analysis of spatial concepts and is achieved and the way it is interpreted. manipulation of complex spatial forms involv- Whereas the three-dimensional physical prop- ing mass and space. Sculptors (and presum- erties of materials and related perceptual prop- ably appreciators) need on this view to be erties may be material conditions for the schooled in the “logic of form,” which makes the two-dimensional surface properties that function articulation of sculpture intelligible. Yet, while as the artistic medium in painting, within the factors identified by Read may be charac- sculptural practices of production and appreci- teristic of how we ought to approach our expe- ation properties such as thickness or weight rience of some works, such as those of Rodin or themselves function directly as an art medium. Moore, they do not seem necessary to our Sculpture can be understood as a tradition of art appreciation of all sculpture, and may be anti- practice to which such a use of materials is thetical to some (e.g., those concerned with standard, in the terms of Kendall Walton’s the arrangement of abstract line and form, the (1970) categories of art. Whether individual articulation of surfaces, or the absence of sub- works are sculptures will therefore depend on stance). Similarly with respect to Vance, it is true the facts of their relationship to the traditions not only of some sculptures but also of some of art practice out of which they emerge. paintings that the imagined mass of a work’s Works that do not belong to the category of material construction, or the apparent qualities sculpture may well nevertheless involve a of its represented content, is integral to our sculptural use of materials where this use is (in experience of the work. Nonpropositional terms of Walton’s categories) variable (e.g., imaginings of the kind Vance describes some- architecture) or contra-standard (e.g., painting)

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the arts to the traditions of practice out of which they See also architecture; drawing, painting, and emerge and are to be understood. printmaking; depiction; tradition; walton. In appealing to specific features as essential, bibliography the theories canvassed earlier are unable to Hopkins, Robert. 2004. “Painting, Sculpture, Sight explain the special relationship to sculpture and Touch,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 44, they suppose such features to have. An 149–66. account of the kind just outlined, however, Koed, Erik. 2005. “Sculpture and the Sculptural,” enables us to understand general physical Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 63, 147–54. and perceptual differences between sculptures Langer, Susanne K. 1959. Feeling and Form. and paintings as contingent rather than essen- London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. tial. Sculptures are likely to be more massive Martin, F. David. 1981. Sculpture and Enlivened or more appropriately touched or moved Space. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. around than those in which two-dimensional Read, Herbert. 1956. The Art of Sculpture. London: Faber. features function as a medium given the sculp- Rogers, L. R. 1962. “Sculptural Thinking,” British tural use of materials. Likewise, observations Journal of Aesthetics, 2, 291–9. about the general role of ways of thinking or Rogers, L. R. 1963. “Sculptural Thinking. 2: A imagining in terms of three-dimensional form, Reply,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 3, 357–62. spatial concepts, and real and imagined sensa- Vance, Robert D. 1995. “Sculpture,” British Journal tions can be made sense of in terms of their of Aesthetics, 35, 217–26. relationship to sculptural use of materials as a Walton, Kendall L. 1970. “Categories of Art,” medium in the production and appreciation of Philosophical Review, 79, 334–67. works. erik koed

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abstraction Artworks are abstract, we might accepts that the traditional definition of abstrac- think, when they do not represent: abstraction tion does apply to some paintings. The prob- is simply the absence of representation. After all, lem is that it does not apply to most of those we there is a natural contrast between abstract think of as abstract. and representational painting; and music, at We can flesh out the second difficulty by least in its “absolute” (i.e., abstract) form, does considering either abstract painting or music. not clearly represent at all. Absolute music, It is hardly plausible that these never make like abstract painting, expresses feelings and any reference to things beyond themselves. perhaps thoughts, but, we suppose, expression The idea that they express emotions and ideas and representation are different. is intended to concede as much, without rein- However, there are two difficulties with tak- troducing representation. But is it clear that ing this to capture the nature of abstraction. expression is not simply another form of repre- First, on closer inspection it excludes art that sentation? Of course, it differs from some kinds intuitively counts as abstract; and second, the of representing – from the depiction that con- definition is only as clear as the rather murky cerns Wollheim, for instance, or from describing notion of representation itself. things in language. But the notion of represen- To illustrate the first difficulty, consider tation is both highly general and resists easy Richard Wollheim’s argument (1987: ch. 2) analysis. Until we settle whether expression is that a good deal of abstract painting in fact itself representing, our definition of abstraction represents in the same way as painting of leaves us uncertain whether expressive absolute other kinds. In looking at a typical Kandinsky, music, for instance, counts as abstract or not. for instance, while I may not see in it everyday Of course, there is nothing in itself wrong objects such as men and buildings, I do see with a definition leaving boundaries vague. colored shapes arrayed in three-dimensional Many phenomena exhibit hinterlands where space. The red trapezium that breaks a long it is simply unclear whether they hold. The black line is seen as a red rectangle, tilted at problem is rather that defining abstraction as an angle to the viewer, and lying in front of a absence of representation leaves the limits of black strip. I am thus simultaneously aware of the latter unclear as those of the former, on our how marks are distributed on the canvas and intuitive understanding, are not. of rather different objects arranged in depth. The alternative is to see abstraction, not as Since for Wollheim pictorial representation the absence of representation, but as a mat- just is the deliberate generation of experiences ter of what is represented. Wollheim suggests with this twofold nature, he concludes that that what marks out the Kandinsky from more the Kandinsky represents shapes in three- traditional painting is that the latter is figur- dimensional space. And although the details of ative. Traditional works represent things of Wollheim’s argument invoke his views about readily identifiable kinds (dogs, houses, battles, pictorial representation, his conclusion has one-eyed giants), and individual members of independent appeal. Now, Wollheim does not those kinds (Louis XIV or Polyphemus). Much think every abstract painting can be treated abstract painting instead represents things in this way. Certain works of Mondrian and which themselves belong only to relatively Barnett Newman, he says, resist being seen as abstract kinds – red rectangles or black strips, other than simply marks on a canvas. Thus he for instance. In similar vein, Kendall L. Walton

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(1988) explores the idea that what marks Never far behind questions about the nature out abstract works is that what is represented of abstraction are questions concerning its value. or conveyed is purely general. While a novel may Abstraction is sometimes itself a source of value describe a specific locale and specific events (and not a mere accompaniment to other qual- that occur within it, abstract works (Walton’s ities that are valuable). Where abstract art is focus is music) convey, for instance, only the profound – in the greatest works of absolute general notion of struggle, or the dynamics music, or the masterpieces of abstract painting of an emotion. In the context of painting, a – the abstractness of the works is surely central natural relative of Walton’s thought lies in the to their achieving what they do. Something idea that abstraction should be understood as like this thought no doubt underpins the per- the product of abstracting from the specifics sistent tendency to valorize absolute music of visual phenomena. While a nineteenth- as the purest form of that art, and the attempts century Realist painter might have sought to made during the heyday of Abstract Expres- capture all the detail of some scene, his more sionism to do the same for it in relation to abstract successors seek instead to extract painting (Greenberg 1971). Yet it can seem from it the bare essentials of form and structure. puzzling how abstraction can be of value. How This idea is familiar from the work of Cézanne, can eschewing representing altogether, or for instance, in which buildings and natural limiting oneself to representing only what is features are stripped down to their basic geo- general, help produce art worth caring about? metry. But it also runs through a good deal of Where art is abstract in our second sense, later work, such as the drawings of Picasso (in there is no real difficulty in understanding how almost any of his periods). Abstraction in this that promotes value. Less abstract art captures sense need not mean abandoning the repre- the details of particular things, or of specific sentation of particulars – Picasso’s own portrait types: the precise features of a sitter’s face, per- of Françoise Gilot as a flower shows that what haps, or the character of a typical Victorian can be preserved is the form of an individual’s pickpocket. But why, apart from historical or look, abstracted from the details of her appear- psychological curiosity, should we care about ance. What it does necessarily involve is representations that capture such features? abandoning detail in favor of the basic form, The sitter is available to be studied for herself, structure, or gestalt. and the pickpocket probably never existed. Although it is perhaps not entirely clear What are either to me, and what does the quite what any of these suggestions involves, and painting or novel make of either that I could thus whether there are one or several proposals not make for myself? Surely one of the things here, it is clear that they all tend in the same to want from art is something more universal, direction. The result is a definition of abstrac- something to take away that can be found in tion that, in contrast to its predecessor, treats other instances of the types, and in life more gen- it as a matter of degree. It also opens up the erally. For that, however, what matters is the prospect of making sense of abstraction in arts, more general content of the artworks. That such as literature, in which it is unclear what might be present in nonabstract works – they would be left if representation were absent. may represent the general by representing the A full account of abstraction will need specific. It is also, however, certainly present in to deploy both definitions now before us. As works that are abstract in our second sense. Wollheim notes, some, if not many, paintings That leaves untouched, of course, works are abstract in virtue of not representing at that are abstract in the other sense, those that all; and perhaps there can be musical art that do not represent at all. Since abstraction here neither represents in any more straightfor- is conceived purely negatively, the prospects ward way nor expresses anything. (Some for understanding how it contributes to value indeed, have considered this to be the true mis- are limited. We may instead ask a related sion of absolute music.) So the first notion can- question: how can the work have value at all, not be dispensed with entirely. But, equally, given that it does not represent anything? we have seen good reason not to rely on it But puzzlement over that is only in place to alone. the extent that we understand how in general

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adorno, theodor w(iesengrund) representation contributes to art’s value. Since (1970). His aphoristic style reaches a high point I doubt our understanding of that issue goes in the wide-ranging Minima Moralia (1951), deep, we should not rush to find it mysterious one of the great books of the postwar period. how art can be successful in representation’s Adorno’s primary aesthetic interest is in the absence. “autonomous” art that emerged from earlier functional contexts at the end of the eigh- See also drawing, painting, and printmaking; teenth century. This autonomy “was a function music and song; cognitive value of art; ex- of the bourgeois consciousness of freedom that pression; picture perception; representation. was itself bound up with the social structure” (1997: 225); thus art expressed the autonomy bibliography of the individual subject vis-à-vis society. Art’s Greenberg, Clement. 1971. Art and Culture. Boston: autonomy means a development of its own Beacon. structures of meaning, independent of direct Walton, Kendall L. 1988. “What is Abstract about reference to the social world; hence Adorno the Art of Music?” Journal of Aesthetics and Art suggests that the concept of art is strictly applic- Criticism, 46, 351–64. able only to music, since literature and painting Wollheim, Richard. 1987. Painting as an Art. London: Thames & Hudson. always include “an element of subject-matter transcending aesthetic confines, undissolved in robert hopkins the autonomy of form” (1974: 223). Paradoxic- ally, it is the very tendency toward the elabora- tion of its own formal nature that constitutes acquaintance principle see testimony in art’s social meaning. As the expression of a aesthetics. subjectivity engaged dialectically with a social reality at once repressive of its desires and defining its conditions of existence, art repres- Adorno, Theodor W(iesengrund) (1903– ents the demand for freedom from repression. 1969) German philosopher; leading figure Its autonomy, its functionlessness, allow it to in the Frankfurt school of critical theory. Born stand as a critique of a society dedicated to the into a wealthy family in Frankfurt am Main, domination of nature in the interests of com- Adorno received his PhD in philosophy in that mercial profit, As an element of the modern city in 1924, but spent the following year in society to which it stands in this critical relation, Vienna studying composition with Alban Berg. aesthetic form is “sedimented” social content, While remaining involved in the music world, because “artistic labour is social labour” he taught philosophy at Frankfurt University (1997: 5, 236). Its history follows the pattern until Hitler’s advent to power drove him to of social development generally: that of the the US in 1938, where he joined the Frankfurt progressive mastery of nature by humankind, Institute for Social Research in exile, working described by Adorno (following Max Weber) in New York and southern California. He re- as a process of rationalization. Nature is re- turned to a professorship in Frankfurt in 1953, presented in music by what Adorno calls the and succeeded his close collaborator Max musical “material” confronting composers at any Horkheimer as director of the institute, also given time: sound as organized by historically reinstalled in that city, in 1964. His work, evolved musical form. The drive to control which greatly influenced the German student this material led first to the elaboration of the movement of the 1960s, has since the 1980s tonal system by the masters of Viennese classi- become an international touchstone for criticism, cism and then to the total control over the mater- especially in the visual arts. The majority of ial achieved by Schoenberg. With the second Adorno’s works are concerned with aesthetic Viennese school, no conventions force the com- questions. There are studies of Berg, Mahler, and poser “to acquiesce to traditionally universal Wagner; essays on literary and musical matters; principles. With the liberation of musical mater- an Introduction to the Sociology of Music (1962); ial, there arose the possibility of mastering it and two central theoretical works: Philosophy technically . . . The composer has emancipated of Modern Music (1948) and Aesthetic Theory himself along with his sounds” (1973: 52).

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The emancipation achieved by modern art or of the relation between theme and harmony through its denial of earlier conventions in sonata form to the dialectic of individual and must be paid for. “In the process of pursuing its society, are too often “merely verbal analogies own inner logic, music is transformed more which have no basis in fact but owe their and more from something significant into origin and a semblance of plausibility to a gen- something obscure – even to itself” (1973: 19). erously ambivalent use of words like . . . ‘gen- From the artist’s point of view, “the progress in eral and particular’ ” (Dahlhaus 1987: 243). In technique that brought them ever greater free- addition, Adorno does not hesitate on occasion dom and independence of anything hetero- to subordinate matters of fact to his philosoph- geneous, has resulted in a kind of reification, ical purposes (see Dahlhaus 1970). His clearly technification of the inward as such” (1974: inadequate dismissal of Stravinsky and his 214). For the listener, music has lost its trans- inexpert and unsubtle treatment of popular parent meaningfulness and the satisfaction it music have also come under much (not un- once gave. To grasp its meaning – what Adorno appreciative) criticism. Nevertheless, his work calls its truth content – now requires, beyond remains important as an aesthetics of modern- “sensory listening,” aesthetic theory, which ism, both for its general program, the discovery alone makes possible “the conceptually mediated of social meanings in artistic form, and for its perception of the elements and their configura- many powerful observations and suggestions. tion which assures the social substance of great music” (1973: 130) – its resistance to the ideo- See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century logical demand that experience be depicted as continental aesthetics; art history; marxism the achievement of harmonious totality. and art. Art that does not confront society in this way is condemned by Adorno as regressive, both in bibliography the realm of high art, as with Stravinsky’s primitivism and neoclassicism, and in that of the Primary sources popular music mass produced by the “culture [1948] 1976. Philosophy of Modern Music. A. G. industry.” Both are adaptations to social real- Mitchell & W. V. Blomster (trans.). New York: ity: in the former by formally modeling the Continuum. [1951] 1974. Minima Moralia. E. F. N. Jephcott submission of the individual to social irra- (trans.). London: Verso. tionality, in the latter by accepting completely [1962] 1973. Introduction to the Sociology of Music. the consequences of the commodity form for E. B. Ashton (trans.). New York: Continuum. musical production. “Classical” music as a [1970] 1997. Aesthetic Theory. R. Hullot-Kentor whole is drawn into the system of commercial- (trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota ization, as its presentation is adapted to a mass Press. listenership no longer capable of “structural 2002. Essays on Music. R. Leppert (ed.). Berkeley: listening” but able only to wait for the ap- University of California Press. pearance of beautiful melodies and exciting Secondary sources rhythms. In this, too, music bears a social Dahlhaus, Carl. 1970. “Soziologische Dechiffrierung meaning – that of the increasing domination of von Musik. Zu Theodor W. Adorno’s Wagnerkritik” individual experience by the needs of industrial [Sociological deciphering of music: on Theodor capitalism. Adorno’s critique of Wagner], International Review It follows from Adorno’s conception of of Music Aesthetics and Sociology, 1, 137–47. artworks as “concentrated social substance” Dahlhaus, Carl. 1987. Schoenberg and the New Music. that a critical aesthetics must seek social signi- D. Puffett & A. Clayton (trans.). Cambridge: Cam- ficance in the formal properties of individual bridge University Press. works. This is a difficult prescription to follow, Gendron, Bernard. 1986. “Theodor Adorno meets the Cadillacs.” In Studies in Entertainment. T. Modleski and Adorno’s studies of artworks are typically (ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, less persuasive than his theoretical generaliza- 18–36. tions. Attempts at combining formal analysis Mattick, Paul. 2007. “The Dialectic of Disappoint- with sociological decoding, such as the com- ment: Adorno and Art Criticism since the 1980s.” parison of serial technique to bureaucratization, In Value: Art: Politics. Criticism, Meaning and

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Interpretation after Postmodernism. J. Harris (ed.). must have no concern with the kind of object Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 347–66. he is viewing – that is, with the “concept” Paddison, Max. 1993. Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music. under which it falls. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. There have been several significant vari- paul mattick ations on Kant’s theme. For Schopenhauer, too, the aesthetic attitude is marked by a withdrawal from our usual practical, willful engagement aesthetic attitude The question of what it with things. It is, once again, a type of con- is to adopt a distinctively aesthetic attitude to templation, but directed toward the Platonic objects is important in its own right, but also ideas or forms that lie behind “appearances.” In because of the role attributed to this attitude contemplating a building, I am indifferent to within wider issues. For example, the difficulties, its function, attending instead to the ideas intensified by developments in “modern art,” in of space, gravity, and so on. Edward Bullough defining the term “art” have prompted the characterized the aesthetic attitude in terms of attempt to characterize works of art as those “psychical distance.” On a fogbound ship, the toward which it is appropriate to adopt the aesthete distances himself from the fears and aesthetic attitude. Some philosophers have practical concerns of the crew, and concen- also tried to define the notions of aesthetic trates on the strange shapes and forms the fog properties, qualities, values, and experience in lends to things. Finally, a number of phenome- terms of aesthetic attitude. nologists, elaborating on Kant’s talk of “indif- Immanuel Kant was not the first person ference” to actual existence, have argued that to associate a distinctively aesthetic attitude the true object of the aesthetic attitude is not an with “disinterest.” (A similar association seems actual object in the world but an “intentional to have shaped Japanese aesthetic theory object,” existing only for the perceiver. Strictly, over many centuries: see Odin 2001.) But in therefore, there cannot be a single object toward modern Western aesthetics, it is Kant’s discus- which both aesthetic and nonaesthetic atti- sion that has had a decisive influence. Entirely tudes may be taken, for in the two cases differ- representative, therefore, is the definition of ent kinds of object are being considered. “the aesthetic attitude” as “disinterested and More dramatic are the implications many sympathetic attention to and contemplation of twentieth-century artists and critics have drawn any object of awareness whatever” (Stolnitz from Kant’s notion of “disinterest” for the proper 1960: 34–5). (Strictly speaking, Kant himself ambitions and functions of art. One of these did not employ “disinterest” to distinguish the is a marked “formalist” hostility to representa- aesthetic from the nonaesthetic, but to dis- tional art. In “pure” aesthetic experience, wrote tinguish, within the realm of what he called Clive Bell in 1914, a painting must be treated “the aesthetic,” judgments of beauty and sub- as if it “were not representative of anything” limity from those of mere pleasantness or (1947: 32). More generally, there should be no agreeableness.) concern for content and meaning since this Kant explains the “disinterested” attitude as would contradict the required indifference to one where the subject is “merely contemplative matters of existence and conceptualization. . . . indifferent as regards the existence of an A second implication drawn – also in the “for- object,” and focusing rather upon its “appear- malist” spirit – is that art should not aim to be ance” (Kant 1966: 43). This is intended to expressive of emotion. The proper response capture the insight that when viewing some- to art is not an emotional one but something thing “disinterestedly,” and so aesthetically, like Kant’s “restful contemplation.” Finally, will and desire are in abeyance. When so view- “disinterest” has been invoked to support the aes- ing an object, a person is unconcerned with its theticist or “art for art’s sake” estimation of practical utility, including its role as a source art. Since people are not viewing something as of intellectual or sensuous gratification. From this art if they are interested in further benefits to Kant draws some questionable conclusions. be derived from it, no justification is required for Not only, he says, is emotion a “hindrance” to art beyond the satisfaction aesthetic contem- “pure” appreciation of beauty but the subject plation yields.

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It is hard to judge how far Kant would attitude as “disinterested” indifference to its endorse such claims, since the bulk of his dis- objects’ actual existence and conceptual type cussion is about an aesthetic attitude toward remains implausible. The aesthetic satisfaction nature, not art. Extrapolation to a Kantian yielded when one looks at a cathedral may be theory of art is uncertain. (What, for example, due, in part, to a projected sense of its solidity, is the analogue in the case of painting to sus- the coolness of its stone, and the peace that pension of interest in a thing’s actual exis- obtains within. This enjoyment could not sur- tence? Indifference to the existence of the vive the discovery that the “cathedral” is a canvas and pigments? Or to that of whatever is cardboard facade used in the latest film about depicted?) Some of his remarks indicate that he Thomas à Becket, and so cannot be an enjoy- would not accept these alleged extensions of his ment that is “indifferent” to the building’s real idea. Thus, while he indeed insists that judg- existence. And while Kant may be consistent in ments of beauty should be “independent of concluding that my appreciation of a cathedral emotion,” the feeling of the sublime – itself an is “impure” to the extent that I am conceiving aesthetic one – is an “outflow of vital powers” of it as a cathedral, his conclusion betrays a pecu- and may be “regarded as emotion” (Kant liarly restricted notion of aesthetic appreci- 1966: 83). And, unlike the aestheticists, Kant ation. It is my aesthetic sensibility, as much offers nonaesthetic justifications for aesthetic as anything, that is offended by the staging experience. Most notably, it is “purposive in of a circus or bingo competition within the reference to the moral feeling,” since it “prepares cathedral’s walls, and this sensibility is not us to love disinterestedly” (Kant 1966: 108; to be abstracted from my consciousness of the see also Guyer 2005: esp. chs. 8–9.) building’s spiritual purpose, of the prayers and The formalist and aestheticist programs are acts of worship it has housed. surely not entailed by the bare idea of “disin- Given such considerations, some philoso- terest.” That my concern with a painting must phers prefer to characterize the aesthetic attitude not be practical (pecuniary, say) nor a “con- and disinterest in terms of attention to an ceptual” one of classification (Pre-Raphaelite, object “for its own sake.” This would not carry say) cannot entail that paintings should eschew the same connotation of indifference to the representation. Nor can it entail that I should object’s existence, to the kind of thing it is, and suspend all inquiry into a painting’s “point” or to its representational and expressive features. content, representational or otherwise. Nor, But the notion of an interest in something except on the crude view that a painting only “for its own sake” has substance only by way of expresses something extraneous to it (like the contrast with other sorts of interest. So the first artist’s mood), is there any reason to proscribe problem will be to specify these other attitudes attention to its expressive features, including and interests. Now, while it is easy enough to those which are expressive of emotions. For exclude such obviously pragmatic interests as these features may be discerned as belonging, those in a painting’s monetary value and powers integrally, to the painting itself. of sexual arousal, there remain many non- Finally, the doctrine of “art for art’s sake” instrumental attitudes toward things or people seems guilty of confusing two questions – that that are not aesthetic. I admire a person of high of the proper attitude toward a work of art, and moral caliber simply for what he or she is; the that of why it may be desirable for this attitude true scholar seeks knowledge for its own sake. to be taken. It is perfectly possible to answer the In some of these cases, it will be said, satis- second question by referring to the moral, psy- faction of the interest in question (moral, chological, or even religious benefits that may scholarly, or whatever) does not take the form accrue, while insisting that the aesthetic gaze of enjoyment, as it must in the case of aesthetic itself must not be motivated by such considera- interest. But if “enjoyment” is understood tions. It is only because it is “disinterested” narrowly, it is hardly obvious that aesthetic that, as Kant clearly saw, it can succeed in satisfaction should always be described as yielding these further benefits. enjoyment. I admire, but do not enjoy, Goya’s Even with these unwarranted extensions “black paintings.” If, however, “enjoyment” is blocked, the characterization of the aesthetic stretched to cover such instances, it is no

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aesthetic attitude longer clear that perception of moral quality As that final point indicates, much of the or the acquisition of new knowledge is not problem here has to do with the passivity often an experience of enjoyment. It might be more associated with the contemplative attitude. As promising, then, to employ a variety of criteria one author, echoing many others, puts it, the for distinguishing these other modes of interest contemplative spectator “is not concerned to in something “for its own sake” from the aes- analyze ...or to ask questions about [an object]” thetic one. For example, Dufrenne suggests (Stolnitz 1960: 38). But the justification for that the difference between love and aesthetic insisting that this is how spectators should appreciation is that “love requires a kind of approach works of art is unclear. Typically, union which is not needed by the aesthetic they come before works in an active spirit, object, because the latter . . . holds [the specta- replete with ambitions to analyze and ask tor] at a distance” (1973: 432). questions, to compare and put into context. More difficult, arguably, is to distinguish “In aesthetic appreciation,” Scruton writes, an aesthetic attitude toward, say, a lakeland “the object serves as a focal point on which scene from the simple and utterly familiar many different thoughts and feelings are experience of passing the time, idly and enjoy- brought to bear” (1974: 155). A person look- ably, looking about one, observing the clouds ing at Night Café in Arles is not looking for the and boats sailing by. This, too, is done for no answers to questions about human loneliness further reason, but for the mere sake of it, yet available from a sociological tome, but would “aesthetic” sounds too portentous a term for one dismiss as “nonaesthetic” a response to such a banal occupation. the painting like “Van Gogh shows what it is like A further and more radical challenge will to be lonely, even in the company of others”? question whether “disinterest” or interest in An appropriate comportment toward a something “for its own sake” is anyway the work of art requires a certain openness or right place from which to start in trying to receptivity toward it, but this point – the element characterize the aesthetic attitude. This challenge of truth in the idea of “disinterested” contem- might focus on the tendency of characterizations plation – cannot prohibit approaching a work like Kant’s and Stolnitz’s to assimilate the aes- with active interests, like that of learning how thetic attitude to contemplation. To begin with, it is to view the world a certain way or how a there are paradigm cases of contemplation work embodies the predilections of its creator’s – “navel-gazing,” say – which are not ones of times. What matters in such instances – and aesthetic appreciation. Second, while some what makes them instances of aesthetic appre- works of art, like Olivier Messiaen’s religious ciation, arguably – is the spectator’s readiness works, might reasonably be described as invi- to employ imagination in attempting to satisfy tations to contemplation, this would be a the interrogative interests with which he or strange description of, say, the finale of the she approaches the work. The painting does “Eroica” Symphony. So, at the very least, the not tell one about loneliness, nor does a statue contemplation deemed essential to the aes- depict the prejudices of its age. These, rather, thetic attitude must be contemplation in a very are matters an audience must imaginatively special sense. Third, it has been vigorously reconstruct from the canvas or stone before it. argued by Arnold Berleant (1991) that disin- To understand the aesthetic attitude in terested contemplation is rarely the form taken terms of a readiness for imagination is, to be sure, by aesthetic appreciation of nature. Here, rather, to move from one obscure notion to another. But the appreciator is typically participating in at least imagination incorporates that peculiar and interacting with the landscape, and it is blend of will and receptivity, that oscillation through this engagement, not despite it, that between an imposition of structure or meaning proper appreciation is possible. Berleant goes on and a readiness to be “taken over,” which is to argue that the disinterested contemplation characteristic of our best moments in the pres- model is a poor one even in the case of art. ence of art, or indeed of natural scenes. It may Typically, neither artworks nor natural scenes well be that only so much of aesthetic experi- are “objects” of detached contemplation, but ence can be understood in these terms. And then “occasions” for “active” engagement. the conclusion should be that it was mistaken

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aesthetic education to look for a single phenomenon, the aesthetic Schopenhauer, Arthur. 1966 [1819/44]. The World attitude. This conclusion was reached by George as Will and Representation. E. J. F. Payne (trans.). Dickie (1974) in his well-known attacks on New York: Dover. “the myth of the aesthetic attitude.” Not only, Scruton, Roger. 1974. Art and Imagination: A Study he argued, is there no single state of mind one in the Philosophy of Mind. London: Methuen. must induce in oneself – through a feat of “psy- Stolnitz, Jerome. 1960. Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art Criticism. Boston: Riverside. chical distancing,” say – in order to appreciate things aesthetically, but it is impossible to david e. cooper understand where “disinterested” aesthetic attention differs from attention tout court. People who focus on, say, the cost of the paint- aesthetic education My main aim in this ing or the moral character of its painter are guilty essay is to clarify the concept of aesthetic edu- of plain inattention to it, the work itself. cation, rather than provide an overview of the The implication to draw from Dickie’s criti- recent literature on this topic. (See Smith 1998 cism is not, perhaps, that we should eschew all for an overview.) The concept refers to the talk of aesthetic attitude. Something, after all, theory, content, and practice of teaching and distinguishes the kind of attention we try to learning related to issues of aesthetic value pay to paintings from the kind paid, for exam- and aesthetic experience. In educational discip- ple, to incoming shells by soldiers in a trench. lines it is often used to cover a range of teach- A more moderate implication would be that ing and learning practices that pertain to what we should content ourselves with describing a we might properly call art education. On the motley of attitudes, united more by the range other hand, within philosophical aesthetics, of objects or “occasions” – including, of course, education is largely seen to be an area of appli- works of art – that tend to invite them than by cation, particularly that of moral education, a single, underlying state of mind. If we do so for philosophical aesthetics. In addition, within then the ambition, noted at the outset, of the literature more generally, philosophical defining “art” in terms of a particular attitude aesthetics and philosophy of art are often con- toward objects must be abandoned, for that flated. The point of clarifying the concept of would be a circular enterprise. aesthetic education then is to be able to say more clearly what it is, and how it serves toward an See also eighteenth-century aesthetics; education that is not focused narrowly on the twentieth-century anglo-american aesthet- creation and appreciation of artworks in them- ics; aesthetic properties; aestheticism; selves. Its goal is to educate individuals toward definition of “art”; dickie; imagination; kant. the recognition and enhancement of the role bibliography that aesthetics can play in human wellbeing, a role that aesthetics plays in all human activity Bell, Clive. 1947. Art. London: Chatto & Windus. from cognition, through the development of Berleant, Arnold. 1991. Art and Engagement. Philadel- phia: Temple University Press. institutions, to our engagement with natural Bullough, Edward. 1912. “ ‘Psychical Distance’ as a and built environments. This is not to exclude Factor in Art and an Aesthetic Principle,” British artworks but to recognize them instead as just Journal of Psychology, 5, 87–98. one form of human activity that engages us Dickie, George. 1974. Art and the Aesthetic. Ithaca: aesthetically. Cornell University Press. There is a long history of the role of aes- Dufrenne, Mikel. 1973. The Phenomenology of Aesthetic thetics in human development and citizenship Experience. A. Anderson (trans.). Evanston: North- education, as in Plato’s Symposium and The western University Press. Republic, and Aristotle’s Poetics, within the Guyer, Paul. 2005. Values of Beauty: Historical Essays in Western philosophical tradition. Regardless of Aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1966 [1790]. Critique of Judgment. whether these arguments defend an education J. Bernard (trans.). New York: Hafner. in the arts or argue against them, they rest on Odin, Steve. 2001. Artistic Detachment in Japan and the the assumption that aesthetic education bears West: Psychic Distance in Comparative Aesthetics. a strong relationship to our emotional lives Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. and moral and political development. Within

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aesthetic education non-Western aesthetics, too, a connection and hence of culture and education. Much of between the arts and the moral and political our contemporary philosophical interest in realms is explicit. For example, drama, within environmental aesthetics could turn to Kant, the Indian tradition, as in the Greek, was a key with some profit, in thinking about aesthetic vehicle for the imparting of moral and political education and about human development and values. Not surprisingly, then, in these traditions wellbeing. Moreover, taking a Kantian view we see the early development of philosophical of aesthetics is invaluable in understanding aesthetics in the writings of Bratahari and formalism, and as Nick Zangwill (2001) so Aristotle. More recently, we see similar attempts persuasively argues, providing us with a sys- at linking aesthetics with ethics and moral tematic understanding of the relation between education, as, for example, Marcia M. Eaton’s aesthetic properties and experience. Above all, Aesthetics and the Good Life (1989). Jenefer taking a Kantian approach makes us aware of Robinson (1995), taking a more psychological the role that aesthetics, as human cognition, approach, has argued for an education of the plays in all human activity. This, too, is a rela- emotions through an engagement with the tively underdeveloped area within aesthetic arts that would facilitate moral education. education. While the cognitive value of the arts was Perhaps there is no single philosopher more addressed by the early philosophers, it is with important to aesthetic education than John Kant, building on Alexander Baumgarten and Dewey. His Art as Experience, a book based on responding in part to David Hume, that we the William James Lectures that he delivered see the emergence of modern aesthetics. With at Harvard University in 1931, lays out the the development of modern aesthetics we see role that aesthetics plays in the development an increase in the interest of aesthetics as an of humans, as complex biological organisms aspect of human cognition. This interest has adapted to their environment. grown considerably in significance with devel- Dewey had always stressed the importance opments in neuroscience (Zeki 2000). David of recognizing the significance and integrity of Hume’s essay “Of the Standard of Taste” is a clas- all aspects of human experience. His repeated sic within aesthetic education but it remains complaint against the partiality and bias of the strongly rooted in art. For Hume, the question philosophical tradition expresses this theme. is how we can set a standard for judgments of Consistent with this theme, Dewey took account taste. For Kant, on the other hand, in making of qualitative immediacy in Experience and aesthetic judgments we make a determination Nature, and incorporated it into his view of the about human cognition rather than about developmental nature of experience. It is in the object itself. Aesthetic pleasure is our felt the enjoyment of the immediacy of an integra- awareness that the appearance of the object tion and harmonization of meanings, in the conforms to the most basic conditions of “consummatory phase” of experience that, in human cognition. Dewey’s view, the fruition of the readaptation Roughly the argument is that there are of the individual to her environment is realized. structures or categories of the mind that affect These central themes are enriched and what we perceive and construct what we deepened in Art as Experience, making it one of know. For example, in the case of vision “see- Dewey’s most significant works. Furthermore, ing” does not entail a passive reception of the roots of aesthetic experience lie, he argues, perceptual information. Rather, “seeing” is an in commonplace experience, in the consum- active process that brings our cognitive appa- matory experiences that are ubiquitous in the ratus and the visual signal together to con- course of human life. struct what we see. For Kant, aesthetics, the Like Kant, Dewey argues against the conceit cognitive organization of perceptual information, cherished by some art enthusiasts that aes- is fundamental to human animals. Hence, thetic enjoyment is the privileged endow- aesthetic experiences are not limited to those ment of the few. While Kant remains agnostic with refined sensibilities as Hume might have regarding the prescription of certain aesthetic it. Rather, they are available to all. What in experiences over others, Dewey thinks that it is particular is appreciated is a matter of taste, precisely because humans are aesthetically

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aesthetic education predisposed that certain experiences should simply in terms of the traditionally codified be valued over others, so that individuals do list of sense qualities. Such qualities are not not fill this need through less than worthy divorced from an individual’s history. Rather, artworks. While he does not offer any criteria they rely on our mental structures and con- as such for preferring some works or experiences tent gained through experiences. Unlike Kant, over others, drawing on his overall philosophy however, Dewey highlights the role of education it is safe to say that only those aesthetic ex- in building a content rich in meanings from past periences would be considered educative that experience. Culture is invaluable to the making foster more meaningful experiences. of such a fund of meanings. More importantly, for Dewey, an “experi- Ever concerned with the interrelationships ence” coalesces into an immediately enjoyed between the various domains of human activ- qualitative unity of meanings and values drawn ity and interest, Dewey ends Art as Experience from previous experience and present circum- with a chapter devoted to the social implications stances. Life itself takes on an aesthetic qual- of the arts. Because art has its roots in the con- ity and this is what Dewey calls having an summatory values experienced in the course experience. of human life, its values have an affinity to For Dewey, the creative work of the artist, commonplace values, an affinity that gives the broadly speaking, is not unique. It is a process arts a critical role in relation to prevailing that requires an intelligent use of materials, social conditions. Dewey’s specific target is the the imaginative development of possible solu- conditions of workers in industrialized society, tions to problems issuing in a reconstruction of conditions that force upon the worker the per- experience that affords immediate satisfaction. formance of repetitive tasks that are devoid of This process, found in the creative work of personal interest and afford no satisfaction in per- artists, is also to be found in all intelligent and sonal accomplishment. That is, assembly-line creative human activity. What distinguishes routines of work are impoverished aesthetic- artistic creation is the relative stress laid upon ally. Such impoverishment is not necessarily the immediate enjoyment of unified qualitat- tied to labor as such, as Dewey demonstrates ive complexity as the rationalizing aim of the with examples like that of riveters setting up a activity itself, and the ability of the artist to rhythm in catching and using hot rivets as achieve this aim by marshaling and refining they build a skyscraper. It is management that the massive resources of human life, mean- needs to be made aware – educated – toward the ings, and values. Although Dewey insisted role that aesthetics plays in all human activity that emotion is not the significant content of the in order to make it meaningful and worthwhile. work of art, he clearly understands it to be the Richard Shusterman (2008) has extended crucial tool of the artist’s creative activity. and deepened Dewey’s aesthetics through Dewey’s aesthetic theory requires educa- his theory of aesthetics related to the body – tion, both formal and informal, to build up “somaesthetics.” Furthermore, he has extended these resources that help create artworks, but the educational repertoire of artworks worthy requires aesthetic education in this sense to of producing meaningful experiences by in- appreciate them too. For Dewey, accounts of aes- cluding those we might typically not consider thetic appreciation that portray the artist as an worthwhile even though they carry meaning active creator and the audience as passive for vast segments of our society. In this he receiver are flawed. In his view, both the artist remains true to Dewey’s democratic commit- and audience are active in producing and ments. Arnold Berleant (1997) and Yuriko appreciating artworks that afford us aesthetic Saito (2007), on the other hand, have turned experience. their attention to the aesthetic dimensions of our It is commonplace to think that the senses play natural and built environments and to every- a key role in artistic creation and aesthetic day life. Dewey’s ubiquitous theory of aesth- appreciation. Dewey, like Kant, however, argues etics, like Kant’s cognitive theory, recognizes against the view, stemming historically from the role of aesthetics in all human activity and the sensationalistic empiricism of David Hume, not only in the making and appreciating of who interprets the content of sense experience high art but also nonart like the environment

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aesthetic judgment and the everyday. Aesthetic education in this implication holds because what he is claiming case might mean not only the enhancing of is only that the object has certain qualities our awareness of this dimension of our activities arranged in a given way. If the original judg- and experiences but also serving more humbly, ment is correct, it follows that anyone else but not less importantly, as a reminder of its per- ought to judge in the same way. vasive presence. Simple objectivism has been subjected to several criticisms. Many have found it counter- See also aesthetic properties; aesthetics of intuitive that one can, in theory, decisively the everyday; cognitive value of art; dewey; settle the beauty of an object by reference to hume; indian aesthetics; kant; morality and rules of composition alone. Whatever aesthetic art. rule of composition is proposed, it is never self-contradictory to accept that the object unequivocally falls under the rule, yet deny bibliography that it is beautiful. Berleant, Arnold. 1997. Living in the Landscape: Second, the analysis leaves no intrinsic role Toward an Aesthetics of the Environment. Lawrence: for a spectator’s feelings in the determination of University of Kansas Press. Dewey, John. 2005 [1934]. Art as Experience. New beauty. Admittedly, a defender of the analysis York: Perigee. can, and very probably will, allow that the Eaton, Marcia. 1989. Aesthetics and the Good Life. judgment is normally accompanied by a feeling Madison: Farleigh Dickinson University Press. of pleasure or displeasure, but an object’s beauty Robinson, Jenefer. 1995. “L’education Sentimentale,” exists quite independently of any spectator’s Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 73, 212–26. feelings. Finally, the evaluative force of the Saito, Yuriko. 2007. Everyday Aesthetics. Oxford: judgment is not adequately accounted for: one Oxford University Press. is not merely judging that the object possesses Shusterman, Richard. 2008. Body Consciousness: certain properties disposed in a given way, but A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics. also that it merits attention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, Ralph. 1998. “Education, Aesthetic.” In simple and sophisticated subjectivism Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. M. Kelly (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, vol. ii, 93–6. According to simple subjectivism, the correct- Zangwill, Nick. 2001. The Metaphysics of Beauty. ness of an aesthetic judgment is determined Ithaca: Cornell University Press. by the pleasure or displeasure that perception Zeki, Semir. 2000. Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art of the object arouses in any given spectator. This and the Brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. implies that if, under the same circumstances, pradeep a. dhillon one individual judges that an object is beauti- ful and another judges that it is not, they could never be contradicting each other. Yet it seems evident that at least sometimes they could be. aesthetic judgment There have been a Moreover, an aesthetic judgment is made on the huge number of attempts to understand the basis of our perception of features in the object. nature of aesthetic judgment. These are placed We are normally expected to show that the in two broad categories, and called here object- judgment rests on features that render our ivism and subjectivism. response a justifiable one. This is not consistent with the judgment depending only on feelings simple objectivism of pleasure or displeasure the perception of the According to a simple objectivism, the truth object occasions in any spectator. of an aesthetic judgment is wholly determined In the light of these and other criticisms, by whether certain qualities or relations exist subjectivists have usually accepted that the in the object. An important corollary of this aesthetic judgment cannot be a bare statement account is that when a spectator affirms that an of personal liking or disliking. A more sophist- object is, for instance, beautiful, his judgment icated subjectivist account was defended by must imply that everyone who judges the Hume, and most subsequent subjectivist theor- object aesthetically ought to find it beautiful. This ies have remained greatly indebted to it. The

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aesthetic judgment basic idea is often introduced by seeking to ness of such features. These features become draw an analogy between color judgments denominated the “beauties” or “blemishes” of and aesthetic judgments. Even those who con- objects, despite their existence being depen- strue an object’s color as nothing more than an dent on the sensibilities of discriminating occurrence in the observer’s mind allow that spectators. On this account, any defensible there are standards for assessing the appropri- aesthetic rules of composition will simply be ateness of particular color judgments. These empirical generalizations, based on the dis- standards depend on: (1) similar general prin- covery that features of a certain kind have ciples governing most people’s color percep- been found to please discriminating spectators tion, and our accepting that those within the in a variety of different objects. consensus who can make maximum discrimi- Sophisticated subjectivism incorporates many nations between colors have the best color of the properties that have been widely seen as vision; (2) widespread agreement among the central to aesthetic appreciation. It permits a maximum discriminators about the precise prominent role to reasoning and the comparison colors of given objects. Similarly, the sophisti- of cases in the justification of aesthetic judg- cated subjectivist urges, we should think of ments, at least in the finer arts; yet it gives to standards in art criticism as resting on: (1) the contemplative feelings of pleasure or displeasure same, or nearly the same, general principles the ultimate determining ground of the judg- governing most people’s aesthetic taste, and ment. And since any acknowledged general our acknowledging that those within this rules are only contingent, it can explain why it majority who are capable of experiencing the is never self-contradictory to admit that cer- fullest and most discriminating range of con- tain features fall under an accepted rule, while templative feelings have the most perfect taste; also denying that they are beautiful. Further- (2) a large measure of agreement among the more, it can account for why we place such a maximum discriminators about the precise value on aesthetic appreciation: the discrim- feelings that are produced by the particular inating feelings, on which judgments in the qualities and relations of objects. finer arts depend, are of an intrinsically satis- If the subjectivists are to make good this fying nature. Also they have a strong tendency analogy, they will need to defend the belief that (together with the analytical skill required for the majority of people are governed by similar their experience) to civilize a person’s attitude principles of taste. They attempt to do this by toward moral and intellectual matters. Since pointing to the long-running survival of certain both these consequences are highly desirable, admired works among diverse nations; and it is not surprising that aesthetic discrimination by arguing that most disagreements are due to should be considered an admirable quality and factors like prejudice or lack of suitable education. its objects worthy of appreciation. Even allowing that the analogy with colors On the other hand, a subjectivist cannot can survive the existence of aesthetic disagree- allow that an aesthetic judgment about any ment, it still fails to explain why we should talk given object claims the necessary agreement of of the beauties or blemishes of objects (the feel- everyone. At best, the aesthetic judgment can ings of pleasure/displeasure manifestly belong lay claim only to a contingent universality, or to the subjects judging). To meet this objection, near-universality, based on an empirical gener- the sophisticated subjectivist refers to those alization concerning the sensibilities of human features of objects, the awareness of which beings. To those of us whose sensibilities may causes the majority’s contemplative feelings happen to be governed by totally different prin- of pleasure or displeasure. He insists that ciples from the majority’s, the judgments of the capacity to notice intricate relationships discriminating spectators within that majority between the parts of a complex work of art or can have no logical force. natural object is, as a matter of fact, a causally necessary condition for the fullest experience of sophisticated objectivism the appropriate feelings. Accordingly, we learn This position, which was originally developed that in order to justify our responses as aesthetic by Kant, shares with simple objectivism the ones, they need to be grounded in the aware- view that the judgment of taste lays claim to

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aesthetic judgment the necessary agreement of everyone without each of us can only estimate beauty by means exception, but it shares with sophisticated sub- of his own individual feeling. jectivism the view that its determining ground Kant’s theory belongs in the objectivist must always be the feeling of contemplative camp because of his insistence that a well- pleasure or displeasure. Even if this is, so far founded aesthetic judgment ultimately rests on as it goes, a correct analysis of the aesthetic (unknown) principles that obtain independ- judgment, its appearance of having one’s cake ently of any spectator’s feelings. Arguably, his and eating it raises very acutely the question position rests on an unjustified metaphysical of whether application of the judgment can structure; relatedly, it relies on a narrow forma- ever be justified. list conception of beauty. Still, Kant’s analysis In Kant’s case, the justification is intimately raises a serious problem for the subjectivist, linked with his metaphysics. Two people can which is to account for the persisting con- only be perceiving the same object insofar as they tention that the aesthetic judgment claims possess the same faculties of understanding the necessary agreement of everyone without and imagination, operating identically in both exception. of them. The feeling of contemplative pleasure For the subjectivist, any inclination to claim or displeasure, by which we determine the aes- strict universality for the aesthetic judgment thetic judgment, also has to arise from the arises from explicable delusion: because the interlocking of these two faculties in an act of exercise of judgment, especially in the finer arts, perception. We correctly pronounce an object requires extensive knowledge and reflection, it to be beautiful if, and only if, in an act of purely is easy to be misled into thinking that the judg- reflective perception upon the relations holding ment depends wholly on factors belonging to among its formal features, we find – by means the mere perception of the object (especially of the ensuing feeling – that the imagination is since the feelings resulting from careful and permitted maximum freedom from the rule- practiced aesthetic reflection are frequently so governed constraints of the understanding. comparatively unobtrusive); and, under such On this account, it is impossible for two people a misapprehension, one will naturally take it that to be perceiving the same object, while the verdict claims strict universality. In reality, making different, equally well-grounded, aes- the most that can be claimed is a universality thetic judgments. It is impossible because covering all who, as a matter of fact, possess a we make a well-grounded aesthetic judgment similar sensibility. on the basis of a feeling that depends on an identical use of necessarily shared perceptual further developments faculties. (Differences in aesthetic judgment How convincing is the sophisticated subject- arise because people seldom reach a decision ivist’s position? On two counts, it has been solely by allowing the imagination its free play.) strenuously disputed. So although we decide upon an object’s First, it has been held that the spectator beauty on the basis of feeling, Kant thinks that must be the final authority on what aspects what we are thereby estimating is the extent to of an object ground his response. It is always which the object’s mere form or design gives the spectator himself, on the basis of his own scope to the imagination’s free play. But there experience of the aesthetic object, who must can be no discoverable general rules for estab- willingly authorize any suggestions from others lishing this, precisely because the imagination before they can be considered correct. Yet – is here maximally unconstrained by the faculty the argument runs – on the supposition that of rules (the understanding). Only if we had the connection between object and response access to the ground of all experience – the is a causal one, no authorization by the person supersensible world – would it be possible to concerned would be required. Second, it has been discover the principles governing the free play held that although the spectator is the final of the imagination; and, hence, to determine authority on the ground of his response, that prior to and independently of feeling the extent response can only be justified as an aesthetic one of an object’s beauty. Failing, as we do, to if the reasons for it appropriately fall under achieve this insight into the supersensible, aesthetic rules. Perhaps the rules themselves

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aesthetic judgment were first laid down because the features that sure or displeasure do, after all, carry a causal answered to them satisfied the sensibilities of implication, it would be implausible to hold influential people. Whatever their origins, only that any currently accepted aesthetic rules judgments in accord with these rules are well form an immovable framework that serves founded. They have become a constitutive to define the possible justifiable content of element in manifesting aesthetic appreciation. aesthetic judgments (as the second criticism Consequently, the connection between response of subjectivism contended). For suppose it is and object, insofar as the response is to be discovered that certain features of an object, thought of as genuinely aesthetic, cannot be although fully in accord with an accepted aes- merely contingent. If it were, one could identify thetic rule, are not the cause of the response of that response independently of knowing whether discriminating spectators, despite being picked its grounds were in accord with aesthetic out by them as its ground; and suppose, further, rules. What is crucial is that there exists a that other features which they also perceived fundamental framework of given rules, within were acting as the cause. Since it is implied which alone it is possible to talk of the making, that a spectator’s awareness of the properties defending, and criticizing of particular aes- named in an aesthetic explanation cause his thetic judgments. response, this discovery would force a change This dual attack on subjectivism, which in the rules, so that they did henceforth pick out derives from the work of Wittgenstein, evid- the object’s causally efficacious features. It fol- ently has affinities with Kant’s position. It lows that aesthetic rules are ultimately depend- defends the strict universality of the aesthetic ent on the sensibilities of human beings, in the judgment, and it affirms an internal, and not a very manner that the sophisticated subjectivist merely contingent, relation between the spec- maintains. tator’s perception of the object and his making The subjectivist has argued forcefully that, an aesthetic judgment. without a causal implication to aesthetic reason Despite its ingenuity, it is doubtful whether giving, there can be no conceivable case where the attack’s central claim – that the connection the assignment of aesthetic value would be between object and spectator’s response is justified. It turns out, therefore, that if the essentially noncontingent – should be conceded. objectivist tries to analyze the aesthetic judgment Admittedly, it does seem right to say that the without the causal implication, he will be in spectator must willingly authorize any suggestion grave danger of having to deny that its appli- as to the precise reason for his satisfaction or cation ever entails an evaluation. This is an dissatisfaction, before that suggestion can be con- absurd consequence. It raises, again, a difficulty sidered correct (as the first criticism of subject- that we encountered in connection with simple ivism contended). At the same time, it also seems objectivism: namely, whether an objectivist can right to say that any precise identification by him provide a comprehensible account of aesthetic of the ground of his feeling is subject to a famil- value. Unless such an account is forthcoming, iar form of causal falsification. no persuasive alternative to sophisticated sub- For example, we question whether certain jectivism appears to be available; and we shall features can be the real reason for a spectator’s just have to confess that there is an element of dissatisfaction with an object (even though delusion, a tendency to affirm a stricter uni- he identified them as such) if, on another, sim- versality than can be warranted, in our appli- ilar, occasion, their presence, though noted, cation of the aesthetic judgment. did not interfere with his pleasure. So whereas the spectator may be able to rule out suggestions See also aesthetic pleasure; beauty; hume; as to the reason for his response, he cannot kant; objectivity and realism in aesthetics; justifiably continue to affirm that such and such relativism; taste; theories of art; wittgen- features are the real reason for that response, if stein. it can be shown that his awareness of them formed an insignificant part of its cause. bibliography Once it is admitted that the features which Hume, David. 1985. “The Sceptic” (1742), “Of the figure as the real reason for a spectator’s plea- Delicacy of Taste and Passion” (1742), and “Of the

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Standard of Taste” (1757). Repr. in Essays Moral, disinterested – that is, not grounded in the sub- Political and Literary. Indianapolis: Liberty Classics. ject’s personal desires, needs, or susceptibilities Kant, Immanuel. 1987 [1790]. “Introduction” and – it is distinguished (or so Kant believed) from “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment.” In Critique of sensory pleasures such as those of a warm Judgment, W. Pluhar (trans.). Indianapolis: Hackett. bath or the taste of raspberry. In deriving from McDowell, John. 1983. “Aesthetic Value, Objectiv- an impression of purposiveness – an impression ity, and the Fabric of the World.” In Pleasure, Preference and Value. E. Schaper (ed.). Cambridge: which, in stimulating imagination and under- Cambridge University Press, 1–16. standing to an unaccustomed free play, directly Mackie, John L.1977. Ethics: Inventing Right and gives rise to the pleasure in question – aesthetic Wrong. Harmondsworth: Penguin. pleasure is shown to reside in forms or appear- Pears, David F. 1975. “Causes and Objects of ances per se, and not in an object’s real-world Some Feelings and Psychological Reactions.” In status or connections. Questions in the Philosophy of Mind. D. Pears (ed.). Different strands of this complex concep- London: Duckworth, 56–79. tion have been stressed by subsequent writers. Reid, Thomas. 1969 [1785]. “Of Taste.” In Essays on Schopenhauer agreed with Kant that the plea- the Intellectual Powers of Man. Cambridge, MA: sure in beholding an object aesthetically is a MIT Press. Ward, Andrew. 2006. “A Kantian or an Empiricist disinterested one, but claimed that its focus is Theory of Taste?” In Kant: The Three Critiques. not an object’s pure form as such in relation to Cambridge: Polity, 220–6. the cognitive faculties, but rather some meta- Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1996. Lectures and Conversa- physical idea inherent in an object which, in tions on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief. drawing the subject’s attention, lifts him tem- C. Barrett (ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. porarily out of the painful striving to which he, as a spatiotemporally bound individual bundle andrew ward of will, is ordinarily condemned. In a similar vein, Bullough proposed that such pleasure issues upon the subject’s metaphorically distancing aesthetic pleasure When is pleasure in any object of perception, in the sense of brack- an object properly denominated “aesthetic”? eting all of its life implications, thus putting the The characterization of aesthetic pleasure is subject’s practical self “out of gear” and clear- something that almost every theorist of the ing a space for rapt absorption. Others in the aesthetic has attempted. For such a character- twentieth century, such as Eliseo Vivas and ization to be accounted a success, it should Jerome Stolnitz, have emphasized the intrans- illuminate the relation between aesthetic plea- itivity of the mode of attention that yields sure and the taking of an aesthetic attitude to aesthetic pleasure, by which is meant its not works of art, and make intelligible how aes- going beyond the object but instead terminat- thetic pleasure can be taken in what are usu- ing on it. ally labeled nonaesthetic aspects of an item – for The formalist strand in Kant’s conception instance, its cognitive content, moral import, or has been taken up in different ways in the political message – without thereby turning twentieth century by Clive Bell, J. O. Urmson, into pleasure of a nonaesthetic sort. and Monroe C. Beardsley. Bell claimed that Before venturing my proposal, I review pleasurable aesthetic emotion is the result briefly some of the prominent suggestions solely of contemplation of an object’s significant that the tradition of aesthetic thought has form. It is unclear, however, whether Bell thrown up so far. In Kant’s influential treatment, had any intelligible, noncircular account to aesthetic pleasure is characterized as the by- give of when a form is significant, and so the cash product of a nonconceptual and disinterested value of Bell’s pronouncement seems to be just judging, whose focus is exclusively the formal that form, narrowly construed – that is, the purposiveness of the object judged. In being pure arrangement of elements in a medium – nonconceptual it is distinguished from plea- is the sole legitimate object of aesthetic experi- sure taken in an object as good, since such a ence. More liberally, Urmson has suggested judgment always presupposes a concept of that specifically aesthetic pleasure is pleasure the object as of some kind or other. In being deriving from a concern with appearances

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aesthetic pleasure as such. On such a suggestion the aesthetic Especially if a characterization of aesthetic includes, but is not restricted to, the narrowly pleasure is to be adequate to our interest in art, formal. Relatedly, Beardsley has proposed that it will have to be roughly of the sort I have aesthetic pleasure be defined as pleasure taken sketched. Aesthetic pleasure is supposed to in either an object’s formal qualities (for in- be both individualizing and capable of being stance, balance, unity, tension) or its regional taken in an object’s cognitive and moral aspect, qualities – that is, gestalt qualities of character without becoming a fortiori purely cognitive or or expression which attach to structured wholes moral satisfaction. Now, it seems that what is (for instance, vivacity, serenity, gloominess, most distinctive about an artwork, and possibly grace). the only thing for which uniqueness might be That aesthetic pleasure derives from a wholly claimed, is not its artistic character or content nonconceptual engagement with an object, as per se, but the specific complex of the work’s Kant would have it, has not been as readily character and content with the particular per- accepted as some other parts of his theory. What ceptual substructure that supports it. So, inso- the balance of thought and feeling in aesthetic far as that is what is attended to, interest in an experience is or should be was a prominent object carries to what is maximally distinctive topic for critical discussion in the twentieth about it. And where a work has a prominent century. Roger Scruton, for instance, has urged intellectual or moral or political content, plea- that aesthetic experience and the satisfaction sure in this remains recognizably aesthetic inherent in it is necessarily permeated by when it results not so much from acquisition of thought or imagination – that such experience some portion of scientific knowledge or ethical always involves conceptions of objects, of their insight or political wisdom per se, but from features, under certain descriptions. An object appreciation of the manner in which these are not consciously construed in one fashion or embodied in and communicated by the work’s another cannot, for Scruton, be an object in specific elements and organization. which one is finding aesthetic, as opposed to Aesthetic satisfaction in Thomas Mann’s merely sensational or instinctive, satisfaction. Death in Venice, for instance, is to be derived from I propose the following characterization of aes- more than its beauty of language, the striking- thetic pleasure. Pleasure in an object is aesthetic ness of its images, or even the downward curve when it derives from apprehension of and reflection of its sad narrative; it is had as well in its moral on the object’s individual character and content, both mediation of life and art, and in its symbolism for itself and, at least in central cases, in relation of death and disintegration. But the satisfac- to the structural base on which such character tion is properly aesthetic in these latter cases and content rest. That is to say, to appreciate precisely when such symbolic or moral con- something aesthetically is characteristically tent is apprehended in and through the body to attend not only to its forms, qualities, and of the literary work itself – its sentences, para- meanings for their own sakes, but also to the graphs, and fictive events – and not as something way in which all those things emerge from the abstractable from it. Aesthetic pleasure in particular set of low-level perceptual features that Matisse’s The Red Studio is not exhausted in constitute the object on a nonaesthetic plane. delectation of its shapes, planes, and colors; We apprehend the character and content of it includes, for one thing, delight in the origin- items as anchored in and arising from the ality of Matisse’s handling of space. But such specific structure that constitutes it on a primary delight is inseparable from a conception of observational level. Content and character are what that handling amounts to, and how it is supervenient on such structure, and appreci- based in, or realized by, the particular choices ation of them, if properly aesthetic, involves of shape, plane, and color before one. awareness of that dependency. To appreciate an Aesthetic appreciation of art thus always object’s inherent properties aesthetically is to acknowledges the vehicle of the work as essen- experience them, minimally, as properties of tial, and never focuses merely on detachable the individual in question, but also typically as meanings or effects. It is a signal advantage of bound up with and inseparable from its basic the characterization outlined here that it ensures perceptual configuration. both that aesthetic pleasure is individualizing or

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aesthetic pleasure work-centered, and that aesthetic pleasure can of this as resulting from geological forces along be taken in what are, on a traditional reckon- with patterns of human use. ing, nonaesthetic aspects of a work, without Some theorists, such as Arthur C. Danto and thereby becoming nonaesthetic. Nelson Goodman, have stressed the great dif- How, though, are aesthetic pleasures dif- ference in kind between aesthetic response to ferentiated from sensory and from intellectual nature and to art, while other theorists, such ones? When is pleasure in a flavor, for exam- as Richard Wollheim and Anthony Savile, ple, aesthetic rather than merely sensory? It have even proposed that the aesthetic interest seems natural to suggest that what is required in art is logically prior to that in nature, the is some grasp of the flavor for the quality it is, latter being properly analyzed in terms of the perhaps in opposition to other flavors not then former. While recognizing that there may be present, and/or of the flavor as itself founded two species of aesthetic response here, I suspect on other discriminable qualities. To appreciate there is no priority either way. In any event, my the taste of raspberry aesthetically is to register concern has been only to characterize aes- not only the brute taste, but also, so to speak, thetic satisfaction in such a way as to cover both. its form – that is, its relation to other, simpler It is clear that aesthetic pleasure as charac- qualities in the taste, or to ones it contrasts terized so far in this article comprises more with in imagination. A purely sensory pleasure than pleasure in aesthetic qualities per se – in raspberry taste, insofar as this is possible, that is, those that Frank Sibley has famously would neither focus on the flavor for what it dis- identified – and, equally, more than pleasure tinctively is nor involve awareness of relation- in mere appearances. Of course, when one is ships and dependencies within the experience after aesthetic gratification one is interested in as a whole. On the other hand, as already appearances, but usually one is equally inter- remarked, since paradigm aesthetic pleasures ested in how, on a phenomenological plane, always involve an appreciation of contents-in- such appearances are generated; or, alterna- relation-to-vehicles-or-supports, then although tively, how aesthetic qualities emerge from necessarily involving thought of a kind, they do an object’s structure. Somewhat legislatively, not collapse automatically into pure intellectual I have sought a notion which would make pleasures, in which satisfaction is grounded aesthetic pleasure, where works of art are con- in the acquisition of knowledge or insight as cerned, something closer to pleasure proper to such, for themselves, independent of how they something as art – that is to say, art-appropriate are embodied or conveyed. pleasure. In this broader, art-conscious sense, Turning now to nature, how is aesthetic the relationship of substructure and super- pleasure in that related intelligibly to aesthetic structure in the total impression that an object pleasure in art? I suggest that, with nature as affords is necessarily of concern when an well as art, the pleasure is usually taken in its object is approached aesthetically. experienceable aspects, coupled with a vivid Of course we may still acknowledge, in a tra- awareness both of the interrelations of such ditional vein, a more basic notion of aesthetic aspects and of their groundedness in the pleasure as pleasure taken in sensory or per- object’s structure, history, or function. Aesthetic ceptual properties as such, for example, colors, pleasure in natural objects, like aesthetic sounds, or shapes, immediately experienced pleasure in works of art, is typically a multilevel (see Stecker 2005: 46–7). And indeed I framed affair, involving reflection not only on appear- my proposed characterization of aesthetic ances per se, but on the constitution of such pleasure earlier in this essay so as to allow for appearances and the interaction between such cases at the margin, insisting only that in higher-order perceptions. The shapes, colors, central instances of aesthetic pleasure, atten- and expressivenesses of natural objects are tion must carry to relationships of dependence appreciated in their complex relation to one between higher-order and lower-order quali- another and to the concepts under which we ties as experienced. And in line with that more identify such objects. For instance, a landscape basic notion of aesthetic pleasure, appreciation scene might provide aesthetic pleasure not in which awareness of relationships among solely in its appearance but in the recognition experienced qualities at different levels was

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aesthetic properties wholly absent might yet be accountable as aes- form – which means that Kant, in an oblique thetic, provided there is an element of focusing fashion, was right about aesthetic pleasure on such qualities for what they are, so as to pre- after all. vent such pleasure from collapsing into purely sensory pleasure. But we must not lose sight of See also eighteenth-century aesthetics; aes- the fact that such appreciation, even if minimally thetic attitude; aesthetic judgment; aesthetic qualifiable as aesthetic, is simply too thin to properties; aesthetics of the environment; do justice to art and nature appreciation as bell; formalism; kant; schopenhauer. such, and that it is two-level, and not one- level, appreciation that should be seen as the bibliography paradigm of aesthetic appreciation. Accord- Beardsley, Monroe C. 1982. The Aesthetic Point of ingly, it seems useful to have articulated a View. M. Wreen & D. Callen (eds.). Ithaca: Cornell notion of aesthetic pleasure sufficiently rich to University Press, chs. 1–3. respect the complex contents of its primary Bell, Clive. 1914. Art. London: Chatto & Windus. Budd, Malcolm. 1995. The Values of Art: Pictures, objects, art and nature. Poetry, and Music. London: Penguin. Two last points. First, in order to have a Bullough, Edward. 1912. “ ‘Physical Distance’ as a notion of aesthetic appreciation applicable to art- Factor in Art and as an Aesthetic Principle,” works and natural phenomena alike, I invoked British Journal of Psychology, 5, 87–98. in my characterization none of the ingredients Goldman, Alan H. 1995. Aesthetic Value. Boulder: specific to the appreciation of art, such as con- Westview. cern with style, personality, intention, and Kant, Immanuel. 1987 [1790]. Critique of Judgment. design. The result is a notion that seems to fit W. Pluhar (trans.). Indianapolis: Hackett. what goes on when we regard a natural phe- Levinson, Jerrold. 1990. Music, Art, and Metaphysics. nomenon as more than just a source of sensa- Ithaca: Cornell University Press, chs. 6, 7. Levinson, Jerrold. 1996. The Pleasures of Aesthetics. tion, but without necessarily treating it as Ithaca: Cornell University Press, chs. 1, 2. artwork manqué. The aesthetic appreciation of Savile, Anthony. 1982. The Test of Time. Oxford: nature requires not only attention to manifest Oxford University Press. appearances but a concern with their percep- Schopenhauer, Arnold. 1966 [1819]. The World as tual and conceptual underpinnings. Will and Idea, book 3. E. F. J. Payne (trans.). New Second, my characterization has the virtue, York: Dover. ironically, of preserving a connection between Scruton, Roger. 1979. The Aesthetics of Architecture. the aesthetic and the formal in art, reminiscent Princeton: Princeton University Press. of Kant, but without reducing the aesthetic to Stecker, Robert. 2005. Aesthetics and the Philosophy the formal narrowly construed – for instance, of Art: An Introduction. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. as pattern in space or time. For in deriving Stolnitz, Jerome. 1960. Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art gratification from the unique manner in which Criticism. New York: Houghton-Mifflin. a work’s content and character, whatever they Urmson, J. O. 1957. “When is a Situation Aesthetic?” might comprise, are rooted in and emerge from Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. 31, the work’s form sensu stricto – the particu- 75–92. lar arrangement of elements (colors, sounds, Vivas, Eliseo. 1959. “Contextualism Reconsidered,” words, movements, gestures) through which it Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 18, 222– conveys whatever else it does – one is focused 40. on something which could fairly well be Wollheim, Richard. 1980. Art and Its Objects. 2nd edn. described as formal, in a wide sense. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pleasure in an artwork is aesthetic when, jerrold levinson whatever aspects of it are attended to, be they psychological or political or polemical, there is also attention to the relation between content aesthetic properties A definition or ana- and form – between what a work expresses or lysis of aesthetic properties may best be appro- signifies, and the means it uses to do so. This rela- ached by first listing those properties and types tion, which is the sine qua non of aesthetic plea- of properties that are typically thought to be sure in art, is quite obviously a kind of higher aesthetic when ascribed to works of art:

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1 pure value properties: being beautiful, sub- and realism in artworks as readily as they per- lime, ugly; ceive redness or squareness. It seems that they 2 formal qualities: being balanced, tightly must be more sensitive or knowledgeable to knit, graceful; see the former qualities; hence the suggestion 3 emotion properties: being sad, joyful, angry; that they require taste. But the traditional con- 4 behavioral properties: being bouncy, daring, cept of taste has suggested a special faculty sluggish; akin to moral intuition. Without some inde- 5 evocative qualities: being powerful, boring, pendent description of how the faculty is amusing; supposed to work, its existence is no more 6 representational qualities: being true-to- plausible in the one case than in the other. life, distorted, realistic; Furthermore, there are qualities in our list that 7 second-order perceptual properties: being do not require taste to be perceived (e.g., vivid- vivid or pure (said of colors or tones); ness in color). 8 historically related properties: being original, Those qualities that do seem to require taste bold, derivative. for their appreciation need not lead us to posit a special faculty. The apparent need for taste can This list, especially with its inclusion of (8), be explained, first, by the fact that many of the takes a broader view of aesthetic properties than qualities in question are complex relations. We the one traditionally adopted. The reasons for may require considerable exposure, or train- including such properties as originality or stale- ing, before we become capable of recognizing ness in the list are, first, that they contribute to such relations in works of art. Second, most of the value of artworks qua artworks and, second, the qualities mentioned in our list are at least that, despite not being directly perceived, they partly evaluative. To call an artwork daring, influence the ways knowledgeable viewers per- powerful, or vivid is to suggest a positive evalu- ceive or experience the works. ation of it. To call it sluggish, boring, or drab is Is there any common characteristic of these to suggest a negative evaluation. various properties by which they are all recog- Thus, ascription of these properties expresses nized as aesthetic qualities? Several proposals some set of aesthetic values. This fact points may seem promising, but may be dismissed to a plausible general criterion for identifying by counterexample. It might be thought that aesthetic properties: they are those that con- these are all perceptible properties of the works tribute to the aesthetic values of artworks (or, themselves. But not all the qualities listed above in some cases, to the aesthetic values of nat- can be perceived in the works themselves. One ural objects) (Beardsley 1973). It has also been could not perceive whether a representational plausibly suggested that aesthetic properties work was true to life without knowing the are those that make artifacts works of art, or that model or type of model represented; one could help to determine what kinds of artworks they not know that a work was original without are (Sparshott 1982: 478). These two criteria knowing the tradition. Aesthetic properties have may well be related if “work of art” is itself a also been called regional qualities (Beardsley partly evaluative concept in at least one of its 1973), qualities of complexes that emerge definitions, so that to call something a work of from qualities of their parts, but vividness of color art is to imply, for example, that it is worthy of and purity of tone are just qualities of single sustained perceptual attention. We might con- colors or tones. Many of the properties in the clude that works of art are objects created and above list – for example, the emotion and perceived for their aesthetic values, and that aes- behavior properties – are ascribed literally to thetic properties are those that contribute to such humans and perhaps only metaphorically values. In considering this analysis, we must to artworks. But this is not true of the formal not forget that there are negative evaluative or representational properties. properties on the list as well. If being ugly, bor- Another influential suggestion has been ing, distorted, or dull contribute to an object’s that aesthetic properties are those that require value, they normally contribute only to nega- taste to be perceived (Sibley 1959). Ordinary tive value (though not always, e.g., a work’s perceivers do not see sadness, balance, power, ugliness may contribute to its power or realism).

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There are also qualities, such as emotion qual- response in sensitive observers. Philosophers ities like sadness, that seem to be evaluatively have not always agreed that the objective side neutral. It will be argued below that such prop- of beauty cannot be specified. Perhaps the best- erties do contribute to aesthetic value, albeit known attempt to do so was that of Hutcheson more indirectly or less obviously than some of (1725), who held that it is always uniform- the others. ity amid variety. But all such attempts fall to If we restrict attention to the positively counterexamples, in this case ordered complex evaluative properties, it might seem that artists objects that do not appear beautiful. Although would intend to build as many as possible into B (from the above formula) is therefore un- their works, and that their works would be specified in the case of beauty, there will better the more such properties they have. But always be some properties – usually formal this idea is too simple, since many of these relations – in virtue of which an object is beau- properties do not blend well in particular con- tiful. Sometimes these more basic properties texts. In the case of both positive and negative will themselves be evaluative properties. For evaluative properties, it is part of the task of example, an artwork may be beautiful in critics to point them out and to justify their virtue of its grace or power. It may in turn be claims in this regard. powerful in virtue of its piercing pathos or Most of the qualities listed are both rela- graceful in virtue of its smooth lines. A prop- tional and (partly) evaluative. In principle, it erty such as grace, while still generally positively should be possible to analyze particular refer- evaluative, is more specific on its objective side. ences to such properties (although not the “Graceful” always refers to formal qualities property types themselves) into evaluative and that suggest smooth and effortless movements. descriptive components. A crucial question Graceful objects will nevertheless differ in their concerns the relation between these compon- particular formal properties. ents. The properties on our list differ among Ascriptions of more broadly evaluative and themselves in the degree to which they always less specifically objective properties, when include (in their instantiations) specific evalu- challenged, are always defended by appeal to less ative or descriptive aspects. broadly evaluative and more specifically objec- These distinctions can be brought out by tive properties. Ultimately, a critic or viewer analyses of the following form: “object O has aes- should defend evaluations by pointing to thetic property P” means “O is such as to elicit nonevaluative properties of the works in ques- response of kind R in ideal viewers of kind V tion. These will be formal, expressive, repre- in virtue of its more basic properties B.” If P is sentational, or historical properties of the work evaluative, then R will be positive or negative, (relations of the work to its tradition) that lack often involving pleasure or displeasure. V will evaluative dimensions in themselves. For ex- almost always include characteristics such as ample, while to say that a painting’s composi- being knowledgeable of the kind of artworks tion is balanced may be to evaluate it positively, to which O belongs, being unbiased or disin- to say that it is symmetrical is not evaluative; terested, and being sensitive enough to react to similarly for “poignant” and “sad” when pre- properties of type B. B may be more broadly dicated of musical works. Ultimately, appeal or narrowly specified. Although the evocative may be always to nonevaluative formal prop- qualities on the initial list most clearly involve erties, but this claim is more controversial. reactions of observers, this analysis views Sibley (1959) raised the question of how many of the other properties there as having aesthetic qualities relate to nonaesthetic prop- similar structure. Ascribing such properties erties, and he claimed that the latter are never to an object expresses a positive or negative sufficient conditions for the former. He did seem response, suggests that others ought to share the to allow for necessary conditions in claiming that response (ought to approximate to the ideal aesthetic properties could be “negatively con- viewer), and points to certain more or less dition governed.” His example was that objects specific objective properties of the object. with all pastel colors cannot be gaudy (a neces- Beauty, for example, is nonspecific on the sary condition for gaudiness is bright colors). objective side, but always elicits a pleasurable Sibley’s question whether aesthetic properties are

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“condition governed” is equivalent to the ques- The examples just noted suggest two rea- tion whether there are principles governing sons why we cannot specify interesting prin- their ascription, a central question in aesth- ciples of aesthetic evaluation. First, aesthetic etics. We may ask it at the level Sibley does, the properties of parts of artworks are altered or relation between aesthetic and nonaesthetic transformed, often in unpredictable ways, properties, or we may ask how the more specific when juxtaposed with properties in other or less broadly evaluative aesthetic properties works. A curve that is graceful in one sculpture relate to the more broadly evaluative ones or to may be insipid in the context of another sculp- overall evaluations of works. ture. Second, there remain irreconcilable dif- Not only do there not appear to be necessary ferences in taste, even when we consider the or sufficient conditions at either level, but aesthetic judgments of only ideal critics. properties at one level do not always con- Aesthetic properties are response dependent – tribute in the same direction to properties at the relations between objective properties and next level. In regard to necessary conditions, responses of observers – and these responses are Sibley’s example fails. The art deco facades in relative to different tastes. That is why there is South Beach, Miami are pastel and gaudy. no supervenience across different critics, at Undoubtedly there are trivial necessary condi- least if we restrict the supervenience base to tions for many aesthetic properties: a tragic objective properties of works. poem must contain more than the single word Aesthetic properties have been identified “pussycat.” But it is much more difficult to here primarily as those that contribute to the think of nontrivial necessary conditions that aesthetic value of artworks (or, in some cases, could not be counterinstanced by a clever and natural objects), and as those that provide rea- original artist. sons for aesthetic judgments or evaluations. Regarding the relation of narrower evaluative Many of these properties are themselves evalu- properties to overall evaluations, properties ative, consisting in relations between objective that are normally positive, such as graceful- basic properties and evaluative responses of ness, are not always so. A graceful perform- observers. Others have been characterized here ance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring might not as nonevaluative properties that ultimately be better for it, and arguably the graceful prose ground evaluations. It remains to explain of Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans detracts briefly how and why these basic properties are from the excitement of the story. ultimate sources of aesthetic value. Something similar can be said of the relation Complex formal properties constitute princi- between nonaesthetic properties and aesthetic ples of order among the elements they structure. properties: again there are no principles gov- They enable perception and cognition to grasp erning this relation. The same objective formal such elements in larger wholes and to assign properties – for instance, gentle curves and them significance in terms of their places and pastel colors – that make one artwork graceful functions within such structures. This recogni- might make another insipid. The same har- tion of order, especially after being challenged monies that make one piece of music powerful by complexity, is pleasing to those faculties might make another strident. From the point of that seek it (although, as noted above, it is not view of a single critic, it would seem that evalu- always constitutive of beauty). Likewise, repre- ative aesthetic properties must supervene on sentational and expressive properties engage nonevaluative qualities of artworks; that is, the imagination and affective capacities in there can be no difference in evaluative prop- satisfying ways free of the costs and dangers erties without some differences in objective often associated with the latter in real life. Of qualities. This amounts to a constraint on significance too is the way that these distinct rational aesthetic judgment: given all the same aesthetic properties interact in the context of objective properties, evaluative judgment must artworks. Formal properties help to determine remain constant, at least for those with fully expressive, behavioral, and representational developed tastes. But the principle of super- qualities, which may in turn enter formal venience fails when we compare judgments structures at higher levels, and so on. Since across equally competent or even ideal critics. elements within works are grasped in terms of

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aestheticism their contributions to aesthetic properties and aestheticism The doctrine that art should to such complex interactions among them, this be valued for itself alone and not for any pur- makes for an intensely meaningful and rich ex- pose or function it may happen to serve, and perience of these elements as they are perceived. thus opposed to all instrumentalist theories At best, complexes of aesthetic properties in of art. Historically, the idea of art for art’s sake artworks can so engage all our cognitive and is associated with the cult of beauty, which affective capacities as to seem to be distinct had its roots in Kantian aesthetics and the worlds, intentionally designed to challenge Romantic movement, although its potential and satisfy these uniquely human capacities application is wider than that. or faculties. Basic aesthetic properties create The phrase l’art pour l’art (art for art’s sake) value ultimately by contributing to the con- first became current in France in the first half stitution of such alternative worlds in which we of the nineteenth century as the rallying cry can become fully and fulfillingly engaged. of the aesthetic movement, and was associated with such names as Théophile Gautier and eighteenth-century aesthetics; See also Baudelaire, and later with Flaubert. The doctrine twentieth-century anglo-american aesthetics; became fashionable in England in the second half aesthetic attitude; aesthetic judgment; aes- of the nineteenth century under the influence thetic pleasure; beardsley; beauty; definition first of Walter Pater and later of such luminar- of art ; expression; formalism; representa- “ ” ies as Oscar Wilde, Whistler, Aubrey Beardsley, tion; senses and art, the; sibley; taste. and A. J. Symons (author of The Quest for Corvo), bibliography among others. The movement is famously Aagaard-Mogensen, Lars. 1983. “Aesthetic satirized in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Qualities.” In Essays on Aesthetics. J. Fisher (ed.). Patience, where Wilde appears under the guise Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 21–34. of the poet Bunthorne. In its earliest and most Beardsley, Monroe C. 1973. “What is an Aesthetic uncompromising form, the doctrine asserts not Quality?” Theoria, 39, 50–70. merely that a work of art should be judged Beardsley, Monroe C. 1974. “The Descriptivist only on its internal aesthetic properties, but Account of Aesthetic Attributions,” Revue that any extraneous purpose or function it may Internationale de Philosophie, 28, 336–52. happen to serve must be counted a serious Budd, Malcolm. 1999. “Aesthetic Judgments, defect. Thus, in the preface to his novel Aesthetic Principles and Aesthetic Properties,” European Journal of Philosophy, 7, 295–311. Mademoiselle de Maupin, Gautier argues that De Clercq, Rafael. 2002. “The Concept of an “nothing is truly beautiful except that which can Aesthetic Property,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art serve for nothing; whatever is useful is ugly.” Criticism, 60, 167–76. This was in part a reaction to the utilitarian and Goldman, Alan H. 1995. Aesthetic Value. Boulder: materialistic values of the new industrial age. Westview. It can clearly be seen to be an overreaction – to Hutcheson, Francis. 1971 [1725]. An Inquiry into the quote Harold Osborne: Origin of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. New York: Garland. As we survey the art work of the past from the Isenberg, Arnold. 1949. “Critical Communication,” earliest cave art onwards we find that, various as Philosophical Review, 58, 330–44. their uses were, by and large all works of art were Levinson, Jerrold. 2006. Contemplating Art. Oxford: made for a use . . . They were essentially utensils Oxford University Press. in the same sort of sense as a suit of armour, a Mitias, Michael (ed.). 1988. Aesthetic Quality and horse’s harness or objects of domestic service are Aesthetic Experience. Amsterdam: Rodopi. utensils, though the purpose they served was not Sibley, Frank. 1959. “A Contemporary Theory of necessarily a material one. (1968: 13) Aesthetic Qualities: Aesthetic Concepts,” Philo- The very idea of “the fine arts,” arts such as sophical Review, 68, 421–50. painting, poetry, music, sculpture, and ballet, in Sparshott, Francis. 1982. The Theory of the Arts. which the aesthetic properties are thought to be Princeton: Princeton University Press. more important than the utilitarian ones, was Stecker, Robert. 2005. Aesthetics and the Philosophy largely an eighteenth-century innovation. By of Art. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, ch. 4. Gautier’s criterion, beauty in its purest form alan h. goldman simply did not exist in art prior to the eighteenth

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aestheticism century. A far more sensible line is that taken though I don’t believe that only art matters, by André Malraux, who has argued that by I do believe in art for art’s sake” (1951: 104). viewing the art of all times, all places, all cul- Since the aesthetic movement owed much of tures as pure aesthetic objects, divorced from its inspiration to Kant’s powerfully formalistic their original purposes and functions, we have theory in the Critique of Judgment, it is perhaps in effect entered into “an entirely new rela- not surprising that the two doctrines should be tionship with the work of art,” where “the so closely associated. work of art has no other function than to be a A major drawback to a strict formalist work of art.” We have, he says, created for approach is that while the form/content dis- ourselves “a museum without walls” (Malraux tinction is clear enough within the narrow 1974). confines of Kant’s aesthetics, it has a tendency Clearly, to accept this contextless approach to to break down when applied across the board, art as a perfectly legitimate and even desirable especially when applied to the literary arts. one, is to adhere to one of the main tenets of the For instance, if expression in art is treated as an art for art’s sake doctrine. The central core of internal property and not defined in terms of truth in this doctrine can be summarized in self-expression or audience reaction, then no the following way: aesthetic values depend on distinction can usefully be drawn between properties which are internal to the work of art the particular feeling being expressed and the on account of which it is valued for its own sake. manner of its expression. Nevertheless, as In other words, aesthetic merit, thus narrowly Scruton has observed, “aesthetic expression is defined, is a type of final value but clearly dis- always a value: a work that has expression tinguishable from all other final values such as cannot be a total failure” (1974: 213). Other knowledge for its own sake, the love of God, and nonformal aesthetic properties might include doing one’s duty. As the philosopher Victor brilliance of color, sweetness of sound, texture, Cousin said, “we must have religion for religion’s and felicity of language. sake, morality for morality’s sake, as with art This leads to the question of whether the for art’s sake . . . the beautiful cannot be the way self-sufficiency of works of art, on which the to what is useful, or to what is good, or to what doctrine of aestheticism depends, is in any way is holy; it leads only to itself” (Cousin 1854). undermined by the presence of affective prop- It is, then, a necessary condition of a work’s erties – properties that express or reflect human being valued for its own sake that it be valued response, such as those that render works of art on account of its intrinsic properties and not moving, exciting, interesting, amusing, enjoy- on its relationship to anything external, such as able. Clearly, these properties are not internal nature, moral and political systems, audience in the required sense. The attitude of the aes- response, and so on. We deem the internal thete, typified by Oscar Wilde, is to regard their properties of a work to be aesthetic not because presence as aesthetically harmful, because “all they belong to a distinct class, like the class art is quite useless” and has no business with of color concepts, but because of the way such external effects. As long as a thing affects they contribute to or detract from its value. us in any way, either for pain or for pleasure, Properties commonly identified as aesthetic or appeals strongly to our sympathies, then it include beauty, elegance, grace, daintiness, is outside the proper sphere of art. sweetness of sound, balance, design, unity, However, it is a mistake to treat the affective harmony, expressiveness, depth, movement, response to art as a specific state of mind that texture, and atmosphere. Not all such proper- is produced by the object but that might be ties could accurately be described as formal produced in other ways – as, for example, a properties – expressiveness, for example. This is relaxed frame of mind might be produced important, because most of those who espouse by tranquilizers, meditation, or by reading the doctrine of art for art’s sake do so on the basis escapist literature. For the very identity of the of some sort of formalistic theory. Take, for affective response depends on the identity of example, E. M. Forster: “Works of art, in my opin- the intentional object, and cannot be indepen- ion, are the only objects in the material universe dently described. Thus it would be mislead- to possess internal order, and that is why, ing to say that the purpose of a work of art is

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aestheticism to interest, amuse, or please, because to find it in and for themselves, that would in itself place interesting, amusing, or pleasing on account of us under a moral obligation to preserve them. its internal properties is, in effect, to value it for Whatever its other defects, the art for art’s its own sake. It is, after all, the work itself that sake approach is surely too restrictive. The aes- is interesting, amusing, or pleasing, and not thetic standpoint is not the only possible stand- the state of mind produced by it. point from which one can approach a work of A related problem that more particularly art, as is shown by the wide diversity of theor- concerns the aestheticist is how to justify ies about the nature and purpose of art, all the treatment of aesthetic values, not only as illuminating different aspects. To understand final values, but as ultimate values alongside a work of art adequately, one may need to con- truth and goodness. Some in the aesthetic sider it from more than one aspect. For exam- movement, of whom Walter Pater is a prime ple, if one were to view a piece of medieval example, see aesthetic values as actually stained glass from a narrowly aesthetic stand- overriding all other values, even moral ones. point, one would be unable to appreciate it For Pater, the aesthetic quest is the highest as a religious work of art. To refuse to take way of life a man can follow. The possibility of account of that aspect, on the grounds that it such a “philosophy of life” was anticipated and is aesthetically irrelevant, would be to diminish attacked by Søren Kierkegaard in his Either/Or rather than to enrich one’s appreciation, and (1843). Under the influence of Pater, Wilde’s would be a kind of aesthetic puritanism. humor is sometimes aimed at subverting morality and elevating what may be broadly See also twentieth-century anglo-american termed aesthetic values, as when he says aesthetics; aesthetic attitude; aesthetic that “people will only give up war when they properties; beauty; cognitive value of art; consider it to be vulgar instead of wicked,” or, formalism; function of art; kant; morality again, that it is better to be beautiful than to and art; ontological contextualism; reli- be good. Such remarks may sound flippant, gion and art; wilde. but anyone who acknowledges the supremacy of aesthetic values is bound to take them bibliography seriously. Not surprisingly, few have been Beardsley, Monroe C. 1958. Aesthetics: Problems in the prepared to defend such an extravagant position, Philosophy of Criticism. New York: Harcourt Brace. which is usually stigmatized as decadent. Bradley, A. C. 1909. “Poetry for Poetry’s Sake.” In Oxford Lectures on Poetry. London: Macmillan, 3–36. Even if one adopts the less extreme position Cousin, Victor. 1854. Lectures on the True, the of treating aesthetic values as taking their Beautiful and the Good. O. W. Wright (trans.). New place alongside other ultimate values rather York: D. Appleton. than overriding them, one encounters dif- Ellman, Richard. 1987. Oscar Wilde. Harmonds- ficulties. What grounds the claims of aesthetic worth: Penguin. values to occupy such a position? It is not Forster, E. M. 1951. “Art for Art’s Sake.” In Two enough to say, as Harold Osborne (1968: 202) Cheers for Democracy. New York: Harcourt Brace does, that aesthetic activity is a self-rewarding & World, 88–95. and therefore self-justifying activity, because Gautier, T. 1981 [1835]. Mademoiselle de Maupin. many self-rewarding activities, like smoking J. Richardson (trans.). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Johnson, R. V. 1969. Aestheticism. London: Methuen. and billiards, are relatively trivial. The high Malraux, André 1974 [1952]. The Voices of Silence. seriousness of aesthetic value could perhaps be S. Gilbert (trans.). London: Paladin. established in two stages: first, by showing that Osborne, Harold. 1968. Aesthetics and Art Theory. aesthetic preferences are not merely private London: Longman. and personal but may be correct and incorrect; Pater, Walter. 1873. The Renaissance: Studies in Art and second, by linking them, if only indirectly, and Poetry. London: Macmillan. to overriding moral values or some more gen- Scruton, Roger. 1974. Art and Imagination. London: eral notion of the “good life.” The second move Methuen. would run counter to the spirit of aestheticism. Wilde, Oscar. 1983. Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. However, if the aestheticists are right to claim V. Holland (ed.). London: Collins. that aesthetic values are ultimately important david whewell

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aesthetics of food and drink aesthetics see african a.; amerindian a.; much aesthetic theory was being developed, chinese a.; evolution, art, and a.; feminist the literal sense of taste was the chief point of a.; feminist standpoint a.; indian a.; islamic both comparison and contrast for analyzing a.; japanese a.; objectivity and realism in a.; aesthetic taste. As Kant put it, literal taste is pragmatist a.; race and a.; testimony in a. merely subjective, whereas aesthetic taste is both subjective and universal. With the aesthetic status of food so in ques- aesthetics of food and drink Philosoph- tion, the issue of its standing as an art form ical attention to food and drink is a relatively was more or less moot. Moreover, eating is a recent but burgeoning scholarly enterprise necessity for life, and its practical importance that manifests striking revaluations of what may seem to eclipse any claims for food as art, were previously derogated as merely bodily especially as a “fine art” whose chief purpose experiences. The sources for these changes is aesthetic contemplation. Nonetheless, in the are multiple, including reexamination of the nineteenth century an enthusiastic group of senses in cognition, feminist critiques of the European writers promoted fine dining for its concept of rationality, artistic challenges to aesthetic importance and gastronomy as an fine art traditions, and revisions of the para- art form, taking as their models the new aesthetic meters of the aesthetic – all of which converge theories (Gigante 2005). Their efforts were in attention to embodiment. little noted by philosophy at the time, although they are now gaining retrospective interest. historical background The traditional exclusion of eating and drink- taste and taste qualities ing from the purview of philosophy has ancient If eating preferences are indeed solely dependent and enduring roots. Though a multimodal on individual inclination and taste qualities sensuous experience, eating chiefly and cen- admit of no standard, then it would be difficult trally engages the “bodily” senses of taste to defend a robust account of the aesthetics of and smell, which are considered cognitively food. However, there is no reason to conclude limited compared to the distance senses of that the relative “subjectivity” of taste – under- vision and hearing because they provide re- stood as the complete taste experience that latively little information about the world includes smell and touch (and often vision around (Korsmeyer 1999: ch. 1). (The role of and even hearing) – entails either idiosyncratic touch – the third bodily sense – is somewhat privacy or the absence of standards for excel- ambiguous because it coordinates with vision.) lence. By means of taste one discerns properties The bodily senses are the sources of consider- that are otherwise inaccessible. Hume made able pleasure, but their brand of enjoyment is this point long ago in his essay “Of the often dismissed as merely physical gratification Standard of Taste” (1757) when he introduced that poses risky distractions and temptations. his controversial example of a wine-tasting In fact, food, drink, and sex provide the typical contest to illustrate what he called delicacy of exemplars of pleasures that should be gov- taste – the ability to perceive fine qualities of erned or avoided. Philosophers from Plato to objects. Contemporary philosophers have further Hegel have observed that physical enjoyment investigated the complexities of subjectivity should be set aside in preference for the mental to vindicate both an “objective” standing for and spiritual pleasures of true beauty. tastes and the aesthetic significance of eating and In addition, food and drink have not been con- drinking. sidered good candidates for aesthetic attention Tastes are undeniably subjective in that because of the way taste qualities are usually they need to be directly experienced by a per- understood. The saying “There’s no disputing ceiving subject. This fact appears particularly about taste” sums up the philosophical neglect troublesome for taste because its causal triggers of qualities that appear to be mere matters of per- cannot be easily identified externally in the sonal preference, different for each individual, way that visual qualities can (although recent and not important enough to demand stand- studies in taste chemistry have greatly illumin- ards. Indeed, in the eighteenth century when so ated the determinants of flavors). In contrast to

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aesthetics of food and drink the “higher” senses of vision and hearing, the accounts of food inasmuch as there is a objects of taste are never distant; they are lit- widespread assumption that when eating is erally inside one. Nonetheless, taste registers worthy of aesthetic attention, it qualifies as qualities of food and drink that as a rule fine, gourmet dining rather than the mere normal perceivers are all disposed to detect. satisfaction of appetite. (Indeed, eating when In other words, the degree to which taste appetite is not acute was for the nineteenth- experience is subjective is consistent with the century gastronomers mentioned above the claim that tastes are also of their substances gustatory equivalent of disinterested con- (Sweeney 1999, 2007; Machamer 2007; templation (Gigante 2005).) Nonetheless, the Smith 2007a; Bender 2008; Shaffer 2007). If inclusion of eating and drinking in the pur- there were no objective pole to tasting, there view of aesthetic activities still represents an would be no possibility of developing discrimi- important modification of the old standard of nating taste, which entails that there is some- disinterestedness for aesthetic pleasure and an thing out there to discriminate. The possibility inclusion of bodily experiences in aesthetic of developing expert taste is one dimension of practice (Sibley 2001; Brady 2005; Burnham the aesthetic potency of food and drink, one that & Skilleås 2008). perhaps has been most recognized with wine (Smith 2007b; Allhoff 2008). food, drink, and art The character of taste qualities extends to While the aesthetic dimension of eating and include a cognitive dimension to flavors that is drinking is a point of agreement among those often overlooked. Tastes themselves are only who theorize on the subject, the standing of food fully comprehended when the identity of the sub- as an art form remains unsettled. Difference stance and its place in culture are in evidence, on this question pivots around the concept of and this opens the door for claims that tastes art and whether or not the values of food and themselves impart meaning – meaning that drink are sufficiently similar to the values of manifests the pervasive and complex roles that (other) art forms. Most disagreement centers eating practices play in ceremonies, rituals, on whether culinary art has claims to be con- and everyday habits (Heldke 2003). When one sidered a fine art, for its qualifications as an attends to the meanings that foods carry, the applied art are evident. parameters of aesthetic attention widen to There are at least two questions that need to include place of origin and modes of production be addressed here: Can we approach food and and preparation. Though at first such matters drink in the same appreciative manner as we may appear aesthetically extrinsic, they enter approach fine arts such as music or painting? into what might be considered the style of And, is it appropriate to consider foods in the food and drink and their cultural properties. category of artworks? To the first question That is, flavor is not just analogous to artistic there is a fair degree of assent, for demonstra- “form”; it suggests “content” as well. What is bly one can appreciate the sequence of tastes of more, certain concepts central to art, such as a meal or the notes of wine with an attention authenticity, are equally relevant to judging and discernment that is parallel to the attention food and drink, for taste qualities concern the and discernment required to listen sensitively to identity of the sapid substance and how it was a concert performance (Sweeney 1999; Bach made (Jacquette 2007; Gale 2008). 2007). Frequently the comparisons chosen are Directing aesthetic attention to food has from the performance arts, for neither a per- several implications for the concept of the formance nor a meal endures for more than a aesthetic itself, for it erases the traditional dis- short time (Monroe 2007). How far the com- tinction between aesthetic and sensuous plea- parison can be sustained is more disputed, sures. The satisfaction of appetite was for years although absent the tradition that emphasizes the paradigmatic “interested” pleasure, and fine art, foods are more readily accommodated aesthetic pleasure was considered “disinter- within the concept of art (Saito 2007). ested” – free from the self-directed concerns Up until this point the tacit assumption has that limit judgments to personal relevance. been that the measure of success in gustatory Some of these values linger in aesthetic aesthetics is discriminating pleasure. However,

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aesthetics of food and drink pleasure alone, no matter how sophisticated, Allhoff, Fritz & Monroe, Dave (eds.). 2007. Food and is a limited achievement, especially in com- Philosophy. Malden: Blackwell. parison to the wider scope of values sought Bach, Kent. 2007. “Knowledge, Wine, and Taste.” In in art. Attention to aesthetic savoring suits Questions of Taste. Barry C. Smith (ed.). Oxford: approaches familiar from Dewey that accen- Signal Books, 21–40. tuate experience (Kuehn 2007). Concepts of Bender, John W. 2008. “What the Wine Critic Tells Us.” In Wine and Philosophy. Fritz Allhoff (ed.). art that emphasize their meanings may seem to Malden: Blackwell, 125–36. preclude food and drink, which are widely Brady, Emily. 2005. “Sniffing and Savoring.” In The held to exhibit a paucity of message or expres- Aesthetics of Everyday Life. A. Light & J. Smith sion (Telfer 1996; Sibley 2001). However, as (eds.). New York: Columbia University Press, mentioned above, a full investigation of taste 177–93. qualities extends to the meanings of flavors Burnham, Douglas & Skilleås, Ole Martin. 2008. in history and society, which in turn connect “You’ll Never Drink Alone.” In Wine and to the significant roles that food and drink play Philosophy. Fritz Allhoff (ed.). Malden: Blackwell, in ceremony, hospitality, and daily practice. 157–71. Whether or not one categorizes food as art, its Gale, George. 2008. “Who Cares If You Like It.” In Wine and Philosophy. Fritz Allhoff (ed.). Malden: aesthetic qualities include its cultural signific- Blackwell, 172–85. ance and the meanings it conveys. Gigante, Denise. 2005. Taste: A Literary History. Not only does the aesthetic exercise of the New Haven: Yale University Press. proximal senses draw attention to embodi- Hales, Steven D. (ed.). 2007. Beer and Philosophy. ment, but our bodies themselves are palpably Malden: Blackwell. changed by eating and drinking – and by Heldke, Lisa. 2003. Exotic Hungers. New York: deprivation and excess. The aspect of food that Routledge. involves growth, change, and death is fore- Jacquette, Dale. 2007. “Thirst for Authenticity.” In grounded by some contemporary artists who Beer and Philosophy. Steven D. Hales (ed.). Malden: include foodstuffs or other transient sub- Blackwell, 15–30. Korsmeyer, Carolyn. 1999. Making Sense of Taste. stances in their work. Artists who make use of Ithaca: Cornell University Press. foods often exploit the meanings implicit in Kuehn, Glenn. 2005. “How Can Food be Art?” decay and putrefaction, in counterpoint to the In The Aesthetics of Everyday Life. A. Light & emphasis on savoring that is more commonly J. Smith (eds.). New York: Columbia University explored in the philosophical aesthetics of Press,194–212. food. The fact that eating is a physical activity Lintott, Sheila. 2007. “Sublime Hunger.” In Food with perilous borders – including fasting and and Philosophy. Fritz Allhoff & Dave Monroe (eds.). starvation, not to mention the destruction of Malden: Blackwell, 58–70. sentient creatures that are eaten – can give it Machamer, Peter. 2007. “How to Properly Dispute a profundity and risk that some argue bears com- Taste.” In Beer and Philosophy. Steven D. Hales (ed.). Malden: Blackwell, 52–64. parison with the sublime (Korsmeyer 1999; Monroe, Dave. 2007. “Can Food be Art?” In Food and Weiss 2002; Lintott, 2007). Eating sustains Philosophy. Fritz Allhoff & Dave Monroe (eds.). life and vitalizes community, but at the same Malden: Blackwell, 133–44. time awareness of mortality adds depth to Saito, Yuriko. 2007. Everyday Aesthetics. Oxford: the aesthetic dimensions of food and drink, Oxford University Press. and philosophic reflection on these elements Shaffer, Michael. 2007. “Taste, Gastronomic Exper- amplifies comparisons with artworks with pro- tise, and Objectivity.” In Food and Philosophy. Fritz found and difficult import. Allhoff & Dave Monroe (eds.). Malden: Blackwell, 73–87. Sibley, Frank. 2001. “Tastes, Smells, and Aesthetics.” See also aesthetic attitude; aesthetic proper- ties; aesthetics of the everyday; japanese In Approaches to Aesthetics. Oxford: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 207–55. aesthetics; taste. Smith, Barry C. 2007a. “The Objectivity of Taste and Tasting.” In Questions of Taste. Barry C. Smith bibliography (ed.). Oxford: Signal Books, 41–73. Allhoff, Fritz (ed.). 2008. Wine and Philosophy. Smith, Barry C. (ed.). 2007b. Questions of Taste. Malden: Blackwell. Oxford: Signal Books.

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Sweeney, Kevin W. 1999. “Alice’s Discriminating This aspect of our experience of the environ- Palate,” Philosophy and Literature, 23, 17–31. mental object of appreciation is intensified by the Sweeney, Kevin. 2007. “Can a Soup be Beautiful?” unruly nature of the object itself. The object of In Food and Philosophy. Fritz Allhoff & Dave Monroe appreciation is not the more or less discrete, (eds.). Malden: Blackwell, 117–32. stable, and self-contained object of traditional art. Telfer, Elizabeth. 1996. Food for Thought. London: It is rather an environment; consequently, not Routledge. Weiss, Allen S. 2002. Feast and Folly. Albany: State only does it change as we move within it, it also University of New York Press. changes of its own accord. Environments are constantly in motion, in both the short and the carolyn korsmeyer long term. Even if we remain motionless, the wind brushes our face and the clouds pass before our eyes; and, with time, changes con- aesthetics of the environment Much of tinue seemingly without limit: night falls, days our aesthetic appreciation is not limited to pass, seasons come and go. Moreover, envir- art, but rather is directed toward the world at onments not only move through time, they large. Moreover, we appreciate not only pristine extend through space, and again seemingly nature – sunsets and mountains – but also our without limit. There are no predetermined more mundane surroundings: the solitude of boundaries for our environment; as we move, a neighborhood park on a rainy evening, the it moves with us and changes, but it does not chaos of a bustling morning marketplace, end; indeed, it continues unending in every the view from the road. Thus, there is a place direction. In other words, the environmental for the notion of environmental aesthetics, object of appreciation does not come to us for in such cases – in our appreciation of the “preselected” and “framed” as do traditional world at large – our aesthetic appreciation artistic objects, neither in time as a drama or a often encompasses our total surroundings: musical composition, nor in space as a painting our environment. Environments may be large or a sculpture. or small, more or less natural, mundane or These differences between environments exotic, but in every case it is central that it is and traditional artistic objects relate to an an environment that we appreciate. This fact even deeper dissimilarity between the two. The signals several important dimensions of such latter, works of art, are the products of artists. appreciation, which in turn contribute to the The artist is quintessentially a designer who central issues of environmental aesthetics. creates a work by embodying a design in an These dimensions follow from the deline- object. Works of art are thus tied to their ation of the field of inquiry. The “object” of designers not only causally but conceptually; appreciation, the “aesthetic object,” is our what a work is and what it means has much environment, our own surroundings, and to do with its designer and its design. However, thus we are in a sense immersed in the object environments are paradigmatically not the of appreciation. This fact has the following products of designers. In the typical case, both ramifications. We are in that which we appre- designer and human design are lacking. Rather, ciate, and that which we appreciate is also environments come about “naturally”; they that from which we appreciate. If we move, we change, they grow, they develop either by nat- move within the object of our appreciation and ural processes or by means of human agency, thereby change our relationship to it and at but even in the latter case only rarely are they the same time change the object itself. More- the result of a designer explicitly embodying over, as our surroundings, the object impinges a design. Thus, the typical environmental upon all our senses. As we reside in it or move object of appreciation is unruly in yet another through it, we can see it, hear it, feel it, smell way: neither its nature nor its meaning is it, and perhaps even taste it. In brief, the expe- determined by a designer and a design. rience of the environmental object of appreci- The upshot is that in our aesthetic appreci- ation from which aesthetic appreciation must ation of the world at large we are initially be fashioned is intimate, total, and somewhat confronted by – indeed, intimately and totally engulfing. engulfed in – something that forces itself upon

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aesthetics of the environment all our senses, is limited neither in time nor in resources to draw on in our appreciation of space, and is constrained concerning neither its environments, especially the object of appreci- nature nor its meaning. We are immersed in a ation itself, but also the appreciator and the potential object of appreciation, and our task knowledge that the latter has of the former. is to achieve some aesthetic appreciation of Thus, in the aesthetic appreciation of an envi- that object. Moreover, the appreciation must be ronment, these elements can play roles similar fashioned anew, without the aid of frames, the to those played in the aesthetic appreciation of guidance of designs, or the direction of designers. traditional art by the designer and the design. Thus, in our aesthetic appreciation of the world In appreciating the world at large, we typically at large we must begin with the most basic fulfill some of the roles of a designer and yet let of questions, those of exactly what and how to the world provide us with its own “design.” aesthetically appreciate. These questions raise Thus, when confronted by an environment, the main issues of environmental aesthetics, we select the ways that are relevant to its essentially issues concerning what resources, appreciation and set the frames that limit it in if any, are available for answering them. time and space. Moreover, as designers cre- Concerning the questions of what and how atively interact with that which they design, we to aesthetically appreciate in an environment, likewise creatively interact with an environ- there are two main lines of thought. One, which ment in light of our knowledge of it. In this way is sometimes characterized as subjectivist or an environment itself, by its nature, provides its perhaps even as skeptical, holds that, since in own “design” and can bring us to appreciate the appreciation of environments we seem- it “as what it is” and “on its own terms.” In short, ingly lack the resources normally involved in the the environment offers the necessary guidance aesthetic appreciation of art, these questions in terms of which we, the appreciators, by our cannot be properly answered. That is to say selecting and framing, can answer the questions that since we lack resources such as frames, of what and how to appreciate – and thereby designs, and designers, and the guidance they fashion our initial and somewhat chaotic provide, the aesthetic appreciation of environ- experience of an environment into genuine ments, unlike the appreciation of art, cannot aesthetic appreciation – appreciation that is be judged to be either appropriate or inappro- both appropriate and serious. priate. Moreover, even if it could be so judged, As is typical with disputes in aesthetics it would remain, in comparison with that of between subjectivist or skeptical positions art, at best free and fanciful – or at worst and more objectivist ones, the burden of proof superficial and shallow as opposed to serious and falls on the latter. Thus, it is important for deep. An even more skeptical line suggests the objectivist account to be elaborated and that perhaps the appreciation of environments supported by examples. The basic idea of the is not genuine aesthetic appreciation at all. objectivist position is that our appreciation is Concerning the world at large, as opposed to guided by the nature of the object of appreci- works of art, the closest we can come to appro- ation. Thus, knowledge of the object’s nature, of priate aesthetic appreciation is simply to give our- its genesis, type, and properties, is essential for selves over to being immersed, to respond as we serious, appropriate aesthetic appreciation. For will, and to enjoy what we can. In contrast to example, in appropriately appreciating a natu- the aesthetic appreciation of art, the aesthetic ral environment such as an alpine meadow appreciation of environments is marked by it is useful to know, for instance, that it has devel- openness and freedom. And whether or not oped under constraints imposed by the climate the resultant experience is appropriate in some of high altitude, and that diminutive size in sense or even really aesthetic in any sense is not flora is an adaptation to such constraints. of much consequence. This knowledge can guide our appreciation A second line of thought concerning the of the environment so that, for example, we questions of what to aesthetically appreciate avoid imposing inappropriately large frames, in an environment and how to do so is fre- which may cause us to simply overlook minia- quently characterized as objectivist or cognitivist. ture wild flowers. In such a case, we will It argues that there are in fact important neither appreciatively note their wonderful

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aesthetics of the everyday adjustment to their situation nor attune our Carlson, Allen. 2000. Aesthetics and the Environment: senses to their subtle fragrance, texture, and The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture. hue. Similarly, in appropriately appreciating London: Routledge. human-altered environments such as those Carlson, Allen. 2007. “Environmental Aesthetics.” In of modern agriculture, it is helpful to know The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. E. N. Zalta about the functional utility of cultivating huge (ed.). Available at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ environmental-aesthetics/ fields devoted to single crops. Such knowledge Carlson, Allen & Berleant, Arnold (eds.). 2004. The encourages us to enlarge and adjust our frames, Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Peterborough: our senses, and even our attitudes, so as to Broadview. more appreciatively accommodate the expansive Carlson, Allen & Lintott, Sheila (eds.). 2008. Nature, uniform landscapes that are the inevitable Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to result of such farming practices. Duty. New York: Columbia University Press. The basic assumption of environmental Kemal, Salim & Gaskell, Ivan (eds.). 1993. Landscape, aesthetics is that every environment – natural, Natural Beauty, and the Arts. Cambridge: Cambridge rural, or urban, large or small, ordinary or University Press. extraordinary – offers much to see, to hear, to Sepänmaa, Yrjö. 1993. The Beauty of Environment: A General Model for Environmental Aesthetics. 2nd feel, much to aesthetically appreciate. The dif- edn. Denton: Environmental Ethics Books. ferent environments of the world at large are as aesthetically rich and rewarding as are allen carlson works of art. However, it also must be recognized that special problems are posed for aesthetic appreciation by the very nature of environ- aesthetics of the everyday The discipline of ments, by the fact that they are our own sur- aesthetics has tended, especially for the twen- roundings, that they are unruly and chaotic tieth century, to focus on encounters with the objects of appreciation, and that we are plunged fine arts and, to a lesser extent, with nature. into them without appreciative guidelines. Both Much attention has been devoted to the projects the subjectivist and the objectivist approaches of defining art and establishing its ontology, recognize the problems and the potential and accounts of aesthetic experience and aes- involved in the aesthetic appreciation of envi- thetic properties have been derived primarily ronments. The main difference is that while from considerations related to Western art- the latter attempts to ground an appropriate aes- works. In the last few decades, though, there has thetic appreciation for different environments been a movement away from the narrowly art- in our knowledge of their particular natures, oriented approach and toward recognition of the the former simply invites us to enjoy them all continuity between experiences of fine art and as freely and as fully as we can and will. In the experiences from other domains of life. This last analysis, perhaps both alternatives should movement has given rise to an emerging sub- be pursued. discipline often known as “everyday aesthetics” or “the aesthetics of the everyday.” Theorists in See also aesthetic attitude; aesthetic judg- the aesthetics of the everyday typically claim that ment; aesthetics of the everyday; artifact, objects and activities not essentially connected art as; evolution, art, and aesthetics. to art or nature can have aesthetic properties and/or that they can give rise to significant bibliography aesthetic experiences. Aesthetic analysis, then, Berleant, Arnold. 1992. The Aesthetics of Environ- is appropriately extended to virtually all areas ment. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. of life. Berleant, Arnold & Carlson, Allen (eds.). 2007. The John Dewey’s (1934) Art as Experience has had Aesthetics of Human Environments. Peterborough: a great influence on contemporary work in Broadview. Brady, Emily. 2003. Aesthetics of the Natural everyday aesthetics. Dewey suggested that the Environment. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University experiences of aesthetic exaltation associated Press. with art can be traced back to processes that Budd, Malcolm. 2002. The Aesthetic Appreciation of predate art and, indeed, that both humans and Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. other animals partake in. Aesthetic experience,

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aesthetics of the everyday according to Dewey, is on a continuum with person, an attitude which, he suggests, is quite the deep feelings of fulfillment that arise naturally taken toward the objects of ordinary from interacting with the environment to life as well. The traditional division of the satisfy one’s needs. What distinguishes aes- senses into “higher” and “lower,” and the thetic experiences from nonaesthetic aspects of associated suggestion that aesthetic experi- experience, he claims, is not that they involve ence must be exclusively the province of the response to a particular set of objects, as many former, has been challenged as arbitrary, aesthetic traditionalists would claim, but that with the result that ordinary activities involv- they exhibit qualitative unity as well as a sense ing taste and smell (Korsmeyer 1999; Brady of closure or consummation. These qualities 2005: ch. 10) or touch (Shusterman 2000: can belong even to simple experiences like that chs. 7, 10) have been rendered eligible for aes- of lifting a stone, as long as it is done with thetic consideration. sufficient attention (1934: 44). Dewey’s view is The sharp distinction between the fine arts thus highly amenable to the application of aes- and other domains of life has also been chal- thetic concepts throughout everyday life. lenged by the observation that art emerges out Despite its significant expansion of the terri- of, and is in many contexts integrated with, tory of the aesthetic, Dewey’s view has been everyday practices. Crispin Sartwell (1995) criticized as too restrictive by some aestheti- and Yuriko Saito (2007) observe that, particu- cians of the everyday. Mindful of contem- larly in non-Western cultures, works of art porary developments, they observe that many and aesthetically oriented design objects are objects in the fine arts lack unity and closure or often made to enhance everyday life. David give rise to experiences that are “disjointed, Novitz (1992) notes the implausibility of seeing severed, and jarring” (Novitz 1992: 9), but are popular art forms as segregated from everyday nonetheless counted as aesthetic by traditional life: works of television and pop music often art-oriented theories. Indeed, their fragmented take the mundane as their subject matter, and nature may be precisely what gives them their their consumption is integrated with the ordin- distinctive aesthetic qualities (Irvin 2008). It ary activities of life. Moreover, recent develop- cannot, then, be a necessary condition for an ments within the Western fine arts have experience’s being aesthetic that it exhibit arguably brought art and life closer together, as unity or closure. This conclusion is in line with ordinary objects have been exhibited in gallery recent developments in accounts of aesthetic settings and ordinary sounds have been integ- experience, which no longer tend to claim that rated into avant-garde musical compositions. an experience must be positive in valence or These techniques seem to invite us to apply to must have a particular qualitative character everyday objects and events the same aesthetic to count as aesthetic. regard traditionally reserved for artworks. Though particular aspects of Dewey’s account While much of the defense of everyday aes- may be criticized, the Deweyan strategy of thetics has grown out of observations related deflating traditional distinctions between the to art, another important force has been the fine arts and other domains of life has remained burgeoning of environmental aesthetics. While central to the aesthetics of the everyday. Some taking its initial impetus from the Kantian theorists have observed that the aesthetic phe- interest in the sublime, environmental aesth- nomena invoked in traditional discussions of art etics has evolved to include consideration of a are also present in other domains of life such wide variety of environments and phenomena. as sport, sex, and everyday decision-making An interest in natural science has moved some (Kupfer 1983). Moreover, aestheticians have environmental aestheticians to acknowledge increasingly rejected the Kantian notion that the difficulty of drawing a principled distinc- the aesthetic attitude involves holding oneself tion between the natural and the nonnatural: distant from the object of contemplation and since humans are animals, and their artifacts, remaining indifferent to any nonartistic func- behaviors, and environments arise in large tions it may serve. Arnold Berleant (1991) part out of evolved capacities, the natural and argues that the proper attitude toward art- nonnatural seem to be best thought of as lying works is one of deep engagement of the whole along a continuum rather than on opposite

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aesthetics of the everyday sides of a sharp divide. If an aesthetic regard can artifacts that serve a variety of everyday func- properly be cast on natural objects and envir- tions (1995: 9). onments, then there is no obvious reason not Attempts to demonstrate the theoretical to extend it further. More generally, the atten- interest of everyday aesthetics bring out a tion to environments, rather than isolated methodological tension that inheres in the dis- objects, has led to the recognition of a mode of cipline. On the one hand, in order to demonstrate aesthetic experience that is complex, immer- that it really is a subdiscipline of aesthetics, the sive, and multisensory, and thus readily appli- aesthetics of the everyday must demonstrate cable to everyday life. that, at some level, it is fundamentally con- Once the barriers separating everyday life cerned with the same concepts and phenomena from art and nature have been broken down, that have preoccupied mainstream aesthetics. a positive case remains to be made for the This is why so much of the discipline has been interest of applying aesthetic concepts to ordi- concerned to break down barriers between art nary objects and phenomena. The interest is and other domains of life. On the other hand, claimed to be both practical and theoretical. though, if it is to be of interest, everyday aes- From a practical perspective, the claim is often thetics must show that it has a distinctive made that a serious interest in the aesthetics contribution to make to aesthetics by virtue of the everyday promises a richer life, as we of introducing a distinctive subject matter, attend to satisfactions that are readily avail- methodology, or set of aesthetic concepts. This able but that we may not have tended to notice tension continues to animate the discipline: or take advantage of. Indeed, Shusterman aestheticians of the everyday continually refer (2000: ch. 10) suggests that everyday aesthet- back to and demonstrate connections to tradi- ics should include practical training in bodywork tional aesthetic objects, properties, and experi- and related disciplines, precisely to secure the ences, even while suggesting that mainstream benefit of a more satisfying life. The aesthetics aesthetics has been too restrictive in its treat- of the everyday also has moral implications. ment of them. Kupfer argues that “the aesthetic dimensions in The breadth of content and approach advo- everyday life are . . . instrumental in develop- cated within the aesthetics of the everyday ing people into more deliberate, autonomous leaves the discipline vulnerable to two objections. community members” (1983: 3). Irvin (2008) First, one might suspect that it renders the argues that aesthetic satisfactions in everyday notion of the aesthetic so broad as to be mean- life can be harnessed to support moral be- ingless. If aesthetic experience can happen at any havior. And as Sartwell (1995) points out, in time, can take anything as its object, and need many cultural and, especially, spiritual traditions have no particular qualitative feel, is there the moral and the aesthetic are seamlessly really any distinction between the aesthetic integrated within everyday life. aspects of experience and its other aspects? From a theoretical perspective, it has been sug- Such a concern is presumably what motivated gested that the aesthetics of the everyday is of Dewey to require qualitative unity and closure: special interest because everyday phenomena these criteria ensure that not every possible may require aesthetic insights and concepts experience will fall into the category of the aes- distinct from those needed to account for art and thetic, and thus secure the nontriviality of the nature (Saito 2007: 5). Many of the aesthetic concept. If such requirements are rejected, it properties exhibited by everyday phenomena, for appears that any experience may qualify as instance, may be different from those derived aesthetic just by virtue of having a qualitative from a prominently art-oriented aesthetics feel. This is a conclusion that aesthetic tradi- (Leddy 1995). At the same time, the aesthetics tionalists are likely to find unpalatable, even as of the everyday may be used as a source of aestheticians of the everyday may welcome it. insights about the nature of art: Sartwell sug- Second, since everyday aesthetics tends to gests, based on observations about the continuity emphasize aesthetic experiences and objects between art and everyday life in many cul- that are not exalted in character, one may tures, that art should be redefined as “skilled wonder if it really warrants our attention. and devoted making” that may eventuate in Would it not ultimately be more rewarding to

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african aesthetics focus on great artworks and the natural sublime, African aesthetics Art is a universal human which promise more significant edification? phenomenon. It is the expression of the com- The aesthetician of the everyday may reply pulsive innate human tendency toward cre- that the aesthetic pleasures of everyday life are ativity. It is one of the main engagements and worth acknowledging because they are available accomplishments of human beings that dis- to everyone, even those who lack access to art tinguishes humans from other beings, as the and untouched nature. Moreover, even if the tex- means by which humans are capable of focus- ture of everyday life is such as to yield aesthetic ing consciousness to achieve and express their satisfactions that are relatively subtle, con- perception, comprehension, apprehension, an- tinual awareness of these satisfactions may offer notation, demarcation, appreciation, and docu- a payoff in quality of life that is very much mentation of their peculiar lived realities. It is worth having. in this regard that it is meaningful to speak of African art, while being mindful of the het- See also aesthetic attitude; aesthetic proper- erogeneity of the natural habitats, languages, ties; aesthetics of food and drink; aesthetics ethnicities, and cultures of the many African peo- of the environment; dewey; evolution, art, ples, as there are some common African cultural and aesthetics; japanese aesthetics; popular affinities and identities that have been manifested art. over many millennia. African art encompasses visual and nonvisual, bibliography tangible and nontangible elements, such that vir- Berleant, Arnold. 1991. Art and Engagement. tually every aspect of living constitutes a verit- Philadelphia: Temple University Press. able domain for art. It can be conjectured that Brady, Emily. 2005. “Sniffing and Savoring: The the two tropes that facilitate the understanding Aesthetics of Smells and Tastes.” In The Aesthetics of African aesthetics are beauty and pleasant- of Everyday Life. A. Light & J. M. Smith (eds.). New ness. Beauty and pleasantness make the object York: Columbia University Press, 177–193. of art and the process or act of creating worthy Dewey, John. 1934. Art as Experience. New York: art special, distinguishing art from nonart Perigee. objects, because the latter are not deliberately Irvin, Sherri. 2008. “The Pervasiveness of the made by humans to be artistic. Aesthetic in Ordinary Experience,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 48, 29–44. At the time of their production, most art Korsmeyer, Carolyn. 1999. Making Sense of Taste: objects often reflect a multiplicity of intention, Food and Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University purpose, utility, and appreciation. These may be Press. masked by the search that pervades contem- Kupfer, Joseph H. 1983. Experience as Art: Aesthetics porary consumerist consciousness for the net in Everyday Life. Albany: State University of New financial worth of art objects, with the result that York Press. their value is misplaced. In most cases, the Leddy, Thomas. 1995. “Everyday Surface Aesthetic makers of African art, in its indigenous setting, Qualities: ‘Neat,’ ‘Messy,’ ‘Clean,’ ‘Dirty’,” Journal set no monetary value on their effort, not of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 53, 259–68. because they do not understand that they are Light, Andrew & Smith, Jonathan M. (eds.). 2005. The Aesthetics of Everyday Life. New York: Columbia incurring costs in the production or because they University Press. cannot put a value on the effort they have put Novitz, David. 1992. The Boundaries of Art. into the production, but more importantly Philadelphia: Temple University Press. because they understand that the beauty and Saito, Yuriko. 2007. Everyday Aesthetics. New York: pleasantness of what is produced, the truth Oxford University Press. and meaning it purveys, and the sentiment Sartwell, Crispin. 1995. The Art of Living: Aesthetics and social consciousness invested in it, are of the Ordinary in World Spiritual Traditions. Albany: beyond financial quantification. In this regard, State University of New York Press. the art object is a gift to the person who has com- Shusterman, Richard. 2000. Pragmatist Aesthetics: missioned it, as well as to the society in which Living Beauty, Rethinking Art. 2nd edn. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. it is produced, reflecting and enriching that society’s moral, social, spiritual, and other sherri irvin values. The society collectively owns the art

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african aesthetics object, as much as does its individual “owner”; to those who form the intended target of that hence the unusual reticence with which most critique, in order that the point be properly Africans sell art objects. driven home without alienation or disruption of Some of the areas in which art is manifested, communal existence. showing the twin consciousness of beauty and In Africa, art is the epitome of the culture and pleasantness, are in (1) the architecture of civilization of society, representing the human used or inhabited space; (2) the dress, appear- capacity to enjoy the sublime aspects of life, ance, deportment, and adornment of persons regardless of the wider situation, without for various occasions and vocations; (3) the leading to a rich/poor divide in cultural con- content of speech and the manner of speak- sciousness. In fact, most African art functions ing as befits the audience and occasion; seamlessly, because it transcends artificial divi- (4) decorations that emphasize and enhance the sions to present itself to every member of soci- beauty and pleasantness of homes, spaces, and ety. To this end, it is clear that some artistic the wider world; (5) the capacity to appreciate expressions record the skepticism of the critical art in nature – such as when animal, tree, members of society, those who take issue with river, rock, celestial appearance, and behavior their society’s epistemological, metaphysical, become narratives underlining an architec- moral, religious, political, and scientific beliefs, tonic of beauty and pleasure, leading to forma- its received knowledge. These individuals often tion of cosmologies, cosmogonies, ontologies, find ingenious ways of expressing their alter- metonyms, metaphors, and mythologies; native views without failing to entertain, regard- (6) the humble display of the performer’s skill less of how arcane the views may seem at the and talent; (7) efforts to observe the highest time. They may even record their defiance of and professional and moral standards in whatever nonconformity to the orthodox and popular is done to capture and enrich truth; (8) the dis- positions embraced by the majority in various play of good habits and respectful mannerisms ways, making art not only a means of cele- in private and public spaces; (9) the care taken brating the patterns of cooperation of members to ensure the maintenance of equilibrium and of society but also a medium of protest. For moderation in the various modes of being of example, among the Yoruba certain ways in the living, the dead, and the unborn; (10) the which men wear their caps and women tie maintenance of proper and edifying relationships their headgear clearly signal a protest against within and outside families; and (11) efforts the norm, reflecting their view that in society toward the development of future generations certain wrongs need redressing. Yoruba artists and filial bonding with family members and also question conformity through stories, prac- society. tical jokes, songs, sculpture, bodily adornment, There are three elements that contribute hairstyle, dress, and music (using both the to African aesthetics. First, there is the skill, language and music itself and their choice dexterity, and consciousness and other mental of instruments to make the point), and even faculties involved in the production of true silence, generated at appropriate moments in artistic forms of life. Second, there is the final out- conversation and theatrical performance. come of the effort, the extent to which it meets Essentially, art is an integral part of the con- the remit that impelled it in terms of finesse, truth science of any society. The way its practi- of representation, orientation, and integration. tioners carry out their trade will help to determine Third, there is the moral or ethical element of the epistemological engineering and re- art – how far it is morally edifying, truthful, and engineering that the social fabric must undergo acceptable, or denigrating and unacceptable; continuously. Even when there is borrowing how far it conduces to the interests of society from others, this has to be done with as much as a whole in affirming and promoting har- faithfulness and honesty as possible, recogniz- mony and cultural progress. Any art that is ing the debt (perhaps with tongue in cheek), and skeptically oriented and infused with cynicism, acknowledging the reason for the borrowing. as in carefully choreographed and intelligently Thus there is a tendency to speak of the ori- orchestrated critiques of power and wealth, ginal artwork by comparing it with copies; even has to be not only beautiful but pleasant, even where there are no observable distinctions

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african aesthetics between them, the original is preferred and maintained, emulated, and perpetuated. This attracts a higher accolade. constitutes a regulatory code of conduct, for There is also often a clear distinction between leaders and their followers that covers all aspects artworks and mere tools. One may have to use of life, from dress, eating, and forms of greeting, a very “ugly” tool to perform a task, and may to games and work ethics, political leadership, feel repelled every time one uses it, but if it relaxation, and festivals. It extends to what is the best tool, or the only one available or most can be exhibited in private and public space, how suited for the job at hand, one is foolhardy and where they can be exhibited, and so on. to worry about taste, instead of being clear- In many African societies, the art of child- sighted about the effectiveness and efficiency rearing is suffused with person-affirming of the tool in the performance of the task at and individuality-developing literature, songs, hand, as no further consideration is relevant. dance, paintings, and other cultural parapher- This is not far from the Yoruba understanding nalia. Also, while the other-regarding aspect of of the difference between beauty in character social existence is emphasized, the need for the and physical beauty: the wise Yoruba man or individual to acknowledge himself or herself woman recommends that one should marry as an individual, and as a person, with a name, not for physical beauty but for its ethical form a destiny, a calling, etc., is instilled in the child and beauty in behavior, for it can be said that from the beginning, such that, while he or she “The lady may be beautiful in looks, but spoil shares a common human destiny of being and her beauty with bad character.” But in the of responsibility for the survival of the species, absence of the combination of physical beauty his or her ability to make a difference is never and beauty of character, it is better to marry disregarded or compromised. someone who is not (so) beautiful but who is There is a clear relationship between art and known to have been properly brought up by his morality, as the different arts are educational or her parents and acknowledged to have good media for the training of the young in society. character (i.e., an omoluabi, a well-cultured, In this regard, there is room for academic dis- highly respectful, and morally upright person). course to the extent that it will lead to an Whenever comparisons are made in Yoruba informed decision as to the proper course of culture, acuity of observation is emphasized. action. This is important because bad art can Language itself embodies this search for subtle have deleterious effects: (1) people can be points of comparison, and there is a general insis- deceived by it into false complacency, similar tence that the meaning of any comparative to what happens when religion becomes the claim be clear, as a corollary of the more gen- opium of the people; (2) it can be responsible for eral requirement that the young be given clear creating unfounded euphoria, especially in instruction in the virtues. In all instances of com- untutored and uncultured minds; (3) it can parison in Yoruba culture, for example, acuity misrepresent reality; and (4) it can lead people of observation is emphasized. It is important to to have false impressions of their capabilities, note that there is a combination of an epi- similar to what happens when people relate stemic discernment that has led to a noting to their environment under the influence of and incorporation of comparative ideas into drugs. In these ways, such art destroys psychic the corpus of language, and to insistence both harmony rather than reinforcing it, and stirs up on understanding the meaning of the message wrong emotions and false beliefs, thus confus- and on the clarity with which the young are ing rather than clarifying reality. instructed in the virtues. We should remember that the workings of art Order and responsibility are important within a culture involve the appreciation of and unavoidable requisites of all aspects of more than artworks alone; it is equally import- civilized life in any society and any attempt ant to recognize that every artist loves applause. to compromise them always involves a great African artists, in all walks of life, are appreci- human, cultural, and material cost to society. ated within their various societies. For, as Consequently, the arts to which children and these societies often recognize, praise begets other members of society are exposed should further excellence, while failure to appreciate can reflect the values that are worthy to be developed, stymie creativity, if not totally destroy it.

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amerindian aesthetics

See also art history. For the purposes here, I shall focus on three ethnographic examples. They are the Kuna, bibliography the Zuni, and the Navajo. I discuss each in turn. Bewaji, J. A. I. 2003. Beauty and Culture: Perspectives I explore the general by way of the particular. in Black Aesthetics. Ibadan, Nigeria: Spectrum Books. In conclusion, I discuss issues of the appropri- Layton, Robert. 1991. The Anthropology of Art. 2nd ation of Amerindian aesthetic practices. edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. john ayotunde (tunde) isola bewaji kuna aesthetics The Kuna, who live along the Atlantic coastal region of primarily Panama and Colombia as Amerindian aesthetics Franz Boas’s (1927: well as in Panama City, are traditionally agri- 183–298) monumental Primitive Art devotes culturalists, who practice slash and burn agri- 115 pages to a discussion of north Pacific culture in the coastal jungles. Their aesthetic coast artistic styles. Boas, as was his method, was practices have been most ably described by Joel largely descriptive in his analysis of Native Sherzer (1983, 1990). American aesthetic practices. For example, Perhaps the most famous example of Kuna he writes: “Two styles may be distinguished: aesthetic practices are the molas. Molas are the man’s style expressed in the art of wood multicolored appliqué blouses that were tradi- carving and painting and their derivations; tionally made and worn by Kuna women. A and the woman’s style which finds expression woman made her own mola. The molas were in weaving, basketry, and embroidery. The quintessential emblems of Kuna-ness. More two styles are fundamentally distinct. The recently, molas have been sold to tourists and former is symbolic, the latter formal. The sym- collectors. The organizing principle of mola bolic art has a certain degree of realism and design is that of repetition with variation. Molas is full of meaning. The formal art has, at most, are often based on three themes: (1) geometri- pattern names and no especially marked signi- cal designs; (2) representations of Kuna life; ficance” (1927: 183). For Boas, the under- and (3) representations of the Western world standing of patterns was the beginning of an (copied from magazines). Molas are filled. understanding of Native American aesthetics. Empty space is to be avoided. The molas are not Amerindian aesthetics were not, however, representations of Kuna “ancestors, mythical limited to visual arts, but also included verbal beings or scenes, or good or bad spirits of arts (song, story, chant, etc.) as well as dance. a supernatural nature” (Sherzer & Sherzer Since Boas’s early work, anthropologists 1976: 32). They are decorative emblems of have been engaged in documenting and under- Kuna-ness, but they are not supernatural in standing Amerindian aesthetic practices. These nature. Nor for that matter are they meant to investigations have been variously termed be interpreted. ethnoaesthetics (B. Tedlock 1986), ethnopoetics This aesthetic differs in some substantial (Hymes 1981; D. Tedlock 1983), and ethno- ways from the verbal art of the Kuna. Among musicology (McAllester 1954). Such appro- the Kuna, the use of the paradigmatic litany of aches have striven to understand what makes objects in chants creates lists of the known. For various social practices “beautiful.” The focus example, in the “Way of the Hot Pepper” (a Kuna here is on aesthetic practices and the ways chant) the kinds of peppers known to the Kuna that such practices are given value as aesthetic- are listed through parallelism, that is, repetition ally pleasing. In each case, the question of what with variation. The “Way of the Hot Pepper” is and is not considered beautiful becomes an then is a statement of Kuna ecology via paral- ethnographic question, as does the very ques- lelism. In going through the various paradig- tion of what it means to say something is matic relationships, the Way is lengthened. “beautiful.” What ethnographers have found This is also a part of Kuna aesthetic practices. is that Amerindian peoples often have well- Long chants, as well as verbal proclivity, are con- thought-out theories of beauty. sidered aesthetically pleasing. Silence, on the In a short piece it is impossible to cover all of other hand, is something to be avoided. Chants Amerindian aesthetics and aesthetic practices. can be performed either in public at the central

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amerindian aesthetics congress house or in private, when addressed forms, and colors” (1986: 190). Songs, as well, to the spirits. In the public congress there is also can be considered tso’ya, when they are newly much meta-talk about chants. A Kuna chief composed, “rich in allegorical meaning . . . gives a speech in the central gathering house, sung clearly, and when the basically diatonic and that speech is then interpreted and trans- melody has a stepped construction beginning low lated by a ratified interpreter. Kuna chants and and ending high” (1986: 191). speeches are given in esoteric and metaphoric On the other hand, “attanni is a quality of language. The esoteric and metaphoric lan- the shaggy, dark, matted hair and costumes guages are considered aesthetically pleasing of ogres, and of crudely naturalistic designs aspects of the chants. They are meant to be painted on kiva walls as well as on certain interpreted. Curing chants, done in private, types of ceremonial pottery. In auditory cul- are not interpreted. ture, the attanni aesthetic occurs in traditional The Kuna, then, have two poles on a con- songs of the medicine societies . . . which have tinuum of aesthetic practice. On the one hand, relatively simple texts and melodies totally they have the molas, which are seen as beau- lacking in chromaticism” (1986: 193). Things tiful, but are not meant to be interpreted. On the that are tso’ya can be shared. Much of the other hand, they have chants and speeches artistic expressions, the kachina designs sold given in the central congress house, which are by Zuni artisans, are understood as tso’ya also beautiful, but which must be interpreted. and are, therefore, shareable. The kachina are The organization of both the molas and chants sacred and tso’ya and hence shareable. On the is based on the principle of parallelism. Both other hand, War God images are attanni and attempt to fill emptiness, either with images or because they are dangerous they are not with sounds. Finally, both the chants and the shareable. Understanding Zuni aesthetics allows molas are understood as the products of creative one to understand that not all sacred items are individuals. treated identically, nor are they categorized by Zunis identically (B. Tedlock 1995). zuni aesthetics The Zuni predominately live at Zuni Pueblo and navajo aesthetics the surrounding area in western New Mexico. Much has been written concerning Navajo The Zuni language, which is still actively spo- aesthetics (see McAllester 1954; Witherspoon ken, is a language isolate. This has led some 1977; Witherspoon & Peterson 1995). amateur scholars to wild speculations con- The Navajo were traditionally a Southern cerning the origins of the Zuni, but all that it Athabaskan-speaking people who resided in really means is that the Zuni language cannot what is now the American southwest. Today, be directly connected with other languages Navajos (or Diné) live on the Navajo Nation, a based on the methodology of historical linguistics. reservation that covers portions of Arizona, Zuni aesthetic practices have been described New Mexico, and Utah, as well as in urban most usefully by Barbara Tedlock (1984, 1986, areas throughout the United States. Navajo 1995) and Dennis Tedlock (1972, 1983). Zuni is still spoken by nearly 120,000 Navajos. have two broad ethnoaesthetic categories, Younger Navajos, though, are no longer learn- tso’ya and attanni. For purposes here, we can ing the language at a rate that will guarantee gloss – though these are in no way adequate its continued use. translations – tso’ya as “beautiful” and attanni David McAllester summed up Navajo aes- as “dangerous.” These categories cross mul- thetics as “beauty is that which does some- tiple domains, genres, and media. As Barbara thing” (1954: 72). The Navajo are famous Tedlock explains: “In the visual world of the cul- for their elaborate and complex chantway cer- tural world, tso’ya describes flower bouquets, emonies (Matthews 1995). Such chantways as jewelry, pottery, beadwork, the costumes of the Enemyway, Blessingway, and Nightway Zuni Olla Maidens, kachina dance costumes, the can last many nights and work either as a arrangement of kachinas in dance line, and curative or a prophylactic. HózhZ (“beauty, the interior decoration of Sha’lako houses, all harmony, good”) and nizhóni (“it is good, it of which display a great variety of textures, is beautiful”) are often used by Navajos to

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amerindian aesthetics describe things that are beautiful. The Navajo expressive culture is most aesthetically pleas- are also known for their weavings and for their ing when it allows listeners to engage in ima- silver work. ginative coordination. Silence is also valued. Chantways are marked by long complex Speech is understood as considered action and chants and by the use of drypaintings or sand- speaking should be done in a careful and paintings. Sandpaintings are used immediately thoughtful manner. There is a link between after they have been completed in a ritual set- aesthetic practices and traditional Navajo reli- ting. The patient is placed on the sandpainting gious views. One of the things that beauty does almost immediately after the sandpainting has is to heal and to protect. been completed and the sandpainting is One feature of Navajo verbal art is that it destroyed. This lack of reification of the sand- is localized. That is, stories begin at named painting as an enduring artistic piece had been locales and events take place at named and one of the hallmarks of Navajo aesthetics. This knowable locations. Place names are often is a focus on the process and not on the prod- considered aesthetically pleasing uses of lan- uct. With changes in economics that have guage. Such place names are often descriptive been conditioned by incorporation into a capi- and are also associated with the ancestors who talist economy that objectifies and trades in originally named those places. I am reminded commodities, sandpaintings are now being of a November afternoon in 2000, when a done by Navajos to be sold to tourists and col- Navajo friend, his elderly maternal aunt, and I lectors. Weavings too, in theory never com- stood out at the crest of a ridge on the Navajo pleted, are also now sold as objects of trade and Nation near where both my friend and his commerce. Many weavers leave a flaw in the aunt had grown up. We were talking about rug’s border, a gap. This aesthetic, that no place names. The aunt had asked if I knew the design is ever truly complete, keeps the rug as name for the place we were. I had offered the a process, and not as a product. conventional term for what I thought was the In chants, weavings, and sandpaintings, place. She corrected me: “That’s what people call repetition and repetition with variation often it now.” She paused. “But it’s T’iis ‘ii’áí’.” “Tree mark their forms. The use of repetition and of line,” offered my friend. She went on to explain repetition with variation of formulaic expres- how there used to be a series of trees along the sions is often considered aesthetically pleasing. ridge, but that the trees were gone now. The Repetition in fours or twos is common and beauty of the place name came partly from its appreciated as aesthetically pleasing. The brevity and descriptiveness, but it also came sandpaintings are often a series of figures or from an association with the words of her designs that repeat and vary. In principle, they elders, and finally there was also the ability, often reflect complementary concepts. Male through an association with her elders and and female are frequently put into comple- due to its descriptiveness, to recall an earlier time. mentary dialogue. The sacred mountains and Aesthetically pleasing uses of language “give an sacred directions are often presented in a for- imagination to the listener” as one Navajo mulaic manner. However, while repetition consultant told me. As the language shifts and parallelism are important components of from Navajo to English, such aesthetic practices Navajo chantways, they are not enough. A are also lost. chant must be aesthetically pleasing as well Much contemporary written Navajo poetry (Field & Blackhorse Jr. 2002). Deities respond has links with the oral traditions (Webster to chants because of aesthetic considerations. 2006) and shares their rhetorical and poetic Onomatopoeia is common in chantways as devices. Parallelism is found in Navajo chant- well as in songs, place names, and contempor- ways and can be evoked in written poetry as ary poetry. Such sound symbolism is aesthet- well. Interpretation is not highly valued, but ically pleasing because it allows a listener to reflection is. A good poem, as it was explained imagine a particular moment. Through sound to me, is one that makes someone think or symbolism one can imagine the moment in reflect. Nor are chantways or, for that matter, which the event occurred because one can contemporary poetry, considered to be the imagine the sounds of the moment. Navajo sole invention of a creative individual. Rather

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aquinas, thomas chantways are considered – given the vagaries Field, Margaret & Blackhorse, Taft, Jr. 2002. “The Dual of life – to be exact repetitions of prior chants. Role of Metonymy in Navajo Prayer,” Anthro- While the individual is important, this import- pological Linguistics, 44(3), 217–30. ance is mitigated by acknowledgment of the Hill, Jonathan. 1993. Keepers of the Sacred Chants. words of those who have come before. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Hymes, Dell. 1981. In Vain I Tried to Tell You. conclusion Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. McAllester, David. 1954. Enemy Way Music: A Study Amerindian aesthetics are not identical across of Social and Esthetic Values as seen in Navajo Music. groups or across genres and media. Kuna and Cambridge, MA: Papers of the Peabody Museum of the Navajo both value speaking and find displays American Archaeology and Ethnology, 41(3). of repetition with variation to be aesthetically Matthews, Washington. 1995. The Night Chant. Salt pleasing. Yet Kuna fill the world with sounds, Lake City: University of Utah Press. while Navajos appreciate silence. Not every Samuels, David. 2004. Putting a Song on Top of It. aesthetic practice that Amerindians engage in Tucson: University of Arizona Press. is sacred or religious. The Kuna mola is an aes- Sherzer, Dina & Sherzer, Joel. 1976. thetic practice that is considered beautiful but “Mormaknamaloe: The Cuna Mola.” In Ritual and Symbol in Native Central America. P. Young & is not meant for sacred reflection. Zuni War J. Howe (eds.). Portland: University of Oregon, Gods, on the other hand, are sacred and attanni, 21–42. “dangerous,” and they cannot be removed Sherzer, Joel. 1983. Kuna Ways of Speaking. Austin: from Zuni control. Images of kachinas, on the University of Texas Press. other hand, are tso’ya, “beautiful,” and can be Sherzer, Joel. 1990. Verbal Art in San Blas. shared and, for that matter, sold by Zuni arti- Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. sans. Understanding Amerindian aesthetic Tedlock, Barbara. 1984. “The Beautiful and the systems can go a long way in aiding under- Dangerous: Zuni Ritual and Cosmology as an standing of what is and is not meant to be Aesthetic System,” Conjunctions, 6, 246–65. shared cross-culturally. As the Navajos have Tedlock, Barbara. 1986. “Crossing the Sensory Domains in Native American Aesthetics.” In learned with sandpaintings and the Kuna with Explorations in Ethnomusicology. C. Frisbie (ed.). molas, aesthetic practices can be adapted by Detroit: Information Coordinators, 187–98. degrees for Western consumerism. The problem Tedlock, Barbara. 1995. “Aesthetics and Politics: Zuni of misrecognizing every Amerindian aesthetic War God Repatriation and Kachina Representa- practice as “spiritual” continues, however, as tion.” In Looking High and Low. B. J. Bright (ed.). does the appropriation of aesthetic practices as Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 151–72. well. These problems will continue as long as Tedlock, Dennis. 1972. Finding the Center. New Amerindians occupy a “spiritual other” place in York: Dial Press. the Western imagination. Tedlock, Dennis. 1983. The Spoken Word and the The aim here has been to suggest something Work of Interpretation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. of the variety of Amerindian aesthetics, not to Webster, Anthony. 2006. “ ‘Alk’idyy’ My’ii Jooldlosh, summarize an entire hemisphere’s aesthetic Jiní: Poetic Devices in Navajo Oral and Written practices. In the list of further reading below, I Poetry,” Anthropological Linguistics, 48(3), 233–65. suggest contemporary ethnographic accounts of Witherspoon, Gary. 1977. Language and Art in the the aesthetic practices from North and South Navajo Universe. Ann Arbor: University of America. The list is eclectic, but I hope that it Michigan Press. allows for a motivated rambling through the Witherspoon, Gary & Peterson, Glen. 1995. Dynamic contemporary literature. Symmetry and Holistic Asymmetry: In Navajo and Western Art and Cosmology. New York: Peter Lang. See also authenticity and art; cultural anthony k. webster appropriation. bibliography Basso, Ellen. 1985. A Musical View of the Universe. Aquinas, Thomas (1225–1274) Italian Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Dominican friar whose philosophy and theology Boas, Franz. 1927. Primitive Art. Cambridge, MA: (“Thomism”) have decisively shaped Catholic Harvard University Press. thought. Born into an aristocratic Italian family,

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Aquinas disappointed his relatives by failing 1–2, q. 54, a. 1: “Beauty is the compatibility of to enter the affluent Benedictine order, instead parts in accordance with the nature of a thing”). becoming a friar of the newly founded Domin- Before commenting on these ideas, it will ican Order of Preachers. Under the tutelage of be as well to introduce another of Aquinas’s St. Albert the Great in Cologne, he began to study interesting claims. This is the suggestion that Aristotle and later became a major figure at beauty is a transcendental quality identical in an the University of Paris and at the papal court. entity to that thing’s being, its unity, its goodness, He died on his way to the Council of Lyons; and and its truth. Moreover, according to Aquinas, in 1323 he was canonized. it is part of what it is to be a transcendental qual- Aquinas is generally regarded as the great- ity that everything possesses it. Thus, “There is est of the medieval philosophers. This estimate nothing which does not share in goodness and is hard to fault when one takes account of the beauty, for according to its form each thing is scale and variety of his intellectual achieve- both good and beautiful” (De divinis nominibus ments, for he was the first medieval thinker to c.IV, lectio 5). work out at length the new synthesis between The key to understanding what otherwise Catholicism and philosophy. He believed in the appear obscure remarks is Aquinas’s notion of idea of cumulative philosophical and religious form – more precisely, substantial form (forma wisdom, and sought to integrate Neoplatonist, rei), that which makes a thing what it is, con- Augustinian, and Anselmian ideas, as well as stitutes its principle of organization and (in Aristotelian ones, with scripture, patristic teach- the case of something animate) of life. Carbon, ing, and evolving Catholic doctrine. cars, and cats all have organizing forms – He was a prodigious writer on a multitude of chemical, mechanical, and biological, respec- topics. With a few exceptions (such as Jacques tively. The form of a thing gives it existence, and Maritain and Armand Maurer), however, inasmuch as its being is an object of value for philosophers inspired by Aquinas have had it or for others it has goodness. Equally, when that little to say about aesthetics. This reflects the existence is affirmed in the mind of a thinker the character of his own writings, for while he thing has truth, and when it is viewed as an offers remarks on the nature of beauty and of object of contemplation it takes on the charac- art-making, he has no treatises or extensive ter of beauty. In speaking of goodness and theory on these subjects. All the same, it is pos- beauty (as of being and truth), therefore, one is sible to extract from his work ideas of enduring not speaking of intrinsically different properties interest for philosophical aesthetics. but of one and the same quality considered in The two most important sources of these relation to different concerns. In contemporary ideas are brief remarks in his Commentary on philosophical language the difference is one of the Divine Names (De divinis nominibus) and sense or “intension” and not of reference or in the Summa theologiae. In the first of these “extension.” he observes that something is not beautiful In short, beauty is only ascribable in the because we like it, but that our liking for it is context of actual or potential contemplation due to its beauty (c.IV, lectio 10), having of the form of a thing. This introduces an ele- earlier remarked that anyone who depicts a ment of subjectivity but relates it directly to thing does so for the sake of making something an objective ground, the nature of the object beautiful; and that each thing is beautiful to being contemplated. The earlier analysis of the extent that it manifests its proper form beauty now emerges as an account of the (c.IV, lectio 5). In the Summa, this notion of necessary conditions under which the meeting manifest form occurs implicitly within the famous of an object and a subject gives rise to aesthetic Thomist analysis of beauty: “Three things are experience. The thing in question must be required for beauty. First, integrity or perfection possessed of the elements or aspects apt to [integritas sive perfectio], for what is defective something having the relevant form or nature is thereby ugly; second, proper proportion or (integritas), these elements must be properly consonance [proportio sive consonantia]; and related to one another (proportio), and these third, clarity [claritas]” (Summa theologiae 1, states must be manifest when the entity is question 39, article 8; see also Summa theologiae perceived or contemplated (claritas).

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This interpretation suggests parallels with Tatarkiewicz, Wladyslaw. 1970. History of Aesthetics, Kantian aesthetics. For Aquinas is claiming vol. ii: Medieval Aesthetics. C. Barrett (ed.). The that the experience of beauty arises directly as Hague: Mouton. a type of intellectual satisfaction taken in the con- john haldane templation of elements apt for cognition, when one’s present interest in them is neither prac- tical nor scientific. Where Aquinas differs from Aristotle (384–322 bce) Greek philosopher Kant, however, is in regarding the contem- and scientist of immense, enduring influence. plated forms as being structural elements of a After studying in Plato’s Academy he founded mind-independent reality. On which, if either, his own school, the Lyceum. Often regarded as of these philosophers this difference reflects the first philosopher to admit the autonomous greater credit is a matter beyond discussion character of aesthetic activity and experience, here. It should be clear, however, that Aquinas in direct reaction against supposed Platonic has interesting ideas to offer to those who hope moralism. But the full picture is more complex to integrate an account of beauty and aes- than this. Aristotle’s statement in Poetics 25 that thetic experience within a broadly realist epi- “correct standards in poetry are not the same stemology and metaphysics. as in politics or any other art” asserts a kind of aesthetic independence for individual art forms. See also medieval and renaissance aesthetics; But his description of tragedy as “mimesis [i.e., beauty; kant. representation] of actions and life” (Poetics 6) signals a fundamental link between experience bibliography of art and experience of life in general. The framework of Aristotle’s thinking in this Primary sources area (see Poetics, ch. 1) is a classification of cer- 1963–75. Summa theologiae. 60 vols. Oxford and tain activities as mimetic, that is representational- London: Blackfriars with Eyre & Spottiswoode. cum-expressive forms of image-making. Each of 1969. De divinis nominibus [Commentary on the these counts for him as a technê, a specialized Divine Names]: selected translations from this expertise subject to conscious, rational control. and other relevant works are to be found in The group in question includes poetry, painting, The Pocket Aquinas. V. Bourke (ed. & trans.). New York: Washington Square. (Also in Wladyslaw sculpture, dance, and even music. The latter Tatarkiewicz, History of Aesthetics, vol. ii. The is mimetic for Aristotle, as it was for many Hague: Mouton, 1970, 257–63.) Greeks, in virtue of embodying what he calls tonal and rhythmic “likenesses” (or correlates) Secondary sources of “movements of the soul” (Politics 8.5). It Barrett, Cyril. 1963. “The Aesthetics of St Thomas is important, however, to distinguish two Re-examined,” Philosophical Studies (Ireland), 12, Aristotelian principles of mimesis that are 107–24. often confused. Mimetic representation, as in Bredin, Hugh & Santoro-Brienza, Liberato. 2000. Philosophies of Art and Beauty. Edinburgh: poetry, involves imaginative simulation of Edinburgh University Press. aspects of reality. But the principle that “all art Eco, Umberto. 1988. The Aesthetics of Thomas is mimesis of nature” (misleadingly translated Aquinas. H. Bredin (trans.). Cambridge, MA: as “all art imitates nature”: “all art follows Harvard University Press. the pattern of nature” would be better) is of a Kovach, Francis J. 1961. Die Ästhetik des Thomas von different order: it applies to the production of Aquin. Berlin: de Gruyter. all kinds of artifacts and posits a parallelism Maritain, J. 1974. Art and Scholasticism. J. W. Evans of teleology, but without conscious imitation, (trans.). Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame between human craftsmanship and what Press. Aristotle sees as the purposive shaping of form Maurer, A. 1983. About Beauty. Houston: Center for Thomistic Studies. into matter by nature. This second principle Phelan, G. 1967. “The Concept of Beauty in St (found at, e.g., Physics 2.2, 2.8) must encom- Thomas Aquinas.” In G. Phelan: Selected Papers. pass the musico-poetic and figurative arts as well, A. Kirn (ed.). Toronto: Pontifical Institute of but Aristotle never appeals to it in his discus- Mediaeval Studies, 155–80. sions of them.

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Aristotle’s conception of mimetic representa- of the “actions and life” (Poetics 6) the poem tion is seen most fully in his treatment of depicts. Chapter 9’s remarks about “univer- tragedy (with subordinate treatment of epic) in sals” follow directly from the discussion of the Poetics. By analyzing the genre’s qualitative unity: unity, probability, and the universals constituents (plot, character, etc.), Aristotle built into a poetic structure of action are mutu- works out a normative view of the dynamic ally reinforcing elements in a theory of poetry relationship between a tragic action, in which that endows artistic images with a coherent human lives are exposed to major suffering sense of human meaning. Whether this theory through the fallibility (hamartia: “error” or entails a rationalization of “the tragic” remains “fault”) of the agents, and the audience’s a challenging question about Aristotle’s agenda defining emotional response (“pity and fear”). in the Poetics. Although recognizing that tragedy is a highly Form and content are intertwined in stylized, elevated art form, Aristotle believes Aristotle’s account of aesthetic objects; and his that it deals with possible events (esp. ch. 9), conception of aesthetic experience possesses events that audiences can understand and matching features. Poetics 4 (compare with judge in ways continuous with those they use Rhetoric 1.11) gives a cognitive grounding to to interpret life outside the theater. The Poetics the pleasure that arises from contemplation of repeatedly underlines this point by appealing to mimetic works: the viewer seeks to understand criteria of “necessity and/or probability,” crite- and reason out each element in an image or ria which call both for “internal” consistency in poem. Politics 8.5, discussing music but widen- the terms of the represented world, and for the ing the point, confirms this: “habituation to intelligibility of that world by the standards of feeling pain and pleasure in the case of likenesses the audience’s beliefs about reality as a whole. [i.e., mimesis] is close to being so disposed But Aristotle goes further. In Poetics 9 he towards the truth.” Aesthetic responses are states: “Poetry is more philosophical and more not sui generis but correlated with larger struc- serious than history, for it speaks more of uni- tures of experience. That correlation allows, versals, while history speaks of particulars.” however, for important variations. Poetics 4 Aristotle does not mean by this that poetry registers the pleasure taken in the depiction of offers abstractions or schematic types of people objects that would be found painful in life; this, and events. What he appears to mean is that suc- implicitly, is pertinent to tragedy. “Art” can cessful poetic plots differ from the contingency transform, as well as capturing the underlying of ordinary life (individual lives are not artisti- principles of, “life.” cally unified, he stresses: Poetics 8). They have Aristotle’s model of aesthetic pleasure a purer, more coherent intelligibility; universals remains, even so, resistant to any strong version are, as it were, woven into their dramatic of aestheticism: it combines the cognitive and fabric. The achievement of such intelligibility the affective. He describes the pleasure of is undoubtedly connected, in Aristotle’s think- tragedy as “that which comes from pity and fear ing, with the principle of artistic unity. “Just as through mimesis” (Poetics 14). Grasping the in the other mimetic arts ..., so the plot- embodied universals of a poetic representation structure of tragedy . . . should be a represen- is not a matter of abstract comprehension; it tation of a unitary and complete action” involves sensitive absorption in the world of (Poetics 8). the play and carries with it an intensely emo- Aristotle’s notion of unity is not strictly tional reaction to the imagined characters formalist in character. All order and beauty and events. Plato had feared that such experi- depend on the nature and function of the ence could subvert reason by its “bewitching” objects in which they are realized (Politics 7.4). power over the emotions; Aristotle believes Unity in mimetic art is the meaningful organ- that good mimetic art elicits responses in ization of the representational content of a which reason and emotion are integrated. poem or other work; the criteria of wholeness While Aristotle diverges from the more and completeness which Poetics 7 sets out, uncompromising of Plato’s attempts to subject with the formula of “beginning, middle and aesthetic standards to a unified framework of end,” cannot be detached from the significance ethical and metaphysical value, he does not

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art history aim to establish an outright autonomy for art history What a history requires is a nar- mimetic art. He allows it considerable freedom rative framework relating what comes earlier to of scope (on a scale that runs from realism to what happens later. A culture could have art, idealism: see the start of Poetics 25) and denies and even a concept of art, without having any that artistic standards can simply be equated conception of art history. That culture might with those of morality or politics in general. But make art, and theorize about that activity, he nonetheless regards both the making and the without thinking that its art had a history. reception of poetry, painting, and music as spe- Writing a history of art requires thinking of its cial forms of engaged contemplation (theôria) development as having a historical structure. through which the human need to understand The first extended history of European art the world finds one kind of fulfillment. appears in an odd place, book 35 of Pliny’s Natural History, between the discussion of See also aesthetics in antiquity; catharsis; medicinal drugs in book 34 and the description plato. of stones in book 36. As modern commentators (Kris & Kurz 1979) have observed, the anecdotes bibliography that Pliny presents about various Greek painters recur frequently in accounts of Renaissance Primary sources artists. Pliny’s history of naturalistic art is told 1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle. 2 vols. J. Barnes (ed.). Princeton: Princeton University in terms of progress. Early, later, latest is good, Press. better, best: such is the story of the development 1995. Aristotle Poetics. S. Halliwell (trans.). of naturalism. Vasari’s history of art of the Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Italian Renaissance from the time of Cimabue and Giotto to his own era, two and a half Secondary sources centuries later, employs a similar framework. In Andersen, Ø. & Haarberg, J. (ed.). 2001. Making Sense of Aristotle: Essays in Poetics. London: such a history, once image-making begins, it Duckworth. continues, this model suggests, until the tradi- Halliwell, Stephen. 1998. Aristotle’s Poetics. 2nd tion dies. edn. London: Duckworth. In one way, beginnings and endings have a Nussbaum, Martha C. 1986. The Fragility of certain symmetry. Whatever art comes before Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and the beginning, like what comes after the end Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University of the tradition, is not part of the history of art. Press. In another way, however, endings raise special Rorty, A. O. (ed.). 1992. Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics. problems. Vasari explains in 1550 that he Princeton: Princeton University Press. judges each artist relative to the standards of that stephen halliwell man’s time: “Although Giotto was admirable in his own day, I do not know what we should say of him or the other ancients if they had lived art see artifact, a. as; authenticity and a.; in the time of Michelangelo” (1963: iv. 291). cognitive science and a.; cognitive value of Insofar as the claim of his account is that a.; conceptual a.; definition of “a.”; erotic a. Michelangelo is an absolutely great artist, a and obscenity; evolution, a., and aesthetics; figure whose work sums up the whole tradition, function of a.; marxism and a.; mass a.; it is very hard to see what could come next. At morality and a.; performance a.; popular a.; earlier times, of course, great artists had suc- psychoanalysis and a.; religion and a.; science cessors, but given Vasari’s narrative framework and a.; senses and a.; technology and a.; the- one has difficulty in imagining Michelangelo’s ories of a.; truth in a.; universals in a. successors. Once the cycle is started, it is hard to see how it can conclude, except in decay which, after art and experience see senses and art, the. some interval, may be followed by a rebirth of the tradition. Vasari’s working assumption is that the cycle of development in antiquity, as “art for art’s sake” see aestheticism. described by Pliny, repeats in his own time.

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That repetition is possible only because Dutch struggle against Spanish rule, the feats medieval art marks a break in the tradition, a of their maritime empire, and their pleasure in gap between the development of illusionism communal festivities are all expressed in their in antiquity and the rebirth of that artistic tra- art. A history of the art of any culture might be dition in the Renaissance. A modern historian written in this way. The Japanese and the of technology might think that indefinite pro- Africans can also express themselves in their art. gress is possible; when employing Pliny’s and One consequence of Hegel’s approach is to Vasari’s organic model, such a view of history suggest that each culture must have its own is hard to imagine. independent artistic ideals. Wölfflin develops Here we encounter an important conceptual this idea. The classical and the baroque “are like complication, the development of which began two languages, in which everything can be with Winckelmann’s Reflections on the Imitation said, although each has its strength in a differ- of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture of ent direction” (1908: 12). Wölfflin’s history 1755. Winckelmann both discusses the tradi- employs a formalist approach, explaining the tion that concerns him most deeply, the story development of art as a self-contained process of Greek sculpture, and explains its relation- without much reference to the larger culture. ship to art of the Renaissance. In some ways, Another development of Hegelian art history he admits, the modern artists are better: “In the occurs in the diverse approaches of art histor- science of perspective modern painters are ians who focus on the social history of art. As clearly superior . . . Various subjects . . . have Hegel sees Dutch art as expressing the charac- likewise been raised to a higher degree of per- teristic political, religious, and social concerns fection in modern times, for example, land- of that culture, so these historians treat each cul- scapes and animal species” (1987: 59). ture as capable of expressing its own values Gombrich has argued that “rather than in its art. Winckelmann’s History of Ancient Art . . . it is Both the formalist approaches and these Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics . . . which should social histories can describe the art of very be regarded as the founding document of the diverse cultures. So, for example, American modern study of art . . . they contain the first Abstract Expressionist painting of the 1940s attempt ever made to survey and systematize can be understood formally as developing the the entire history of art” (1984: 51). While flattened space found earlier in Cubism, and Winckelmann’s account remains focused on in the early modernist art of Cézanne and Greek art, it is Hegel who provides a way of Monet (Greenberg 1961). But it may also be linking art of antiquity to painting of the explained as an expression of post-World Renaissance. For Hegel, it should be added, War II American culture. The formalist finds what constitutes “the entire history of art” is similarities between artists whose work looks defined by the concerns of early nineteenth- different. Thus in Wölfflin’s account, not only century European scholarship. He did not Rembrandt and Rubens, but also Vermeer and know much about Chinese and Indian art; he Bernini, must be linked under the rubric does not discuss Japanese painting or African “baroque.” If the danger of formalism is the sculpture. need to appeal to such a fiction of a “period Unlike Pliny, Vasari, and Winckelmann, style,” the problem of a social history of art is Hegel does not focus on the history of the that it may link art with the general society development of illusionistic painting and in all too facile a fashion. These problems with sculpture within one culture. He explains how both formalist and social histories become the art of quite different cultures is part of more pressing as we approach the present. It is one continuous story, a universal history of difficult enough to identify the common fea- art. Insofar as each culture possesses its own val- tures of the work of Bernini, Pietro da Cortona, ues, it too may express them in its art. The goal Borromini, and all the other artists working in of art history is to identify the relationship Rome in the era of the baroque. But when we between a culture and its art. Thus, to under- look at the culture of New York during the stand Dutch art of the Golden Age, “we must 1940s, to speak of that as the era of American ask about Dutch history” (Hegel 1975: 169). The Abstract Expressionism really is problematic.

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We must connect work of quite diverse The development of art history by A. Riegl, painters by reference to a period style; we must Wölfflin, and E. Panofsky out of the legacy of exclude from the account painters working in Hegel (Podro 1982) requires pruning that the- other styles; and we need to explain how ory of Hegel’s metaphysics. For the modern art American philosophy and the larger culture historian to say that a culture expresses itself in are related to that art. its art is only a manner of speaking, not a the- Recognizing that both formalist and social ory to be taken literally. Modern art historians histories of art must thus employ fictions is work within the general framework estab- only to acknowledge that they, like any history, lished by these founding fathers of their discip- have to use such devices in order to tell a story line, collecting information about artists and (Carrier 1991). It is important to recognize periods not yet intensively studied by the pre- connections between the literary structures of cursors, yet without abandoning this historical art histories and those employed by creative framework itself. But when now we collect writers. When Vasari treats the collective cre- in our museums not only Greek and Italian ation of artists from Cimabue to Michelangelo Renaissance art, the Dutch painting that Hegel as akin to an organism which is born, develops discusses, and the baroque works Wölfflin to maturity, and dies, he is only using an deals with, but also Chinese and Japanese analogy. Vasari’s analogy has an important painting, Hindu sculpture, African artifacts, influence on how he thinks about art history. weaving and other decorative work from An organism must die, but there is, in prin- many cultures, and modernist and postmod- ciple, no reason why an artistic tradition may ernist art, then the claim that it is possible to not continue indefinitely. write a general history of art seems increas- Any story must be selective. The art historian, ingly questionable. Insofar as a history is a like the creative writer, chooses to describe story in which all of these artworks are to be those events that he can fit into a plausible set within one narrative framework, the claim narrative. But in one essential way, literature that there can be some general interpretative and history are different. The stories of the framework adequate to all art now seems novelist seek merely to be convincing; the highly problematic (Elkins 2002). narrative of the art historian aims for truth. Until relatively recently, the best-known Wölfflin wants to understand how Raphael’s English-language survey histories have focused High Renaissance classicism anticipates the on the story of Western art. Chinese scrolls, baroque, although Raphael could not think of Hindu sculpture, and Islamic decorations make his art in that way; Greenberg seeks to grasp only cameo appearances. And while there are the relationship between Cubism and Abstract elaborate specialist histories of art in China, Expressionism, although the Cubists could not India, and the Islamic world, and also in Africa imagine that later movement. and the other cultures without writing, as yet Can we both exercise our modern sensibility this material is not integrated into these general and simultaneously be aware that the artist histories. But it starts to become apparent that whose work we study saw it differently? When, we need a world art history (Onians 2004; for example, we see a Rubens crucifixion, may Elkins 2007). We need it because we have to we apply to it “some concepts derived from do justice to art from all cultures, and also psycho-analysis – some such notions as the because of the legitimate political demands release of aggression with the displacement of raised within our multicultural societies. How guilt” (Podro 1982: 214), which, though alien is it possible, then, to develop narratives that take to Rubens’s culture, express in our vocabulary account of art from all cultures without impos- how his contemporaries saw that work? These ing a bias based on the traditional studies of questions are unanswerable. Any translation European art (Carrier 2008)? Answering this of Christian ideas into a psychoanalytic vocab- question is the central concern facing the pro- ulary will be controversial. The best we can fession right now. do is both understand Rubens’s culture in its own terms, and interpret it as best we can in our See also medieval and renaissance aesthetics; modern vocabulary. african aesthetics; chinese aesthetics;

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artifact, art as gombrich; hegel; indian aesthetics; islamic created; for example, a poem or a theory are aesthetics; modernism and postmodernism; humanly created and hence are nonphysical tradition. artifacts. Why, then, have philosophers of art become bibliography concerned in recent times with the question of Carrier, David. 1991. Principles of Art History whether artifactuality is or is not a necessary Writing. University Park: Pennsylvania State condition for being art? One reason has its University Press. origins in certain developments within the Carrier, David. 2008. A World Art History. Univer- philosophy of language: namely, Ludwig sity Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Wittgenstein’s view about how certain words Elkins, James. 2002. Stories of Art. New York: Routledge. apply to their objects. These words apply, Elkins, James (ed.). 2007. Is Art History Global? New Wittgenstein maintains, in virtue of “family York: Routledge. resemblances” among the objects to which Gombrich, E. H. 1984. “ ‘The Father of Art History’: they apply, rather than in virtue of the objects A Reading of the Lectures on Aesthetics of G. W. possessing properties that satisfy necessary F. Hegel (1770–1831).” In Tributes: Interpreters of and sufficient conditions. Our Cultural Tradition. Ithaca: Cornell University Paul Ziff (1953), Morris Weitz (1956), and Press, 51–69. William Kennick (1958) were the first to Greenberg, Clement. 1961. Art and Culture. Boston: attempt to apply this linguistic thesis to the Beacon. philosophy of art. These three and subse- Hegel, G. W. F. 1975 [1835–8]. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. 2 vols. T. M. Knox (trans.). Oxford: quently other philosophers claimed that “art” Clarendon. (or “work of art”) does not have any necessary Kris, Ernst & Kurz, Otto. 1979 [1934]. Legend, Myth, and sufficient conditions that must be satisfied and Magic in the Image of the Artist. A. Laing in order for something to be a member of the & L. M. Newman (trans.). New Haven: Yale class of works of art. Rather, they maintain University Press. that the members of the class of works of art Onians, J. (ed). 2004. Atlas of World Art. London: belong to that class in virtue of the “family Laurence King. resemblances” that obtain among the mem- ce Pliny. 1968 [77 ]. Natural History. 10 vols. bers. Thus, work of art A is a member of the class H. Rackham (trans.). London: Heinemann, vol. ix. of artworks because it shares a property with Podro, Michael. 1982. The Critical Historians of Art. New Haven: Yale University Press. work of art B, and work of art B is a member Vasari, Giorgio. 1963 [1550]. The Lives of the of the class because it shares a property with Painters, Sculptors and Architects. A. B. Hinds work of art C, and so on. Work of art A and work (trans.). London: Dent. of art Z, however, may not share any property Winckelmann, J. J. 1987 [1755]. Reflections on the and do not need to. Although work A and Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture. work Z do not share any property, they are E. Heyer & R. C. Norton (trans.). La Salle: Open related to one another through the property- Court. sharing of other members of the class of works Wölfflin, Heinrich. n.d. [1908]. Principles of Art of art. Every member of the class of works of art History. M. Hottinger (trans.). New York: Dover. will share a property with at least one other work david carrier (and probably many more), but a given pair of works need not share any property. If the members of the class of works of art do not artifact, art as Until recently, everyone had need to share any property, then they do not assumed without question that art is artifactual need to share the property of artifactuality. – that is, that a work of art is a humanly cre- And, in fact, these philosophers claim that ated object. Traditional philosophers of art there are works of art that are not artifacts, these attempted to defend their claims that art is nonartifacts having become works of art by expressive, symbolic, or of some other nature, sharing a property with a prior established but it never occurred to them to defend their work of art. Weitz, for example, claims that a common view that art is artifactual. An object piece of driftwood can become a work of art need not be physical in order to be humanly when someone notices its resemblance to some

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artifact, art as sculpture and says, “That driftwood is a lovely have been interested in theorizing about. piece of sculpture.” Driftwood, sunsets, and Traditional philosophers of art have sought to other nonartifacts can become works of art in discover the essential nature of a particular this way. Thus, according to Ziff, Kennick, class of human artifacts, and even if the mem- Weitz, and company, the traditional assumption bers of this class of objects do not have any other that every work of art is an artifact is shown interesting property or properties in common, to be false. they are all artifacts. Artifactuality is built There are several difficulties with this way into the philosophy of art because philosophers of conceiving of art. First, if resembling a prior have always been interested in theorizing established work of art is the basic way that about a set of objects that are produced by something becomes a work of art, it is going to human creativity. The fact that another class be virtually impossible to keep everything from of objects can be generated by means of resem- becoming a work of art, for everything resem- blance to the members of the class of artifactual bles everything else in some way. Second, “the art provides no reason to divert philosophers of new view” gives the impression that sharing a art from their traditional task. property with, or resembling, a prior estab- There is another reason to challenge the lished work of art is the only way that something artifactuality of art that is quite different from can become a work of art. If, however, every those based on a Wittgensteinian conception of work of art had to become art by resembling a language. How are philosophers of art to deal prior established work of art, then an infinite with things such as the urinal that Duchamp regress of works receding into the past would entered in that now famous art show under the be generated and no work of art could ever title Fountain? The urinal is an artifact of the have come into being. Some other way of plumbing trade, but is Fountain Duchamp’s becoming a work of art would be required to artistic artifact? Driftwood and urinals are the block the regress, and the only plausible way materials of a class of artworks that can be would be that the regress-blocking work or called “found art.” In some instances the mate- works came into being as a result of an artifact’s rial basis of a work is already an artifact when being created. Thus, this new view requires found (the urinal), in others it is not (the drift- two distinct and different kinds of art – art as wood), but in both cases, something further is conceived of by Ziff, Weitz, and Kennick, done by the artist in addition to finding the which may be called “resemblance art,” and item. The most minimal thing that could be what may be called “artifactual art.” done is presenting the item as art to an artworld Artifactual art has a temporal priority. Of audience by showing it in some manner or course, it is not just that artifactual art is other. Assume that this (possibly along with required to block the regress. Even given the some other conditions that may well be present) new way of conceiving of art, much of the art is sufficient to make these items artworks. Is it that has been created has come into being as sufficient to make these items artifacts? In the artifactual art. Thus, artifactual art, with its case of the urinal, since it is already an artifact, one necessary condition (artifactuality), forms we can assume that the artwork it becomes an unacknowledged basis or core of the new con- is also one. But what about the driftwood? ception of art. The two kinds of art required by This seems at best a borderline or minimal case the new conception have two very different of artifactuality, if it is a case of artifactuality bases: the one derives from acts of human cre- at all. ativity and the other from acts of noticing sim- There are at least two other kinds of art- ilarities. This striking difference suggests that it works that might be regarded as good candidates is the members of the class of artifactual art that for being nonartifactual artworks: some works we have in mind when we speak literally of that are ontologically abstract and some con- works of art, and that the other class of objects ceptual works. Ontologically abstract artworks is a metaphorical derivative. are not those that are nonrepresentational but Suppose, however, that both classes are liter- are those that have more than one instance or ally art. This just means that it is and always occurrence. Musical works are instanced in their was the class of artifactual art that philosophers performances, novels in their copies. There

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artifact, art as are some who claim that even ontologically 123–4). Dipert’s and Davies’s definition of abstract works are artifacts, since they are artifact seem, at first sight rather similar. They humanly created entities (such as Levinson both involve reference to modifying something 1980; Thomasson 1999). However, there are or other. Dipert, however, requires that a gen- others who deny this (such as Kivy 1993; uine artifact has to communicate something, Dodd 2000). They claim that musical works, for viz., that it is a thing made for some specific use. example, are abstract sound structures that Davies has no such requirement. Davies claims exist eternally and hence are discovered, not cre- that artifacts must result from the manipula- ated. Some even deny that abstract objects can tion of a material object and are themselves be created (Dodd 2000). If this view is right, material objects. Dipert does not claim this. He musical works are not artifacts. Of course, this thinks some actions are artifacts. It is not clear is a conditional claim. It depends on the cor- whether he thinks there are also abstract artifacts. rectness of a controversial and highly con- For someone who agrees with Davies’s tested view about the ontology of art. So we do understanding of “artifact,” or who decides not yet have an unchallenged example of to adopt this conception for more pragmatic clearly nonartifactual art. reasons such as greater precision, the issue of Some conceptual artworks provide another set whether all artworks are artifacts becomes of possible examples. Consider the famous crystal clear. Even if all artworks are humanly piece by Robert Barry entitled or specified by: All created, they are not all artifacts. the things I know but of which I am not at the moment thinking – 1:36 pm, June 15, 1969. It is See also twentieth-century anglo-american not clear just what this piece consists in. Is it aesthetics; conceptual art; definition of “art.” the very beliefs referred to by the specification? The set of beliefs is not an artifact. Is it the bibliography act of referring to those beliefs or the inscrip- Davies, Stephen. 1991. Definitions of Art. Ithaca: tion or utterance of the words? Would any of Cornell University Press. these be more plausible candidates for being Dickie, George. 1984. The Art Circle. New York: an artifact? Haven. From the first sentence of this entry, it has Dipert, Randall R. 1993. Artifacts, Art Works, and been assumed that an artifact is anything that Agency. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Dodd, Julian. 2000. “Musical Works as Eternal is humanly created. Nor have we been very Types,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 40, 424–40. careful to define the extension of the humanly Kennick, William E. 1958. “Does Traditional created. Does it include things we do, as well as Aesthetics Rest on a Mistake?” Mind, 67, 317–34. the products deliberately made in the course Kivy, Peter. 1993. The Fine Art of Repetition: Essays our doings? In any case, we have looked for in the Philosophy of Music. Cambridge: Cambridge counterexamples to the claim that artworks University Press. are necessarily artifacts in things that are not Levinson, Jerrold. 1980. “What a Musical Work Is,” humanly created, such as driftwood, abstract Journal of Philosophy, 77, 5–28. structures, beliefs, or concepts. Levinson, Jerrold. 2006. “Artworks as Artifacts.” Some argue, however, that “artifact” has a In Contemplating Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 26–37. much more narrowly circumscribed meaning. Thomasson, Amie. 1999. Fiction and Metaphysics. According to Randall Dipert, an artifact is Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. something intentionally modified to serve as a Thomasson, Amie. 2007. “Artifacts and Human means to an end whose modified properties Concepts.” In Creations of the Mind. E. Margolis & were intended by their maker to be recognized S. Laurence (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University as having been altered for that, or some other, Press, 52–73. use (1993: 29–30). Stephen Davies claims Weitz, Morris. 1956. “The Role of Theory in that an artifact in the primary sense is something Aesthetics,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, modified by work, which, he thinks, implies 15, 27–35. that it is an object that is manufactured via the Ziff, Paul. 1953. “The Task of Defining a Work of Art,” Philosophical Review, 62, 58–78. direct manipulation of a material item that preexists the creation of the artifact (1991: george dickie & robert stecker

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“artworld” “artworld” A term that has both a philo- conditional on circumstances that obtain in a sophical and an ordinary meaning. Philoso- special artworld. Several late twentieth-century phically, the idea of an “artworld” serves as a theorists, notably Arthur C. Danto and George device for analyzing “art” and the “aesthetic.” Dickie, develop this thought by arguing that Artworld theory makes these concepts the objects qualify as art in virtue of being the products of certain social practices so specialized subject of practices characteristic of a special that persons engaged in them appear to be world exclusive to art. operating in an autonomous world. In the ver- In brief, the contemporary philosophical nacular, the “artworld” is the actual society conception of the artworld locates what is of persons whose interactions affect the valu- definitive of art in the application of some set of ation of works of art. What these meanings practices, whether these be activities which have in common is an understanding of art treat art organizationally, historically, or as being the consequence of institutionalized theoretically. To hypothesize an artworld is activities. to explain that objects qualify as art by being That art should be thought of as situated in “institutionalized’ – that is, by operating or a special world of its own is a notion of some- being operated on within a definitive institutional what recent fabrication, and one quite alien framework. to antiquity’s robust idea of art as central to prac- But the relevant institutions need not con- tical human life. Plato and Aristotle located stitute an all-encompassing world that embraces artistic activity and appreciative experience all the kinds of human activities. So such ques- among practices meant to promote the goals tions as whether the artworld is democratic or of cognition and conduct. But, subsequently, elitist are not automatically relevant; they are at least two lines of thought converged to drive germane only where there is reason to con- art from this central location. strue artworld systems as political. On the one The first was triggered by Plato’s reasons hand, it seems parochial for philosophers to for doubting how effectively art can realize posit unique aesthetic practices when so wide vital practical functions. In response, art’s a range of explanations of institutionalized apologists have tended to isolate it from every- phenomena is available in the work of other dis- day activities or experiences as a stratagem for ciplines. The more thoroughly the artworld is defending its value. They typically define art (or conceived in terms of principles which operate the appropriate experience of it) as autonomous, also in the world of practical life, the more arguing that art characteristically induces misguided seems the drive to separate these unique ways of feeling or thinking, or is the pro- worlds. On the other hand, to operationalize the duct of a unique kind of activity, or is at least artworld in social scientific terms is to accept a unique product of ordinary activities. The reductionism. result is to construe art as independent of prac- In the vernacular, to speak of the artworld is tical contexts, and aesthetic value as irreduc- to refer to networks of persons engaged either ible. This strategy blunts Plato’s complaints vocationally or avocationally in activities that by removing art from the constraints usually affect the buying and selling of art. But to re- associated with cognition and conduct, but it also cognize the power of such persons by no means threatens art’s place in the everyday world. solves the problem of whether their actions A second line of thought which makes the determine, or are determined by, aesthetic or notion of situating art in an environment of other values. This brings us finally to the ques- its own attractive is fuelled by a widespread tion of whether the conception of the artworld skepticism about finding an essential property is simply another relativizing notion. internal to all artworks. If there is no such To what kinds of systematized circum- property, then whatever warrants the identi- stances is the identification of objects as art fication of some objects as art must be found in to be tied, and may these encompass, or must the contexts in which these objects are situated. they exclude, systems that also are constitutive But if to recognize something as art is also to of the practical world? Are the art systems accept it as independent of contexts occasioned of different times and places frameworks to by the everyday world, its being art must be be thought of as begetting separate worlds?

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Fragmenting aesthetic contexts in this way authenticity and art Works of art stand in makes it hard to explain the undoubted ease multiple complex relationships to their origin- with which cultures adopt and appreciate ating contexts. Some of these relationships each other’s art. Or are the divergent systems are grouped together as matters of authentic- to be incorporated into one complex artworld ity and inauthenticity. Broadly understood, a scheme so as to account for art’s demonstrable work of art possesses authenticity when it is ability to diffuse transculturally and transhis- “true” to its authorial and/or cultural origins by torically? If this latter alternative is the case, then reflecting beliefs and values held by its creator how are we to decide which systems’ values and/or creator’s community. However, different are to be marginalized? Thus, the most vexing eras, artforms, and critical traditions emphasize disagreements about the interpretation and distinct relationships between art and its socio- evaluation of art reappear, unresolved, within historical origins, so prominent species of artworld theory. authenticity display considerable variety. Attempts to define art as the product of Individual and cultural authenticities are the artworld, which is characterized as an associated with competing artistic values. informally structured institution, are contro- Cultural authenticity generally requires con- versial in ways already indicated. But the idea formity with established cultural norms. In that identifying and appreciating artworks contrast, authorial or individual authenticity involves seeing them in relation to art practices requires some degree of originality and there- and traditions that they continue, develop, or fore tends to involve departure from estab- rebel against – which was always an import- lished norms. Evaluating literary texts for ant strand in the accounts of the artworld authenticity relative to authorial intentions, proposed by both Danto and Dickie – is now we can ask which edition of James Joyce’s widely accepted by philosophers of art and Ulysses is most faithful to his intentions. plays an important role in theories of art inter- Viewing Ulysses relative to contemporaneous pretation and of the ontology of artworks. cultural practices, its radical innovations are more authentically modernist than Irish. As See also aristotle; danto; definition of this example suggests, the same work can be “art”; dickie; function of art; interpreta- authentic relative to one classification and tion; ontology of artworks; plato. inauthentic relative to another. Three important uses of “authentic” fall out- bibliography side the scope of this entry. The first involves Danto, Arthur C. 1964. “The Artworld,” Journal of inauthenticity due to forgery. The second Philosophy, 61, 571–84. involves the degree to which works remain Danto, Arthur C. 1981. The Transfiguration of the intact following restoration. The third derives Commonplace. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer- from functional accounts of art, where sity Press. authentic art advances art’s proper ends and Dickie, George. 1974. Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis. Ithaca: Cornell University inauthentic art does not. This broad category is Press. emphasized in Continental philosophy and Dickie, George. 1984. The Art Circle: A Theory of Art. plays a prominent role in, for instance, writings New York: Haven. of Martin Heidegger and Theodor Adorno. Silvers, Anita. 1976. “The Artworld Discarded,” Questions about artistic authenticity seem Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 34, 441– to have arisen when philosophers and artists 54. began to question eighteenth-century expecta- Silvers, Anita. 1989. “Once upon a Time in the tions about artistic beauty (Trilling 1971: Artworld.” In Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology. 92–100). As art came to be valued as a vehicle for G. Dickie, R. Sclafani, & R. Roblin (eds.). New self-exploration, standards of beauty came to be York: St. Martin’s, 183–95. regarded as cultural impositions that restricted anita silvers self-fulfillment and expression. A poem or paint- ing achieved expressive authenticity by chal- lenging prevailing taste. By the end of the attitude, aesthetic see aesthetic attitude. nineteenth century, it was commonly thought

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authenticity and art that authenticity was diluted by any concessions play the correct notes but fail to realize the made for the sake of commercial viability. composer’s expressive goals? If musical works Thus, to experience “authentic” Beethoven we are pure sound structures, then such questions turn to his late string quartets, which baffled are trivialized, because expressive authenticity his contemporaries, rather than to Twenty-Five in performance is unrelated to the work’s iden- Scottish Songs (Op. 108), his piano arrange- tity and provenance. Alternatively, if we con- ments of existing folk songs undertaken for strue authenticity as a matter of the work’s commercial profit. However, this tradition pri- essential relationship to its origins, then the oritizes authenticity relative to self-expression variety of questions that are posed about – a standard that applies to Beethoven’s music authentic musical performance suggests a but not, for example, to bronze statutes of corresponding variety in the historically con- Buddha produced in seventeenth-century Tibet, tingent properties that belong to various musi- which are authentic or not relative to established cal works. Let us explore three of these issues. iconography. Applied to “traditional” and First, a sound structure can be performed non-Western art, the opposition of commerce with different timbres, as when the same and authenticity introduces questionable piece is played on a harpsichord and then on assumptions about cultural purity and cul- a piano. Many composers constrain timbre tural change (Shiner 1994). The opposition of choice by specifying instrumentation. So we do commerce and authenticity is also challenged not think that a string quartet receives an by the fact that multiple issues about expressive authentic performance if the four string parts authenticity arise within the commercial mar- are performed with a tuba, a kazoo, and two ketplace of popular culture, as evidenced by tin whistles. However, a simplistic adherence blues music (Rudinow 1994). to composer-specified instrumentation can The performing arts highlight additional generate its own sonic inauthenticity. Because issues of authenticity as issues of work authen- Mozart wrote for valve-less horns, the use of ticity are supplemented by questions about modern horns for performances of his horn performance authenticity. Debates about the concertos yields horn lines that are audibly possibility and desirability of authentic per- different from those that Mozart expected to formance of “early” and “period” music have be derived from his scores. The violin parts become an especially rich arena for explor- of these concertos also sound different (and ing the tensions between different modes of louder, altering the balance of instruments) authenticity. Different performances of the when played with modern synthetic strings in same work can be evaluated as more or less place of historically correct animal-gut strings. authentic by reference to distinct goals and So are performances of Mozart’s horn con- performing styles of different performers, which certos more authentic when performed on can, in turn, be evaluated by reference to (and valve-less horns and gut-strung violins? Since conflict with) goals indicated or presupposed he wrote with those sounds in mind, it would by the work’s composer. Hence, the ideal of seem so. Yet he did not specify these expecta- authentic self-expression puts a performer’s tions. We surmise what Mozart expected the expressive authenticity at cross-purposes with audience to hear by determining what was the goal of authentically rendering all the available to him. Hence, we must consult his- work’s contemporaneous properties (Kivy torical practices in order to combine explicit 1995:138–42). instructions (e.g., a musical score) with con- These issues have also enriched discussion of temporaneous performance conventions in the ontology of art. For example, an intuitively order to achieve authentic realization of a simple ontology of the performing arts regards composer’s music (Davies 2001: 103–7). works as structural types. On this model, per- It does not follow that authenticity is fully formances occur in order to make these types achieved through sonic authenticity, i.e., by pro- accessible to audiences. However, different ducing the sounds that the composer would expressive and aesthetic properties are present anticipate hearing under the best circum- in different performances of a common type. Is stances. Many opera arias in the soprano and a musical performance authentic if the musicians alto range in Italian opera seria were composed

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authenticity and art for male castrati. In the nineteenth century, instrumentation specified. Bach’s idea of massed moral qualms led audiences to reject this per- musical forces was puny by our standards, so formance practice. The music can be transposed realizing Bach’s intentions requires rearranging for tenors, or sung at pitch by male counter- his music (Kivy 1995: 53). However, in the tenors or by female singers, though none of these same way that a work composed for strings reproduces the combination of power and high yields a different, derivative work when played pitch for which castrati were renowned. More on a mellotron or on wind instruments, it can recently, electronic manipulation has been be argued that sacrificing explicit instructions used to duplicate a castrato’s unique combina- (e.g., the score) in light of an interpretation of tion of range, timbre, and volume. Although overall intentions results in a substitution of a sonically authentic, this electronically created derivative musical work (Davies 2001: 223–4). sonic facsimile is rejected as too inauthentic Additional complications arise when we for actual opera performance. It obliterates emphasize that music is a performing art. the performance art that made the best castrati Consider the performer’s role when perform- singers into international stars. Human per- ing the “Appassionata” piano sonata. Pianists formance, even if not sonically faithful to what engage in a skilled activity and Beethoven wrote the castrato could achieve, is still regarded as piano sonatas that exploit and sometimes more desirable than sonic mimicry. challenge that skill. In a word, his sonatas are Second, a musical sound structure is always meant to provide occasions of musicianship. interpreted by its realization in a performance Hence, authentic performances require per- style. For example, eighteenth-century violinists formers who employ and display the proper appear to have used vibrato quite sparingly. technical skill, which in turn requires the right In the twentieth century, continuous vibrato sort of instrument, if not the make and model became fashionable. Haydn’s violin concertos that Beethoven had available. Pianists are ulti- can be played with continuous vibrato or with mately the best judges of the proper balance of very little, but either approach will present innovation and conservatism when perform- audiences with the notes and structures that are ing those works (Godlovitch 1998: 61–78). actually stipulated in Haydn’s scores. Hence, per- Third, recognizing that musical works are formance technique introduces another facet more than mere sound structures invites to authenticity. extended debate about which other composer- Although it might seem obvious that a per- intended features of performances are equally formance always has greater authenticity by relevant. For example, J. S. Bach intended that virtue of utilizing contemporaneous perform- particular religious cantatas be performed in a ance practices with instruments of the intended Lutheran church on specific Sundays of the type and from the composer’s era, there are liturgical year. Given his clear intentions, a competing considerations. It is tempting to say Friday performance of “Wachet Auf” in a con- that historically appropriate instrumentation cert hall cannot be authentic. One response is is authentic because it reflects the composer’s that most music is multifunctional. Secular intentions. However, it is easy to find examples presentations are authentic whenever a com- of composers who recognized the deficiencies position is meant to be “an object of interest in of the available instruments. It is unlikely that its own right” (Davies 2001: 216). Because Beethoven desired that the “Appassionata” Bach intended this function for all of his music, piano sonata (Op. 57) should only be played on our secular performances are authentic in one fortepianos of the sort available to him in of the ways sanctioned by his intentions. A 1807, whose strings broke when he played its parallel argument can be made about modern most tumultuous passages. Hence, some per- museum displays of religious “art,” such as formances might be more authentic by virtue altarpieces and Byzantine icons. of being performed as the composer would However, the concept of aesthetic autonomy have wanted them had later instruments is foreign to many artistic traditions. Although been available. Extending this line of thought, secular performances of Bach’s religious cantatas authenticity of aesthetic or expressive effect can be defended on the grounds that he might demand radical departures from the intended them to be judged for their aesthetic

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authenticity and art merit, the same intention does not equally result of these cultural interactions (Shiner guide all indigenous and traditional “art” 1994). Yet works rejected as inauthentic may (Shiner 1994). Many cultural artifacts are site scrupulously adhere to the originating cul- and event specific. Despite their significant aes- ture’s own standards of creativity and author- thetic value, reproducing or preserving them ship (Coleman 2005). violates cultural tradition. Their public or “aesthetic” display may be prohibited. Hence, See also music and song; adorno; amerindian cultural exportation of ceremonial objects aesthetics; conservation and restoration; often renders them inauthentic. In other cases, cultural appropriation; forgery; notations; the process that makes such “art” available for ontological contextualism; originality; aesthetic appreciation introduces new values and performance. practices into the originating culture, reducing cultural authenticity. bibliography For example, Navajo sandpaintings are cre- Bicknell, Jeanette. 2005. “Just a Song? Exploring the ated as part of a healing ritual. These colorful, Aesthetics of Popular Song Performance,” Journal crushed rock designs are destroyed at the end of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 63, 261–70. of the ceremony. Navajo tradition prohibits their Coleman, Elizabeth Burns. 2005. Aboriginal Art, preservation or fixed replication. Although Identity and Appropriation. Aldershot: Ashgate. these ceremonial artifacts are aesthetically Davies, Stephen. 2001. Musical Works and Perform- ances. Oxford: Clarendon. complex and rewarding, they are not produced Dutton, Denis. 1979. “Artistic Crimes,” British as works of art. Hence, a sandpainting pro- Journal of Aesthetics, 19, 302–41. duced for display or sale is inherently in- Godlovitch, Stan. 1998. Musical Performance: A authentic with respect to Navajo tradition. Philosophical Study. London: Routledge. Respecting this tradition, Navajos who create Kivy, Peter. 1995. Authenticities: Philosophical sandpaintings for nonritual display will inten- Reflections on Musical Performance. Ithaca: Cornell tionally alter them from their “authentic,” rit- University Press. ual-specific counterparts. These “inauthentic,” Rudinow, Joel. 1994. “Race, Ethnicity, Expressive fixed-form sandpaintings can be evaluated for Authenticity: Can White People Sing the Blues?” authenticity by regarding them as displays of tra- Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 52, 127–37. Shiner, Larry. 1994. “ ‘Primitive Fakes,’ ‘Tourist ditional Navajo symbolism and design principles. Art,’ and the Ideology of Authenticity,” Journal of However, many collectors and art dealers Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 52, 225–34. believe that stylistic authenticity is insufficient. Shiner, Larry. 2003. “Western and Non-Western Authenticity requires “traditional” intentions. Concepts of Art: Universality and Authenticity.” Seeking authentic indigenous art, they reject the In Art and Essence. S. Davies & A. Sukla (eds.). very artifacts that the Navajo produce as Westport: Praeger, 143–56. works of art, namely, artifacts created to be Trilling, Lionel. 1971. Sincerity and Authenticity. objects of aesthetic appreciation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 81–105. Paradoxically, cultural changes introduced Young, James O. 1988. “The Concept of Authentic to accommodate foreign expectations and Performance,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 28, 228–38. exploitation are challenged as inauthentic whenever the artists evolve new practices as a theodore gracyk

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Barthes, Roland (1915–1980) French the opposing terms, by the catastrophe that semioticist and literary and cultural critic; a befalls the hitherto privileged term. A success- leading representative of structuralism. At the ful opposition is as violent or forcible as what it Pavillon des Arts in Paris in 1986 there was opposes is entrenched, and when the privi- an exhibition called Roland Barthes: Le texte et leged is the set of culturally endorsed beliefs, l’image. It consisted of paintings, photographs, its unsettling is cataclysmic. The cataclysm and posters, accompanied by Barthes’s writ- occurs in the individual whose beliefs are ings about them blown up large enough to be undone by the incursion of the primitive. comfortably seen from the viewing distance This is the poststructural deconstruction of called for by the images. The words overpow- precisely those received meanings explained ered the images, which in turn became illus- by structuralism in terms of Ferdinand de trations of them, in a fitting exhibition for one Saussure’s linguistic model. Barthes was a pre- for whom words, written or spoken, sounded eminent scriptor of this deconstruction, which or seen, were material, physical, affecting each appears full-blown in S/Z (1970), his reading other and whatever encountered them as do of a Balzac short story fragmented along the all material things. Words had for Barthes a lines of language, money, and sex that organize power akin to that of tribal carvings or icons and Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things (1966). to that he found in certain photographs. It was Barthes’s career is intimately connected with the power of the past and of the form without the rise and fall of structuralism in Paris in which nothing could work or take effect or make the 1960s and the skepticism born of the end its mark, including the brute, dumb, blind of what he called “the dream of scientificity” energy of the unconscious and its instincts. to which structuralism had given rise. A struc- Barthes was a writer for whom writing was turalist, Barthes tell us in his primer, The the quintessential human activity, because Elements of Semiology (1964), is simply one through it the individual participates in the who uses words like “sign,” “signifier,” production of sense and experiences the limits “signified” and finds the models of language of of the intelligibility hard won by productive Saussure and Hjelmslev helpful in classifying the labor; through it she imbricates herself in the elements of signification, which are taken to be structure of birth and death common to mean- signs. Signs are arbitrarily connected with that ing and nature alike. By the death of meaning of which they are signs. In this signs are differ- or sense is meant escape from the systems of dif- ent from meanings, which are held to be neces- ference that alone create sense, a leap beyond sarily connected with that of which they are the limits of the intelligible, cultured world into meanings. His interest was in the structuring the raw, the intractable real, the primitive. The activity, which he described as fragmenting experience of the primitive is possible only as the given and encoding the fragments in a an irruption of the cultured; it is, therefore, not variety of codes – as many as imagination the primitive raw that is experienced but the could devise. It was the freedom of the activity opposition between cultured and raw, between of structuring that he sought, not the structures what Barthes calls in his last book, Camera that it produced. Lucida: Reflections on Photography (1980), “the Freedom appears as a value in Barthes’s first tame and the mad.” To appreciate the opposi- book, Writing Degree Zero (1953), as the freedom tion is to be struck, shaken by the collision of of the writer to choose his forms. This is a high

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barthes, roland modernist tract that identifies writing in its dif- trick, outwit, outplay, evade these delimiting sys- ference from both style, a writer’s utterly per- tems. Identity questions are raised, only to be sonal signature born in the depths of his body, shown to be impossible of answer, especially and language, an algebra-like system of rules, questions about the identity, completeness, impersonal and abstract. The modern writer, and consistency of the self. A Lover’s Discourse refusing to inherit tradition’s forms of literature, characterizes a discourse warranted neither by bears the responsibility of choosing the forms in the speaker’s intentions nor by the rules of which he shall write. The necessity of position- language and, driven “into the backwater of ing himself with respect to the tradition follows the ‘unreal’ . . . has no recourse but to become from the historicism to which modernism is the site, however exiguous, of an affirmation” committed. By the time of S/Z, however, (1978: 126). This discourse is pure act, the site Barthes’s focus turns from the modern writer’s of the affirmation of itself, not of its speaker. choice of forms to “writerly” reading, and the For Barthes, the subject, the speaker, vanishes opposition between classic and modern yields to into acts of writing, reading, speaking, as in that between “readerly” and “writerly.” Camera Lucida material objects vanish into Each is a way of reading that can be used in- their photo-recordable traces of light. Language differently on classic or modern texts, and the is put into motion as each word becomes a step reader is free to choose between the ways. The along a path to all the other words to which it readerly is the comfortable, familiar way of can be connected by resemblance, by differ- reading, whereas the writerly is what unsettles ence, by contiguity, with the result that the all that the readerly assumes: it undoes the materiality of words themselves vanishes into reader’s “historical, cultural, psychological the gathering speed of writerly reading. At the assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, val- end of Camera Lucida Barthes says of whether to ues, memories, [and] brings to a crisis his rela- view the matter in this mad way or in a man- tion with language” (1974: 93). The readerly ner more familiar: “The choice is mine.” brings pleasure, the writerly bliss, where bliss is an ecstasy in which are dissolved all familiar See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century conceptions, including those along whose lines continental aesthetics; deconstruction; the reader’s identity is drawn. The reader, interpretation; meaning constructivism; then, loses herself in the act of reading in the structuralism and poststructuralism; text. writerly way. This distinction appears in the last book as the bibliography distinction between a photograph’s studium, Primary sources what in it is culturally coded, and its punctum, [1957] 1972. Mythologies. A. Lavers (trans.). New what, unbeckoned, rises out of it to pierce, York: Hill & Wang. touch, wound its viewer. The punctum con- [1964] 1972. Critical Essays. R. Howard (trans.). nects the viewer with the object whose light- New York: Hill & Wang. drawn image the photograph records, proving [1970] 1974. S/Z. R. Miller (trans.). New York: Hill the past reality of the object and putting & Wang. the viewer in touch with the past as nothing [1973] 1975. The Pleasure of the Text. R. Miller else can. Barthes calls light a “carnal skin” (trans.). New York: Hill & Wang. [1977] 1978. A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. R. enveloping the photographed object and its Howard (trans.). New York: Hill & Wang. viewer, thereby carrying the viewer back 1977. Image–Music–Text. S. Heath (trans.). New to the time of the photograph’s taking. The York: Hill & Wang. ecstatic dissolve of the viewer into the past [1980] 1981. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photo- made present in the photograph can bring graphy. R. Howard (trans.). New York: Hill & Wang. madness, madness being the other side of the [1982] 1985. The Responsibility of Forms: Critical tame, the civilized – that exists, however, only Essays on Music, Art, and Representation. R. as an encroachment upon the tame, the sane. Howard (trans.). New York: Hill & Wang. Culture and its systems of meanings are Secondary sources always already there, therefore, and the work Allen, Graham. 2003. Roland Barthes. London: of Barthes’s last five years consists of efforts to Routledge.

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Brown, Andrew. 1992. Roland Barthes: The Figures of of the subject–predicate proposition. Just as Writing. New York: Oxford University Press. reality is the greatest unity and variety of its Culler, Jonathan. 2002. Barthes: A Very Short Introduc- actual states (predications), so, Baumgarten tion. Rev. edn. New York: Oxford University Press. believed, sensuous perfection attains the great- Wiseman, Mary Bittner. 1989. The Ecstasies of est unity and variety of perceptions within a Roland Barthes. London: Routledge. singular image. Aesthetics springs from a “dark mary bittner wiseman faculty” of the soul, an ars combinationis, which intuitively fuses a perceived sensuous manifold into a coherent whole, the perfection of which Baumgarten, Alexander G(ottlieb) (1714– lies in the degree of its “intensive and extensive 1762) German philosopher and logician; a clarity” – an argument that cleverly reworks the significant influence on Kant’s aesthetics. The Cartesian terms “clear” and “distinct.” “father” of aesthetics and the first to employ Descartes insisted that, though we may per- the term in a distinctly philosophical context; ceive the sea before us “clearly,” we may not his pseudonym was Aletheophilus, “friend of know those defining properties which make it truth.” Baumgarten’s principal doctrines were: “distinct” from other types of water. We might, equally, “know” seawater’s distinct properties 1 that aesthetics comprises a science of sen- and yet never have “clearly” seen the sea. sitive knowing (scientia cognitionis sensitivae); Baumgarten departs from this juxtaposition 2 that such knowing is not, as Spinoza and (especially Leibniz’s version of it) with his insis- Leibniz believed, solely subordinate to logi- tence that, though remaining logically indistinct, cal knowledge but possesses an autonomy sensitive knowledge has a perfection of its own of its own; that cannot be reduced or dissolved by concep- 3 that aesthetic knowledge exhibits its tual knowing. With an ingenious wordplay, own perfection, here understood in the Baumgarten names the sensuously perceived eighteenth-century manner as a specific realm a “field of confusion” (campus confusionis), activity achieving its fruition (per-facere). a point which, though it appears to abide with Baumgarten accordingly conceived of the the rationalist conviction that the sensuous is task of aesthetic knowing as the translation logically confused (indistinct and muddled), of an obscure sensuous manifold into a in fact breaks with it by displaying the percep- clear perceptual image. tual world as confluence, convergence, and A professor of philosophy at Frankfurt and synthesis (con-fusion), a world in which indis- Halle, Baumgarten was known as a formid- cernible particulars (Leibniz’s “dull percep- able logician, theological hermeneuticist, tions”) are combined to produce a distinctly astute critic, and a follower of the rationalist “clear” image. The argument is worked out in Christian Wolff. Rather unjustly, Baumgarten the Metaphysica (1739) and in the incomplete is remembered solely for his definition of aes- two-volume Aesthetica (1750, 1758), but its thetics as “the science of sensitive knowing” basis stems from his earliest work, Meditationes (Aesthetica §1), a science that touches neither philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus on the nature of art per se nor on its social import (1735). In a manner close to Gadamer, he but on the direct sensuous apprehension of its suggests that poetic words have both an inten- actuality. The context and purpose of his argu- sive and extensive clarity – intensive insofar ment is, regrettably, hardly remembered. But as they invoke a highly particular object, and given the vehement contemporary debate over extensive inasmuch as the richness of poetic the perception of meaning in postmodern aes- allusions involves making all the implicit thetic and hermeneutic theory, his works have associations of an image explicitly clear. much to offer. Baumgarten’s understanding of semiotics was Baumgarten’s philosophy is shaped by the such that he believed there to be no difference rationalist conviction, cognitio vera est realitas: between the functioning of visual signs and the world is considered an intelligible totality of poetic words. constituted by the relations of greater and It is unclear whether he appreciated the lesser wholes, the logical key to which is the form extent to which his insistence on an irreducible

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beardsley, monroe c(urtis) perfection proper to aesthetic knowledge dis- See also eighteenth-century aesthetics; rupted the rationalist program of knowledge as gadamer; irony; kant. a logically unified science. And yet his merit is that, though by no means a deprecator of bibliography reason, he reveals how any transition from the phenomenological experience of the sea’s Primary sources [1734] 1974. Reflections on Poetry. K. Aschenbrenner immediacy to an analysis of saltwater involves & W. Holther (trans.). Berkeley: University of a great diminishment of the experiential world. California Press. The transition might facilitate an advance- [1739–58] 1983. Texte zur Grundlegung der ment of “distinct” knowledge, but only at the Aesthetik. H. R. Schweizer (ed.). Hamburg: Meiner. cost of weakening our aesthetic sensibility. (Contains a dual Latin and German text of Baumgarten was one of the first moderns to extracts from Baumgarten’s Metaphysica, Halle, defend the autonomy not only of aesthetics 1739, §§501–623; Philosophia generalis, Halle, but also of immediate experience against the 1770, §147; and the Aesthetica, Frankfurt, encroachments of theory, while his suggestion 1750/8, §1.) that sensuous appearance is art’s proper ter- [1750, 1758] 1983. Theoreitische Ästhetik: Die grundlegenden Abschnitte der “Aesthetica.” H. R. rain opens a line of thinking which leads to Schweizer (ed.). Hamburg: Meiner. (Edited collec- Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Gadamer. tion of extracts from Baumgarten’s Aesthetica. Once Kant steered aesthetics toward a Frankfurt. 1750/8.) transcendental study of the objective precondi- tions of judgments concerning the beautiful, Secondary sources Baumgarten, despite the proselytizing efforts Cassirer, Ernst. 1969. The Enlightenment. New of G. F. Meier and the admiration of Moses Haven: Yale University Press, 338–53. Mendelssohn and J. G. Herder, was fated to fall Davey, Nicholas. 1989. “Baumgarten’s Aesthetics: into obscurity. His location of the aesthetic in A Post Gadamerian Reflection,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 2, 101–15. the realms of the “sensitive” condemned him in Gross, Steffen W. 2001. Felix aestheticus: Die Ästhetik Kant’s eyes as an apologist for sensationalism als Lehre vom Menschen: zum 250. Jahrestag des and subjectivism. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Erscheinens von Alexander Gottlieb Baumgartens Baumgarten is referred to as that “admirable “Aesthetica”. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. thinker” who “attempted to bring the critical Kant, Immanuel. 1970 [1781]. Critique of Pure treatment of the beautiful under rational prin- Reason. N. K. Smith (trans.). London: Macmillan. ciples, and to raise its rules to the rank of a sci- Wessell, Leonard P. 1972. “Alexander Baumgarten’s ence.” Yet Kant dismissed the attempt because Contribution to the Development of Aesthetics,” “the said rules . . . are empirical and ...can Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 30, 333–42. never serve as determinate a priori laws by Witte, Eqbert. 2000. Logik ohne Dornen: Die Rezeption von A. G. Baumgartens Ästhetik im Spannungsfeld which our judgment of taste must be directed” von logischen Begriff und asthetischer Anschauung. (1970: 66). However it is now Kant’s star that Hildesheim: Olms. is waning, for since Gadamer has forcefully undermined the estranged intellectualism of nicholas davey Kant’s aesthetic and reasserted the truth claim of the aesthetically immediate, the virtues of Baumgarten’s initial position are apparent. Beardsley, Monroe C(urtis) (1915–1985) Contemporary debates about the distinctness American philosopher of art and literary cri- of aesthetic as opposed to scientific knowledge, ticism. While having contributed importantly recent appeals to an intuitive sense of aesthetic to the philosophy of action, Beardsley devel- wholeness to mitigate between opposing oped extensively and defended articulately the interpretations, and attempts to defend per- twentieth century’s most influential aesthetic ceptions of unitary meanings in artworks theory since John Dewey. Growing out of the against deconstructive criticism, all indicate desire to provide a philosophical foundation for that Baumgarten’s aesthetics remains not the New Criticism as well as a sense that the arts merely relevant but ripe for serious philosoph- have a distinctive social and cultural place, ical reappraisal. the body of Beardsley’s aesthetic theory is

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beardsley, monroe c(urtis) supported at the heart by a conception of aes- that we do not need to know the meanings of thetic experience or an experience having aes- words as they were used when Wordsworth thetic character (whatever other character it was writing. Thus, it would be unreasonable may have too) and aesthetic value. to think that an author could successfully The latter notion is to be understood in write a piece that is ironical if an educated terms of the former, aesthetic value being, reader of the author’s time could not be reason- in Beardsley’s most considered view, a value ably expected to catch the irony in virtue of owing to a potentiality of artworks and other knowing how the language works (Beardsley relevantly similar objects to afford experiences 1982: 188–207). That a later reader should that, through cognition, characteristically be helped in appreciating the irony by reading involve “attention firmly fixed on a perceptual the author’s private correspondence is com- or intentional object; a feeling of freedom from patible with it not being necessary that such help concerns about matters outside that object; be generally provided for a full appreciation notable affect that is detached from practical of the work. Any residual indeterminacy of ends; the sense of exercising powers of dis- meaning is simply a matter of strict ambiguity. covery; and integration of the self and of its The artwork, though admittedly often a experiences” (1981: lxii). Objects which have very complex object, is an object nonetheless, such value provide experiences with aesthetic and our reasoning about its value and char- character in virtue of their “formal unity acter is not logically different from other sorts and/or the [typically human as well as formal] of reasoning about values. Beardsley resists regional qualities of a complex whole” (1982: both relativism and Kantian subjectivism in 22). The interpolation is worthy of special his account of aesthetic judgment. And while note, since Beardsley was intent on separating artworks can be judged from other points of view himself from formalist views such as those of – as we can judge literature for its truth value, Clive Bell and Roger Fry (1981: xvii). An art- for example – properly critical judgment is work itself is to be understood as an arrange- judgment that addresses the work from the ment of conditions in such an object intended aesthetic point of view. It manifests an interest to afford such an experience. in the aesthetic value of the work and defends Now, while “intention” plays an import- its judgments by referring to the aesthetic ant part in Beardsley’s notion of an artwork, qualities of the work. These qualities are con- his best-known doctrine is that it is a fallacy dition-governed (Beardsley 1982: 99–110). to hold that appeal to information about That is, they are causally generated by the the artist’s intention is indispensable for deter- nonaesthetic perceptual or intentional quali- mining the meaning or aesthetic character ties of the work in the way that a gestalt of an artwork (Beardsley & Wimsatt 1946). is causally conditioned by perceptual and Whatever the peculiar causal conditions semantic features that constitute the local entering into the creation of art, the artist’s qualities of a figure. Beardsley thus wants to set intentions being among them, the aesthetic strict limits on the contextual determination of features of the work are themselves indepen- the character of the artwork. dently perceivable. This gives the work a The artwork, then, does have contextual critical autonomy. and causal conditions, some of which might be A central aspect of the theory here, taking the called institutional, but Beardsley resists the especially difficult case of a literary work, is institutional definition of art most saliently that the work as such be understood to be not represented in the work of George Dickie. He itself a speech act but, rather, the imitation worries that in gathering a sense of all the cul- or representation of a speech act (Beardsley tural dependencies that enter into the practice 1970). (An analogous point could be made of art, we will lose a sense of what makes art concerning any theory of art that considers special (1982: 356). Art is not, he says, essen- the work qua work to be an expressive act.) tially institutional (1982: 125–43). An essen- However, that we need not know the intentions tially institutional act is one that could of Wordsworth in order to fully appreciate not take place independent of the existence “A slumber did my spirit seal” does not mean of an institution – for example, depositing a

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beardsley, monroe c(urtis) paycheck in a bank account. Beardsley does well. Picasso may have wanted to protest the not deny that the creation of many artworks barbaric effects of war in painting Guernica, takes place within institutions, that is, as part but he understood that the only effective way of the day-to-day activity of those institutions. for him to do this as an artist was to make a Rather, his point is that art does not require such painting that would be aesthetically satisfying institutions. as well. Otherwise, assuming the point could still Think of Sunday painters or children’s art. It be made, the “work” would be merely polit- may be that some properties of some artworks ical commentary with no specially qualified – for instance, belonging to a genre – are insti- expertise to recommend it, the merits of his tutionally conditioned, but that does not make human lamentation notwithstanding. Speaking the writing of a poem essentially institutional. of Duchamp’s Fountain during a seminar, Nor is the existence of art essentially dependent Beardsley quipped that one might be able to res- on the presence of some theory of art that cue the gesture as a minor work of art were we allows or disallows one to ascribe entitlement to think of it as a joke pointed at the jury of to art status, though some artists create with the- judges for the exposition. That the joke was ories in mind about what they are doing. Are made by an artist acting as a critic created not there certain normal kinds of aesthetic qualities an artwork difficult to understand as such but that are essentially institutional? Beardsley a critical confusion for generations to come of leaves open the possibility that there may be. artists, critics, and philosophers of art. Artists If so, then art would perhaps turn out to be may also be critics, of course, but that does not essentially institutional in certain ways in the make criticism art. normal case (which is perhaps a peculiar kind of essence). But even so, it would not follow that See also twentieth-century anglo-american we should not look for how art functions quite aesthetics; aesthetic attitude; aesthetic generally to satisfy certain basic human needs properties; “artworld”; bell; definition of and interests – that is, aesthetic interests. An “art”; “intentional fallacy”; interpretation. answer to the question “What things are called ‘art’ by artistic establishments?” is no bibliography substitute for an answer to the question “What is art?” Primary sources The alternative view, to wit that a sufficient 1946. (& Wimsatt, W. K., Jr.) “The Intentional condition for creating a work of art is that Fallacy,” Sewanee Review, 54, 3–23; extensively an action or object be given the status of art reprinted. by suitably qualified status-conferring actions 1966. Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present. or persons, makes the creation of an artwork New York: Macmillan. a nearly senseless act. Writing about artistic 1970. The Possibility of Criticism. Detroit: Wayne creation, Beardsley features the importance of State University Press. a negative critical judgment in the process of 1981. Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism. 2nd edn. Indianapolis: Hackett. creating a work of art. While not having a pre- 1982. The Aesthetic Point of View. M. Wreen & D. Callen cise idea of a goal to be achieved in the work, (eds.). Ithaca: Cornell University Press. the artist is sensitive to the conditions that make for aesthetic value. The effect of an art- Secondary sources making action will be allowed to stand as part 2005. “Symposium: Monroe Beardsley’s Legacy in of the work only if it does not produce the judg- Aesthetics,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, ment that the result weakens expressive regional 63, 175–95. intensity or formal unity in the object that is Davies, Stephen. 1991. Definitions of Art. Ithaca: taking shape (Beardsley 1982: 239–62). Thus, Cornell University Press, ch. 3. echoing traditional expressionist theories of Wreen, Michael. 2005. “Beardsley’s Aesthetics.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. E. N. art, the artist discovers what her work is about Zalta (ed.). Available at http://plato.stanford.edu/ in the process of making it, but the process as entries/beardsley-aesthetics/ a whole has been guided by an aesthetic inter- est. Of course other interests may be present as donald callen

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beauty beauty is a topic of great philosophical inter- Those who think that beauty is undiscussable est and one that is relatively unexplored. Few have another familiar objection: tastes differ, and would deny its importance, and yet the mere of two incompatible judgments it is impossible suggestion that it be defined drives intelligent to prove that one is right. This is an idea that people to witless babble. They suppose that the has haunted the literature since the eighteenth first and obvious requirement is to prove that century. I believe it comes from assuming beauty is “objective”; that it is not “in the eye that to define a term is to offer a criterion for its of the beholder.” They assume that the burden application. A definition of X is thought of as of proof lies on those who maintain that utter- answering the question, “By what marks can I ances of the form “O is beautiful” are either true recognize a case of X?” Three observations: or false, and they also assume that no proof will First, if what is wanted is a test, then beauty be forthcoming, that only very unsophisticated is indefinable, but so are most terms of every- persons think that such judgments are “objec- day language. Definitions that tell me how to tive.” The suggestion is that, until what is recognize an X are found in legal textbooks, assumed to be impossible has been achieved, in formal logic, in the physical sciences, but there is no point in talking about beauty. rarely elsewhere. Second, a definition presents But this is all pretentious nonsense: the two terms as equivalent, but equivalent with unhappy metaphor in which a complex episte- respect to what? Do they apply to the same mological problem is presented as a question items? Do they have the same meaning? Is the about what is or is not “out there” is multiply equivalence something discovered, or some- ambiguous. As a remedial first step, consider the thing stipulated? It all depends on what you want following: beauty is linked with appreciation, so to use the definition for, what function it plays if all human beings died, then there would be in your inquiry. Developing a philosophical no one to do the appreciating and no claim theory is not like putting together a manual that something was beautiful would be true. But for beginners. When Russell and Frege argue under such circumstances, no claim of any about how to define number, they are not kind would be true since there would be no thinking about helpful clues that will help the claims – no sentences uttered. If that is the ordinary person recognize a number. Third, a idea, then truth, as well as beauty, is “in the eye term of everyday language – “beauty,” say – is of the beholder.” On the other hand, if beauty’s indefinable in the sense of lacking criteria for being in the eye of the beholder is supposed to application. You can make up a definition if you mean that everything is equally beautiful or want to and perhaps force everyone to adopt it. that nothing is beautiful, then the hypothesis But then you will have to invent another term needs the backing of a developed theory, since to do the job that had been done by “beauty.” in an ordinary way of thinking it is false. This is a general point, but it is important for Beauty is not more equally distributed than is the theory of the beautiful, since we are often height or intelligence. Perhaps there are people tempted to look for rules or principles that to whom nothing is beautiful: they are either would bolster our particular preferences. Kant deprived or very depressed. was the first philosopher to see how empty Even if it were cleaned up, the inside/outside such attempts must be. question would be premature. How the taking A final and inconsequential obstacle: it is of something to be beautiful fits into our over- said that “beauty” is not the right term to focus all scheme, whether the cognitive idiom is on because it carries the suggestion of something appropriate to such takings – is a question mildly pleasing and nonstrenuous, thereby that presupposes some understanding and inter- excluding much great art. (How many times pretation of the phenomena. To prove that have we been told that neither the ceiling of thinking something beautiful is, so to speak, all the Sistine Chapel nor King Lear nor late there is, or that what we take to be aesthetic Beethoven quartets are “beautiful”?) This is pleasure is some other kind of gratification in just pedantry: in eighteenth-century critical disguise, we have to be able to characterize parlance where, in accord with the now for- the alleged illusion, to explain what it is that gotten theory of genres, the beautiful was people mistakenly take to be the case. divided from the “sublime,” the “picturesque,”

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beauty the “pathetic,” and so forth, it had a point, Kant, and, in the present century, Dewey, although even then it was one known only Santayana, and a handful of later writers. to insiders. Nonexperts then and now apply The popular conception – that there is a vast the term “beautiful” across the board, and the literature, many theories, as many as there are same is true for its cognate in other languages. theorists – is false. It is also a mistake to Anyone who thinks “aesthetic value” is an assume that the views that we do have are improvement is free to adopt it – but then it in conflict with one another. On questions of has to be explained: beauty is a good, so ontology, theory of knowledge, and ethics, “value” is appropriate, but what do you say Plato, Hume, and Kant represent very different about “aesthetic”? positions, and such differences emerge in their Once we set aside the questions that have been analyses of the beautiful. But with respect to supposed to block inquiry, we are free to con- what it is that needs analysis, the characteriza- sider the role that aesthetic considerations play tion of the data, their views converge. There are in our lives. We care a lot about good appear- differences of emphasis but, by and large, these ance: to be beautiful, to have good-looking are complementary rather than competitive. children, nice clothes, a fine house – these are Furthermore, the philosophers’ consensus is in accounted blessings. People work long and accord with common sense – that is, with the hard, inspired by the hope that what they opinion of reflective laypeople. achieve may be beautiful – and not just artists Certain propositions are taken to need no but gardeners and industrial designers. Our argument: they are not axioms or a priori perceptions of beauty are deeply intertwined in truths but commonplaces derived from experi- the complexities of our affective lives. Why ence and observation. Some examples: does a mere house inspire in me feelings of 1 Beauty is a kind of good, a “positive value.” pride? “Because it is mine and because I think 2 Beauty is linked with pleasure: what we it beautiful” is an answer that anyone can take to be beautiful we enjoy. The converse understand. Think further of the role that does not hold, since we enjoy things that we “because it is beautiful” plays in explanations do not think beautiful or even seemly. of such emotions as envy, love, ambition, solic- 3 Beauty inspires love and thus acquires its itude. It is not only in the theory of affect that power as an element of motivation. such considerations figure. No account of 4 Appreciation of beauty depends on percep- deliberation or practical reason that did not tion or, if abstract entities are in question, allow them their proper weight could be on some other form of acquaintance. adequate. What is at issue in particular cases Hence our findings are, as one might say, may be momentous (which one shall I marry?) all first-personal, and discussions of a piece or minor (where shall we spend our vacation?) of music that is described but never heard or trivial (shall I buy this potholder?). But there are necessarily vacuous. is no decision in which what Kant calls “the 5 The claim, when it is serious, that a par- judgment of taste” may not play a role, and ticular item is beautiful brings into play a in some contexts it is decisive. So there is every kind of judgment that is distinctive – not to reason to recognize that beauty is a basic be subsumed under the heading of prac- and indispensable concept in whatever sense tical or theoretical judgment. Kant was the one could say the same of knowledge, belief, first to make it explicit and recognize its wrongdoing, logical validity, or virtue. importance. To say of beauty that it is relatively unexplored is just to observe that many great philosophers The five propositions listed provide a basis to treat it in a perfunctory manner or not at all. build on. Taken together, they suggest a num- None of the system-builders of the seventeenth ber of further propositions. Thus, if, as accord- century – not Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, ing to proposition 4, ascription of beauty to an Berkeley, Leibniz – has anything much to say individual, O, requires that the ascriber be about the beautiful. Who, then, have made acquainted with O, then it appears that, what- significant contributions? Plato, for one, ever the warrant for the ascription may be, Aquinas and some of the medievals, Hume, it cannot depend on inference from general

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beauty principles. A major premise for a syllogism that has to “participate” in beauty, then – well, you had “O is beautiful” as its conclusion would can see the difficulties. Maybe the story of the have to be of unrestricted generality, like “All progressive ascent from handsome youth to roses are beautiful,” which, in contrast with absolute beauty is not really Plato’s considered “All the roses in this vase are beautiful,” view; the account comes from the Symposium, requires commitment with respect to an where it is attributed by Socrates to Diotima, indefinitely large number of hitherto unexam- a prophetess. ined roses – and this is incompatible with Or consider Kant, so clear and persuasive on proposition 4. the main points, yet he has the weird idea that When it comes to determining what is beau- when I judge something beautiful, I am focus- tiful, no interesting, law-like generalizations ing not on the thing but on what Kant sees as are available. Kant puts it plainly: there are a command (something like the categorical no principles of taste. Kant takes his claim to be imperative) that every human being must self-evident, but it is not – as appears from the assent to my claim. Admittedly, it is true that manifest convictions of many to the effect that if I think I am right, I will expect competent peers unless there are principles of taste, the judg- to concur in my judgment, but to demand that ment of taste must be “merely subjective.” everyone agree with me seems a most illiberal Kant’s greatest contribution is his recognition and anti-Enlightenment requirement. Here that what is posed as a dilemma is not a again, there may be a way of squaring Kant’s dilemma; that while there is something to be doctrine with commitment to freedom of explained, there is no forced option; and that the thought and expression, but what way has yet singular judgment of taste, “O is beautiful,” to be made out. despite lack of principled support, is (some- Hume’s mistake was fairly basic: he is prob- times at least) a valid judgment. Although ably the originator of the idea of a dilemma – Kant puts his negative thesis with respect to prin- that only if there are principles of taste can we ciples as an a priori truth that needs no argu- grant that some judgments of taste are true ment, it is perhaps helpful to see that his point and others false. Hume believed that there was can be derived from, or at least supported by, some conflict between holding on the one proposition 4. What proposition 4 amounts to hand that a speaker, in making a judgment of is the claim that the judgment of taste is, in a taste, manifests not his beliefs but his “senti- radical sense, an empirical judgment. ments” and recognizing, on the other, that The virtual consensus among historical some judgments – such as the judgment that authors with respect to the phenomenal char- Ogilby (a now forgotten poet) is the equal of acteristics of the beautiful should not stand in Milton – are not merely false but absurd. the way of our noting that none of the traditional Hume tries to solve the problem by proposing accounts is wholly adequate. Plato, for instance, that there are principles of taste, but very elu- appears to believe that spiritual progress, sive ones, difficult to discern and impossible to anchored in a love of the beautiful, moves (if all formulate. (This is like claiming that there are goes well) from appreciation of the particular – moral principles but that it is not possible to cite as might be, a handsome youth – to the more any examples.) Hume’s epistemological com- general – what handsome youths have in com- mitments lead him to a kind of waffling that Kant mon – thence to the beauty of social institutions was careful to avoid, although when Hume (the “just state”), and finally to a grasp of the forgets his theories, he is as clear-sighted as form of absolute beauty. If we grant the five anyone has ever been. propositions listed above, then beauty belongs In fact, the conflict that worried him need not only to individuals, and Plato’s second step is a have arisen: it depends entirely on his assump- false step. Moreover, Plato’s account is full of tion that the motive of an utterance is decisive apparent incoherencies: earthly items become in determining its claim to have a truth value. beautiful by “participating” in the form, He is therefore led to believe that, given their beauty, and that form is said to be itself the most provenance, judgments of taste, like moral beautiful of all. But the good is also said to be judgments, are beyond the reach of reason and the most beautiful of all forms, and if the good hence neither true nor false. Hume offers no

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beauty arguments for this claim, one that surely needs melancholy music causes hearers to feel defense. It would have astonished Plato and melancholy by “imitating” melancholy feel- Aristotle. (In a fit of passion, I shout out, ings. For reasons connected with his meta- “Socrates is a Greek!”; in a moment of cool physical doctrines, he supposed such music to reflection, I murmur, “Alcibiades is beautiful.” be doubly hazardous: first, because it arouses There may be questions about truth claims, negative emotions, and, second, because what but they are not questions that are settled by dis- it imitates or represents is not part of true covery of my emotional state at the time of reality but an aspect of the bungled world of utterance.) appearance and becoming. The practice of the The preceding observations about Plato, arts, he argues, must be strictly controlled Kant, and Hume are meant to suggest that the because art is both deceptive and demoralizing. philosophers who have contributed most to Aristotle is another who is less concerned the analysis of the beautiful have raised issues with the beauty of the arts than with their of consequence and have left us with many psychological effects, which, in contrast to problems to solve. They present a challenge to Plato, he takes to be mainly benign. To be anyone who takes the topic seriously. Why moved by an imitation of wrongful action or has the discussion languished? bad feeling is good: vicarious satisfaction of You might think that philosophical aesth- our own antisocial wishes makes us less rather etics is the study of the beautiful, but that is than more likely to model ourselves on the not how things have turned out. From its mid- doomed characters depicted on the Attic stage. eighteenth-century beginnings when it first Medieval authors, drawing on what was avail- became an academic subject in German uni- able to them from the classical tradition, versities, aesthetics has been mainly con- take beauty seriously but show a kind of ambi- cerned with the fine arts. Kant’s Critique of valence about the arts. The delight we take Judgment (1790) is the first work that can be said in pageantry, music, ornamentation, and sculp- to offer a systematic theory of beauty, but Kant ture is seductive and may lead us away from was the last philosopher to consider nature on our spiritual vocation. On the other hand, an equal footing with the arts. Indeed, because the arts, by way of fable or allegory, prefigure of his preoccupation with the “sublime” as a for simple folk truths of faith that are abstract bridge between aesthetics and ethics, and his and difficult to grasp. Manifest physical beauty hope of preserving what he felt was valuable in is a clue to and a reminder of the beauty that the “Argument from Design,” he pays more is higher but less obvious – namely, the beauty attention to natural phenomena than to works of the virtuous soul secure in its faith. of art. Another persistent theme is that the world as The shift of focus from the concept of beauty a whole is an object for admiration and pleasure. to the idea of a unitary enterprise called “art” The creator in Plato’s Timaeus had wanted to happened gradually, and can escape notice make a kosmos, fine in every detail and beauti- because works of art were always among the ful as a whole. One article of the Manichaean items taken as exemplars of the beautiful. The heresy was the claim that the world is in a con- expression “work of art” itself is a honorific stant state of strife between good and evil. title that belongs not just to any old poem or Scholastic philosophers bent on refutation of that painting but to those that are deemed notably view found it helpful to emphasize the intimate beautiful. But works of art can be studied from connection between the beautiful and the many different points of view, and are interest- good. In the face of the facts, it is harder to argue ing for reasons other than their aesthetic that God is benevolent and just than to argue value. Plato was the first to see that because that God is an artist who needs contrasts – drama, music, and poetry have powerful emo- shadows to make brightness more striking, dis- tional effects, statesmen and educators can put cords that can be harmoniously resolved. the arts to work in support of political goals, What properties of the universe as a whole worthy or unworthy. Plato also thought that make it beautiful? The answer is going to what later ages were to call the “fine arts” have to be fairly abstract and not susceptible to were essentially mimetic; that, for instance, disconfirmation, since we have only our own

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beauty world to appreciate and nothing to compare this is a loose way of speaking. The only true it with. Thus the notion of “unity in variety” beauty is that which is “born again of the comes to the fore, often embellished with mind,” and hence to be found only in human fanciful doctrines of ratio and proportion. beings and in the works of art that they Presumably Pythagorean in origin, these doc- create. trines exercise a strange fascination over Hegel was the first to recognize that, theorists and artists alike; by the time of the although artistic beauty may be timeless, to Renaissance they are a familiar obsession. As for understand a work from an alien or bygone the beauty of the kosmos, you can appreciate it culture requires research: you have to learn without being a believer or thinking of the about the social, economic, and ideological kosmos as a work of art. Because of the size and context in which the work was produced. duration of the universe, you cannot grasp it as Conversely, once you get the point, you can use a whole, but this is not fatal: it can be seen as the work as a key to what Hegel refers to as “the a limiting case of the difficulty of getting a fix spirit of the age.” To the extent that “the phi- on extremely long novels or operas. None- losophy of X” is conceived as an attempt to dis- theless, it is a thought that impressed the cover the meaning of X, Hegel’s insight is the medievals more than subsequent generations. discovery that the philosophy of art, rather It is perhaps echoed on a smaller scale in the than being an independent subject, is identical reflections of philosophically unpretentious with the history of art – or at any rate its his- astronauts who have found our planet, seen from tory seen through the eyes of a philosopher. afar, fragile, solitary, and beautiful. Hegel’s own version is interesting. He believed The story of the progressive institutionaliza- that all history is at bottom a sort of psycho- tion of the arts and of their elevation to a social biography of “absolute spirit,” in the course of status comparable with that of the professions which the subject undergoes dialectical vicissi- has been told by historical scholars. Out of the tudes; conflicts and contradictions are resolved miscellany of crafts and techniques – some and the resolution generates new contradic- messy and manual, like painting and sculp- tions. Hegel also put forward the peculiar ture, some intellectual and refined, like music hypothesis that art is about to come to an end and poetry – there emerged the notion of art as and is to be replaced by a yet higher and more a unitary enterprise, and with it the belief that evolved spiritual form: namely, philosophy. it was important to determine what the essen- Academic aesthetics has accepted and tial characteristics of art may be. The arts are absorbed one part of Hegel’s legacy and obviously very different, and yet there does ignored another part. What was accepted was seem to be some bond. A straightforward and the view that mere nature is aesthetically seemingly uncontentious suggestion is that defective and just sits there in its dumb way works of art are artifacts that are beautiful; as subject matter for the creative artist. This and that suggestion, although rarely accepted assumption, although understandable, has as adequate, lurks in the background of tradi- had some bad consequences for aesthetic tional theories of beauty. This explains the fact theory. On the other hand, few aestheticians that, until the early nineteenth century, there have appreciated the merit of Hegel’s claims is no sharp distinction between explications of about the importance of history – which is beauty and explications of what we might call why much of the best work in the philosophy artistic excellence or merit. The big break came of art has been done not by professional with Hegel, who worked on such questions as philosophers but by philosophically minded that suggested by passing queries of Horace’s – art historians and scholars. namely, how much of an affinity does narrative What is wrong with taking philosophical poetry have with painting? What does the aesthetics to be the study of art as distinct from medium dictate? Is it illuminating to think of such items as landscapes or persons or the uni- architecture as “frozen music”? Hegel’s con- verse as a whole? In a way, there is nothing tribution was to propose that, while common wrong: when we believe of something mar- people characterize as “beautiful” landscapes, velous that it was made by another human plants, or animals that happen to please them, being, our admiration and interest acquire

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beauty added dimensions; we raise questions about Many people would find it enough to say technique, intentions, motives, feelings that that aesthetics covers any question that is would be inappropriate were the item in ques- directly or indirectly connected with criticism tion taken to be the accidental product of nat- or the arts. All right – but then was not ural forces. Besides, it may be that some works Baumgarten mistaken in thinking that he had of art are more beautiful than any such prod- discovered a new subject? One suggestion: uct. Plato did not believe this and neither did works of art do have something in common, but Kant, but it still might be true. it is not peculiar to works of art. Works of art The difficulty lies deeper, and has to do with are humanly made items that are preemin- our grasp of what it is to find something beau- ently beautiful. They exhibit a kind of good- tiful. There are works of art that you cannot ness, although possibly in higher degree, that appreciate or understand without some back- is also manifest in particular persons, rivers, ground and knowledge of the relevant conven- mountains, animals, and plants. If this is so, tions (Hegel’s point): polyphony is chaotic to philosophical aesthetics needs to return to the someone unfamiliar with counterpoint; Picasso question of the nature of beauty and to try looks primitive (or crazy) to someone who has to develop the insights of past philosophers in never encountered anything other than anec- a systematic way. dotal nineteenth-century painting. And yet, as one might put it, everything that is there is See also aesthetics in antiquity; medieval there. Acquaintance with Bach’s fugues or the and renaissance aesthetics; eighteenth- preoccupations of Cubist artists may lead you century aesthetics; aesthetic attitude; to notice features that you had not noticed aesthetic judgment; aesthetic properties; before, but beliefs about a picture are not aristotle; “artworld”; dewey; hegel; hume; visual properties of the picture, and knowing kant; plato; santayana; sublime; taste; tes- how a fugue is supposed to work is not like timony in aesthetics; theories of art. adding a fourth voice. If you look and listen and are patient enough, then, even without bibliography instruction, you will eventually see what Aristotle. 1941. Poetics. In The Basic Works of Picasso or Bach is up to. And then there are cases Aristotle. R. McKeon (ed.). New York: Random where you really do not know. John Dewey House. asks us to imagine an interesting little piece of Brand, Peg Zeglin (ed.). 2000. Beauty Matters. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. stone that is first classified as a geological acci- Dewey, John. 1934. Art as Experience. New York: dent, then as an artifact, a tool, and then as an Minton, Balch. artifact that has a symbolic or aesthetic func- Hegel, G. W. F. 1920 [1835–8]. Philosophy of Fine tion – asks us to consider how it is moved from Art. 4 vols. F. P. B. Osmaston (trans.). London: one museum to another and how we look at G. Bell & Sons. it in different ways depending on how it is Hume, David. 1960 [1739]. A Treatise of Human described. Changes of belief may, but need not, Nature. L. A. Selby-Bigge (ed.). Oxford: Clarendon. affect appreciation: if I like the way the little thing Hume, David. 1965 [1757]. Of the Standard of Taste. looks or how it feels when I hold it in my hand, J. W. Lenz (ed.). New York: Bobbs-Merrill. then my state is one of appreciation and I am Kant, Immanuel. 1964 [1790]. Critique of Judgement. J. C. Meredith (trans.). Oxford: Clarendon. on the threshold of a judgment of taste. Mothersill, Mary. 1984. Beauty Restored. Oxford: To say that only works of art are beautiful is Clarendon. as paradoxical as saying that only wrongful Osborne, Harold. 1952. Theory of Beauty. London: actions are bad. A terrible catastrophe occurs: Routledge. someone says, “I can’t say whether it was bad Plato. 1920. Ion, Symposium, Phaedrus, Republic.B. or not until I know whether it was deliberately Jowett (trans.). New York: Random House. brought about by an agent.” We find ourselves Santayana, George. 1902. The Sense of Beauty. New in an alpine meadow bright with wild flowers: York: Scribner. someone says, “I can’t tell you whether this Zangwill, Nick. 2001. The Metaphysics of Beauty. is beautiful or not until I know whether it is Ithaca: Cornell University Press. a garden.” mary mothersill

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Bell, (Arthur) Clive (Heward) (1881–1964) first and second Post-Impressionist exhibitions British art critic; an early champion of Post- in 1910 and 1912. (It is worth adding that Impressionist and abstract art. Convinced that much later in life, in his preface to the 1949 edi- little had been so far achieved in aesthetics, tion of Art, Bell allows that he spoke “absurdly Bell proposed a fresh start: a return to basic and impertinently of the giants of the High personal experience of authentic works of art. Renaissance.”) In his book Art (1914), he took as basic a With some diffidence, he now ventures a distinctive “kind of emotion,” “aesthetic emo- “metaphysical hypothesis.” To experience the tion,” and a quality “common and peculiar purely formal, we have to strip off the everyday to all the objects that provoke it.” In visual art, human significance of objects in the world and Bell’s main concern, this quality must arise abandon seeing them merely as means to our from certain “forms and relations of forms,” practical ends. To contemplate them as pure “relations and combinations of lines and forms, as “ends in themselves” or “things in colours.” Why these arouse aesthetic emo- themselves,” is to reach a vision of “ultimate real- tion we do not know: we have to postulate ity,” to become aware of “the God in every- “unknown and mysterious laws” whereby thing ...the all-pervading rhythm.” Here “the particular forms constitute for us “significant chatter and tumult of material existence is form,” as Bell labels it. unheard.” Not surprisingly, Bell sets together “art Creating and responding to significant form and religion as twin manifestations of the is a very different matter from furnishing and spirit,” two roads “to ecstasy.” Similarly, there receiving information through purely descriptive, is no special problem, for Bell, in relating the illustrative painting (e.g., William Powell Frith’s values of art and the values of morality. In Paddington Station); different, too, from evoking fulfilling its proper task of facilitating aesthetic and reliving the varied emotions of human life. experience, an intrinsically excellent state of In authentic art, the painted forms are them- mind, art ministers directly to one of the fun- selves the objects of our (aesthetic) emotion, damental forms of goodness. Bell explicitly not the “means of suggesting emotion and models his thinking here on G. E. Moore’s conveying ideas.” The proper goal of art is not Principia Ethica (1903). the perfecting of mimetic accuracy through Clive Bell’s bold, unitary, simple theory of technical virtuosity. For imitation, we now, in art has been a tempting target for criticism by any case, have the camera. Where painting is analytical philosophers, skeptical of specula- concerned, if “a representative form has value, tive systems as such. They have seen it as it is as form, not as representation.” failing to present a genuinely informative ver- What we should look for and hope to expe- dict about human experience of art. His main rience in art, then, is what we seldom experi- concepts (“work of art,” “aesthetic emotion,” ence in life outside art – the aesthetic thrill, “significant form”) constituted, rather, a self- rapture, or ecstasy. For all the inexhaustible supporting set, defined in terms of one another: variety of styles, idioms, and media throughout they achieved no triumph of comprehensive the history of art, the same thrill that testifies explanation, since they were not really open to to significant form is the vital constant feature empirical confirmation or falsification. The of genuine art. It is common to Sumerian analytical philosopher tended thus to dismiss sculpture, archaic Greek art, sixth-century Bell’s theory as metaphysical in a bad sense, as Byzantine art; to Giotto, Poussin, and Cézanne, simplistic or, indeed, vacuous. Nevertheless, with his “insistence on the supremacy of signi- there is some reason to see these critics as ficant form.” But from the High Renaissance to themselves simplifying and distorting Bell’s the Impressionists, Bell sees numerous highly position. regarded painters as failing in the crucial Bell certainly believed his theory to be respect. His aesthetic theory supported radical anchored in individual experience – experi- revisions in the estimation of artistic achieve- ence of one characteristic type evoked by art from ment, and in particular gave a theoretical war- primitives to Post-Impressionists. He cannot rant to the efforts of Roger Fry and Clive Bell give a formula for what evokes it; but he himself to win acceptance for the artists of the knows that formal structures, not narrative or

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bell, (arthur) clive (heward) sentimental matter, are its source. Many read- neighbors: for instance, a contemplative with- ers of Bell, again, deny that there exists any drawal of ordinary concepts and categories distinctive aesthetic emotion. Should we not may feature in some mystical states of mind. Yet speak, instead, of the “aesthetic attitude,” con- Bell is not a clear-headed guide in this area: he templatively disengaged from practical con- slides, rather than convincingly argues, from talk cerns (Dickie 1965)? But surely that would be of nonutility perception to perception of objects too remote from what Bell meant by “aesthetic as ends in themselves, as things-in-themselves, emotion,” for we can take up an aesthetic atti- as reality, and as God in everything. tude to an object which (because of its lack of Bell should not be judged on one book alone. satisfying formal unity) does not in the event In his later writing, “significant form” became sustain or reward that attitude. Closer to Bell a more elusive quality, and art criticism corres- might be a response of admiration, delight, and pondingly a more difficult and more fallible a wonder to an individual achievement of formal task. Significant form may manifest itself in a unity. That would capture the essential recep- shock or sudden thrill to the passive spectator, tivity, without insisting on a specific aesthetic yielding a judgment that subsequent study emotion – though that too cannot be dogmat- in detail and depth cannot properly modify or ically denied (see Meager 1965). overlay. Conversely, an analytical grasp of a Art was an eloquent and much needed re- work’s form cannot reverse an unfavorable appraisal of sentimental, literary, and moraliz- holistic emotional response. Form is “signific- ing painting. Did it, however, react excessively ant” in later Bell if, but only if, it cannot be against the according of aesthetic value to rep- further worked on, refined, simplified, and resentation as such? Bell himself came to real- intensified by an artist in an artwork. Nature’s ize that there were complexities that he had shied forms are therefore not in the strong sense away from in Art. More basically, though, significant. They become so only when an the very distinction of “form” and represented artist realizes their potentiality (see also Elliott “content” cannot be sharply maintained – a 1965). fact of high importance to aesthetic theory. In countless paintings, the way we apprehend See also twentieth-century anglo-american the represented subject matter – its overall aesthetics; aesthetic attitude; aestheticism; expressive quality – is a function of the design, formalism; langer; religion and art. pattern, and textures in and through which the subject matter is represented. So, too, the bibliography emotions, attitudes, and appraisals evoked by the Primary sources form are inseparable from our awareness of [1914] 1987. Art. 3rd edn. J. B. Bullen (intro.) what these same forms are representing. Those Oxford: Oxford University Press. are, in fact, crucial strategies by which art inten- 1922. Since Cézanne. London: Chatto & Windus. sifies and extends human experience. Again, 1934. Enjoying Pictures. London: Chatto & Windus. where we perceive formal unity as being won Secondary sources from heterogeneous or conflictful materials, Dean, Jeffrey. 1996. “Clive Bell and G. E. Moore: The we can appreciate that triumph of the formal Good of Art,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 36, only if we also, and first, respond to the diver- 136–45. sity and the tensions. We must experience the Dickie, George. 1965. “Clive Bell and the Method of recalcitrance, the near refusal, of some (per- Principia Ethica,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 2, haps chaotic, or tragic) represented material to 139–43. be contained and assimilated within any form, Elliott, R. K. 1965. “Clive Bell’s Aesthetic Theory before we can appreciate fully the fact that a and His Critical Practice,” British Journal of work of art has ordered and subdued it. In a Aesthetics, 2, 111–22. Gould, Carroll. 1994. “Clive Bell on Aesthetic word, the interplay and “fusion” of formal and Experience and Aesthetic Truth,” British Journal of representational elements needs a more complex Aesthetics, 34, 124–33. and balanced exploration. Lake, Beryl. 1954. “A Study of the Irrefutability of Two There is no doubt that aesthetic experience Aesthetic Theories.” In Aesthetics and Language. and religious experience can be very near W. Elton (ed.). Oxford: Blackwell, 100–13.

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Meager, Ruby. 1965. “Clive Bell and Aesthetic It is not just Benjamin’s legacy that is Emotion,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 2, 123–31. ambiguous: in his own lifetime he was different things to different friends and correspondents. ronald w. hepburn The bewildering array of sources he drew on – from Kant to Surrealism – makes it especially difficult to characterize his thinking. Benjamin Benjamin, Walter (1892–1940) German was a collector of both objects and quotations. philosopher and cultural/literary critic; influ- He refused to follow any fashion or Fach (spe- enced as much by Jewish mysticism as by cialty), and it is no surprise that his intended Surrealism and Marxism. Born in Berlin, he doctoral dissertation on baroque Trauerspiel committed suicide at age 48 on the Franco- (tragic drama) was rejected as incompre- Spanish border. He is recognized as one of the hensible by the faculties of both philosophy most important literary critics and aesthetic and German literature at the University of theorists that Germany produced in the twen- Frankfurt. Benjamin’s preferred method of tieth century. “immanent criticism” – theoretical principles had Such recognition was belated however. to emerge from the material or work being Only after T. W. Adorno’s 1955 publication of studied – was really no method at all. There are, selections from his work did Benjamin become nevertheless, certain motifs running through known to a wider public. Following decades his writings, which can be roughly sorted into of commentary in several languages, backed two phases. The first – more metaphysical or by a scholarly Gesammelte Schriften – from theological – extends as far as his Trauerspiel which were excerpted four volumes of Selected book. A second – more political and material- Writings (1996–2003) – Benjamin’s place in the ist in orientation – goes from 1925 almost to intellectual firmament of our time is assured. Yet the end of his life, and would include the enor- his thought is famous for its obscurity, which mous and unfinished Passagenwerk (“Arcades” stems from denseness of expression, the frag- Project). mentary nature of even the published works, and the apparent inconsistency of the positions benjamin’s early aesthetics he was drawn to in what he once called “the Benjamin’s theory of art was always a theory economy of my existence.” of experience (Erfahrung). In his first essays One interpretative problem lies in gauging he opposed the Neo-Kantians’ reduction of how far Benjamin should be considered an experience to empirical terms and their refusal aesthetic theorist at all. He took art to be sub- to allow the suprasensible as a possible object servient to theological, philosophical, and of knowledge. Influenced by Hamann, among political concerns; he also came to assume it was others, he viewed language as originally unified at an end, its “aura” of authenticity now in but now – after the fall into profane temporality decay. The ambiguity of his utterances may be – fragmented, severed from divine law. He seen in their diverse reception. He was brought thought initially that metaphysical “mimesis” to the attention of the Anglophone world by could capture the divine power of creative the 1969 publication of Illuminations, Hannah naming (for Benjamin, naming was the Arendt’s selection of essays (a volume supple- essence of language), so redeeming human mented in 1978 by a second, Reflections). experience. By the time of his 1919 thesis Implicitly – and openly in her introduction – on German Romantic Kritik (“Concept of Arendt denominated Benjamin a literary critic Criticism,” Selected Writings, i. 116–200) he no and “poetic thinker,” so taking issue with longer supposed that philosophy could accom- other perspectives that would view him as plish that. He suggested that art, however, was primarily a philosopher (Adorno), a metaphysi- capable – at least, art completed by a criticism cian of messianic bent (Gershom Scholem), or that would reveal its animating form or “idea.” a political theorist whose engagement with Benjamin’s practice of “immanent criticism” historical materialism was more than “a con- remained true to this Romantic principle. tingent peccadillo or tolerable eccentricity” The principle found immediate application (Terry Eagleton). in a brilliant 1922 essay on Goethe’s Elective

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Affinities (Selected Writings, i. 297–360). Only in conventional expression but as “expression of and through the novel’s historical specificity convention”: that is, it reflects on the finitude would its inner truth emerge – a truth remi- of a world that has lost the wholeness of Greek niscent of Benjamin’s own Kantian ethic. Art tragedy. In turn, allegory becomes the emblem occupies a fragile place between regression to of a modernity now understood as secularized mythic nature and election to moral grace. It and mortified history. Here we glimpse what offers no more than an image or “semblance” he calls the “smugglers’ path” preserving an (Schein) of human unity with the divine, hence esoteric past (Trauerspiel) within present con- a measure of hope; it cannot itself “create.” cerns (disenchantment, reification). Moreover, Ambivalence toward art is found also in the Protestant and melancholic contemplation work that sums up his early career, The Origin is revealed as a historico-political practice – of German Tragic Drama (1924–5). At times again, a secret path takes us to the political it reads like a parody of the dissertation it tendency in Benjamin’s work. was meant to be, scholarly footnotes jostling darkly brilliant insights and generalizations. the turn from theory Yet Benjamin wishes to avoid a universal The Trauerspiel book contains the seeds of aesthetics of tragedy; instead he aims to reha- much that followed. Benjamin celebrates, yet bilitate a specific historical genre, that of sev- also delimits, the momentary “semblance” of enteenth-century Protestant Trauerspiel. Only salvation art affords. The question he grappled after its specificity is grasped will he expand on with for the remainder of his life was this: how its significance, its “truth content”: historical could this essentially theological model of commentary precedes interpretative criticism. interpretation be transposed into a historical and The converse also holds, however: the historic- materialist register? While finishing his disser- ity of artworks, he wrote, in a letter of Decem- tation he had begun reading Georg Lukács, ber 1923 (1994: 224), emerges not in art history which, along with his meeting the young revo- but only in interpretation. lutionary Asja Lakis (who later introduced The so-called “epistemo-critical prologue” Benjamin to Brecht), helped make him a com- to the work – one of the densest bits of prose mitted Marxist. Around this time too, he anywhere – offers a unique reflection on chanced on the work of the Surrealists, whose his method. Benjamin aims at presentation play on contingent juxtapositions of ordinary (Darstellung) of the material in such a way that objects and investigation of dream logic left a the timeless, monadic “ideas” shine through: lasting impression on his subsequent projects. “Ideas are to objects as constellations are to The essay “Marseilles” carries an epigraph stars” (1977: 34). The metaphor of “constella- from André Breton which applies to much that tion” supplies one of his main concepts: the came later: “The street . . . the only valid field configuration of phenomena “saves” them of experience” (Selected Writings, ii. 232). In while also presenting their inner truth. The addition, fascination with Baudelaire and with first, more historical section, though, is taken up dreams led Benjamin to write (2006b) about the with the description of Trauerspiel. Benjamin experience of taking drugs: he was in search of notes that this was taken as historical fact, not an “aura” that would merge self and world, just theatrical device: the fallen state of history detect hidden similarities in all things. takes dramatic form. History is transposed to Marxism and Surrealism are central to spatial form, in the self-enclosed world of Benjamin’s ultimate project, the intended book stage or court; it is (as he puts it) “petrified” called “Paris, capital of the nineteenth cen- into nature. Trauerspiel tells sad stories of the tury” (also known as the “Arcades” Project, death of kings, whether tyrants or martyrs. after the glassed-in shopping streets he took as Compared with ancient tragedy, death appears emblematic of emergent modernity). Here a radically contingent; the bodies pile up with montage of quotations – “citing without quo- the ruins of the world. In the second part of his tation marks” – was to take over the function treatise, Benjamin shifts beyond the externals “criticism” had previously performed. Benjamin of the artwork toward its inner truth or idea – termed its principle the “dialectical image” or namely, allegory. This is understood not as “dialectics at a standstill.” “When thinking

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benjamin, walter reaches a standstill in a constellation saturated “now-time” that would blast through the con- with tensions, the dialectical image appears. tinuum of linear history. What remains constant The image is the caesura in the movement of throughout his life, however, is his antihistori- thought” (Benjamin 1999a: 475). In its initial cism, a commitment to rescuing the past in conception the project juxtaposed representative the name of the future, and a conviction that personages (Fourier, Grandville, Louis-Philippe, (to cite his Goethe essay) “only for the sake of Baudelaire, Haussmann) with physiognomic the hopeless ones have we been given hope” descriptions of the modern cityscape (World (Selected Writings, i.356). Exhibition, interior, flâneur sauntering through the arcade) taken as the commodified life- See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century world, a “phantasmagoria” of nature. Later continental aesthetics; adorno; lukács; mass on, influenced by the support of the Institute art; technology and art. for Social Research in New York, he made Baudelaire more central. The two essays he bibliography wrote (1973a) are a small but brilliant pre- cipitate from a mass of notes. His formal pro- Primary sources cedure remains controversial, however. Adorno 1969. Illuminations. H. Zohn (trans.). New York: criticized it as too reductively materialist, sus- Schocken. 1973a. Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of pended between “magic and positivism.” High Capitalism. H. Zohn (trans.). London: New During the 1930s, Benjamin wrote several Left Books. essays of remarkable originality on, for ex- 1973b. Understanding Brecht. A. Bostock (trans.). ample, Proust, Nikolai Leskov, and Kafka (to London: NLB. whom he felt especially close). From his associ- 1977. The Origin of German Tragic Drama. J. Osborne ation with Brecht came a number of important (trans.). London: NLB. studies on “epic theatre.” Benjamin’s material- 1978. Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiograph- ism is on display in essays on photography, ical Writings. E. Jephcott (trans.). New York: “The Author as Producer” (1934) and “The Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Work of Art in the Age of its Technological 1979. One-Way Street. E. Jephcott & K. Shorter (trans.). London: NLB. Reproducibility” (1935–6). This last – his most 1986. Moscow Diary. R. Sieburth (trans.). celebrated piece of writing – emphasizes condi- Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. tions of reception. Technology may be taken as 1989. The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and an extension of the lifeworld, but also as its Gershom Scholem, 1932–1940. A. LeFevere opposite, the congealing or mortification of (trans.). New York: Schocken. history. Photography and cinema have, he 1994. The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, contends, supplanted the “aura” of traditional 1910–1940. M. Jacobson & E. Jacobson (trans.). art (unique, individual, distanced) by commu- Chicago: Chicago University Press. nal experience and the immediate “shocks” of 1996–2003. Selected Writings. 4 vols. M. Bullock montage, yet may be of use in “politicizing art” & M. Jennings (eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. and so counteract Fascism’s “aestheticizing of 1999a. The Arcades Project. H. Eiland & K. politics.” This again brought down Adorno’s McLaughlin (trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard censure: he rejoined that Benjamin had over- University Press. estimated the emancipatory potential of mass 1999b. (with Adorno, T. W.) The Complete media while ignoring the critical function Correspondence, 1928–1940. N. Walker (trans.). of autonomous art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Benjamin’s last word and testament 2006a. Berlin Childhood around 1900. H. Eiland (though he might not have considered it ready (trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. for publication) is “On the Concept of History” 2006b. On Hashish. Cambridge, MA: Harvard – 18 runic fragments shored against a disastrous University Press. time (Hitler–Stalin pact, Nazi occupation of Secondary sources Poland). Meaning and context are more than Brodersen, Momme. 1996. Walter Benjamin: A usually controversial, as Benjamin seems to Biography. M. Green & I. Ligers (trans.). London: revisit his initial messianism to invoke a Verso.

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Buck-Morss, Susan. 1989. The Dialectics of Seeing: certain universal instincts and sentiments that Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project. are basic to human nature. Drawing upon a divi- Cambridge. MA: MIT Press. sion that had already acquired a limited currency Ferris, David (ed.). 2004. The Cambridge Companion to but the appeal of which his own essay did a great Walter Benjamin. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- deal to strengthen, he distinguishes between sity Press. pleasures of the kind intrinsic to the experience Löwy, Michael. 2005. Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s “On the Concept of History”. London: of beauty and the specific form of “delight” Verso. that he attributes to the experience of the sub- Osborne, Peter (ed.). 2005. Walter Benjamin: Critical lime. The source of the former is to be found in Evaluations in Cultural Theory. 3 vols. London: the “social passions,” predominantly that of Routledge. sex but also ones involving friendship and Rochlitz, Rainer. 1996. The Disenchantment of Art: sympathy with others. The latter, by contrast, The Philosophy of Walter Benjamin. New York: originates in our instinctual preoccupations Guilford. with self-preservation, and turns “mostly on martin donougho pain and danger.” The Enquiry is largely taken up with showing how such primal proclivities operate to induce these two types of aesthetic Burke, Edmund (1729–1797) Irish lawyer, response. politician, and, through his criticism of the So far as the experience of the sublime is French Revolution, a founder of modern con- concerned, it is requisite that its objects be servative thought. Born and educated in apprehended as being in some way “terrible” and Ireland, Burke graduated from Trinity College, hence capable of instilling fear or awe. Burke re- Dublin. His reputation chiefly rests on his polit- cognizes, however, that it seems paradoxical to ical career and writings: elected a Member of suggest that we can derive satisfaction from Parliament for the first time in the 1760s, he phenomena that threaten our lives or well- was the author of various trenchant political being. The solution he offers is that the experience books and pamphlets, including the famous is typically confined to situations in which we Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). are not ourselves placed in dangerous circum- These have tended to overshadow his early stances and only have an “idea” of these. Our Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas sense of the fearful, in other words, is felt at of the Sublime and Beautiful, a contribution to aes- a safe remove from the real thing; in con- thetics that was originally published in 1757 and sequence, it is able to tense and set in play reissued two years later in an enlarged edition. “the finer parts of the system” in a fashion that Some of the views it contains were anticipated is stimulating and invigorating without being by Joseph Addison’s 1712 Spectator articles noxious. As opposed to cases where we suffer on “the pleasures of the imagination,” and the actual terror, we are here conscious of a “sort introduction that Burke added to his second of delightful horror,” this being principally edition seems also to have been partly produced by images evocative of immense prompted by Hume’s essay “Of the Standard power or unfathomable dimensions. of Taste,” which had recently appeared. None- Similar considerations are adduced when theless, the Enquiry was of importance in its own Burke comes to connect the awareness of right. It attracted considerable attention in beauty with such fundamental passions as England, and an extended review by Moses love and sexuality. Just as the sublime is expe- Mendelssohn was instrumental in arousing a rienced when there is no question of our hav- comparable interest in the book in Germany, ing to ward off or avoid a present danger, so where it impressed both Lessing and Kant. experiences of the beautiful are distinguishable In common with much nineteenth-century from those of “desire or lust” that “hurry us on” British work on aesthetics, Burke’s investigation to the possession of certain coveted objects. is essentially explanatory and genetic in Instead, the relevant sentiments are trans- character. A notable feature of his approach, posed to, and modified within, a setting where however, lies in the manner in which he seeks they exert no active influence; we are caused to interpret aesthetic reactions in terms of to respond to particular things in a purely

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burke, edmund contemplative frame of mind, the pleasure In making such claims, Burke helped to involved – unlike that of the sublime – deriv- alter and enlarge the boundaries implicit in ing from their tendency to relax the “fibers” the taste and critical canons of his period: he and “solids” of the whole system. As might may be regarded, furthermore, as on occasions be expected, the qualities Burke identifies as anticipating themes that were to figure pro- being especially well suited to effecting this minently in the subsequent development of happy outcome carry erotic overtones: he refers, Romantic modes of thought. When he insists at for example, to smoothness (something expli- one point in the Enquiry on the failure of clear citly attributed to the skins of “fine women”), ideas or imagery to communicate impressions gradual variation of the kind exemplified by of grandeur, and when he asserts at another that “waving” and “serpentine” lines, and delicacy “it is our ignorance of things that causes all our or fragility. admiration and chiefly excites our passions,” his In his treatment of beauty Burke is insistent remarks seem far removed in spirit from that of that it requires “no assistance from our rea- an age that – in art as elsewhere – put a pre- soning” to appreciate it, and he goes to con- mium on the ideals of perspicuous representa- siderable if sometimes implausible lengths in tion and rational intelligibility. denouncing classical theorists who invoked mathematical criteria of measurable propor- See also eighteenth-century aesthetics; tion. Proportion is “a creature of the under- beauty; sublime. standing,” and as such it has no share in what properly belongs to “the senses and imagina- bibliography tion.” And a comparable emphasis on the cru- cial importance of perceptual immediacy and Primary sources imaginative potential is also apparent in his [1757, 1759] 1958. A Philosophical Enquiry into the account of the sublime. At the same time, Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. J. T. however, he is at pains to stress the distinctive Boulton (ed.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. role these play in the latter. For there it is Secondary sources not formal grace and elegance, together with Ayling, S. 1988. Edmund Burke: His Life and their sensuous associations, that elicit a psycho- Opinions. London: John Murray. physiological reaction. On the contrary, it is Engell, J. 1981. The Creative Imagination: Enlighten- characteristic of sublime objects or works of art ment to Romanticism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard that they should often be dark in tone and University Press. rugged or indistinct in outline. So presented, they Monk, S. H. 1960. The Sublime. Ann Arbor: are experienced as mysterious and obscure, University of Michigan Press. conveying intimations whose full import Wood, N. 1964. “The Aesthetic Dimension of Burke’s Political Thought,” Journal of British eludes our conscious grasp and whose very Studies, 4, 41–64. indeterminacy is apt to arouse sensations of uncertainty or apprehension. patrick gardiner

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canon The idiom of “canon” is relatively concept of apocrypha. There is a Shakespeare new in the theoretical debate about literature canon and a Shakespeare apocrypha. This and art. Until the early 1960s there were, instead, concept of a secular canon embodies the element debates about the nature, content, and value of of authenticity but it does not have the implicit traditions. The concept of tradition has not, of reference to authority. There is a good reason course, disappeared from the art critical vocab- for this. The criterion of “inspired,” which is the ulary, but the concept has ceased to be the only criterion for inclusion in the scriptural focus of an ongoing debate about the nature and canon, does not in itself dictate a protocol for value of past artworks and their relation to the testing whether a text is inspired or not. An art of the present. The concept of canon that authoritative decision is therefore indispens- came into use in the theory and criticism of able in identifying an “inspired” text. However, art in the 1960s was in its origin theological. there is a whole battery of tests available for This theological concept of canon is applied deciding whether a text has been written by a with two important criteria: authenticity and particular individual, from eyewitness accounts authority. The canon of scripture has been and publication records to textual and stylistic fixed by the authoritative organs of the Church. evidence. Thus, it is quite clear in the case of No matter how violent the disagreement before literary authorship what would constitute such decisions are taken, the official decision evidence for authenticity, while in the scriptural settles the matter. The logical basis on which case the criterion of inspiration provides little the Christian Church declares a work to be guidance as to what would constitute such rel- canonical is genetic: it has to be a text dealing evant evidence. with Old Testament or New Testament history A second concept of canon in use in literary which the Church decides is inspired. The con- criticism and theory is that of “a sanctioned nection between authority and the condition of or accepted group or body of related works” authenticity is closely related: the authorita- (Merriam-Webster). This is the concept of canon tive organ decides whether or not a text fulfills that first appears with a catalogue of authors the condition of being inspired. Thus, what in the fourth century specifically in relation appears to be the basic criterion for declaring to Christian literature. However, the practice a text canonical – that is, the criterion of of putting together a catalogue of selected authenticity (a text must be “genuine and authors arose long before the concept of “canon” inspired”) – though it is logically independent was introduced. It can be traced back to the from authority, has no independently valid Alexandrian philologists who were the first to application. put together a selection of earlier literature It is above all in the field of literary criticism for the use of grammarians in their schools that the concept of canon has been widely (Curtius 1953). A catalogue of this kind in- used. Within this field it is possible to distinguish volved the selection of model authors or, as three different applications of the concept with they later were called, “classics.” This notion of different relationships to the theological concept. canon is closely tied to institutional teaching and First, it is used to designate those writings of a learning. It can meaningfully and fruitfully secular author accepted as authentic (Oxford be used about the list of works that various English Dictionary). This concept, just like the modern teaching institutions set for students theological one, has as its complementary the of literature. It is different from the notion of a

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canon scriptural canon in that it contains no refer- etc.” (Oxford English Dictionary). This rule or ence to authenticity. It does, however, embody standard replaces the criterion of authenti- the notion of authority. The choice of books city as the criterion for inclusion. The canon in teaching institutions involves a selection, should comprise what is “best.” The logical which has to be made by people in authority. basis for pronouncing a work to be a canonical The catalogue of authors and works is pre- text of the scripture was genetic: it had to be scribed by a group of people who are, or who authentic (genuine and inspired). Works are think they are or ought to be, in a position of included in the literary canon on the basis authority to impose this list on those who are that they conform to a standard. Thus, in the students of literature. However, in spite of the identification of a literary canon there is not the similar logical role which authority plays in same close connection between authority and fixing the application of the concept of “literary the condition for inclusion as there is in the canon” and “canon of scripture,” there is a dif- identification of a canon of scripture. The stand- ference between the type of authority to which ard of judgment and the values that a canon the two concepts appeal as well as to the scope of literature is intended to exemplify can be of that authority. The authoritative organ that recognized without reference to authority. determines the scriptural canon has a status and The canon in this sense is essentially contin- a role within the Church that the authorities gent and plural. The choice of the standard to who determine the literary canon do not have. which the authors on the canonical list must The representatives to the National Conference conform will be determined by the immedi- on Uniform Entrance Requirements that was ate practical purposes that the catalogue of responsible for drafting the list of texts to be set authors/works is aimed at serving. In anti- for college entrance requirements in English quity the concept of the model author was in the US in 1894, and which was therefore oriented upon a grammatical criterion, the responsible for establishing a list of canonical criterion of correct speech. The Middle Ages works that secondary schools would adopt, sought in their authors technical information, can hardly be compared in its authority with worldly wisdom, and general philosophy com- the Church Council of Trent. Literature has pressed into sententia and into descriptions not developed the characteristics of a universal of human excellence and weakness, exempla. church with its notion of authority and the The two standards invoked in the two different reliance upon dogma: there is no authoritative periods necessarily produced very different organ within the institution of literature which canons. could constitute a universally valid canon of When the concept of a canon appeared in lit- literature through a decision similar to official erary criticism in the 1960s it was with a new decisions taken by the authoritative organs twist. The concept had the element of cata- of a worldwide church. There is within the logue of model authors imposed by people in institutions of literature and art a distinction position of authority, but it was lifted out of between connoisseurs or adepts and the less the traditional context of institutional teaching able, between highly trained and sensitive and learning and applied to what had up to then practitioners who know how to read and inter- been labeled the literary tradition. Expressions pret and who also have the necessary fund of like “the Western canon” or “the canon of knowledge about the institution and its social English literature” came into use, and these setting, and those who are less skilled and less canons were then attacked for being arbitrary knowledgeable. However, there are no rules that impositions of standards of value that some- confer upon one group an absolute authority to how served the aims and purposes of those in take decisions about a canon. authority who imposed these standards. The A third concept of canon involves reference introduction of the idiom of “canon” into the to “a general rule, fundamental principle, literary critical debate had an ideological func- aphorism, or axiom governing the systematic or tion. A canon, whether scriptural, juridical, scientific treatment of a subject; e.g. canons of or literary, is by its very nature contingent descent or inheritance; a logical, grammatical, and imposed by authoritative fiat. Applying or metrical canon; canons of criticism, taste, art, this notion to the literary tradition as defined

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canon through those works that had survived communities have different literary traditions through time, one implied that this tradition was closely linked to what is perceived as the iden- also a social construct embodying an “ideology,” tity of a culture and of a language community. a set of values expressing the limited and con- That is why literature has sometimes played such straining view of those who “dictated” the an important role in the definition of national canon. There then arose a debate about the identity at times of struggle for political and canon of literature and art in which some cultural independence. It is also one of the rea- defended the canon, others attacked it for sons for the continuity and stability of the lit- being in its nature pernicious, excluding or erary tradition: it is one of the identity markers marginalizing certain socially defined groups. of a culture. However, different traditions can The question that was not raised was whether be culturally specific and can nevertheless the notion of canon was an appropriate term involve the same types of skill and the same stan- to apply to the literary and artistic traditions dards. To what extent they actually do is an and consequently whether the questions empirical question, and if traditions become raised in the debate about the canon were real too different in the demands they make on or just pseudo-questions. their practitioners, they will no longer be the The inadequacy of the concept of canon as an same kind of tradition. instrument in art criticism can be illustrated by The debate about the canon misses all these a comparison with the concept it was replacing, points. There will always be debate within a cul- that of “tradition.” The notion of “artistic tra- ture about the canon that teaching institu- dition” has four important elements that are tions should use. This discussion can only take absent from the concept of “canon.” It is tied place against the background of a recognized to the notion of a practice, to the notion of a tradition. And it cannot be extended into a way of doing things, a way of writing, a way discussion of the tradition without seriously of painting, a way of reasoning that has built distorting some of the fundamental issues that into it a set of standards and a notion of skill. a discussion about any artistic tradition will The great works of a tradition are great not raise. because they are pronounced to be great but because they display to a high degree the See also literature; criticism; feminist aes- required skill and meet the requirements of the thetics; feminist standpoint aesthetics; race tradition in an exemplary manner. Second, a tra- and aesthetics; tradition. dition has continuity: it is handed down. The notion of tradition captures the continuity as bibliography well as the development that is constituted not Alter, Robert. 2000. Canon and Creativity: Modern only through the similarities and differences Writing and the Authority of Scripture. New Haven: between literary works since Homer, but also Yale University Press. through the acts of authors of all periods of Bloom, Harold. 1994. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace. placing themselves self-consciously in rela- Crowther, Paul. 2007. Defining Art, Creating the tions of opposition and/or discipleship to earlier Canon: Artistic Value in an Era of Doubt. Oxford: writers as well as to writers contemporary Oxford University Press. with themselves. Third, a tradition is anony- Curtius, Ernst Robert. 1953. European Literature and mous, an “immemorial usage”: no named the Latin Middle Ages. W. R. Trask (trans). London: authority is responsible for or can create a Routledge & Kegan Paul. tradition. A tradition develops. However, it Gorak, Jan. 1990. The Making of The Modern Canon: cannot be changed by authoritative fiat as Genesis and Crisis of a Literary Idea. London: can a “canon.” Finally, the notion of tradition Athlone. is linked to the notion of culture: a tradition Hallberg, Robert von (ed.). 1984. Canons. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. is a “cultural continuity in social attitudes, Leavis, F. R. 1960 [1948]. The Great Tradition. customs, and institutions” (Merriam-Webster). London: Chatto & Windus. Traditions are culturally embedded and are Olsen, Stein Haugom. 2001. “The Canon and by their nature local and culturally specific. Artistic Value,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 41, Different cultures and different language 261–79.

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Oppel, Herbert. 1937. Kanon: Zur Bedeutungsgeschichte The relevance of the Politics passage to des Wortes und seiner lateinischen Entsprechungen tragic catharsis has sometimes been disputed. (regula-norma). Leipzig: Dieterich’sche Verlags- But this is unreasonable, since Aristotle ex- buchhandlung. plicitly indicates a connection with his views Ross, Trevor. 1998.The Making of the English Literary on poetry. It is possible to infer several things Canon: From the Middle Ages to the Late Eighteenth about nonpathological catharsis from Politics Century. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 8.7: first, that it is neither religious nor medi- Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. 1988. Contingencies of cal (though it has analogies in both domains); Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory. second, that through an experience of certain Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. emotions a change occurs in (a disposition for) those emotions; third, that where music (and stein haugom olsen presumably poetry too) is concerned, catharsis is dependent on the art’s general capacity to arouse and shape emotion (and thereby, catharsis The term (literally, “cleansing”) as Politics 8.5 puts it, “to change the soul”); used by Aristotle for part of the psychological fourth, that catharsis is aligned with, and per- experience and effect of tragedy. Its interpreta- haps even consists in, the conversion of painful tion is fraught with difficulties; the view emotions into pleasure. adopted here is tentative. The definition of Those implications, when combined with tragedy in Poetics 6 speaks of the genre the fact that for Aristotle emotions are intricately “accomplishing through pity and fear the bound up with ethical perceptions and impulses, catharsis of such emotions.” Aristotle sub- encourage us to relate tragic catharsis to the sequently refers often to pity and fear (a widely Poetics’ conception of pity and fear as a height- accepted Greek formula for responses to ened but cognitively grounded response to the tragedy) but no explanation of the term patterns of human suffering embodied in a plot “catharsis” is forthcoming in the work. structure. On this reading, tragic catharsis is In Politics 8.7, however, Aristotle says of no mere discharge or “purgation” of emotion, music that it should be used “both for educa- something that makes no sense in terms of tion and for catharsis,” adding: “what I mean Aristotle’s moral psychology. Catharsis must by catharsis I shall state simply now; I will dis- be closely associated with, but need not be cuss it again more clearly in my treatment of identical to, tragic pleasure: it is perhaps best poetry.” (The cross-reference might be to his interpreted as the cumulative psychological early dialogue On Poets, now lost, or to the satisfaction and benefit accruing from the missing second book of the Poetics.) He com- transformation of painful into pleasurable ments there on variable susceptibility to strong emotions through imaginative contemplation of emotions such as pity, fear, and “enthusiasm” an appropriately unified artwork. This will fit (here a kind of frenzy), and he notes how, in the with Aristotle’s larger views by making experi- case of the last, there are religious rituals in ence of tragedy one way of attuning a spec- which special music is used to arouse the emo- tator’s dispositions to an ethical “mean” (i.e., the tion and allow those gripped by it to find “as it right degree of feeling): the emotions aroused will were a cure and a catharsis.” But other people be intense but fully justified by the structure of experience something of the same kind (“a cer- “action and life” enacted. tain catharsis and pleasurable alleviation”) The lack of a direct Aristotelian explanation according to their emotional dispositions. of tragic catharsis has stimulated a complex So it is important that Aristotle here posits history of interpretation (Halliwell 1998: app. 5). both “pathological” and “normal” emotional For most sixteenth- and seventeenth-century catharsis in response to certain kinds of music. neoclassicists, the idea became heavily moralized Whether there was any link with what and colored by Stoic presuppositions: catharsis, Aristotle’s pupil Aristoxenus tells us about the mediated by the “lessons” of tragedy, involved Pythagoreans, that they “achieved catharsis extirpation of dangerous passions and/or of the soul through music,” we cannot now acquisition of emotional fortitude. Something be sure. closer to a model of psychological harmonization

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cavell, stanley was advocated by Lessing. Jacob Bernays various guises of a single, self-inflicted threat to reacted against such views in an influential human existence. He characterizes the threat of monograph of 1857, limiting catharsis to a skepticism as the most recent and perhaps the quasi-medical discharge of feeling. Catharsis as most destructive version of the ancient wish purgation consequently became an academic to escape the human being’s situation within orthodoxy (now waning); it was adhered to by, language and history. What philosophy knows among others, Nietzsche, in a series of dismis- as Cartesian or Humean skepticism is only the sive references to Aristotle’s Poetics. Bernays’s most intellectually refined expression of this influence also encompassed Sigmund Freud skeptical wish. (who married Bernays’s niece). And it is the Cavell’s most detailed effort to undermine entanglement of catharsis with psychoanalytic epistemological skepticism takes the form of ideas that has given the term a ubiquitous a reading of Wittgenstein (Cavell 1979). As in currency in the modern world: one word in the Wittgenstein, the terms of Cavell’s investiga- Poetics has been transformed into a protean tions bear obvious affinities to some of the concept of popular aesthetic psychology. crucial enterprises and concepts of aesthetics. He modifies the enormous importance that See also aesthetics in antiquity; medieval Wittgenstein attaches to the possibilities and and renaissance aesthetics; drama; aristotle; necessities of human judgment, including fea- fiction, the paradox of responding to; plato. tures of what other philosophers take to be its mere contingencies: for instance, its agree- bibliography ments, its evaluations, its publicness, and its Halliwell, Stephen. 1998. Aristotle’s Poetics. 2nd persistent privacies. Cavell goes on to character- edn. London: Duckworth. ize the philosophical power of Wittgenstein’s Halliwell, Stephen. 2003. “La psychologie morale Philosophical Investigations as resting on written de la catharsis: un essai de reconstruction,” Les recollections and achievements of the human Études Philosophiques, 4, 499–517. voice in its most ordinary settings. He thus iso- Kraut, Richard (trans. & comm.). 1997. Aristotle: lates a dimension of Wittgenstein – and perhaps Politics Books VII and VIII. Oxford: Clarendon. of philosophizing as such – that is potentially of Lear, J. 1988. “Katharsis,” Phronesis, 33, 297–326. special interest to students of aesthetics. Nussbaum, Martha C. 1992. “Tragedy and Self- Cavell characterizes skepticism as embodying Sufficiency: Plato and Aristotle on Fear and Pity.” In Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics. A. O. Rorty (ed.). a wish to repudiate the “givenness” of lan- Princeton: Princeton University Press, 261–90. guage and the apparent arbitrariness in the fact that human beings must express them- stephen halliwell selves in order to be understood. Accordingly, he characterizes as skeptical the precarious efforts to reconstruct human language and Cavell, Stanley (b.1926) American philoso- communication on a more “rational” or more pher of skepticism, language, literature, and “justified” foundation, one which would avoid film at Harvard University. Cavell’s contrib- the need for the less tidy and more disruptive utions to aesthetics move in two directions: aspects of ordinary speech. The overcoming of (1) toward his own guiding project of diagnosing skepticism will occur not as a single theoretical and undermining skepticism, which he char- event but as the repeated, practical efforts to acterizes as an issue not only for philosophy recover human expressiveness from its sup- but also for poetry, drama, and film; and pression in philosophical and antiphilosoph- (2) toward issues and problems within specific ical theorizing. Some philosophers have found fields of criticism and within works of art or Cavell’s responses to skepticism to constitute a literature. These directions in turn contain merely literary solution to an intellectual prob- prospects for a unity that helps to structure – lem. Students of aesthetics might follow Cavell though it cannot eliminate – the inveterate and Wittgenstein in exploring a less reductive plurality of Cavell’s investigations. Ultimately, sense of human expression and hence a more this unity derives from the possibility that interesting access to the literary conditions of the various versions of skepticism are, in fact, philosophical questioning.

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Cavell persistently tracks something like an resistance to regarding a work of literature as aesthetic dimension of judgment and expression harboring anything like the propensity for rig- throughout the fields of epistemology, morality, orous thought, Anglo-American philosophers and the philosophy of language. It is therefore have found this side of Cavell’s project to be not surprising that his work leaves little room essentially inaudible. for the idea of a set of intrinsically aesthetic prob- (3) His work on film begins with an explo- lems, which might be treated in isolation from ration of the relations between the photo- the rest of philosophy. Furthermore, it is of the graphic basis of the movies and their specific essence of his approach to aesthetic questions incarnation of narrative possibilities (1976b, that his work attempts to take on the issues of 1981). He comes to focus on the possibilities con- the critics that matter the most to him. Cavell’s tained primarily within two genres: “the com- primary concern is to address the insights and edy of remarriage” and “the melodrama of the mystifications of those critics, readers, and unknown woman” (1996). viewers (himself included) who have already felt (4) His work on the relation of literary the pull of the particular work or experience Romanticism to the critique and transformation in question. His investigations often move of Kant begins with a book on Thoreau (1992) directly from the individual work (for instance, and becomes a central theme of his Beckman lec- of Shakespeare or of film) to the issues of philo- tures (reprinted in 1988a). The issue of Kant’s sophy. Those who have felt the power and the inheritance is at the center of his continuing exactness of his readings are unlikely to see the encounters with Emerson. His stress on an pertinence of the more generalized issues of Emersonian, antimetaphysical strand of moral academic aesthetics. Nevertheless, it is possible perfectionism – stretching from certain regions to specify some lines of investigation in Cavell’s of Kant to Wittgenstein and Heidegger – leads work that either belong explicitly to aesthetics him to his most prolonged, recent confrontation or else can be seen to bear on the wider issues (1990) with American philosophy, as repre- of literature and interpretation that increas- sented by John Rawls and Saul Kripke. ingly occupy the attention of philosophers (5) Again beginning with Thoreau, Cavell has concerned with the arts. These aesthetic inves- steadily intensified his excavation of a prob- tigations can be divided into six major segments. lematic of reading, with a consequent em- phasis on the fact of writing as a source and (1) The essays collected as his first book emblem of human activity and originality (1976a) include his most explicit treatments of (1979, 1988a, 1990). specific aesthetic questions about intentions, (6) Finally, there is an increasingly explicit pleasure, metaphor, musical form and “signi- involvement with psychoanalysis that needs ficance,” literary or dramatic genres and artis- to be distinguished from other contemporary tic media, and the relationship of aesthetics to approaches. Cavell treats Freud’s work neither criticism. This first book also includes extended as a perfected methodology of interpretation instances of his critical activities (climactically, nor as the enlargement of our narrative capa- his essays on Samuel Beckett and King Lear), city for self-dramatization. In Cavell’s account, the as well as a sort of Wittgensteinian proposal for goal of a psychoanalytic reading is, above all, the centrality of aesthetics within a newly self- a better understanding of our prior seduction or critical practice of philosophy. bewitchment by the work, an understanding (2) Cavell’s investigations of Shakespeare which frees us for a still more unsheltered (2002) have secured him a place as one of the engagement with the work’s significance and leading literary critics of his generation. He fascination. continues to delineate his sense of the isomor- phism between the convulsions of philosophy Cavell’s use of psychoanalysis to create the inaugurated in Descartes’s methods of repre- freedom for a further encounter with the work sentative self-doubt and Shakespeare’s pre- can thus stand as an expression of one of his occupation with the catastrophes in human earliest motives for thinking about the arts. knowing and with the traumatic constructions Already in his concern with the inescapability of the modern world. Perhaps because of their of intentions in our experience of art and in his

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censorship related struggles against false pictures of the 1989. This New Yet Unapproachable America: Lectures “inside” and “outside” of the work, Cavell has After Emerson After Wittgenstein. Albuquerque: sought to block the idea that the significance of Living Batch. art can be appreciated from some safely exter- 1990. Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The nalized distance. Here, as elsewhere, he sees Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism. Carus philosophy as crystallizing the human inclina- Lectures, 1988. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. tion to imagine ourselves exempt from the 1996. Contesting Tears: The Hollywood Melodrama seductions of experience on the grounds that we of the Unknown Woman. Chicago: University of are capable of analyzing it. But philosophy is Chicago Press. also a name for the place in which we might 2004. Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a learn that there is no separate place from which Register of the Moral Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard to learn the significance of human works University Press. and expressions, apart from submitting to the 2005a. Cavell on Film. W. Rothman (ed.). Albany: specific demands they make on our capacities State University of New York Press. for understanding and response. 2005b. Philosophy the Day After Tomorrow. In Cavell’s account, the task of aesthetics is Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. to maintain the still more basic and ineradica- Secondary sources ble demand that we submit ourselves to the Cohen, Ted & Guyer, Paul (eds.). 1992. Pursuits of experiences that we are drawn to learn from. Reason: Essays in Honor of Stanley Cavell. Lubbock: (This version of Kant demands that we submit Texas Tech Press. the object to our own eyes, for our own judg- Eldridge, Richard (ed.). 2003. Stanley Cavell. ment.) But this thought goes together with his Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. insistence that we bear in mind those ordinary Fischer, Michael. 1989. Stanley Cavell and Literary Skepticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. surfaces of words and concepts and events, Fleming, Richard & Payne, Michael (eds.). 1989. without which the struggle with the depths The Senses of Stanley Cavell. Lewisburg: Bucknell of our experience of a work is bound to lose University Press. its sense. Goodman. Russell B. (ed.). 2005. Contending with Stanley Cavell. Oxford: Oxford University Press. See also criticism; morality and art; psycho- Gould, Timothy. 1998. Hearing Things: Voice and analysis and art; wittgenstein. Method in the Writings of Stanley Cavell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. bibliography Hammer, Espin. 2002. Stanley Cavell: Skepticisim, Subjectivity, and the Ordinary. Cambridge: Polity. Primary sources Mulhall, Stephen (ed.) 1996. The Cavell Reader. Cam- [1969] 1976a. Must We Mean What We Say? 2nd edn. bridge, MA: Blackwell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, Joseph & Kerrigan, William (eds.). 1987. [1971] 1976b. The World Viewed: Reflections on the Images in Our Souls: Cavell, Psychoanalysis and Ontology of Film. Enlarged edn. Cambridge, MA: Cinema. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Harvard University Press. timothy gould [1972] 1992. The Senses of Walden: An Expanded Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1979. The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Scepticism, Morality and Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University censorship In its broadest sense, censorship Press. is any kind of suppression or regulation, by 1981. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of government or other authority, of a writing or Remarriage. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University other means of expression, based on its content. Press. The main concern with censorship applies [1987] 2002. Disowning Knowledge in Seven Plays of to kinds of work intended for sale, display, or Shakespeare. Expanded edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. other manner of publication, though the term 1988a. In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Skepticism and has been applied to the official activity of Romanticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. removing sensitive information from private 1988b. Themes Out of School: Effects and Causes. letters written home by troops serving in war. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. It seems that the activity has at least to be

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censorship publicly recognized in order to count as cen- Schemes of restriction or zoning, which require, sorship, and interference with the mail by the for instance, that pornographic materials be secret police, or covert intimidation of editors, sold only in certain shops and only to adults, are would be examples of something else. Accord- analogous to film classification, and are to be dis- ingly, any censorship implies a public claim of tinguished from censorship, strictly understood. legitimacy for the type of control in question. In 1774 Lord Mansfield said “Whatever is The most drastic methods of control involve contra bonos mores et decorum the principles prior restraint: a work is inspected before it is of our laws prohibit, and the King’s Court as published, and publication may be forbidden, the general censor and guardian of the public or permitted only after changes have been morals is bound to restrain and punish.” made. Traditional absolutist regimes sought to Although this dictum was approvingly men- control book publication by these means, and tioned by another English law lord as recently legal procedures to the same general effect, as 1962, few now would offer quite such a for the control of material affecting national broad justification for censorship. In part, this security, still exist in many states. Until 1968, is because of doubts about what “the public theatrical performances in England were con- morals” are, and by whom they are to be inter- trolled in this way by a court official, the Lord preted: pluralism, skepticism, sexual toleration, Chamberlain, whose staff monitored scripts and doubts about the social and psychological before production, would demand changes on insight of judges have played their part in a variety of grounds (including disrespect to weakening confidence in the notion. A more the monarchy), and attended performances basic point is that, even where there is a high to see that their instructions were being degree of moral consensus on a given matter, observed. In many jurisdictions, cinema films are it remains a question what that may mean for inspected by some official agency before release, the law, and what, if anything, can count as a and its powers may include that of suppressing good reason for using the law in an attempt to some or all of a film. However, the emphasis of suppress deviant opinions or offensive utter- these inspections has increasingly moved from ances. Liberal theories claim that freedom of suppression to labeling, the agency not so expression is a right, which can be curtailed much censoring films as classifying them by only to prevent serious and identifiable harms. their suitability for young people. This is, in effect, the conclusion reached by Prior restraint is essential when censorship is John Stuart Mill in his very influential defense motivated by official secrecy: once the infor- of freedom of expression, though he himself did mation is out, the point of censoring it is lost. not theoretically favor the notion of a right. (The English government attracted ridicule in Other liberals who are better disposed to that the 1980s by trying to ban a book on security notion insist, further, that the harms that grounds that had already been published else- justify suppression must take the more particu- where.) There are other aims of censorship, lar form of a threatened violation of some- however, including those most relevant to aes- one’s rights. thetics, which do not necessarily demand prior A very strong version of such principles restraint. If a work is thought objectionable on is embodied in United States law, which grounds of indecency, evil moral character, or has interpreted the First Amendment to the its possible social effects, the suppression of it after Constitution (“Congress shall make no law . . . publication may still have a point, in limiting abridging the freedom of speech or of the press”) people’s exposure to it. Actions of this kind, in such a way as to make censorship on any and laws under which they can be carried out, grounds very difficult. Mr. Justice Holmes in are also regarded as examples of censorship. 1919 produced an influential formula. “The This form of censorship avoids some of the question in every case is whether the words used objections to prior restraint – notably, its are used in such circumstances and are of such secrecy – and it is in relation to this kind of cen- a nature as to create a clear and present dan- sorship that questions of principle are now ger that they will bring about the substantive normally discussed. It is important that cen- evils that Congress has a right to prevent”; sorship in this form still aims at suppression. and restrictions in such terms have been taken

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censorship to protect even overtly racist demonstrations, health measure, and concentrate on the idea that let alone publications. The “clear and present certain publications unacceptably express a danger” test is not used with regard to porno- culture of sexual oppression. This approach graphy, but the effect of Supreme Court decisions tends to treat legal provisions against porno- in that area has been that, at most, hard-core graphy as like those against publications pornography can be suppressed. In many parts that endorse racial discrimination. In some of the US, all that the law enforces are zoning systems, of course, this would still not make such restrictions. censorship constitutional, even if the problem English law allows greater powers of sup- can be solved of making the provisions deter- pression than that of the US: publications minate enough for them not to be void on designed to arouse racial hatred, for instance, account of uncertainty. may be illegal, and the same is true in other juris- Censorship laws typically encounter prob- dictions. In the case of pornography, the main lems about artistic merit. The English law is concept used in English law is obscenity: in a not alone in allowing a “public good defence,” formula inherited from a judgment of Chief which permits acquittal of a work that pos- Justice Cockburn in 1868, the principal statute sesses serious aesthetic, scientific, or other defines a publication as obscene if it has a “ten- such merits. (In English law a jury who acquit dency to deprave or corrupt” those exposed to in a case where this defense has been made are it. This professedly causal concept of obscenity not required to say whether they found the implies that the rationale of the law is to be found work not to be obscene, or found it meritorious in the harmful consequences of permitting a par- although it was obscene.) Provisions of this ticular publication. However, as the House kind have certainly helped to permit the publi- of Lords has itself observed, the courts could cation of serious works such as Ulysses and not apply this formula in a literal sense, and do Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which were previously not really try to do so. No expert evidence banned; but there are difficulties of principle, is allowed on the matter of causation, and in which have been clearly illustrated in the practice the question is whether a jury or a English practice of allowing expert testimony on magistrate finds the material sufficiently offen- the merits of the works under prosecution. sive. As critics have pointed out, this not only Besides the inherent obscurity of weighing makes the application of the law arbitrary artistic merit against obscenity, and the fact but reopens the question of its justification. that evidence bearing on this has to be offered As opposed to the principle that rights to under the conditions of legal examination, the free speech may be curtailed by appealing to process makes the deeply scholastic assump- harms in the particular case – the principle tion that the merit of a given work must be that Holmes’s “clear and present danger” test recognizable to experts at the time of its expresses in a very strict form – the mere fact publication. Moreover, the works that can be that a work is found deeply offensive is likely to defended under such a provision must presum- justify its suppression only to those who think ably be meritorious, which implies that they that it is the business of the law to express any are to some considerable degree successful; correct, or at least shared, moral attitude. but if a law is to protect creative activity from There has been a great deal of controversy censorship, it needs to protect the right to about the effects of pornographic and violent make experiments, some of which will be very publications, and a variety of anecdotal, statis- unsuccessful. tical, and experimental evidence has been The idea of making exceptions to a censor- deployed in attempts to find out whether there ship law for works with artistic merit seems, in is a causal link between such publications and fact, essentially confused. If one believes that some identifiable class of social harms, such as censorship on certain grounds is legitimate, sexual crime. It is perhaps not surprising that then if a work of artistic merit does fall under such studies are inconclusive, and more recent the terms of the law, it is open to censorship: its advocates of censorship, such as some radical merits, indeed, may make it more dangerous, feminists, have moved away from thinking of on the grounds in question, than other works. censorship in this area on the model of a public If one believes in freedom for artistic merit,

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chinese aesthetics then one believes in freedom, and accepts cen- them. Music seems particularly powerful in sorship only on the narrowest of grounds. this respect, since notes from one instrument can resonate with distant instruments causing See also erotic art and obscenity; iconoclasm them to produce the same tone. Like the air we and idolatry; morality and art; pornography. breathe, sound penetrates the human body, creating a harmony between sounds in differ- bibliography ent places in the world. Because it is difficult to Devlin, Lord. 1959. The Enforcement of Morals. understand sound as “representing” anything, Oxford: Oxford University Press. in Chinese metaphysics the cosmos was made Dworkin, Ronald. 1985. A Matter of Principle. up of “psychophysical energy” or qi, rather than Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. as a system of discrete objects, one of which Hart, H. L. A. 1963. Law, Liberty and Morality. copied or represented the other. Unlike Western Oxford: Oxford University Press. conceptions of order that classify objects by Mill, John Stuart. 1983 [1859]. On Liberty. In On Liberty and Other Writings. S. Collini (ed.). their relationship to logical concepts, Chinese Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–116. conceptions of order are described as “aesthetic.” An aesthetic order seeks allusions, analogies, and bernard williams associations reflecting the mutual influence, resonances, and harmonies of qi in different locations in the universe. Thus, sound in gen- Chinese aesthetics In China the arts played eral, and music in particular, became the key much the same role in the history of philosophy to understanding natural phenomena and the that science performed in the West. Classical interactions between humankind and nature. philosophers in Greece and China investig- China is the only society where standard ated the origin of sensory, aesthetic know- measurements were based on the pitches of ledge, assessed its reliability, and debated its perfectly tuned bells. The tones of the chro- importance. In the West, sight was assumed to matic scale were correlated to the divisions be the most important sense and wisdom was of the year, establishing a cosmic connection described in terms of “vision” and “insight.” In between music and time. Since determining classical China, hearing was considered at the calendar is particularly important in an least as important as sight and the Chinese agricultural society like China, control of high- sage was often a person of acute hearing. quality precisely tuned bells was a symbol of gov- ernmental authority. metaphysics and music The difference in epistemological metaphors aesthetics and morality was significant. Western philosophers typic- Moreover, just as the tones of a bell reflected the ally conceived of reality as composed of two cosmic order of the seasons, the moral order of kinds of things: visible physical objects and a society was reflected in (and influenced by) its invisible mental ones, understood as a special music. In early Chinese psychology, humans kind of object, a mental image or picture. have a single organ, the “heart-mind” or xin that Since the epistemological problem was to thinks and feels, and according to the ancient know when and how the mental objects repre- Book of Documents: “Poetry expresses the sented, corresponded to, or otherwise correctly heart’s intent.” The human heart-mind is in a reflected physical reality, philosophers seldom state of tranquility until it responds to something considered the representation of “fictions” as outside itself in poetry, song, and dance. important as the discovery of “facts,” that is, Musicians, poets, and dancers move audiences scientific and metaphysical truths. to respond in similar ways, creating a human Given the importance of hearing in early community. Because the social harmony Chinese theorizing about the senses, the fun- between people contributes to the harmony damental metaphysical metaphor was sound between humanity and the cosmos, the rela- and the air or wind that carries it. Wind and tionship between the arts, morality, and cos- sound are powerful forces that influence faraway mic order are an enduring theme in Chinese things with no visible connection between aesthetics.

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Daoist aesthetics looked for harmony with the things they painted, the status of painting nature, while the Confucians focused on social was elevated to that of poetry and calligraphy. harmony; neither of them looked for an Although the early great landscape paint- abstract set of laws or principles under which ings of the tenth to thirteenth century were behavior could be classified and evaluated. largely representational, Chinese artists never Given the intimate association of music, ritual, attempted the illusion of reality that led Western and order, the music of a state was said to artists to develop single-point perspective. reflect its moral order. Government officials Viewers of Chinese paintings cannot identify collected folk songs to understand the ambi- the place from which the artist observed the tions, joys, and complaints of the people. The scene being painted. Chinese artists use a earliest collection of Chinese poetry, Classic series of shifting perspectives that invite us to of Odes, was said to be such a collection of folk take a journey through the landscape depicted. songs and dynastic hymns edited by Confucius A small path may start at the bottom of the himself. Confucius argued that reciting the painting leading the eye past a waterfall to Odes and understanding their many levels the top of a towering mountain. Tiny human of meaning was an essential part of a good figures often travel up the mountain, passing iso- education. lated pavilions or temples along their way. Although the Odes describe natural scenes, Long handscrolls demand even more active feelings of love and longing, hunting parties, participation from viewers who hold the and farming rituals, they were interpreted as scroll at arm’s length on a table, opening it, allegories and allusions, reminding readers of unrolling it, and rerolling it as they wander associated images, historical events, and moral through scene after scene. Writing and seals on principles and provoking an appropriate range paintings add another interpretative dimen- of emotional responses. Chinese poetry is not pri- sion, providing a dedication for the painting, marily intended to describe reality or narrate a descriptions of the occasion on which it was heroic epic, but to express the poet’s emotions painted, a series of poems by the painter’s and personality and inspire listeners to res- contemporaries, and inscriptions expressing pond in an appropriate way. appreciation of the artist and the work. The meaning of Chinese painting, like that of the poetry, calligraphy, and painting older art form of poetry, is found in the many Poetry, calligraphy, and painting were intim- layers of responses and associations it evokes. ately connected because they use a brush to The relationship between the vast natural express the moods and feelings of the artist. scenes of mountains, rocks, waterfalls, and Just as poetic images are interpreted as allu- rivers and the small villages, buildings, and sions rather than descriptions, in calligraphy people in a landscape express the Daoist belief the subject matter of a piece of writing is all in the value of a hermetic life alone in a moun- but irrelevant to its aesthetic value. Particular tain forest, as well as the belief that people are brush strokes are discussed in terms relating a part, but only a small part, of the entire cos- to the human body (bone, muscles, blood), mos. Chinese paintings also reflect Confucian the human spirit (strong, vigorous, carefree, ideals of our duty to live in the natural world honest) and human emotions (writing done by and to revere the past. While Western artists are someone in bitter rage, bone deep pain, with a concerned with originality, Chinese paintings tranquil and soaring spirit). seem to repeat a series of conventional images In early aesthetic theory, painting was not developed over centuries: mountain, waterfall, considered a serious art form because it was a lone scholar walking in the woods, a fisher- only decorative or representative. Paintings man drifting in a boat on the river. Moreover were portraits or illustrations that did not painters often claim to be painting “in the style express the artist’s emotional and intellectual of” an older master. Nevertheless, the greatest responses to the world. When painter-poets paintings are always highly original expres- began to use the repertoire of brush strokes sions of the particular painter’s personality, developed in calligraphy to express their own moods, and metaphysical insight. Ni Zan, the moods and feelings rather than to represent great Yuan dynasty landscape painter, often

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chinese aesthetics neglected to put a human figure or pavilion in Cultural Revolution forced much Chinese art to his sparse paintings, indicating his deep feelings become pure propaganda. of alienation and isolation. When the Cultural Revolution ended China experienced an “aesthetics craze.” Chinese painting and politics philosophers asserted the independence of art Painters did not always convey lofty meta- from ideology and offered the traditional aes- physical or cosmic thoughts and moods. thetic values of harmony and personal expres- Amateur literati artists used paintings to com- sion as a welcome relief from the chaos of the municate political distress they could not preceding decades. Combining Kantian aes- express directly. The literati were scholars who thetics with Confucian morality and Marxist had been educated for government service but materialism, Li Zehou argued that aesthetic were forced into exile by invading foreign experience, not politics or religion, constituted dynasties. Paintings of orchids adopted a the highest form of human life. Nevertheless Buddhist symbol of purity growing out of filth Kantian arguments for the autonomy of art and muck, isolated and unappreciated, to pro- may have been taken to mean that art was test the conquest of China by the Mongols of politically and morally irrelevant, severing the the Yuan dynasty. Bamboo symbolized upright- ancient connection between art and morality. ness, simplicity, and the “hollow-heartedness” At the same time, China has become part of obtained by freedom from desire. Pine trees, the global art community. The internationally which remained green in winter, stood for celebrated artist Xu Bing uses pigs and human steadfastness in adversity. mannequins painted with English words and Literati paintings of horses relied on the Chinese characters to express his ambivalence Chinese belief that the ability to judge horses was about the literature of ancient China and the associated with the ability to judge the charac- relationship between China and the United ter of a government official. Han Gan’s Tang States. The imperial horses painted by Han dynasty portraits of imperial horses came to Gan appear on tote bags and Xu Beihong’s gal- symbolize Chinese power at its artistic and mil- loping horses decorate refrigerator magnets. itary height. Literati painters under the Yuan Although traditional Chinese art may have dynasty eschewed Han Gan’s use of color and become just another consumer good, Chinese produced simple ink pictures of horses, repre- aesthetics has always insisted that the old and senting the plight of Chinese officials under the new are in harmony. The thoughts and feelings Yuan conquerors. In the twentieth century, of ancient, and not so ancient, artists resonate Xu Beihong’s exuberant ink paintings of gal- with the feelings of twenty-first-century audi- loping horses represented the courageous ences as traditional themes and forms express Chinese struggle against the Japanese. In new ideas, new thoughts, and new feelings 1980, Wang Huaiqing’s less spirited but about China’s place in the world. more colorful Bole, a Wise Old Man who Knows How to Choose Horses represented China’s See also art history; conservation and ambiguous relationship to its past. restoration. aesthetics in the twentieth century bibliography The Communist revolution imported Soviet Cahill, James. 1960. “Confucian Elements in the Socialist realism along with Marxism. Theory of Painting.” In The Confucian Persuasion. Although Mao Zedong lectured that art should D. Nivison & A. F. Wright (eds.). Stanford: serve the masses in their struggle for libera- Stanford University Press, 115–40. tion and reject the elite bourgeois art of the Cai Zong-qi. 2002. Configurations of Comparative past, Mao himself identified with the tradition Politics. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. DeWoskin, Kenneth J. 1984. A Song for One or Two: of Confucian scholars who had led China for Music and the Concept of Art in Early China. Ann 1,000 years. He read traditional literature, Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies. wrote poetry, and practiced calligraphy. Gao Jianping. 2002. “Chinese Aesthetics in the Despite Mao’s condemnation of the “poster Past Two Decades,” Acta Orientalia Vilnensia, 3, and slogan” style of art, the horrors of the 129–38.

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Hall, David L. & Ames, Roger T. 1987. Thinking assumptions. First, cognitive science can through Confucius. Albany: State University of explain how artworks function as cognitive New York Press. stimuli. Second, an understanding of how Li Zehou. 1994. The Path of Beauty: A Study of artworks function as cognitive stimuli can Chinese Aesthetics. Hong Kong: Oxford University contribute to an understanding of how they Press. function as artistic stimuli. The first claim is trivi- Mao Zedong. 1967. “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art.” In Selected Works of Mao ally true. The function of the formal structure Tse-Tung, vol. iii. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, of an artwork is to provide viewers, listeners, 69–98. spectators, and readers with sets of cues to Sullivan, Michael. 1980. Three Perfections: Chinese enable them to recognize its formal, represen- Painting, Poetry and Calligraphy. New York: tational, and expressive content. We do not George Braziller. need specialized artistic training to recognize Temple, Robert. 1986. The Genius of China: 3,000 Years these types of features in an artwork. The sets of Science, Discovery, and Invention. New York: of visual cues embedded in the formal structure Simon & Schuster. of a painting trigger the same sets of visual marthe chandler processes by which viewers perceive depth and recognize objects in ordinary visual contexts. Likewise, sets of cues embedded in the narrative cognitive science and art Can an under- structure of a text trigger the same sets of cog- standing of the psychological processes that nitive processes by which individuals recog- subserve our engagement with artworks con- nize actions and events, interpret the beliefs, tribute to discussions of the nature of art or the desires, and emotions of others, and predict character of aesthetic experience? Engaging their behavior. Cognitive science can explain with artworks is a canonically psychological how these basic processes work. Therefore task. In this context, cognitive science can help cognitive science can explain how artworks explain the way artworks induce perceptual work as perceptual and cognitive stimuli. and expressive effects associated with aesthetic An artist’s formal methods (e.g., maquettes, experience and control for semantic associ- drawings, and color studies in the visual arts) ations associated with their meanings. Under- can be thought of as tools for recovering sets standing these processes would seem central to of formal cues sufficient for artistic production our understanding of art, as both a category of in a medium (e.g., realistic representation in objects and a set of loosely related cultural landscape painting) from ordinary experience. practices. Therefore, the answer would seem However, even in the case of realistic pictorial to be yes. However, philosophers have been representations, there is no preferred set of generally skeptical about the prospects of a image cues for accomplishing this task. Any productive rapprochement between the philo- number of possible formal vocabularies will sophy of art and cognitive science. Their skeptic- suffice (e.g., formal differences between Hudson ism boils down to a question about whether River School and Superrealist paintings). In psychological explanations of our engagement this context artists choose the formal features with artworks suffice to explain the artistic and narrative devices they use to construct a salience of associated perceptual and cognitive work relative to the aesthetic effects or seman- effects. This is a compelling worry. None- tic association they intend them to produce. theless, it may be too strong as an evaluative Therefore, explanations of how artworks func- criterion. Cognitive science need not provide tion as cognitive stimuli should also explain independent explanations of artistic phenomena how they function as artistic stimuli. to contribute to our understanding of them. The strength of this model lies in its appeal The question therefore is, what role, if any, can to ordinary psychological processes that research in cognitive science play in discus- are transparent to empirical investigation. sions of issues germane to the philosophy of art However, this strength is also its central flaw. and aesthetics. Consider Margaret Livingstone’s explanation Research at the confluence of cognitive of Mona Lisa’s dynamic expression (2008: science and philosophy of art rests on two 68–73). Our ability to discern fine visual detail

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cognitive science and art is far greater in the central, or foveal, region about the nature of art and aesthetic experience. of the visual field than the periphery. However, In this restricted sense, cognitive science can this important capacity comes at a cost. Foveal make a clear contribution to the philosophy vision is insensitive to coarse-grained visual of art. Consider Mona Lisa again. It is often features (e.g., broad contours defined by shad- argued that the aesthetic merit of Leonardo’s ing). Livingstone has demonstrated that Mona painting lies in the use of sfumato to generate Lisa’s expression is depicted using only coarse- the dynamics of her expression. Livingstone’s dis- grained image features (Leonardo used a tech- cussion of the painting supports this interpre- nique called sfumato to blur the smile contours tation. Therefore, although her research does not around the eyes and mouth of the figure). itself explain why we assign aesthetic value to These coarse-grained features are invisible our engagement with the painting, it con- when one looks directly at Mona Lisa’s face, but tributes confirming evidence to a theory that reappear when one looks away. This entails does. This in turn entails that it contributes to that the expression perceived on Mona Lisa’s face our understanding of how Mona Lisa functions actually changes as a viewer scans the paint- as an artistic stimuli. ing. Therefore, Livingstone’s research explains Research in cognitive science on art can be how Mona Lisa functions to induce the experi- loosely taxonomized relative to its methodology. ence of perceiving a dynamic expression. Neuroaesthetics and other research in the cog- This case study illustrates the way artists nitive neuroscience of art employ a case study learn to harness the basic psychological processes approach. Particular works of art are used associated with a spectator’s engagement with to demonstrate correlations between artists’ works in their medium. However, the psycho- formal productive strategies and the opera- logical processes appealed to by cognitive sci- tions of basic neuropsychological processes entists in this case and in explanations of other (e.g., Livingstone’s discussion of Mona Lisa). aesthetic effects are not unique to a viewer’s These correlations are, in turn, employed to engagement with artworks. Leonardo’s formal explain a range of psychological issues related strategy for Mona Lisa works precisely because to the production, understanding, and appre- it harnesses psychological processes involved in ciation of art, for example, how techniques everyday face perception. This entails that the like half-shadows and irradiation function to explanation Livingstone provides for Mona enhance the perception of depth in oil paintings. Lisa’s dynamic expression applies equally to This research is scientifically interesting. How- aesthetic and nonaesthetic stimuli (e.g., Mona ever, it is as yet underdeveloped territory in the Lisa and the laconic expression on a friend’s face philosophy of art. The cognitive neuroscience of in a snapshot from 1978). Therefore, these visual art (Zeki 1999; Livingstone 2002) has types of explanations fail to differentiate our received a great deal of attention, much of engagement with artworks from our engage- it skeptical. There is a broad range of focused ment with ordinary, nonart stimuli, and so research in the cognitive neuroscience of also artworks from nonart stimuli. music (Peretz & Zatorre 2005). There is also a The solution to this difficulty emerges from an growing interest in the cognitive neuroscience examination of the goals of empirically minded of dance derived from research on mirror neu- philosophers of art. The purpose of their appeal rons, motor simulation, and our understanding to research in cognitive science is not to gen- of the intentionality of actions (Montero 2006). erate a novel biological paradigm for under- The more prevalent strategy is to apply theor- standing art, but rather to provide data to ies and results from a broad range of research contribute to theoretical debates in philosoph- in cognitive psychology and neuroscience to ical aesthetics (Raffman 1993: 3). Results from what have traditionally been thought of as research in cognitive science can be used to uniquely philosophical puzzles. This strategy explain how particular artworks induce aes- has been applied to discussions of such diverse thetic effects or guide semantic associations. issues as narrative understanding in film and These data can be used to confirm critical literature (Currie 2007), emotional engagement interpretations of existing artworks and adju- with fictional characters (Goldman 2006), dicate between competing philosophical theories musical comprehension (Raffman 1993), the

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cognitive science and art expression of emotion in music (Robinson First, readers are quicker to respond to questions 2005), the nature of pictorial representa- about narratives that track characters’ per- tion (Rollins 2001), the nature of creativity spectives than those that do not. Second, it has (Boden 2003), and aesthetic responses to been demonstrated that the same brain areas dance (Montero 2006). Consider our emo- involved in performing an action oneself are tional engagements with fictional characters. involved in perceiving that action performed Our naive intuitions suggest that some form of by others (see Goldman 2006: 51). character identification, or empathy, plays a The productive rapprochement between critical role in our experience and understand- philosophical aesthetics and cognitive science ing of narrative fictions. However, there are a should come as no surprise. These fields are, number of philosophical difficulties with this in one sense, natural bedfellows. Cognitive sci- intuition. For instance, although we often ence is concerned with the way organisms experience the events depicted in narrative acquire, recognize, use, and manipulate infor- fictions vicariously, our responses would be mation. Cognition can, in this context, be inappropriate for their characters (e.g., we are understood in terms of representational struc- frightened of quiet, dark places in horror films tures that encode information about the envi- because we, unlike the protagonists, know ronment and computational processes that what is coming). Further, we recognize that interpret and transform those structures. these are fictional characters in fictional contexts. Artworks are, by virtue of the practical neces- So it would seem that there is nothing for us to sities of working in a medium, abstract, or be sad about or afraid of, and no one for us to degraded, stimuli. Questions about the produc- empathize with. tion, understanding, and appreciation of art Philosophical discussions of these issues are, in part questions about the way viewers, have focused on the role of imagination in spectators, listeners, and readers acquire, rep- narrative understanding. Participants in the resent, and transform information from these debate can be loosely divided into two camps. stimuli in order to recognize, categorize, and Proponents of simulation theory argue that evaluate their content. Cognitive science is, some form of first-person imaginative experience by definition, methodologically well suited to is critical to our understanding of narrative answer these types of questions. The goal of the fictions. Although there are a number of vari- resulting research program is not reductive, but ations on this theme, the central claim is that rather to expand the range of explanatory spectators and readers imaginatively project tools available for examinations of the nature themselves into narratives, adopt the per- of art and aesthetic experience. spective of either one of the characters or a dance; creativity; depiction; evolution, hypothetical observer, and thereby simulate See also art, and aesthetics; expression; fiction, the the experience of a participant in the events paradox of responding to; imagination; depicted. Alternative theories deny the central- narrative. ity of first-person imaginative experience to narrative understanding. They argue instead bibliography that fictional narratives contain cues that Boden, Margaret A. 2003. The Creative Mind. New that enable spectators and readers to categorize York: Routledge. a character’s response as belonging to a par- Currie, Gregory. 2007. Image and Mind. Cambridge: ticular type without adopting his or her perspect- Cambridge University Press. ive. Therefore, understanding our emotional Goldman, Alvin. 2006. “Imagination and Simu- engagement with fictional characters requires lation in Audience Responses to Fiction.” In The no appeal to first-person imaginative experi- Architecture of the Imagination: New Essays on ences. Philosophers in this debate appeal to Pretence, Possibility, and Fiction. S. Nichols (ed.). New York: Oxford University Press, 41–56. research from the study of autism, develop- Livingstone, Margaret. 2002. Vision and Art: The mental and cognitive psychology, and cognitive Biology of Seeing. New York: Abrams. neuroscience in support of their theories. For Montero, Barbara. 2006. “Proprioception as an instance, two types of evidence have been Aesthetic Sense,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art offered in support of the simulation approach. Criticism, 64, 231–42.

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Peretz, Elisabeth & Zatorre, Robert (eds.). 2005. from fictions. Goya’s Disasters of War (1810– The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music. New York: 20) etchings may convey war’s horrors or Oxford University Press. Austen’s Pride and Prejudice the dangers of self- Raffman, Diana. 1993. Language, Music, and Mind. regard, but do we learn such things from the art- Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. works concerned? The idea that war is horrific Robinson, Jenefer. 2005. Deeper than Reason. Oxford: or that pride comes before a fall is commonplace Clarendon. Rollins, Mark. 2001. “Pictorial Representation.” and trivial. If we already believe the message of In The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. B. Gaut such works then we cannot be said to learn any- & D. McIver Lopes (eds.). New York: Routledge, thing from them. If we do not, then how could 297–312. we learn from make-believe worlds that are Zeki, Semir. 1999. Inner Vision. New York: Oxford not tied to truth about the real world? University Press. First, it is worth noting that many artworks are not fictions. Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia william p. seeley or Ingres’s Napoleon the Emperor (1806) are works of nonfiction that do tell us about actu- ality. Orwell’s book reveals much about the cognitive value of art It is a mark of infighting among the communists in the civilization that the arts are cultivated and Spanish civil war and Ingres’s portrait conveys promoted. Arts education is important and all too well what Napoleon looked like and provision of access to the arts for all is thought how he conceived of himself. Second, even if to be a sine qua non of a good society. The pre- fictions do not give us worthwhile proposi- sumption is that art educates and ennobles the tional knowledge, it can be argued that art mind. It seems that we would know far less if affords significant nonpropositional knowledge we lived in a world devoid of literature, films, (Nussbaum 1990). Artworks can give us prac- paintings, and music. Yet ever since philo- tical know-how, phenomenal knowledge, or sophical reflection about art began, there has access to ways of apprehending the world that been skepticism about the idea that art can may not be expressible in straightforward teach us anything. propositional terms. Perhaps there is some- Plato argued that art affords only the illu- thing about what it is to see another human sion of knowledge. The fundamental thought being as a mere extension of the material can be articulated independently of Plato’s world, as a mere organism to be butchered, contentious metaphysics. The creation of and that Goya’s sketches convey to us. Third, it can engagement with art draws on the imagination. be argued that art does afford propositional If we read a novel, look at a painting, or watch knowledge. Artworks may be thought of as a movie we engage with a make-believe world. aesthetically detailed thought experiments The artistry is designed to promote imaginings that cultivate our imaginative understanding and shape our responses. Artists need have no (Carroll 2002; Kieran 2004; Gaut 2007). In real knowledge about what they represent and life we are in a poor position to know what appreciators may be unconcerned with truth in someone’s character or intention in action is. participating in games of make-believe. Know- By contrast, the artifice of fiction allows the ledge requires contact with reality but games of elaboration of pure cases where hypothetic- make-believe do not. Thus art cannot cultivate ally we know the ways in which someone’s knowledge. thought, action, and character may be inti- Stolnitz (1992) argues that art cannot afford mately related. Consider Pride and Prejudice. significant knowledge since it yields only Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy are proud in banalities or trivial knowledge. As imaginative different respects and prejudiced against one creations whose function is to sustain games another as a result. Darcy’s pride is a result of of make-believe, artworks need not reflect the the unqualified admiration of his parents allied world. Far from being windows onto the world to extreme standards of propriety. However, as they are props that enable us to imagine the story develops, we come to see that his beyond the confines of actuality. Moreover, defensiveness, scorn, and solicitations of praise consider the kind of putative insights we glean manifest an underlying insecurity. Hence it is

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cognitive value of art clear both why he would assume that Eliza- respond to the world. Imaginative experience beth admires him (as all others do) and why he with art may also give rise to reliably formed is shocked when she rebuffs him. Only when he beliefs about possibilities (Stokes 2006) and comes to see his actions from Elizabeth’s point modal knowledge is crucial to scientific, histor- of view can Darcy recognize that he has failed ical, philosophical, and ordinary reasoning. to live up to the self-professed ideals of propri- Furthermore, in ordinary life we often imagine ety and consideration. We do not merely learn hypothetical scenarios to help us find out what that “pride comes before a fall.” Rather, we we would think and feel. Even if such imagin- learn that narcissism and insecurity can com- ings do not give us knowledge, they are cogni- bine in mutually reinforcing and self-destructive tively useful in terms of testing out how we ways. might think and feel. Artworks can be particu- However, a problem remains. How can we tell larly vivid and enriching means of doing so. This whether or not the beliefs we derive from art are is true even if the conception itself is mistaken. warranted? Looking at a Van Dyck portrait of Hence, even if situation psychology is right, we Charles I or reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace, we can nonetheless learn from “realist” novels may acquire true beliefs about Charles I or how we tend (falsely) to conceive of the inter- Russian society during the Napoleonic era. Yet relations between thought, action, and char- we may also acquire false beliefs. The problem acter. Furthermore, artworks can themselves is that there is no way of telling from a fiction show us reason to doubt claims made else- which beliefs are true and which are false. If where. A large part of the point of Austen’s we want to know whether Charles I was an novels is that possessing a trait is insufficient to authoritative king of England or whether the determine behavior. Characters possessing the Russian General Kutzov slept through battles we same trait may act differently. Practical wisdom must look outside the work (e.g., at historical is required, to make the appropriate evaluative sources). Furthermore, many assumptions judgments, and must be underwritten by the integral to artworks might be fundamentally higher order virtue of constancy to act continu- flawed. Situation psychology, for example, ally in accord with virtue. Darcy’s compassion suggests that our ordinary conception of char- leads him to see his actions as inconsiderate but acter is radically mistaken. Milgram’s experi- it is his constancy to high ideals that renders him ments on authority and Zimbardo’s Stanford capable of reshaping himself and winning prison experiments are sometimes taken to Elizabeth’s approval. Failure to do so would show, on the basis of measured behavior, that not have shown that Darcy lacked compassion character traits such as compassion do not but, rather, that he lacked constancy. Austen’s exist (Doris 2002). If so, then psychologically novels show how possession of a trait might be “realist” works serve only to embed our illusions insufficient to determine behavior. Hence they about character. Pride and Prejudice may per- give us reason at least to question some of the petuate an illusion rather than afford genuine claims made by situation psychology. knowledge. There are different areas of inquiry A complementary approach sets aside ranging from history to science and philosophy. the question of whether beliefs endorsed in a Each one is characterized by their distinct work are warranted or not. Independently of objects of study and methods of inquiry. Yet art whether art affords knowledge, works may be has neither a distinctive object of study nor dis- cognitively valuable insofar as they cultivate tinct methods of inquiry. Hence for any truth perceptual and cognitive virtues (Kieran 2004; claim conveyed through art we should look to Lopes 2005). Chardin’s Boy Playing Cards the relevant mode of inquiry to check if it is war- (1740) for example, involves a complex play ranted. We cannot learn, for example, from with our visual attention. It stretches our Austen about character – that is a matter for capacity to see the visual field presented to us psychology. as a diamond shape, emphasized by the illumi- Art often concerns how people experience, nation of the cards, the boy’s collar and cuff. think about, and respond to the world. Hence The picture cultivates the virtues of patience, we clearly can learn from it. What can we close attention, visual discrimination, and learn? How artists experience, conceive of, and adaptation.

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Even if it is granted that art affords knowledge, through our experience of the work. Where it does not automatically follow that this is rel- works do so, the mode of apprehension or atti- evant to a work’s value as art. We delight in the tude is relevant to assessing the work’s value as way in which the form of a work is an aesthet- art. The anamorphosis of a skull in Hans ically artful and apposite means of portraying Holbein’s Ambassadors (1533) must be viewed its subject matter. Artistic value is constituted from the right, close up to the plane of the can- by the imposition of form on a subject in such vas, rather than the usual straight-on position a way as to realize aesthetically valuable features. required to see the rest of the painting. In the Aestheticism holds that the content of a work most marked way the distinctiveness of the matters only insofar as it relates to the unity, position required to see the skull casts light on complexity, intensity, elegance, gracefulness, the content of the painting – the pride of the vivaciousness, or other aesthetic qualities of it. painting’s subjects is mere hubris when viewed Hence we should distinguish between a work’s from the perspective of mortality (Kieran fictive, aesthetic, and cognitive aspects. On this 2004). A different criterion focuses on art’s view, the content of a work is relevant only to solicitation of emotional responses from us. the extent it promotes or hinders the attainment The content of a work seems relevant to its of properly aesthetic virtues. Good art is, it value as art insofar as it relates to the emotional may be thought, to be distinguished from bad response solicited. How we evaluate Francis art in terms of its capacity to realize and sustain Bacon’s work will partly depend on whether the aesthetic experience. Thus the value of a work visceral horror solicited at his vision of the as art is not reducible to its message. This human condition is appropriate or not. Thus, not explains why we can and do value works that only can works cultivate knowledge, and the embody incompatible claims. Philip Pullman’s capacity to become better knowers, but how they His Dark Materials trilogy and Michelangelo’s do so seems internally related to their value Pietà (1498–9) embody conflicting claims as art. about divinity. But we can appreciate them both as art since, according to aestheticism, See also literature; aesthetic education; aes- truth is as such irrelevant to artistic value theticism; fiction, nature of; fiction, truth (Lamarque 2006). in; function of art; morality and art; truth Aestheticism is, however, at odds with criti- in art. cal practice. Critics often advert to considerations of truth in evaluating works as art. Critical bibliography terms of praise or blame such as profound, Carroll, Noël. 2002. “The Wheel of Virtue: Art, insightful, sentimental, shallow, callow, often do Literature and Moral Knowledge,” Journal of pick out the beliefs and attitudes conveyed Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 60, 3–26. through a work. It is hard to see how we could Doris, John. 2002. Lack of Character. Cambridge: make sense of such notions without some kind Cambridge University Press. Gaut, Berys. 2007. Art, Emotion and Ethics. Oxford: of relation to truth. Moreover, it is no part of the Oxford University Press. cognitivist’s claim that truth is the only perti- Kieran, Matthew. 2004. Revealing Art. London: nent cognitive value. After all, works can be Routledge. truthful but banal and partial or mistaken and Lamarque, Peter. 2006. “Cognitive Values in the yet profound. There is a range of cognitive Arts: Marking the Boundaries.” In Contemporary virtues. Hence we can value highly works that Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. are incompatible (in the same way we may M. Kieran (ed.). Oxford: Blackwell, 127–39. value different philosophical theories). What is Lopes, Dominic M. 2005. Sight and Sensibility. needed is an account of the criteria that distin- Oxford: Clarendon. guish when the content of a work is relevant to Nussbaum, Martha. 1990. Love’s Knowledge. New York: Oxford University Press. its value as art and when it is not (Gaut 2007). Plato. 1974 [375 bce]. The Republic. D. Lee (trans.). The complexity of art suggests that there will be 2nd edn. Harmondsworth: Penguin. many. Visual artworks make use of distinc- Stokes, Dustin. 2006. “Art and Modal Knowledge.” tively visual techniques in order to convey In Knowing Art. M. Kieran & D. M. Lopes (eds.). modes of apprehension or reflective attitudes Dordrecht: Springer, 67–82.

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Stolnitz, Jerome. 1992. “The Cognitive Triviality of achievements, there can be no history of artistic Art,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 32, 191–200. problems. Problems are understood in terms of matthew kieran questions and answers, and unreflective thought does not allow for the formulation of questions to start with. “The aesthetic experience, or artistic activity, Collingwood, R(obin) G(eorge) (1889– is the experience of expressing one’s emotions; 1943) British philosopher, historian, and and that which expresses them is the total archaeologist; from 1935 Waynflete Professor imaginative activity called indifferently lan- of Metaphysics at Magdalen College, Oxford. guage or art” (Collingwood 1938: 275). For As a philosopher, Collingwood disassociated Collingwood artistic creation does not answer himself from the realism and positivism of his to his so-called logic of question and answer, colleagues, and in aesthetics pursued a course which he articulates, for instance, in his Essay that drew on the work of Giambattista Vico, on Metaphysics. In The Principles of Art he is Benedetto Croce, and others. Besides his con- concerned to show that art is not assertion; art tributions to aesthetics, Collingwood is known predates assertion, and assertion presupposes art. especially for his work on philosophy of history, That is, in the creative moment the product and he wrote extensively as well in meta- cannot be understood as an answer to a ques- physics, philosophical method, philosophy of tion (as such later thinkers as Karl Popper and mind, philosophy of religion, and politics. Ernst Gombrich suggested it can), because cre- There is some controversy as to whether there ative activity is one in which the unconscious is an essential continuity or discontinuity in becomes conscious. Consequently, although the course of his philosophical career, which a critic or art historian may offer a “rational spans 15 published books. This question colors reconstruction” of the creative moment in one’s reading of his contributions to specific terms of questions and answers, such recon- philosophical topics (see bibliography). structions cannot claim to be historically true. Regarding mind as an activity rather than This thought undercuts any intentionalist pro- an entity, Collingwood’s works may be viewed gram insofar as the latter seeks to reconstruct as an extended account of different types of the conscious problem situations of creators. mental activities or forms of experience. In his Collingwood holds that intentions can exist Speculum Mentis, he argues against the view only in their expression; they do not predate that knowledge should be pursued in terms of expression. delineable domains of inquiry, and emphasizes Further, he holds that there can be no un- the essential unity of mind by charting the expressed emotion. Expression and emotion are relations between its forms of experience: art, dialectically codependent. It is in the expression religion, science, history, and philosophy. These of emotion that one becomes conscious of it; con- forms are not exhaustive, for Collingwood sciousness of emotion follows its expression. allows the possibility that others might yet Thus emotions are not objects that are pos- develop and that some subforms within this sessed before one’s consciousness of them. In this outline might be filled in. The question of the sense, emotion and its expression are one: nature of the specific relations between these “What the artist is trying to do is to express a forms of experience concerned him for most given emotion. To express it and to express it of his philosophical career. In this “map of well, are the same thing. To express it badly is knowledge” art plays an important role, for the not one way of expressing it . . . it is failing to aesthetic infuses all other forms of experience. express it” (1938: 282). Collingwood is primarily concerned with the Now, one may disown or repress feelings. connection between art and mental activity, That is, one may refuse to bring them to and not with the defining features of works of expression. Collingwood calls this the “corrup- art, nor with the criteria of “good” works of art. tion of consciousness” (1938: 216–21). This Generally, he identifies art with the movement happens when “the conscious self disclaims from unreflective to reflective thought. Con- responsibility for [feelings], and thus tries to sequently, while there is a history of artistic escape being dominated by them without the

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collingwood, r(obin) g(eorge) trouble of dominating them. This is the ‘corrupt work and make the tune “public property,” consciousness,’ which is the source of what they are not necessary for it to exist in the psychologists call repression” (1938: 224). composer’s mind. There it exists as an imaginary In the case of artistic creation, a corrupt tune. The actual making of the tune is something consciousness gives rise to bad art. In order to that goes on in the composer’s head, and apply this notion of corrupt consciousness in nowhere else. specific cases of works of art, one would expect Creating involves making a plan, while that rules or guidelines of application would be fabricating involves imposing that plan on provided. But Collingwood does not offer any. certain matter. A plan can exist only in a per- His intention may not be to provide criteria for son’s mind. An engineer’s notes and sketches distinguishing between particular good or bad on paper, for example, may serve as an acces- artworks, but rather to provide an account of sory in order for others to share (and retrieve, what it is for artworks to be good or bad. when necessary) the plan that is in his head. Collingwood identifies “art proper” as an Finally, when the bridge (for instance) is built, imaginative experience. He holds that “A work the plan is “embodied” in the bridge. The plan of art in the proper sense of that phrase is not or the form was in the engineer’s mind. an artifact, not a bodily or perceptible thing Further, a plan or a work of art need not be made fabricated by the artist, but something solely in as means to an end, for a person can make the artist’s head, a creature of his imagination; these with no intention of executing them. and not only a visual or auditory imagination, Generally, works of art proper are not made as but a total imaginative experience. It follows that means to an end (1938: 135). the painted picture is not the work of art in the One might object to Collingwood’s distinction proper sense of that phrase” (1938: 305). between creating a tune and publishing it by sug- A physical painted picture is a necessary gesting that music may be created through accessory for a work of art proper. At the improvisation – that is, through the interaction same time, “the picture . . . produces in [the of a sometimes inchoate musical idea and the audience] sensuous-emotional or psychical materials of music-making. It seems that he experiences which, when raised from impres- assumes that there is a sharp distinction sions to ideas by the activity of the spectator’s between what is initially in the artist’s mind and consciousness, are transmuted into a total what is not. Not only do works of art charac- imaginative experience identical with that of the teristically not present themselves as plans painter” (1938: 308). independently of their embodying materials Collingwood distinguishes between artistic and forms, but such materials and forms char- making or creating, and fabricating. His dis- acteristically help formulate the plan to start tinction between creating and fabricating with. Put otherwise, it is in the interaction appears to be coextensive with his distinction between the plan and the materials that the between imaginary and real. He suggests that work of art comes to emerge. while a work of art is made by the artist, it is But such an objection would be misplaced, for not made by “transforming a given raw mater- Collingwood’s distinction allows that the activ- ial, nor by carrying out a preconceived plan, ities of creating (or imagining) and making nor by way of realizing the means to a precon- can go on simultaneously. The latter may be ceived end” (1938: 125). His examples include an accessory for the former. Put negatively, he an artist making a poem, a play, a painting, or is not committed to the view that creating pre- a piece of music. He was not especially concerned cludes fabricating. There need be no instance to discriminate between art forms in this of creating without fabricating: “There is no regard. Collingwood tells us that the purpose of question of ‘externalizing’ an inward experi- making sketches is to inform or remind others ence which is complete in itself. There are two or oneself of the plan in one’s head. experiences, an inward or imaginative one By Collingwood’s account, for a tune to exist called seeing and an outward or bodily one it is not necessary for a composer to hum, sing, called painting, which in the painter’s life are or play it, nor is it necessary for him to write it inseparable, and form one single indivisible ex- down. While these are accessories of the real perience, an experience which may be described

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comedy as painting imaginatively” (Collingwood 1938: Wollheim, Richard. 1972. “On an Alleged Incon- 304–5). Yet one might press the point by sug- sistency in Collingwood’s Aesthetic.” In Critical gesting that while imagining and making may Essays on the Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood. be understood as interacting simultaneously, M. Krausz (ed.). Oxford: Clarendon, 68–78. they are also emergent in a sense that is not cap- michael krausz tured by the idea that they interact. That is, the work of art may well embody properties that are attachable to none of its contributing parts, be comedy Sometimes in the course of daily they imagining or making. This emergentist events, we come upon things that simply strike view would undermine Collingwood’s idea that us as funny, such as nuns in full regalia shoot- works of art are essentially expressive of what ing at clay pipes in a gaming stall in Coney goes on in the mind of the artist. Correspond- Island. Here, the disparate elements that strike ingly, it would pose difficulties for the view us as funny have come together in an uncon- that the audience recreates what is putatively trived manner – by coincidence, so to speak. The in the mind of the artist. nuns did not stop at the shooting gallery in order to be funny. Their presence just is funny. See also twentieth-century anglo-american Comedy, on the other hand, is composed. aesthetics; creativity; croce; emotion; ex- It involves the intention to make something pression theory; ontology of artworks; reli- that will be funny. If the nuns are an example gion and art; theories of art. of found funniness, comedies are instances of invented funniness. The range of things that bibliography are comedies include: plays, movies, television programs, like situation comedies or sit-coms, Primary sources cartoons, comics, songs, poems, such as limer- 1924. Speculum Mentis; or, The Map of Knowledge. icks, stand-up comedy routines, jokes, riddles, Oxford: Clarendon. parodies, satires, novels, caricatures, sight gags, [1925] 1964. Outlines of a Philosophy of Art. In and much impersonation and puppetry. Essays in the Philosophy of Art. A. Donagan (ed.). This, of course, is by no means an exhaustive Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Also repr. list, nor are all the items mentioned so far mutu- Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1994. 1938. The Principles of Art. Oxford: Clarendon. ally exclusive. Roughly, comedy in the broad 2005. The Philosophy of Enchantment: Studies in sense belongs to the category of the funny. Folktale, Cultural Criticism and Anthropology. What differentiates comedy from the other D. Boucher, W. James, & P. Smallwood (eds.). major member of the species – found funniness Oxford: Clarendon. – is that comic funniness is invented. Of course, the notion of invented funniness is of Secondary sources little use unless we have a handle on funniness. Donagan, Alan. 1952. The Later Philosophy of So our first order of business is to explicate the R. G. Collingwood. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jones, Peter. 1972. “A Critical Outline of concept of funniness or humorousness, after R. G. Collingwood’s Philosophy of Art.” In Critical which we will discuss a question about a cat- Essays on the Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood. egory of comedy that has interested philosophers M. Krausz (ed.). Oxford: Clarendon, 42–65. since the ancients, viz., the nature of the comic Knox, T. M. 1946. “Editor’s Introduction.” In narrative, or comedy as a genre of the order of R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History. Oxford: tragedy. Oxford University Press. Mink, Lois O. 1969. Mind, History and Dialectic: invented funniness The Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood. Bloomington: Comedy is invented funniness. Professional co- Indiana University Press. medians or comics are people who make or Rubinoff, Lionel. 1970. Collingwood and the Reform of Metaphysics: A Study in the Philosophy of Mind. perform compositions that are funny – such as Toronto: University of Toronto Press. plays, caricatures, and songs – often for profit, Van Der Dussen, W. J. 1981. History as a Science: although unpaid amateurs, plain folk like The Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood. The Hague: ourselves, also often produce comedy as when Martinus Nijhoff. we tell a joke or imitate a coworker in an

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comedy exaggerated or caricaturistic manner. The response to funny constructions, like jokes, or notion of invention in this formula amounts to even in reaction to funny remarks, but rather the idea that the composition in question is an occurs as a kind of conversational glue in intentional construction or creation. However, everyday conversation (Provine 2000). Short the concept of funniness, although applied to bursts of laughter, that is, serve as feedback particulars with surpassing accuracy and com- between interlocutors, signaling that each petence by most of us, is harder to pinpoint. is following the other or they are used for One approach to elucidating funniness or emphasis. But since the conversations in ques- the funny is to define it as that which makes us tion need not be comic constructions, the exis- laugh (Morreall 1987). When we go to a com- tence of this sort of phatic laughter provides edy club, we expect to laugh and are generally further evidence that neither laughter nor the disappointed if we do not. So, one character- intention to elicit it is part of a sufficient condi- ization of comedy might be that it is a compos- tion for comedy. Indeed, the evidence here is ition designed with the intention of provoking overwhelming, since there is putatively more laughing. Or, to unpack this idea more pre- phatic laughter than comic laughter. cisely: X is a comedy if and only if it is a com- Furthermore, it is not clear that laughter or position created and/or performed with the even a disposition to laugh is a necessary con- intention of eliciting laughter. By emphasizing dition for funniness, since a funny observation that comedy is an intentional production, we may stimulate no more than a sense of joy or allow for the possibility of bad comedy – com- lightness (i.e., levity) in listeners, viewers, edy that is intended to engender laughter, but and/or readers. That which we find funny is fails to do so. pleasurable, but our enjoyment need not be The problem with this formulation is the marked by laughter, even if it often is. weight that it places on the phenomenon of Perhaps one way to get at what comprises laughter. Laughter is taken as the hallmark funniness is to ask what gives rise to laugh- of funniness. However, there is a great deal of ter on those occasions where the laughter is laughter that has nothing to do with funni- comic, rather than, for example, pharmaco- ness. Laughter can be induced by tickling, logical. The leading philosophical suggestion which, if uninvited and protracted, can be an here is that comic laughter is directed at con- experience that is anything but funny. More- structions perceived to be incongruous. Where over, laughter can be engineered pharmaco- pharmacological laughter has a purely phys- logically by the appropriate dosages of nitrous ical basis, the laughter that correlates with oxide, belladonna, atropine, amphetamine, comedy involves cognition. Specifically, it cannabis, or alcohol. Nevertheless, we do not erupts when one cognizes that the stimulus to count as comics chemists who intentionally which one has been exposed strikes one as ply us with these drugs. being incongruous. Laughter may also issue from certain medi- For example, Groucho Marx once said: cal conditions, including the gelastic seizures that “These are my principles – but if you don’t like accompany certain epileptic fits, extreme ner- them I have others.” The incongruity here is vousness, and hebephrenia. But these afflictions based on an absurdity or contradiction or cat- are tragic, not comic. egory mistake. Principles are that which you There is, in addition, the laughter of superi- hold onto – come hell or high water. Thus, it is ority that one warrior or competitor bellows forth incongruous to treat them as fungible. on the defeat of his nemesis. This too seems, in But the incongruities that feed comic laugh- principle, divorced from that which we identify ter need not be based solely on strict contra- as funny, since this species of laughter might dictions. They may merely reverse received resound at the sight of a ghastly victory, as wisdom as in the story of the church with the when masses of mangled enemy bodies dispose sign outside advising “Come early if you want the conqueror to laugh derisively at the con- to sit in the back.” Nor need the expectations quered dead. that are being subverted incongruously merely And finally recent scientific research has dis- be propositional. When a comedian uses a covered that most laughter does not obtain in tablecloth as a napkin, the effect is comically

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comedy risible because the gesture is incongruous rela- script proclaims happiness through a love tive to our standing norms of etiquette. match, a wedding, a triumph over adversity, Thus, we may hypothesize that a composi- or a reconciliation” (Bermal 2003: 293). That tion and/or its performance is an example of is, comedies have happy endings whereas in invented funniness where it is constructed in tragedies the play typically concludes with one such a way that it is perceived to be incon- or more calamities. A Midsummer Night’s Dream gruous. Of course, a recurring objection to this ends with lots of marriages and reconciliations is that not every instance of inventions that whereas Hamlet finishes off with a rush of are thought to be incongruous is comic. Incon- deaths, murders, and defeats. gruity can cause anxiety as readily as it may spur Nevertheless, although the notion that com- delight. What is strange can be threatening, if edy correlates with happy endings has a long it is not carefully contextualized. Consequently, history, it cannot be right. A happy ending the perceived incongruities that are intended to cannot be a necessary condition for comedy, figure in comedy are ones that do not engen- since there are comedies that end badly, such der distress, but, in contrast, instill pleasure. as Dr. Strangelove; or, How I Learned to Stop Nevertheless, there are, additionally, per- Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), which ceived incongruities that do not inspire anxiety forecasts the total destruction of human life. but which are not funny either. We can call Nor is a happy ending a sufficient condition for these incongruities puzzles, such as mathemat- comedy. The plots of many genres other than ical puzzles. Instead of simply relishing these comedy end well for the protagonists. Every incongruities – as we do with a joke – we stage version of Dracula rounds off with the attempt to solve them. Puzzle incongruities, execution of the count, but, unless we are talk- that is, mobilize a puzzle-solving attitude in ing about a parody, no one takes Dracula to be response, one committed to finding the correct a comedy. answer in contrast to a comic riddle of which If the happy-ending plot structure does not we are simply satisfied (indeed, happy) to relish identify comic narratives, are there any plot its absurd resolution. structures that may turn the trick? In all likeli- Something, then, is funny or humorous if hood we are prone to call a narrative comic if and only (1) if it is perceived to be incongruous, a substantial number of the incidents it repre- (2) where the incongruity is not threatening or sents are intended to be humorous, that is, are anxiety-producing, and (3) where the incon- presented as instances of invented funniness. gruity does not recruit an attitude of commit- Even the ending of Dr. Strangelove meets this ted puzzle-solving, but (4) is simply enjoyed criterion, since a man riding an atomic bomb (Carroll 2003). A specimen is comic if and to earth as if it were a bucking bronco is surely only if the composition and/or a performance incongruous. thereof is intended to be funny or humorous in And, in addition to this quantitative mea- the preceding sense. That is, X is comic just in sure of comedy, there are also certain plot case it is a case of invented funniness or humor. structures that have the capability to meet the criteria of invented funniness discussed in the comic narratives previous section. These include what can be So far we have been discussing comedy called the equivocal plot and the wildly improb- broadly in terms of the conditions that a mem- able plot (Carroll 2005). The wildly improbable ber of any comic genre must meet in order to plot obtains when, through the machinations be considered a comedy. However, traditionally of the narrative, some wildly improbable con- the theoretical discussion of comedy has often clusion occurs, often through a wildly improb- focused more narrowly on a particular genre or able string of events – as in Back to the Future set of genres within this group – comic plays and (1985) when Marty’s weak-kneed and timid narratives, or comedies rather than tragedy father defeats the bully and wins the heart of with respect to theater. Marty’s mother. It is just too incredible, indeed In this regard, one thought that recurs with wildly improbable, where improbability, of almost numbing frequency is that comedy is course, is one source of incongruity. Thus, if this “a genre in which the ending of a play or a film perceived incongruity meets the other conditions

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conceptual art for invented funniness, then it will count as Monro, D. H. 1951. The Argument of Laughter. a comedy. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. This is also the case with the equivocal plot. Morreall, John. 1983. Taking Laughter Seriously. This kind of plot involves arranging the events Albany: State University of New York Press. that comprise the narrative in such a way Morreall, John (ed.). 1987. The Philosophy of that they can be seen from two or more, gen- Laughter and Humor. Albany: State University of New York Press. erally conflicting, points of view. For example, Provine, Robert R. 2000. Laughter: A Scientific the townspeople in Gogol’s Inspector General Investigation. Harmondsworth: Penguin. think that Khlestakov is a government official, whereas the audience knows he is not. As hap- noël carroll pens with a pun, the doubleness in the situations that ensue sparks laughter, in this case, due to the incongruity of the townspeople’s mistaken conceptual art is of particular interest from perspective. Given the kind of person Khlestakov a philosophical point of view, for two main is, it is ridiculous that villagers could misread reasons. First, the approach of many conceptual the situation with such regularity. artists is notably philosophical. Second, and Of course, not all comic plots are incon- consequently on the first point, thinking about gruous as a result of being wildly improbable conceptual art raises important challenges or equivocal throughout. Instead, in a great to some of the main questions in philosophical many cases, we categorize plots as comic when aesthetics. they are comprised predominately of episodes of Conceptual art resists precise definition. The invented funniness. term “conceptual art” first came into prominence Where the ancients were concerned to dif- in the late 1960s, during what might now be ferentiate only two grand genres – comedy and thought of as its “high” period, in New York in tragedy – perhaps the notion of a happy end- 1966–72, although the movement has its roots ing was (almost) up to the task. But since we in the “ready-mades” of Marcel Duchamp in the now have so many more genres to deal with – early 1900s, such as his famous Fountain, and many of which can support happy endings, the movement continues today, in, for example, but which are not comedies – our approach to much of the work of the Young British Artists. comic plotting needs to become more nuanced. Here are some examples of conceptual art from its high period (various images and texts about See also humor; tragedy. these works are available from an online search): Vito Acconci, Following Piece (1969); Joseph bibliography Kosuth, One and Three Chairs (1965); Michael Bergson, Henri. 1956 [1900]. Laughter. C. Brereton Craig-Martin, An Oak Tree (1973). Further & F. Rothwell (trans.). In Comedy. W. Sypher (ed.). examples can be found on Tate Online: Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 61– www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition. 190. = Bermal, Albert. 2003. “Comedy.” In The Oxford jsp?entryId 73 Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance. D. At the heart of conceptual art is the thought Kennedy (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, that “the idea or concept is the most important 293. aspect of the work,” as the conceptual artist Sol Carroll, Noël. 2003. “Humour.” In The Oxford LeWitt once put it. What seems to be involved Handbook of Aesthetics. J. Levinson (ed.). Oxford: is a kind of “downgrading” of the importance Oxford University Press, 344–65. of the artwork, the physical object (e.g., a Carroll, Noël. 2005. “Two Comic Plot Structures,” picture, a sculpture), as the proper object of Monist, 88, 154–83. aesthetic appreciation: “Conceptual art, for me, Cohen, Ted. 1999. Jokes. Chicago: University of means work in which the idea is paramount and Chicago Press. Lauter, Paul (ed.). 1964. Theories of Comedy. Garden the material is secondary, lightweight, ephem- City: Anchor/Doubleday. eral, cheap, unpretentious, and/or dematerial- Levinson, Jerrold. 1998. “Humour.” In Routledge ised” (Lucy Lippard, cited in Godfrey 1998: 14). Encyclopedia of Philosophy. E. Craig (ed.). London: I will now consider four challenges that Routledge, 562–7. conceptual art raises which are philosophically

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conceptual art important: questions of definition, of ontology, much here hangs on the definition of “artworld.” of epistemology, and of value. (Some philosophers have tried to accommod- ate this last concern by introducing a “hybrid” conceptual art and definition definition of art, in part procedural and in part Is conceptual art really art? Characteristically, functional; see Stecker 1997.) conceptual artists intentionally challenge our Thinking about conceptual art, then, makes everyday ideas of what art is; moreover, they us sharpen up our ideas of what art is, and deny that whether or not conceptual art really whether conceptual art has a rightful claim to is art is something to be determined by the art be art. critic or the connoisseur: “If I say it’s art, then it’s art” is often their refrain. conceptual art and ontology There are many attempts to define art, but Ontology is concerned with what there is (and for these purposes they can usefully be divided questions of ontology are thus not the same as into three kinds. First, there is the family- questions of definition). Our everyday notion of resemblance account, according to which art art involves thinking of works of art as spatio- cannot be defined in terms of necessary and temporal objects, of the kind one finds on walls sufficient conditions. In spite of this, according or plinths in museums and art galleries. The to this view, we are able to recognize those object is the means, or the medium, by which the things that are works of art and those things that artist communicates his or her ideas. are not, and we are able to do so because of their The ontological challenge from conceptual art perceptual resemblance to other things that we seems to be in the rejection of the role of the previously know to be art (Weitz 1956). But medium in art as being of central importance, this is open to the challenge mounted by Danto a rejection reflected in the conceptual artist (1981), that perceptual resemblance is not Joseph Kosuth’s comment that “The ‘art idea’ necessary for something to be art: Duchamp’s and art are the same.” This rejection comes in Fountain illustrates this as it is not like any kind three forms, raising increasing difficulties. of art that has gone before. Nor is it sufficient: First, there is the rejection of the modernist Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes most of all resem- idea that there is a specific medium that is bles Brillo boxes that are not works of art. “proper” to each art form; for example, works The second kind of approach to definition is of conceptual art sometimes incorporate a functional (S. Davies 1991), according to which wide range of media (sometimes known as something is a work of art if it has a certain mixed-media works). Second, there is the rejec- function. This function is often taken to be the tion of the idea that the physical thing is the capacity to produce in the viewer some kind appropriate object for appreciation; for example, of aesthetic experience, paradigmatically aes- works of conceptual art sometimes consist thetic pleasure. The problem is that much con- just of typed words, or very poor photographs, ceptual art does not achieve this (consider here which do not seem to be suitable for this pur- Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs), and yet we do pose. And third, there is what Lippard (1973) take it to be art. A searching question here is has called the dematerialization of the art whether this ought to lead to a rejection of object; for example, Robert Barry has a work this kind of definition of art, or to a rejection which consists just of these words: All the of conceptual art as not really art. things I know but of which I am not at the The third kind of definition of art, often moment thinking – 1:36 pm, June 15, 1969. designed specifically in order to be able to Not all artworks are spatiotemporal objects: encompass conceptual art (Levinson 1989), consider, for example, dance, music, and is procedural (S. Davies 1991). One such is poetry. Some of these are, arguably, events; the institutional definition of art, according to others are, perhaps, abstract objects. But intu- which, roughly, something is an artwork if it itively, we also take some kinds of artworks to is “an artifact of a kind created to be presented be spatiotemporal objects: paradigmatically to an artworld public” (Dickie 1995). Many pictures and sculptures. We have thus been philosophers find this kind of procedural content to operate with a mixed ontology. definition to be unsatisfactorily conventional; Where does conceptual art such as Robert

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Barry’s piece belong in this ontology? We conceptual art and artistic value might, for example, think that conceptual art has Traditionally, the value of art has often been its own special kind of ontology, whereby it is assumed to reside in the kind of experience it can Barry’s idea that is the art object: not just the give rise to – specifically aesthetic experience. This single thought, encapsulated in those words, kind of experience is often supposed to arise in but the whole series or narrative of thoughts perceptual confrontation (thus the term aes- and intentions leading up to, and including, thetic, first coined in the eighteenth century, from that final thought which is encapsulated in the the Greek term for “perceive” or “feel”) with an title to the piece. Alternatively, some philo- object that is beautiful or has other kinds of aes- sophers, David Davies (2004) in particular, in thetic properties that make this kind of experi- considering what we can learn from such ex- ence appropriate – being serene for example. amples as the Barry piece, have been drawn to (The connections here with the earlier discus- a single ontology for all art. This is undoubtedly sion of definition, of ontology, and of epistemo- an extreme move, but considering conceptual logy should be obvious.) art raises ontological questions in an especially But if conceptual art characteristically pressing way. eschews this kind of experience, not seeking to produce objects of aesthetic interest, what kind conceptual art and epistemology of value can it possibly have? What is important Traditionally, it is considered necessary that in the first place here is to appreciate at least one be in direct perceptual contact with a work the possibility that artistic value need not con- of art if one is properly to appreciate it; mere tes- sist only in aesthetic value, even if that is what timony that a work is beautiful is not sufficient artistic value has traditionally been taken to for one properly to appreciate its beauty (Sibley be. As Timothy Binkley has put it, with one of 1965). Duchamp’s works in mind, “Some art (a great It can readily be seen that the points just deal of what is considered traditional art) made about the ontology of conceptual art and creates primarily with appearances . . . On the the dematerialization of the art object give rise other hand, some art creates primarily with to a range of epistemological questions about ideas. To know the art is to know the idea; and how we are able to appreciate conceptual art. to know an idea is not necessarily to experience Consider, for example, Vito Acconci’s Following a particular sensation, or even to have some par- Piece, where the only “thing” one can be in ticular experience” (1977: 266). direct perceptual contact with is a series of So when we come to the value of art, con- poor photographs of people in the street, and ceptual art helps us at least to appreciate that a description of what the work is. This still artistic value can sometimes reside in some- leaves us some epistemic distance from the thing other than its physical appearance, with events of which the photos are “documentation”: which one must be in direct perceptual contact “Activity, 23 days, varying durations. Choosing to appreciate its specifically aesthetic value. a person at random, in the street, any location, The challenge is to spell out quite what that each day. Following him wherever he goes, further kind of artistic value might be if it is not however long or far he travels. (The activity ends aesthetic. when he enters a private place – his home, office, etc.).” We simply cannot gain direct per- See also artifact, art as; danto; definition ceptual contact with those events; the best we of “art”; modernism and postmodernism; can do, perhaps, is imagine them. ontology of artworks; performance art; The epistemological question, then, is how we testimony in aesthetics; theories of art. are properly to engage with works of concep- tual art of this kind in order to appreciate bibliography them. This immediately leads to questions of Binkley Timothy. 1977. “Piece: Contra Aesthetics,” the value of art: to questions about how art ought Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 35, 265–77. to be appreciated. The epistemological answer Danto, Arthur C. 1981. The Transfiguration of the should in some sense depend on answers to Commonplace. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer- questions of value. sity Press.

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Davies, David. 2004. Art as Performance. Oxford: goal is to be achieved (Carrier 1985). An artist Blackwell. makes an artifact with a certain appearance. Davies, Stephen. 1991. Definitions of Art. Ithaca: With time, the picture may darken unless the Cornell University Press. restorer intervenes. But is the aim to preserve Dickie, George. 1995 [1983]. “The New Institu- the original artifact, which will darken with tional Theory of Art.” In The Philosophy of Art: time? Or should the restorer seek to preserve the Readings Ancient and Modern. A. Neill & A. Ridley (eds.). New York: McGraw-Hill, 213–23. original appearance of the artifact? In 1644–5 Godfrey, Tony. 1998. Conceptual Art. London: Pieter Saenredam made two paintings of the Phaidon. nave of the Buurkerk, Utrecht. One is now in the Goldie, Peter & Schellekens, Elisabeth (eds.). 2007. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, the Philosophy and Conceptual Art. Oxford: Clarendon. other in the National Gallery in London. When Goldie, Peter & Schellekens, Elisabeth. 2009. Who’s they were made, the panels were almost cer- Afraid of Conceptual Art? London: Routledge. tainly similar in appearance. But now the first Levinson, Jerrold. 1989. “Refining Art Historically,” depicts stark white walls while the second Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 47, 21–33. shows a mellow brown interior. Treating these Lippard, Lucy. 1973. Six Years: The Dematerialization pictures differently, the restorers “have per- of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972. Berkeley: University of California Press. formed ...a series of changes . . . which have Sibley, Frank. 1965. “Aesthetic and Nonaesthetic,” amounted to complete transformations of the Philosophical Review, 74, 135–59. aesthetic effect of the two panels” (Schwartz Stecker, Robert. 1997. Artworks: Definition, Meaning, & Bok 1990: 198–9). Both paintings have sur- Value. University Park: Pennsylvania State vived, but until we can determine which of them University Press. provides an accurate record of Saenredam’s Weitz, Morris. 1956. “The Role of Theory in activity, we cannot understand his art. Aesthetics,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Often attempts are made to solve this prob- 15, 27–35. lem by appeal to the artist’s intention. Perhaps peter goldie he wanted his picture to darken, showing its age. Or maybe he would have preferred the original appearance of his artifact to be preserved. conservation and restoration The act of On reflection, however, it becomes clear that preserving the artwork as the artist intended appeal to intentions cannot solve this problem. it to be seen, conserving what he made by In practice, usually the artist must first be con- restoring losses caused by aging or the effects cerned with how the work will appear to con- of time. temporaries. He is unlikely to be concerned Since art history is based on the assumption with future viewers and may be unable to pre- that what the historian views in the museum dict how his work will appear at a later time. is what the artist made, a theory of restoration But even if he says explicitly how he desires the is a necessary starting point for art history. work to appear in the future, we need not neces- Unless the artwork we see has been successfully sarily accept his viewpoint. Just as the artist is conserved, how can we accurately interpret not necessarily the best interpreter of his work, it? Although restoration and conservation are so he may not be the final authority on how it concerns in every art, they are of special import- should be conserved. ance in visual art. Jane Austen wrote texts that An analysis of restoration is unavoidably we interpret; Haydn created scores that the bound up with more general philosophical modern orchestra performs. So long as her text problems. Some thing, a substance, remains or his score has been accurately copied, the the same entity, though its properties change. artwork is preserved. But in the visual arts the We need some way to identify what has artist traditionally creates a physical thing. changed as the same thing; for, otherwise, Unless the restorer can preserve that object, speaking of change would be impossible. If the artwork does not survive. we think of change as continuous, then we The goal of restoration is easy to state. The can describe how a thing gradually changes. restorer aims to preserve what the artist made. That requires some way of identifying the self- The difficulties arise when we ask how that same thing, that enduring entity which has

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conservation and restoration changed. Four kinds of different substances artworks. Most art in our museums was not have been considered by metaphysicians made for the museum. If what the African (Wiggins 1980): artifacts, organisms, persons, tribal artisan made was a magical artifact, the artificial entities. object cannot be preserved when it is treated Artifacts can have their parts replaced and as an artwork and carefully presented in a remain the same thing so long as that process temperature-controlled museum environment. proceeds slowly. A car is the same car, the Similar problems arise when sacred Christian same functioning artifact, when its original works are taken from a church to a museum. components are replaced as they wear out. We conserve in the museum the artwork made Organisms are substances which change as by the artist, secularizing what originally they mature. The same tree is first tiny, then was a sacred work. We preserve the artwork by large, and then decays. These changes involve changing its function (Riegl 1984). Like a a natural process of growth in accordance country, the object treated as an artwork in with a built-in plan of development. Human the museum can survive such radical changes. beings also are organisms. But identity of per- Some art historians deny that it is possible for sons may be different from identity of organisms. the artwork to survive such changes (Wind On some theories, a person can survive the 1969). How we see Romanesque carvings is destruction of his body. Artificial entities like influenced by our experience of early mod- states survive if there is enough continuity. ernist sculpture; the colors in old master art now Modern France is the same country as ruled by look subdued because our eyes are accustomed Louis XIII, though it is now a democracy and to garish twentieth-century paintings. This its borders have changed somewhat. But the implies that to preserve the original artwork we Venetian Republic ceased to exist when it was must preserve its effect, which is not the same incorporated into Italy and the last doge was thing as preserving the object itself. How we see deposed. The United States is the same coun- that object depends on our experience of other try as the republic created in the late eighteenth art that the artist did not know. Even if the century, although slavery has now been abol- artifact is preserved perfectly, it will now look ished, women have the vote, and there are 50 different. states. There is enough continuity to identify it Were this argument correct, it would be through these radical changes. impossible to conserve artworks. But it is hard None of these substances are exactly like to state this skeptical argument in a consistent artworks. If artworks were artifacts, then they way. When an altarpiece is placed in a museum, could survive the gradual replacement of all of and set near modern secular art, it looks dif- their original parts. But if a fresco is gradually ferent from how it looked in a church. But if repainted, when none of the original paint sur- every such change in context changes how vives the artwork has not survived, although the we see the work, then how can we know original design has been preserved. Organisms that? Unless we were able to successfully ima- are born, grow to maturity, and die. But since gine the original appearance of the work, we normally artworks do not contain a built-in could not know that now its appearance has plan of development, they cannot be organ- changed. isms. Usually the restorer seeks to arrest The settings of the African artifact and natural processes, intervening as the artwork the Italian altarpiece are dramatically changed decays. A person can continue to exist when they are put in the museum. If the iden- through radical changes in his physical quali- tity of these objects depends on their function, ties, because one test of continuity is memory then they have not been preserved when or continuity of consciousness. An artwork is not they are placed in the museum. The object that sort of thing. has survived, but, set in a new context, it has Perhaps, then, the most promising approach lost its original function. Some aestheticians to conservation involves treating artworks solve this problem by claiming that artworks like artificial entities. Emphasizing, as it does, the possess universally recognizable qualities. On role of convention in restoration, that way of this Kantian view, artworks are not artifacts thinking focuses attention on the function of because they “do not normally, qua works of art,

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creativity have any function” (Wiggins 1980: 138). As art- activity is ultimately determined by the broader works, the African artifact and Italian altar- culture’s highly elusive ideas about how we piece do not have a function. should think of the identity of artworks. This is an ahistorical way of thinking. Until relatively recently, most art had a function. See also art history; museums; ontological According to a long tradition of what has been contextualism; ontology of artworks. called “museum skepticism” (Carrier 2006), art museums fail to preserve the objects they con- bibliography tain. When an altarpiece moves from a church Carrier, David. 1985. “Art and Its Preservation,” to a museum, its context is changed. No longer Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 43, 291– do people pray before it. This altarpiece has 300. become a work of art. Even more dramatic Carrier, David. 2006. Museum Skepticism: A History changes occur when Chinese scroll paintings, of the Display of Art in Public Galleries. Durham: Duke University Press. Hindu temple sculptures, or Islamic decora- Riegl, Aloïs. 1984 [1903]. Le culte moderne des tions from mosques are moved into museums. monuments: son essence et sa genèse. D. Wieczorek Still, in many (though not all) cases there is some (trans.). F. Choay (intro.). Paris: Seuil. overlap between how artworks were thought of Schwartz, Gary & Bok, Marten Jan. 1990. Pieter in their original culture and how they are per- Saenredam: The Painter and His Time. New York: ceived in the museum. There is some connec- Abbeville. tion between the function of these objects in their Wiggins, David. 1980. Sameness and Substance. original culture and their aesthetic qualities Oxford: Blackwell. which we appreciate in our museum. These Wind, Edgar. 1969. Art and Anarchy. 2nd edn. New artifacts had one function in their original con- York: Random House. text, and have another in the museum where david carrier they are treated as artworks. These changes of function involve enough continuity for us to say that they have survived. creativity has been discussed by several major We preserve the artifacts in our museums philosophers of art: Plato, Aristotle, Kant, at the cost of changing rather drastically their Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Collingwood function. Something is preserved even while made important contributions to the topic. these things are drastically changed. It is But the latter half of the twentieth century, important to recognize that the problems of perhaps due to the lingering influence of preservation of artworks involve understanding formalism, saw a relative decline of interest in the function of the museum. Although our art creativity in comparison to the voluminous museum is a creation of the late eighteenth writings about the definition and interpreta- century, there is enough continuity between the tion of art. This relative neglect is odd, since beliefs of that period and ours to permit us to creativity and art are often strongly associated speak of the same institution. A succession of in art-critical discussions and in artists’ own gradual changes in the museum may add up to self-understandings. However, creativity has the effect of a revolution. But those successive begun to reemerge as the object of philosoph- changes are changes in the same institution, ical attention, as witnessed by two recent antho- whereas by definition a revolution involves a logies (Gaut & Livingston 2003; Bardsley et al. break with tradition. Museums have changed forthcoming). Several issues can be raised radically, but there is enough continuity to about creativity, but I will concentrate on permit us to identify them as the same institu- three: the definition of “creativity,” the nature tions. The function of a museum is to give us of the creative process, and the value of creativity knowledge of the past and aesthetic experience in art. of artworks. These philosophical arguments can seem of definition tangential importance to the conservator. He The traditional definition has two parts. A must act while philosophers go on talking. But creative act, process, or object must be original. how he proceeds in his important practical But originality does not suffice, for, as Kant

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creativity remarks, there can be original nonsense: so Goodyear’s invention of the vulcanization the act, process, or object must also be valuable of rubber transformed the conceptual space – it must be “exemplary” (Kant 1987: 175). governing rubber, but his invention was not But if originality is simply newness, and since creative, since it was produced by mechanic- almost all particulars differ from other particu- ally adding to liquid rubber all the substances lars in some respect or other, more needs to on which he could lay his hands (Novitz be said about the notion of originality if it is to 1999). escape vacuity. Novitz’s Jenner objection is more effective Refining the traditional definition, Boden against Boden’s 1994 position, which comes holds that creative ideas must be not only close to suggesting that transformational valuable but also new and surprising – the sur- creativity is the only kind of creativity; but by prise condition answers the problem of trivial 2004 she is explicit that other kinds of creativ- differences. Further, an idea may be new to ity exist. However, the Goodyear objection is a the person who comes up with it (P-creativity, problem not just for Boden’s account of creativity or psychological creativity) or also new in the but also for the two-part definition in general: sense that no one else has thought of it before for it is possible to produce original and valu- (H-creativity, or historical creativity). And able objects by luck or mechanical search something may be surprising either because procedures (such as the mass testing of chem- it is an unfamiliar combination of familiar ical compounds employed by pharmaceutical ideas (combinational creativity), because it companies), but for the results not to be creative. explores a conceptual space (exploratory cre- This shows that not just what is produced ativity), or because it transforms a conceptual matters in determining whether something is space (transformational creativity). In the lat- creative, but also how it is produced. So the ter case, the idea could not have been thought definition of “creativity” should be three-part: of before, since the previous conceptual scheme a creative idea must be not just original rendered it unthinkable (Boden 2004: 1–6). (saliently new) and valuable but also produced A conceptual space is a set of generative rules by flair, in a sense that rules out pure luck and or constraints, such as the rules of chess or of the use of mechanical search procedures in its grammar; and the notion is widely applicable: generation (Gaut 2003). there are, for instance, rules for generating Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie house architecture. the creative process Transformational creativity is more radical Probably the two most influential traditional than exploratory creativity, since it trans- philosophical accounts of the creative process forms the generative rules, rather than merely are the inspiration model (Plato) and the ima- exploring the possibilities within them; and the gination model (Kant). deeper the constraint that is transformed or According to Plato, the creative process is dropped, the more radical is the creativity a matter of being literally inspired (breathed (Boden 1994). Since computers can model into) by the gods, so that the creative person does generative rules and specify their transforma- not know what he is doing and cannot explain tions, this account grounds a computational it; and Plato thinks of inspiration as producing theory of creativity, in the sense that comput- a kind of derangement in the creative person ers can model creativity, though there is no (Plato 1963). The inspiration account was implication that computers really are creative. enthusiastically embraced by the Romantic It has been objected to Boden’s definition poets, particularly Shelley; and it does capture that transforming a conceptual space is not the feeling of some creative people that their ideas necessary to creativity, since Jenner’s inven- arrive mysteriously and unbidden. Freudian tion of the smallpox vaccine was creative, theories of creativity also owe something to the but did not transform a conceptual space, for Platonic model, with the unconscious taking the no conceptual space about vaccines existed role of the gods. prior to his invention. Nor is transforming a According to Kant, a genius has an innate tal- conceptual space sufficient for creativity, even ent for allowing his faculties of imagination when something valuable is produced, since and understanding to play freely together (i.e.,

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creativity in non-rule-governed fashion) so as to create something about what she is trying to do in order works of beauty – genius occurs only in the to reject some of her attempts at achieving it fine arts and not in science according to Kant. as unsatisfactory (1985: 245). And it has also In particular, the genius possess Geist, spirit, been argued that the creative process can be tele- which is an ability to exhibit aesthetic ideas, ological, both because it can involve a more and “by an aesthetic idea I mean a presenta- detailed specification of one’s end and also tion of the imagination which prompts much because creativity can be shown in choosing thought, but to which no determinate thought the means to one’s ends; and this view also whatsoever, i.e., no [determinate] concept, can allows that creativity is or involves a skill be adequate” (Kant 1987: 182). This account (Gaut 2008). Some writers also note that cre- of open-ended imaginative exploration cap- ativity occurs in a framework of planning and tures an aspect of the creative person’s experi- intention-formation without which the cre- ence, in the sense that the creative person may ative process could not be effective (Livingston explore various possibilities in imagination, so 2005: ch. 2). that imagination is the vehicle of active creativity The idea that creativity cannot be explained (Gaut 2003). Kant also holds that the operations has also been challenged on various grounds. of genius are inexplicable, since the natural David Novitz (2003) has argued that action- talent that is genius is grounded on the sub- guiding and causal explanations of creativity are ject’s supersensible nature, that is, on his nature not available, but has defended the possibility in the noumenal realm, which does not admit of biological and social explanations. Jon Elster of scientific knowledge (Kant 1987: 217). (2000) develops an account of the creative Thus, though his reasons differ, Kant agrees with process in terms of the constrained maximiza- Plato that creativity is inexplicable. tion of artistic value, which makes it a rational An important refinement of traditional process and so also potentially subject to models is due to Collingwood. He holds that art explanation. The possibility of comprehensive is created and “To create something means to explanations is also suggested by computa- make it non-technically, but yet consciously tional models of creativity and by explanatory and voluntarily” (1938: 128). Technical mak- accounts of creativity offered by psychologists. ing is craft-making, and it involves taking the means to some predetermined end and creativity and the value of art also skill. Though Collingwood does not ex- Formalists reject the relevance of creativity as plicitly connect creativity to creation, a natural an artistic value, since the originality – a com- thought prompted by his account is that the ponent of creativity – of a work is an extrinsic creative process cannot involve taking means property of it. So Beardsley (1965), having to some already established end, since, if the end developed a theory of creativity, goes on to is already established, the creative act is com- claim that the theory plays no role in under- plete. Vincent Tomas has defended this view, standing or in evaluating art. Nonformalists holding: “To create is to originate. And it follows have also questioned the value of originality. from this that prior to creation the creator Originality in the sense of mere newness per se does not foresee what will result from it . . . has no aesthetic value, since, as Kant notes, there [Otherwise he] would have to have the idea of can be original nonsense. And if a work is ori- it in mind. But if he already had the idea in mind, ginal by being new in respect of some aesthetic- all that would remain to be done is to objectify ally valuable property, then the reason the the idea in paint or in stone, and this would work is aesthetically valuable is because of the be a matter of skill, or work” (1958: 4). In this aesthetic value of the property, not because sense, creativity is “blind,” and the creative of its newness. For consider the first work in process is not teleological but generates its Frans Hals’s mature style: this work has aesthetic own momentum and direction from factors value by virtue of its valuable style, but this value internal to it (Beardsley 1965). is possessed by all his later works in the style too; Though influential, this nonteleological the mere fact that it is the first in that style, in model has been challenged. John Hospers contrast, gives it some historical value, but objects that the creative person has to know no aesthetic value (Vermazen 1991; cf. Sibley

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1985). It has also been argued that whereas See also collingwood; imagination; kant; creativity, the maximization of artistic value originality; plato; science and art. subject to constraints, has aesthetic value, originality, the mere changing of these con- bibliography straints, has no intrinsic aesthetic value (Elster Bardsley, Karen, Dutton, Denis, & Krausz, Michael 2000). And even if one accords originality (eds.). Forthcoming. The Idea of Creativity. Leiden: Brill. some aesthetic value, one can deny that it has Beardsley, Monroe C. 1965. “On the Creation of Art,” the preeminent value that it is sometimes Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 23, 291–304. accorded, since some of the greatest artists Boden, Margaret. 1994. “What is Creativity?” were less original than lesser ones: Defoe, In Dimensions of Creativity. M. Boden (ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 75–117. Fielding, and Richardson were more innovative Boden, Margaret. 2004. The Creative Mind: Myths as novelists than Austen, Dickens, and Eliot, but and Mechanisms. 2nd edn. London: Routledge. it is the latter group who are the greater artists Collingwood, R. G. 1938. The Principles of Art. (Olsen 2003). Oxford: Clarendon. A defense of the aesthetic value of original- Elster, Jon. 2000. Ulysses Unbound: Studies in ity can appeal to the fact that artworks are not Rationality, Precommitment, and Constraints. just objects with properties, but also achieve- Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ments. So artistically evaluating them involves Gaut, Berys. 2003. “Creativity and Imagination.” In in part evaluating them as achievements; Gaut & Livingston, 148–73. and the degree of their achievement is partly Gaut, Berys. Forthcoming. “Creativity and Skill.” In The Idea of Creativity. K. Bardsley, D. Dutton, & dependent on how original they are. Thus the M. Krausz (eds.). Leiden: Brill. originality of a work is part of its artistic value Gaut, Berys & Livingston, Paisley (eds.). 2003. The (Levinson 2003). One can also hold that ori- Creation of Art: New Essays in Philosophical Aesth- ginality is an artistic value, without believing etics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. that it is a preeminent one: one can accord Hospers, John. 1985. “Artistic Creativity,” Journal of originality status as one of several artistic mer- Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 43, 243–55. its that artworks possess. Kant, Immanuel. 1987 [1790]. Critique of Judgment. W. Pluhar (trans.). Indianapolis: Hackett. conclusion Levinson, Jerrold. 2003. “Elster on Artistic These three issues are only some of those that Creativity.” In Gaut & Livingston, 235–56. Livingston, Paisley. 2005. Art and Intention. Oxford: can fruitfully be raised about creativity: there Oxford University Press. are also interesting questions to explore about Novitz, David. 1999. “Creativity and Constraint,” the relation of creativity to rules, to tradition, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 77, 67–82. to moral values, and so on. Also, the relative lack Novitz, David. 2003. “Explanations of Creativity.” of attention to creativity in aesthetics and In Gaut & Livingston, 174–91. philosophy in general contrasts sharply with Olsen, Stein Haugom. 2003. “Culture, Convention, the large amount of work that has been and Creativity.” In Gaut & Livingston, 192–207. done by psychologists on the topic (Sternberg Plato. 1963. Ion. In Plato: The Collected Dialogues. 1999). Some of the most important recent E. Hamilton & H. Cairns (eds.). Princeton: work by philosophers has explored computa- Princeton University Press. Sibley, Frank. 1985. “Originality and Value,” British tional models of the mind (Boden 2004). But Journal of Aesthetics, 25, 169–84. there are many other psychological theories Simonton, Dean Keith. 1999. Origins of Genius: worthy of philosophical investigation, such as Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity. New York: Darwinian theories, which consider creativity Oxford University Press. as the production of random ideational variants, Sternberg, Robert (ed.). 1999. Handbook of Creativity. the successful ones of which are selectively Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. retained (Simonton 1999). Given the import- Tomas, Vincent. 1958. “Creativity in Art,” ance of creativity in art and the psychological Philosophical Review, 67, 1–15. theories awaiting philosophical exploration, Vermazen, Bruce. 1991. “The Aesthetic Value of there is every reason to believe that the recent Originality,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 16, 266–79. philosophical revival of interest in creativity will continue to flower and grow. berys gaut

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critical monism and pluralism critical monism and pluralism Critical pluralistic rhetoric is set aside it is difficult to pluralism is the thesis that artworks admit of see what the alleged contrast between critical alternative, equally acceptable interpretations, pluralism and critical monism amounts to. some of which are incompatible with others; it Genuinely incompatible theories – artworld asserts that if there is a way to get an artwork interpretative or otherwise – cannot both be right then there are many ways. The contrast- correct, unless the pluralist gives “correct” a ing thesis is critical monism: every artwork is nonstandard interpretation. Critical pluralism susceptible to a single correct, complete inter- strains at our ordinary concepts of correctness, pretation. Critical pluralism is an exciting completeness, disagreement, and incompat- thesis: it entails that two critics could lay equal ibility. In what sense are the touted “rival” claim to understanding the same artistic interpretations genuinely incompatible? Does phenomenon despite serious interpretative dis- one interpretation really affirm (as true) what agreements with one another. It promises rival another denies? In what sense are they interpretations, complete interpretations, each “equally correct”? In what sense do they of which accounts for all the artwork’s fea- account for all of the artwork’s features? tures, yet all equally correct and genuinely If the coherence and intelligibility of critical incompatible. Critical monism, in contrast, pluralism and critical monism are established, insists that every instance of interpretative dis- the challenge is to locate compelling reasons for agreement rests on at least one interpretative accepting one or the other. Although critical error. monism is not without adherents (Nehamas A helpful contrast is provided by scientific 1981), pluralism is the dominant sentiment explanation. Fashionable relativisms and post- within the artworld. Terry Barrett, for example, modern rhetoric notwithstanding, there is a claims as a basic principle of interpretation way the world is: a way to get it right, and many that “artworks attract multiple interpretations ways to be mistaken. There are determinate and it is not the goal of interpretation to arrive facts, for example, about the electrostatic prop- at single, grand, unified, composite interpreta- erties of copper, the toxicity levels of arsenic, and tions” (2003: 198). Despite his acknowledg- the representational significance of dark areas ment that some interpretations are more on a photographic plate. No “plurality of coherent, reasonable, convincing, and infor- equally correct but incompatible” characteriza- mative than others – thereby rejecting the idea tions of such facts should be countenanced. that all interpretations of an artwork are In contrast, critical pluralism denies the existence equally acceptable – Barrett nonetheless insists of a single, correct interpretation of any given that “there is a range of interpretations any artwork: it portrays the artworld as sustaining artwork will allow” (2003: 198). It is not interpretative pluralism in a way that the clear, however, what sorts of arguments support physical world does not. his pluralistic preferences. Perhaps the contrast is misleading: artworks One way to understand critical pluralism are a special domain of objects, and artworld and critical monism is as expressions of interpretation is not scientific explanation. conflicting views about the nature of artistic Ptolemy and Copernicus could not both have meaning and the purpose of art interpretation. been correct about planetary trajectories, but On one view, interpretation aims to discover rival critics disagreeing about the aesthetically facts about meaning. The meaning is “out relevant features of Barnett Newman’s paintings, there” in the artistic object or performance: an or the expressive properties of Stravinsky’s interpreter can be right or wrong about it. Firebird Suite, or the proper interpretation of Such a “realist” view about meaning carries no T. S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” may be equally commitment as to its nature. Meaning might correct. Critical pluralism claims that for a be a psychological property constituted by variety of artworks, no unique correct inter- artist’s intentions, for example, or by experiences pretation is forthcoming. prompted by an artwork among the artist’s Pluralism is intimately related to tolerance. contemporaries. Or meaning might be a socio- A tenet of liberal democratic orthodoxy is logical property, explicable in terms of com- that Tolerance is a Good Thing. But once the munally upheld norms, or a physical property,

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critical monism and pluralism explicable in terms of reliable signaling and disagreement about realist versus projective informational content. Whatever the nature conceptions of artistic meaning, adjudication and ontological status of meaning, it is a feature requires technical semantic and psycholo- as real and objective as the mass of an object gical inquiries; moreover, empirical study is or the relative position of a city. The success- required to identify the notion of interpretat- ful interpreter gets it right. Such a picture of ive meaning actually sustained within the meaning is naturally conjoined with critical artworld. Examples: if art historians seek to monism. discover cultural-historical facts about the A contrasting view is that artistic meaning iconic significance of certain images, this is “projected,” rather than discovered, by the would suggest that critical monism provides a interpreter. The meaning of a painting is no more more accurate picture of actual critical practice. a real feature of the painting than the taste of If film critics regard late 1950s science fiction an orange is a real feature of the orange. The movies as “about” cold war anxiety and fear of interpreter’s job is to weave narrative stories that nuclear radiation – and dismiss contemporary facilitate engagement with artworks: mean- viewers as unable to grasp that content and thus ings properly ascribed to an artwork are con- unable to understand the genre – this too stituted by viewer/reader/listener responses, would suggest that critical monism provides a which are mediated by his or her interests, more accurate picture of actual critical practice. expectations, presuppositions, and contextual And so on. situation. Meanings are made, not found. Such Putting aside the theory of meaning, the a view about meaning is naturally conjoined term “pluralism” tends to be applied to a vari- with critical pluralism (with reservations to be ety of phenomena: considerations that appear noted below). to validate critical pluralism turn out, on care- Thus, there are two different ways to think ful scrutiny, to be unexciting and/or unsup- about artistic meaning: (1) it is a real feature of portive of pluralistic conclusions. an artwork, analogous to the representational Consider an analogy between interpreting significance of tree rings, deflections on an artworks and understanding persons. Any effort ohmmeter, or height of a mercury column; one to tell “the whole story” about Robin involves can be correct or mistaken about such matters; a plurality of complex descriptions connected or (2) it is constituted by subjective psycho- with various aspects of her life. Perhaps any logical responses to a work; meaning is a feature “monistic” effort to pin down a single, unified that emerges from the effects of an artwork on story about her is misguided (except in the an observer, and the narratives and inter- trivial sense that the conjunction of this plurality pretative stories it prompts the observer to tell. of stories is constructible, thereby resulting in But a projective theory of artistic meaning a single story). Understanding Robin’s com- does not, in fact, provide a ground for critical plex life requires attention to a plurality of pluralism. Granted, some interpretative stories interpretative and explanatory stories; perhaps are more fruitful and robust than others, and an analogue of this situation obtains in the lead to richer aesthetic experiences, height- realm of artworld interpretation, thereby vin- ened awareness of artwork subtleties and com- dicating critical pluralism. plexities, etc.; and beyond this there is nothing But the alleged pluralities in Robin’s life flow for the interpreter to be right or wrong about. from a single, underlying explanatory ground. But critical pluralism is no consequence, for on Persons are unified entities; the properties this projective view of meaning, interpretative manifest throughout her various roles flow claims are not truth-evaluable (therefore the from some unifying personal essence – her various interpretations cannot be said to be character. Her patience and compassion, for equally correct). Moreover, the various inter- example, explain both her professional and her pretative stories are not, strictly speaking, parental temperament; her cleverness explains incompatible; at most they foreground different both her problem-solving skills in hospital features of the interpreted object. settings and in dealing with friends’ crises. Insofar as the dispute between critical plu- Understanding Robin requires knowing why ralism and critical monism is grounded in she exhibits the features she does across various

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critical monism and pluralism aspects of her life. This in turn involves grasp- One way to approach the issue is to explore ing the underlying personality from which her parallel puzzles concerning the metaphysics multifarious properties flow. There is a single, of linguistic meaning. In the wake of Quine’s correct psychological theory about Robin, (1960) arguments for the indeterminacy of difficult though it may be to discover. Monism translation there is ongoing dispute about the vindicated. existence of “mutually incompatible but equally Although artworks are not persons, the correct” translations of sentences in natural analogy is provocative. Just as aspects of Robin language. Quine’s results are pluralistic: if displayed across a plurality of contexts are there is one correct translation scheme from an manifestations of an underlying, explanatorily alien language to our own, there are many unifying character, any alleged plurality of such schemes. If Quine is right – if there is “no correct interpretations of a given artwork fact of the matter” about sentence meaning might be subject to unification via a single and the reference of singular terms – perhaps interpretative story: the correct interpretation similar considerations apply to the artworld, of the artwork properly identifies that underly- thereby providing support for interpretative ing explanatory essence. Critical monism vin- pluralism. dicated. Of course, different observers armed But arguments for critical pluralism modeled with different interests might focus on differ- on Quinean arguments for the indeterminacy of ent facets of Robin’s life, but such interest translation are not likely to be compelling, for relativity provides no ground for pluralistic several reasons. (1) It is not clear that artistic conclusions. genres are sufficiently similar to natural lan- On the other hand, explanatory unification guages, and artworld interpretation suffici- of the envisaged sort is not always possible: ently similar to natural language translation, to some artworld correlate of Donald Davidson’s render Quine’s arguments supportive of critical (2001) “anomalous monism” might obtain, pluralism. (2) Quine’s arguments for trans- whereby different classes of predicates “not lational indeterminacy rest on a rigorous (and made for each other” are applicable to the controversial) specification of “correct transla- same artwork and figure into a variety of cor- tion,” but no equally rigorous characterization rect but incommensurable interpretations. of “correct artistic interpretation” would likely (Plausible artworld examples of this phe- be agreed on by parties to the dispute between nomenon are worth seeking.) Moreover, the critical pluralism and critical monism (thereby critical pluralist might prefer a different sort of arousing suspicion that critical pluralism and analogy. Perhaps interpreting an artwork is critical monism are not, in fact, conflicting less like understanding a person (or explaining claims about the same phenomenon). scientific data) and more like planning an Another possible route to critical pluralism extended journey: there is no single, “correct” turns on the idea that artworks are cultural route to be discovered. The optimal line of artifacts, and that interpretation of cultural travel depends on one’s interests and goals phenomena deploys a methodology that does (minimize drive time, maximize scenic views, not aspire toward uniqueness of functional etc.). Critical pluralism vindicated. characterization. If, for example, correct inter- But some analogies are more apt than oth- pretation of Kasimir Malevich’s paintings ers. And arguments are required. Here we offer involves situating them in the context of additional considerations in support of critical Russian avant-garde artists, or the social ideals pluralism, and find none to be convincing: the behind the Russian Revolution, or European critical monist will have a response to each. This Post-Impressionism, or aerial photography, hardly establishes the falsity of critical plural- then the art-interpretative enterprise emerges as ism; but in light of plausible assumptions an instance of historical explanation. Perhaps about meaning and interpretation – artistic there is a compelling argument that such and otherwise – it provides sufficient basis for explanation, unlike that in physics or chemistry, skepticism. Given the prevalence of pluralistic involves a hermeneutic methodology that sentiments within the artworld, this conclu- cannot be expected to deliver a single, correct sion is nontrivial. story. Perhaps, as Hayden White suggests,

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“narrative accounts of real historical events . . . artistic communities – then proper interpreta- admit of as many equally plausible versions in tion of the work requires specification of all of their representation as there are plot struc- the relevant roads, as well as the interpretative tures available in a given culture for endowing ambiguities and ironies that result. To alter stories, whether fictional or real, with meanings” the imagery, if a person enjoys citizenship in (1986: 489). But it is vital to distinguish epi- a plurality of nations, proper understanding stemic roadblocks – the difficulties in discerning of that person requires the complete story connections of historical influence and causa- about such multiple citizenship and, perhaps, of tion – from the metaphysical claim that his- the internal tensions that result. There will be torical reality is ontologically indeterminate a single, correct such story. Critical monism and admits of inconsistent but equally correct vindicated. characterizations. The latter claim appears Further reflection on the nature of meaning, implausible (if not unintelligible). Pending an purposes of artworld interpretation, methodo- elaborate inquiry into the metaphysics of past logy of cultural history, and/or the ontology events, there seems little reason to endorse it. of art might provide compelling grounds for Thus no argument for critical pluralism is critical pluralism not considered here (see likely to emerge from considerations of Kraut 2007). But insofar as meaning – artistic historico-hermeneutic methodology. (For further and otherwise – is a real phenomenon in the discussion, see Habermas 1971.) world, and artworld interpretation aspires to dis- Yet another pluralistic argument highlights cover it, the onus is on the critical pluralist to the social-institutional constituents of mean- establish that there is, in any interesting sense, ing, and draws its power from an analogy. a plurality of equally correct interpretations of Linguistic communities play an essential role in an artwork. the constitution of semantic content: it is the word’s use within this group of speakers that See also literature; “artworld”; criticism; constitutes its meaning. Analogously, art com- implied author; intention and interpre- munities play a role in the constitution of artis- tation; “intentional fallacy”; interpre- tic content: it is the image’s use within this tation; interpretation, aims of; meaning group of artists that constitutes its meaning. The constructivism. interpretative meaning of artistic productions is constituted by facts about artistic norms and bibliography stylistic conventions – those sustained within the Barrett, Terry. 2003. Interpreting Art: Reflecting, relevant community. Wondering, and Responding. New York: McGraw- Therefore an artwork – qua susceptible to Hill. interpretation – must be construed as occupy- Danto, Arthur C. 1964. “The Artworld,” Journal of ing a place within an institutional, norma- Philosophy, 61, 571–84. tively constrained context: an artworld. This Davidson, Donald. 2001. “Mental Events.” In was Arthur C. Danto’s (1964) fundamental Essays on Actions and Events. New York: Oxford insight. But Danto failed to note that there are University Press, 207–29. Habermas, Jürgen. 1971. Knowledge and Human many such artworlds, just as there are many dis- Interests. Boston: Beacon. tinct natural languages. This plurality of art- Kraut, Robert. 2007. Artworld Metaphysics. Oxford: worlds provides a ground for critical pluralism: Oxford University Press. if there is no fact of the matter as to which art- Nehamas, Alexander. 1981. “The Postulated Author: world is relevant to the proper interpretation of Critical Monism as a Regulative Ideal,” Critical a given artwork, any of several interpretations Inquiry, 8, 133–49. will qualify as equally correct. Quine, W. V. O. 1960. Word and Object. Cambridge, But additional argument is required to MA: MIT Press. show that no artistic community is the correct Stecker, Robert. 2003. Interpretation and Construc- frame of reference for the interpretative task. tion: Art, Speech and the Law. Oxford: Blackwell. White, Hayden. 1986. “Historical Pluralism,” Critical Moreover, if an artwork is situated at a com- Inquiry, 12, 480–93. munal crossroads – perhaps the artist belongs simultaneously to a plurality of relevant robert kraut

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criticism criticism Introducing a collection of papers influence on and of a work of literature, which entitled Contemporary Criticism in 1970, treated the literary as a historical object about Malcolm Bradbury, while noting an increase in which facts could be gleaned. This approach, what he termed “speculative theory,” recorded however, presupposed a quite different relation nevertheless that “today, literary criticism has to the work, through which its reputation become the method of literary study – its primary could be established in the first place so that it methodology, or ‘discipline,’ the self-conscious could become a worthy object for the study of tactic of the subject” (1970: 19). Almost 20 “influences.” Such an engagement is essen- years later, however, we find Frank Kermode tially interpretative and evaluative. declaring that “criticism seems to be in rapid In The Well-Wrought Urn, Brooks went on decline, and is by many thought moribund, to argue against the tendency to reduce this and all the better for that” (1989: 5). Not, of evaluative and interpretative activity itself to course, that this marks a decline in the pro- a species of factual inquiry. “The temper of our ductivity of teachers in literature departments, times is strongly relativistic,” he wrote, for “we but rather the replacement of “criticism” by tend to say that every poem is an expression of “theory.” The latter, Kermode thinks, “is often its age . . . that we must judge it only by the the work of writers who seem largely to have canons of its age” (1947: preface). But such a lost interest in literature as such” and to be position both conceals its own evaluative char- hostile to criticism, desiring “to destroy the end acter, in determining which authors are to be [it] had in view, which . . . was to deepen taken as showing us the relevant canons, and understanding of literature, and to transmit to makes impossible an engagement with con- others (including non-professors) interpreta- temporary work, which must first be evaluated tions and valuations which could and would be before there can be any conception of a “canon” transformed or accommodated to new conditions at all. We can only evaluate current work in as time went by” (1989: 5). For both Bradbury terms of standards appropriate for literature as and Kermode, “criticism” is to be contrasted such, and it is in terms of these too that we with “theory,” and while the former is con- engage with the works of the past insofar as we cerned with “literature as such” and is directed are evaluatively engaged with them. Great toward the interpretation and evaluation of poems, Brooks claims, bear a close relation to individual works, the latter, at least in its con- each other, in the qualities which make them temporary and dominant mode, intends the poems and that determine whether they are destruction of criticism and its goals. good or bad. Poetry, as a distinct form of dis- This understanding of the object and goals of course, embodies general criteria against which criticism is at one with that of the so-called poems may be measured. Such judgments, “New Criticism” developed in the writings of then, will not be relative to their age, nor to our John Crowe Ransome, Allen Tate, and espe- own, but are made in terms of the nature of cially Cleanth Brooks in the United States dur- poetry as such (Brooks 1947: 197). I shall ing the 1930s and 1940s, and which, through return to what this involves shortly. the textbooks Understanding Poetry (1938) and Now this is, Brooks claims, a new under- Understanding Fiction (1941) (both by Brooks and standing of poetry and the critic’s role. There Robert Penn Warren), became the dominant have indeed been critical revolutions in the force in the teaching of literature in American past, but if now we are to consider literature universities after World War II. Although the as literature, then these must have shared an term “New Criticism” was taken from the title essentially nonliterary understanding of the of a book by Ransome that did not discuss any literary work. These revolutions, the neoclas- of the critics now associated with it, it never- sical at the end of the seventeenth century and theless aptly marks the sense of a break with the the Romantic at the turn of the nineteenth, previous practice of literary study. At the heart although opposed in many ways in their of this lay the question of the sense and role of understanding of poetry, had their differences history for literary study. Tate characterized constituted within a unity. A poem was under- the new criticism as opposed to the “histor- stood by both as essentially a statement, the test ical method,” the research into the historical of which is its truth; the poetical aspect of the

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criticism work lies in the decoration of this information of the poet is to examine, not the individual with imagery and appropriate meter and sound. but the species; to remark general properties There was thus a distinctive poetry language, and large appearances”; and, in the preface to although what was taken as poetic changed. his edition of Shakespeare’s plays, that “it is One might justify this in relation to writing always a writer’s duty to make the world bet- inspired by the importation of French neoclas- ter, and justice is a virtue independent of time sical critics such as Boileau, René Rapin, and and place.” Dominique Bouhours at the end of the seven- If the Romantics objected to the production teenth century, by referring to John Dennis’s of imagery through fancy – which elaborates, Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704, in Elledge as Wordsworth put it, “the lurking affinities” in 1961). Here Dennis claims that poetry is an dissimilars – in favor of the imagination, and art, and “if it is an art it follows that it must pro- rejected the neoclassical “kinds” of poetry, for pose an end to itself and afterwards lay down Brooks they do so still in the name of a non- proper means for the attaining that end . . . literary purpose. Imagination, Coleridge said, acts those proper means in poetry we call rules.” The “by impressing the stamp of humanity, of end of poetry is twofold: “the subordinate one human feeling over inanimate objects” so that is pleasure, and the final one is instruction . . . objects are not merely imitated, but “a human in reforming the manners.” Poetry is essen- and intellectual life is transferred to them from tially the conveying of moral instruction in a the poet’s own spirit” (1960: ch. 11). This is not pleasing form which will incline the reader merely a matter of seeing nature through an toward virtue and against vice. emotional coloring, as when in Lear “the deep The particular kinds of poetry are concerned anguish of a father spreads the feeling of with different spheres of human life and the ingratitude and cruelty over the very ele- virtues and vices relevant to them. The epic ments of heaven,” but a bringing of “the whole thus concerns the highest forms of conduct soul of man into activity” (1960: ch. 12). concerned with the wellbeing of the state or of Imagination, which “struggles to idealize and to mankind itself; tragedy, the punishment of unify,” has the essential task of revealing the great vice or the endurance of great misfor- unity of the human with the universe at large tune on the part of the virtuous; comedy, the and so, as Wordsworth put it, “to incite and sup- common foibles and small vices of ordinary port the eternal.” Hence the appropriateness people, and so forth. Each kind of poetry has its of the Romantic lyric form and the autobio- own rules, determined by the end of pleasing by graphical poem – Wordsworth’s Prelude being instruction through the imitation of the appro- the greatest exemplar – in which the individual priate manners, which concern the various characteristically is shown moving from an parts of the poem: plot, character, speeches, instinctive unity with nature to an alienation sentiments, imagery, diction, and versification. revealed by man’s capacity for freedom, which Criticism brings to bear the appropriate end is in turn remedied through the revelation of a and rule for the kind of poem at issue, and new and higher unity within which the indi- exercises taste which Addison called “that fac- vidual achieves, as the Prelude (book 14, ulty of the soul which discerns the beauties of ll. 113–14) says, “the highest bliss . . . the con- an author with pleasure and the imperfections sciousness / Of whom they are.” with dislike.” Such criticism not only notes Thus, for Brooks, the aim of such poetry is to conformity with the rules, which Pope said convey truths about “the eternal,” which may resulted in “exact disposition, just thoughts, equally be transmitted argumentatively in phi- correct elocution, polished numbers,” but also losophy, in a language and form calculated to that “poetical fire” which marks the great from incite the appropriate feelings. The critic’s task the commonplace in the production of daring is to enable the reader to participate in such feel- and striking imagery, and so forth. The end of ings, a project which leads to an “appreciative” moral instruction requires reference to a uni- criticism which itself conveys the feelings of versal morality and the depiction of individuals the critic and which, therefore, itself particip- with reference to their general humanity, so that ates to an extent in the character of literature Dr Johnson tells us in Rasselas that “the business itself.

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The previous critical revolutions, then, under- in relation to literature, at least in print, in the stood the poem instrumentally, as directed preface to The State of Innocence (1677), where toward a nonliterary end and to be judged he explains it as “a standard of judging well” and accordingly. Whether it is “to instruct by claims it was instituted first by Aristotle. But pleasing” or “to incite and support the eter- evaluative interpretation of individual works is nal,” the poem’s quality depends on the truth singularly lacking in ancient and medieval of its teaching and on the effectiveness of its texts. Plato, concerned to dispute the educative poetic language in achieving the desired end. The value of poetry, and Aristotle, to defend it as a poem has not been judged as literature but form of knowledge about human life, both take as a means to a nonliterary end. To approach for granted the evaluation of the works they the poem as poetry and so noninstrumentally mention but provide little insight into its means rejecting the form/content distinction formation. The same is largely true of the tra- between the truth conveyed and the way it is dition of so-called rhetorical criticism in the presented. A poem, Brooks says, is not about Hellenistic period, concerned as it was to whatever ideas it may contain. The imagery, preserve a culture of the past by making its rhythm, and sound are not merely instruments accepted masterworks into unquestionable by which a content is conveyed, but rather models for imitation, although there are hints constitute the meaning of the poem itself. Poetry of a critical practice at work in the descriptions is a particular kind of discourse – figurative of the appropriateness of particular rhythms, discourse – and the poem as poem is a dra- diction, and sounds to the different “styles” matic unity of patterns of figuration. The unity of poetry (e.g., see Demetrius in Russell & of the poem lies in the ways in which tensions Winterbottom 1972). The allegorical inter- are set up by propositions, tropes, rhythm, pretation of the Middle Ages, deriving from and sound and are ultimately resolved, again Neoplatonic models utilized for Christian exe- figuratively. The poem is thus to be understood gesis, consists in the application of a method to in close proximity to a musical composition, as texts already selected on other grounds. One when in sonata form tonal tensions are set up, could get no indication from Dante’s allegorical argumentatively developed, and resolved. account of The Divine Comedy of how one could The significance of this figurative use of lan- distinguish his work from the mediocre or guage lies for Brooks in literature’s concern incompetent, as his contemporaries and suc- not with ideas but with the way a human cessors clearly did. being may relate to them, which requires Let us, however, return to the question of the figurative expression, as can be seen in our contemporary confrontation between criticism everyday lives when we have resort to simile and and theory. What is proposed by this in its metaphor in order to express how we feel. various forms is that the practice of criticism Because the structure of the poem is to be involves presuppositions “about language and understood in this dramatic way, the central about meaning, about the relationships between terms of critical discourse are those of “ambi- meaning and the world, meaning and people, guity,” “paradox,” “complex of attitudes,” and . . . about people themselves and their “irony,” and “wit.” The poem is an enactment of place in the world” (Belsey 1980) which are attitudes and of their conflict and resolution, and never explicitly stated and defended. When the critic’s task is to interpret, in the sense of these presuppositions are revealed by reflective bringing out the nature of the “meaning,” thought, they are shown to be inadequate, figuratively understood, as opposed to the and the practice that may then ensue, properly mere paraphrasable content, and to evaluate the grounded in the appropriate theory, is no poem’s success or failure as such enactment. longer recognizably criticism. Theory takes a Brooks considers two critical revolutions variety of contemporary forms depending on the prior to the advent of the New Criticism, and one sort of presuppositions identified and criticized, might wonder why not more, given that liter- but perhaps the dominant modes have been ature and its discussion have a far longer his- deconstruction in the United States, and in tory. George Watson (1973: 3) notes that it Britain a form of poststructuralism centrally was Dryden who first used the term “criticism” concerned with political history.

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According to poststructuralist critics of both repeated assertion of the evaporation of mean- camps, literary criticism has sought to interpret ing there is no place to analyze the contest of works of literature and so provide us with meaning, and therefore no politics, and there access to their meaning. Such a meaning is is no possibility of tracing changes of meaning, assumed to be unitary, whether this is taken as the sliding of the signified, in history” (Belsey a paraphrasable message or as the figurative 1988: 403). For such theorists, the differential unity sought by the New Critics, and only on nature of meaning shows it as unfixed, “sliding,” the basis of this assumption are the interpre- and so a matter for political debate. The differ- tative practice and its characteristic forms of ential structures of meaning available at any dispute and agreement intelligible. But this time determine the limits of what it is possible assumption is untenable, it is claimed. The to say and understand, and since the destina- meaning of any sign is produced only through tion of meaning is the subject, “subjectivity is its differing from others, and this process can discursively produced and is constrained by have no given terminus as such an end would the range of subject positions defined by the dis- have to be a sign whose meaning was not the courses in which the individual participates” result of difference. Any particular determin- (Belsey 1985: 6). This determines, therefore, ant meaning is possible only because we have what it is possible to be at any time. But since terminated this play of differentiation for prac- the play of meaning cannot be halted, all such tical purposes, and yet that meaning is possible determinations of subjectivity are unstable and only because the signs concerned can always embattled. be incorporated in another nexus of differ- The discourse of literary criticism, in its vari- ences, another context, and so come to mean ous forms, assumes a particular form of sub- differently, in a way that cannot, in principle, jectivity – the unified, autonomous individual be limited. for whom there is a unified, determinate, and Deconstruction thus characteristically tries to graspable meaning – the subjectivity of “liberal show how a text, in trying to limit its meaning, humanism,” which emerges out of conflict at the same time undoes this work and shows with medieval conceptions in the sixteenth its impossibility. Certain kinds of literary work century and achieves dominance in the seven- are sometimes privileged within deconstruc- teenth. Literature is one of the scenes within tive approaches, as showing a reflective aware- which such fundamental determinations of ness of the differential nature of meaning, meaning are contested and reinforced. The inviting interpretations that they at the same aim of the work on literature is to undermine time resist. Thus, Barbara Johnson in a discus- the hold of “liberal humanism,” through a sion of Melville’s Billy Budd tries to show how demonstration of the way its fundamental con- the different readings of the text produced in lit- ceptions have emerged through conflict and erary criticism are replicated in the text itself, have maintained themselves through the sup- in the way Budd, Claggart, Dansker, and Vere pression of alternative subjectivities. In this read the events of the story and each other. At way, a contemporary space is to be formed crucial moments of the text, central to deciding within which radical change becomes possible. a meaning, however, there is only the “empty, This reading practice is directed toward a mechanical functioning” of language, as “political history from the raw material of literary when, for example, Vere dies simply repeating texts” for which “literary value becomes irrel- Budd’s name. It is, Johnson suggests, “these evant: political assassination is problematized in very gaps in understanding,” which both pro- Pickering’s play Horestes (1567) as well as in voke interpretation and prevent its success, Hamlet”; fiction is thus “put to work for sub- that “Melville is asking us to understand” stantial political ends” (Belsey 1988: 409). (Johnson 1980: 94). The theoretical approaches to literature that British theorists have tended to regard have become a staple part of literary education American deconstruction as a continuation over the past 30 years in general share this of the New Critical project by other means, emancipatory ambition. Dominant forms of within which one can restrict oneself to the subjectivity (e.g., patriarchal, heterosexual, formal aspects of a text. “In the constant and white colonial) historically define themselves

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croce, benedetto over against subordinate and so inferior ones Bradbury, Malcolm (ed.). 1970. Contemporary (female, homosexual, indigenous) and litera- Criticism. London: Arnold. ture is read in terms of the constitution of, and Brooks, Cleanth. 1947. The Well-Wrought Urn. New opposition to, the former, a reading directed York: Reynal & Hitchcock. toward the liberation of the subordinated Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 1960 [1817]. Biographia others to find their own voice. This has clearly Literaria. G. Watson (ed.). London: Dent. Cunningham, Valentine. 2002. Reading After Theory. been a liberating exercise itself for the study of Oxford: Blackwell. literature. It emphasizes the historicality, and so Elledge, Scott (ed.). 1961. Eighteenth-Century Critical alterability, of conceptions of human life, and Essays. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. foregrounds the historical situatedness of liter- Johnson, Barbara. 1980. The Critical Difference. ary works in relation to the formation and Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. contestation of these conceptions, but without Kermode, Frank. 1989. An Appetite for Poetry. objectifying history. Theory stresses, rather, London: Collins. that we are ourselves part of the history of Lodge, David (ed.). 1988. Modern Criticism and human subjectivities so that to respond appro- Theory. London: Longman. priately to literature is to do so in an engaged Russell, D. A. & Winterbottom, M. 1972. Ancient Literary Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. manner, in terms of our own contestations. Watson, George. 1973. The Literary Critics. But although “criticism” in the sense advo- Harmondsworth: Penguin. cated by the New Critics is a thing of the past, Waugh, Patricia. 2006. Literary Theory and Criticism: its concerns with the specificity of the literary An Oxford Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press. and with the evaluation of individual works michael weston remain to trouble theory and to require an accommodation. Because theory sees litera- ture as merely one way in which representations of subjectivity are constituted and contested, Croce, Benedetto (1866–1952) Italian attention is diverted from the character of a idealist philosopher, historian, and critic; a work as a poem or short story, say, rather than dominant figure in his country’s intellectual a piece of journalism, within which, too, repre- life in the first part of the twentieth century. Born sentations of subjectivity are formed. Again, it in the Abruzzo region of Italy, Croce developed is difficult to see how issues of evaluation and in his youth a taste for old books and the life of its criteria can be avoided. The question of why a self-styled scholar in literature and history. we attend to Conrad and Kipling rather than Gradually, a passion for the free thinking that Flora Annie Steel in relation to colonial sub- philosophy allowed drew him into writing in jectivities cannot be answered by an appeal to a philosophical vein. In 1883 he suffered a historical inquiry into their readerships, con- tragedy that reoriented his domestic life. He temporary citations, and so forth. Why such was on holiday with his family when an earth- authors still matter to us, and which contem- quake struck; his parents and sister were killed porary works should, remain questions for us and he himself was buried for several hours as they were for Cleanth Brooks in 1947. before being rescued. He went to live in Rome with his uncle and when he finally emerged from See also literature; poetry; aesthetic judg- the depression brought on by the tragedy and ment; canon; deconstruction; feminist the subsequent displacement, he embarked on criticism; interpretation; modernism and his philosophical career. postmodernism; sibley; structuralism and Croce’s thinking drew from a variety of poststructuralism; taste. sources. Early on, under the influence of bibliography Antonio Labriola, he was led to explore the work of J. F. Herbart and Marx. A more direct Belsey, C. 1980. Critical Practice. London: Methuen. Belsey, C. 1985. The Subject of Tragedy. London: influence on his aesthetics, however, was Methuen. Francesco de Sanctis, whose work he had Belsey, C. 1988. “Literature, History, Politics.” In begun reading as a schoolboy. His continuing Modern Criticism and Theory. David Lodge (ed.). attention to de Sanctis led, after the turn of the London: Longman, 399–410. century, to study of Hegel and Vico and to the

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croce, benedetto refining of his own brand of idealist aesthetics. On this foundation in the Aesthetic Croce In tracing the history of Croce’s central notion built his fuller account of art as intuition. of intuition, it is of interest to note his assertion Scholars, however, disagree how to read the that he learned from de Sanctis “in a very development of his ideas. Some argue that his crude shape this central idea: that art is not a views changed so drastically that it is best to work of reflection and logic, nor yet a product understand his work as a series of distinct and of skill, but pure and spontaneous imaginative inconsistent moments. However, he himself form” (1928: 78–9). held that the development of his ideas was evo- Croce’s first work in aesthetics, an outline of lutionary, that his later thinking was an exten- his initial thoughts, appeared in 1900 as Thesis sion, not a refutation, of his earlier thinking. of Aesthetics. This was followed in 1902 by the This was consistent with his adoption of a kind publication of his central work on the subject, of historicism that acknowledged the growth Aesthetic: As Science of Expression and General of ideas. The evolutionary interpretation seems Linguistic. It is in the Aesthetic that he first not only the most fruitful but, at least in the fully describes his account of art as intuition. first instance, the one that, given Croce’s own Intuition, as he understood it, is not a mystical endorsement of it, provides the likeliest avenue acquisition of transcendent truths, but the to understanding him. immediate knowing, and thereby transform- Not only the nature of this development, but ing, of impressions. Since intuitive knowing its method, is significant. In 1903, shortly after is active, Croce maintains, it can also be under- publication of the Aesthetic, Croce and Giovanni stood as expression. Thus, intuition is expression Gentile began publication of their journal insofar as expression is the act of transforming La Critica. Croce’s task was that of criticizing impressions by active imagination (fantasia) recent Italian literature. Thus, his philosoph- into individual unified images or organic ical development came to be deeply influenced wholes: “Intuition is the undifferentiated unity by his work as a practical critic. Indeed, his of the perception of the real and of the simple life’s work as a whole exhibits a dialectic of the image of the possible” (1964: 4). The result practical and the theoretical. In his aesthetics, was that, for Croce, intuition-expression in this dialectic resulted in the breaking down of itself is neither divisible into parts nor subsum- his initial description of art as intuition into able under intellectual genera or categories. three stages: (1) the attribution of a lyrical In identifying art as intuition-expression, character to intuition; (2) the defense of cosmic Croce seemed to champion art for art’s sake. The totality in art; and (3) the distinction between presence or absence of intuition marked off poetry and literature. that which was art from nonart. Although he The first development, begun in 1908 and insisted that aesthetic activity is not restricted summed up in Guide to Aesthetics in 1913, is per- to artists in the professional sense, he believed haps the least problematic. The question that it possible to identify them by their “greater Croce faced was the efficacy of intuition: if aptitude” and “more frequent inclination fully intuition is not formed by intellectual con- to express certain complex states of the soul” cepts, how does it occur? His answer, which he (1964: 13). However, he was also adamant attributed to ideas developed in his role as in dismissing two extreme readings of art’s critic, was that intuition is “lyrical.” That is, it autonomy. First, the aesthetic is not the only is the expression of emotion or feeling. By this, fundamental realm of the human spirit; however, he intended neither a “letting-off of rather, it has its place alongside logic, the steam” nor a simply imitative theory of expres- practical (economics and ethics), and history. sion. Rather, the intuition-expression is ideal- Second, despite its autonomy, art as intuition- ized or transformed emotion. As Orsini puts expression cannot occur without the richness it: “The lyrical function of art is to express the of human spirit in all its manifestations. Thus, personality of the artist – not, be it carefully aesthetics, although it is foundational, is not noted, his ‘practical personality’ as evidenced in the monarch of all sciences, and artistic his biography, but what Croce calls here the expression does not occur unfunded by other ‘soul’ of the man” (1961: 48). The lyrical con- human activities. ception of intuition, in pointing to idealized

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croce, benedetto emotion and personality, sets the stage for the standing art through types or genres. How- second development of Croce’s notion of art. ever, his project was to return to his distinction In a 1918 essay entitled “The Character of between art and nonart. The problem was to Totality in Artistic Expression,” Croce argued locate those items that appear to be poetry, in- that intuition involves a kind of universality or asmuch as they appropriate artistic expressions, cosmic totality (totalità). To many critics this but are not themselves intuition-expressions. move appeared problematic, in view of his ear- He had in mind particular items such as enter- lier assertions that logical concepts are univer- tainment and prose that are practical or intel- sal and expressive intuitions are individual. lectual in nature. To these items he gave the However, Croce wanted to argue for a special name “literature” to distinguish them from kind of universality in art. In assessing the poetry or art. Thus, instead of establishing fixed work of Ariosto, Shakespeare, Corneille, and genres within art, Croce was simply refining a others, he found himself searching for that distinction he had made in the Aesthetic. which distinguishes their work from confes- His notion of art as intuition-expression in sional, subjective articulations of emotion. its various stages of development produced What he suggested was that the best works of several interesting corollaries. First, it excised these artists express, in their individuality, some- external production or the making of artifacts thing common to all humanity; they express or from art proper. For Croce, “externalization” of reflect a cosmic totality. This does not, as Croce intuition-expression was a practical affair, not saw it, imply an act of intellectualizing or philo- an aesthetic one. This was, and is, anathema for sophizing in art. An intuition-expression in aestheticians for whom the physical making is itself is still not a general type governing a set integral to art. Yet Croce’s position is not as of tokens. Rather, the universality or totality of strange as it might seem at first glance. art occurs together with art’s individuality in On the one hand, even in his earliest work he an undifferentiated form, as is not the case in recognized that externalization can be used to conceptual renderings of universality. assist expression. On the other, he never dis- An interesting upshot of Croce’s defense of cos- carded from intuition qualities such as tempo, mic totality occurred when he began to search rhythm, line, and color. The mistake, as he for its phenomenological attributes. From the saw it, was an ontological one of assuming mid 1920s, he began to argue that moral con- that these qualities are merely external, phys- science is a condition of intuition-expression. If ical items or events. For him they are the taken to mean that art depends on morality, this intuition-expression in their unique unity; clearly and flatly contradicts one of his funda- and they occur in the intuition prior to any mental theses: the separation of the realms of physical recording of them. the spirit. Moreover, critics saw in this sugges- This in turn led to Croce’s assertion that tion the possibility of the very kind of moralism the role that physical artifacts have to play is that Croce had always sought to reject. It is pos- that of vehicle for communicating art. Thus, sible, however, that he had something more as Dewey independently suggested, critics and expansive in mind: “It is impossible,” he said, observers must use artifacts to re-create the “to be a poet or an artist without being in the intuition of the artist. As did Dewey, Croce faced first place a man nourished by thought and opposition here from those who argued that by experience of moral ideals and conflicts” such strict re-creation is impossible. However, (1949: 133). He may have been searching not it is doubtful that he had in mind anything like for a narrow moralism but for the kind of expe- a technical isomorphism; rather, the genius of rience, even if imaginative experience, that the producer and the taste of the critic achieve can engender cosmic totality. the same intuition of cosmic totality. It is in this In the final turn in his aesthetics, Croce pub- way “that our little souls can echo great souls, lished in 1936 his Poetry and Literature: An and grow great with them in the universality Introduction to Its Criticism and History. Here of the spirit” (1964: 121). he distinguishes poetry from literature. On The adoption of this method of criticism also the surface such a distinction may appear to meant that he rejected the efficacy of criticisms contradict his earlier insistence against under- that rest entirely on intellectual categorizations

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cultural appropriation of technique or content. For Croce, such cate- cultural appropriation Cultural appropri- gories, by virtue of their practical or intellectual ation occurs when members of one culture take natures, were incidental to art. Nevertheless, something from members of another culture. he did come to maintain that critics can use It is particularly controversial when someone intellectual categories in their practice of criti- from a wealthy or powerful culture takes some- cizing, but only after a re-creation of intuition- thing from an indigenous culture or from a expression has occurred. disadvantaged minority culture. This article Much of Croce’s work remains under- differentiates the types of cultural appropriation explored in contemporary Anglo-American in the arts and indicates how each of them aesthetics, perhaps because much of it remains could be questioned from an aesthetic or moral untranslated. Nevertheless, through the work perspective. of R. G. Collingwood his aesthetics has been indi- At least three distinct activities have been rectly influential beyond Continental Europe. described as cultural appropriation. One sort Moreover, Croce’s discussions of the similarities involves taking tangible works of art. The between his ideas and those of John Dewey transfer of the Parthenon Marbles from Athens deserve further investigation. While Dewey to the British Museum is an instance of such attempted to disavow any debt to Croce, the sim- appropriation. The appropriation by museums ilarities that exist are too compelling to be dis- and collectors of artworks (such as totem poles missed. If the flux of Croce’s aesthetics makes and masks) from indigenous cultures has also it difficult to unify, the experiential soundness proved very controversial. This sort of appro- of its insights insures it future importance. priation can be called object appropriation. A second sort of cultural appropriation collingwood; dewey; expression See also occurs when an artist reuses artistic content theory; ontology of artworks. that originated in another culture. A culturally bibliography mainstream Australian who retells stories of aboriginal Australian cultures has engaged in Primary sources this sort of cultural appropriation, as has the [1902; rev. edn. 1922] 1964. Aesthetic: As Science of Expression and General Linguistic. D. Ainslie artist from one culture who performs a musical (trans.). New York: Noonday Press. composition from another culture. Call this [1913] 1965. Guide to Aesthetics. P. Romanell content appropriation. Sometimes artists appro- (trans.). Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. priate less than an entire work of art. For [1918] 1928. Benedetto Croce: An Autobiography. example, a style can be appropriated, as when R. G. Collingwood (trans.). Oxford: Clarendon. a non-African American musician composes [1936] 1981. Benedetto Croce’s Poetry and Literature: in a jazz or blues style. Sometimes not even this An Introduction to Its Criticism and History. G. much is appropriated. For example, Picasso Gullace (trans.). Carbondale: Southern Illinois appropriated basic ideas or motifs from west University Press. African carvers without producing a work in 1949. My Philosophy and Other Essays on the Moral and Political Problems of Our Time. E. F. Carrit the style of these carvers. Similarly, Stravinsky (trans.). London: Allen & Unwin. and Milhaud appropriated motifs from jazz without producing jazz compositions. Secondary sources Finally we may identify a sort of appropri- Brown, Merle E. 1966. Neo-Idealistic Aesthetics: ation that is somewhat different from the others. Croce–Gentile–Collingwood. Detroit: Wayne State This sort of appropriation does not involve the University Press. taking of something produced in the context D’Amico, Jack et al. 1999. The Legacy of Benedetto Croce. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. of another culture. Rather, it is the representa- Moss, M. E. 1987. Benedetto Croce Reconsidered: Truth tion of one culture by members of another. and Error in Theories of Art, Literature, and History. The mysteries that Tony Hillerman sets among Hanover: University Press of New England. the Navajo are instances of such appropri- Orsini, Gian N. G. 1961. Benedetto Croce: Philosopher ation, as is Kipling’s Kim. Sometimes this is of Art and Literary Critic. Carbondale: Southern called “voice appropriation.” Since a subject Illinois University Press. matter is appropriated, I will call it subject douglas r. anderson appropriation.

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Cultural appropriation gives rise to both an example. When it was taken to Denmark aesthetic and moral questions. One aesthetic and willed to the University of Copenhagen in objection suggests that outsiders (nonmem- the eighteenth century, few Icelanders knew bers of a culture) who appropriate content will or cared about it. In other cases, works of art produce works or performances that are aes- were appropriated after they had been lost or thetically inferior (perhaps because inauthentic abandoned by their original owners. Many in some way) to those produced by insiders archaeological finds fall into this category. The (members of a culture). So, for example, some challenge here is to show that the appropriation people suggest that non-African Americans of a work of art is wrong even though no one will be unable to perform jazz or blues music as initially objected to the appropriation. well as members of African American culture. Cultures can claim to have inherited property A similar claim has been made about subject that was not originally its property. Any claim appropriation. Here the suggestion is that out- to have inherited property must be based on siders will necessarily misrepresent or distort the testamentary wishes of previous owners. insiders and their cultures and that this is an The trouble is that often a work was in the past aesthetic flaw. owned by a state, a religious communion, a Some evidence can be adduced in favor of clan, or an individual and not a culture. Often aesthetic objections to cultural appropriation. cultures will claim ownership of artworks when Many non-African American musicians have the claim that the original owners wished or failed to produce aesthetically successful per- would have wished a culture to inherit them is formances of the blues. Other artists have hard to establish or implausible. Consider, for appropriated the styles of various aboriginal example, the Parthenon Marbles. They were cultures and then produced poor works of not originally the property of Greek culture, but art. On the other hand, artists from a variety of rather Athenian civic property. It is unlikely that cultures have apparently been very successful ancient Athenians would have wanted bitter when appropriating works, styles, and motifs enemies (such as Spartans) to be among the from other cultures. The Japanese filmmaker future owners of the Marbles. Akira Kurosawa successfully reworked plays by The value that certain works have for a Shakespeare in the films Throne of Blood (1957) culture can, in some circumstances, give a and Ran (1985). Non-African American musi- culture a claim on a work. Consider again the cians such as Marcia Ball, Eric Clapton, and manuscript of the Flatejarbók. Icelandic culture Stevie Ray Vaughan are widely regarded as did not inherit this work – the University of accomplished blues musicians. Copenhagen did. Nevertheless, the Flatejarbók is Cultural appropriation also raises moral so crucial to Icelandic culture that it has a questions. Consider the morality of object plausible claim to own it. Denmark recognized appropriation. Many instances of object ap- this claim and the book was returned to propriation are unobjectionable. A European Iceland. A similar case could be made for tourist who purchases a work of indigenous returning the Parthenon Marbles to Greece or art from a legitimate dealer in Darwin or Sante other works of art to various indigenous cultures. Fe transfers an artwork from one culture to Content appropriation can also give rise to another but does not act wrongly. Other cases questions about property. Clearly it is wrong of object appropriation are obviously wrong to violate legitimate copyright in artworks. because they are instances of theft. The looting Controversy can arise, however, because dif- of the Benin Bronzes (many of which are in the ferent cultures have different legal rules about British Museum) during the punitive expedi- what can be owned. In Western cultures, only tion of 1897 is a case in point. specific expressions of an idea can be protected In a wide range of instances, the morality by copyright. Even this sort of copyright expires of object appropriation is far from clear. In after a term. In certain indigenous cultures, some cases, forebears of a contemporary culture laws regulate who may tell certain stories may not have objected to the appropriation of (such as creation myths). These laws protect a work. The Flatejarbók, which records the not only particular expressions of the story but voyage of Leif Ericsson to North America, provides also the general idea for a type of story. Often

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cultural appropriation these laws apply in perpetuity, unlike Western outsiders are apt to create stereotypes about copyright. In other indigenous cultures, styles insiders and their cultures, but he also main- (including the X-ray style of certain Australian tained that it is possible for members of one aboriginal cultures), patterns of cross-hatching culture to understand another. He explicitly or motifs (such as the koru of Maori art) are denied that “only women can understand regarded as property. When cultures have dif- feminine experience, only Jews can under- ferent rules governing what may be appropri- stand Jewish suffering, only formerly colonial ated, we need to ask about the moral basis for subjects can understand colonial experience” claims to own certain items of property. (Said 1993: 31). According to Amiri Baraka It is hard to make the case for ownership (LeRoi Jones), who opposes appropriation of jazz by a culture of motifs, patterns, or general plot and blues as a kind of theft, Bix Beiderbecke’s types. Cultures have always interacted and a par- appropriation of jazz “served to place the ticular type of story may be told in a variety of Negro’s culture and Negro society in a position cultures. Even when cultures have not inter- of intelligent regard it had never enjoyed acted, certain patterns and motifs may have before” ( Jones 1963: 151). developed independently. Under such circum- Sometimes cultural appropriation is thought stances, it is difficult to identify one culture as to be wrong because it is offensive. Subject the owner of a plot, pattern, or motif. Defenders appropriation certainly can be offensive, as of cultural appropriation will also be inclined to when Westerners represent the prophet argue that Western copyright law captures an Muhammad (in the Jyllands-Posten cartoons of important moral truth: a balance ought to be 2005) or Islam (in Theo van Gogh’s film struck between the interests of those who are Submission, 2004). Content appropriation can responsible for the origin of some original cre- also be offensive. For example, the use of story ation and the interest everyone shares in inno- plots, styles, and patterns characteristic of vation, unconstrained creativity, and the free Australian aboriginal cultures has been exchange of ideas. Restrictions on the use of described as “inappropriate, derogatory, cul- styles and plots would not strike the right bal- turally offensive or out of context” (Janke ance. Everyone would be denied the many 1998: 19). Many aboriginal communities are interesting innovations that have arisen as a offended by the appropriation and display in result of cultural appropriation. museums of art objects that they regard as Even if cultural appropriation does not involve having sacred or ritual significance. the harmful violation of property rights, it There is a prima facie case against acting in could be wrong. One often reads that certain an offensive manner, but the creation of an forms of subject or content appropriation can offensive work of art is not always wrong. lead to distorted pictures of a particular culture. Consider two works that have proved deeply This can, in turn, lead to harm to members of offensive: Piss Christ by Andres Serrano and the culture. Consider, for example, old Holly- Chris Ofili’s Holy Virgin Mary. The former is a wood Westerns and their caricatures of Native photograph of a crucifix immersed in a tank of American cultures. These almost certainly fos- the artist’s urine. Ofili’s work is a multimedia tered discrimination against indigenous people. image of Mary. Her breasts are crafted from Similarly, some outsider’s clumsy appropria- elephant dung and small pictures of female tion of content could similarly encourage the buttocks and genitalia, cut from pornographic formation of harmful stereotypes about the magazines, surround the central image. While insiders’ culture. This could, in turn, lead to these works have proved offensive to many harmful treatment of insiders. Christians, creating them was arguably not The harmful misrepresentation of a culture wrong. In creating the works in question, Ofili is often wrong. It is not clear, however, that all and Serrano were engaged in acts of self- appropriation of content or subject matters expression. That some people are offended by harms insiders or their cultures. The Navajo their work is unfortunate, but when artists have praised Hillerman for his accurate depic- produce offensive works when engaged in self- tion of their culture. Edward Said has argued that expression and self-realization, it is not obvious

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cultural appropriation that they act wrongly. This point extends Hurka, Thomas. 1994. “Should Whites Write about to artists whose work is offensive qua act of Minorities?” In Principles: Short Essays on Ethics. cultural appropriation. So long as artists who Toronto: Harcourt Brace, 183–6. engage in cultural appropriation are engaged Janke, Terri. 1998. Our Culture: Our Future: Report in a project of self-expression or self-realization, on Australian Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual it is not obvious that they act wrongly, even Property Rights. Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and Aboriginal and Torres if members of the culture from which they Strait Islander Commission. appropriate are deeply offended. Jones, LeRoi [Amiri Baraka]. 1963. Blues People. amerindian aesthetics; authenticity New York: William Morrow. See also Merryman, John. 1985. “Thinking about the Elgin and art; forgery; museums. Marbles,” Michigan Law Review, 83, 1881–923. bibliography Said, Edward W. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf. Brown, Michael F. 2003. Who Owns Native Culture? Thompson, Jana. 2003. “Cultural Property, Restitu- Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. tion and Value,” Journal of Applied Philosophy, 20, Coleman, Elizabeth Burns. 2005. Aboriginal Art, 251–62. Identity and Appropriation. Aldershot: Ashgate. Young, James O. 2007. Cultural Appropriation and Gracyk, Theodore. 2001. I Wanna Be Me: Rock the Arts. Oxford: Blackwell. Music and Politics of Identity. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. james o. young

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Danto, Arthur C(oleman) (b.1924) Amer- has gone before it, and attains what sense it has ican philosopher and art critic; for many years because of this. at Columbia University. Past president of the Danto asks us to suppose that Picasso, in a American Society of Aesthetics (1989–90) and moment of inspiration, painted one of his old of the American Philosophical Association neckties a bright blue. This work, were it to exist, (1983), Danto became art critic of The Nation would be about the history and theory of paint- in 1984, in whose service he produced a prize- ing itself. This is why the child who does sim- winning array of articles that marry philo- ilar damage to his father’s tie will not have sophical acumen with a rich knowledge of, produced a work of art: the damaged tie is not and feeling for, the fine arts. about anything. The fact that Picasso’s tie His entry into the philosophy of art was is a work of art means that it has properties marked by his article “The Artworld” (1964), which “its untransfigured counterpart lacks” which brought the term “artworld” from the (1981: 99). The distinction, then, between vernacular into mainstream aesthetics. The the child’s imagined tie and Picasso’s is an term was used by George Dickie and others ontological, not an institutional, distinction. It in the development of institutional theories of is the historical and theoretical identity of art, but for Danto, the artworld is constituted the work – furnished in an interpretation – by the art traditions, conventions, and practices that gives it the aesthetic properties that it has. that create space for the given artwork. It is Interpretation, Danto argues, is essential to the in terms of theory and history, not the decrees existence of a work of art. of a social institution, that Danto hopes to Artworks, in Danto’s view, are representations explain what it is that makes an object art. that are self-referential and that require inter- This theme is taken up and developed in pretation both by the artist, in the sense that it his most important work in aesthetics (Danto is partly constituted by such interpretation, 1981). Deeply influenced by Wittgenstein’s and by the viewer, in the sense that the artwork concern with questions about the difference cannot be apprehended as an artwork without between indiscernibles – between my arm ris- interpretation. There remains the obvious ing and my raising my arm – Danto posed a objection, though, that some self-referential related question about art. What, he wanted reports and descriptions are not works of art. An to know, is the difference between two indis- artwork, he writes, is “a transfigurative repre- cernible objects – two identical urinals, for sentation rather than a representation tout instance – one of which is a work of art, the other court” (1981: 172). By commenting on itself, it not? According to Danto, the difference resides acquires properties that nonart representa- in the fact that works of art are about the world tions do not possess. in a way that ordinary objects are not. Both These themes are deeply suggestive, but are art and philosophy are about reality in much not always well worked out. Could not a philo- the way that language is when it is employed sophical text comment on, and so transfigure, descriptively. Hence art is always representa- itself in just this way? And does this mean that tional – not merely (if at all) in the sense that philosophy is art? Some of these issues are it refers to something, but also in the sense picked up and developed in a later work (Danto that it conveys the artist’s way of seeing, view- 1986), although the main concern here is to ing, understanding. Art is often about what show that philosophy (as practiced by Plato,

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Kant, and Hegel) has traditionally attempted Danto rejects two models for progress in art to undermine and so disenfranchise art. Part of history in favor of a third in which aspects of Danto’s attempt to reenfranchise art involves the first two models are synthesized. The first returning to the relation between art and sees art as aiming at perceptual fidelity, as interpretation in order to show that works of art motivated wherever possible by an imperative are not to be attended to merely for the disin- to replace inference to perceptual reality with terested pleasure they afford. Since it is possible something equivalent to what perceptual real- to have two snow shovels both exactly alike, only ity itself would present. On this view, the his- one of which is a work of art, it cannot be the tory of painting is to be characterized in terms aesthetic appearance of the snow shovel that of the development of pictorial conventions the makes it a work of art. Rather, indiscernible purpose of which is to render space and per- objects become “quite different and distinct spective faithfully. Danto rejects this model works of art by dint of distinct and different because it fails to accommodate not only nar- interpretations” (1986: 39). rational art forms but also those arts to which Danto’s treatment of interpretation is puz- it most naturally applies. The invention and zling. Recognition that the snow shovel is a development of “moving pictures” in the cinema work of art depends not on interpretations in made clear that optical fidelity might be achieved any ordinary sense of this word, but on one’s there more successfully than could be hoped for knowledge of certain theories and cultural in painting. Early in the twentieth century, conventions. If one has the requisite know- this led painters to question and, ultimately, to ledge, one recognizes that the snow shovel is abandon the goal of representational accuracy a work of art, and one recognizes this quite in favor of other concerns. independently of whether one understands the The second model of progress in art history work. If puzzled by the work, one may venture holds that art is expression. Danto objects to explain and in this sense interpret it. This, of that this reduces the history of art to a list of course, is an altogether different process, but individual acts that are not unified by shared Danto seems to run the two together. progress toward a common ideal. He notes that, A second major theme in Danto’s philosophy from Fauvism onward, the important common of art concerns the “end of art.” Inspired by views element seemed to be not expression but reliance presented by Hegel, he (1986) offers the idea on a quite complex theory in order that often that the history of art is the record of its very minimal objects could be transfigured progress toward self-realization through self- into art. Art became self-conscious and, from that understanding. In the twentieth century, art point on, any distinction between art’s nature fulfilled its destiny, so that now the history of and a philosophical consideration of its nature art is at an end. Art has entered its “posthis- was undermined; it was only through con- torical” stage. scious attention to its own philosophical char- As we have seen, Danto holds that artworks acter that art could continue to develop. Every can be identified and appreciated only through work and movement became a kind of theory their proper location within art-making tradi- in action. Nowhere was this more obvious tions which generate the atmospheres of theory than in Duchamp’s presentation of his ready- which make them what they are. A conse- mades. Duchamp’s works, says Danto, raise quence of this is that artistic change is directional the question of the philosophical nature of art and irreversible. The possibilities for artistic from within art, implying that art is already change are shaped by both technical innovations philosophy in a vivid form. that impinge on the “artworld” from the wider The theory of art history Danto then develops culture and the direction in which earlier was influenced by Hegel’s suggestion that artists have led the artworld. What is possible art, through its own development, reaches at any time depends on what has been a stage at which it contributes to the goal of achieved in the art of the past. The artworld has human thought, which is an understanding of to be “ready” for the new movements, because its own historical essence. The stage is trans- they build on or challenge the possibilities of the itional – a step on the path to self-knowledge art of the past. which encompasses art as one important aspect

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danto, arthur c(oleman) of human culture. When the driving forces of thing is permitted, he also observes (1997) history no longer mesh with the driving forces that what artists can achieve by what they do of art, the history of art ends. But whereas is no less limited now by history than before. Hegel regarded this as occurring at the close Artists are free to adopt any style they like, but of the classic period of Greek art, Danto dates if the cultural and intellectual setting that gave it to the arrival of Pop Art in the 1960s. By that style its significance has passed, they are aping “mere real things,” the works of Pop Art not free to give their work the content and provoked the philosophical question that asks import that former artists might have done. what distinguishes them from their mundane, Invoking a familiar distinction in the philo- perceptually indistinguishable counterparts. sophy of language, Danto holds that artists In his early discussions (1986, 1987), Danto can mention styles they appropriate, but cannot suggests that art somehow answered the use them. question it posed, thereby becoming trans- Now, though, we are bound to wonder what muted into philosophy. Later (1992, 1997), can be meant by the claim that the history of he accepts that art is incapable of responding art has come to an end. All it entails, apparently, to the query it spent half a millennium in is that artworks no longer need to impersonate raising and refining. Pop Art’s achievement real things, since art’s philosophically provocat- consists in posing the question in a form that ive duty already has been discharged. It does not makes it possible for philosophers to address mean, as one might have supposed, that artists it, whereas they were in no position to do so now can make any artwork they like, but only formerly. that any thing might be made into an artwork. So, art fulfilled its historical destiny in the What an artwork can be and can mean is no 1960s, Danto maintains, and the history of art less a function of the times in which it is made had then come to a close though art continued than was so prior to 1964. to be made in its posthistorical phase. Danto The universality of art from the earliest (1986) identified the hallmarks of the posthis- times suggests that art answers to some deep torical phase as follows: anything can become human needs, and that art might serve those an artwork. Where all directions are available needs for as long as the fundamental character there no longer can be progress. What art is and of human nature remains unchanged. Given what it means have already been revealed, so that we remain all too human, there is reason it is not possible that art should continue to to doubt that art can no longer have anything astonish us. As the atmosphere of art theory “new to say.” If much modern art seems to be thickens, so the objects of art become thinner, empty, this is not because we now understand more minimal, even dispensable. Traditional what art is and what it means. That philo- boundaries between the art forms tend to sophical knot is no easier to unravel than ever become radically unstable. The institutions of the it was. artworld, the existence of which is predicated on ideas of artistic history and progress, begin to See also twentieth-century anglo-american wither and die. This largely negative charac- aesthetics; art history; “artworld”; defini- terization was balanced (1987) by the sugges- tion of “art”; dickie; hegel; interpretation; tion that having achieved self-comprehension, theories of art. art could return to the serving of largely human needs. bibliography In questioning Danto’s thesis, one might object to the manner in which he marginalizes Primary sources all popular and non-Western art. Is it only in 1964. “The Artworld,” Journal of Philosophy, 61, the rarefied realm of avant-garde Western 571–84. 1981. The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: “high” art that art’s nature is revealed? A Philosophy of Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard And one can doubt that his various theses University Press. are consistent. While he allows (1986, 1992, 1986. The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art. 1994) that, since nothing is historically man- New York: Columbia University Press. dated in the posthistorical phase of art, every- 1987. The State of the Art. New York: Prentice-Hall.

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1988. The Politics of Imagination. Lawrence: truth, and without origin which is offered to an University of Kansas Press. active interpretation” (1978: 292). Signs that 1990. Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical are without fault, truth, or origin are signs Present. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. whose meaning has not been fixed in advance, 1992. Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post- as would be the assumption under a struc- Historical Perspective. New York: Farrar, Straus, & turalist scheme of analysis. Their meaning at Giroux. 1993. “Responses and Replies.” In Arthur Danto and any given point will depend on the ingenuity His Critics. M. Rollins (ed.). Oxford: Blackwell, of the reader’s “active interpretation.” Reading 193–216. becomes a creative process rather than an 1994. Embodied Meanings. New York: Farrar, Straus, exercise in the recovery of meaning. & Giroux. Deconstruction begins as a form of philoso- 1997. After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the phy concerned to challenge the Western meta- Pale of History. Princeton: Princeton University physical tradition in general and its theories of Press. meaning in particular, but it is probably best 2003. The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept known in the English-speaking world as a style of Art. Chicago: Open Court. of literary criticism. Its popularity is largely due Secondary sources to the efforts of the Derrida-influenced “Yale Carroll, Noël. 1990. “Review Essay,” History and School”: Geoffrey Hartman, Harold Bloom, Theory, 29, 111–24. Paul de Man, and J. Hillis Miller. In the hands Haapala, Arto, Levinson, Jerrold, & Rantala, Veikko of these critics, deconstruction becomes a (eds.). 1997. The End of Art and Beyond: Essays license for a display of linguistic virtuosity that After Danto. New Jersey: Humanities Press. deliberately avoids anything resembling expli- Lang, Berel (ed.). 1984. The Death of Art. New York: cation de texte – “interpretation no longer aims Haven. Rollins, Mark (ed.). 1993. Arthur Danto and His at the reconciliation or unification of warring Critics. Oxford: Blackwell. truths” (Hartman 1981: 51). Active interpre- tation takes as its goal the proliferation, rather david novitz & stephen davies than the reduction to schemes and codes, of meaning. It is questionable whether “interpre- tation” is even an appropriate word to use in this death of art see danto; hegel. context, since it is normally taken to mean interpretation in terms of a scheme of some kind, having pretensions to truth of some deconstruction A form of textual analysis kind. But such pretensions are precisely what largely derived from the work of the French Derrida is arguing are unsustainable. poststructuralist philosopher Jacques Derrida, Derrida sees meaning as being endlessly basing itself on the following assumptions: texts, deferred by the action of différance, a concept he like language, are marked by instability and constructs from the verb différer, which can indeterminacy of meaning; given such instabil- mean either “to differ” or “to defer.” Différance ity and indeterminacy, neither philosophy nor cannot be distinguished from the word dif- criticism can have any claim to authority as férence when spoken, and for Derrida this illus- regards textual interpretation; textual inter- trates the inherent ambiguity of the linguistic pretation is a free-ranging activity more akin to sign. The latter thus has an odd sort of half-life; game-playing than to traditional analysis. as Gayatri Spivak has described it: “Such is the The point of deconstructive reading is to strange ‘being’ of the sign: half of it always destroy the illusion of stable meaning in texts. ‘not there’ and the other half always ‘not that’ ” It does this by way of what Derrida calls “active (Derrida 1976: xvii). Deconstructionist critics interpretation,” an anarchic form of writing plunder texts for evidence of différance and the that makes extensive use of wit and wordplay. indeterminacy of the sign, and playing with Derrida speaks of the reader engaging in “the language is one of their primary strategies for joyous affirmation of the play of the world and drawing such phenomena to our attention. of the innocence of becoming, the affirmation Puns and wordplay are used to open up texts of a world of signs without fault, without because they widen the field of meaning of

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deconstruction words, thus suggesting that the sign is indeed slippage, the sheer undecidability of textual always half “not there” and half “not that.” A meaning. word’s sound quality brings to mind like- Deconstructionists believe that slippage is sounding, although not necessarily like-mean- inevitably present in all texts, including philo- ing, words, thereby breaking the notion of a sophical ones. In one of the more provocative one-to-one relationship between signifier and developments of deconstruction, literary critics signified (word and concept). The pun, in effect, have turned the techniques of their own discip- defers the union of signifier and signified. line back on philosophy in what Christopher Once we set off on a sequence of punning our Norris has called “the revenge of literary theory frame of reference keeps shifting, thus prevent- on that old tradition of philosophical disdain ing stable meaning from ever forming. It is an or condescension stretching back at least to example of paradigmatic relation – or “associ- Plato’s Republic” (1983: 3). The objective of ation of ideas” – in operation, and deconstruc- such an exercise is to challenge philosophy’s tionists consider that by undermining a text’s claims to be an arbiter of truth and knowledge, linearity of argument they are undermining by exploring “the various ways in which philo- its pretensions to rationality (which is felt to sophy reveals, negotiates or represses its own depend on linear thought process). A typical inescapable predicament as written language” sequence in Geoffrey Hartman moves by means (1983: 12). This “inescapable predicament” of punning and association of ideas from the means that philosophical texts are no more German word Ecke (corner) to the French able to stabilize meaning than any others are. word coin (corner), to the English coin, to the Derrida’s own aesthetic criticism uses various German word Kante (board) and then to the tricks to defer meaning and textual explication, name of the philosopher Kant (1981: 85). such as a footnote running the whole length of This takes place in the context of a supposed the text in “Living On: Border Lines,” and a commentary on Derrida’s Glas, and can serve dwelling on marginal details such as frames, bor- only to disorient an audience habituated to ders, and signatures when discussing painting expect logical argument and carefully ordered (1987). In a very real sense the act of criticism critique. Only the failure of the critic’s ingenu- is never allowed to get under way in Derrida, ity, or the reader’s patience, can end such a and he argues that, when confronted with a text, sequence. the deconstructionist critic should resist the Hartman is here putting into practice temptation to interpret it: “We should neither Spivak’s plan of operations for the aspiring comment, nor underscore a single word, nor deconstructionist: extract anything, nor draw a lesson from it” if in the process of deciphering a text in the tradi- (1979: 152). The entire strategy is to frustrate tional way we come across a word that seems to the normal expectations of the reader. Style harbor an unresolvable contradiction, and by becomes a battleground for the deconstruc- virtue of being one word is made sometimes to work tionist, who deliberately cultivates an anarchic in one way and sometimes in another and thus is way of writing for polemical purposes. made to point away from the absence of a unified Deconstruction had a powerful impact on meaning, we shall catch at that word ...We the American academic scene in the 1970s shall follow its adventures through the text and see and 1980s, one critic even arguing that it the text coming undone. (Derrida 1976: lxxv). “effectively displaced other intellectual pro- The text comes undone because the critic’s grams in the minds and much of the work of the linguistic ingenuity – punning, wordplay, allu- literary avant-garde” there (Bove 1983: 6). sion, association of ideas – demonstrates just how American deconstruction has, however, come diffuse and unpredictable meaning is at any under attack from some quarters for being a given moment. “We are tempted to become debased version of the philosophical original. associative and metaphorical,” because “the Several commentators regard it as merely an slippage [of meaning] is all around us, and the updated form of New Criticism, and just as principle of stabilization not very conspicuous” open to charges of ahistoricism (neither New (Hartman 1981: 149, 64). The point of decon- Critics nor deconstructionists feel any need to structive reading is persistently to reveal that go outside the text in their readings).

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Derrida himself has expressed misgivings J. Hulbert (trans.). London: Routledge & Kegan about what has been done in his name: “this Paul, 75–176. word [deconstruction] which I had only writ- Derrida, Jacques. 1987 [1978]. The Truth in ten one or twice . . . all of a sudden jumped out Painting. G. Bennington & I. McLeod (trans.). of the text and was seized by others who have Chicago: University of Chicago Press. since determined its fate in the manner you Derrida, Jacques. 1988. The Ear of the Other: Otobio- graphy, Transference, Translation. C. McDonald well know . . . But for me ‘deconstruction’ was (ed.). P. Kamuf (trans.). Lincoln: University of not at all the first or the last word, and certainly Nebraska Press. not a password or slogan for everything that was Hartman, Geoffrey. 1981. Saving the Text. to follow” (1988: 86). This raises the interest- Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ing specter of a misreading of Derrida by his Norris, Christopher. 1983. The Deconstructive Turn. American followers, which in a theory cele- London: Methuen. brating the inescapable instability of the sign stuart sim and the perpetual presence of différance within language is more than somewhat ironic; but it does suggest the need to discriminate care- fully between deconstruction as philosophy definition of “art” A definition of art is and deconstruction as literary criticism. The standardly intended to apply to works unam- former is a serious, if iconoclastic, contributor biguously belonging to Western fine art tradi- to the debate on the nature of meaning, the lat- tions and to their developments, including those ter arguably more of a license for a display of of the avant-garde; and perhaps also to certain linguistic virtuosity for its own sake. objects of alternative cultural provenance (e.g., A more damaging indictment of the decon- cave paintings, Shaker textiles). The classic structive enterprise is that it trades on notions form is that of a small number of individually of undecidability while arguing its case for necessary and jointly sufficient conditions, sat- undecidability within meaning and language. isfaction of which is to determine the reference Most philosophers and critics would be quite will- of the concept. For some, a definition enables us ing to admit that slippage of meaning occurs to identify art, especially avant-garde works, (poetry works on just such a principle), but many of which are not easily differentiable from would draw the line at saying that nothing but other things. For others, its use is primarily slippage occurs: it is hard to see how, if that were metaphysical: given that artworks form no the case, we could even communicate such a obvious natural kind, a definition should engage state of affairs. with the reasons for which art is identified as such by us, in order to show that artworks are See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century a unified (nonnatural) kind of thing. continental aesthetics; criticism; derrida; There is further disagreement about what interpretation; interpretation, aims of; is to be defined. Some differentiate between structuralism and poststructuralism; text. a classificatory and an evaluative concept, arguing that sometimes the appellation as art bibliography implies that value is present, but that there is Bove, Paul. 1983. “Variations on Authority: Some also a notion of bad art which a classificatory Deconstructive Transformations of the New but not an evaluative concept can accommodate. Criticism.” In The Yale Critics: Deconstruction in Against this, others object that an evaluative America. J. Arac, W. Godzich, & W. Martin (eds.). concept is consistent with there being bad art Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 3–19. (e.g., Rowe 1991; Gaut 2000). Derrida, Jacques. 1976 [1967]. Of Grammatology. With certain exceptions (e.g., Davies 1991), G. C. Spivak (trans.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins that an artwork must at least be an artifact is University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1978 [1967]. Writing and widely accepted. There is less of a consensus Difference. A. Bass (trans.). London: Routledge & about further necessary conditions. It is agreed Kegan Paul. that, given recent art-historical developments Derrida, Jacques. 1979. “Living On: Border Lines.” In and the resultant physical diversity of artworks, Deconstruction and Criticism. H. Bloom et al. (eds.). definitions in terms of perceivable properties

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definition of “art” must fail, as must definitions in terms of rela- art, addressed by Levinson in later work, a tively concrete relational properties, such as significant worry is whether, given the un- beauty, imitation, or expression. Consciousness traceability in many cases of the intention of these points has produced definitions in cited, the definition incorrectly engages with terms of more abstract relational properties. I will general reasons for which art is classified as consider three prominent sorts. such (Stock 2003). On a functionalist account, art is that which Instead, one may prefer to define art in terms fulfills a particular role in people’s lives, or is of an external and so more publicly available his- intended to. Often the role is characterized as torical relation. For instance, Carney defines art aesthetic. For instance, according to Beardsley as that which “can be linked by those suitably “[a]n artwork is something produced with the informed, along one or more of various specific intention of giving it the capacity to satisfy the dimensions to a past or present general style or aesthetic interest” (1983: 21). An attraction of styles exhibited by prior artworks” (1991: 273). this sort of view is that it apparently engages However, the problem now becomes one of with the value we find in much art. A problem overinclusiveness, since many nonart objects can is that, given traditional views of aesthetic be so linked (Stock 2003). experience, which connect it to beauty or Meanwhile, the most well-known version pleasure or disinterestedness, many artworks do of an institutional definition, offered by Dickie not provide any such experience, and are not (1974) and since modified, builds on the claim intended to (see Beardsley’s acknowledgment of Danto (1964) that whether something is art (1983: 26) that he rules out conceptual and or not is partly a function of its relation to an other anti-aesthetic visual works from art’s “artworld.” Dickie conceives of the artworld extension). Since a definition should be ade- as a social institution, on behalf of which cer- quate to linguistic practice, this is a serious tain individuals with relevant authority act fault. Recent functionalist definitions define art to confer the status of “candidate for appreci- in terms of more abstract notions of aesthetic ation” upon aspects of certain artifacts, which experience, aiming at accommodating a maxi- count as artworks in virtue of this procedure. mal range of artworks (for instance, Anderson An attraction of this view is its appearance 2000). A residual problem is that such accounts of having roughly the right extension (with tend to countenance as art objects that fulfill the the possible exception of art made in cognit- designated function but lack relevant connec- ive isolation from established practices of art- tions to the sort of cultural structures many think making, including “first art”). Like historical essential to a thing’s arthood (e.g., gardens, accounts, it encompasses avant-garde works of jewelry, haute couture). any nature, so long as they are related to the Those to whom this objection is persuasive sort of act specified. There are worries, however. are likely to be attracted to a definition that One is circularity, explicit in a later incarnation attempts to relate art, explicitly, to the right sort of the definition in which Dickie presents of cultural practice. Historical and institu- work of art as one of a set of concepts, each of tional definitions both fall under this description. which uses some other member in its definiens. On a well-known historical definition, Another concerns his construal of the artworld Levinson argues that X is an artwork at time as an institution: certainly if this is interpreted t if and only if the person who has a proprietary as one having formally delineated roles, it is right over X intends it to be regarded “in any implausible; hence it is urged that we understand way (or ways) in which objects in the extension the institution as an informal one. In turn, this of ‘artwork’ prior to t are or were correctly or move has prompted worries about whether the standardly regarded” (1979: 236). This account notion of a person acting authoritatively “on seems attractive insofar as it correctly empha- behalf of” the artworld can be made sense of. sizes the point that not anything can be an These and other issues are discussed at length artwork at any time. Moreover, it encompasses by Davies (1991). avant-garde works, as long as they are made Earlier it was noted that an aim of many with the relevant intention. However, apart definitions of art is to demonstrate the unity of from problems accommodating revolutionary the concept. Whether institutional definitions

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definition of “art” can do so is moot. To vary a famous objection a disjunctive one. Given the relatively large of Wollheim (1980) to Dickie, either there number of conditions listed and their independ- is some single or small set of reasons for con- ence from one another, this seems inappropriate ferring art status on objects, or there is not if, as was indicated earlier, a definition is aimed (because different reasons tend to inform each at revealing the unity of a concept. (Indeed, decision). If the former, then, assuming the the challenge of demonstrating how a set of dis- interest of a definition is in such reasons, art junctive conditions could capture a concept’s should be defined in terms of them rather than unity faces any disjunctive definition. For the in terms of the act of conferral. If the latter, then claim that most current definitions take this the class of artworks is no longer a genuinely form, including his own hybrid historical- unified class of objects, even if all and only art- functionalist definition, see Stecker 2003). works stand in relation to an act of conferral of A more radical antiessentialist position claims the relevant sort. that the “reasons” for which the linguistic com- Of course, though Dickie does not, one might munity classifies particular artworks as such, embrace the point that art is not a unified kind in terms of shared properties with established of thing, and so cannot be defined. This is the artworks, do not automatically extend to other conclusion of Weitz (1956) who argues that art objects that possess those properties, and hence is best understood as a “family resemblance” con- are not always universalizable. Artworks count cept, insofar as every artwork counts as such as such because relations are found between in virtue of sharing some property with some them and other artworks, and not simply other member, but there are no properties because such relations exist. This “radical stip- individually necessary to all. ulativist” position (the term is from Davies Weitz’s grounds for his antiessentialist con- 2006) is outlined by Stock (2003) though clusion are unpersuasive. He claims that the remains to be positively defended in detail. It is practice of art is sufficiently innovative to insure not to be confused with the view according to that no adequate definition of its disparate which art is identified as such by the telling products could ever be given. To this it can be of narratives intelligibly connecting a present replied that the experimental nature of artistic object to some past artwork(s), via relations practice is consistent with its products having of repetition, amplification, or repudiation some relatively abstract set of properties as (Carroll 1993). For Carroll, it seems it is the fact necessary and sufficient (indeed, this is what of such relations that is sufficient for arthood, modern definitions seek to provide). rather than any narrative about them. This However, the antiessentialist conclusion admission tends to make his account open to itself is unfairly maligned. An objection often counterexample (Stock 2003). Nor is the view made is that if resemblance to established a covert definition, claiming that art is all and artworks is sufficient for arthood then, since only that about which a narrative citing the rel- everything resembles everything else, any- evant relations is told. As with the institutional thing might counts as art, even in virtue of definition, this would appear unsatisfactory, some trivial resemblance. Yet an antiessential- since it would not capture the salient facts ist need not hold that just any property shared about artworks which lead to their classi- with an established artwork is sufficient for fication as such (in this case, the features of arthood, but only that some are. Moreover, works picked out by the narratives in ques- such properties, rather than being trivial, may tion), which is what a definition should be intersect with deep and abiding human inter- interested in, insofar as it is interested in show- ests. Nor need they be manifest properties, as is ing art to be a unified kind of an interesting sort. sometimes complained (Carroll 1993). Recently several objections have been made A candidate list of such properties is pro- to radical stipulativism by Davies (2006); posed by Gaut (2000), who designates art a it remains to be seen whether these can be “cluster concept” governed by disjointly neces- answered. sary conditions, all or fewer of which are sufficient for arthood. Though he denies that this See also twentieth-century anglo-american amounts to a definition, it is often taken to be aesthetics; artifact, art as; “artworld”;

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deleuze, gilles beardsley; conceptual art; danto; dickie; Deleuze is respected as a prolific poststruc- function of art; theories of art. turalist philosopher/theorist whose written corpus displays three clear aspects: substantial bibliography reinterpretations of major figures in Western Anderson, James. 2000. “Aesthetic Concepts of Art.” philosophy (Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, and In Theories of Art Today. N. Carroll (ed.). Madison: Nietzsche), significant individual contributions University of Wisconsin Press, 65–92. to poststructural thought (e.g., Difference et Beardsley, Monroe C. 1983. “An Aesthetic Definition Repetition, 1968; Logique du Sens, 1969), and of Art.” In What is Art? H. Curtler (ed.). New York: cooperative works of philosophy and literary Haven, 15–29. Carney, James. 1991. “The Style Theory of Art,” criticism with Felix Guattari (such as L’Anti- Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 72, 273–89. Oedipe, Capitalisme et Schizophrenie 1 (1972), Carroll, Noël. 1993. “Historical Narratives and the and Qu’est-ce que la Philosophie? (1991). Philosophy of Art,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art However, throughout his career Deleuze also Criticism, 51, 313–26. wrote important works on aesthetics, most Carroll, Noël (ed.). 2000. Theories of Art Today. notably Proust et les Signes (1964), Francis Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Bacon: Logique de la Sensation (1981), Cinema 1 Danto, Arthur C. 1964. “The Artworld,” Journal of (1983), and Cinema 2 (1985), works which Philosophy, 61, 571–84. have endeared him to many artists attracted Davies, Stephen. 1991. Definitions of Art. Ithaca: to the material and temporal dimensions of art Cornell University Press. Davies, Stephen. 2006. The Philosophy of Art. production. Malden: Blackwell. Deleuze does not offer an aesthetic theory in Dickie, George. 1974. Art and the Aesthetic: An any conventional sense. As a poststructuralist Institutional Analysis. Ithaca: Cornell University thinker greatly influenced by Nietzsche’s phi- Press. losophy of Becoming, he tends not to be con- Gaut, Berys. 2000. “ ‘Art’ as a Cluster Concept.” In cerned with the intrinsic aesthetic properties Theories of Art Today. N. Carroll (ed.). Madison: of an art object, nor is he enamored with the University of Wisconsin Press, 25–44. specific qualities of a spectator’s experience. Levinson, Jerrold. 1979. “Defining Art Historically,” Deleuze attempts to articulate a realm of affec- British Journal of Aesthetics, 19, 232–50. tivity in which potent works overreach the Rowe, M. R. 1991. “Why ‘Art’ Doesn’t have Two Senses,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 31, 214–21. circumstances of both their historical produc- Stecker, Robert. 2003. “Is It Reasonable to Attempt tion and reception to generate further thought to Define Art?” In Theories of Art Today. N. Carroll and response. The thesis is affiliated with (ed.). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, Heidegger’s modernistic claim that “great” 45–65. works of art are not so much the products of his- Stock, Kathleen. 2003. “Historical Definitions of tory but announce and define new historical Art.” In Art and Essence. S. Davies & A. C. Sukla epochs. Within Deleuze’s perspective, the com- (eds.). Westport: Praeger, 159–76. positions of Wagner and Schoenberg become Weitz, Morris. 1956. “The Role of Theory in significant for their historical effects: the Aesthetics,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, capacity of their germinal structures to gener- 15, 27–35. Wollheim, Richard. 1980. Art and Its Objects. 2nd edn. ate musical transformations in the subsequent Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. compositions of Bruckner, Mahler, and Webern. Deleuze presents the vibrancy and vitality of kathleen stock an artwork as transformative and generative. The transformative aspect reflects the monistic form of his thinking. His theory of ontogenesis Deleuze, Gilles (1925–1995) is the philo- dissolves the usual dualisms which sever an sopher of the unruly and feral, the thinker who artwork from the viewer. Deleuze strives, to seeks to un-domesticate the established dis- the contrary, to portray the artwork as a pro- courses of art and philosophy by opening them cess of transformative emergence. This con- to those impersonal, disruptive energies and ception sweeps away conventional distinctions forces which conventional intellectual prac- between work, material, content, and artistic tices invariably struggle to tame. intentionality. It also opposes attempts to

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deleuze, gilles explain art’s emergence by appeal to purposes account of concepts in that, like concepts, they external to art itself. Deleuze expresses hostil- are intellectual formations that, though they ity toward teleological accounts of Becoming may derive from experience, then transform defended by thinkers such as Aristotle, Hegel, experience in new and unexpected ways. and Marx. Art does not arise to fulfill or realize Deleuze’s thought strives to dismantle the an externally set historical purpose; its emer- customary distinctions between art and theory gence is to be regarded as a spontaneous by stressing that philosophy, like art, is a pro- expression, a transformation and intensifica- ductive process. It is not that philosophy can tion of the forces which sustain its coming to “think” art by offering a conceptual represen- be, a bringing of formative energies into new tation of the subject but rather that, in the configurations able to generate unexpected struggle to find new ways of thinking about historical effects. art, philosophy becomes comparable to art Pace Nietzsche, Deleuze presents individu- inasmuch as it forms, invents, and articulates ated works as essentially unstable resultant concepts. From the multiple cross-currents of all forms, complex multiplicities that will always levels of impressions and perceptions, a thinker imply more than the apparent fixity of their can (often inexplicably) bring to fruition a con- form suggests. The implication here is to the vir- cept able to shape and give form to an incho- tual, a grounding concept in Deleuze’s thought ate mass of thought. Indeed, from within a which denotes that almost unconceptualizable Deleuzian perspective it would be more appro- realm of prephenomenal force (flux) which priate not to say that a film, a novel, or paint- wells up within a work, individuating it by ing gives voice to a historical situation but transforming embryonic energies into new rather that the situation gains expression in and, perhaps, more infectious shape and form. the work it brings forth. Concepts for Deleuze By no means does this dynamic privilege actu- do not serve as mental re-presentations of any alization (as if a work were a single bloom, fol- extra-mental world, rather they serve to reor- lowing one developmental trajectory only to ganize complex perceptions forming what are in become locked in a fixity of form and thought). effect new regions of intelligible experience. The signature of Deleuze’s thought emphasizes Furthermore, concepts, like poignant artworks, transformation and reanimation: it is what a have an effective transformative power well work sets in motion that is important, its abil- beyond both what their (alleged) creators ity not just to express the forces which impel it may have imagined and the specific circum- into being but to reanimate and reactivate stances of their production. Plato’s logos, them so as to bring new effects into being. In Descartes’s cogito, Nietzsche’s Wille, Hegel’s this respect Deleuze can be grouped with those Geist, or Wittgenstein’s Lebensform are not just philosophers who, like Nietzsche, Merleau- free-floating ideas but modes of thought that Ponty, and Heidegger, value art’s self-generative are both indicative and expressive of the social ontology as a disruptive challenge to philo- and cultural situations which call them forth. sophy’s fixation with the stable and identical. More important, concepts, like artworks, have Deleuze accordingly esteems art’s ability to (often unpredictable) effects: they open “new afford a glimpse of the prephenomenal forces of perspectives on the world” which cannot be becoming operating as the condition of emer- wholly reconciled with one another. gence of all the individuated forms. Mozart’s Deleuze’s aesthetics is distinctly modernist. Symphony No. 40 and Mahler’s No. 9 are It emphasizes process, becoming, and the mul- examples of works that push their form to such tiplication of worlds. The ontogenetic move- extremes that it becomes possible to discern ment from the virtual to the actual occurs the energy that not only drives them into a within processes of differentiation. Tension, given shape but also threatens to overwhelm contradiction, and collision are of the essence. them. Artworks, then, are transformations of For Deleuze, the purpose of creative thought is prephenomenal energies into more intense not to smooth out contradiction and opposition and infectious forms. Their emergence can but rather to intensify them. Once again, the task generate new sensibilities. Their distinct visual of philosophical thought is not to seek resolv- or sound worlds can be compared to Deleuze’s ing syntheses but to penetrate appearance,

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deleuze, gilles identity, and surface and to reengage with so. A work, like a concept, is not an abstract the possibilities of the new within the virtual. entity but is formed from interrelationships Partly because of his poststructuralist orienta- between different ideas and fields of associ- tion, Deleuze regards the intellectual tendency ation. It is the fact that concept and work allow to compromise or overcome differences as an different components to intersect with each expression of establishment powers. However, other that allows both in Gadamer’s phrase to as a post-Nietzschean thinker, he is committed be historically effective. The contrasts and con- to radicalizing and sharpening difference, not nections made within a given philosophical or to disrupt and discredit ideologies of identity artistic structure can link in historically unpre- but more to set back into play the impersonal dicted but transformative ways with patterns forces and energies within the virtual and the of intellectual and sensual association not possibilities for new epiphanies they hold. presently connected with it. It is the very non- Philosophy must transform the concept as a identity of concept and work that enables them tool of reduction and generalization into a to be historically effective. The power to affect device for inducing the unpredictable associ- gives both a concept and a work the semblance ations and links. Deleuze’s most innovative of an identity in that “it” becomes a given his- image is of the concept and artwork as a tory of effects and, as such, “appears” to oper- rhizome, a living entity that grows horizontally ate as an independent agency. This form of and vertically in a discontinuous clustering of argumentation in fact serves to rewrite notions synthetic associations. The task of both philo- of tradition and canon. A tradition can be sophy and art is indeed subversive: to seek out rearticulated as a continuity of generic trans- those fault lines, tensions, and contradictions formations within an idiom of artistic or intel- in dominant modes of thinking and practice, lectual practice. A canonical work can be to seek out the unsettling which established described as one that continues to have effects discourses strive to hide, in order to release the in the sense of generating new associated possibilities for becoming that lie within the forms and idioms. virtual. The Nietzschean aspect of Deleuze’s It is in his discussion of painting that aesthetic is plain. The creativity of art and Deleuze is most insightful and most cherished philosophy requires instability, disturbance, by certain painters. The essay Francis Bacon: and excess. And yet, in order to be disruptive Logique de la sensation emphasizes the importance and have longevity of effects, a work must of focusing on how artists deploy their chosen achieve a relative stability. The only law of material. Deleuze’s antirepresentationalist aes- creation, Deleuze argues, is that a work must thetic rules make it clear that it is not a matter stand on its own. This he claims is the artist’s of coming to judgment about whether the greatest challenge. material mode of the work successfully accords Philosophy makes concepts. Art shapes per- with a preexisting conception of a mood, ges- cepts and affects. Both activities strive to give ture, or subject. It is, therefore, not a question form to experience in such a way that experi- of how Turner uses paint to represent or look ence when transformed into concept or work can like water. For Deleuze, it is much more a mat- stand on its own and be autonomous indepen- ter of how an artist like Turner can use the dent of the artist’s intentions, feelings, or virtual properties of liquidity within paint in thinking. In What is Philosophy? Deleuze pro- such a way that his canvases appear to swell, claims the artwork as a being of sensation and and dip, wave-like. The genius of Turner from as existing in itself. A work preserves what is a Deleuzian perspective involves a certain described as a block of sensations, a compound abandonment of figuration and representa- of percepts and affects. In Heidegger’s and tion, a succumbing to the materiality of paint, Adorno’s language, Deleuze’s artwork “comes an attention to how the material medium can to stand” and its authenticity resides in that organize itself as if it were water, such that the capacity. Yet though this allows a work to act painting becomes a visual and material analogue as an identity, that is, operate as discernible force to the massive power of swirling seawater field of effects, as a synthetic compound it is itself. Very material painters, such as Turner, inherently nonidentical with itself and essentially Bacon, and Auerbach, evolve a painterly logic

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deleuze, gilles of sensation that serves not so much as an quicken and enliven. The question is whether analogue for the represented seascape, figure, art and its understanding can be reduced to an or face but for the chaos of prephenomenal account of processural affects and still be re- forces that form such objects. The challenge cognized as art. Deleuze’s account of aesthetic that such art poses for philosophers is how the experience faces similar difficulties to those formation of concepts might similarly serve as that confront Clive Bell’s famous argument an analogue for thinking the virtual. concerning significant form. Bell, like Deleuze, At least two questions can be raised about wishes to avoid privileging established dis- Deleuze’s account of ontogenesis and the for- courses about art. He chooses to emphasize a mation of artworks. The first reflects a prob- work’s significant form, its planes, its surfaces, lem characteristic of philosophies of Becoming and its compositional form. The difficulty which affirm the idea of prephenomenal ener- shared by these positions is that while they gies and forces underlying individuated beings. laudably endeavor to escape narrow bourgeois Deleuze’s thinking runs along lines similar to prejudices concerning art and its privileged Nietzsche’s reasoning in this respect. A con- meanings, they produce formal accounts of scious representation of the external world is not art and aesthetic experience that threaten to a representation of an actual external world at dissolve what is readily understood as art in all but an internal interpretative effect of sub- the first place. conscious interactions with forces and affects that extend beyond a subject’s individuated See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century being. What is presented in consciousness is, continental aesthetics; structuralism and then, an interpretative response of one life- poststructuralism. form being acted on by another. In Nietzsche’s words, the external object “is only a kind of effect bibliography produced by a subject upon a subject – a modus of the subject” (Will to Power, §569). If, Primary sources however, all we can know are our conscious [1962] 1983. Nietzsche and Philosophy. H. Tomlinson states, the question arises as to how Deleuze (trans.). New York: Columbia University Press. can proclaim the existence of prephenomenal [1964] 2003. Proust and Signs. R. Howard (trans.). forces that, by definition, cannot be known. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. [1968] 1994. Difference and Repetition. P. Patton For an aesthetics that strives to escape the (trans.). New York: Columbia University Press. actual and make visible what normally lies [1968] 1992. Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. invisible within the virtual, this question poses M. Joughin (trans.). New York: Zone Books. a serious difficulty. [1969] 1990. The Logic of Sense. C. V. Boundas (ed.). The second question relates to whether New York: Columbia University Press. issues of aesthetic meaning and value can be col- [1981] 1994. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. lapsed into assertions of intensity. There are P. Patton (trans.). London: Athlone. considerable advantages to this stratagem. It [1983] 1989. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. avoids all the customary problems associated H. Tomlinson & B. Habberjam (trans.). London: with debates about aesthetic intentionality, Continuum. [1985] 1989. Cinema 2: The Movement-Image. essential content, subjectivity, and mean- H. Tomlinson & R. Galeta (trans.). London: ing. There is, indeed, something persuasively Continuum. Nietzschean in Deleuze’s argumentation: a [1991] 1994. (with Guattari, Felix) What is measure of great art is its ability to animate, to Philosophy. H. Tomlinson & G. Burchell (trans.). excite, to agitate, and to enliven the activity London: Verso. of the senses and, hence, to intensify our 1993. The Deleuze Reader. C. Boundas (ed.). New sense of being intensely alive. The question is York: Columbia University Press. whether descriptions of such experiential Secondary sources intensity, descriptions that deliberately avoid Ansell-Pearson, Keith. 1999. Germinal Life: The Differ- reference to customary discourses of visual ence and Repetition of Deleuze. London: Routledge. meaning, could ever be recognized as descrip- Bogue, Ronald. 2003. Deleuze on Music, Painting and tions of art. This is not to deny that art does the Arts. London: Routledge.

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Colebrook, Clare. 2002. Gilles Deleuze. London: other pictures; while resemblance can also seem Routledge. to operate in nonpictorial modes of representa- nicholas davey tion, for instance sculpture. Both considerations entail that resemblance is not sufficient for depiction. On the other hand, some pictures (for instance, some Cubist paintings) do not depiction Philosophical studies of depiction seem to bear any notable resemblance to focus on the representational function of figur- what they depict, in which case resemblance ative pictures: they aim to explain how such is not necessary for depiction either. Finally, pictures represent and how pictorial represen- the resemblance theory seems to have limited tation relates to other types of representation. explanatory scope: where there are notable Although contemplation of the nature of pictures resemblances between picture and subject, has a long history that starts in antiquity, what seems to resemble the appearance of the depiction becomes an object of systematic subject is the object seen in the picture, rather philosophical study only after the middle of the than the pattern of lines and colors on the can- twentieth century. At this time developments in vas. For instance, when I take a portrait to be the philosophy of language, but also relevant a good likeness of Queen Elizabeth II, it is the studies in experimental psychology and visual woman in the picture that I see as resembling anthropology, provided philosophers with the the Queen, not the color patches on the pictor- incentive and the theoretical tools needed ial surface. But if so, we need to understand how to scrutinize the distinctive way in which pic- a certain pattern of colors (a certain design) tures serve their representational function. In comes to be identified as a depiction of a woman what follows we will consider the main direc- in the first place. In that respect, the resemblance tions of analysis that pictorial theorists have theory takes depiction for granted. followed. conventionalism the resemblance theory The resemblance theory draws a sharp contrast In the Republic, Plato contends that pictures between pictorial and linguistic representation: are like mirror images; through their lines whereas the latter is governed by convention, and colors they imitate the appearance of the the former is thought to be grounded on a rela- objects of the world of sense. This pronounce- tion, that is, resemblance, that holds independ- ment is the earliest characterization of depiction, ently of practice or precept. The presumed but also the precursor of the resemblance the- radical disparity between pictures and lan- ory, historically the dominant theory of depic- guage has been forcefully undermined by tion. Proponents of the resemblance theory Nelson Goodman. Pictorial representation, focus on the relation between pictures and Goodman argues, is no less conventional than their objects in order to explain the represen- linguistic representation, although the two tational function of pictures, identifying this symbol systems are governed by different con- relation as one of resemblance. Specifically, it ventions, that is, different sets of arbitrary is assumed that (1) a picture X represents laws that determine the mode of representation an object Y just in case X notably resembles as well as what is represented in each case. the appearance of Y; and (2) representing in Specifically, Goodman explains, the pictorial that way is distinctive of pictorial modes of symbol system has the following properties: representation. it is syntactically and semantically dense, and The resemblance theory has considerable it is relatively replete. What these properties intuitive appeal; pictures do seem to resemble entail respectively is that the pictorial system pro- visually the objects or scenes that they depict. vides for infinitely many possible characters However, the conviction that such resemb- (i.e., types of pictorial mark), as well as an lance explains the representational function of infinite number of possible referents correlated pictures is implausible. On the one hand, pictures (by convention) with that set of characters; visually resemble many other objects apart and, further, that for a relatively wide range of from the objects that they depict, for instance properties of marks on a pictorial surface, the

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depiction smallest difference in one of those properties ability to visually recognize the object repre- affects to which character a mark belongs and sented. Pictures, it is suggested, embody thus what reference it is assigned. information from their objects on the basis of Goodman’s analysis of depiction has received which these can be recognized: they have been much criticism. A first point of concern is that designed to trigger roughly the same visual it does not provide either sufficient or necessary processing that allows a perceiver to recognize conditions for depiction. On the one hand, as the object represented when seen face to face. Goodman himself acknowledged, there are As Dominic Lopes explains, this entails that syntactically/semantically dense and relatively “the ability to work out what pictures depict replete symbol systems that are not pictorial. covaries with the ability to recognize their (Consider, for instance, a system of representa- depicta in the flesh” (Lopes 2005: 170). That is, tion where pictures in linear perspective are we can recognize in pictures those objects cut up into many pieces and reshuffled accord- that we can recognize in the flesh and under ing to some rule; such a system is both dense the same dimensions of variation. Moreover, and relatively replete but it is not pictorial.) On it is assumed that, given some familiarity with the other hand, there are pictures that belong the norms of a given system of depiction, the to articulate rather than to dense systems, for viewer’s recognitional ability for Os is neces- instance digital pictures. sary and sufficient for understanding a picture A further, perhaps more important, worry of O in that system. about Goodman’s account is that his principal However, the relation between ordinary and assumption that depiction, like language, is pictorial perception might be a source of worry entirely governed by convention, fails to com- for the recognition theory. The perceptual ply with practice. There is no doubt that the achievement in both cases seems to be that ability to understand pictures that belong to we recognize O, but of course (trompe-l’oeil unfamiliar systems or traditions of depiction pictures aside) we never take ourselves to see the may often require some instruction regarding actual O in a picture; rather we see a depiction the conventions and regularities that these of O. Lopes explains that, although pictorial systems involve. However, pictorial competence and face-to-face recognition largely overlap is generative. Once a viewer has acquired some and co-vary, they differ in that the former is familiarity with a system of depiction, she is able typically triggered by a flat, marked surface; to understand any picture in that system with- pictorial competence thus supposedly relies out further instruction or learning provided on an ability to recognize objects when they that she has a recognitional capacity for the appear in two dimensions. So what is the con- object the picture depicts. The generative tent of the pictorial act of recognition? Given that character of pictorial competence undermines in pictorial perception the viewer is (usually) Goodman’s radical conventionalism: unlike aware of seeing a representation, presumably she linguistic comprehension, pictorial compre- identifies this representation as of O, and sees hension does not seem to rely on knowledge of that the representation is two-dimensional. an arbitrary set of conventions. As Robert Hopkins has noted however, this qualification significantly limits the explana- the recognition theory tory scope of the recognition theory: “it turns Although the ability to understand pictures the overlap claim from an interesting assertion in different systems of depiction involves some about the cognitive processing involved in familiarity with the conventions and regular- understanding pictures into the wholly uncon- ities pertinent to each system, the above con- troversial claim that we are able to understand sideration seems to suggest that it also involves them” (2005: 157). a natural capacity, or else, that it has a natural starting point. This insight is central to the experiential theories recognition theory of depiction. According to A comprehensive theory of depiction, it seems, recognition theorists, it is distinctive of depic- has to acknowledge the visual nature of depic- tion that it is an essentially visual form of tion, but also the ways in which pictorial per- representation as it invokes our perceptual ception differs from ordinary perception. This is

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depiction the central insight of experiential theories, which shape ignores the third dimension, it is a prop- seek to define depiction in terms of the distinct- erty that pictures and their objects can share. ive visual experience that pictures evoke. What matters for depiction though, according According to Ernst Gombrich, pictorial seeing to Hopkins, is not the actual resemblance in is a case of illusion: in seeing a picture of a outline shape between the marked surface and table, for instance, we have an experience as the object depicted therein, as the resemblance of seeing a real table, that is, an experience phe- itself does not entail that the viewer will have nomenologically like that of seeing a real table. the experience appropriate to pictures, seeing- The illusion hypothesis has been undermined in. Rather, what matters is the experience of by Richard Wollheim, who rightly notes that such resemblance. When a viewer experiences (trompe-l’oeil pictures aside) seeing an object resemblance in outline shape between the in a picture is not like seeing the object face to marks on a pictorial surface and a familiar face in that there is a difference in the phe- object (which she thereby takes the picture to nomenology of the two experiences. The differ- depict), both the marks and the object figure in ence, he thinks, consists in the fact that the her awareness, so the experience can be prop- pictorial marks are perceived along with what erly characterized as a case of seeing-in. is represented in the picture; awareness of the According to Hopkins, then, a picture P marks and awareness of the object of represen- depicts an object O because (1) P is experi- tation are two distinguishable but insepar- enced as resembling O in outline shape; and able aspects of a single visual experience. The (2) P has been intentionally marked (or is capacity for visual experiences that have this sort causally related to O, in the case of photo- of complexity is for Wollheim the capacity for graphs) so as to promote this experience. seeing-in. Seeing-in, Wollheim explains, can However, Hopkins notes, there is not always also be triggered by adequately differentiated an exact match between the depictive content surfaces that are not representational. It is dis- of a picture and what can be seen in it. tinctive of depiction, however, that there is a Drawing on her knowledge of the regularities standard of correctness for seeing-in (for what and practices that govern depiction, the viewer is to be recognized in the marked surface) set may need to take certain details of the object seen by the intentions of the artist. It follows that a in a picture as stylistic traits or simply limita- picture P depicts an object O if and only if P tions of the medium, irrelevant to what the has been intentionally marked so that O can be picture is intended to convey. seen in P. The success of the experienced resemblance Although we may have to concede with theory seems to rest on whether we perceive Wollheim that depiction ordinarily fosters – that is, are consciously aware of – outline twofold seeing, the seeing-in theory has not shape; moreover, in the case of depiction, been adequately developed so as to qualify as a whether we do so before we identify what a pic- complete theory of depiction. On the one hand, ture depicts. As Lopes notes, there is evidence Wollheim does not explain how pictures rep- that the features we see a picture surface as hav- resent, that is, why X rather than Y can be ing (for instance, subjective contour, perceived recognized in a marked surface. Further, he relative size, shape, etc.) may depend in part on refuses to provide a comprehensive character- what we see in a picture; “if the experienced ization of seeing-in, one that would allow us to resemblance between P and O is detached from understand the precise character and content an actual resemblance between P and O, then of this complex experience, thinking that such there is the danger that it is a function of P’s an endeavor would not be fruitful. depicting O. Experienced resemblance cannot Perhaps, however, the resemblance hypoth- explain depiction if it is beholden to depiction” esis can give us some insight into the nature of (2005: 168). seeing-in. Robert Hopkins has argued that the type of resemblance that is salient to depiction conclusion is resemblance in outline shape, where outline Although the existent theories of depiction shape is the solid angle that an object subtends do not converge in a unitary account of the at a point in its surroundings. Since outline phenomenon, due to their breadth and depth

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derrida, jacques they have offered us a rich understanding of dif- the Philosophy of Art. M. Kieran (ed.). Oxford: ferent aspects of depiction. In order to reach Blackwell, 160–74. a more comprehensive understanding of the Peacocke, Christopher. 1987. “Depiction,” Philoso- way pictures serve their representational func- phical Review, 96, 383–410. tion, we need to gain a better insight into the Schier, Flint. 1986. Deeper into Pictures: An Essay on overall nature of the pictorial experience, one Pictorial Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. that highlights the points of similarity and Walton, Kendall L. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe. the points of contrast with ordinary percep- Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. tion – with regards, for instance, to their Wollheim, Richard. 1980. Art and Its Objects. 2nd edn. phenomenology, or the visual cues that each Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. exploits and the epistemic resources on which Wollheim, Richard. 1987. Painting as an Art. each draws. Although individually these phe- London: Thames & Hudson. nomena have been studied by different theories katerina bantinaki of depiction, both in the domain of pictorial theory and in experimental psychology, what we do not have is a study that would consider the phenomena in their interrelations. Such Derrida, Jacques (1930–2004) is part of an integrating approach would allow us a the grand tradition of French skepticism that more broad and uniform understanding of the includes Montaigne, Descartes, Mersenne, way depiction functions. Pascal, Bayle, Voltaire, Camus. Born in Algeria in 1930, Derrida began to study philosophy in See also drawing, painting, and printmaking; 1950 in a Paris dominated by Camus and photography; abstraction; gombrich; good- Sartre, and received a doctorate in literature man; perspective; picture perception; real- in 1980 with the essay “The Inscription of ism; representation; walton; wollheim. Philosophy: Research on the Interpretation of Writing,” having already received one in phi- bibliography losophy in 1967 with Of Grammatology, “on Budd, Malcolm. 1992. “On Looking at a Picture.” In the enduring of the Platonic, Aristotelian, and Psychoanalysis, Mind and Art: Perspectives on Richard Scholastic conceptions of the written sign.” Wollheim. J. Hopkins & A. Savile (eds.). Oxford: The information about the degrees comes from Blackwell, 259–80. a three-page typewritten curriculum vitae, Gombrich, Ernst. 1977. Art and Illusion: A Study in current up to 1984, that dramatizes the prob- the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. 5th edn. lem of sources and origins, authorizations and London: Phaidon. legitimating laws to which Derrida has paid Goodman, Nelson. 1968. Languages of Art. Indiana- attention, namely: I have seen no other refer- polis: Bobbs-Merrill. ence to the essay submitted for the degree in Hopkins, Robert. 1998. Picture, Image and Experi- literature and the vitae does not name the ence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hopkins, Robert. 2005. “The Speaking Image: granting institutions. In “The Time of a Thesis: Visual Communication and the Nature of Punctuations” (1983), a presentation made at Depiction.” In Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Sorbonne on June 2, 1980 to the examin- the Philosophy of Art. M. Kieran (ed.). Oxford: ing committee, Derrida draws a map of his Blackwell, 145–59. career up to the time of the thesis. Hyman, John. 2000. “Pictorial Art and Visual Husserl and Hegel were his first interlocutors. Experience,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 40, The 1967 defense of grammatology was pre- 21–45. ceded in 1954 by a master’s thesis on the Hyman, John. 2003. “Subjectivism in the Theory of problem of genesis in the phenomenology of Pictorial Art,” Monist, 86, 676–701. Husserl and in 1957 by the registration of a Kulvicki, John. 2006. On Images: Their Structure and Content. Oxford: Oxford University Press. first thesis topic, “The Ideality of the Literary Lopes, Dominic McIver. 1996. Understanding Object,” to be written under the direction of the Pictures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hegel scholar Jean Hyppolite. The task was to Lopes, Dominic McIver. 2005. “The Domain of fashion a new theory of the literary object with Depiction.” In Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the techniques of transcendental phenomenology.

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For Derrida said that his most constant interest Having written a lengthy introduction to has been in how it is that the sheer fact of writ- Husserl’s The Origin of Geometry (1962), ing can disturb most fundamental questions Derrida no longer looked in phenomenology about what exists and what whatever exists for a theory of the literary object because he means. He asks himself rhetorically why he is found Husserl to have located writing within so fascinated by the trick, the play, the dodge mathematical objects without realizing that of the inscription and the paradox of the trace, the logic of the inscription, with its presumption the mark that erases itself in the course of of the same presence to mind of ideal objects making, performing itself. (meanings) to which speech lays claim, menaces The trace is for Derrida that whose existence the whole phenomenological project from the is proved by a Kantian transcendental deduc- outside. This thesis is worked out in the close tion to conditions necessary for the possibility readings done in the three works published of something’s being the case. Its invisibility as in 1967 (Speech and Phenomena, Of Grammato- well as its existence is assured by the occurrence logy, Writing and Difference), where Derrida of that of which it is a necessary condition. The shows writing to have a logic of its own that trace “carries its other within itself,” and here relentlessly governs texts despite their avowals are opened up the fields on which play blind- that writing is necessary only because of the ness and insight, presence and absence, death limits nature imposes on the range of the voice and life. The paradox of the trace is, Derrida and is dangerous because it tries to usurp the would say, not only ungraspable but also power of speech, whose handmaiden it is. This unsolvable, with the result that there always is notion is akin to that of pragmatic contradiction, what cannot be grasped; there always is para- which occurs when what someone does con- dox. The effort to uncover the paradoxes that travenes what he says, when the performance haunt writing, “the literary ruse of inscrip- of a speech act undercuts either what is said or tion,” has occupied Derrida from the start, a necessary condition thereof, as when some- where the ruse is that only in literature is writ- one says that he is silent or does not exist, with ing opaque and intransitive. the difference that Derrida locates contradiction His claim is that not only has all writing between what a text, not a person, does and density and a life and destiny of its own but also what it says. writing is a precondition of speech. There is This identification of both a textual uncon- an arche-writing, an articulation, a spacing, scious, to which dangerous writing is relegated a carving out of what Saussure calls the con- in order to preserve the hegemony of the voice tinuous ribbons of thought and sound that and speech fully present to conscious mind, precede speech and make it possible. This is no and the various maneuvers performed by the simple reversal, however, for the crucial step in textual unconscious was the subject of his ear- this deconstruction of the opposition is the lier work. The later work gave way to works shift in the conceptual scheme that follows of plastic art, institutions, individual lives, upon the reinscription of speech and writing and their stories. From 1963 to 1968 Derrida within arche-writing. The change this dis- worked in solitude, apart from the structural- covery rings on familiar conceptual schemes ism that prevailed in Paris. He said that in amounts to their deformation, which is 1967 he had had so little inclination to ques- difficult in the extreme to make out unless one tion the necessity of the university and its gen- performs an experiment in imagination that eral principle that he thought to divide his consists in supposing the standard contract labor between a thesis on Hegel’s semiology to between reader and text to be null and lan- be done with Jean Hyppolite on the one hand guage to have power to resist the intentions and the continuation of work that not only did of its users. These suppositions made, the not conform to such requirements as a thesis but experimenter can try out various of Derrida’s also was meant to displace and deform them. strategies of reading as Derrida later does on He registered this second thesis topic in 1967, texts other than those of Plato, Condillac, but after the May uprising and the death of Kant, Rousseau, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Hyppolite in 1968, he simply ignored it, pub- Nietzsche, Freud. lishing three books in 1972 (Dissemination,

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Positions, Margins of Philosophy) and writing affairs, text (the spectral, death, the future), texts that became more and more playful. The Derrida takes the concept out of its familiar play, however, was in the deadly serious service contexts and destabilizes it. The fact that it can of breaking the habits of reading that refuse to be decontextualized without losing itself shows search out the places in a text where what it does it to have been already unstable, which exem- undermines what it says. plifies the principle that nothing can be done or In 1974 he decided not to write the thesis found that was not already done or already because doing so would be inconsistent with there to be found. a political struggle over the place of philosophy Of the concept stripped bare of its context, in the French curriculum in which he was Derrida asks the Kantian “How is it possible?” engaged as a founder of GREPH (Groupe de and answers that all are possible because Recherches sur l’Enseignement Philosophique) they contain their other within themselves. and an activist until 1979. During this time, he Everything has at its heart what is different-from- notes, his work focused on questions of rights, itself, and in the latter body of work Derrida turns on the proper, the signature, the name, its des- to explicating the notion of the other, which tination and restitution, and the institutional is different from the opposite. Were death, say, hold on discourses’ internal and external lines wholly other than life, it could not, as such, of demarcation. In his work, philosophers’ have anything to do with it. But death is at the texts gave way to their institutional contexts, and very heart of life: only what can die can be said the borders between them were shown to be to be alive. That, however, is not the end of the highly pervious. In the time after the final the- matter. The strangeness of the concept of sis of 1980, these texts are reinscribed in the death is revealed once it too is taken out of its philosophers’ lives, as the issue of Nazism beset familiar contrast with life. It is also the other of the lives of Paul de Man and Heidegger and immortality, and of the pair Derrida says “we forced the question of the boundaries between will never believe in either death or immortal- professional, political, and private, between ity.” We cannot decide between them because the productions of and by institutions and – and here the Derridian project puts every- individuals. In 1989 two books appeared in thing at risk because no concept stays still and English: Memoires: For Paul de Man and none has its borders intact – each inhabits the Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, about which other in the guise of what is different-from-it and last David Farrell Krell, a scholar translator of is, therefore, neither the same as nor separate Heidegger, asks “Will a more important book on from the other. Heidegger appear in our time?” and answers Derrida’s move from the deconstruction “No, unless Derrida continues to think and of binary oppositions in written texts to the write in his spirit.” unsettling of the concepts through which we Derrida’s singularity is such that one is not think the world – rife as it is with institutions, inclined to identify the spirit in which he works politics, globalization, war – is not a move from as that of anyone but himself. Yet strands language to world or from names to things, other than French skepticism pass through however. No name is proper to the thing it him. One is the modernist preoccupation of names: it does not belong to what it names. early twentieth-century art and philosophy, What we know is that name and named are not for example, with what they are that pervaded and cannot be the same. Derrida describes this as the art and philosophy of the time. Derrida’s dif- the name’s being inhabited by the death of the ference is that he asks these questions of every thing, which transforms the name from being concept he encounters. Just as the modernist appropriate to the thing to being its death. In “art is significant form” was read back into the Derrida’s description, death has lost its mooring history of art, so Derrida reads any concept as the other of life to become instead the impos- on which he is working back into the myriad sibility of being the same. other concepts on which he has worked. “The impossible to think” is the condition Whether it is something people do (mourn, for the possibility of the new – which would give hospitality, forgive, decide, take respons- contravene the principle that everything has ibility) or a characteristic of a practice, state of always already been done or found – and for the

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dewey, john possibility of decision. Decision is called for 2002. Who’s Afraid of Philosophy? Right to Philosophy when reasons for and against a matter do not 1. J. Plug (trans.). Stanford: Stanford University decide it and when, then, a leap of faith into an Press. unknown future is required. The necessary 2004. Eyes of the University: Right to Philosophy 2. J. condition for decision, in turn, is the idea of a Plug (trans.). Stanford: Stanford University Press. future as that which is utterly open and wholly Secondary sources other from what we can think, as that with Cohen, Tom. 2002. Jacques Derrida and the which we can have nothing to do from where Humanities: A Critical Reader. Cambridge: we now stand, but toward which we can, if we Cambridge University Press. dare as Derrida did, make a leap of faith. Royle, Nicolas. 2003. Jacques Derrida. New York: Routledge. See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century Stocker, Barry. 2006. Routledge Philosophy Guide- continental aesthetics; deconstruction; book to Derrida on Deconstruction. New York: structuralism and poststructuralism. Routledge. mary bittner wiseman bibliography Primary sources [1962] 1978. Edmund Husserl’s “Origin of Dewey, John (1859–1952) American philo- Geometry”: An Introduction. J. P. Leavey (trans.). sopher, educator, and reformer; contributed Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. significantly to every major field of philosophy. [1967] 1973. “Speech and Phenomena” and Other Aesthetics and its affiliated subject matters Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. D. B. Allison play a central role in the work of C. S. Peirce and (trans.). Evanston: Northwestern University William James as well as, and preeminently, of Press. Dewey, all of whom are considered the most [1967] 1967. Of Grammatology. G. C. Spivak prominent members of the school in American (trans.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University philosophy called the “pragmatist movement.” Press. Though Dewey wrote only one book exp- [1967] 1978. Writing and Difference. A. Bass (trans.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. licitly devoted to aesthetics, Art as Experience [1972] 1981. Dissemination. B. Johnson (trans.). (1934), it remains one of the most significant London: Athlone. and original treatments of the topic. It also [1972] 1981. Positions. A. Bass (trans.). London: offers an insight into the nature of Dewey’s Athlone. general philosophy, illuminating his abiding [1972] 1982. Margins of Philosophy. A. Bass concern with the aesthetic dimension of ex- (trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. perience. Some, however, like Croce, have [1978] 1987. The Truth in Painting. G. Bennington & regarded this book as radically inconsistent I. McLeod (trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago with Dewey’s pragmatism, while others have Press. thought that it carries within it two inconsis- [1982] 1985. The Ear of the Other. P. Kamuf (trans.). New York: Schocken. tent strands: one idealist, the other naturalist. 1983. “The Time of a Thesis: Punctuations.” But it is important to note that the views Philosophy in France Today. Alan Montefiore (ed.). expressed in this work follow the underlying Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 34–53. themes of Dewey’s major philosophical opus, [1986] 1989. Memoires: For Paul de Man. Experience and Nature (1925), in which is C. Lindsay, J. Culler, E. Cadaver, & P. Kamuf (trans.). found not only the theoretical context of his aes- Rev. edn. New York: Columbia University Press. thetics but also the ramifications for a radically [1987] 1989. Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question. novel metaphysical theory that takes aesthetic G. Bennington & R. Bowlby (trans.). Chicago: experience as central. University of Chicago Press. By the early years of the twentieth century, 1994. Specters of Marx: The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. P. Kamuf Dewey had aligned himself with the natur- (trans.). New York: Routledge. alistic side of the pragmatist movement. In his 2001. On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. essay “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology,” M. Dooley & M. Hughes (trans.). New York: he provided a successful model of learning Routledge. activity that takes as primary the idea of an

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dewey, john organism constantly acting and responding the pervasive aesthetic possibilities of human to its environment in a continuous and devel- experience in general. oping pattern of experience. By 1925, with Dewey has been much misunderstood on Experience and Nature, the model had been this point. He is not rejecting the social function expanded to account for how members of a of public museums. Nor is he arguing that community, rather than a single isolated “ordinary” human experience, left unrefined organism, pursue through the use of symbol, in all its massive crudities, is art in exactly the expression, and communication the ongoing same way in which “fine art” is art. What he project of directing experience toward intrinsi- does say is that the origin of art lies in the cally fulfilling ends which give human exis- capacity to develop our ordinary experiences tence its depth of value and meaning. Thus, by toward fulfilling ends. The traditional fine arts Dewey’s mature period, the term “experience” have done this exceptionally well, and thus had come to mean for him not what it connotes can serve as a model for any activity that is to the tradition of British empiricism (the sub- fraught with the possibilities for truly fulfilling jective, discrete, static mental image somehow the human desire to exist with a vivid, complex “representing” an “external world”). Rather, it awareness of the meaning and value of life. By signifies the shared social activity of symbolically putting the idea of art on a pedestal, as it were, mediated behavior that seeks to discover the we lose sight of its continuity as a development possibilities of our objective situations in the from the ordinary world (1987: 8). natural world for meaningful, intelligent, and Thus Dewey seeks to remind us of the con- fulfilling ends. And the skill at doing this Dewey stant involvement of “the live creature” with its calls “art.” world. Our senses are extensions of our need for Experience is a process in nature; it continuous, organized activity that maintains embraces potentialities as well as immediate and develops our equilibrium. There is an actualities; it can be “civilized” or “cultivated” underlying vital rhythm to any living being’s through education, whereby one becomes a existence, and these rhythms form an organic participant in a social world; it can become matrix out of which our sense of dynamic “intelligent” insofar as it can be directed by order arises. Our embodiment as organisms recognition of its possibilities, both desirable shapes the conditions of the aesthetic. This and undesirable. The idea that experience is rhythm of “doing and undergoing,” of anticip- such a process, capable of control, so that it can ating, acting, and responding, builds up our develop continuously rather than be suffered overall framework of what a “meaningful from moment to moment, is the idea of art, world” is. We come to experience in the light which Dewey describes as the “greatest intel- of remembered events and foreseen conse- lectual achievement in the history of human- quences, and cease thereby to be prisoners of ity” (1987: 25, 31). the momentary sensation. The objects of our It is important, Dewey thinks, to understand world arise from the temporality of human the origin of art and the quest for aesthetic action constructing interpretations out of experience in the natural world of human immediate events (1987: 13). action, especially since the cultural climate of This leads to the most significant idea of the “artworld” and its institutions, like the Dewey’s aesthetics: consummatory experience museum or the market value of “great art,” or “an experience,” as he often referred to it. have been so uncritically taken as the starting When the rhythmic interaction of individual and point for aesthetic theory. He sees any theory, world comes to be consciously experienced as such as Clive Bell’s, that treats art as an isolated, a developmental process culminating in the “high,” or “pure” phenomenon standing un- kind of organic integrity and wholeness which related to any other mode of human concern makes the event sensed as deeply meaningful, or experience, as a victim of a particular his- pervaded by a qualitative continuity which torically mediated cultural situation – one of uniquely distinguishes the experience as such, which Dewey himself was highly critical. By then one has had “an experience.” Works of separating the idea of art from life, we not only art are preeminent examples: the experience mystify art, but we thereby fail to recognize of a Bach fugue, the Medici Chapel, Dante’s

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Commedia. But, of course, many experiences dynamic dialogue within the experience of the also have this consummatory character – even human community – that is, culture. The work experiences that are not particularly happy or of art is to be found in the life it has within the uplifting. There is “an experience” of a special culture. Thus there is not one “real” Hamlet. day spent with a child, a gourmet meal enjoyed Neither is Hamlet a meaningless name for a with friends, and of heart-rending grief. What haphazard variety of subjective reactions. The is common to these experiences is that, work of art that is Hamlet lies in the continued through their internal qualitative integrity, life of its reception in the culture, which gives they have revealed the capacity of experience rise to many divergent interpretations and to be meaningful on a profound level. The ene- readings (1987: 81). mies of the aesthetic, says Dewey, are mindless Likewise, Dewey takes form in a very habitual repetition at one extreme and random dynamic sense. The work of art is temporal, chaos at the other (1987: 40). historical, cultural, and developmental. Its Aesthetic experience is not instantaneous or “form” cannot refer to some static underlying timeless. Its “consummatory” nature lies not in skeleton. Rather, its form is the way the work the fact that the experience comes to an end – gives organization to experience: it is the pat- for all experiences do – but that it is marked off tern of the “working of the work,” to use from the start by the element of “closure.” This Heidegger’s phrase. Form is the process of is what gives dynamic, growing continuity to accumulative richness or, to use another of the experience beyond the mere succession of Dewey’s terms, “funding” in an experience. anticipations and responses. The experience Because the work of art is temporally experi- has a sensed movement about it that holds enced, not only is each moment of the process forth the promise of consummation or, in some a “summing up and a carrying forward,” but it cases, fails its promise, and so is sensed as a “dis- is felt and perceived as such (1987: 137). appointment” (1987: 41). Dewey also distinguishes the “subject matter” Some of the most novel aspects of Dewey’s of a work of art from its “substance.” The sub- theory lie in his discussions of expression and ject is what may be discursively and topically form. His is often misunderstood, along with isolated or shared by many different works. other “expression theories,” as simply regard- Paradise Lost and the Sistine Chapel, for exam- ing expression as an aspect of the creative act. ple, share the common subject matter of the story But Dewey treats expression as the ongoing of the creation and fall according to Genesis. But relationship between the work of art and the each work has disclosed its rendition in an public. He distinguishes the “work of art” from entirely distinct way that can be encountered the physical “art product,” such as the canvas only through the work itself: this is what each and paint, ink and paper, or sound vibrations; work is really about; this is its substance. The sub- the work of art is the result of the interaction of stance is what is disclosed through the work, and the art product and an appreciator; the “work” it is this that gives sense to the saying that a work becomes the meaningful integration of an art of art is ultimately about itself (1987: 111). product and a life. Any philosophy of experience, Dewey states, Like Collingwood, Dewey did not believe is ultimately tested by its treatment of aesthetic that “emotions” or “aesthetic intuitions” pre- experience (1987: 274). Because aesthetic ex- existed their physical embodiment; as the perience signifies for him the most integrated work became objectified, so did they take on and complete mode of experience in which the definition. Mere emotional outpouring is not human quest for meaning directly imbues the “expressing.” Expression is governed by the events of life with value, any short-sightedness idea of communication, whether the art product here or lack of attention to vital factors, such is meant to be encountered by anyone else or as emotion, feeling, and imagination, will be not. Even while creating, the artist takes on most evident in an aesthetic theory (or lack of the role of the appreciator in every act of criti- one). It is remarkable how many philosophies cal assessment and response to what she has stand condemned by this requirement. Dewey done. One is engaged in a dialogue with the self; does not make this comment idly, and surely as the product engages others, it becomes a intends his own philosophy to be judged by it.

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It is perhaps one of the starker ironies of the most controversy and had the most impact are history of philosophy that Dewey’s philosophy aesthetic theory and art theory. has largely been judged on other, lesser merits. Traditionally, aesthetic theory has been There are, obviously, weaknesses and prob- concerned with our responses to such things lems in Dewey’s theory, not least of which are as natural beauties and artworks. The task of the vagueness and rambling discursiveness aesthetic theory – at least since the eighteenth of his prose. His heavy reliance on organic century – has been to characterize the specta- metaphors is often excessive or, at least, in tor’s share in our commerce with nature and art need of clarification. He is not the connoisseur in such a way that it can be seen as compris- of fine art that Bell, Langer, Goodman, or Cavell ing a distinctive or unique mode of experience are. One wishes he dealt more forthrightly or perception, or as requiring or activating a dis- with the genuine problem of cross-cultural tinctive attitude or faculty. Broadly put, aesthetic responsiveness to art, instead of naively believ- theory attempts to define a realm or dimension ing that art communicates directly where lan- of the spectator’s commerce with art and guage often fails. nature that is essentially distinguishable from But these are all minor points in the light of any other mode of experience or activity such the fact that Dewey has given in his discussion as the religious, the practical, and the moral. of art and aesthetic experience one of the most Dickie’s contribution to this debate has been powerful, original, and challenging theories in to argue that the notion of a distinct realm of the literature. Carried to its conclusion, his the aesthetic, such as aesthetic experience, is a theory would have revolutionary effects not myth. No principled distinction can be drawn only upon the conclusions but also upon the con- between so-called aesthetic perception and duct of most Anglo-American philosophy. ordinary perception. And the postulation of special faculties, like taste, or the aesthetic atti- See also twentieth-century anglo-american tude is ill-advised. aesthetics; aesthetics of the everyday; bell; Dickie has attacked many diverse attempts to expression theory; museums; pragmatist formulate aesthetic theories. One of his central aesthetics. objections has been to the role that the notion of disinterestedness plays in so many aesthetic bibliography theories. For example, Jerome Stolnitz (1960: 34) defines an aesthetic attitude as “disinterested and Primary sources sympathetic attention to any object of aware- 1925. Experience and Nature. Chicago: Open Court. ness whatever for its own sake alone.” Here, the [1934] 1987. Art as Experience. Carbondale: Univer- idea of the aesthetic is a matter of attending to sity of Southern Illinois Press. something in a specifiable way – that is, dis- interestedly. “Disinterest,” in turn, involves a Secondary sources lack of any ulterior purpose. But, Dickie notes, Alexander, Thomas M. 1987. John Dewey’s Theory of Art, Experience, and Nature: The Horizons of Feeling disinterest tells us something about a spectator’s Albany: State University of New York Press. motives; it does not really point to any feature Shusterman, Richard. 1992. Living Beauty, Rethink- of the spectator’s act of attention. If two people ing Art. Oxford: Blackwell listen to a recording of a symphony – one in preparation for a music exam and the other for thomas m. alexander enjoyment – presumably the former has an interest and the latter is disinterested. Both may attend to the same features of the music Dickie, George (b.1926) American philoso- and appreciate their structures for the same pher of art. He was president of the American musicological reasons. There is only one way to Society of Aesthetics in 1993–4. Dickie has attend (albeit with different grades of sophisti- made contributions to a number of important cation) to the music, though there may be dif- topics in analytic aesthetics, such as evaluation ferent motives for our attention. Thus, notions and intentionalism. However, the two areas of like interest and disinterest do not specify dif- discussion where his work has sparked the ferent modes of attention. Furthermore, there is

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dickie, george no reason to invoke these ideas in order to that is to say, by having status conferred upon explain why the theatrical producer who it by the right persons. watches his production with an eye to the box The institutional theory of art was subjected office is not responding appropriately. The to intense criticism. One such was that the problem is not that he is not attending dis- definition is circular insofar as art (the artworld) interestedly. Rather, he is not paying attention is an ineliminable element of the definiens. to the play at all. Dickie conceded this point, but argued that the Along with his celebrated attacks on theories circularity is not vicious. Another line of objec- of disinterested attention. Dickie’s attempts to tion is that the underlying analogy with formal construct a real or essential definition of art institutions, such as the law and religion, is are his most noteworthy contribution to ana- strained beyond breaking point. Formal insti- lytic aesthetics. It can be said that he reinvigor- tutions of this kind have specifiable criteria ated the project of art theory in the name of governing what can be a candidate for a certain what he initially called an “institutional theory position (for instance, a potato cannot be a of art.” Prior to Dickie’s intervention in the candidate for President of the United States) as debate, aestheticians of the 1950s and 1960s well as specifiable criteria for who may officiate were generally persuaded by the arguments of over certain procedures (for instance, only a neo-Wittgensteinian philosophers, like Morris bishop can confer Holy Orders). The artworld Weitz, who maintained (1) that art cannot be lacks criteria of this sort. Therefore, the art- defined because it is an open concept; and (2) world is not an institution in any rigorous that the lack of a real definition of art should raise sense. In other words, the second condition in no philosophical anxieties, for there is an alter- Dickie’s theory relies on the putative existence native way of identifying art – namely, the of altogether bogus roles and procedures. family-resemblance method. Feeling the pressure of this line of argument, Dickie rejected the notion of family resem- Dickie jettisoned talk of institutions in favor of blance as a serviceable means for telling art talking about the art circle, a practice involv- from nonart, on a number of grounds. One ing structured relations between artists and decisive objection was that the notion of fam- their audiences. In this context, he identified a ily resemblance is ultimately only the idea of a necessary condition for what it is to be an art- resemblance, and, since everything resembles work: “A work of art is of a kind created to be everything else in some respect, noting so- presented to an artworld public.” This, in turn, called family resemblances will finally force us is elucidated by the following four proposi- to count everything as art. Moreover, since the tions: “A public is a set of persons the members family-resemblance approach is an obviously of which are prepared in some degree to under- inoperable method for identifying art, one is stand an object which is presented to them”; “An compelled to take a second look at the rival artworld system is a framework for the presen- method, that of identifying art by means of tation of a work of art by an artist to an artworld a definition comprising necessary conditions public”; “An artist is a person who participates that are jointly sufficient. Dickie showed that with understanding in the making of an art- such a definition of art need not place limits on work”; and “The artworld is the totality of artistic creativity with respect to artifacts. This artworld systems” (1984: 80–2). Dickie waves definition, the “institutional theory of art,” aside anticipated charges of circularity here, states in one of its elaborations: “A work of art on the grounds that it is not vicious, while in the classificatory sense is (1) an artifact also conjecturing that it is a feature of cultural (2) a set of the aspects of which has had con- concepts that they will be circular – or, as he ferred upon it the status of candidate for appre- prefers to say, “inflected” – in this way. ciation by some person or persons acting on Nevertheless, even if the theory of the art behalf of a certain social institution (the art- circle successfully deflects some of the objections world)” (1974: 34). This definition allows that leveled at the institutional theory of art, it would an artwork could, for instance, look like anything appear to provoke some problems of its own. – even a snow shovel – so long as the artifact There is the genuine question, for instance, is introduced by means of the right procedure: of whether this theory is indeed a theory of art.

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For though Dickie’s set of inflected definitions 1974. Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis. mentions “art” at crucial junctures, the overall Ithaca: Cornell University Press. framework could be filled in just as readily 1984. The Art Circle: A Theory of Art. New York: with the names of other complex, coordinated, Haven. communicative practices, such as philosophy. 1988. Evaluating Art. Philadelphia: Temple Univer- But then the question arises as to whether sity Press. 1989. (ed. with R. Sclafani & R. Roblin) Aesthetics: Dickie has really said anything specific about art, A Critical Anthology. 2nd edn. New York: St. as opposed to producing something like the Martin’s. necessary framework of coordinated, commun- 1997. Introduction to Aesthetics: An Analytic Approach. icative practices of a certain level of complex- Oxford: Oxford University Press. ity, where such practices cannot be identified in 2001. Art and Value. Oxford: Blackwell. terms of their content. In other words, Dickie indicated that art belongs to the genus of com- Secondary sources Aagaard-Mogensen, Lars (ed.). 1976. Culture and plex, coordinated, communicative practices, Art. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press. along with showing, by example, some of the Davies, Stephen. 1991. Definitions of Art. Ithaca: interrelated structures of these practices. This Cornell University Press. analysis is not without interest, but it does not Graves, David C. 1997. “The Institutional Theory of seem to qualify as a definition of art – the very Art: A Survey,” Philosophia, 25, 51–67. thing that he believes is the point of art theory. Stecker, Robert. 1996. “The End of an Institutional Though Dickie’s contributions to aesthetic Theory of Art,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 26, theory and art theory may appear to be inde- 134–42. pendent, they are not. For in dismissing the Stolnitz, Jerome. 1960. Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art viability of the notion of the aesthetic, he Criticism. Boston: Riverside. Yanal, Robert J. (ed.). 1994. Institutions of Art: undermines the possibility of aesthetic theories Reconsiderations of George Dickie’s Philosophy. of art – theories such as Clive Bell’s, that main- University Park: Pennsylvania State University tain that artworks are artifacts designed to Press. cause aesthetic experiences. Insofar as aes- thetic theories of art are rivals to institutional noël carroll theories, Dickie’s rejection of the aesthetic can be seen as a dialectical thrust against a major competing view. The other major com- Dufrenne, Mikel (1910–1995) French phi- petitor to the institutional approach was the neo- losopher, best known for applying phenom- Wittgensteinian notion that art might be enology to the study of visual art. Dufrenne identified in virtue of family resemblances. In studied under Alain and Souriau, and taught at contradistinction to the tendencies of these the universities of Poitiers and Paris–Nanterre, rival theories of art is the importance Dickie and of Buffalo, Michigan, and Delaware. He places on social context for art theory. Whether was the chief editor of 10/18, the well-known the details of Dickie’s theories are finally correct, French aesthetic and art journal transformed in it is nevertheless the case that he, along with 1974 from the Revue d’esthétique, which he Arthur C. Danto, has put the significance of had coedited. social context on the agenda of contemporary His principal Sorbonne thesis, published in philosophy of art. 1953 as Phénoménologie de l’experience esthé- tique, is his largest and most comprehensive See also twentieth-century anglo-american work of aesthetics, and focuses mostly on the aesthetics; aesthetic attitude; artifact, art study of aesthetic experience, aesthetic objects, as; “artworld”; bell; danto; definition of and aesthetic values. Like Ingarden, he rejects “art”; theories of art; wittgenstein. the traditional “objectivist” and “subjectivist” aesthetics, and accepts the phenomenological bibliography point of departure: the analysis and description Primary sources of the acts of consciousness and their inten- 1971. Aesthetics: An Introduction. Indianapolis: tional correlates at the moment of the subject’s Pegasus. encounter with a work of art.

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Dufrenne follows Husserl in his critique of psy- basis for the reflection between man and the chologism, physicalism, and relativism, and in real” (1973: 456). Thus, the cosmological and the phenomenological method of description, the existential are united in the aesthetic expe- though he rejects the notion of pure transcendental rience in which we learn truths about art, ego, claiming that consciousness is always nature, and ourselves. individualized and concrete, as is its correlate, Dufrenne comes back to this theme in his the aesthetic object. Like Merleau-Ponty, he subsequent Poétique, where he insists that the emphasizes the concrete, lived, corporeal, and aesthetic experience does not stop with the sensuous (sensible) experience of art. Like aesthetic object but transcends it to contemplate Ingarden, he distinguishes between the work the truth of nature, accessible in no other way of art and the aesthetic object – which is the than through the archetypes expressed in art. only true form in which the work of art can In this sense nature needs art as much as art be appreciated. Nevertheless, he criticizes needs a spectator for “the glory of appearing.” Ingarden’s thesis of works of art as purely Art can express truths, and man can perceive intentional, and Sartre’s thesis of irreality, them sensually because the categories affective though it seems that his critique of Ingarden is a priori are antecedent to both – like human based more on terminological than on concep- beings, and art, they belong to being itself. tual differences between them. It seems that the project of pure aesthetics has The most interesting aspect of Dufrenne’s been frustrated in favor of Heideggerian onto- aesthetics seems to be his theory of the categories logy, which actually leads Dufrenne to anthro- affective a priori, arising out of his interest in “the pology (see his Pour l’homme (“For Man”) ), possibility of a pure aesthetics.” Kant’s notion and to ultimately denying the possibility of of a priori is extended to affective categories transcendental philosophy. His statement that a priori as the “conditions under which a the a priori is revealed only in the a posteriori world can be felt” (1973: 437). Specifically, is an ambiguous attempt at combining the Dufrenne distinguishes between the cosmolog- empirical and the transcendental, as well as ical and existential a priori, the former residing absolutism and relativism, especially when he in the object (making it perceivable), and the addresses Max Scheler’s antinomy between latter in the subject (making him capable the absoluteness of values transcending the of perceiving aesthetically). We are capable of relativity of history and the “historicity of the having an aesthetic experience because we feeling of values” (1973: 494). have the existential categories affective a priori Dufrenne’s works from 1980 provide ana- which allow us to emotionally penetrate a lyses of those contemporary works of art that, work of art, to decipher its sense and value, and programmatically, go against all traditional to feel its unique climate: the pathos of schemata, genres, styles, and methods. The Beethoven’s music, the tragic in the works of work ceases to be the ultimate goal of artistic Sophocles, or the comic in Moliére. creativity, and Dufrenne’s attention shifts now The work of art expresses emotions: the to illuminate the process of creation as an end cypresses in Van Gogh’s painting are not just in itself. The contemporary work of art, with its trees, but the expression of passion. The affect- elements of improvisation and participation of ive a priori in a work of art constitutes its the perceiver, defies finality and the traditional value, its “soul,” which is always associated subject–object structure. It disrupts the limits with truth, for art grasps the elements of real- artificially imposed on art by institutions, and ity that cannot be expressed otherwise. To dis- opens up new possibilities for freedom and cre- cover values is to discover the truth of nature. ativity, whose end is the liberation of human- “The artist exists in the service of Nature kind from oppressive practices – such as which seeks to be incarnated in the work violence, ideology, commercialization, fashion through his agency” (1973: 454), for he has a and power structures – that negate human special sensitivity (categories existential a priori) values. for discovering its true sense, which the perceiver Artistic practices may actually be only will be able to feel, thanks to his categories. marginal to the whole commercialized and “Aesthetic experience can thus become the institutionalized industry called “the artworld,”

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dufrenne, mikel but for aesthetics they should be of central creativity, aesthetic values, the death of art, interest, since spontaneous creation and aes- nature and aesthetic experience, language and thetic perception are two most important expe- reality, literary criticism, humanism, and post- riences in life. In creation “man reveals himself modernism. All of these phenomena are analyzed as capable of escaping the realm of necessity,” with his usual depth and honesty and he takes and in aesthetic experience “man reveals him- care to reveal what should never be lost: the irre- self capable of wonder” (1987: vii). Thus, what ducibility and value of being. really remains as the end in itself for Dufrenne is humankind and its values, which are re- See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century vealed in artistic and aesthetic experience, the continental aesthetics; “artworld”; ingar- only “innocent and free praxis” left in “the den; merleau-ponty; truth in art. world sinking into barbarism” (1987: xii). The joy and spontaneity of such experiences, based bibliography on love and not domination, are subversive – they go against the established orders, show the Primary sources possibility of change, and promise liberation. [1953] 1966. The Notion of the A Priori. E. S. Casey (trans.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Dufrenne remains the defender of humanism [1953] 1973. The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Ex- in his numerous polemics with its critics – perience. E. S. Casey (trans.). Evanston: North- namely, Heidegger, Althusser, Lévi-Strauss, western University Press. and Lacan. His dialogue with French postmod- 1963. La Poétique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de ernism is of particular value, and not only to France. students of aesthetics. Some of his discussion of 1967, 1976, 1981. Esthétique et philosophie. 3 vols. Barthes, Bachelard, Derrida, and Lyotard can Paris: Klincksieck. be found in In the Presence of the Sensuous. 1968. Pour l’homme. Paris: Seuil. This anthology, the first English collection of 1987. In the Presence of the Sensuous. M. S. Roberts & Dufrenne’s writings, spanning almost the whole D. Gallagher (eds. & trans.). Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press. of his career, exhibits the unusual versatility of his philosophical interests – imagination, artistic wojciech chojna & irena kocol

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education, aesthetic see aesthetic education. artistic expression: is there a unitary sense in which works of art are experienced as being expressive of emotion, or does the sense emotion figures in art and in the aesthetic change from one art form to another? experience of the natural word in many differ- Second, there are various problems about ent ways. Some of these are unproblematic, the emotions aroused by works of art. One of but others are less easy to understand and these concerns the nature of the mental state their full aesthetic significance more difficult of someone who reacts with emotion to a to grasp. fictional state of affairs represented in a work Perhaps the most difficult issues about art and of art. It seems often to be the case – in the emotion are these. First, there is the problem cinema, at the theater, in an art gallery, or when of the artistic expression of emotion. Works of reading fiction – that we are moved by what we art can not only describe emotion or depict or know not to be real, but only fictional. But otherwise represent its manifestation in the how is it possible for a fictional person or state body, but also express it. What is the relation of affairs to be the object of our emotion, when between a work and a certain emotion, when we are fully aware of their unreality? And if the work expresses that emotion? This question we do feel emotions about people or states arises in its purest form when the expressive of affairs that we are conscious of as merely work lacks any representational content, as fictional is it rational for us to do so? is usually the case with music. Remarkable Another problem about the artistic arousal claims have often been made about the great of emotion concerns the so-called negative superiority of music to language as a vehicle emotions, emotions like fear and horror that for the expression of emotion, especially in its involve a negative attitude toward what they capacity to express nuances of emotion that are about and are distressing to experience. elude the net of language. Aristotle located fear and pity at the heart of the Whatever the truth of these claims, it is clear experience of tragic art, identified the tragic that some musical works are valued partly pleasure with that of fear and pity, and main- in virtue of their being heard as expressive of tained that the arousal of fear and pity by a emotion; and yet it is by no means clear what tragedy effects “catharsis.” this experience is and how, if at all, the emo- There is a long-standing problem about the tionally expressive aspect of a work endows correct interpretation of Aristotle’s conception it with musical value. Does the experience of catharsis. But there is a further problem, for consist in the recognition of some property of Aristotle defined both fear and pity as forms of the music (e.g., the music’s resemblance to one pain, which would appear to preclude their of the ways in which the emotion can be constituting the distinctive pleasure of tragedy. expressed in the human body or voice), or the Hume inherited this problem, and tried to recognition of some symbolic relation in which resolve it by means of a doctrine about the it stands to the emotion it expresses; or does it conditions under which one emotion will be involve responding to the music with emotion transformed by another, so that a normally of some kind; or is it some combination of painful emotion will lose its painful aspect and these? Whatever the correct answer to this increase the strength of the pleasurable emotion question may be, there is a further issue about that dominates it. But there is a more general

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emotion issue about the occurrence of negative emo- emotion, the subject is not in that emotional tion in the experience of a work of art that is condition. Both pity and Schadenfreude include found valuable, which does not presuppose that the representation of someone’s misfortune; this experience must be pleasurable: namely but it is possible to be emotionally unaffected by why is it ever reasonable to value a work of art someone’s misfortune; and pity and Schaden- for its ability to arouse negative emotions? freude are different emotions because they Finally, there is a problem about the educa- involve opposite responses to the represented tion of emotion through art. A common justi- misfortune that is common to them. This fication of art is that it has a beneficial effect on encourages the thought that the emotions can the emotions of both the artist and the public: be defined in terms of the representations and its successful practice requires the control and responses that jointly constitute them. But development of the artist’s emotional life, and what kind of response to a representation is an its products are unrivaled in their ability to emotional response? What needs to be added introduce those who appreciate them to un- to a representation to make it an instance of familiar and superior forms of feeling, and to an emotion? encourage in them more adequate or more Now, an emotion can exist in either a dis- rewarding feelings about many aspects of the positional or an experiential form. If you have world in which they live. Yet the variety of a general fear (e.g., of dogs), or you are afraid of ways in which art can accomplish these desir- a particular person or that a certain state of able ends, and the sense or senses in which affairs will come about, you need not be under- emotion can be refined and educated through going any experience of fear – you might even artistic practice and appreciation, are not well be dreamlessly asleep, experiencing nothing at understood. This is especially true of nonrepre- all. Your fear is a dispositional state, which is sentational works of art. manifested not only in a tendency to avoid It is possible to make some progress with the feared object or to reduce the likelihood of aesthetic problems concerning emotion, while the threatening state of affairs or to reduce remaining unclear about the nature of emotion your vulnerability to the threat it poses, but also in general and the various natures of the differ- in experiences of fear targeted on particular ent emotions. But proposed solutions of these objects or concerned with possible states of problems are often rendered null by a defective affairs. When you experience an emotion, typic- understanding of the emotions, and definitive ally you feel the emotion – you feel afraid, solutions must be founded on a sound under- ashamed, embarrassed, proud, or whatever. standing. However, the field of the emotions is This suggests that the specifically emotional highly contentious, within both philosophy ingredient in a mental state is a feeling: an and psychology, and it is by no means easy to emotion requires the right representation plus achieve a firm grasp of the topic. the right feeling. Whether or not this is so, the What are the emotions? As a first approxi- idea of experiencing an emotion is of crucial mation: the emotions are attitudes or reactions significance for aesthetics, for the central prob- to how the world is represented as being, and lems about emotion turn on it. So what is it to they are distinguished from one another by feel a certain emotion? What kind of feeling is the different representations or responses they the feeling of jealousy, admiration, remorse, or involve. Each emotion requires the world to amusement, and what makes a feeling a feeling be represented to its subject in a certain way, of one of these emotions rather than another? as fear requires the representation of a threat, The best-known account of the nature of jealousy a rival, and sorrow the death of a emotional feelings identifies the feeling of an loved one, for instance. Such a representation emotion with the experience of bodily sensations. can be realized in many different forms, such as A bodily sensation is a feeling of an occurrence perception, experiential memory, imagination, in or a state of the body. When you feel a pain or thought. in your back or when you feel hot, it feels to you But an emotion requires more than the right as if something is going on in some part of your kind of representation, for unless the represen- body or that your body is in a certain condition; tation induces the response distinctive of the and what is felt to occur or how your body

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emotion feels to you determines the nature of the sen- derivative from the mental representation sation you experience. Now, it is true that intrinsic to the emotion. when you experience an emotion it will often It is unnecessary to pursue this issue, how- be the case that you experience bodily sensations. ever, for there is a more decisive objection. But it is mistaken to represent the feeling of sad- When you feel admiration, amusement, dis- ness, envy, pride, or regret as being composed gust, gratitude, sadness, shame, or shyness, of bodily sensations. it is unnecessary for you to be aware of any This suggestion exists in two forms. The bodily sensations, so that the feeling you are stronger claim maintains that for each emotion aware of cannot be composed of bodily sensa- there is a set of distinctive bodily sensations tions in either the stronger or the weaker such that whenever the emotion is felt this set sense. Furthermore, it is never sufficient in of bodily sensations is experienced: it identifies order to experience a certain emotion that a type of emotional feeling with a collection of you should feel various bodily sensations as a types of bodily sensation. Perhaps the best way result of the representation of the world integral for this suggestion to be developed is to main- to the emotion: if the perception of danger tain that a set of bodily sensations constitutes causes you to feel the pounding of your heart an emotional feeling, not simply in virtue of the and the bristling of your hair, you might feel intrinsic character of the set of sensations, but afraid of the threat, but you might instead feel because it has been caused by the right kind of excited at the challenge it poses. An emotion is representation of the world. The weaker form not a causal compound of a mental represen- of the suggestion maintains only that for each tation and bodily sensations. episode of emotion what is felt is a set of bodily If an emotional feeling is not a set of bodily sensations: it identifies each instance of an sensations, what else might it be? A more emotional feeling with whatever bodily sensa- plausible suggestion emerges if we are guided tions are caused on that occasion by the repre- by the account of the emotions in Aristotle’s sentation integral to the emotion. Whereas the Rhetorica. Aristotle defines the emotions as “all stronger version requires that each instance of those feelings that so change men as to affect an emotional feeling of the same kind (admira- their judgments, and that are also attended by tion, say) consists of bodily sensations of the same pain or pleasure”; a good illustration is his kind, the weaker allows bodily sensations to definition of anger as “an impulse, accompanied vary across different instances of the same by pain, to a conspicuous revenge for a con- emotional feeling. But neither form is correct. spicuous slight directed without justification It is sometimes thought to be sufficient, to towards what concerns oneself or towards refute the identification, to point to the inten- what concerns one’s friends” (Rhetorica 2.182). tionality or directedness of emotions and the lack The great advantage of Aristotle’s account is that of intentionality of bodily sensations: whereas it exploits and articulates a crucial feature of emotions are about something or other, bodily the emotions – namely, their power to initiate sensations are not. But this objection presupposes action and to affect thought. For many emotions that bodily sensations are not representations involve not only mental representations but of the body’s condition: if they are, they possess forms of desire or aversion, pleasure or pain, or intentionality. Perhaps it will be thought that, other kinds of pro or con attitudes; as amuse- nevertheless, they would not possess the right ment and pride involve pleasure, hope a wish intentionality. For, unless the object of an that something is or will be so and regret a emotion is the subject’s own body, as it might wish that things had turned out differently, be in a case of pride or shame, emotions are shame the desire to conceal and anger the directed toward the world outside one’s body, desire to oppose or overcome, grief and fear whereas bodily sensations indicate the current distress, envy an aversion to a perceived state of one’s body. But this consideration is inequality and pity the impulse to help. So the inconclusive, since it would be possible for an suggestion is that what we must feel if we are adherent of the identification to reply that to experience an emotion is the pleasure or an emotional feeling is inherently only body- pain or the (apparent) frustration or satisfaction directed, its world-directed intentionality being of the desire or wish integral to the emotion.

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Note that this allows that when we experience of other emotions (e.g., embarrassment). Not an emotion we may often feel various pro- only, though, do the emotions form a hetero- cesses take place in our body; but it denies that geneous class, which militates against a unitary this is what the feeling of amusement, anger, account of the kinds of feeling intrinsic to them; envy, fear, grief, hope, pity, pride, regret, or but the boundaries of the class are uncertain, shame amounts to. Rather, it is an experience so that it is unclear whether certain kinds of re- of satisfaction or frustration, pleasure or pain. action fall within the boundaries and therefore It is important to distinguish between what we are emotions. must feel if we are to feel shame, say, and what For instance, if surprise and amazement in fact we feel on some occasion (or even all occa- are correctly thought of as emotions, what we sions) when we feel shame. The feeling of experience when we undergo them does not con- shame is the first of these, not the second. Note form to the account, since the experience of also that this theory does not rest on the com- surprise or amazement is not one of being mon doctrine that a desire lies at the heart of frustrated by or distressed about something, or each emotion: the truth is that some emotions in which pleasure or satisfaction is derived lack constitutive desires. Nor does it presup- from some state of affairs. Even so, these expe- pose that we always derive satisfaction from riences are not bodily sensations. (They are the known satisfaction of a desire, and experi- the confounding of expectations – as the expe- ence displeasure if a desire is thought to be rience of wonder is the surpassing of expecta- unfulfilled. What it maintains is that we experi- tions.) So there may well be counterexamples ence an emotion that contains a desire that to the suggestion. It may also be necessary to appears to us to be frustrated or threatened, only qualify the suggestion by introducing addi- if we experience displeasure at that prospect tional kinds of feeling into the analysis of cer- or certainty: to feel the emotion is to experience tain of the emotions for which the sugges- the displeasure. tion holds – felt impulses to action, the feeling Note, finally, that this suggestion does not of being invigorated or the feeling of lassitude, identify any emotion with a feeling. What it offers for example. is an account of what is felt when an emotion I believe that the best strategy is not to is experienced; but there is more to any emo- attempt to design a theory that captures every tion than the feeling that partly constitutes it. member of the accepted class of emotions, There is a difference between what is felt when since this class may be both ill-conceived and an emotion is experienced and what it is to feel indeterminate. It is better to try to accommodate that emotion. Although what it is to feel one the great majority of the members within a emotion is not the same as what it is to feel a single theory, and to place the exceptions out- different emotion, there is a sense in which side the newly drawn boundaries of the class. what is felt (e.g., pleasure) may be the same in This is how the suggestion outlined above the two cases. The nature of the feeling does not should be understood. But even if this sugges- determine the nature of the emotion felt. For an tion captures most emotional feelings, it does emotion is a causal structure: unless the feeling not follow that it is better than any other, for intrinsic to an emotion is caused by the rep- another account might capture equally many, resentation intrinsic to the emotion and is if not more. Furthermore, without an exhaus- directed at what the representation is about, the tive list of the emotions, it is unclear whether emotion is not experienced. the suggestion is in fact true of most, or only This suggestion maintains that the experience a minority, of emotional feelings. If it holds of an emotion is a product of a mental repre- only for a minority, a different strategy recom- sentation, typically a belief, and a positive or mends itself: recognize the diversity of emo- negative attitude toward the content of the tional feelings and abandon any attempt to representation, which attitude either is an redraw the boundaries of the class in order to affect or combines with the representation to pro- impose uniformity on its members. This strat- duce one. If this is a true account of what it is egy appears to be especially appropriate within to feel the emotions mentioned, does it hold for aesthetics, where problems about emotion all emotions? Certainly, it applies to a number benefit from a case-by-case approach.

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See also aesthetic education; aesthetic plea- is likely to cause immoral attitudes and beha- sure; aristotle; catharsis; expression; fic- vior toward (usually) women. Yet even if we tion, the paradox of responding to. grant that there are causal links from objecti- fying representations to immoral behavior, bibliography the causal assumption would apply to many Aristotle. 1924. Rhetorica. W. R. Roberts (trans.). works we do not judge obscene. Many Klimts Oxford: Clarendon. or Pre-Raphaelite paintings, film comedies, and Budd, Malcolm. 1985. Music and the Emotions. books that sexually objectify women are not London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, ch. 1. judged to be obscene. Furthermore, works Hepburn, Ronald W. 1984. “The Arts and the soliciting a certain interest in the freakish and Education of Feeling and Emotion.” In “Wonder” and Other Essays. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University deformed (Joel-Peter Witkin), children or death Press, 88–107. (Jake and Dinos Chapman) may still be con- Levinson, Jerrold. 2006. “Emotion in Response to demned as obscene without the assumption Art.” In Contemplating Art: Essays in Aesthetics. that they affect anyone’s attitudes or behavior Oxford: Clarendon, 38–55. to the disabled, young, or the deceased. Robinson, Jenefer. 2005. Deeper than Reason: Alternatively obscenity is sometimes identi- Emotion and Its Role in Literature, Music and Art. fied with objectification (Scruton 1994). Yet Oxford: Clarendon. a medical photograph, Cezanne’s portrait of malcolm budd his dead child, or Lucian Freud’s nudes may solicit an objectifying interest in our corporeal nature without being judged to be obscene. end of art see danto; hegel. Obscenity as such should not be conflated with objectification (though the latter may be a typical means of realizing the former). Works environmental aesthetics see aesthetics judged to be obscene do not always involve of the environment. objectification (think of sacrilegious art), and works that depend on objectification to achieve their aims are not always obscene. erotic art and obscenity Artworks are Paradigms of obscenity manifest a variety sometimes condemned as obscene. In making of features that we take to be marks of the the judgment that something is obscene, the pre- obscene: subject matter of bodily functions, sumption seems to be that a work is morally sex, violence, and death; a lack of self-restraint repulsive and thereby to be condemned as art. sought from or elicited in the viewer; the The arts, after all, should educate and refine objectification of people and indecency. While the mind rather than coarsen and degrade it. these may be potential markers, such features Hence, for example, we may praise a work as do not capture the fundamental character of erotic art while condemning another as porno- obscenity. What further matters is the way the graphic. Yet there is a strong tradition within subject matter is treated by the representations art of making works that deliberately seek to to seek or elicit certain kinds of responses from unsettle and provoke us – in part through get- us. It is not enough (contra Feinberg 1985) to ting us to take up interests, imaginings, or say that the features involved or the responses responses that we normally would not. It can sought are vulgar or deemed to be morally be a good-making feature of a work that it indecent or problematic. There are many rep- challenges some of our most fundamental cog- resentations that may be judged in these terms nitive/affective attitudes. Works often adjudged without thereby attracting a judgment of obscene may challenge us in valuable ways. So obscenity. What also seems to be required is what is it for a work to be obscene and just how the recognition of a central feature of the does this relate to artistic value? phenomenology involved in paradigmatic in- The notion of obscenity cannot be strictly stances: the feelings of repulsion that arise in causal (contra MacKinnon 1993). It is true virtue of both the solicitation or elicitation of that a lot of obscenity debates around porno- responses taken to be morally prohibited and graphy center on whether sexual objectification the attraction toward indulging or savoring

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erotic art and obscenity those very responses (Kieran 2002, 2004). and disgust themselves. A common strand of This explains why it is that people tend to get twentieth-century art is driven by the impulse so heated when discussing obscene artworks. to shock or repulse. One of the ways a work can The type of account just sketched faces at least do so is through being morally transgressive. two challenges: (1) what motivation could we Works that seek morally problematic responses have for indulging in responses we take to be may do so to solicit interest and delight in morally repulsive, and (2) how is it that we moral transgression as such. Part of the appeal may judge works to be obscene even where may spring from a common enough desire to we do not ourselves feel the attraction of the break free from basic moral norms. We are not morally prohibited responses spoken to? The usually attracted to doing so in real life, since second challenge is the more straightforward to the moral costs are high (and often the pru- meet. Although paradigmatic cases are char- dential ones are too). However, such costs are acterized in terms of representations being greatly diminished where doing so involves found to be both morally repulsive and attrac- attending to representations that indulge such tive, this is not strictly necessary. We can and desires without obviously harming anyone. do recognize that representations may merit or Third, a work may speak to cognitive interests elicit such responses in others, in ways we take such as curiosity or fascination. As Leontion in to be morally problematic, even though we Plato’s Republic (1974: 439e–440a) sated his ourselves do not so respond. Judging some- curiosity to dwell on the appearance of ex- thing to be obscene is in this respect similar to ecuted corpses despite his better judgment, so judgments of moral offence – we can judge we too may feel the pull of representations of something to be offensive or obscene without death and disaster out of sheer curiosity even ourselves necessarily feeling repulsed and though we may consider how we are invited to attracted or feeling offended. With respect to do so to be morally repulsive. meeting the first challenge, there are at least Can obscene works, in particular porno- three explanations as to why we may be graphic ones, be any good as art? The received attracted by a representation we deem to be view holds that what is pornographic cannot be morally repulsive (Kieran 2002, 2004). First, artistic. Erotic works may aspire to the rarefied a representation indulges basic motivating heights of great art but the pornographic, it is desires deemed to be morally wrong, misdir- often held, can only be bad art (if it is art at all). ected, or excessive. Imagine a work that uses The erotic engages the imagination and may explicit genital fixation to solicit a viewer’s evoke sensuous feelings, whereas pornography sexual interest in young girls. Alternatively, trades in explicitness and mere fantasy in the consider a representation of rape where the pursuit of arousal. Thus, by definition, the artistry is designed to arouse the viewer pornographic cannot make for (good) art through the victim’s subjugation. Sexual (Burgess 1970; Levinson 1998). Two underly- desire is not as such wrong, and desire for the ing assumptions are questionable. First, it is young or for sexual dominance is not that taken for granted that because the porno- uncommon. Such representations are repul- graphic aims at sexual arousal it cannot have sive, in virtue of the way in which they are any other aims. Why should we think this is morally abhorrent, and yet attractive, in virtue true? Representations made to fulfill one func- of arousing and commending certain basic tion are often designed with others in mind (to sexual desires. The same kind of characteriza- take but one example, consider much religious tion generalizes to include, for example, cer- art). In the case of sexually explicit works, at least tain kinds of representations of violence, some of them clearly seem to be designed with suffering, or death. A photograph, for example, both artistic and pornographic interests in that solicits delight in the annihilation of mind (Kieran 2001, 2004). Jeff Koons’s con- another and the destruction of the human troversial 1990s “Made in Heaven” series body is repulsive and yet speaks to base desires graphically depicts the artist and his then wife, in exactly this way. Second, some obscene the former porn start Ilona Staller, having sex. works engage the desire to be morally trans- Aubrey Beardsley, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, gressive or to delight in the feelings of repulsion and Klimt, to name but a few, all went in for

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erotic art and obscenity frank, sexually charged sketches and paint- respond to the work, and this sometimes gives ings. Indeed, Egon Schiele sometimes made a rise to judgments of obscenity. Mapplethorpe’s living by making pornographic works to order fetishism of muscle definition, sinew, and, and ran into all sorts of legal troubles. Second, not to put too fine a point on it, size, seems why should we think that sexual explicitness a morally impoverished aestheticization of aiming at arousal precludes the exercise of sexual desire. Rodin’s ferocious lust for sexual artistic imagination (Kieran 2001, 2004)? possession suffers from the fervors of an over- To take just one example, the heightened romanticization of sexual desire. But some dynamism in Rodin’s explicit line drawings is such works cannot be appreciated as art achieved through the innovative use of wash and without seeing that this is what their artistry, overscoring. albeit sexually explicit and partly in the service The strongest consideration in defense of the of sexual interest, is devoted to evoking. received view is the claim that pornographic Hence, to appreciate them fully, one cannot works may be appreciable as art and as but engage with and appreciate such works as pornography but they cannot be appreciated as pornographic art. Pornographic works, and pornographic art (Longford 1972; Levinson obscene works more generally, may sometimes 2005). A pornographic interest pays attention be good as art partly in virtue of their porno- to explicit body parts and behavior in the ser- graphic or more generally obscene nature. vice of sexual arousal. An aesthetic interest concerns the medium, structural composition, See also censorship; morality and art; and meaning of a work. Zeroing in on the pornography. features that serve to arouse may obliterate the detachment and attention required for bibliography aesthetic appreciation. Yet if we consider Burgess, Anthony. 1970. “What is Pornography?’ In pornographic works that are truly artistic, Perspectives on Pornography. D. A. Hughes (ed.). there is some reason to doubt this. Torii New York: St. Martin’s. Kiyonobu I’s Erotic Contest of Flowers: Scenes Feinberg, Joel. 1985. Offense to Others. Oxford: of Lovemaking (1704–11), works from the Oxford University Press. Kieran, Matthew. 2001. “Pornographic Art,” Japanese Ukiyo-e school, Rodin’s drawings, Philosophy and Literature, 25, 31–45. or Robert Mapplethorpe’s aestheticization of Kieran, Matthew. 2002. “On Obscenity: The Thrill and homoerotic desire all seek to convey some- Repulsion of the Morally Prohibited,” Philosophy and thing about the nature of sexual desire, in part Phenomenological Research, 64, 31–56. through the solicitation of it via artistic fea- Kieran, Matthew. 2004. Revealing Art. London: tures. The extent to which they are successful Routledge, ch. 4. is the extent to which there is reason to hold Levinson, Jerrold. 1998. “Erotic Art.” In The something can be appreciated as pornographic Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. E. Craig (ed.). art (Kieran 2001, 2004). London: Routledge, 406–9. What distinguishes the merely porno- Levinson, Jerrold. 2005. “Erotic Art and Porno- graphic Pictures,” Philosophy and Literature, 29, graphic from pornographic art? Pornographic 228–40. art is something more than pornography (as Longford, Lord. 1972. Pornography: The Longford opposed to not being pornographic at all). Report. London: Coronet. Good art draws us in to appreciate particular MacKinnon, Catherine. 1993. Only Words. ways of viewing and responding to the world – Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. often ones that may not be our own. A piece of Plato. 1974 [375 bce]. The Republic. D. Lee (trans.). mere pornography may manifest banal sexual 2nd edn. Harmondsworth: Penguin. clichés or vicious attitudes in the same way Scruton, Roger. 1994. Sexual Desire. London: that someone clenching their jaw may manifest Phoenix. anger. Pornographic art, however, cultivates matthew kieran through the artistic solicitation of arousal a way of apprehending and responding to the subjects or states of affairs as represented. Of ethics and art see authenticity and art; course, we may not like how we are invited to censorship; cultural appropriation; erotic

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evolution, art, and aesthetics art and obscenity; forgery; morality and Many of the claims made about the evolu- art; pornography; race and aesthetics. tionary status of currently observed human behaviors are dismissed as post hoc speculations. Apart from continuing archaeological and evaluation of art see cognitive value of other studies of prehistoric times, four kinds art; criticism; interpretation, aims of; of tests are used to offset such charges: obser- objectivity and realism in aesthetics; taste. vation of contemporary hunter-gatherers, study of children (because their development is thought to recapitulate the species’ evolution- evolution, art, and aesthetics If our aes- ary history), comparison with primates and thetic preferences and artistic behaviors are other animal relatives, and “reverse engineer- directly connected to evolution, then either ing,” which views current behavior as address- they are adaptations or they are “spandrels,” ing some ancestral challenge and infers adventitious by-products of adaptations. An backward to what that was. Inevitably, the adaptation is some feature produced by chance status of the hypotheses proposed by socio- genetic variation that confers a net advantage biologists and evolutionary psychologists often to the long-term reproductive success of those remains controversial. individuals that have it, in some cases by appealing to the preferences of potential sexual natural aesthetic preferences partners. Adaptations must be reliably trans- Evolutionary psychologists have discussed the missible from generation to generation, usu- adaptive value of our aesthetic tastes with ally in part via genetic inheritance, so that the respect to other humans and natural environ- feature is perpetuated in the lineages of its pos- ments. Our concern with human beauty or sessors. Adaptive behaviors and qualities are attractiveness is assumed to be linked to our often self-motivating or perceived as intrinsic- interest in others as potential sexual partners ally appealing or pleasurable; we enjoy eating or as social allies/rivals (Pinker 1997; Miller nutritious food, having sex, and nurturing 2000). Judgments of human beauty or attrac- babies for their own sakes. tiveness track markers of health and fertility, It is not inevitable that successful adapta- such as symmetry, hypernormalcy, and youth- tions will become universal across the species. fulness, that in turn are predictors for the A behavior or trait might be adaptive only by breeding success of offspring. In other words, we relating in a stable equilibrium to different, find aesthetically appealing those people most more common adaptations. (Neither is univer- likely to be the most successful parents. For sality sufficient to identify a successful adapta- instance, studies have shown strong correlations tion: spandrels can be universal, as can be between our finding faces beautiful and their features generated by random genetic drift.) being symmetrical, and it is noted that symmetry Whether a successful human adaptation is dis- is a strong indicator of health, “good genes,” and played pan-culturally depends on whether the immunity to disease. Matters are not always necessary environmental and sociohistorical so straightforward, however. We can also be resources for its realization are available in entranced by features that are unusual in every culture. falling at the extremes of (but not beyond) the Though evolutionary change is an ongoing normal range. Of course, it is not only aspects process – as a result, we are immune to germs of physical appearance that are relevant to and viruses that would have killed our fore- breeding success. Desirable intellectual and bears – the perceptual, cognitive, and affect- moral qualities, social adeptness, knowledge, ive systems that characterize modern-day physical prowess, creativity, humor, and, humans were in place earlier than 50,000 bp. indeed, aesthetic sensitivity can all contribute Accordingly, successful adaptations are typic- to a person’s appeal. ally of prehistoric origin, and our basic aesthetic Some evolutionary psychologists may be preferences and art behaviors would have to be guilty of equating or confusing aesthetic beauty similarly ancient if they are adaptations or with sexual attractiveness, but their position spandrels. need not be reductive. It could be argued that

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evolution, art, and aesthetics they identify the roots of our aesthetic preferences Some theories present the arts in general as for our fellows as originating in connection adaptations. Ellen Dissanayake (1988) argues with mate selection, and this is consistent with that art is an ancient, universal behavior acknowledging that the aesthetic stance is dis- that falls alongside play and ritual under the tinct from the sexual one. As we know, it is not heading of “making special.” Making special only young adults in search of a mate who is adaptive because those who engage in it evaluate others for the pleasingness of their thereby create communities in which human appearance and character. Rather the aes- families can more readily thrive. Geoffrey thetic is a frame (one among many) through Miller (2000), by contrast, holds that sexual which we all seek value in the world. An inter- selection drives artistic creation, which is an hon- est in and fascination with human beauty, est because costly display of male fitness, some- of both appearance and character, is pursued what like the peacock’s tail. Though women are by and directed to all, regardless of age and primarily styled as consumers of male art, gender. Miller emphasizes that they must match men’s As regards natural environments, the sug- subtle creativity with equally sophisticated gestion is that our ancestors took delight in and complex modes of aesthetic appreciation. environments suited to their hunter-gatherer Very general theories, like these, run the risk way of life. They were drawn to landscapes of reducing the arts to denominators so low that offered prospects, shelter, and refuges, and common that what they identify as evolu- along with water and food. (Even in today’s tionarily relevant is not characteristic of art cities, the most sought-after properties over- as such. look parkland and rivers, seas, or lakes.) They Other theories treat specific arts as distinctively found beautiful those habitats in which they and adaptive. For instance, Ian Cross (2007) argues their children could flourish (Heerwagen & that, because it is significant yet lacking in Orians 1993). definite meaning, music facilitates social inter- Some evolutionary psychologists claim that action even in the face of disagreement. More- the African savannah, where the first humans over, its semantic openness and its capacity evolved, is aesthetically privileged by children to be integrated with other activities underpin wherever they are born. In any case, the human our ability to integrate information across dif- capacity to adjust to a variety of physical envir- ferent cognitive domains. Meanwhile, Joseph onments suggests that the general principles Carroll (2007) and J. Tooby & L. Cosmides undergirding the aesthetic stance toward habi- (2001) argue that literature and its oral tats can be applied to suit the local conditions. antecedents create emotionally and morally imbued models of human action which pro- art as an adaptation vide psychological maps that allow us to assess The natural aesthetic preferences so far des- others and to explore hypothetical courses of cribed would not help us discriminate swim- action and engagement. Such accounts some- suit and landscape calendars from paintings by times make claims for the adaptive value of Rembrandt or Constable, so how does evolution the given art that seem unduly inflated or im- apply to art more specifically? Some argue that plausible; alternatively, the significance of the the creation and appreciation of art are adap- artistic contribution to the adaptive result is tive behaviors. Notice that this presupposes difficult to discern. that art is probably pan-cultural and ancient, which invites the view that art is typically the arts as spandrels humble and functional, being tied to decoration, Theorists who argue that art is merely a by- religion, and ritual. The eighteenth-century product of evolutionary adaptations need show Western concept of fine art then must be viewed only that something of uncontroversial adaptive as only one species within a wider genus. value has the incidental benefit of promoting Indeed, the abstruse appeal of such art and the artistic activity. cult of disinterested connoisseurship associ- Several writers, including Mithen (1996) ated with it might be considered as a perversion and Pinker (1997), suggest that the arts are a of what was originally adaptive. by-product of our large and developed brain or

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expression of the evolution of intelligence. This makes the Evolutionary Psychology. R. I. M. Dunbar & connection between art and evolution trivial, L. Barrett (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, however, since science, technology, and almost 637–48. everything else can similarly trace their roots to Cross, Ian. 2007. “Music and Cognitive Evolution.” the same source. In The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. A more useful theory might first argue for the R. I. M. Dunbar & L. Barrett (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 649–67. adaptive importance of our propensity to con- Dissanayake, Ellen. 1988. What is Art For? Seattle: struct narratives in understanding ourselves, University of Washington Press. others, cosmology, and the world at large, and Dutton, Denis. 2009. The Art Instinct: Beauty, then describe narrative drama and literature as Pleasure, and Human Evolution. Oxford: Oxford the artistic bonus. Or it could discuss how our University Press. concerns with the prosodic and expressive Gottschall, Jonathan & Wilson, David Sloan (eds.). features of speech, the informational content 2005. The Literary Animal: Evolution and the of environmental sound, and the interplay of Nature of Narrative. Evanston: Northwestern sonic forms and patterns lay the foundation University Press. for our delight in music. And so on for the Heerwagen, Judith H. & Orians, Gordon H. 1993. “Humans, Habitats, and Aesthetics.” In The other arts. (Denis Dutton (2009) suggests, Biophilia Hypothesis. S. R. Kellert & E. O. Wilson however, that on such theories, the arts are (eds.). Washington, DC: Island Press, 138–72. best understood as deliberate enhancements Miller, Geoffrey. 2000. The Mating Mind: How Sexual or extensions of adaptations rather than as by- Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature. New products of adaptations.) York: Doubleday. Others are interested in the way that univer- Mithen. Steven. 1996. The Prehistory of the Mind: A sal features of our evolved perceptual, cognitive, Search for the Origins of Art, Religion, and Science. and affective systems, and connections among London: Thames & Hudson. these, are reflected in art and our engagement Pinker, Steven. 1997. How the Mind Works. New with it (Ramachandran & Hirnstein 1999; York: Norton. Ramachandran, Vilayanur S. & Hirstein, William. Zeki 2000; Solso 2003). The operation of such 1999. “The Science of Art: A Neurological Theory systems can give rise to aesthetic reactions, as of Aesthetic Experience,” Journal of Consciousness when we take pleasure in pattern, symmetry, Studies, 6, June–July, 15–51. or closure, in tracking meanings or narratives, Solso, Robert L. 2003. The Psychology of Art and the in tracing the ebb and flow of affect, and so on. Evolution of the Conscious Brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Often, rather than telling us about the artwork Press. as such, these accounts use art merely to illus- Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. 2001. “Does Beauty Build trate the aesthetically appreciable workings of Adapted Minds? Toward an Evolutionary Theory the relevant systems. They are more to the of Aesthetics, Fiction and the Arts,” SubStance, point when they address how art achieves its 94/95, 6–27. Voland, Eckart and Grammer, Karl (eds.). 2003. potency and appeal by the way it concentrates Evolutionary Aesthetics. Berlin: Springer. and amplifies features that not only trigger but Zeki, Semir. 2000. Inner Vision. New York: Oxford also overstimulate these systems or bring them University Press. into unusual and provocative juxtapositions. And they are at their most interesting when stephen davies doing this helps explain how the artist tackled some technical problem posed by the work’s aes- thetic goals, style, or content. experience and art see senses and art, the.

See also art of the paleolithic; cognitive science and art; objectivity and realism in expression Something is expressed when it aesthetics; universals in art. is laid out to public gaze. Hence, the minutes might express the view of the meeting, or Lisa bibliography of Lambeth the plight of the urban poor. There Carroll, Joseph. 2007. “Evolutionary Approaches to is a set of more particular problems in dis- Literature and Drama.” In The Oxford Handbook of cussing the expressive qualities of art and it is

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expression this on which this entry will focus. A natural involved in the experience of expression: an place to start is with expression in the central imagined state, an experience of resemblance, (i.e., nonartistic) case and to take that as the or an aroused feeling. model for expression in art. Some make a dis- Jerrold Levinson takes the experience to be an tinction between “betraying” one’s emotion imagined state. Of all the theories, his follows and expressing it. The former is merely the most closely expression in the central case. venting of emotion with little or no intention Thinking of the tripartite account of expres- behind it. The latter involves some attempt sion offered above, Levinson claims that to (conscious or otherwise) to mold one’s appear- hear music as expressive is to hear it as an ance or behavior for communicative intent. inner state made publicly available, by a persona. This distinction is useful when it comes to The third part of the tripartite account he must thinking about the arts, however it is not well reject. Obviously, we do not hear music as “the marked in ordinary language; betrayals of appearance or behavior characteristically emotion are often counted as expressive: just associated with that state.” That is, we do not think of bursting into tears. Hence, I shall hear it as, for example, the sound of weeping assume a generous definition of expression, and wailing. In other words, our experience of which has three parts. An inner state is the music is an imaginative one: we hear the expressed when it is made publicly available, by music as the expression of an emotion by a a person, by means of appearances or behavior persona – an emotion expressed in a sui generis characteristically associated with that state. musical manner (even if we might not articu- Furthermore, the term describing that inner late that final thought to ourselves as an element state can be transferred to states of affairs of the experience) (Levinson 2005). Kendall L. that give a reason for being in that state: for Walton also claims that expressive music is example, weddings are happy occasions and that which prompts us into an imagined state, funerals are sad occasions. albeit one of a very different sort. Walton There are various means by which a work allows expression of much the sort Levinson could be expressive (none invariably successful). describes, but goes on to claim that there is It might represent a person being expressive. It an additional form of expression. Walton’s might represent a situation that gives a reason suggestion is that some music will prompt us for being in an emotional state. However, the to imagine, of our actual introspective aware- philosophical literature has tended to focus on ness of our auditory sensations, that it is an ways by which a work can become expressive awareness of our own (emotional) states of that do not involve the representation of states mind (Walton 1988: 359). If it does so, it is of affairs; paradigmatically, it has focused on expressive. instrumental music although there is also a Whatever the individual merits of these small literature on expression in paintings. suggestions, they suffer from the drawback I shall deal with each in turn. that there is no generally accepted account of An account of expression in music is only the imagination on which we can draw. We philosophically (as opposed to psychologically) have no independent grasp of whether we are interesting if it fits in with an account of artis- in fact exercising these imaginative capacities tic understanding. Hence, philosophy needs of ours in these ways; it is in the nature of the to take account of only those properties that case that what it feels like to do so will simply are part of our experience of music. Thus, the be what it feels like to experience expressive question of which properties of instrumental music. We have no way of being sure that music cause us to experience it as expressive is the reconstruction of our experience offered by not relevant to our inquiry unless those prop- Levinson and Walton corresponds to what is erties figure in our experience, in which case it going on in our minds. This is not to say that is better to study the experience directly. Thus we have nothing to go on; we can ask whether we can put the causal question to one side, and the elements of the accounts are or are not focus on the issue of what constitutes expres- metaphysically dubious, and whether the sion. I shall divide the accounts into three accounts have intuitive appeal. However, I types, defined according to what they take to be am not sure whether this is robust enough to

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expression allow us to decide between alternative propos- made sad by music that is badly played) nor als. It is not clear that either of our other types does all sad music arouse our feelings (we can of view is in any stronger position on this point. experience expression in music without being My second type of solution relied on the aroused to that feeling of which it is expressive). experience of resemblance. Stephen Davies Furthermore, the experience of music as ex- claims that there is a type of appearance – “an pressing sadness is different from the experi- emotion characteristic in appearance” – that ence of the music conjoined to a feeling of gets its character from the appearance charac- sadness. However, it need not be the case that teristically linked to the expression of emotion the aroused feeling has this simple form. We in the central case. It is not, however, necessarily might hold that there are pieces of music that caused by any feeling or emotion; such an arouse the feeling that “sadness is being felt appearance can be worn by someone whatever around here,” without being any more specific they are feeling. We experience some pieces of (see Walton 1999). Nonetheless, more work music as possessing such appearances, or at would need to be done to show this was an ade- least some aspects of such appearances: “the quate account of the experience of expression. expressiveness of music depends mainly on a Although I have divided these accounts resemblance we perceive between the dynamic into distinct types, experience suggests that character of music and human movement, the connections between music and emotion gait, bearing, or carriage” (Davies 1994: 229). might be various. Malcolm Budd has sug- We do not notice such appearances and infer the gested “a basic and minimal” account of the music is expressive; rather, our experience of musical expression of emotion, which is a cross- such resemblances is (or is in part) our experi- categorial likeness perception (a theory of our ence of music as expressive. second type). However, Budd argues that it is The movement properties Davies specifies likely that there are others, and countenances are possessed by many things apart from the possibility of accounts of our first and third music and human beings, so one might won- types as well (1995: 138–59). This has the vir- der why it is this resemblance that is brought tue of explaining the interminable nature of to our notice. However, it is not fair to demand the debate: that one theory is correct does not such an account of Davies; there will be some mean that the alternatives are incorrect. causal account of why this is so, while Davies Finally, I shall say something about expres- is giving us a constitutive account. This does, sion in painting, which also seems capable however, raise another worry. The experience of embodying emotion. Here the literature is of resemblance seems inadequate as a charac- less developed. Richard Wollheim has given terization of the experience of expression: they an account that relies on the mechanism of simply do not seem equivalent. It is open to “complex projection.” A scene is such that it is Davies here to say that he need not provide a particularly apt for us to “project” our mental full characterization, it is enough that all and states upon it, in such a way that we come to only music we experience as expressive, we see it as “of a piece” with our emotions. If a paint- experience as resembling a human being in ing is made with the intention that this take the appropriate way – whatever more there is place, and that intention is successful, the to be said about the experience. There is a dan- painting has the requisite expressive property ger in such an answer, however, for it raises (1986: ch. 7). There is much in the theory that the question as to whether we have a char- requires further elaboration, not least the phe- acterization of expression, and not merely of a nomenon of complex projection and, particu- property that is constantly conjoined with larly, how the projection could take place in the expression. absence of the felt emotion (as it is not plaus- The third type of solution was accounts that ible to hold that gallery-goers occurently ex- rely on some aroused noncognitive state. The perience all the emotions they subsequently find bare claim that sad music is music that makes in the works) (Budd 2001). Dominic Lopes has us sad will not do for many reasons, not least a less ambitious theory. He defines a notion of because not all feelings that are aroused by an “expression look”: “a physical configuration music are related to expression (we can be that has the function, in the circumstances, of

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expression theory indicating an emotion” (2005: 73). He rightly Tolstoy assumes that if art is to be taken seri- points out that, for reasons gone into above ously as a human activity, it must prove itself in the case of music, philosophy does not owe morally worthwhile; it must have a purpose an account of the mechanism or mechanisms connected to the meaning of life. Religion cap- that underlie such indication. tures exactly such serious purposes, so art Progress on this issue has been made in must embody the religious ideas of its time. In some respects. The nature of the problem has our time, Tolstoy held, that means that art been clarified, and there are interesting solutions needs to embody the Christian ideals of the to be compared. However, in one other crucial union and brotherhood of man. There must be respect progress has been less marked: namely, a transmission of these ideals from artist to the relation between expression in the art and audience, with the purpose of conveying such the value of art. ideals. Work that fails to convey this sense of unity with the artist and others in the commun- See also emotion; expression theory; music ity fails as art. Tolstoy sums up his version of and song. the expression theory as follows: bibliography To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experi- Budd, Malcolm. 1995. Values of Art: Pictures, Poetry, enced and having evoked it in oneself then by Music. Harmondsworth: Penguin. means of movement, lines, colours, sounds or Budd, Malcolm. 2001. “Wollheim on Correspond- forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feel- ence, Projective Properties and Expressive Percep- ing that others experience the same feeling – this tion.” In Richard Wollheim on the Art of Painting. is the activity of art. Art is a human activity con- R. van Gerwen (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge sisting in this, that one man consciously by University Press, 101–11. means of external signs, hands on to others feel- Davies, Stephen. 1994. Musical Meaning and ings he has lived through, and that others are Expression. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. infected by these feelings and also experience Levinson, Jerrold. 2005. “Musical Expressiveness them. (1962: 123) as Hearability as Expression.” In Contemporary This theory suffers from a number of problems. Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. However, the central problem, from which we M. Kieran (ed.). Oxford, Blackwell, 192–204. can learn most, is that the work of art is being Lopes, Dominic McIver. 2005. Sight and Sensibility: used as a vehicle for the transmission of ideas Evaluating Pictures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Walton, Kendall L. 1988. “What is Abstract about that can be specified independently of the the Art of Music?” Journal of Aesthetics and Art work. The artist has these “feelings he has Criticism, 46, 351–64. lived through,” and by certain mechanical Walton, Kendall L. 1999. “Projectivism, Empathy, and means embodies them in a work “so to trans- Musical Tension,” Philosophical Topics, 26(1–2), mit that feeling.” However, if the vehicle and the 407–40. content can be separated in such a way, then Wollheim, Richard. 1986. The Thread of Life. it is possible that another vehicle could trans- Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. mit the same content. That is, one work of art derek matravers could be replaced by another and the content not be disturbed. That this is not possible (at least in the case of great works) is one of our central expression theory The term “expression intuitions about art. theory” has a broad and a narrow usage. An alternative account construes expres- Broadly, it is the thought that, in creating a work sion, not in terms of what the creator puts into of art, artists somehow embody a state of mind the work, but in terms of what the audience gets in it, which the work then brings about in the out. That is, a work is expressive of an emotion spectator. Narrowly, it refers to a theory of art if it arouses an emotion in some suitably associated with Benedetto Croce and R. G. qualified audience. This suffers from a number Collingwood, which draws on this idea. of problems. First, not all objects that arouse The broad expression theory found its best emotions in us are thereby expressive. A dentist exponent in Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910). The might arouse apprehension without express- argument that drove him to this has its merits. ing apprehension. Perhaps such problems can

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expression theory be overcome by specifying some psychological same with a poem. (3) Craft exhibits a distinc- role any aroused feeling needs to fulfill. It tion between raw material and finished product. might be the case that the aroused feeling The wood, strings, and cat gut are worked on needs to track our experience of the object in a to produce a tennis racket; nothing analogous particularly intimate manner: our apprehen- happens in the case of a poem. It is important sion does not change as we experience the to realize that Collingwood is not here mak- dentist in the way that our feelings change ing a distinction between art objects and craft as we experience the music (Matravers 1998: objects; rather, he is making a distinction ch. 8). However, the account would still have between types of activity. Individual objects to overcome the problem that to claim that a might be the product of both craft and art: the work of art is expressive is to claim that there sculptor uses certain means to carve the stone, is some phenomenally objective quality to the he or she might well plan it before executing it form or character of the work, and it is unclear (although not down to the finest detail), and how the purported analysis proposes to cap- there is a distinction between raw material and ture this (Tormey 1971; Davies 1986). finished product (1945: 20–6). Collingwood For the narrow expression theory I shall focus also contrasts art proper with “art as magic” (art on Collingwood’s account in his Principles of designed to elicit emotions “useful to the work Art. The account suffers from several draw- of living” (1945: 66) ) and “art as amusement” backs. First, there is Collingwood’s idiosyn- (art designed merely to gratify and amuse cratic philosophical system, which serves as (1945: 78) ). background. One can only understand certain In contrast, Collingwood’s view is that art is of his claims (e.g., that “art must be language” a matter of expressing, and hence clarifying, our (1945: 273) ) by taking this system into mental states. account. Second, there is a tendency to overstate his case, or at least state it in a way that easily When a man is said to express emotion, what is misleads. Notoriously, he holds that works of art being said about him comes to this. At first, he is conscious of having an emotion, but not con- do not exist in the world, but in their creators’ scious of what this emotion is. All he is conscious minds: “the music, the work of art, is not the of is a perturbation or excitement, which he feels collection of noises, it is the tune in the com- going on within him, but of what nature he is poser’s head” (1945: 139). Finally, the central ignorant. While in this state, all he can say about theses of the work cannot be abstracted and his emotion is: “I feel ...I don’t know what I stated clearly and independently. Collingwood feel.” From this helpless and oppressed condition makes a point, but then returns to it later to inte- he extricates himself by doing something which grate it in yet another part of his philosophical we call expressing himself . . . As unexpressed, he system that has since arrived on the scene. feels it in what we have called a helpless and All this makes it difficult to summarize the oppressed way; as expressed, he feels it in a way from which this sense of oppression has vanished. account while doing it justice (it also means that His mind is somehow lightened and eased. Collingwood, more than most, suffers from (1945: 109–10) being anthologized). Hence, in what follows I shall tend more toward clarity than I will It is important to distinguish this process from toward being respectful to the text. what Collingwood calls “betraying an emo- Collingwood contrasts what he calls “art tion.” This involves no process of clarification; proper” with various other human activities. The it is simply externalizing an emotion – venting primary contrast is with craft, and the points it. In expressing something, a person “becomes of contrast are as follows. (1) Craft exhibits a conscious of what it is that he is expressing, and distinction between means and end. That is, enables others to become conscious of it in there are objects and processes that we manip- himself and in them” (1945: 122). ulate in producing (say) a tennis racket, but The account looks simple, but it captures not in producing a poem (1945: 20). (2) Craft that central intuition about art violated by the exhibits a distinction between planning and broad expression theory (Ridley 1998: 28). execution. We might plan our garden and The artist clarifies their mental state by means then create it; we (generally) do not do the of creating an object (broadly construed – this

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expression theory might be a poem or a piece of music that exists (Lyas 1997: 104). However, we can argue only in the artist’s mind). That object – and I for differences here. Although all our actions shall, for ease of exposition, talk of it as an are (by definition) caused by our mental states, object in the world – has the form it does as a not all of our actions seek to refine and clarify result of that clarification. Colin Lyas provides such states. The final problem with the theory an example that has some intuitive force. rests with its self-imposed limitations. What Some youth, filled with inchoate feelings of account can the expression theory provide of a frustration, picks up a brick and throws it work of art such as Raymond Chandler’s The through a window. That act would betray the High Window? Among the salient properties of emotion felt. However, if he or she then starts this novel are its intricate plot, its evocation of to remove bits of glass and replace others, mood, and vivid imagery. No light is thrown sculpting the glass until the jagged hole is “of on these by thinking of them as the expression a piece” with their now clarified mental state, and clarification of an emotion. The expression then they have expressed their emotion (Lyas theorist might reply in two ways. First, that 1997: 70–1). As we saw, the problem with the while this is not the expression and clarifica- broad expression theory is that the work is tion of an emotion, it might be of some other taken to be a mere vehicle for a previously mental state; for example, some notion of what existing state. For Collingwood, it is not a vehi- makes a good hard-bitten detective novel. cle; rather, the work is the exploration and However, the burden of the explanation here clarification of that particular mental state; would be carried by the content of that state, one could not exchange the work without rather than its being expressed and clarified. exchanging the content. For Collingwood the Second, the expression theorist might try to pay-off, the value of art, is in the clarification restrict the theory to the visual arts, or perhaps of our mental states. We thus avoid what he the visual arts and music. However, once the calls “the corruption of consciousness.” This objection has been conceded in the case of is something to which Collingwood returns, the novel, one can see that many works of always with horror at its individual and social visual art and of music possess the kinds effects (1945: 284–5). However, this is not the of properties that were salient for the novel, only value of art available to the expression and the expression theory will throw no light theorist: there is also the intrinsic benefit of on these either. communing with the refined expression of a See also twentieth-century anglo-american self-aware mind. aesthetics; collingwood; creativity; croce; What of the drawbacks? First, we need to emotion; expression; tolstoy. say something about the claim that works have their primary existence in their creator’s heads. bibliography This claim has been roundly (and rightly) crit- Collingwood, R. G. (1945). The Principles of Art. icized (Wollheim 1972). There have been vari- Oxford: Clarendon. ous attempts to defend Collingwood on this, Davies, Stephen. (1986). “The Expression Theory but he does seem to argue that the aesthetic Again,” Theoria, 52, 146–67. work is “an imaginative experience” (1945: Lyas, Colin. (1997). Aesthetics. London: UCL Press. Matravers, Derek. 1998. Art and Emotion. Oxford: 305). This is odd, in that it would seem natu- Clarendon. ral for Collingwood to regard externalizing Ridley, Aaron. (1998). R. G. Collingwood. London: the mental state as a necessary part of clarify- Phoenix. ing it. Whatever the true account of why he held Tolstoy, Leo. (1962) [1898]. What is Art? And the view (and there are various theories), it is Essays on Art. A. Maude (trans.). New York: something that can be excised from the theory Oxford University Press. without loss. Second, there is a more general Tormey, Alan. 1971. The Concept of Expression. problem for the expression theory, that all Princeton: Princeton University Press. action is caused by our mental states and Wollheim, Richard. (1972). “On an Alleged hence everything we do is art. This view is Inconsistency in Collingwood’s Aesthetic.” In On Art and the Mind. London: Allen Lane, 250–60. embraced by Collingwood (1945: 285), and at least one advocate of the expression theory derek matravers

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feminist aesthetics is a somewhat con- under one umbrella concept, especially one as tested notion. Some feminists are content with indeterminate as “feminist aesthetics.” the phrase (Ecker 1985) while others prefer to “Global feminisms” – note the plural form – call a gendered approach to the philosophy of is a term that aptly captures the sentiment art – one that is now inclusive of the various but most prevalent today among feminists in the interrelated perspectives of race, religion, sexu- visual arts who, unified in their goals of equal- ality, class, and ethnicity as well as gender – sim- ity, celebrate the achievements of today’s ply a feminist critique of aesthetics (Brand & women and those of the past – particularly Korsmeyer 1995). This approach links femin- artists of the original feminist art movement ism with aesthetics but stops short of proposing (from the late 1960s on) who worked primar- anything like a cohesive and mutually agreed ily in the US, Great Britain, and France. With upon body of work that can be strictly called fem- the dispersion of information through exhibition inist aesthetics (Felski 1989). No one theory of catalogues, monographs, and more recently what might constitute a codified and accepted the Internet, goals first manifest in Euro- core of feminist aesthetic principles has arisen American feminism have become known, because of the many perspectives on what adopted, and adapted in various ways across the counts as “feminist” – dependent as they are on globe, creating a multiplicity of “transnational social context and identity. In terms of basic feminisms”: a network among women who politics, a feminist is a person – male or female continually rethink the shared tenets of feminism – who believes that biological sex differences and the art it produces (Reilly 2007: 17). Thus should play no role in a person’s access to “feminism” is an evolving concept; it has equal opportunity, equal representation under proven itself resistant to constraints on time the law, and equality in the workplace. How- (it has already survived its first, second, and ever, gender, unlike sex, is socially constructed, third “waves”), place (it has spread beyond and its constructions take multiple forms that the homogeneous culture of the so-called “first infuse culture and its products. A sophisticated world”), and identity (no longer a white middle body of literature already exists from feminists class movement, there are black, lesbian, who have systematically – from a gendered Chicana, postcolonial, as well as liberal, social- point of view – criticized the existing inequali- ist, Marxist, radical, or cultural feminists). ties and historical discourses of literature, art, Moreover, feminism has survived its own music, theater, film, video, and other modes demise, announced prematurely in the 1980s of performance and representation. Within when the phrase “postfeminism” was intro- aesthetics, feminists have substantively ques- duced to refer to a new phase of self-referential tioned basic philosophical concepts like art, and postmodern art, which in fact acknow- genius, pleasure, disinterestedness, and taste ledges and endorses its feminist roots. With (Battersby 1989). However, current thinking the inclusion of more voices within feminist suggests that no one feminism can capture the discourse, divergent views have naturally diversity of perspectives comprising such a spawned lively debate. Like philosophy itself, fem- massive challenge to centuries-old thought, inism continually questions the ever growing and that feminist systems of criticism and cre- complexities of its own enterprise and chal- ativity have arisen all over the world that lenges its own assumptions. But how did it are too complex and idiosyncratic to be united reach this point? What is the foundation for

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feminist aesthetics its current role of critique within the field of there been no great women artists?” two aesthetics? specific agendas were born (Nochlin 2006). First, the feminist critique of aesthetics is an One was the task of rediscovery of numerous outgrowth of the more general questioning of women artists, writers, and musicians of the past. philosophy as a traditionally male-dominated, In some cases, the work of these women had gender-biased enterprise focused on mind been erroneously attributed to male artists; in over matter/body, reason over emotions, and other cases, women who were notable in their (covertly) male over female. Second, it paral- day – publishing, securing commissions, earn- lels similar challenges to subdisciplines within ing a living at their craft – had subsequently philosophy such as feminist epistemology, been forgotten. When a pattern emerged that feminist philosophy of science, feminist ethics, revealed the systematic devaluing of women’s feminist social/political philosophy, and feminist achievements throughout history, the second bioethics, which question basic, longstanding agenda of exploring the reasons why became principles. Third, as a cross-disciplinary field, aes- necessary for understanding the social conditions thetics participates in the critiques and revi- by which history had been written to exclude sions of art history, music, literature, film women’s voices. This theoretical exploration studies, and the like. Within aesthetics and the was closest to the work done by aestheticians, philosophy of art, a feminist might ask not since to question attributions of greatness is to only traditional questions about the parameters challenge the assumptions of aesthetic value, a of the definitions of art versus craft, an art- concept long contemplated by (primarily male) work’s beauty or formal features, aesthetic and philosophers as well as art historians. The nonaesthetic value, but also how an artwork impetus to challenge other established judg- came to be, who created it, and how the power ments – about who counted as a genius, why structure of the socioeconomic context opera- crafts like needlework were not considered ble at the time of its production either facilitated fine art, whose beauty was on display and for or complicated its creation: all factors operating whose pleasure, and how disinterestedness below the surface of standard exploration, fac- applied to a heterosexual man gazing at the tors which Carolyn Korsmeyer appropriately nude body of a voluptuous woman – became terms “deep gender” (2004: 3). overriding interests of feminist scholarship in Feminists argue that artistic creativity is the arts. doubly bound up within (1) the general fabric Philosophical aesthetics was somewhat of one’s society – which, for most cultures over slower to develop feminist critiques than were the history of time, has been patriarchal, that the critical disciplines, although a German is, dominated by men who have not allowed volume, Feminist Aesthetics (Ecker 1985) con- women full equality, and (2) the specific organ- tained an essay by Sylvia Bovenshen from ization of the institutions of the artworld, 1977 that asked whether there was a particu- which has been uniformly organized and oper- larly unique feminine aesthetic exhibited in the ated by male artists, writers, musicians, actors, art women made. Similarly, certain French critics, philosophers, museum directors, and theorists posited “writing from the body” that investors. The concept of art as a source of might distinguish female from male linguistic elevated aesthetic pleasure belies its role as a production. Among other feminists, this attri- commodity created by persons whose social bution of female identity was critiqued as identity affects the production and success of essentialist – whereby all women are reduced artistic goals. Consider such familiar terms as to an essence tied to their sex, their physical bod- “old master,” “masterpiece,” or “genius” and ies, or their ideal nature as the givers of life and one immediately thinks of male icons such nurturers. Critics of essentialism emphasized as Rembrandt, Shakespeare, or Mozart. Few the differences among women and women’s women who are similarly accomplished, well art and stressed the diversity of voices such as known, and routinely valorized in histories of artists like Adrian Piper, also a Kant scholar, who art, literature, or music easily come to mind. inject race into the feminist critique, along When art historian Linda Nochlin asked with many others who challenge power relations the provocative question in 1971 “Why have beyond those of gender by focusing on issues

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feminist criticism of identity, genealogy, and cultural diversity Hein, Hilde & Korsmeyer, Carolyn (eds.). 1993. (Robinson 2001). Aesthetics in Feminist Perspective. Bloomington: Feminist writing continues to be concerned Indiana University Press. with issues that preoccupy many women Korsmeyer, Carolyn. 2004. Gender and Aesthetics: An artists and writers: the body, beauty and disgust, Introduction. New York: Routledge. the sublime, pleasure, the intersection of ethics Musgrave, L. Ryan (ed.). 2009. Feminist Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art: Critical Visions, Creative and aesthetics, the role of emotions, political Engagements. Dordrecht: Kluwer/Springer. art, connections between art and the law, Nochlin, Linda. 2006. “Why Have There Been No strategies of interpretation and evaluation, Great Women Artists? Thirty Years After.” In and metacritical analyses of feminism itself Women Artists at the Millenium. C. Armstrong & (Brand & Devereaux 2003). British scholars C. De Zegher (eds.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, have stressed the interdisciplinary nature of 21–32. art practice and theoretical observation while Reilly, Maura & Nochlin, Linda (eds.). 2007. Global proposing a new approach through differen- Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art. tial aesthetics (Florence & Foster 2000). The New York: Merrell/Brooklyn Museum of Art. future of the feminist critique is open-ended Robinson, Hilary (ed.). 2001. Feminism – Art – Theory: An Anthology, 1968–2000. Malden: amid a rich variety of possibilities: explorations Blackwell. of nature and the environment, gender differ- ences in perception and the role of the emotions, peg zeglin brand feminist politics in cultural climates where rape is a weapon of war, infusions of video and film recordings that literally give voice to the feminist criticism In “A Criticism of Our oppressed, and transnational feminisms that Own: Autonomy and Assimilation in Afro- bypass traditional gallery and museum rep- American and Feminist Literary Theory” resentation, thereby subverting continuing Elaine Showalter (1989) discerned five ideo- power structures and artworld institutions logies that have been influential in feminist (Musgrave 2009). The shifting terrain of fem- literary criticism and theory. The first, inist art and aesthetics attests to its ever “androgynist poetics,” denies that there is any expanding and limitless boundaries, a sure specifically male or female way of writing or sign of its future good health. approaching texts, maintaining that the human imagination is essentially genderless. See also canon; feminist criticism; feminist With the rise of the women’s movement, femi- standpoint aesthetics; ontological contex- nists initiated a critique of male culture and tualism; pornography; race and aesthetics. advanced a “female aesthetic” celebrating women’s culture. Believing that our sexual bibliography identities cannot be separated from our expres- sions and creations, advocates of the female Battersby, Christine. 1989. Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics. Bloomington: aesthetic maintained that women’s writing Indiana University Press. expresses a distinct female consciousness, is Brand, Peg Zeglin & Devereaux, Mary (eds.). 2003. more discursive and conjunctive than classify- “Women, Art, and Aesthetics,” Hypatia: A Journal ing and linear. of Feminist Philosophy, 18 (special issue). By the mid 1970s the emphasis had shifted Brand, Peg Zeglin & Korsmeyer, Carolyn (eds.). to “gynocriticism,” or the study of literature by 1995. Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics. Uni- women. Arguing that the female aesthetic versity Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. is problematic in its presupposition of an eter- Ecker, Gisela (ed.). 1985. Feminist Aesthetics. nal, universal feminine “essence” shared by H. Anderson (trans.). Boston: Beacon. all women, gynocritics preferred to focus on Felski, Rita. 1989. Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change. Cambridge, locating and examining texts by women, and MA: Harvard University Press. undertook a historical analysis of the problems Florence, Penny & Foster, Nicola (eds.). 2000. of talented women attempting to create in a Differential Aesthetics: Art Practices, Philosophy and male tradition. In the early 1980s, proponents Feminist Understandings. Aldershot: Ashgate. of “gynesis” charged that gynocritics were

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feminist criticism confining themselves to a women’s literature above (1988: 155–7). The first stage, compa- ghetto, and advocated a confrontation with rable to gynocriticism, was a resurrection of the patriarchal canon. Following the lead of lost or ignored women artists. In highlighting French writers such as Hélène Cixous and supposedly “minor” artists, this stage led to Luce Irigaray, these feminists explored repre- new perspectives on art history and to new sentations and expressions of the feminine in bodies of knowledge. Traditionally, portraits, Western thought. The French feminists in still-lifes, miniatures, and crafts have been particular also suggested that women should prominent among women artists, and the pre- discover, explore and “write their bodies” and sentation of craft or craft-like art in “high” art that this writing of the body will lead to a style contexts by contemporary women artists has of “openness, fragmentation, non-linearity, served to blur the distinction between “high” and and disruption.” “low” art. The second phase, comparable to Although gynocriticism and gynesis con- the female aesthetic and equally controversial, tinued to be strong, the late 1980s were posited a women’s art distinct from the tradition characterized by the rise of “gender theory,” con- of patriarchal culture, an art based on a cerned with integrating the study of gender “female imagination” or “female sensitivity.” differences into the various disciplines. Rather Active in the mid 1970s, advocates of a female than concentrating on women and “reifying artistic sensibility maintained that women’s feminine marginalization,” gender theorists art is characterized by central core imagery of sought to produce comparative studies of men apertures, rifts, and cracks (thought to sym- and women and their works, and to focus on bolize female genitalia); circular or repeated social constructs of gender rather than on bio- patterns; open, fluid forms; soft colors; repetitive logy (Showalter 1985). patterning; the decorative; and subjective or More recently, feminist literary criticism has personal subject matter. The third phase of further expanded to include more diverse feminist art criticism was more theoretical, voices (black, lesbian, “third world”) that respect and centered on gender analysis of the art of differences among women, experimenting both women and men, and interconnections with various expressions of female experience, between an artwork and its historical and cul- and undertaking more complex analyses that tural context, giving rise to more philosophical connect a revised literary canon with history, work in feminist aesthetics. psychoanalysis, linguistics, philosophy, film, Frueh’s own performance pieces are examples sociology, religion, law, economics, anthropo- of this new and profound body of knowledge logy, cultural, and media studies (Plain & about women’s art and its production through Sellers 2007). Feminist literary criticism con- her ongoing evolution of these feminist prin- tinues to generate fresh approaches to the ciples (Frueh 2007). Through photography and written text against the backdrop of myriad video of performed texts, she creates models of representations of women, including those of the presentation that focus on the female-centered nonliterary virtual world. Given that today’s body in terms of physicality, playfulness, and women more freely create and enjoy the limit- female pleasure. Her lived body within its less possibilities of a multiple gendered subjec- physical environment – the arid desert of the tivity, their critical perspective has come to American southwest – functions as a continu- include masculinity studies, postcolonialism, ing presence within and against a cultural and queer theory. Rejecting monolithic femin- context of patriarchy. She exhibits a female ism, theorists now speak of multiple feminisms agency that replaces centuries of representations that “produce constructive new readings of the of female passivity previously depicted by male world, its texts and its bodies” (Plain & Sellars artists, thereby attracting and empowering 2007: 213). female viewers (Broude & Garrard 2005). A feminist approach has also been taken These phases in literature and art can also be to art, architecture, theater, film, and dance. instructive for the development of a feminist Joanna Frueh has offered a history of feminist criticism in music. Researchers in music iden- art criticism in three stages that echo the cat- tify, analyze, perform, and record musical works egories of feminist literary criticism presented by women throughout history, considering the

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feminist criticism contexts in which women in music have been the tonal system in general. Although Carmen active, and assessing the status of women in var- and her music are interesting and attractive, ious musical disciplines (Bowers & Tick 1987). there is something in us that seeks resolution The possibility of a music analogous to of the instability of the chromaticism, that l’écriture féminine, the writing claimed to arise seeks the clarity and closure of diatonicism and out of women’s bodies and sexual experience, the tonic triad. In seeking this resolution, we may has been proposed (Cox 1992; Duran 2007). on some level – probably an unconscious one While “phallocentric” culture is based on the sin- – be expecting or even wanting Carmen to be gularity, identity, and specificity of male geni- somehow overcome, to be appropriated into talia and sexual experience, female genitalia the system both musically and socially. In the are multiple and contiguous, and the sexual opera and literature of the time, women who do experience of women tends to be indefinite, not conform to the social order may eventually cyclic, without set beginnings and endings. submit to marriage, enter a convent, or be Correspondingly, l’écriture féminine is said to committed to an asylum, but those who will not be heterogeneous, process-oriented, and fluid. be tamed usually wind up dead. And when Growth and development are continuous, and Carmen dies, her unstable music resolves into boundaries are unclear. There are frequent diatonicism. The stability and order of the repetitions, and phrases are rephrased or con- tonic is “violently imposed.” joined. There is a resistance to the definitive, the Dramatic music, song, and programmatic highly structured; to closure, hierarchies, and music from all eras are ripe for gender analysis the dialectical process. A music comparable to of this kind, which has come to be known as l’écriture féminine would have a flexible, cyclical “New Musicology.” Discerning the masculine form, and would involve continuous repetition and feminine in instrumental music (as with with variation, the cumulative growth and abstract visual art), however, proves to be development of an idea. It would serve to decon- more difficult. Romantic conceptions of the struct musical hierarchies and the dialectical masculine and feminine in music are already juxtaposition and resolution of opposites, disrupt fairly well known. The so-called “masculine” linearity, and avoid definitive closures. Such music or theme of the Romantic era is char- music would not be reflective of the experience acterized by a dramatic quality, large intervals, of all women, and could be and has been com- volume, sforzandos, full orchestral scoring, posed by both men and women. Yet discerning and predominant wind and brass instruments, this style in the music of women would provide while “feminine” music is more likely to be an opportunity for interested feminists to cele- lyrical and legato, with delicate instrumentation, brate what has been identified or culturally small intervals, and regular rhythms (Rieger conditioned as feminine or womanly. 1985: 139–40). The “masculine cadence” is There have been a few works written on definitive and achieves closure, while the “fem- musical expressions of the feminine and the inine cadence” is inconclusive or implicative. All masculine in canonical masterworks. Susan of this helps to explain why the work of certain McClary (2002) has suggested that in Bizet’s composers is easily read as “gendered” by fem- Carmen chromaticism is associated with a inist critics: the forceful and definitive music of seductive, deadly feminine sexuality. The music Beethoven, for example, seems masculine rela- of the slithery, slippery Carmen is predomin- tive to the lyrical, inconclusive, and disruptive antly chromatic, while Don José and the music of Chopin or Debussy. But McClary’s pure, chaste Micaëla sing diatonically. Because reading of tonality, rhythm, and musical form Carmen makes us so aware of her body and her as an erotic metaphor for the physical – and in sexuality when she sings, we come to associate the case of Beethoven, particularly violent – her sexuality with the chromaticism; we likewise sex act, strikes some as narrow and overly neg- associate Don José’s and Micaëla’s diatonicism ative: one that ignores the positive pleasure with the abstract ideals of society, Church, and association with a sexual aesthetic (Higgins state that they strive to uphold. These associ- 1993: 184). Moreover, gay and lesbian musi- ations become significant when we look at how cologists question the attribution of “masculine” chromaticism is handled within the opera and to the music of a composer like Tchaikovsky

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feminist standpoint aesthetics who, in light of his homosexuality, resists Plain, Gill & Sellars, Susan (eds.). 2007. A History of a simplistic interpretation along the lines of Feminist Literary Criticism. New York: Cambridge gender. University Press. It seems clear that conceptions of women’s Rieger, Eva. 1985. “ ‘Dolce semplice’? On the writing, art, or music can be quite similar to Changing Role of Women in Music.” In Feminist expressions of the feminine in traditional Aesthetics. G. Ecker (ed.). H. Anderson (trans.). Boston: Beacon, 135–49. works by men. Yet there is an important dif- Showalter, Elaine (ed.). 1985. The New Feminist ference between the types of expression, in Criticism: Essays of Women, Literature and Theory. that the traditional works often present the New York: Pantheon. feminine as trivial, weak, or dangerous, while Showalter, Elaine. 1989. “A Criticism of Our Own: women’s art may reconstruct this subject Autonomy and Assimilation in Afro-American matter and cast it in a positive light. However and Feminist Literary Theory.” In The Future similar the aesthetic content of the works, of Literary Theory. R. Cohen (ed.). New York: radically different perspectives will be brought Routledge, 347–69. to this content. Feminist critics, whatever their renée lorraine & peg zeglin brand opinions of traditional notions of the feminine or of women’s art, can identify, consider, and critique these perspectives, thereby enriching feminist standpoint aesthetics is a rela- the available range of interpretations and aes- tively new name for a view that has its roots in thetic judgments. the social history of art and feminist epistemo- logy. It takes as its point of departure the idea See also canon; criticism; feminist aesthetics; that taste – broadly speaking, our capacity to feminist standpoint aesthetics; kristeva; produce, appreciate, and judge aesthetic value pornography; psychoanalysis and art; race – is deeply social. More specifically, the view and aesthetics. is committed to three theses: (1) Social location systematically shapes how art – broadly con- bibliography strued – is made, and how both art and nature Bowers, Jane & Tick, Judith (eds.). 1987. Women are understood, appreciated, and evaluated. Making Music: The Western Art Tradition 1150 – Social location refers to a person’s ascribed 1950. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. social identities – for example, gender, race, Broude, Norma & Garrard, Mary D. (eds.). 2005. class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. – and Reclaiming Female Agency: Feminist Art History the social roles and relationships considered After Postmodernism. Berkeley: University of appropriate to them (Anderson 2007: 4). (2) California Press. Taste is normative: judgments of taste admit of Cox, Renée. 1992. “Recovering Jouissance: Feminist degrees of success and competence, and correct Aesthetics and Music.” In Women and Music: A judgments of taste have legitimate claims on History. K. Pendle (ed.). Bloomington: Indiana others. (3) Standpoints – that is, social positions University Press, 331–40. Duran, Jane. 2007. Women, Philosophy and that yield uniquely perceptive awareness of Literature. Aldershot: Ashgate. particular features of the world – can be aes- Frueh, Joanna. 1988. “Towards a Feminist Theory thetically privileged in certain crucial respects. of Art Criticism.” In Feminist Art Criticism: An Despite their many differences, feminist Anthology. A. Raven, C. Langer, & J. Frueh (eds.). philosophers of art agree that taste is gendered; Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 153–65. more precisely, that gender – the different Frueh, Joanna. 2007. Clairvoyance (for Those in the roles, norms, and meanings assigned to people Desert): Performance Pieces, 1979–2004. Durham: based on real or imagined anatomical charac- Duke University Press. teristics of the different sexes – is a constitutive Higgins, Paula. 1993. “Women in Music, Feminist element of aesthetic production, experience, Criticism, and Guerilla Musicology,” Nineteenth- Century Music, 17, 174–92. and judgment (Korsmeyer 2004). This pre- McClary, Susan. 2002 [1991]. “Sexual Politics in sents a difficulty, namely that taste’s perspect- Music.” In Feminine Endings: Music, Gender and ival and partial nature appears to undermine its Sexuality. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota normativity, which, it has traditionally been Press, 53–79. thought, requires impartiality in judgment.

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This result would be particularly unwelcome values where they had been missed, or new for feminists since our intervention into art forms of these values, or old forms of these history and the philosophy of art depends on values in new and surprising places. This, in taste’s being normative. For instance, feminists turn, can enable the identification of prejudices criticize the artistic canon for its androcentric in matters of taste. bias (Korsmeyer 2004; Eaton 2008). Reducing The distinction between prejudice and gen- this bias to just one of the myriad ways that erative bias is well illustrated with the case of social location inflects taste strips feminism of the female nude, that category of European a substantive critique of the canon. If we are to art (especially painting, sculpture, and most denounce these androcentric biases as genuine recently photography) that focuses on the “errors,” then we must endorse the normativ- unclothed female body. For all of the differ- ity of taste. This apparent tension between ences in style throughout the ages, most works normativity and the ineliminable effects of comprising the genre, especially the most social location is what feminist epistemologists prized works, embody a gendered way of seeing, call “the paradox of bias” (Antony 2002). to use a term from art historian John Berger The tension can be resolved by rejecting the (1972). From Titian to Matisse, female nudes are presumption that bias is always bad (Antony most often anonymous, passive, vulnerable, 2002; Wylie 2003; Anderson 2007). Bias may and objectified bodies positioned so as to provide in specifiable cases have constructive effects on the viewer with maximal visual access to ero- taste, while in other cases it may lead taste genous zones (Saunders 1989; Nead 1992). astray. Distinguishing between generative and The term “the male gaze,” first coined by film detrimental forms of bias is an ongoing project theorist Laura Mulvey (1989), captures this for standpoint aesthetics. dimension of the tradition: female nudes typic- Bias yields errors in taste when any of the ally address a heterosexual male viewer and following circumstances obtains. (1) The bias aim primarily at arousing his carnal appetites. stems from an irrational attitude of hostility This is not an empirical claim about actual directed against an individual or a group (or their viewers and their responses but, rather, a nor- supposed characteristics). (2) It results in aes- mative concept regarding ideal viewers and thetic dogmatism: (a) blinding its proponents the objectifying responses called for by these to counterevidence and other viewpoints, and works (Korsmeyer 2004: 51–6). (b) insulating its proponents from critical The fact that the genre of the female nude is scrutiny by others. (3) It blocks the possibility biased toward heterosexual men is not in itself of discovering new aesthetic values. (4) It a problem. As noted earlier, standpoint theorists serves primarily to reinforce social hierarchies do not automatically condemn all bias. What (see Bourdieu’s 1984 critique of Kant). (5) It makes this a case of prejudice can be seen only closes off values that would be unwelcome to by situating the genre in the context of the some because they empower disenfranchised history of Western art. First, the genre eroticizes groups. Such forms of bias are often referred women in ways that reinforce social gender to as prejudices: judgments formed without hierarchies, and this coincides with the pri- sufficient grounds and motivated, whether mary way that women in general are repre- consciously or not, by a concern for one’s own sented throughout the history of Western art. wellbeing or the wellbeing of one’s group. Second, there is no comparable genre that Generative bias, by contrast, is a perspective eroticizes inert, passive, anonymous, objecti- that is partial – that is, both slanted and incom- fied male nudes. The male body, by comparison, plete – yet marked by an awareness of the is rarely subjected to an objectifying erotic gaze. effects, both positive and negative, of social Third, this one-sided abundance of objecti- location. Generative bias enables the discovery fied female flesh occurs within the context of of aesthetic value, whether in the form of mer- women’s general disenfranchisement from the its or defects, producing new aesthetic con- artistic canon. Strolling through the great cepts and principles. Generative bias can bring museums of the world, or even skimming an art neglected perspectives into view, thereby allow- history textbook, one observes that women ing us to see beauty, ugliness, and other aesthetic are connected to great art not as its creators but

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feminist standpoint aesthetics simply as sexual bodies serving as the raw viewer tantalizingly revealing views of a supple material from which men forge masterpieces and sexually available body (Garrard 1989). (Nochlin 1988: esp. chs. 1, 6, 7; Nead 1992; Artemisia’s picture differs starkly: Susanna is not Duncan 1993; Guerilla Girls 1998). eroticized and her nudity feels entirely motiv- There are, however, exceptions, one of ated by the story instead of by the aim to kin- which provides an example of how the effects dle carnal desires. Furthermore, rather than of social location can be a resource for taste. depict the moment before the villains approach Artemisia Gentileschi was born in Rome and when Susanna luxuriously displays herself in painted during the first half of the seventeenth a relaxed atmosphere, Artemisia depicts the century at a time when there were almost no moment of the attack with a strong emphasis female painters. Although the female nude on Susanna’s physical and psychological resis- was, as in the centuries to follow, one of the most tance. This emphasis on Susanna’s predica- popular subjects for art, life drawing classes ment rather than the viewer’s erotic pleasure relied almost entirely on male models (Garrard (Garrard 1989: 189) represents a significant shift 1989: 200). In order to meet the demands of away from appeal to the male gaze. realism in depicting the female nude, artists had Artemisia’s gender identity enabled this to rely on their extra-studio experience with unique and powerful take on both the female female bodies, filtered through current concep- nude and Susanna’s story. Not only was tions of women as well as standards of female Artemisia striving for recognition in an all- beauty. As a result, female nudes of the period male field at a time when women had few are typically idealized, generic, and objectified. rights and opportunities but she was herself Artemisia had distinct advantages in repre- the victim of persistent sexual harassment that senting the female body. First, she had oppor- eventuated in rape – an attack that she fought tunities to observe many different kinds of and doggedly pursued in court (Garrard 1989: female bodies, including her own, in different ch. 3). This dimension of her social location contexts and engaged in a variety of activities. afforded a clearer and more discerning view Second, she had the perspective of being of the sort of plight Susanna faced, as well embodied in such a body: she knew what it feels as of her resistance, than was available to like – from the inside – to have, say, breasts and Artemisia’s male colleagues. This privileged hips and fleshy thighs. As a result, her exact- perspective yielded one of the strongest pic- ing naturalism outshines her predecessors tures ever made on the subject. and contemporaries. Third, as a heterosexual Standpoint aesthetics is committed to the woman, Artemisia’s way of seeing women differed idea that taste is always biased, imbued with starkly form the dominant artistic paradigm: a partial perspective that has been shaped by from her perspective women were not primar- the material conditions of the judging subject. ily passive objects of sexual desire but, rather, The case of the female nude illustrates how strong capable individuals. Artemisia’s nudes social location can issue in prejudices that come with the blemishes and personality of are damaging for taste, whereas Artemisia’s individuals, and they often adopt dynamic case shows how social location can yield artis- Michelangelesque postures that bespeak vital- tically privileged interpretations of time-worn ity and strength rather than passivity and subjects. vulnerability (Garrard 1989). Feminist standpoint theory thus recom- Consider, for instance, Artemisia’s Susanna and mends the use of perspectives from particular the Elders (1610). The painting offers an ori- socially located points of view for understand- ginal interpretation of the biblical story accord- ing, appreciating, and judging art. Artemisia’s ing to which lascivious male elders spy on work, to return to our example, was woefully Susanna bathing and attempt to blackmail undervalued both at the time that she pro- her into sexual relations. Susanna resists duced it and in modern times. It took a stand- the blackmail and the elders are punished. point sensitive to the artistic effects of gender The standard way of representing this story to see both the androcentric distortion of the in and before Artemisia’s time gave it a kind canon and what so many had missed in of pornographic visual appeal, offering the Artemisia’s work. This is not to claim that

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fiction, nature of feminist consciousness will be more discerning fiction, nature of There are at least two in every, or even most, cases. Rather, a feminist senses of the word “fiction” that are easy to run standpoint allows certain features of certain together, but need to be distinguished. In one kinds of works to come into focus, making us sense, a fiction can simply be a type of falsehood. in these cases better and more exacting judges If I say, “Your PhD is a fiction,” I am using of taste. “fiction” in this sense. I am simply saying that it is false that you have a PhD. On the other See also canon; feminist aesthetics; feminist hand, if I say that Middlemarch is a fiction, I am criticism; relativism. not saying that it false that there is such a novel. I am saying that it is a certain type of bibliography book, story, or representation. The book, story, Anderson, Elizabeth. 2007. “Feminist Epistemology or representation clearly does exist. and Philosophy of Science.” In The Stanford There is probably some connection between Encyclopedia of Philosophy. E. N. Zalta (ed.). the two senses of “fiction,” which explains the Available at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ ease with which they are run together. Works feminism-epistemology/ of fiction typically contain an element of Antony, Louise. 2002. “Quine as Feminist: The “unreality.” In reality, there is no such town as Radical Import of Naturalized Epistemology.” In Middlemarch and no such people as the char- A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and acters Dorothea or Casaubon who in the fiction Objectivity. L. M. Antony & C. E. Witt (eds.). 2nd edn. Boulder: Westview, 110–35. inhabit the town. In fact, unlike the novel, the Berger, John. 1972. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin. town Middlemarch and the people Dorothea Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984 [1979]. Distinction: A Social and Casaubon are fictions in the first sense. On Critique of the Judgment of Taste. R. Nice (trans.). the other hand, it is important to realize that the Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. logical relationship between the two senses Brand, Peggy Zeglin. 1998. “Disinterestedness and of fiction is loose. Fictions in the first sense can Political Art.” In Aesthetics: The Big Questions. be lies and always involve falsehood or “unre- C. Korsmeyer (ed.). Malden: Blackwell, 155–71. ality.” Works of fiction – a class of representa- Duncan, Carol. 1993. The Aesthetics of Power: Essays tions – are never lies, can refer to real things in Critical Art History. Cambridge: Cambridge such as historical personages (Julius Caesar, University Press. Eaton, A. W. 2008. “Feminist Philosophy of Art,” Napoleon) and actual places (Rome, Moscow), Philosophy Compass, 3(5), 873–93. and can contain truths about them. In fact, the Garrard, Mary. 1989. Artemisia Gentileschi. purpose of a work of fiction, or one of its pur- Princeton: Princeton University Press. poses, can be to convey certain truths. Guerilla Girls. 1998. Bedside Companion to the The sense of “fiction” that primarily interests History of Western Art. Harmondsworth: Penguin. us is the second one, which refers to a class of Korsmeyer, Carolyn. 2004. Gender and Aesthetics: works: works of fiction. Having identified it, An Introduction. New York: Routledge. our job is to figure out what characterizes it and Mulvey, Laura. 1989 [1975]. “Visual Pleasure and makes it distinct from other representations. Narrative Cinema.” In Visual and Other Pleasures. But before directly tackling that issue, there is Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 14–26. Nead, Lynda. 1992. The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity one further preliminary one. This is to get and Sexuality. London: Routledge. some sense of the range of works of fiction. Nochlin, Linda. 1988. Women, Art, and Power and Fiction is sometimes identified with a type of Other Essays. Boulder: Westview. discourse. So understood, fiction is a linguistic Pollock, Griselda. 1999. Differencing the Canon: phenomenon. Novels, stories, and dramas are Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories. New preeminent example of fictions. However, it is York: Routledge. obvious that there is lots of nonliterary fiction. Saunders, Gill. 1989. The Nude: A New Perspective. New Media like cinema and television constantly York: Harper & Row. trade in stories that are fictional. Songs often tell Wylie, Alison. 2003. “Why Standpoint Matters.” fictional stories. Many paintings also present In Sciences and Other Cultures. R. Figueroa & S. Harding (eds.). New York: Routledge, 26–48. fictional representations. Consider Vermeer’s A Woman Weighing Gold. A woman stands a. w. eaton before a balance beneath a picture of the Last

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Judgment. Light from a nearby window divides nothing to be picked out. If there were some- the picture into two diagonals, the upper one thing, it would exist. The things we refer to are light, the lower one dark. The picture does not distinguished from others in virtue of their tell a story; it is not a narrative. But it is also properties or characteristics, but nothing can not a portrait of an actual woman. Though have properties unless it exists in the first Vermeer almost certainly used a model to place. Existence is not just another property, but paint it, the picture is not a portrait of her. The is the condition for having properties. What scene is an imaginary one, a fiction. does not exist is nothing and so cannot have We are now ready for the main question: properties. what is fiction? There is one large class of Those who believe we can refer to nonexis- answers I will simply ignore: those that define tents deny that they lack properties. Compare fiction as a type of linguistic discourse (see Hamlet and Macbeth, that is, the characters Walton 1990: 75–89 for a survey and critique from the two plays by Shakespeare. Hamlet is of these.) We know in advance that these will a prince of Denmark. Macbeth is a Scottish lord, be inadequate because of the ample existence a usurper, a king. They have different proper- of nonlinguistic fiction. There are two broad ties, it is claimed, so they must have properties. classes of answers that remain. One defines it One property that Hamlet and Macbeth both lack in terms of a special type of reference. A second is being real or existing. For those who believe kind defines fiction in terms of pretense or that there is fictional reference to nonexistents, make-believe. existence is just another property, and not a con- dition for having properties. fictional reference Can appealing to fictional reference provide Most fictional works appear to refer to people and a plausible answer to the question “what is other things that do not exist. For some, this is fiction?” It does not. Even if there is reference strictly appearance. We are not really referring to nonexistents, it can occur both inside and to anything. We may make believe such refer- outside fiction. If I am a habitual liar, and lie ence to fictional entities occurs, but it really about where I spent my vacation, claiming it was does not. on the golden mountain, I referred to a nonex- However, there are others who hold that istent object and did so intentionally (according some sort of reference to fictional things really to those who believe such reference occurs), occurs. Among these, some claim we refer to but I did not create a fiction in the relevant sense. fictional people and other fictional things even I merely told a lie. If a write a historical novel, though they deny that fictional things exist I may refer only to existents (past or present), (Zemach 1997; Dilworth 2004). If they are but I still create a fiction. Hence, fictional refer- right about this, perhaps they have a way of ence does not provide a route to answering the answering the question “what is fiction?” In question “what is fiction?” fiction, we refer to things that do not exist, while in nonfiction we refer to things that do. pretense and make-believe Alternatively, in fiction we intend to refer to One might think that the standard function of things that do not exist and in nonfiction we a mode of representation like language or pic- intend to refer to things that do. tures is to inform us about the actual world, to The view under discussion makes two inter- assert or show us things about it. Fiction could esting claims. One is that we can define fiction then be thought of as something derived from through reference to nonexistent things. The this standard use. Instead of actually asserting second is simply that such reference is possible something, a fictional story or its author pretends and actually occurs. The first claim obviously to assert it. Instead of showing us something depends on the second, which is very contro- about the actual world, in a picture like A versial. By contrast, the majority view (which Woman Weighing Gold the painter Vermeer obviously does not mean it is the true one) is that pretends to show us something about it (Searle one can refer only to what exists. When we refer 1975). to something, we pick it out, and what does not This proposal would need to be refined to exist cannot be picked out because there is even approach adequacy. Consider an epistolary

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fiction, nature of novel – one whose story is told not through a imaginings. Suppose children are playing school narrative but through a series of letters written with dolls. The dolls are props. Painting, novels, by one or more characters. Here the author and poems are also props on the make-believe does not pretend to assert something but, if the view. Second, make-believe, unlike some other pretense view is correct, pretends to present imaginings, operates according to underlying letters that, among other things, make asser- rules about these props, which authorize or tions. Such adjustments, while needed to make mandate certain imaginings. For example, the the pretense view work, are not hard to make game of school might operate according to the and hence do not pose a serious problem for rule that the number of students in the class- the view. room is equal to the number of dolls arranged There is another problem with the pretense in a certain way. Similarly, a given art form or view that is not fixable. Pretense does not genre will have certain rules that guide the always seem to be the right description of what audience’s imaginings (Walton 1990). artists are doing in their works. Consider a A fiction, on this view, is a work that is clear case of pretense. I am pretending to sing intended or has the function of being a prop by lip-syncing. There is no intent to deceive, just in a game of make-believe. What makes A as there usually is not when an artist produces Woman Weighing Gold fictional is that it is first a fiction, but I am doing one thing in order to of all a work – a painting in this case – and sec- pretend to do another. Is Vermeer pretending to ond that it is intended or has the function of show us a real scene by painting an imaginary being a prop of the kind described above. It one? That is what does not seem right. To ade- authorizes us to imagine certain things: that we quately describe what Vermeer is doing it is are seeing a woman before a balance in the act enough to say that he is painting an imaginary of weighing gold, standing beneath a picture of scene without adding anything about some- the Last Judgment, etc. thing he is thereby pretending to do. In fact, there The make-believe view has become one of would be a certain irony if we did say that the most widely held accounts of the nature because it is very likely that Vermeer painted of fiction. However, there are some differences an imaginary scene by using a real one as a among those who accept it. One of these is model. embodied in the very definition of fiction just So what is it to write a fictional story if given. It concerns whether a work must be not to engage in a sort of pretense? What is it to intended by its maker to be a prop (Currie paint an imaginary scene if not to pretend to 1990) or whether it is enough that it functions do something? One might think that one has as a prop (Walton 1990). The latter condition represented an imaginary scene if there is no is too weak. We can treat almost anything, real scene “corresponding” to the one that from a police report to a scientific paper to a is painted or described. This will not work. shopping list, as if they were fictions, and for Misdescriptions satisfy this condition with- the nonce they acquire the function of being out being imaginary scenes. Further, in the props. But treating something as if it were a Vermeer case, there might have been a real fiction does not create a work of fiction. On the scene corresponding to the one represented in other hand, perhaps regular treatment or con- the painting. ventions can render a work a prop for make- The make-believe view offers an alternative believe without an original intention that it answer. In order to understand this view one has be so treated. We tend to treat the ancient to recognize that “make-believe” is being used “myths” of other cultures not only as if they were in a restricted, somewhat technical sense. There fiction, but as fiction. (Let us assume they were are some ordinary uses of “make-believe” in not originally so intended.) Perhaps this use which it is a synonym for pretense. “Let’s creates a work of fiction. If so the original make-believe we are pirates” and “Let’s pre- intention requirement is too strong. The most tend we are pirates” say the same thing. plausible view lies somewhere between the Make-believe in the relevant sense involves two thus far discussed. We can express it this two special features. First it involves props. way: F is a fiction only if it is a work with the Props are publicly accessible objects that guide proper function of being a prop in a game of

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fiction, the paradox of responding to make-believe. To speak of a proper function the strongest argument for adopting the second is to screen out items treated as if they are condition. fictions or that acquire the function of being props on an ad hoc basis. This typically is the See also literature; fiction, truth in; fictional result of an original intention that it be so entities; genre; imagination; narrative. used, but the function can perhaps be acquired in other ways. bibliography We have just claimed that a necessary condi- Currie, Gregory. 1990. The Nature of Fiction. tion for being a fiction is properly functioning Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. as a prop for a game of make-believe. Another Dilworth, John. 2004. “Internal versus External Representation,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art disagreement concerns whether this condition Criticism, 62, 23–36. also is sufficient on its own to pick out works of Lopes, Dominic. 1996. Understanding Pictures. fiction or whether a second condition is needed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Here is one type of situation that, according Searle, John. 1975. “The Logical Status of Fictional to some, gives rise to the need for a second con- Discourse,” New Literary History, 6, 319–32. dition. Suppose that I think my life contains Walton, Kendall L. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe. the stuff of a great narrative. I could present this Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. as my autobiography, but I think it would Zemach, Eddy. 1997. Real Beauty. University Park: have greater significance to present it as a Pennsylvania State University Press. fictional story: a novel. The only thing is, every robert stecker sentence states a fact. The question here is whether I am attempting to do something that is impossible – make a fiction out of nothing but fiction, the paradox of responding to It is fact. There are those who answer this question a fact about most of us that we can be emo- affirmatively (Currie 1990) and so claim that we tionally affected by our engagement with need a second condition on the definition stipu- stories and other works of narrative fiction; lating that a narrative that is “nonaccidentally” and we often characterize experience of this true throughout is not a work of fiction. sort as involving emotions directed at fictional There is another problematic set of cases characters and events: I feel pity for Anna that this condition eliminates. These cases Karenina, I am terrified of Nosferatu the vam- involve perfectly familiar items. Suppose that I pire, I loathe Iago, and so on. Indeed, it is do in fact present my story as autobiography, arguable that the very point of certain genres but in such a way that you can vividly ima- of fiction – ghost stories, “tear-jerkers,” and gine the events of my life. Then it appears that horror movies, for example – is to engage us my work fulfills two functions. One is to inform emotionally in such ways. At the same time, you about my life. A second is to enable you to however, it seems obvious that in engaging engage in the kind of guided imagining that is with narrative fiction – reading a story or a constitutive of make-believe in our technical novel, watching a play or a movie – most of us, sense. (Since this imagining is about real most of the time, are aware that what we are events, it is hardly make-believe in its ordinary engaging with is fiction: we do not believe that sense.) Something similar happens with cer- Anna really did jump under a train, or that tain works of history, journalism, as well as Nosferatu left his home in eastern Europe to the “nonfiction” novel like Truman Capote’s threaten people farther afield, or that Iago In Cold Blood. All these works are props that betrayed Othello; and we do not believe any of authorize certain imaginings and hence meet our these things just because – or inasmuch as – we first condition. There are some who claim that know that neither Anna nor Nosferatu nor because of this, these works are fictional even Iago ever existed. But if we know that Anna and if the primary purpose lies elsewhere (Walton Nosferatu and Iago do not and never did exist, 1990). However, this does not seem right. why, and what, do we feel for them? For emo- Historical novels are fictional; history is not, tion would appear to depend on belief, or at even if it uses techniques that produce guided any rate something like belief, in the existence imaginings. It is cases like these that provide of and the possession of certain attributes by their

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fiction, the paradox of responding to objects: it is because I take the rabid dog charg- Republic – that if this were the case, these ing toward me to be actually a threat that I am responses would be fundamentally irrational. terrified of it; and only if I take a person to This is a conclusion reached via a different be in some sense a victim of misfortune can I route by Colin Radford, in a series of articles that pity her. initiated contemporary philosophical interest We have three thoughts, then: (1) we may in the paradox of fiction. Radford in effect experience emotions such as fear of and pity for amends the third of the thoughts outlined fictional characters; (2) we do not believe that above – the thought that the experience of these characters exist; and (3) the experience of emotions such as pity and fear requires belief in emotions such as pity and fear requires belief in the existence of the objects of those emotions. the existence of the objects of those emotions. As Radford argues (1975), emotional experience The puzzle often referred to as “the paradox of normally requires such belief, and evaporates fiction” consists in the fact that while each of in cases in which a person becomes aware that these thoughts has at least prima facie plaus- the beliefs on which an emotional response is ibility, they cannot all be true. grounded are false; in responding emotionally One strategy for dissolving the paradox lies to narrative fiction in the absence of the relev- in questioning the second thought outlined ant sort of belief, then, we are behaving above – the thought that in engaging with inconsistently, incoherently, and irrationally. fictional narratives we are perfectly well aware A different approach to the paradox that that the characters and events depicted are proceeds by rejecting the idea that emotional fictional. Perhaps the fact that we are moved by responses require belief, sometimes labeled such things itself demonstrates that we are not “Thought Theory,” begins by asserting that in “perfectly well aware” of their fictionality. all sorts of circumstances merely the thought of Thus Jonathan Barnes has suggested that it danger or suffering, for example, without any is the fact that poetry can affect us emotionally belief that one is actually in danger or that that led the Pre-Socratic philosopher Gorgias anyone is actually suffering, is sufficient to to hold that poetry can “persuade and deceive generate emotion. (See for example Lamarque the soul” and that in responding to poetry 1981; Carroll 1990; Meskin & Weinberg 2003; “the deceived [is] wiser than he who is not Robinson 2005. Different versions of Thought deceived” (1979: 161ff.). This idea is echoed in Theory offer different, and varyingly sophistic- different ways in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ated, accounts of the ways “unasserted thought” notion of “that willing suspension of disbelief for can generate emotional response.) So respond- the moment, which constitutes poetic faith” ing emotionally to fiction without believing (1907: 6), and in what Noël Carroll (1990) in the actuality of its characters and events has called “the illusion theory” of engagement is not, contra Radford, inconsistent with our with fiction. In none of its manifestations to responses in other contexts, and so need not be date has the idea been convincingly worked irrational. out. Whatever support the audience’s emo- Thought Theory construes and rejects the tional response to a fiction may be thought to claim that emotional response requires certain provide for the idea that it loses its awareness sorts of belief as a claim about the causal con- that what it is responding to is fiction, other ditions of emotional response. However, the aspects of its response seem to support the claim has also been understood as making a opposite conclusion: as Dr. Johnson suggests, conceptual point: as asserting that whatever for example: “The delight of tragedy proceeds the facts about the generation of a particular from our consciousness of fiction; if we thought response, for that response to count as one of murders and treasons real, they would please fear, for example, the subject must believe or in no more” (1969: 27–8). some way take himself to be somehow threat- Another obstacle faced by any attempt to ened or in danger. Thus it may be granted that substantiate the idea that our emotional (as Thought Theory maintains) I need not take responses to fiction are based on illusion or Nosferatu to pose a threat to me in order to feel suspension of (dis)belief is the charge – a vari- as I do when he appears on the screen, but ant of part of Plato’s critique of poetry in the maintained that what I feel cannot coherently

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fiction, the paradox of responding to be characterized as fear unless I do take him to responses to fiction are grounded (both causally be a threat. While Thought Theory offers an and conceptually) in beliefs about the actual answer as to why I feel anything when con- world, and those responses have actual rather fronted with the depiction of Nosferatu, that is, than fictional objects: what I may at first be it does not settle the question of what it is that inclined to describe as fear of Nosferatu is in fact I feel. fear of something (or some possible something) An alternative strategy for dissolving the in the actual world; what may misleadingly be paradox argues for a qualified rejection of described as pity for Anna Karenina is in fact the claim that emotional responses require – directed at actual people in the kind of situ- in a conceptual, rather than a causal, sense – ation that she is depicted as being in. A second belief in the existence of the objects of those approach (Charlton 1984; Neill 1993) describes responses. On this view, at least certain varieties the responses in question in terms of nonin- of emotion can be grounded – conceptually, tentional, non-belief-dependent states such as if not causally – in beliefs about what is moods or sensations: what I may unreflect- fictionally the case, or what is true in the ively be inclined to describe as fear of a horror fiction (Neill 1993). Thus, for example, it may movie monster, for example, may turn out be argued that my belief that it is fictional that (particularly when we consider the manner of Anna Karenina suffers as she does in the the monster’s depiction) to be less misleadingly story, together with certain other facts about described in terms of responses such as startle me, including my desires and the character and shock. of my feeling, may make it true that what The most theoretically sophisticated and I experience amounts to pity for Anna; and interesting attempt to dissolve the paradox of if the beliefs in question are themselves ap- fiction by denying the claim that we experi- propriately grounded, and the feelings are ence emotions the objects of which are charac- within appropriate limits, that pity may be ters and events that we know to be fictional has rational. been developed by Kendall L. Walton (1990). However, while I can coherently believe Walton argues that the contexts in which we that it is fictional that Anna Karenina suffers, may be inclined to describe ourselves as fearing I cannot coherently believe, given that he does or pitying (for example) fictional creatures not inhabit the world that I inhabit, that I am are contexts in which we engage in games threatened by Nosferatu. In which case – if the of make-believe, using the works of fiction conceptual version of the claim that belief is nec- in question as “props.” And just as a work of essary for emotion is correct – whatever I feel fiction generates fictional truths concerning its in the face of his depiction, those feelings can- characters and events (such as that Nosferatu not without distortion be described as amount- is a vampire, and deadly), the game that the ing to fear of Nosferatu. While we may pity reader or spectator plays in engaging with it gen- fictional characters, it may be argued, we can- erates fictional truths which refer to himself or not be afraid of them. But then how are our herself, as well as to the inhabitants of the feelings – phenomenologically speaking, our fictional world of the work: thus in the game of fear-like feelings – in the face of the depiction make-believe I play when watching a vampire of Nosferatu best characterized? movie it will be make-believe that I am threat- Answering this question in effect involves a ened if, in a scene where the camera’s point qualified rejection of the first of the thoughts out- of view is that of the audience, the vampire lined at the beginning of this piece – that we may begins to advance threateningly toward the experience emotions such as pity for and fear of camera. And if in response to the scene I ex- fictional characters. And at least three ways of perience the feelings that typically partially rejecting this thought – whether in a qualified constitute fear (increased pulse rate, adrenalin or wholesale fashion – have been suggested. One surges, and so on), then it will be make- is given by Dr. Johnson: fictions move us not believedly the case that I am afraid. And so, because they are mistaken for realities, but mutatis mutandis, for my “pity” for Anna because they bring realities to mind (1969; see Karenina, my “loathing” of Iago, and so on. also Levinson 1990). On this view, our affective Walton thus dissolves the paradox of fiction by

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fiction, truth in denying the first of the thoughts outlined at Robinson, Jenefer. 2005. Deeper than Reason: the beginning of this piece: it is not literally Emotion and Its Role in Literature, Music and Art. true that we experience emotions such as fear Oxford: Oxford University Press. of and pity for fictional characters; it is, rather, Walton, Kendall L. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe. sometimes fictional that we experience such Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. emotions. alex neill As philosophical debate in aesthetics on the paradox of fiction has developed in recent years, it has drawn on an increasingly wide fiction, truth in Consider Thomas Hardy’s range of cognate areas in philosophy and 1895 novel, Jude the Obscure. It is true in the fiction psychology, and connections between ques- that in spite of his humble origins, Jude Fawley tions concerning the nature of our emotional aspires to a life of scholarship. It is also true in responses to fiction and adjacent issues – for the fiction that the stonecutter sends letters to example, concerning the moral implications of five academics expressing his desire to study and constraints upon our engagement with at Christminster University. The only answer fiction, and concerning the nature of our emo- he receives is from T. Tetuphenay, the master tional engagement with nonrepresentational of Biblioll College, who curtly advises him to forms of artistic representation – have emerged. abandon his scholarly ambitions. It is true in the Progress on the topic will be driven by increas- fiction that Fawley never recovers from this ing discrimination with regard to the different blow, even though Hardy’s narrator does not ways in which different kinds of narrative (and state the point explicitly. indeed other sorts of) fiction elicit different It is easy to give uncontroversial examples of kinds of emotional response. fictional truths of this sort, but hard to answer philosophical questions concerning their status See also emotion; fictional entities; horror; and justification. Truth requires a truth-bearer, imaginative resistance; tragedy; walton. such as a belief, proposition, or assertion; it also requires a truth-maker, such as objects, bibliography events, persons, and states of affairs. Even Barnes, J. 1979. The Presocratic Philosophers, vol. ii: though Hardy obviously based his fictional Empedocles to Democritus. London: Routledge & Biblioll College on the actual Balliol College at Kegan Paul. Oxford, and Tetuphenay may have had a par- Carroll, Noël. 1990. The Philosophy of Horror. ticular model in the Oxonian classical scholar London: Routledge. Benjamin Jowett, such real-world sources are not Charlton, W. 1984. “Feeling for the Fictitious,” the truth-makers for Hardy’s fiction. Even if he British Journal of Aesthetics 24, 206–16. wanted to insinuate that the master of the Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 1907. Biographia Literaria. actual Balliol College of his day was inhospit- 2 vols. J. Shawcross (ed.). Oxford: Oxford Univer- able to aspiring working class intellectuals, sity Press. Johnson, Samuel. 1969 [1765]. Preface to Hardy did not make any direct, literal assertion Shakespeare’s Plays. Menston: Scholar Press. to that effect in the novel. He certainly did not Lamarque, Peter. 1981. “How Can We Fear and absurdly accuse the master of Balliol of reject- Pity Fictions?” British Journal of Aesthetics, 21, ing Jude Fawley, and the latter is not Hardy him- 291–304. self. Why and in what sense is it true, then, that Levinson, Jerrold. 1990. “The Place of Real Emotion some nonexistent Fawley unsuccessfully tried to in Response to Fiction,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art study at a nonexistent college? Criticism, 48, 79–80. In David K. Lewis’s (1978) influential paper Meskin, Aaron & Weinberg, Jonathan M. 2003. on the topic, the first step is to recognize that “Emotions, Fiction, and Cognitive Architecture,” what is true in a given fiction is based on, British Journal of Aesthetics, 43, 18–34. Neill, Alex. 1993. “Fiction and the Emotions,” but not reducible to, a string of declarative American Philosophical Quarterly, 30, 1–13. sentences (or accurate translations of them). Radford, Colin. 1975. “How Can We be Moved by Fictional truth is not just a matter of sentences the Fate of Anna Karenina?” Proceedings of the but of propositions true in a world where the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. 69, 67–80. fiction is “told as known fact.” And for Lewis that

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fiction, truth in is a possible world, or more accurately, a col- beliefs can carry over into a story even if the lection of possible worlds, logically compatible narrator does not say so explicitly. This would with what the storyteller tells as known fact. appear to get us the premises we need to draw Lewis’s second step is to acknowledge that the right inferences about fictions where acts of competent interpreters have to understand the conjuring are followed by some desired result, storyteller’s sentences correctly and use them as the implicit proposition or story truth being a basis for making any number of inferences to that the relation between such events is a propositions or beliefs that are unstated in the causal one. Yet the analysis does not really fit text yet also “true in the fiction.” The proposi- all such examples. In some cases, the story- tions expressed in the text alone, standardly teller invokes a familiar, but to his community interpreted in the language in which it was nonveridical, system of supernatural beliefs. written, underdetermine fictional truth. For And in many cases, there is no single, coherent example, Hardy’s narrator does not say so, system of beliefs to be associated with the com- but it is true in the fiction that Fawley never munity within which a work was created. responds to Tetuphenay’s letter. Any minim- Where else might one look for principles ally competent understanding of the story determinative of fictional truth? One place is requires the reader to reason to unstated story generic or other artistic conventions. It is con- truths, and the problem is specifying the prin- ventional in some types of comedy that violent cipled basis of such a competence. blows and accidents do not have the same ser- Lewis tentatively advances a pair of pro- ious consequences they would have in the posals for the analysis of fictional truth. One, actual world or in other kinds of fiction. The pain which Kendall L. Walton (1990) has usefully is not so bad, and recovery is swift. This blocks dubbed “the Reality Principle,” is roughly the inferences concerning the negative moral sta- idea that what is true in a fiction is what is true tus of such actions as hitting one’s friends on in our actual world, with minimal changes the head with a hammer and taking delight required to accommodate what the storyteller in the fool’s misfortune. Yet not every fiction in the fiction explicitly relates as known fact. This having determinate, comprehensible contents proposal may seem to work for realist fiction, falls squarely within a single genre having well- but is hopeless as an analysis of fictional truth established story-constitutive conventions. in general. As John Heinz observes (1979: 85), What is more, the very classification of fictions inferences about what is implicitly true and in genres could require independent recognition false in some fictions require premises incom- of what is true and false in the story. If I have patible with our beliefs about the actual world to know whether the consequences are seri- (as when the spaceship must be traveling ously harmful in order to say whether the faster than the speed of light, yet the narrator fiction is genuinely comic, I cannot first help does not explicitly present us with an alterna- myself to comic conventions in order to identify tive physics). Knowing which actual world the story’s content. There is also the related beliefs to revise or delete is another problem. question of saying how genres get started. If Should Oxford be deleted to make room for someone needs to know the generic conven- Christminster, or does the latter figure in the tions in order to devise or understand a fiction worlds of the story as a third venerable British having determinate content, how could the site of learning? It would seem inappropriate to first instance of the genre ever be created or import scads of irrelevant beliefs about the understood? actual world into every fiction. Interpretative intentionalism is another family Lewis’s other analysis hinges on a different of approaches to the topic. “Constructivist” way of amplifying the storyteller’s explicit indi- proposals in this vein are based on the idea cations. Instead of importing beliefs about the that given a text created by some actual actual world wholesale, the interpreter draws on author, it is the intentions of an interpreter- what was mutually believed about the actual constructed “author” that determine fictional world in the community within which the content. To figure out what is true in a fiction, fiction originated. According to some such the reader is to take the text (interpreted stand- belief systems, magic really works, and such ardly given relevant linguistic conventions)

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fiction, truth in and augment its content by including pro- especially salient, since it is uptake of authorial positions intended by an interpreter-constructed irony that warrants recognition that a proposi- “author.” The interpreter’s construction of this tion asserted by the narrator may be false in authorial persona (variously named the “pos- the fiction. tulated,” “fictional,” “hypothetical,” or “ideal” One outstanding issue among “actual inten- author) is guided by evidentiary strictures speci- tionalists” concerns the nature of the success fied by the philosopher. For example, William conditions on the realization of intended Tolhurst (1979) proposes that it is the actual fictional content, as it is implausible to think that author whose intentions determine what artist’s semantic intentions infallibly determine kinds of evidence are relevant to the reader’s the content of the finished work. One idea construction of the “hypothetical author’s” (Livingston 2005) is that intended imaginings intended fictional content. In other words, it is are part of what is true in the fiction only the author who decides what should count as when they mesh or are integrated with the a suitably “informed” interpreter. In another coherence-constitutive rhetorical structures constructivist proposal, the interpreter’s evid- of the text or display. Another proposal is entiary base in constructing an authorial per- Robert Stecker’s (2005) view that there must in sona is selected in function of the goal of principle be evidence indicative of intended making a work the contents of which enhance fictional content if that content is to be part the work’s value. Unlike the actual author, the of the work’s actual meaning. More generally, constructed author has infallible intentions. intentionalism allows us to recognize that An objection to all constructivist proposals is authors can flexibly draw on various sources as that once it has been recognized that the text they select content-constitutive assumptions alone underdetermines fictional content, it is and patterns of reasoning in creating a fiction. hard to see why any particular set of evidentiary Those sources include convictions about the restrictions on the construction of an author- actual world as well as devices specific to artis- ial model should be accepted. Why not use tic genres and conventions, historically remote diaries, letters, or websites indicative of the systems of belief, alternative psychological actual author’s plans and intentions, whether theories and value schemes, or creative recom- or not the actual author intended for the audi- binations of any of the above. ence to use such evidence? For example, why should interpreters consult Hardy’s wishes in See also literature; cognitive value of art; deciding whether to study his private corres- fiction, nature of; fictional entities; pondence for clues about how he conceived of implied author; intention and interpreta- Sue Brideshead’s sexuality? Why should critics tion; “intentional fallacy”; interpreta- not pursue the goal of trying to understand tion; meaning constructivism; truth in art. the actual author, using all available evidence bibliography to that end? Currie, Gregory. 1990. The Nature of Fiction. Many philosophers (e.g., MacDonald 1954; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wolterstorff 1980; Currie 1990) reckon that Davies, David. 2007. Aesthetics and Literature. it is the intentions of the actual author (or London: Continuum. authors) that make the difference between Heinz, John. 1979. “Reference and Inference in fiction and nonfiction. Roughly, the idea is Fiction,” Poetics, 8, 85–99. that to make fiction is to imagine that such Kirkham, Richard L. 1992. Theories of Truth: and such is the case and to invite others to A Critical Introduction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. do the same, providing props (such as a text, Lamarque, Peter. Fictional Points of View. Ithaca: performance, or audiovisual display) to that Cornell University Press. end. Some philosophers also reckon that if the Lewis, David K. 1978. “Truth in Fiction,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 15, 37–46. text or other prop is successfully designed and Livingston, Paisley. 2005. Art and Intention. Oxford: created, the actual author’s choices and inten- Clarendon. tions help constitute fictional truth. Fictions MacDonald, Margaret. 1954. “The Language of in which the narrator is unreliable make the Fiction,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, importance of recourse to authorial intention supp. vol. 27, 165–84.

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Pavel, Thomas. 1986. Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, true, just as “Hamlet killed Homer Simpson” MA: Harvard University Press. is false. Rossholm, Göram. To Be and Not to Be: On Interpreta- Third, how are emotional responses to non- tion, Iconicity, and Fiction. Bern: Peter Lang. existent objects possible? What do I respond to? Stecker, Robert. 2003. Interpretation and Construc- And how can I feel pity for Little Nell or fear tion: Art, Speech, and the Law. Oxford: Blackwell. of Hannibal Lecter, when I know that no one Stecker, Robert. 2005. Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: An Introduction. Lanham: Rowman & is actually dying or in danger? Emotions, like Littlefield. thoughts, have intentional objects, and also Tolhurst, William. 1979. “On What a Text Is and How seem to be belief-dependent (e.g., the difference It Means,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 19, 3–14. between my envying Fred and my being jealous Walton, Kendall L. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe: of him – my behavior and raw feelings may be On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. the same – is that I believe Fred possesses what Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. is rightfully mine). Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 1980. Worlds and Works of Art. Fourth, talk about nonexistent objects appears New York: Oxford University Press. to violate a rule of elementary logic. According paisley livingston to the existential generalization rule, if Gordon Brown is a Labour politician, then there is something that is a Labour politician. If I think, fictional entities Among artworks there are then there is something that thinks. And so stories told by storytellers in words or in pictures, on. Fictions, it seems, break this rule: Harry or acted out on stage or film. We call some Potter is a boy wizard even though there is “fiction,” some “history”; what distinguishes nothing that is a boy wizard. these? One answer is: the teller of a fictional Despite these difficulties, several philosophers story creates imaginary characters, events, have argued for nonexistent objects. Broadly and places – Madame Bovary, the War of the speaking, there are two rival philosophical Worlds, and Lilliput – whereas the historian approaches to discourse about fictional char- describes actual people, events, and places. acters, events, and places. The realist about But imaginary objects, it seems, do not exist, and fiction takes sentences such as “Hamlet killed so this answer raises difficult philosophical his stepfather” more or less at face value: problems. the name “Hamlet” (or the whole sentence) First, how can we think about entities that are picks out some entity. The canonical realist not there to be thought of? This is one of the is Alexius Meinong, who notoriously wrote problems of intentionality (the “aboutness” of in 1904, “There are objects of which it mental representation). That we can think is true that there are no such objects” about the imaginary Madame Bovary is a par- (1960: 83). ticular problem for contemporary “naturalistic” In contrast, the reductionist aims to “analyze theories of intentionality, which aim to explain away” such sentences: “Hamlet killed his step- thought in terms of relations between physical father” looks like (i.e., is grammatically similar objects. to) the sentence “Henry VIII killed his second Second, how can names that do not refer to wife,” but in fact is used to make a (logically) anything be meaningful, or sentences contain- different claim. The canonical reductionist is ing such names be true? If what gives my Bertrand Russell, for whom Meinong’s theory name meaning is the fact it labels or points to lacked a “robust sense of reality” (1919: 170). me, how can the name “Hamlet,” which does According to Russell, “There is only one world, not label or point to anything, have meaning? the “real” world: Shakespeare’s imagination This is the problem of empty reference. If is part of it, and the thoughts that he had in “Hamlet” is meaningless, then the sentence writing Hamlet are real . . . But it is of the very “Hamlet killed his stepfather” fails to express essence of fiction that only the thoughts, feel- a complete thought, and so cannot be true. ings, etc., in Shakespeare and his reader are real, (Also, this sentence fails to express a different and that there is not, in addition to them, an thought from “Polonius killed his stepfather.”) objective Hamlet” (1919: 169). Meinong said Yet intuitively “Hamlet killed his stepfather” is that this type of view exhibits a “prejudice in

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fictional entities favor of the actual” (1960: 78) – for Russell, only accounts of “negation” (so the round square the actual is real. can without contradiction be both round and One problem for Meinong’s thesis that there nonround); a distinction between “existence- are nonexistent objects is that it appears entailing” and “nonexistence-entailing” prop- to generate a contradiction, and (in classical erties (so the round square can be round, and logic) we can prove anything from a contra- even existent, although it does not exist – and diction. (Russell said: “[H]owever hot the Sherlock Holmes both live in London and be a flames of Hell may become, I will never so fictional character); or a distinction in “modes degrade my logical being as to accept a con- of predication” (Gordon Brown, but not Sherlock tradiction” (1954: 34).) Consider a fiction Holmes, really has the property of living in about a round square. According to Meinong, London). Other neo-Meinongians have argued it is plainly true that, in thinking of the round for the possibility of true contradictions. square, I am thinking about a nonexistent However, outside the formal machinery, (because impossible) object that is nevertheless what exactly are these nonexistent objects both round and square. Russell replied: if so, (and the proposed properties and modes of then it is plainly true that, in thinking about predication) – and how many are there? Some the existent round square, I am thinking about theorists come close to saying that nonexis- a nonexistent object that is round, square, tents are sets of properties (e.g., Hamlet is the and exists! Meinong (according to Russell) set of properties that in Shakespeare’s play are attempted to avoid this contradiction by saying: attributed to the man named “Hamlet”), but it the existent round square is existent but does seems that sets exist. (Sets are also abstract not exist. Russell said he could see no difference. entities, which is a problem for Meinongians On Russell’s own theory, the fictional name who claim that Hamlet is a concrete object “Hamlet” is shorthand for a (definite) descrip- like you or me.) The formal machinery itself is tion – for example, “the Danish prince who puzzling: if the round square is both round and said ‘To be, or not to be, that is the question nonround, can “nonround” mean the same as . . .’.” When we say “Hamlet killed his step- “not round”? And even if we can make sense father,” we are claiming: there exists one (and of nonexistents, if no fictional character exists, only one) Danish prince who said “To be, or not to what is the difference between Hamlet and be . . .” and that prince killed his stepfather. With- Lucianus (in Shakespeare’s play one is a out postulating nonexistent objects, “Hamlet flesh-and-blood prince and the other a fictional killed his stepfather” is meaningful (because character)? Moreover, how can a storyteller the italicized sentence is meaningful) and create objects that do not exist? On the other “Hamlet does not exist” is true (since nothing hand, if, as some contemporary realists claim, fitting the description exists). However, dif- these objects do exist, what makes them ficulties remain. Which features should we fictional? include in the description of “Hamlet”? On A possible worlds analysis of truth in fiction Russell’s theory, if some actual person fitting (e.g., Lewis 1983) can in principle be either Hamlet’s description killed his stepfather, realist or reductionist (depending on our view “Hamlet killed his stepfather” would be true, but of “possible worlds” talk). On this theory, “In the independently of Shakespeare’s play – and in this Conan Doyle fictions, Holmes is a detective” case “Hamlet does not exist” would be false. is true if and only if the sentence “Holmes is Moreover, unless some actual person does a detective” is true in the world(s) of the behave like Hamlet, “Hamlet killed his step- fiction. The “In the . . . fiction” prefix respects our father” is false. Intuitively, these outcomes are intuition that fictions are cut off from reality incorrect. (even if the actual 221B Baker Street was a Modern Meinongians (e.g., Parsons 1995; Chinese restaurant, Holmes did not live in a Zalta 2003) make various technical moves, Chinese restaurant) and the notion of the aiming to avoid Russell’s objections. These “world(s)” of a fiction allows background include: a distinction between two senses of truths in fiction that are not explicitly stated “are” in “There are objects of which it is true (although Conan Doyle did not say so, Holmes that there are no such objects”; nonstandard did not have two heads). However, problems

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fictional entities remain. If the background of a fiction is deter- psychological states. According to the fictionalist, mined by the actual world, is it true in the if I imagine being an observer of a real Hamlet, Sherlock Holmes stories that Blackwell pub- and this observer is herself imagining being lished A Companion to Aesthetics in 2009? Hamlet, I actually experience off-line versions Since there is no possible world in which con- of a real Hamlet’s beliefs and emotions.) Some tradictions are true, how can it be true (in realists postulate impossible worlds. Other the- Le Voyageur Imprudent) that a man travels back orists provide combination realist-reductionist in time and prevents his own birth? (Some accounts, or use “deflationist” approaches (e.g., theorists assume that impossible fictions are Proudfoot & Copeland 2002). Analyzing talk few or peripheral, but many important fictions about fiction remains an important challenge are impossible (Proudfoot 2006). And, since in for contemporary philosophy. the fiction Sherlock Holmes exists, what makes “Sherlock Holmes does not exist” true? See also literature; emotion; fiction, the Some modern reductionists (e.g., Evans paradox of responding to; fiction, truth in; 1982; Walton 1990; Brock, 2002) propose imagination; walton. fictionalist theories: Shakespeare’s audience merely pretends or makes believe that things bibliography are as they seem – for example, that “Hamlet” Brock, Stuart. 2002. “Fictionalism about Fictional refers, “Hamlet killed his stepfather” is mean- Characters,” Noûs, 36, 1–21. ingful and true, and there is a “world” of the Currie, Gregory. 1995. “Imagination and Simulation: play. I make believe (when watching the film) Aesthetics Meets Cognitive Science.” In Mental that I see Hannibal Lecter kill his victim; when Simulation: Evaluations and Applications. M. Davies my heart races (this natural reaction is a “prop” & T. Stone (eds.). Oxford: Blackwell, 151–69. in an open-ended “game of make-believe” Evans, Gareth. 1982. The Varieties of Reference. based upon the film), I make believe that I am Oxford: Clarendon. afraid. “I am afraid” is make-believedly true, Everett, Anthony & Hofweber, Thomas (eds.). although actually false. 2000. Empty Names, Fiction, and the Puzzles of Nonexistence. Stanford: CSLI. Fictionalism, however, raises more ques- Lewis, David K. 1983. “Truth in Fiction.” In tions. If the name “Hamlet” is meaningless, how Philosophical Papers, vol. i. New York: Oxford can the sentence “Hamlet killed his stepfather” University Press, 261–80. express even a “make-believe” thought? What Meinong, Alexius. 1960 [1904]. “The Theory of is it for a sentence to be “make-believedly Objects.” In Realism and the Background of true”? Why, when my heart races, do I pretend Phenomenology. R. M. Chisholm (ed.). I. Levi, I am afraid – rather than believe I am having D. B. Terrell, & R. M. Chisholm (trans.). London: a heart attack? To answer these questions, Allen & Unwin, 76–117. fictionalists introduce such technical notions Nichols, Shaun (ed.). 2006. The Architecture of the as: “quasi-information” (the content of the Imagination: New Essays on Pretence, Possibility, and Fiction. Oxford: Clarendon. empty name “Hamlet”) and “make-belief” (my Parsons, Terence. 1995. “Meinongian Semantics psychological attitude to fictional stories); an Generalized,” Grazer Philosophische Studien, 50, “In the . . . make-believe” prefix, with a formal 145–61. notation and rules; and “quasi-fear” (my re- Proudfoot, Diane. 2006. “Possible Worlds sponse to a horror movie). However, often these Semantics and Fiction,” Journal of Philosophical notions are merely programmatic; fictionalists Logic, 35, 9–40. assume that we already understand what it Proudfoot, Diane & Copeland, B. Jack. 2002. is to “suspend disbelief” or think “within the “Wittgenstein’s Deflationary Account of Reference,” scope of a pretense.” Language and Communication, 22(3), 331–51. Recently some fictionalists have added simu- Russell, Bertrand. 1919. Introduction to Mathemat- ical Philosophy. London: Allen & Unwin. lation theory, with the associated psychological Russell, Bertrand. 1954. “The Metaphysician’s research (e.g., Currie 1995). (Using simulation Nightmare.” In Nightmares of Eminent Persons. theory, to know what another person thinks London: Bodley Head, 31–5. or feels, I imagine being that person; I actually Thomasson, Amie. 1999. Fiction and Metaphysics. experience “off-line” versions of his or her Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Walton, Kendall L. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe: What, then, is forgery? At its core lies decep- On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. tion: producing something with the intention Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. that it pass as other than it is – either as an indi- Walton, Kendall L. 1997. “Spelunking, Simulation, vidual, or as a member of a kind. Now, decoy and Slime: On Being Moved by Fiction.” In ducks are intended to deceive in this second way, Emotion and the Arts. M. Hjort & S. Laver (eds.). but they are not forgeries of ducks. A deceptive Oxford: Oxford University Press, 37–49. Zalta, Edward N. 2003. “Referring to Fictional duck, however lifelike, and who- or whatever Characters,” Dialectica, 57(2), 243–54. (other ducks, bird-watchers, duck-breeders) it is intended to fool, while it might be a fake diane proudfoot duck, will not count as a forgery of one. Why? What condition on forgery is the phony duck doomed not to meet? The answer cannot be film see motion pictures. that only artifacts can be forged, for we can raise the same question for a “decoy” door: a trompe- forgery raises various questions concerning l’oeil painting of a door is intended to deceive, the nature and value of the arts. I divide them yet it too will not be a forgery of a door, but at into three. most a fake one. Nor can it be that a forged F cannot be a representation of an F – at least not what is forgery, and where is it possible? until we are convinced that forged banknotes The forgeries that come naturally to mind are do not count as representations of them. fraudulent copies of individual paintings or Rather, I suggest, the concept of forgery sculptures. However, historically most forgery requires a particular sort of practice to be in in the visual arts involves a modern original place, one in which we value items at least in posing as an instance of an earlier type. Van part for their origin in a particular agent. The Meegeren and Bastianini did not copy existing agent might be an individual, as in the case of Vermeers and works by the school of Donatello, a signature; a group, as with the paintings of a but passed off their own works as previously particular school; or an institution, as in the case undiscovered pieces by those masters. Here the of banknotes, passports, and other official docu- type is already recognized – however seriously ments. The item’s origin might play a greater the addition of these false examples threatens or smaller role in explaining why the thing is of to weaken our understanding of it. In yet other value to us. In the case of official documents, cases, the type itself might be invented, as their originating where they do more or less when forgery is of the entire oeuvre of a ficti- secures that they will perform the tasks we tious, or long lost, artist. want them to (e.g., getting us into other coun- At least some types of forgery are also found tries); in the case of paintings and the like, we in all the other arts. Perhaps literature and presumably care about their origin because we music do not allow for forging an individual think that feature will bring others we care work. Anyone reproducing the text or notes about (such as artistic merit) in its train. has, arguably, merely produced a fresh inscrip- So a forgery is a work produced or altered with tion of the original novel or another perform- the intention that it pass for some other indi- ance of the original piece. Musical and literary vidual or as belonging to some type, where manuscripts might be forged, but works cannot there is a practice of valuing such things in be. But type forgeries are certainly possible in part as the product of a certain agent. Success- these arts. James MacPherson faked a set of ful forgeries are those where the intention to mis- poems by Ossian in his “translations” from the lead is itself successful. This definition has two Gaelic bard, and we can at least imagine some- consequences. First, for any forgery it is always one offering her own compositions as Sibelius’s possible that there be a nonfraudulent copy – (unwritten) atonal symphonies. Nor is forgery something as like (or unlike) the original as the by any means confined to the fine arts. Its forgery, but not intended to mislead anybody. targets have included furniture, coins, stamps, Second, forgeries need not resemble their ori- weapons, costumes, and carpets, to name but ginals. Sometimes there will be no relevant indi- a few (Arnau 1961). vidual for them to resemble (think of the atonal

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forgery works by Sibelius). But even when there is, Desmoiselles D’Avignon is not separately startling the forgery might bear little relation to it. Since looking and a radical challenge to the tradition we have scant idea how the statue of Zeus of the group portrait. Its startling quality lies at Olympia looked, someone might produce in part in what it does to that tradition. For sure, a successful forgery of it however thin the one will not see that unless one knows some- resemblance between the two. thing of that tradition. Indeed, extensive expo- sure to other group portraits, by Van Dyck, the perfect copy Hals, and nineteenth-century academicians, Let us concentrate on forgeries in art. Although might be needed. But for someone suitably forgeries need not be like their originals, they acculturated, the revolution Les Demoiselles might be. What then? What, in particular, if a effects is there to be seen. Does this render its forgery of an individual artwork were so good value aesthetic? It certainly seems to involve the that no one could tell it and the original apart? very elements (innovation, reflection on tradi- Could the two nonetheless differ in their value tion, etc.) taken to define artistic value. If artis- as art (Goodman 1969)? Although this question tic value too can be experienced, then perhaps could be asked about a nonfraudulent copy, the sharp distinction above is not needed for the forgery dramatizes it nicely. For, on the meeting the dilemma. one hand, how can the two not differ, given that The alternative is to accept that all the value one might be a sublime artistic achievement, of art shows up in experience, while freeing such as Picasso’s Les Demoiselles D’Avignon; the experience from the limits of discrimination. other merely a slavish reproduction? Yet, on the How you experience a work (how it looks, other hand, how can the two differ? For surely sounds, or reads to you) is not simply a matter the value of art lies in the experiences to which of what you can distinguish it from. It also it gives rise. And surely the two works, being turns on the “cognitive stock” (Wollheim 1987) indistinguishable, give rise to precisely the you bring to bear: your knowledge of the work same experiences. and the tradition from which it comes, your One influential response to this dilemma is to habits and aptitudes in (say) looking at paint- distinguish two kinds of value a work of art ings, the visual culture in which you have might possess (Lessing 1965). Aesthetic value is been raised. Being told that these are the Van indeed bound up with experience. The two Meegerens, these the Vermeers, will make certain works can no more differ aesthetically than features of each salient to you, as the key like- identical twins can differ in how handsome nesses within a group and differences between they are. But the value of works as art does not them. Paintings that once looked strikingly reduce to their aesthetic merit: they also have alike can thus come to look radically different. artistic value. That is a matter of their con- Again, viewers looking at Van Meegerens tributing to the tradition – of Japanese landscape now may be struck by features that, as visual painting, piano music, epic poetry, or what- “ticks” of the forgeries’ time, largely escaped con- ever – to which they belong. Artistic value is temporary viewers – features that the real about creativity and innovation, about reflect- Vermeers lack. These examples concern type ing on the achievements of other artists and forgeries. They help explain how pictures that adapting, incorporating, reacting to, or reject- now look so unlike Vermeers might have been ing them. It essentially involves the history of taken, even by leading experts, for them. But the the art form. As such, it often eludes our points carry over to our present concern, the way senses. We cannot see that in Les Demoiselles we experience a perfect copy and its original. Picasso broke, decisively and for the first time, How something looks depends on the thoughts, with the Western tradition of the group portrait. knowledge, and experience of other works one Its being innovative in that way is not therefore can bring to bear. If we bring knowledge of an aspect of its aesthetic value. But it is part of their origins, and the right contrast and com- its value as art, nonetheless: a value the copy, parison classes, to bear on the two works, we as merely imitative, does not share. may thus experience the original differently However, it is not clear that we can neatly from the forgery. And this, even though we divide the value of art in this way. Les remain unable to tell the two apart.

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This response to the dilemma has proved the former that is not equally a reason to pre- popular. However, as it stands it is only the serve the latter? The key experience may only beginning of a reply. First, the challenge was be veridical before the Picasso, but the fake to say how the two works differ in value, given would seem just as useful as a prop for induc- that they cannot be told apart. Being told that ing that experience. Thus even if the two differ they can be experienced differently helps only in value as art, we may wonder whether that if that reflects the differing value of the objects thought, in the form in which we have preserved experienced. But, quite generally, thought can it, connects in the right way with what we affect how we experience things without reflect- have reason to do. ing their nature. If some comedian prompts me to hear humorous English sentences in the is forgery bad art? lines of an Italian opera, that shows nothing Forging is wrong – or so at least the sanctions about the artistic value of the aria. Why against it suggest. But it does not follow that the should my ability to see the forgery one way, the wrongness is artistic, rather than ethical; let original another, be any more revealing alone that the wrongness of the act infects (Radford 1978)? The question bites especially its product, the forgery itself, with an artistic hard when we remember that either experi- defect. So is forgery bad as art? Does a forgery ence is possible before either work: we merely necessarily lack artistic value? (Since we need to approach the forgery thinking it to be have set aside the distinction between artistic the original, or vice versa. What, then, makes and aesthetic value, by “artistic value” I simply one experience the right way to see the original, mean value as art, whatever that turns out the other the right way to see the forgery? to be.) Nelson Goodman is among the few to face this Any deficiency here might lie in forgery’s question. His answer is that what makes each lacking an artistic virtue, or its possessing an experience appropriate to just one of the pair is artistic vice. The obvious candidate for the that by experiencing them thus we open the way missing virtue is originality, in the sense of to being able to distinguish them one day creative novelty. Les Demoiselles might be (1969: ch. 3). The works differ in value now, groundbreakingly original, but a forgery of it can even for those (and that, we are supposing, is hardly be. (It could at most be groundbreaking everyone) who cannot currently distinguish as forgery, in terms of the techniques, etc. them. The two experiences reflect that value. But used, not as art.) Not that all forgery necessar- their claim to do so turns on the fact that, see- ily lacks originality. Our hypothetical atonal ing the one as a forgery, and so belonging with symphonies “by” Sibelius might break ground Van Meegerens, Bastianinis, and the like; the in many ways. But at least some kinds of other as Les Demoiselles, and so belonging with forgery will necessarily lack this virtue, and the rest of Picasso’s output, will lead to our other kinds will perhaps be unlikely to possess eventually being able to tell the two apart. But it, even if they are not excluded from doing so. what, we may wonder, if we never come to dis- Perhaps mere lack of virtue will seem criminate the fake from the original? What if the insufficient: intuitively, if forgery is bad at all as copy is so good that no one ever could tell the art, it is so seriously so that it must manifest some two apart? Goodman has various things to say vice. If so, we might look for that vice in the in reply (1969: 106–8), but few have found strong parallel forgery bears to other forms of them compelling. deception, and in particular lying. (The wrong- We may do better simply to appeal to the facts ness of lying is presumably ethical, but for here. We should see the forgery as a forgery, the all that the comparison might be useful.) There Picasso as a Picasso, simply because that is is controversy over what exactly is wrong how things really are (Hopkins 2005). But with lying. Crudely put, views divide into those even if that reply is found adequate, a second that consider it a crime against trust, and difficulty looms. It remains the case that either those that consider it a crime against truth experience could be had before either work. Is (Macintyre 1967). On the latter account it there any reason, then, to look at the original, involves a sort of corruption of the central rather than the copy; or any reason to preserve function of language, that of conveying truth.

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It may be that we can make sense of some- Lessing, Alfred. 1965. “What is Wrong with a thing analogous in the case of forgery. Forgery?” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Suppose we thought that one central function 23, 461–72. of art was to express the emotions, thoughts, Macintyre, Alasdair. 1967. Secularization and Moral and other states of mind of its maker. Forgery Change: The Riddell Memorial Lectures 1964. seems ill-suited to do this. Not that every form Oxford: Oxford University Press. Radford, Colin. 1978. “Fakes,” Mind, 87, 66–76. of forgery is absolutely incapable of it. Forger- Wollheim, Richard. 1987. Painting as an Art. ies of new specimens of old types, or of new types, London: Thames & Hudson. might manage it. Forgeries of individual art- works that are very little like their originals robert hopkins may also do so (think of the statue of Zeus). But when the individual work that has been forged is known, the forgery will certainly be blocked formalism is primarily a view about what it from expressing its maker’s feelings: even if the takes to determine the aesthetic characteristics forger happens to share the states of mind the or features or properties of things. Which char- original expressed, his work is not expressive of acteristics are aesthetic? “Aesthetic” is an elas- those states of mind as a result of his feeling tic term. One approach to giving it a sense is them. And while other kinds of forgery might simply to give a list of examples of the kind of express their maker’s attitudes, the chances of features that are aesthetic: beauty, ugliness, their doing so seem slim. Too many other pres- daintiness, dumpiness, elegance, and so on. A sures are at work, dictated by the intention to more ambitious approach is to say that the list deceive. Thus, as a whole forgery seems destined of aesthetic characteristics is nonarbitrary in to forsake what we are supposing to be a cen- virtue of a crucial role that beauty and ugliness tral function of art. To that extent, its products play: other characteristics, such as, elegance, are are fated to stand as corruptions of the project ways of being beautiful or ugly. Either way, it of art itself. They would be a crime against art, is clear that works of art have many nonaesthetic somewhat as lying is (on some views) a crime characteristics, and nature has many aes- against truth. That, I take it, would be an artis- thetic characteristics. (Formalism is sometimes tic defect, and a serious one. thought of as a view of the nature of art, but that Of course, defending such a view requires us is probably because a view about aesthetic to defend a rather old-fashioned conception of characteristics is conjoined with an aesthetic art. Nonetheless, if the badness of forgery lies in view of the nature of art.) any substantial artistic vice at all, this would seem to be the best place to look for it. formal and nonformal properties Now, what of formal aesthetic characteristics? See also conservation and restoration; ex- These are a subclass of the aesthetic ones. pression theory; function of art; ontology of Rather than offering a definition, we can gain artworks; originality; senses and art, the. an indication of which aesthetic properties they are by considering debates over various bibliography art forms. Arnau, Frank. 1961. The Art of the Faker: Three Clive Bell (1914) and Roger Fry (1920) Thousand Years of Deception. J. Maxwell Brownjohn thought that formal aesthetic features of paint- (trans.). Boston: Little, Brown. ings are those that are determined by the lines, Danto, Arthur C. 1981. The Transfiguration of the shapes, and colors that are within the frame. Commonplace. London: Harvard University Press. By contrast, the meaning and representational Dutton, Denis (ed.). 1983. The Forger’s Art: Forgery characteristics of paintings are not entirely and the Philosophy of Art. Berkeley: University of determined by what is in the frame but also California Press. Goodman, Nelson. 1969. Languages of Art. 2nd edn. by the work’s history of production. What a Oxford: Oxford University Press. painting means or represents is determined in Hopkins, Robert. 2005. “Aesthetics, Experience part by the intentions of the person who made and Discrimination,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art it (Wollheim 1980, 1987). Such intentions are Criticism, 63, 119–33. not sufficient, but they are necessary for the

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formalism meanings or representational properties of cloak. There is a sense in which it has an ABA paintings. Thus meaning and representation structure and a sense in which it has an AAB are not formally relevant. The aesthetic for- structure. But note that the AAB structure is for- malist about paintings believes that all their mal in the previous sense that it is determined aesthetic properties are formal; they are all by what is in the frame – by the lines, shapes, determined solely by what is in the frame and and colors on the surface – while the ABA not at all by their history of production. By “structural form” is determined by what they contrast, the antiformalist about paintings represent (king or bishop), and on most plaus- believes that all their aesthetic properties are ible views that structure is not determined just determined in part by their history of produc- by the lines, shapes, and colors that are in the tion. Sometimes antiformalists appeal to the frame, but is determined in part by the artist’s context of interpretative practices in which intention. So the sense of form as structure works are embedded, instead of their history of does not overlap with the sense of form as the production, or they invoke some combination determination of aesthetic features by what is of interpretative practices and history of pro- in the frame. Let us put structural form to one duction, or some other extrinsic factor. I shall side here, interesting though it is. assume, however, that antiformalists insist on the aesthetic importance of the history of pro- formalism versus antiformalism duction of works. Antiformalists say that in order to appreciate a Eduard Hanslick claimed that musical work of art aesthetically we must always see that beauty was determined by structures of sound work as historically situated. Aesthetic antifor- (1986: ch. 3). On this view, even if music some- malism, with its emphasis on historical deter- times has meanings, they are of no relevance to mination, has its roots in Hegelian history and its formal aesthetic properties. The emotions philosophy of culture (Kulturgeschichte) that leading a musician or composer to make was popular in prewar Germany and Austria. music, and the emotions generated in listeners This was imported to English-speaking coun- are formally irrelevant. In a performance of a tries by refugees from Nazism becoming very piece of classical music, for example, the influential in English-speaking art history, and “frame” around the sounds that determines beyond. Consider Ernst Gombrich’s bestselling formal aesthetic properties is the tapping of The Story of Art (1950). The antiformalism is the conductor’s baton and the applause (Cone right there in the title! The idea became com- 1968). That structure of sounds determines monplace that the aesthetic value and even the formal properties of the music. Anything out- the identity of a work of art depend on its place side that, such as the history of production of in the story of art. Contrast Bell, the formalist, the sounds or their emotional causes or effects, who writes “what does it matter whether the is aesthetically irrelevant. forms that move [us] were created in Paris the day before yesterday or in Babylon fifty centuries form as structure ago?” (1914: 45–6). There is another sense of form and formal Gottlob Frege famously said that a word properties that has currency – especially in has meaning only in the context of a sentence reflections on literature, but also in music, (1967), and similarly most aestheticians architecture, and painting – and that is of form would assert that the elements of a work have as structure. This is a matter of the arrangement significance only in the context of the whole of the elements of a work with respect to each work. W. V. O. Quine equally famously said other. Consider three cards arranged in a line: that a sentence has meaning only in the con- the six of hearts, the six of spades, and the text of other sentences of the language (1951), seven of hearts. There is a sense in which they and similarly aesthetic antiformalists assert have an ABA structure, and another in which that a work has aesthetic significance only in they have and AAB structure. Perhaps they the context of other works in the tradition in have both. Now consider a painting with three which the work is located. Aesthetic formalists human figures in a line: a king in a red cloak, deny this and insist that works sustain their a bishop in a red cloak, and a king in a blue aesthetic properties by themselves. (There was

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formalism a similar debate, conducted in different terms, critical engagement with works of art in vari- in the Renaissance: see Mitrovic 2004.) ous art forms. Here it is worth transgressing Antiformalists believe that all aesthetic disciplinary boundaries. This need not mean properties are historically determined and that the vacuous kind of “interdisciplinarity” that is aesthetic judgments should always be made, mere deference to the apparent authority of and experiences always had, in the light of another discipline (so as to avoid the authority appropriate historical categories (Walton 1970). of one’s own!). It can be an active engagement Formalists deny this. Antiformalists charge with the subject matter of both disciplines with formalists with a naive belief in the “innocent whatever genres of intellectual thought are eye” according to which knowledge of history available (so long as the disciplines really do is irrelevant to the aesthetic appreciation. engage with the subject matter, rather than Formalists celebrate the innocent eye, prefer- being an excuse for undisciplined philosophy). ring it to one cluttered with irrelevances. It is likely that the issue or issues over for- Innocence is sometimes a good thing, they say. malism needs to be discussed art form by art form; there may be no one correct view that arguments? applies universally. And even within art forms, What can be said in favor of either view? In favor it may be that no general theory is right. of antiformalism, Gombrich put forward an imaginary example of physically identical works moderate formalism by different artists and invited us to judge that Both formalism and antiformalism have some- they are aesthetically different (Gombrich thing to be said for them, and yet both also seem 1959: 313). Philosophers like Danto (1964) too extreme. A possible middle course is what and Walton (1970) followed suit. Such argu- we might call “moderate formalism” (Zangwill ments are supposed to show that a work’s 2001). On this view, many aesthetic properties physical nature does not suffice for its aesthetic are formal and many are not; and many works properties and that history also plays a role. But have only formal properties and many do not the appeal to imaginary examples has limited have only formal properties. Moderate formal- dialectical efficacy. Fanciful thought experi- ism admits some, and indeed many nonformal ments – sometimes involving Martians – are properties of works. For example, marching supposed to generate possible examples of music or religious music is music with a non- physically identical artworks with different musical function; it is music for marching or aesthetic properties; but whether such cases praying; but the way it realizes that extramu- are really possible is far from uncontroversial. sical function may be part of its aesthetic excel- The dialectical pressure exerted by such exam- lence. This is unlike music that is for shopping. ples is minimal since formalists and anti- There the question is simply “Does it make formalists will simply interpret the examples people buy more?” or perhaps “Does it make differently. Physically identical cases with dif- shopping more pleasant?” Shopping music is not ferent histories may have other interesting dif- the aesthetically appropriate expression of ferences. For example, they might differ in the activity of shopping in the way that music originality; but that difference may not con- may be the appropriate aesthetic expression tribute to a difference in their beauty, elegance, of marching or praying. Sometimes musical or delicacy – that is, it may make no aesthetic beauty arises when music serves some non- difference. Or so the formalist will say, and musical function or purpose in a musically merely imaginary examples will not sway appropriate way. The music has a certain non- them. Similarly, it is controversial whether musical function and the aesthetic qualities of being a fake makes an aesthetic difference. the music are not separate from that function Arguments for or against formalism should but are an expression, articulation, or realiza- probably be less purely philosophical and tion of it. This is what Kant calls “dependent” involve more attention to actual cases. The beauty (1928: §16). Similarly, there can be a apparently abstract metaphysical issue about representation that is beautiful, elegant, or del- what it takes to determine aesthetic properties icate as a representation, and a building may be is probably not answerable without practical beautiful as a mosque, station, or library.

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So nonformal aesthetic properties are import- Wollheim, Richard. 1987. Painting as an Art. ant. Bell, Fry, and Hanslick overshot in deny- London: Thames & Hudson. ing that. However, there are many aesthetic Zangwill, N. 2001. The Metaphysics of Beauty. properties that are purely formal, and there Ithaca: Cornell University Press. are many purely formal works. Some paintings nick zangwill are entirely abstract and quite a lot of music is “absolute.” Moreover, most representa- tional paintings have formal aesthetic features Foucault, Michel (1926–1984) French among their other aesthetic features. Extreme intellectual, historian, and social critic, profes- antiformalism, which denies the existence of sor of history of systems of thought at the formal aesthetic properties and purely formal Collège de France (1970–84). works, goes too far. Moderate formalism insists During the last three decades of his life, on the importance of both formal and non- Michel Foucault produced thought-provoking formal properties. volumes that contributed significantly to philo- sophy, psychology, sociology, historical stud- See also eighteenth-century aesthetics; ies, culture criticism, and art criticism. Their twentieth-century anglo-american aes- engaging literary style, searching detail, in- thetics; aestheticism; bell; danto; forgery; genious interpretations, and implicit social gombrich; hanslick; intention and interpre- critique have secured his influence among tation; ontological contextualism; repre- intellectuals from all walks of life. sentation; senses and art, the; walton. Foucault’s initial writings (1954 to early 1960s) address, directly or tangentially, the bibliography nature and history of mental illness and of cre- Bell, Clive. 1914. Art. London: Chatto & Windus. ative personalities who radically deviate from Cone, Edward. 1968. Musical Form and Musical the norm. Included here is his literary-critical Performance. New York: Norton. study of the eccentric French writer, Raymond Danto, Arthur C. 1964. “The Artword,” Journal of Roussel (1877–1933), who captured Foucault’s Philosophy, 61, 571–84. Frege, Gottlob. 1967. “The Thought: A Logical interest through his fascination with language Inquiry.” In Philosophical Logic. P. F. Strawson and his imaginatively intense and yet mechan- (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 17–38. ically methodical use of it. Fry, Roger. 1920. Vision and Design. London: Chatto As Foucault became a major European & Windus. intellectual during the 1960s, his interests Gombrich, Ernst. 1950. The Story of Art. London: extended to include the history of medical clin- Phaidon. ics, the history of conceptions of knowledge, Gombrich, Ernst. 1959. Art and Illusion. London: and more reflectively during the late 1960s Phaidon. and early 1970s, alternative methods of inves- Hanslick, Eduard. 1986 [1854]. On the Musically tigating history itself. Foucault’s own method Beautiful. G. Payzant (trans.). Indianapolis: Hackett. Kant, Immanuel. 1928 [1790]. Critique of Judgement. emphasizes “discourse formations,” which are J. C. Meredith (trans.). Oxford: Oxford University formal regularities between sets of objects, types Press. of statement, concepts, or thematic choices. Mitrovic, Branko. 2004. Learning from Palladio. New His parallel interests in literature, painting, York: Norton. and art criticism inform all of these studies. Quine, W. V. O. 1951. “Two Dogmas of Empiri- Foucault’s final decade highlights the themes cism.” In From a Logical Point of View. Cambridge, of power and discipline insofar as they exert a MA: Harvard University Press, 20–46. controlling factor in the formation of individual Sibley, Frank. 1959. “Aesthetic Concepts,” personalities and social institutions. Central to Philosophical Review, 68, 421–50. this period is his history of the prison system and Walton, Kendall L. 1970. “Categories of Art,” Philosophical Review, 79, 334–67. his multivolume history of sexuality, whose Wollheim, Richard. 1980. “Seeing-In, Seeing-As origins go back to his 1957 studies on the con- and Pictorial Representation.” In Art and Its cept of love in French literature, from Sade Objects. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University to Genet. In 1984, an AIDS-related illness cut Press, 205–26. short Foucault’s life as he approached the age

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foucault, michel of 58, but he was able to publish three volumes came into currency at a particular place and of his history of sexuality and begin the study time. His writings accordingly focus on the of disciplines related to self-mastery, which he processes of historical emergence and muta- referred to as “technologies of the self.” In rela- tion that give birth to such concepts, and tion to the latter he developed an “aesthetics of address themes such as madness, mental hos- existence,” described below. pitals, medical doctors as social authorities, Foucault’s initial publications on the nature styles of imprisonment, and techniques of self- and history of mental illness issued from his discipline. Foucault’s underlying assumption is diploma studies in psychopathology, his psy- that social systems, values, and practices are arti- chology teaching position at the University factual: as such, they are constructed, they of Lille, and his experiences as a psychology change, and they remain open to evaluation. assistant at both the Sainte-Anne psychiatric Impressed by the artificiality of social institutions, hospital in Paris and at the main medical facil- Foucault observed their numerous discontinu- ities of the French prison system, housed at ities with a penetrating eye. Fresnes. His homosexuality also shaped his Although Foucault did not compose a sys- outlook, for it placed him within an unpopular tematic philosophy of art, the assumption that minority group associated with sexual prac- concepts are historically constructed implies a tices that were more often than not legally pro- way to interpret those that constitute such hibited. He was also motivated to break away philosophies. We refer here to notions such as from the Marxism, phenomenology, and exis- beauty, sublimity, art, works of art, aesthetic tentialism that had grounded his education. value, aesthetic judgment, creativity, repre- These assorted experiences motivate sentation, expression, modernity, and so on. Foucault’s larger project of understanding Following Foucault’s own examples, each of in terms of a variety of psychological and these can be analyzed historically to reveal historical dimensions, how different societies how and when the concept emerged, and to treat their minority members. One of his key intimate that the contemporary use of this or questions is how the prevailing social evalu- that concept holds only for the time being and ations of the mentally ill, the unemployed, will either transform or fade away “like a lepers, and eccentric members of a society face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea,” as he in general, establish their legitimacy. In the states concerning “man” at the conclusion of course of answering this question throughout The Order of Things (1973a). Foucault’s essay his oeuvre, he often refers to artists and their “What is an Author?” (1969) provides a fur- work, not simply because their productions ther example by characterizing “the author” as represent the themes he is discussing but an ideological product and as a function of a because artists themselves have a reputation for style of discourse that was once not present often being rebellious social critics and out- and that can and does change. Like people, casts. Aesthetics-related concepts also inspire Foucault regards concepts as having finite life- Foucault’s writings, since the notions of times that come into and go out of fashion. “artifactuality,” “creativity,” and “technique” In a more selective, piecemeal manner, underpin his main theses about the nature of Foucault also rhetorically utilizes references to historical change. works of art to introduce and illustrate the With respect to this last point, a leading and respective themes of his manuscripts. These recurring assertion is that what seems to be are usually masterpieces of fine art, but he timelessly true, essential, and eternally pat- sometimes mentions those that, independent terned, is in fact the upshot of arbitrary strands of their artistic quality, represent the spirit of of happenings that have coalesced – periodically the times. In the first chapter of Madness and with dramatic speed – into a particular social Civilization (1965), for instance, he invokes the system, set of values, practices, attitudes, or allegory of the Ship of Fools (e.g., as painted by common assumptions. Foucault observes, for Hieronymus Bosch (1490–1500), but which example, that concepts such as the “author” or appears also in woodcuts and in literature) “man” (human being) were not always promin- to encapsulate his claim – often challenged – ent within the socially prevailing discourse, but that mentally deficient individuals were treated

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foucault, michel with a greater measure of humanity and free- works expressing the idea of an emptiness dom during the 1400s and 1500s, in contrast situated at the edge of language which, when to the dehumanizing incarcerations they suffered met, undermines already ossified forms of speech in later centuries. In the first chapter of The to create new forms of discourse. Reiterating the Order of Things (1966), he similarly describes point, The Order of Things begins with a passage Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas (1656), in order from one of Jorge Luis Borges’s short stories to show how the painting’s structure repre- that refers fictionally to “a certain Chinese sents that of classical representation in general encyclopedia” that (dis)organizes the sphere of and, accordingly, the epistemological spirit of animals into a set of confusing, contradictory, the times. According to Foucault, the classical and conceptually entertaining categories. Basic style of representation duplicates the relation- to these literary references is the theme of ships between the objects it represents within the pushing one’s present perspective to the limit, relationships between the signs that it uses such as to undermine established orders and (e.g., in the way the grooves on a phonograph hierarchies. record are isomorphic with the sounds the In connection with architecture, an image record produces). The style of representation at the other end of the spectrum is Jeremy remains naive insofar as the presence and Bentham’s ideal prison design, the Panopticon influence of the person who is doing the re- (1785), which Foucault uses in Discipline presenting is thought to remain outside the and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977c) to representation. embody the idea of an ossifying, all-seeing In This is Not a Pipe (1973b), Foucault high- watchman. Representing an omniscient mon- lights René Magritte’s painting, La trahison des itor, the Panopticon captures the image of an images (The Treachery of Images) (1928–9), in Orwellian society whose leaders, fixated on conjunction with works by Paul Klee and power and control, try to stifle creativity by Vassily Kandinsky. These serve as contemporary holding everyone under their surveillance in a examples that challenge the principles Foucault quasi-sadistic manner. believes “ruled Western painting from the In each of these cases, Foucault employs fifteenth to the twentieth century.” Magritte’s works of art to present themes that the works painting contains a realistic image of a pipe themselves, as a rule, were not intended by with the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This their creators to represent. The series of exam- is not a pipe”) written below it, and Foucault calls ples also displays Foucault’s own intellectual tra- on this arrangement to show how word and jectory, telling us as much about his interest in image are equally valued, how their meanings liberation as they do about the themes they are are ambiguous, and how we should not confuse used to supplement. a thing’s image with the thing itself (as when The bulk of Foucault’s artistic examples we look at a photograph of the Eiffel Tower and coalesce, on the one hand, into a group whose feel that we are actually looking at the tower). genius expresses a touch of madness and/or His references to Magritte, Klee, and Kandinsky whose works creatively challenge the status document a break with earlier tradition, where quo. Opposing this is a group that has close this tradition is understood to privilege images affinities to scientific objectivity and that over words, to strive for literalistic exactness, and regards the world with the detached, analytic to confuse image with reality. eye of a medical doctor or all-seeing God “Theatrum Philosophicum” (1977b) men- that embodies ultimate veracity. The latter tions Andy Warhol’s Pop Art as exemplary of group represents the stable world of estab- a liberating outlook where repetition, monotony, lished truths, the former the disrupting world and evenness prevail, where traditional hierar- of new, unexpected, and unforeseen truths. chies and orderings are leveled, and where on The artist has yet a further role in Foucault’s such a homogeneous field, we are set free to works, if we conceive of an artist broadly to perceive new types of differences and multi- include society and language themselves as plicities. In literature, Foucault addresses the artists of a nonpersonal sort. In his studies of same theme in Maurice Blanchot: The Thought madness, medical clinics, and prisons, Foucault from Outside (1966), where he finds Blanchot’s describes how various social institutions

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foucault, michel historically emerge and shape individuals and the twentieth century’s “I speak” and into appropriately behaving kinds of people. “I write,” which direct our gaze outward and In the production of “soldiers,” for example, he disperse it into linguistic activities and structures. notices how the process of social formation In this transition from thought to language, became increasingly manipulative: during the Foucault perceives a change in our orientation early 1600s, men who became soldiers were toward truth, within the context of which “found,” owing to their natural display of an writing fiction serves epistemologically better alert manner, broad shoulders, and the like. than writing science. By the late 1700s, soldiers had “become some- In his final period, Foucault focuses on the thing that can be made; out of a formless clay, “technologies of the self.” These describe prac- an inapt body, the machine required can be con- tices where an individual becomes his or her own structed; posture is gradually corrected . . .” artist through a set of objective procedures or (1977c: 135). Here, society acts like an artist self-disciplines whose purpose is to produce an who works (unconsciously and sometimes enhanced state of being such as happiness, cruelly) on the human materials that stand as wisdom, health, purity, or perfection. In this aes- formless clay. Education becomes a sinister thetics of personal existence, one exercises a form of manipulation within this perspective, and skill or technique upon oneself, as if one were the prevailing society, when seen in retrospect, an object to be manipulated, aiming to recreate often becomes a Ship of Fools as it continues on oneself into a new person thereby. This activ- contentedly and obliviously, failing to realize the ity of self-liberation and self-transformation distortions inherent in its conception of truth. has a paradoxical and complicating recoil, Most of Foucault’s writings significantly, but since the character who initially engages in not completely, adopt the detached perspective this process of self-recreation becomes a differ- of an onlooker who considers how the particu- ent character by the end of it. lar society at large organizes its people into Since Foucault did not prescribe determinate various privileged and marginalized groups, goals toward which this self-recreation ought to orders, and institutions. This detached per- be directed, he can be seen as advocating that spective is tempered by Foucault’s self-awareness only aesthetic criteria apply meaningfully to that his historical constructions are his own how one reconstitutes one’s life. We can also interpretations that inevitably harbor a fictional interpret Foucault’s position with less moral or creative element. The result is a complicated disengagement, as expressing merely the pre- mixture of descriptive science and imaginative liminary importance of being open to new pos- art, where it is often difficult to discern the line sibilities. This reflects his 1982 remark that between history as the depersonalized assem- “the main interest in life and work is to become blage of hard facts, and history conceived of someone else that you were not in the begin- as personally or politically motivated fiction. ning . . . The game is worthwhile insofar as we This tension mirrors the dynamics of the tradi- don’t know what will be the end” (Martin tional, self-conscious knower, who is a funda- 1988: 9). In 1969, he said the same: “I am no mentally active and creative consciousness, doubt not the only one who writes in order but who becomes a fixed object of knowledge in to have no face. Do not ask who I am and do the act of reflection. not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our Aware of this dynamic, Foucault explores bureaucrats and our police to see that our nontraditional notions of subjectivity that papers are in order” (1972: 17). involve the liberating dissolution and dispersal Foucault intends here to explode limiting of the subject within the field of language. He definitions and implicitly to advocate a notion finds examples of this type of personal abandon of universal contingency where everything is a in the literary tradition that includes Nietzsche, perishable good. As a breaker of the tablets and Mallarmé, Artaud, Bataille, Klossowski, and, as an intellectual renegade, he embodies the most importantly, Blanchot, interpreting them spirit of Friedrich Nietzsche’s iconoclasm; as a as expressing the latter half of the transition philosopher of ever open possibilities and uni- between Descartes’s “I think,” which directs versal contingency, he reiterates Jean-Paul our gaze inward and coalesces our personality, Sartre’s thought that we are absolutely free,

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function of art and that existence precedes essence; as a Nilson, Herman. 1998. Michel Foucault and the philosopher of continual self-questioning and as Games of Truth. New York: St. Martin’s. cognizant that we are always already situated robert wicks within a linguistic and social milieu, he reflects Descartes’s skepticism in league with Martin Heidegger’s historical and hermeneutical sensit- function of art The belief that works of art ivity. Along each dimension, Michel Foucault are functional and serve certain important presents himself as a philosopher of social free- ends has a very long and distinguished history dom, inspired by unconventional and innova- – one that begins with Plato and has persisted tive artistic personalities and by masterpieces of in a variety of forms to the present day. The fine art, which he believes can guide us to a more opposing idea that genuine art is nonfunc- liberated sense of self and world. tional, that it is always autonomous and is produced merely for its own sake, is a compar- nineteenth- and twentieth-century See also atively recent invention. continental aesthetics; interpretation; The distinction between the useful arts (or interpretation, aims of; modernism and crafts) and arts that serve no purpose and are postmodernism. attended to solely as ends in themselves is not bibliography to be found in Plato or Aristotle; nor is it to be found in medieval theories of art. It was only at Primary sources the time of the Renaissance that the notion of [1961] 1965. Madness and Civilization: A History of fine art began to take root as a way of distin- Insanity in the Age of Reason. R. Howard (trans.). guishing the functional from the nonfunc- London: Tavistock. [1963] 1986. Death and the Labyrinth: The World of tional arts. Up until then, all of what we now Raymond Roussel. C. Ruas (trans.). Garden City: call fine art was considered to have a purpose Doubleday. – although in the case of some art forms like 1966. Maurice Blanchot: The Thought from Outside. music and decoration the precise nature of its B. Massumi (trans.). New York: Zone. function was specified only with difficulty. [1966] 1973a. The Order of Things. A. Sheridan Functional views of art take at least two dis- (trans.). New York: Vintage. tinct forms. Some are normative, and insist [1968] 1973b. This is Not a Pipe. J. Harkness that art ought always to serve a specified func- (trans.). Berkeley: University of California Press. tion. To the extent that a work of art performs [1969] 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the its designated function, it is considered merito- Discourse on Language. A. M. Sheridan Smith (trans.). New York: Pantheon. rious; reciprocally, when a work fails to serve [1969] 1977a. “What is an Author?” In Language, its function it is considered inadequate or bad. Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and In this article, this is referred to as normative Interviews. D. F. Bouchard (ed. & trans.). Ithaca: functionalism. Descriptive functionalism, by Cornell University Press, 113–38. contrast, contends that by their very nature [1970] 1977b. “Theatrum Philosophicum.” In works of art serve certain metaphysical, psy- Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays chological, or cultural functions, and do so and Interviews. D. F. Bouchard (ed. & trans.). whether or not the artist knows or intends it. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 165–96. Descriptive functionalism treats a particular [1975] 1977c. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the function as a necessary feature of all art, Prison. A. Sheridan (trans.). London: Penguin. although it is true that both descriptive and Secondary sources normative functionalists are generally quite Carroll, David. 1987. Paraesthetics: Foucault, happy to allow that particular works of art Lyotard, Derrida. London: Methuen. may contingently serve a function on a cer- During, Simon. 1992. Foucault and Literature: Towards tain occasion – where this function is entirely a Genealogy of Writing. London: Routledge. Martin, Rux. 1988. “Truth, Power, Self: An unrelated to its status as art. Interview with Michel Foucault.” In Technologies of Those functional views of art that are nor- the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. L. Martin, mative in character tend often to hold that art H. Gutman & P. H. Hutton (eds.). Amherst: ought to act as a medium of instruction. Thus, University of Massachusetts Press, 9–15. for instance, Plato tells us that art ought not

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function of art to deceive, and ought instead to imitate the In much the same way, Karl Marx, as a “Forms” and thereby convey intellectual insights descriptive functionalist, sees art as a phe- into reality. In book 10 of the Republic Socrates nomenon that arises out of the economic is said to have advocated the banishment of interests of groups of individuals within the those poets who either could not or would economy and that helps reinforce or else not abide by his injunction. Their art imitated advance these interests. Although he qualifies appearances rather than the eternal forms, this in important respects by allowing that cer- and was, for that reason, irredeemably bad. tain periods of art are not directly connected to Aristotle in the Poetics also believed that art the growth and development of society and its should imitate the real nature of things, but his economy, he does nonetheless believe that art account of real essences differed from Plato’s and somehow expresses and, in this way, helps he believed that the proper function of art was reinforce, various economic interests within both the imitation of the functions of things the economic “base” of the society. and the achievement of certain pleasurable In an altogether different vein, Ortega y and cathartic effects. The medieval Church, Gasset (1925) sees art as a social safety valve: long after, wanted an art that would illustrate an early-warning system that can, if properly the gospels and so convey the glory of God. attended to, inform us of social directions and One can continue in this way: Leonardo so promote an understanding of our society. thought that art should imitate physical real- There is no shortage of such theories. Using ity, while John Constable believed that painting gestalt theory, Rudolf Arnheim (1974) has should convey appearances scientifically, and argued that the function of art is to symbolize would be especially good if it did so. Leo the entire pattern of feelings and meanings Tolstoy thought that good literature ought to (what he calls “expressiveness”) that is embod- convey truths about human nature and ied in the perception of the artist. In a similar, morality; while realist painters of the nine- but more philosophical, way Susanne Langer teenth century and twentieth-century socialist (1953) argues that art always captures and realists argued that serious art should convey symbolizes nonverbal human feelings. the realities of social and political life. Freud, Marx, Ortega, Arnheim, and Langer Descriptive functionalism, by contrast, are each in their own way descriptive func- while clearly concerned with the functions tionalists. All hold that art serves certain psy- served by works of art, is not concerned to iso- chological and social ends, and that it must do late those functions that are thought to make so whether or not an artist intends it to. It is how- art worthwhile or good. Indeed, descriptive ever, no part of the descriptive functionalist’s functionalists seem often to be of the opinion that view that the performance of these functions is the functions served by a work of art need sufficient for something’s being a work of art; have very little, if anything at all, to do with artis- the same functions can be, and often are, per- tic merit. They are more concerned with social formed by nonart. Freud and Marx treat their and psychological theory and with the role chosen functions only as a necessary feature of that art plays in our lives than with the critical art, although Freudians are not entirely con- assessment of works of art. Sigmund Freud, sistent in this matter, and are inclined at times for example, sees all art as the imaginative ex- to treat the functions that they isolate as a pression and fulfillment of certain deep-seated contingent feature of art. It is arguable, for desires that cannot be fulfilled in the artist’s instance, that while Freudian critics believe everyday life. On his view, thwarted desires in that representational painting necessarily per- the real world lead most people to daydream or forms a specific psychological function, this fantasize. However, the artist learns to control need not be the case, say, with minimalist or con- these fantasies, and to mold them into works ceptual art. They veer between being descrip- of art. Of course, good artists will do this more tive functionalists for specific genres, and effectively than poor artists; but irrespective of contingent functionalists for others. whether they do it well or badly, on Freud’s view Of course, if the performance of a particular all works of art perform this function, and they function is a necessary feature of an artwork, do so whether or not the artist knows it. it cannot be a mark of its merit. This notwith-

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function of art standing, it is entirely consistent for a descript- art, subtle distinctions between types of func- ive functionalist to approve of the way in which tionalism were not of interest, and were never a function is performed. Thus, for instance, drawn. a work that exposes the corrupt structure The antagonism to functionalist views of of bourgeois society may be praised on that art was brought to a head in the second half of account by Marxists and socialist realists, the nineteenth century. The demise of feudal- while one that lends strength to a free market ism and, with it, the disappearance of an aristo- ideology may be criticized. In much the same cratic class that was willing to act as patron way, Freudian critics are often inclined to of the arts, threw all practicing artists on the praise a work on the basis of how subtly and mercy of the marketplace. Many artists refused efficiently it fulfills its psychological function. absolutely to pander to what the market Quite often one and the same thinker turns demanded: they refused to produce art that out to embrace both normative and descript- would serve some or other fashionable end, ive functionalism. We find, for instance, that and instead insisted on producing art for its Tolstoy believes that a work of art must always own sake. The aesthetic movement, and with express the emotions of its artist and infect its it the cry of art for art’s sake, had come of age. audience with similar emotions. To this extent The pursuit of purely artistic values and the Tolstoy is clearly a descriptive functionalist. production of art for the sake of art alone meant However, he also argues that in order for a that many artists were no longer concerned work to be good, the emotions it expresses with what ordinary people wanted from art. must be moral: it must encourage progress Their attention was wholly absorbed by the toward the wellbeing both of individuals and of demands of the medium, and it was largely humanity. To this extent, he is also a norma- because of this that artists grew increasingly out tive functionalist. This suggests that the dis- of touch with what their audiences expected and tinction I have drawn between descriptive and could understand. The result was that the normative functionalism marks ideal positions rank and file of society grew disillusioned with that often merge in subtle and quite complex much fine art, and began to attend instead to ways. In part, this is why traditional aesthetics what they found interesting and entertaining. has tended to criticize functionalism as if it In this way, painters, poets, musicians, and were a single, homogeneous position. Edward sculptors gradually began to lose their audience, Bullough’s (1912) arguments, for instance, and in the process they lost whatever impact against the normative functionalist account of they had once had on the broader society. evaluation, leads him to the undefended con- On one functionalist view, this series of his- clusion that art is always nonfunctional. In torical accidents meant that the fine arts had a similar way, Stuart Hampshire (1959) tries effectively neutered themselves, had chosen to show that aesthetic judgments are not the path of silence, and could no longer chal- informed by practical interests, but from this con- lenge the hegemony of the ruling classes cludes that descriptive functionalism is false: (Novitz 1989). Partly because of this, those that art is necessarily gratuitous and so always in positions of power found art for art’s sake nonfunctional. congenial and helped entrench its position in This tendency to ignore the distinction the broader society. Quite soon, the “proper” between normative and descriptive functional- appreciation of art as an end in itself came to ism can further be explained by the fact that as signal one’s inclusion in the upper classes, and High Renaissance art shaded into Mannerism, was taken as a sign of refinement and high baroque and eventually neoclassicism, the culture. Those who looked for a message in emphasis came to be placed not just on the art, and who, worse still, attempted to evaluate functions of the artwork, but also, and increas- art in terms of that message, were considered ingly, on the formal properties of the work. vulgar and uninitiated: they failed in the As a result, the status of objects as art, as well round to understand what art and culture as their critical assessment, gradually became were all about. detached from their function. In this climate If this is right, it helps explain the strong of increasing hostility to functionalist views of allegiance that some people have to the view of

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function of art art as an end in itself. It is arguably a political sets of skills, often housed within institutional allegiance, since commitment to it is thought to frameworks that perpetuate and regulate assure one of a place in an intellectual, cultural, them. It is precisely because doctors, shearers, and class elite. One result of all of this was that and cobblers have an interest in doing their job in the middle years of the twentieth century aes- well that they think about and try to improve thetics became little more than an apologetic for their skills. Consequently, the skills them- a specific and very restricted view of the fine arts. selves, and not merely the ends that they Its concern, for the most part, was to defend the serve, become objects of attention. It is, accord- view that art was properly an end in itself, that ing to Sparshott, when an art (an organized body it existed for its own sake, and that our under- of skills) comes to be treated as an end rather standing and evaluation of it should not con- than as a means that the fine arts begin to cern itself with matters extraneous to the work emerge. such as its intended function. This is why we should not allow the work of One standard argument against functional- art to occlude our awareness of the useful skills ist views of art and in favor of autonomist that are exercised in its execution and of the views maintains that if a work of art serves value that we attach to these skills. It is all but a particular function – say, the function of in- impossible to look at a painting, a drama, a forming you about the workings of American sculpture, or a dance without being aware, or British society – then anything which per- however remotely, of the practical skills exer- forms the same function – say, a sociology text cised in these works of art. The skills of pic- – ought to be capable of serving as a substitute torial representation, for instance, have an for a work of art. But this conclusion, it has been obvious practical value, for they not only facil- argued, is counterintuitive. For if I cannot itate the communication of attitudes and infor- locate a copy of Bleak House, I do not refer you mation, but enable us to negotiate situations instead to a report on the practice of law in nine- of which we have no first-hand experience. teenth-century London, even if it turns out to Again, we find that poets and novelists are be the case that both texts are equally instruc- normally skilled not just in the use of language tive in this respect. Autonomists infer from this (which is itself highly prized), but also in that what is important about a work is not its inventing a world of people and in telling a function but its formal properties. However, story about them. The capacity to invent, to be functionalists have generally contended that innovative and original, has obvious utility in the function of a work of art, while artistically a world that requires people to respond in new important, is not all-important. The way in and useful ways to the problems that confront which the function is performed is what is of them. And, of course, skills of invention are singular importance about a work of art praised everywhere in the fine arts. (Beardsmore 1971). One can continue in this way to outline the In arguing for the possibility of artistic values many practical interests and concerns that that are not tied to practical interests, traditional mediate our appreciation of all art forms. We can aestheticians have failed to acknowledge the learn about our world from works of art; they extent to which the values that attach to art are may sharpen our moral sensitivities, and in so dependent on the roles that works of art play doing either unsettle or entrench certain of in our lives: that is, on their functions. It is our commitments, enlist loyalties, and thereby wrong, of course, to think that there is a single foment or resolve social conflicts of one sort function that art invariably performs. Rather, or another. Although these are not the only there are many different functions, which vary functions that works can serve, they greatly from genre to genre and from period to period. influence our assessment of, and hence the Traditionally an art was conceived of as a values that we attach to, particular works of art. practice consisting of an organized package It is simply a fact, then, that our religious, eco- of more or less integrated, but invariably nomic, moral, ecological, and intellectual values useful, skills (Sparshott 1982: 25–6). In this can, and often do, intrude on our response to sense, medicine and shoemaking are arts, as are a work of art. The remoteness and concern of plumbing and sheep-shearing. All consist of Titian’s madonna in his Madonna with Saints,

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function of art for instance, is valued not just because of and aesthetics; formalism; langer; marxism the formal correctness of the painting, but also and art; plato; psychoanalysis and art; because of the religious and gender-related realism; theories of art; tolstoy. values that we bring to it. The assumption that art is wholly nonfunc- bibliography tional, and that our evaluation of it has noth- Arnheim, Rudolf. 1974. Art and Visual Perception. ing at all to do with our practical interests and Berkeley: University of California Press. concerns, is simply misleading. This, of course, Beardsmore, R. W. 1971. Art and Morality. London: is not to deny that works of art are sometimes Macmillan. appreciated for their textures, colors, timbre, Bullough, Edward. 1912. “ ‘Psychical Distance’ as a Factor in Art and as an Aesthetic Principle,” and other formal properties. But such appreci- British Journal of Psychology, 5, 87–98. ation is not determined by the nature of art Davies, Stephen (ed.). 1997. Art and Its Messages: itself. On the contrary, people learn to appreci- Meaning, Morality, and Society. University Park: ate art in this way, and they do so because Pennsylvania State University Press. they are the beneficiaries of a particular art Hampshire, Stuart. 1959. “The Logic of Apprecia- education. The threat of being considered tion.” In Aesthetics and Language. W. Elton (ed.). incompetent, insensitive, or ignorant about art Oxford: Blackwell, 161–9. gives them an interest in attending to textures Langer, Susanne. 1953. Feeling and Form. New and grains rather than messages or themes. In York: Scribner. such a case, the viewer’s artistic (or aesthetic) Novitz, David, 1989. “Ways of Artmaking: The High and the Popular in Art,” British Journal of values are clearly mediated by social consider- Aesthetics, 29, 213–29. ations. And at least part of their reason for Ortega y Gasset, José. 1972 [1925]. The Dehuman- subscribing to formal artistic values is that ization of Art and Other Writings on Art and Culture. they want to be accepted and acknowledged H. Weyl (trans.). Princeton: Princeton University within a certain social network. In this case, art Press. and its appreciation can fairly be said to serve Shiner, Larry. 2001. The Invention of Art. Chicago: a specific social function: the function, that is, University of Chicago Press. of assuring oneself of a place in a specific social Sparshott, Francis. 1982. The Theory of the Arts. group. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wolff, Janet. 1981. The Social Production of Art. London: Macmillan. See also aesthetics in antiquity; aestheticism; aristotle; definition of “art”; evolution, art, david novitz

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Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1900–2002) Ger- success in this can be understood as a result of man philosopher; a pupil of Heidegger, and his insistence on giving this priority to the the leading “hermeneutical” theorist of the late experience of art over any determinate frame- twentieth century. Gadamer once described his work. It is noteworthy that already in the 1940s approach to art as an attempt to transform the he challenged Beissner’s approach to Hölderlin systematic problem of aesthetics into the ques- – and implicitly Heidegger’s too – for basing their tion of the experience of art (1976: 97). Broadly interpretation on Hölderlin’s famous letters to speaking, his concerns might be described as Böhlendorf instead of acknowledging the con- phenomenological: the question of our access to tent of the poem as first appeal (1994: 176). The the artwork and the need to guard against same approach is still in evidence many years misdescribing our experience of it under the later in his brilliant readings of the challenging influence of unwarranted philosophical preju- poetry of Paul Celan (1997). dices. However, as is clear from the first part of Gadamer employs the term “aesthetics” in a Truth and Method (1960), his major work, where technical sense to refer to a specific conscious- Gadamer gives his most sustained account of art, ness of art that, though prepared for earlier, art plays an exemplary role for him in illumi- became clearly apparent only toward the end nating the hermeneutical notion of truth. of the eighteenth century. Truth and Method Gadamer legitimates the hermeneutical idea records in its first part the rise of aesthetic con- of truth by showing how, once one has dropped sciousness in the passage from Kant’s Critique the restriction of truth to its scientific concep- of Judgment to the writings of Schiller. In the tion, the artwork can also be understood as course of that transition, the concept of genius making a claim to truth. Although written prim- is said to take the place of judgments of taste, arily as a critique of aesthetic consciousness, his and at the same time the artwork loses its con- discussion exemplifies hermeneutics by show- nection with the world. Gadamer’s challenge to ing that the historical tradition of reflection aesthetic consciousness does not take the form on art itself makes a claim to truth. Gadamer of denying that its experience of art is genuine. rehabilitates the tradition by recalling the The point is, rather, that aesthetic consciousness legitimate experiences that underlie traditional misunderstands its experience; it is more than terminology – for example, when he finds the it knows itself to be. much maligned concept of mimesis appropriate Gadamer, typically, does not ask his readers even to “pure poetry” and to nonobjective to open themselves up to new experiences painting (1986: 36, 103, 117). One does not find so much as to awaken themselves to familiar in him a wholesale rejection of the conceptual experiences. So, even the term “conscious- language that has mediated the experience ness” in the phrase “aesthetic consciousness” is of art in the West. In this he differs from his ultimately found inadequate insofar as the art- teacher, Martin Heidegger. But it is striking work is the underlying subject of the experience that Gadamer at the same time had more suc- of art, rather than the human subject. His fre- cess than Heidegger at taking account of our quent appeals to the model of play are in large experiences of specifically modern works of art, measure introduced to render this idea more such as nonobjective art (1986: 52–3), even acceptable. What draws and holds the player though many of these works were designed to is the game, which thus itself becomes the disrupt traditional aesthetic concepts. Gadamer’s subjectum of the playing (1989: 106, 490).

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It is striking to find that Gadamer’s first 1976: 104). In German, one would say that the scholarly essay, “Plato and the Poets,” anticip- experience of art is an Erfahrung, in the ates, and even illuminates, his subsequent Hegelian sense of a transformative experience writings on art. Plato’s critique of mimetic art that one undergoes, and not an Erlebnis, the lived in book 10 of the Republic is read by Gadamer experience described by Dilthey. as a critique of the moral consequences of aes- Aesthetics is not only a frame of mind, it thetic consciousness. Plato banished the poets has an institutional reality, for example, in from the ideal state, on Gadamer’s interpreta- the museum. Just as aesthetic consciousness tion, because the joy taken in their imitations attempts to take up the aesthetic quality of the led to a kind of self-alienation in which one for- work independently of its moral or religious gets oneself. Losing oneself in a poem or a piece content, thereby abstracting from the condi- of music in this way was precisely the frame tions of the work’s accessibility, its purpose, of mind that aesthetics cultivated. In other and its function, so the isolation of works from words, Gadamer understands Plato to have their contexts by placing them in “collections” attacked the attitude that would subsequently can seem to disregard everything in which a become known as “aesthetic” (1980: 65). What work is rooted. Gadamer calls this abstraction aesthetic consciousness tended to forget, but “aesthetic differentiation” (1989: 85). Whereas which was well known to Plato, was that there cultural historians respond to aesthetic differ- are forms of art that clearly escape these limi- entiation by attempting to reconstruct the tations and thus serve as a corrective to the inter- conditions of the original construction, as if pretation. Hymns of praise sung to a god or some one could thereby reproduce an understanding outstanding individual bind those who hear it of the original purpose of the work, Gadamerian to each other. They prepare their audience to hermeneutics takes a somewhat different appro- meet its obligations. ach. The point at which aesthetics becomes In this early essay from 1934, Gadamer reabsorbed in hermeneutics, beyond anything appears to accept Plato’s distinction between that simply historiological investigations can different kinds of poetry, and simply follows accomplish, is when one attains a living rela- Plato’s displacement of the question of poetry tionship with the work, such that it still has into philosophical dialogue. Philosophical dia- something to say to us as people in history logue has its own poetry, which makes it the (1989: 164–9). song of praise most appropriate for those politics that are “almost incurable” (1980: See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century 66). Subsequently, Gadamer would likely have continental aesthetics; aesthetic attitude; concluded that all works of art, and not aestheticism; baumgarten; heidegger; hermen- just hymns of praise, make a claim on their eutics; museums. audience. That is to say, self-alienation is only one moment of the experience of art which, bibliography properly described, also includes a return Primary sources to self. [1934] 1980. “Plato and the Poets.” In Dialogue and Nevertheless, the self to whom one returns Dialectic. P. C. Smith (trans.). New Haven: Yale following the experience of art is not the self University Press, 39–72. with which one began. “The experience of art [1947] 1994. “Hölderlin and the Future.” In . . . does not leave him who has it unchanged” Literature and Philosophy in Dialogue. R. Paslick (1989: 100). Art does not represent a realm (trans.). Albany: State University of New York into which one can escape, only to return Press, 87–108, 176. subsequently to the life one had temporarily [1960] 1989. Truth and Method. J. Weinsheimer bracketed. The artwork issues a challenge to & D. G. Marshall (trans.). 2nd edn. New York: Crossroad. everybody who experiences it. By its dissolution [1964] 1976. “Ästhetik und Hermeneutik.” In of the familiar, the artwork says not only, Philosophical Hermeneutics. D. E. Linge (trans.). “You are this,” but, with Rilke, “You must Berkeley: University of California Press, 95–104. change your life [Du musst dein Leben ändern]” 1967. Kleine Schriften, vol. ii: Interpretation. (Archaïscher Torso Apollos, cited in Gadamer Tübingen. (Some of the essays in this volume

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may be found in translation in The Relevance of the dener as a creative agent who is nevertheless Beautiful and Other Essays (see below).) thoroughly dependent on the cooperation of [1977] 1986. The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other natural processes has a popular resonance at the Essays. N. Walker (trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge beginning of the twenty-first century. University Press. There are a number of themes closely [1986] 1997. “Who Am I and Who Are You?” In related to the question of the garden’s “ambi- Gadamer on Celan. R. Heinemann & B. Krajewski (trans.). Albany: State University of New York guity,” on which contemporary aestheticians Press, 63–165. have focused. But before articulating these, mention should be made of the increasing robert bernasconi attention being paid to the application to gar- dens of some familiar issues in aesthetics. Unsurprisingly, for example, there has been gardens Although some of the “founding discussion of the adequacy or otherwise, in the fathers” of aesthetics, including Shaftesbury, case of gardens, of the “institutional” theory Kant, and Hegel, made interesting, if only of art. Given the creation of such unusual gar- passing, remarks on garden appreciation, nei- dens as Charles Jencks’s “Garden of Cosmic ther gardening nor gardens have attracted Speculation” or Ian Hamilton Finlay’s “Little great attention in modern philosophical aes- Sparta,” should we describe something as a thetics. The many reasons for this comparative garden just in case it is deemed to be one by the neglect include the perception of gardening as “gardenworld,” the horticultural equivalent of an activity too useful and practical to belong the “artworld”? Again, proposals have been among the Fine Arts, and the relative immunity made, parallel to familiar ones in the ontology of garden design to the avant-garde gestures, of artworks, about the kind of existence that gar- familiar in several twentieth-century arts, that dens enjoy. It has been urged, for example, have shaped the preoccupations of modern that rather as we distinguish a novel from the aesthetics. The outdoor analogues to experi- printed physical object on a bookshelf, so we mental artworks in the studio are more likely should distinguish the garden as a “virtual” to be found in “earthworks” and other envir- entity – a “world” imaginatively to explore and onmental interventions than in gardens, per- appreciate – from the physical garden, “a par- haps because of the constraints implied by ticular chunk of Surrey,” say (Ross 1998: 179). gardens being, typically, places that people live The three most prominent themes addressed in and with. in contemporary philosophy of gardens, how- A more general reason for neglect has been ever, are those relating to the perception of the “ambiguous” status of the garden as a the garden as “nature as affected by humanity.” prime example of what Malcolm Budd (2002: 7) These themes are, moreover, recognizable calls “nature as affected by humanity.” For descendants of ones that were prominent in Hegel (1975: 627), gardening’s reliance on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century debates. nature makes it an “imperfect art,” while its The debate that dominated eighteenth-century intervention in the natural world makes of garden writing, and which has recurred ever the garden an equally imperfect specimen since, is whether gardens should, like the for- of nature. The garden, it has seemed to some, mal, regular ones at Versailles and Hampton is a fit object of reflection neither for the Court, wear their art on their sleeves or, instead, philosophy of art nor for natural or environ- like the informal “English” garden, more closely mental aesthetics. Ironically, however, this resemble natural places. ( Joseph Addison same “ambiguity” has become, in an intellec- boasted that his garden would strike a for- tual climate hospitable to the “deconstruction” eigner as a “natural wilderness.”) The debate of dichotomies like that of art versus nature, a was one to which both Kant and Hegel con- reason for renewed philosophical attention to the tributed, with the former preferring the garden. The garden is important, writes Mara “English” garden – in keeping with his calls for Miller, as “an attempt at the reconciliation art to be “free from the constraint of arbitrary of opposites which constrain our existence” rules” and to “look like Nature” – and the lat- (1993: 25). Certainly the image of the gar- ter denouncing as a deception what was, after

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gardens all, a carefully designed “natural wilderness.” While some garden historians lament the The main issue that descends from this debate decline of these symbolic ambitions, the focus and has been addressed by later philosophers is of contemporary philosophers – in keeping no longer the normative one of what gardens with a wider tendency in modern aesthetics – should look like – artworks or natural places – has not been on the issue of whether or what but the relationship of garden appreciation to gardens ought to signify, but on distinguishing the appreciation of art and nature respectively. the various and very different ways in which (It does not follow from a garden’s looking gardens can signify or have meaning (e.g., natural that it is to be appreciated in the way see Ross 1998). Distinctions are consequently natural places are. Maybe, as with many drawn between, for example, the representa- Chinese and Japanese gardens, the intention is tional, the expressive, and the allegorical pow- that they be enjoyed as skillful representations ers of gardens, or between the meaning a of mountains, islands, or whatever.) Some garden may have for a person and the cultural writers (e.g., Miller 1993: ch. 4) stress how significance it may possess as a symptom or very different appreciation of a garden is from reflection of an age or society. that of, say, a painting. A garden is not a dis- Particular attention has been paid to dis- crete, “framed” object to stare at, but some- tinctive aspects of meaning that gardens, in thing we are surrounded by, move about in, and virtue of their “ambiguous” place between art engage with using all our senses: and, unlike the and nature, are especially apt to convey. It has case with a painting, our perception and hence been argued, for example, that some Japanese enjoyment of the garden is crucially subject to temple gardens paradigmatically exemplify changes in the weather, the season, the light, the Zen Buddhist antipathy to drawing any and other factors. sharp distinction between nature and artifice. Other writers, though, emphasize the differ- Certainly the reliance of a garden, if it is to ence between garden and nature appreciation, flourish, not only on the commitment of the gar- arguing in particular that it is a necessary fea- dener but on the cooperation of nature makes ture of people’s authentic enjoyment of a nat- it an apt symbol or epiphany of an intimate rela- ural place that they recognize that it is not, tionship – a “codependence,” one might say – to any significant degree, a human product. between human creativity and the world in (The discovery that the “natural” scene was, like which it is exercised (see Cooper 2006: ch. 7). Addison’s garden, an artifice would cause the Closely associated with the debates sur- enjoyment to evaporate, or to modulate into a rounding the relations between gardens, art, and different type of enjoyment – in the designer’s nature in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- skill, say.) It is tempting to steer a middle turies was a further debate with a distinctly course here and maintain that the appreciation moral edge. We noted above Hegel’s hostility to of a garden should be a fusion of art and the informal “English” garden on the ground nature appreciation. But this suggestion is that it was a deceptive imitation of nature. For problematic. It is surely not the case that Schopenhauer (1969: 404–5), by contrast, it enjoyment of a garden factors out, as it were, was formal “French” gardens that deserved into admiration of artistic contributions and censure, as blatant “tokens of [nature’s] slavery” pleasure at the sight of natural objects, like and mirrors of “the will of the possessor.” trees. Arguably, garden appreciation is sui These morally charged positions have their generis, and not the joint product of two other contemporary descendants. While few people modes of appreciation to which it is therefore now worry about being “deceived” into think- reducible (see Cooper 2006: ch. 3). ing that an informal garden is really “wild” A second normative debate in the eight- and “natural,” some writers are concerned eenth century concerned the desirability or that the garden presents an all too benign and otherwise of making gardens with symbolic anodyne image of nature, which thereby purposes. Opinions differed, for example, on obstructs a proper, informed appreciation of the attempt at Stourhead to represent scenes nature itself. And Schopenhauer’s strictures from Virgil’s Aeneid or on the aim of “pic- against the “French” garden are prescient of turesque” gardens to recall famous paintings. a contemporary animus, especially marked

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genre among “deep ecologists,” against gardens in Cooper, David E. 2006. A Philosophy of Gardens. general. For them, all gardens signify a human Oxford: Clarendon. enslavement of nature. Hegel, G. W. F. 1975 [1835–8]. Aesthetics. J. Knox It is important to recognize that these moral (trans.). Oxford: Clarendon. concerns are not disjoined from aesthetic ones. Miller, Mara. 1993. The Garden as Art. New York: State For Schopenhauer, after all, aesthetic contem- University of New York Press. Pollan, Michael. 1996. Second Nature: A Gardener’s plation involves a suspension or quietening of Education. London: Bloomsbury. the will – something hard to achieve if the Richardson, Tim & Kingsbury, Nöel (eds.). 2005. objects being contemplated are, like the gardens Vista: The Culture and Politics of Gardens. London: at Versailles, themselves unmistakable “mir- Frances Lincoln. rors” of the will. A more moderate implication Ross, Stephanie. 1998. What Gardens Mean. of Schopenhauer’s strictures than those drawn Chicago: University of Chicago Press. by “deep ecologists” would be that gardens Schopenhauer, Arthur. 1969 [1819/44]. The World should be – and appear to be – places where care as Will and Representation. 2 vols. E. F. J. Payne and effort is taken to cooperate with natural pro- (trans.). New York: Dover. cesses and to attend to the good of the plants david e. cooper and creatures that belong there. This would not, for example, exclude all topiary (a particu- lar bugbear of ecological critics of gardens), but genre A type or kind (of art); the term is fre- it would militate against shaping foliage into quently used as a substitute for a general con- Mickey Mouse, a giant phallus, or anything cept of stylistic kind. else that singularly fails to honor the integrity There is a slightly special sense of the word of the tree or bush (see Brook & Brady 2003). that applies to a certain sort of painting – It is, more generally, a salient feature of con- namely, to paintings of low life or “real” or temporary philosophical discussions of gar- “ordinary” life. Elsewhere, the idea of genre dens that they address issues at the interface of has come to mean a kind of art in a rather aesthetics and ethics. In doing so, the discussions specific sense, which has far more to do with belong to a long tradition of garden writing subject matter than with style, so that style – from Virgil and Pliny the Younger to Karel may indicate genre but not define it. napek, Hermann Hesse, and Michael Pollan in In the case of literature and the narrative the twentieth century – that proposes a close arts generally, recognizing genre is a precondi- relationship between the informed enjoyment tion for any sort of fair critical judgment. To read of both gardens and gardening and the good Macbeth as a detective story, as James Thurber life. For some time to come, one may surmise, suggested, or the first two books of Paradise philosophers will continue to explore the attract- Lost as if they were an early form of science ive vision expressed in this tradition that much fiction, would clearly be absurd. Similar mistakes of the significance and satisfaction people find may be more subtle, hence more misleading. in the garden owes to its being a theater for the Some people object to the sort of fairy-tale that creative exercise of such virtues as hope, humil- ends with the princess and the woodcutter get- ity, and respect for the integrity of living things. ting married and “living happily ever after,” insisting that such tales are grossly unrealistic; See also aesthetics of the environment; aes- or that the stories of P. G. Wodehouse lack thetics of the everyday. deep sexual motivation. But, with stories of that sort, that genre, such objections are not to bibliography the point. “Living happily ever after” is how it Adams, William H. 1991. Gardens through History: is in fairy-tales, and indeed, that style of ending Nature Perfected. New York: Abbeville. itself indicates the genre to which the story one Brook, Isis & Brady, Emily. 2003. “Topiary: Ethics and Aesthetics,” Ethics and the Environment, 8, has been told belongs, just as Wodehouse’s 128–41. style indicates the sort of story he is telling. It Budd, Malcolm. 2002. The Aesthetic Appreciation of seems as inappropriate to object to the lack of Nature: Essays on the Aesthetics of Nature. Oxford: psychological depth in a “standard” detective Clarendon. story or science fiction fantasy as to object of

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Gilgamesh that it is hard to identify with the main appropriate question, even though it is a logi- character. cal truth that if anyone has had some children The tacit principles here are roughly these: we she must have had some number of children.) are invited by fictional narratives to assume A then fashionable stricture to limit the read- certain events or situations, so that what we may er’s interpretative attention to the “words on the be told happens next will be against a back- page” is misleading: questions about tacit psy- ground of the nonfictional expectations that chological motivation are, clearly and espe- we, as readers, will have. Our capacity to be sur- cially for Shakespeare, of central relevance, yet prised, reassured, unconvinced, or astonished plainly involve questions that go well beyond the by the outcome we are in fact given constitutes merely verbal text. our intelligently understanding the narrative. In In a detective story, precisely the sort of the case of a purely factual narrative, we bring question that Knights ruled out for Macbeth to bear on this all that we know or believe would be relevant, though other questions about the “real” world, whether in terms of may not be. Again, when Rapunzel lets down general principles of inference, laws of nature, her hair for her lover to climb up, questions or, more loosely, how we suppose facts and situ- about the subsequent state of her scalp are no ations to “hang together.” Thus, if a factual more relevant than are questions about the report has it that someone called Pickwick likelihood of giants exceeding escape velocity or Holmes did such and such at such a place when they put on seven-league boots: though and time, any further information – birth such questions might well matter for some certificates, meteorological records, the latest science fiction. discoveries in medical science, and so on – will be In the central genre of narrative fiction that relevant to assessing the truth or plausibility of F. R. Leavis identified as the canon of the the story we are told. But, if a story about “great tradition,” concerns with the plausibil- Holmes or Pickwick is a fiction, clearly neither ity of motivation are all-important, since ques- the failure to find the birth certificates, nor a tions for the reader about what it would have check on the weather at the time of the events, been like to be a protagonist in such a story are will be relevant. Yet, for all that, plausibility must central to that genre. Yet the assumption that be in question at some point. Snow in London such characters have a peculiar psychological in August would, in a Sherlock Holmes story, transparency is no more part of the fictional nar- clearly count against its plausibility and thus be rative than it is part of the plot of a play staged relevant first to our understanding of the nar- “naturalistically” before an audience that one rative, and then to our critical judgment. For a of the walls of the room is transparent, or part narrative, however fictional, to be intelligible at of the narrative that when Hamlet speaks in soli- all there must be a minimal, normally very loquy the other fictional characters at Elsinore rich, reference to what both reader and author go strangely deaf. Such devices control those take to be the way the real world actually is. judgments of plausibility that we need to make Narrative genre essentially has to do with how in order to construe the narrative. They define this may play a part in our understanding of this fictional genre. the work. Fictional genres such as fairy-tales, the heroic It can be useful to distinguish between the epic, fantasy, nonsense fantasy that makes fictional elements in a story (fictional characters, fiction out of the logically absurd (such as the places, events) and the quite differently fictional stories of Lewis Carroll), science fiction, detec- assumptions that we, the readers, will have to tive fiction, the novel of psychological insight, make in order to follow the kind of story we are and so on are loose yet familiar classifications. being told. These latter have to do with genre. Often stylistic devices in the manner of telling L. C. Knights (1964) rightly objected to those the story or in the ways in which the reader is who, reading the line of Lady Macbeth’s, “I addressed can be relied on to indicate what have given suck, and know / How tender ’tis to sort of assumptions the reader should make love the babe that milks me,” deemed it appro- when construing the story – what to expect, priate to ask how many children we should what to take for granted. But there have suppose her to have had. (It is clearly not an always been deliberately ambiguous fictional

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gombrich, sir ernst (hans josef) genres. Tragicomedy was for the seventeenth Knights, L. C. 1964 [1933]. “How Many Children century something of this sort, as was so- Had Lady Macbeth? An Essay in the Theory and called “magic realism” 200 years later: in such Practice of Shakespeare Criticism.” In Explora- cases the point is to challenge the reader, via a tions. New York: New York University Press, self-conscious awareness that it is with fiction 15–54. that he or she has to deal, into a direct con- Walton, Kendall L. 1970. “Categories of Art,” Philosophical Review, 79, 334–67. frontation with the very idea of plausibility or Walton, Kendall L. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe: verisimilitude itself. For what might be termed On the Foundation of the Representational Arts. “genre unease” can be one of the most effective Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ways of enforcing a reader’s reflection, via those devices of art that exploit these very capacities, andrew harrison on the nature of imagination and belief. In the case of nonliterary, nonnarrative art these issues press in on us in slightly different Gombrich, Sir Ernst (Hans Josef) (1909– ways. Various forms of figurative and non- 2001) Austrian-born historian and theorist of figurative painting and sorts of music that can the visual arts. be hard to classify, raise similar embarrass- “There really is no such thing as Art. There ments: all have to do with the propriety of crit- are only artists,” are the opening words of ical presuppositions. What, for instance, does one Gombrich’s immensely popular The Story of have the right to expect of, say, popular music, Art (1950: 5). Still, until the twentieth century rock music with a political content, popular at least, and despite some deviations, painters art as opposed to Pop Art, graffiti art, amateur and sculptors have, since the very earliest times, art with pretensions toward something else, been inspired by a predominant endeavor – to highly professional painting with the super- provide “convincing representations” of the ficial appearance of amateur art, various forms visible world (or “illusions” as Gombrich, per- of minimalist and conceptual art, and so on? haps misleadingly, calls them). That is why a To present the list, even at random, is to indi- story of art is possible. And not just a story, for cate a further twist to the puzzle – namely, that Gombrich’s starting point is the fact – one it is very much integral to the subject matter which he urges us to find surprising – that of modernist and postmodernist art to make painting and sculpture have a history. Despite such embarrassments a central theme of the its subtitle, the “central problem” of his most process of art itself (compare Danto 1981). influential work, Art and Illusion: A Study in the From Dada onwards, what might be called Psychology of Pictorial Representation, is “why deliberate “genre shock” can seem to be what representation should have a history; why it the arts are about. In effect, this is to incorpor- should have taken mankind so long to arrive at ate within the content of art “philosophical” a plausible rendering of visual effects that cre- anxieties about the status of the works, and ate the illusion of life-likeness” (1980: 246). hence philosophical questions valid in their That painting has a history, and not simply own right. a chronology, is evident from the existence of styles and traditions that enable us, usually See also literature; fiction, nature of; without much trouble, correctly to allocate fiction, turth in; narrative; style; walton. anonymous paintings to their periods. More than that, we should recognize with Heinrich bibliography Wölfflin that “not everything is possible in Danto, Arthur C. 1981. The Transfiguration of the every period” (quoted in Gombrich 1980: 4). Commonplace. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer- A thirteenth-century work that looked very sity Press. like a Monet would not be an Impressionist Dodsworth, Martin. 1973. “Genre and the Experi- ence of Literature.” In Philosophy and the Arts. painting, since Impressionism is intelligible only Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures, vol. 6. as a response to the canons of the Academy. G. Vesey (ed.). London: Macmillan, 211–27. Gombrich (1984) has hailed Hegel as “the Fowler, Alastair. 1982. Kinds of Literature. Oxford: father of art history” precisely because of the Clarendon. latter’s acute awareness that painting not only

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gombrich, sir ernst (hans josef) develops but that in crucial respects the stages But it is to the ideal of the “innocent eye” of this development could not have occurred that Gombrich devotes most critical attention. in a different order. On this view (e.g., Ruskin’s), painting has pro- That certain fashionable views, old and gressed through artists’ gradually setting aside new, about the nature of artistic activity make the assumptions and knowledge that intrude it impossible to understand how art could have between their recognition or interpretation of a history is sufficient reason for rejecting them. the scenes before them and what they actually If painting were simply a matter of an indi- and directly see – colored specks, shimmers, vidual’s “copying what he sees” or “only ...an etc. Only with Turner and the Impressionists expression of personal vision, there could be have painters achieved this disengagement no history of art” (1980: 3). But these views and succeeded in recording the deliverances of are anyway inadequate on psychological and “innocent” perception. Gombrich is not entirely philosophical grounds. According to Gombrich, unsympathetic to this view, for he too wants no clear sense can be attached to the notion to stress the role that knowledge of the real of “copying what one sees”; and even the world, or “expectations” based on experience “Abstract Expressionist” must rely on tradition of it, play in our recognition of what is there to not only to furnish an inherited vocabulary see. Indeed, his objection is that these “expec- of “affects” but as something which gives a tations” play such a crucial role in perception point – albeit a rebellious or nihilistic one – to that there can be no complete “disengagement” his work. from them. “[W]e cannot disentangle seeing Granted that art has a history, we require from knowing, or rather, from expecting” so as an adequate psychology if this history is to be to “see” anything free from all interpretation and properly characterized. It is implausible, for thereby proceed to paint what we “innocently” example – despite the favored rhetoric of many “see” (1980: 187). There is another obstacle to contemporary art teachers – to suppose that in “innocence”: our perception of the world has any serious sense of “see,” Egyptian artists, been indelibly shaped by the traditions of Giotto, Constable, and Monet “saw” the world painting itself. Even if we could “bracket” the differently from one another. Perception may world of material objects so as to focus on have altered in marginal ways, but not in the shapes, colors, etc., how we focus on these and massive ways we should have to suppose if we how we would record them in our own paint- took all these artists as accurately recording ings will have been irredeemably influenced by what they perceived. This may encourage us to the Claudes, Constables, or Monets that belong jump to an opposite extreme and argue that their to our cultural inheritance. paintings merely manifest a number of different Debates about the roles of convention and “conventions” for representing the world, tradition, and about the possibility of “pure” barely constrained by – and not to be judged by observation, are familiar of course in the history – any ideal of fidelity to how that world actu- and philosophy of science. Gombrich, inspired ally looks. But not only is this contradicted by by Constable’s rhetorical question “Why . . . the stated aim of many such artists to provide may not landscape painting be considered as “convincing representations,” it also denies a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures the obvious. One should indeed “stress the are but the experiments?” takes this parallel conventional element in many modes of repre- very seriously. Indeed, it is Sir Karl Popper’s sentation,” but carried to an extreme this is “logic of scientific discovery,” Gombrich believes, “also nonsense.” For while Constable’s Wivenhoe that provides a key to the understanding of Park “is not a mere transcript of nature . . . it still artistic discovery as well. According to Popper, remains true that it is a closer rendering of the scientific theories cannot result from unaided motif than is that of the child” (1980: 252). Pace observation and induction since, except against Herbert Read, perspective is no mere convention, the background provided by some hypothesis, but enables a genuine and objective similar- one would have no idea what observations ity between a painting and a scene viewed were relevant or what they could possibly show. through a window to be achieved (Gombrich Science proceeds, rather, through a process 1980: ch. 8; 1982). of “conjecture and refutation,” with scientists

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gombrich, sir ernst (hans josef) creating hypotheses that indicate observable having an “objective likeness” or “fidelity” to our data which would, if obtained, serve to falsify experience of the world. He defines “objective the hypotheses. Science, therefore, is essentially likeness” in terms of the accurate information historical, for without a context of earlier the- about the world that a painting may afford us. ories succumbing to refutation, there would be But this seems to elide the difference between nothing to motivate the conjecturing of new a “convincing representation” and a correct hypotheses. While science progresses, through verbal description. It is difficult not to suspect refutations of earlier theories, no theory can that the analysis is the wrong way round: a pretend to truth since, if it has real empirical con- painting gives accurate information, typically, tent, it too must stand open to falsification. because it really is like its motif. Analogously, for Gombrich, painting pro- Finally, Gombrich’s confidence in experi- ceeds, not through artists copying unguided mental psychology’s having established that observations of nature, but through “schemas seeing is always a matter of interpreting may be and corrections.” “ ‘Making comes before misplaced. Doubtless, there is a sense of “see” matching’ . . . the matching process itself pro- in which a person can only be said to see X if ceeds through the stages of ‘schema and that is what he takes it to be. But it is a philo- correction.’ Every artist has to know and con- sophical issue whether there is not a different, struct a schema before he can adjust it to and possibly more basic, sense in which one the needs of portrayal” (1980: 99). At a more can be said to see X without conceptualizing macro level, the “schemas” that characterize the it as such (Dretske 1983). At the very least, style of an age are “corrected” when the paint- it sounds exaggerated to hold that “To ‘see’ ings they generate fail to “match” aspects of means to guess at something ‘out there’ ” experience that have become important to (1980: 254; emphasis added), or that “it is people to capture. So art, like science, is essen- always hard to distinguish what is given to us tially historical. And just as no scientific theory from what we supplement in the process of can pretend to truth, nor can any genre of projection” (1980: 203; ; emphasis added). Is painting: for we can never exclude new dimen- it really that hard to distinguish the bare lines sions of experience that only an artist of genius of the famous duck/rabbit drawing from my is able both to reveal and to record. It takes “projection” onto them of a rabbit (or a duck, a Van Gogh, for example, to discover that “you as may be)? can see the visible world as a vortex of lines” (1980: 203). See also drawing, painting, and printmaking; While Gombrich’s account of the activity sculpture; art history; depiction; hegel; and history of art has been extremely influen- illusion; perspective; picture perception; tial, it has also been criticized on a number of representation; style; tradition. counts (e.g., see Woodfield 1996). Some later art historians, for instance, have argued that The bibliography Story of Art in particular is excessively “tradi- tional” in approach, too much focused on Primary sources “great men” and “style” (Arnold 2004: 35). Of 1950. The Story of Art. London: Phaidon. 1973. “Illusion in Art.” In Illusion in Nature and Art. greater philosophical interest has been criti- E. Gombrich & R. Gregory (eds.). London: cism of Gombrich’s rejection of the “innocent Duckworth, 194–243. eye” approach. It is unclear for a start, so it is 1980. Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of argued, that we should compare too seriously Pictorial Representation. Oxford: Phaidon. the artist’s “problem” of representing the scene 1982. The Image and the Eye. Oxford: Phaidon. before him with that of the scientist erecting 1984. “The Father of Art History: A Reading of a theory on the basis of the data he or she the Lectures on Aesthetics of G. W. F. Hegel.” In observes. Does the former really have to “inter- Tributes: Interpreters of Our Cultural Tradition. pret” in the same sense as the latter? Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 51–69. Second, critics have wondered whether, Secondary sources without the “innocent eye,” it is possible, as Arnold, Dana. 2004. Art History: A Very Short Intro- Gombrich insists it is, to speak of paintings duction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Dretske, Fred. 1983. Knowledge and the Flow of about itself. That is, it refers to the squareness Information. Boston: MIT Press, esp. ch. 6. of the shapes it contains. No more than deno- Woodfield, Richard (ed.). 1996. Gombrich on Art. tation is exemplification peculiar to the arts. Manchester: Manchester University Press. It is critical in commerce and science as well. david e. cooper A commercial paint sample exemplifies its color and sheen; a blood sample, the presence of antibodies. In art and elsewhere, exemplifying Goodman, Nelson (1906–1998) American symbols afford epistemic access to properties philosopher who made major contributions to that they sample. epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of Exemplification and denotation are not science, as well as to aesthetics. In his youth he mutually exclusive. Works of art that denote ran an art gallery, and throughout his life he typically exemplify as well. Wivenhoe Park was an avid collector of art. He was professor exemplifies Constable’s style while denoting emeritus of philosophy at Harvard University. the park. Tolstoy’s description of the Battle of The arts enhance understanding, Goodman Borodino describes the battle and exemplifies his (1976) contends, and aesthetics explains how attitude toward war. Critical to Goodman’s they do so. Aesthetics, then, is a branch of epi- aesthetics is the recognition that symbols can, stemology. He maintains that understanding and often do, simultaneously perform a variety a work of art is not a matter of appreciating it, of referential functions. or finding beauty in it, or having an “aesthetic Denotation and exemplification need not experience” of it. Like understanding an utter- be literal. A distinctive feature of Goodman’s ance or inscription, understanding a work of art theory is that metaphorical symbols genuinely consists in interpreting it correctly. This involves refer to their figurative subjects. “Bulldog” recognizing how and what it symbolizes, and genuinely denotes Churchill; the Pietà gen- how what it symbolizes bears on other visions uinely exemplifies sorrow. Reference, then, is and versions of our worlds. Works of art, then, not restricted to literal reference, nor truth to belong to symbol systems with determinate literal truth. syntactic and semantic structures. Much of Symbols typically belong to schemes – systems Languages of Art (first published in 1968) is of signs that collectively classify the objects in devoted to delineating the structures of the a realm. “Bulldog” belongs to a scheme that, in systems that the various arts employ, detailing its literal application, sorts the realm of dogs. their powers and limitations. In metaphor, Goodman maintains, the scheme Goodman recognizes two basic modes of transfers to a new realm. The organization of reference: denotation and exemplification. A dogs into breeds is reapplied to classify people. symbol denotes whatever it applies to. A name Because under that transfer Churchill falls denotes its bearer; a portrait its subject; a pre- within the extension of “bulldog,” Churchill is dicate the members of its extension; and so on. metaphorically a bulldog. New patterns and Fictive symbols fail to denote. Their significance, distinctions in the human population emerge; he believes, depends on what symbols denote for the metaphor sorts people into classes that them. Because the term “Ophelia description” no literal predicate exactly captures. This is one denotes a range of names and descriptions in reason why metaphors resist literal paraphrase. Shakespeare’s play, those names and descriptions In referring to a property that it meta- collectively fix Ophelia’s fictive identity (1972: phorically possesses, an object metaphorically 221–38). exemplifies that property. Thus, Churchill Some symbols – including abstract art, most metaphorically exemplifies bulldoggishness instrumental music, much dance – do not even when serving as an example of that trait. purport to denote. They deploy other modes of Expression, Goodman contends, is a form of reference exclusively. Prominent among these metaphorical exemplification. A work of art, is exemplification, whereby a symbol refers to functioning as such, expresses the properties that some of its own properties. A Mondrian paint- it metaphorically exemplifies. Being inanim- ing, for example, exemplifies squareness. It not ate, the Pietà cannot literally exemplify sorrow. only consists of squares, but points up this fact But it can and does exemplify that property

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goodman, nelson metaphorically. It therefore expresses sorrow. denotes a heartbeat and perhaps exemplifies Expression, as Goodman construes it, is not certain symptomatology. The drawing is apt to restricted to feelings. For aesthetic symbols perform myriad complex and interanimating metaphorically exemplify other features as referential functions. Via denotation, exem- well. Music may express color; sculpture, plification, expression, and allusion, it refers to motion; painting, depth. There is evidently no a multiplicity of referents through a variety of a priori limit on the features that works of art routes (Goodman 1976: 229–30). can express (1976: 45–95). The status of a line as an electrocardiogram Reference need not be exclusively deno- or a drawing depends on its function. It counts tational or exclusively exemplificational. as a work of art so long as it functions as an aes- Sometimes, Goodman maintains, reference is thetic symbol. And it may function aesthetically transmitted via chains consisting of denota- at some times and not at others. The crucial tional and exemplificational links. Allusion is a question, then, is not “What is art?” but “When case in point. The simplest allusions involve is art?” Although Goodman supplies no criterion three-link chains. A symbol alludes to its refer- of aesthetic functioning, he identifies its symp- ent by exemplifying a feature that it shares toms: exemplification, relative repleteness, with its referent, or by denoting an object that complex and indirect reference, syntactic and exemplifies its referent. Thus, passages in semantic density. A symbol system is syntacti- Ulysses allude to Roman Catholic prayers by cally dense if the finest differences among signs exemplifying the cadences of those prayers. make for different symbols. It is semantically And the figure of a dog in a Dürer print alludes dense if it has the resources to mark the finest to loyalty by denoting dogs, which exemplify differences among objects in its domain. As loyalty. Longer and more complex chains also symptoms, these features are neither neces- occur. And multiple routes of reference may sary nor sufficient, but they are indications secure an allusion. Regardless of length or that an object is functioning as a work of art configuration, so long as reference is transmit- (1978: 71–89). ted across such a chain, indirect reference Interpreting a work involves discovering occurs (1984: 55–71) what symbols constitute it, how they symbol- A variation must be like its theme in some ize, what they refer to, and to what effect. respects and different from it in others. But Because of the richness and complexity of aes- merely having shared and contrasting features thetic symbols, the task may be endless. And is not enough. Otherwise, every passage would multiple, divergent interpretations may be cor- be a variation on every other. A passage does rect. But it is not the case, Goodman main- not qualify as a variation, Goodman contends, tains, that every interpretation is correct. Only unless it refers to the theme via the exem- such interpretations as make maximally good plification of both sorts of features. Variation, sense of the work’s symbolic functions are then, is a form of indirect reference (Goodman acceptable. His pluralism consists in his recog- & Elgin 1988: 66–82). nition that more than one interpretation may Scientific symbols, Goodman urges, are rela- do so (Goodman & Elgin 1988: 222). tively attenuated. They symbolize along com- To construe works of art as symbols and the paratively few dimensions. Aesthetic symbols, aesthetic attitude as a quest for understanding by contrast, are relatively replete. Comparat- might seem to anaesthetize art. It does not. For ively many of their aspects function symbolically. the feelings that a work evokes are sources of The same configuration of ink on paper might understanding. Emotional sensitivity, like per- be an electrocardiogram or a drawing. If the for- ceptual sensitivity, enables us to discern subtle mer, only the shape is significant. If the latter, but significant features. In the arts, Goodman the precise color and thickness of the line at maintains, emotions function cognitively each point, the exact shade of the background, (Goodman 1976: 245–52). the exact size and shape of the paper and of Merit, too, transforms from an end to a the line on the paper, even the quality of the means. Rather than seeking to understand a paper itself, may be significant. Moreover, the work in order to evaluate it, we use evaluations electrocardiogram is referentially austere. It as sources of understanding. An unexpected

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goodman, nelson assessment kindles curiosity, prompting us to 1988. (with Elgin, Catherine Z.) Reconceptions. attend more carefully to the work – to search Indianapolis: Hackett. for features that previously eluded. The know- Secondary sources ledge that a given work has (or lacks) aesthetic 1974. “Supplement: Symposium on Skills and merit may then help us to understand it better Symbols in the Arts,” Monist, 58. (1972: 120–1). 1978. “The Philosophy of Nelson Goodman,” Erkenntnis, 12 (special issue), 3–179. See also twentieth-century anglo-american 2000. “Symposium: The Legacy of Nelson aesthetics; depiction; expression; metaphor; Goodman,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, notations; ontological contextualism; ontology 58, 213–53. of artworks; perspective; representation. Elgin, Catherine Z. (ed.). 1997a. Nelson Goodman’s Philosophy of Art. New York: Garland. bibliography Elgin, Catherine Z. (ed.). 1997b. Nelson Goodman’s Theory of Symbols and Its Applications. New York: Primary sources Garland. [1968] 1976. Languages of Art. Indianapolis: Hackett. Elgin, Catherine Z. 2001. “The Legacy of Nelson 1972. Problems and Projects. Indianapolis: Hackett. Goodman,” Philosophy and Phenomenological 1978. Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett. Research, 62, 679–90. 1984. Of Mind and Other Matters. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. catherine z. elgin

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Hanslick, Eduard (1825–1904) Austrian He brings three main considerations against music critic, the most famous critic of his day, the supporting thesis. First, there is no invari- and an acerbic enemy of excessive romantic able causal nexus between a musical work tendencies in nineteenth-century music. His and the feelings, if any, it arouses: the feelings verdicts on contemporary compositions greatly excited by a particular work vary both from per- affected their reception, especially in Vienna, son to person and within a single life. But a com- where he lived for most of his career. His first position’s musical merit is unvarying. Second, important publication, The Beautiful in Music the power to awaken feelings is not confined to (first edition 1854), is deservedly the most music, and the feelings excited by any musical famous work of musical aesthetics. work could be aroused by another, nonmusical, Hanslick’s aim in writing the book was to stimulus. So music does not possess an aesthetic establish the thesis that, in his own terms, “the monopoly of the function of evoking feelings. beauty of a composition is specifically musical.” Third, emotional feelings are states either of In other words, he attempted to show that satisfaction or of discomfort. But a musical musical value is autonomous, in the sense that work that arouses a discomforting feeling is the value of music as an art, or the value of any not valued for doing so, and its capacity to piece of music as music, is independent of its rela- arouse such a feeling is not a musical merit. tion to anything extramusical. Instrumental To establish his principal negative thesis, music has no subject matter extraneous to its Hanslick uses three main arguments. The first combinations of musical sounds, and its artis- and most important of these is designed to tic value is determined only by the intrinsic restrict the scope of the musical representation beauty of the audible forms that compose it, so of feeling. A definite feeling, such as a feeling that its aesthetic appeal resembles that of an ever of love, anger, sorrow, or fear, is not only a state changing kaleidoscope or a mobile arabesque of pleasure or dissatisfaction, but a state that that pleases in itself rather than subserving a fur- possesses “intentionality”: the felt pleasure or ther function. The illustrative power of music dissatisfaction is not free-floating but has an is minimal, consisting only in the imitation of object – namely, the state of affairs represented sounds (e.g., bird calls); and the introduction of by the thought that is partly constitutive of reproductions of sounds of the natural world into the feeling. For example, the feeling of hope a musical work always serves a poetic, not a involves the thought of a desired outcome and musical, purpose. the feeling of grief the thought of someone’s The principal target of the book is the doctrine death. Hanslick argues that music cannot rep- that the aim of music as an art is the representa- resent definite feelings, since it cannot represent tion of feelings or emotions. This doctrine main- the thoughts in which such feelings partly con- tains that the proper subject matter of music is sist: music can represent only the “dynamic” the emotional life and that the musical value of properties of definite feelings, the ways in which a work is determined by how successful it is in feelings vary in intensity and the changing representing emotional feelings and, perhaps, by aspects of the movements in or of the body that the nature of the feelings it represents. This are felt in an episode of emotion. doctrine, Hanslick believed, is buttressed by But the argument is not yet finished. For the thesis that the aesthetic function of music music cannot represent these dynamic proper- is to arouse feelings. This is his subsidiary target. ties as being properties of feelings, and feelings

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hegel, georg wilhelm friedrich are not the only phenomena that can change bibliography in strength and kind of movement. So Hanslick Primary sources reaches the conclusion not only that music [1854] 1885. Vom Musikalisch-Schönen. 7th edn. cannot represent definite feelings, but also that Leipzig. it can neither represent indefinite feelings nor [1885] 1891. The Beautiful in Music. G. Cohen indefinitely represent feelings. (trans.). London: Novello & Ewer. (Translation of He brings two additional arguments against 7th edn.) his prime target. The first asserts that it cannot [1891] 1986. On the Musically Beautiful. G. Payzant be necessary for music, considered from the (trans.). Indianapolis: Hackett. (Translation of 8th point of view of its being an art, to represent edn.) definite feelings, since at least some musical 1894. Aus meinem Leben [From My Life]. Berlin: works are admitted by all listeners not to do so. Allgemeiner Verein für Deutsche Literatur. 1988. Hanslick’s Music Criticisms. H. Pleasants (ed. & The second claims that even if music could trans.). New York: Dover. represent definite feelings, its doing so would not be a requirement of musical value. Hanslick Secondary sources offers two reasons why this requirement would Budd, Malcolm. 1980. “The Repudiation of Emotion: not apply. The first is the existence of valuable Hanslick on Music,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 20, music that does not have feelings as its subject 29–43. matter. The second is that, if there were any Davies, Stephen. 1994. Musical Meaning and Expres- sion. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 202–20. music that represented feelings, it would not be valuable to the degree that it represented malcolm budd feelings accurately; for, so Hanslick argues, musical value would always be inversely pro- portional to representational accuracy. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770– Despite its clarity and boldness, Hanslick’s 1831) The most important German philo- philosophy of music is not entirely successful. sopher of the early nineteenth century; his It places a salutary emphasis on the fact that all-embracing absolute idealism was an im- music as an art must be appreciated for its own mense influence on later thinkers, including sake, rather than merely for the feelings it may such critics as Kierkegaard and Marx. Hegel’s awaken. It certainly demolishes the unvarn- writings provide what is arguably the most ished thesis that music has no other aesthetic systematic and comprehensive aesthetic function than the arousal of feelings. It follows theory of the modern world (and a fortiori for that, if there is an aesthetically significant role all time, since aesthetics, in the strict sense, is for the musical excitation of feelings, music must a discourse that begins only in the eighteenth possess other aesthetic functions in virtue of century). which it elicits definite feelings. It is also clear It has become customary to describe as that, if representation is understood as a rela- “Hegelian” all approaches to the arts that under- tion which involves a noticeable resemblance stand them in terms of a meaningful succession between the related items, instrumental music of styles, or as expressions of the worldviews cannot represent the thought that forms the core of cultures or historical periods. While this is a of a definite feeling, so that the musical arousal rather loose designation, it is indeed the case that of feelings cannot be an aesthetic response to Hegel’s aesthetics played a fundamental role music’s representation of the emotional life. in the formation of literary history and the his- But this is not sufficient to show that the tory of art in the nineteenth century. It would appreciation of musical value cannot require be only a slight exaggeration to say that every hearing music in a manner that relates it to philosophical aesthetician in the nineteenth and a definite emotion. If there is such a mode of twentieth centuries has been either a Kantian perception, an aesthetics of music that does or a Hegelian. Kantian aesthetics focuses on not recognize and explicate it is incomplete. those characteristics of aesthetic experience that differentiate it from others (knowledge See also music and song; emotion; expression; and action) and insists, in one way or another, formalism; function of art. on the contemplation of form as the defining

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hegel, georg wilhelm friedrich characteristic of the aesthetic. Hegelian aes- some of Hegel’s own manuscript notes for thetics emphasizes the meaning and the content these lectures, over a number of years (the of works of art and takes those works to be publication and editing of such materials is superior, everything else being equal, which still going on, and while the main outlines of have as their content the most concrete and fully Hegel’s mature aesthetics are clear, we ought articulated idea. to expect some new emphases and analyses to Despite this contrast, Hegel’s aesthetics (like emerge). Hegel – in a way that is documented his entire philosophical project) would not of no earlier philosopher – took a comprehens- have been possible except for Kant’s thought and ive and many-sided interest in the arts, travel- for post-Kantian romanticism, which regarded ing to picture galleries and reading extensively art and beauty as providing our most profound in the literatures of the world; this artistic access to the real. Hegel’s early writings show concern reached a peak in Berlin, where he him to be first a participant in and then an took a passionate interest in opera and the the- early critic of this romantic aestheticism. In ater and befriended a number of actors. Never- “The Earliest System-Programme of German theless, by the time of the lectures Hegel is Idealism” (which apparently emerged out of announcing what is (somewhat misleadingly) youthful exchanges between Hegel, Hölderlin, called his “death of art” thesis, opening his lec- and Schelling), Hegel writes that “the highest tures with the claim that art has exhausted its act of reason, the one through which it encom- potential and that “it is now, on its highest passes all ideas, is an aesthetic act and . . . truth side, a thing of the past” (1975: 11). Art, he and goodness only become sisters in beauty” argues, has not merely been displaced by science (1972: 511); and he speaks of the need for phi- (a science of dialectical wisdom, we should losophy to become poetic and poetry to become recall), but is now a subject matter for science; philosophical, in order that a new aesthetically in other words, this is the era of institutions such appealing religion of reason may arise. as the museum and the formation of such By the time of his first major work, The intellectual constructions as “world literature” Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel had (a notion apparently invented by Hegel’s con- become a critic of aestheticism and spoke temporary, Goethe), in which it is possible to now of the absolute priority to be accorded to know peoples and cultures by a comparative Wissenschaft (science, wisdom, or knowledge) study of their literary expressions. over the representational, intuitive, and figurative knowing that mark the limits of art hegel’s dialectical theory of art and religion. Nevertheless, the Phenomenology THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT contains some of the most significant philo- Most accounts of Hegel’s aesthetics are based sophical writings on the arts, including a spec- almost exclusively on the lecture course. This ulative analysis of tragedy, a theory of the is unfortunate, because the lectures tend to development and dissolution of Greek art, focus on the meaning of art independently of and a commentary on Diderot’s comic and the role of the artist and the audience. In the satiric masterpiece Rameau’s Nephew. The Phenomenology, in the sections entitled “Natural Phenomenology can be read as a contest between Religion” and “The Religion of Art,” Hegel the claims of art and those of philosophical sci- develops a complex account of the dialectic of ence, and while it is clear where Hegel’s final the production and reception of artworks, or allegiance lies, recent philosophers (notably of intention and interpretation, in which the Jacques Derrida in Glas) have pointed out that, meaning of the work is a triadic relation despite his assurances, Hegel’s text is less sci- between the artist, the artifact, and the audience. entific and more artistic than he would have Although Hegel’s concrete material for this us believe. analysis is taken only from the ancient world Beginning after his arrival at his final teach- (Egypt, the Near East, and Greece), the lines of ing position in Berlin, Hegel began to lecture analysis are arguably applicable to all artistic periodically on the philosophy of fine arts, or aes- production and reception; this is not surprising thetics. The text that is called Hegel’s Aesthetics if we recall that he thinks of the Greeks as is a collation of various student transcripts and the supremely artistic culture. Hegel provides a

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hegel, georg wilhelm friedrich narrative account of how art first emerges that relation is a figurative way of talking about from a more mechanical, craft-like endeavor; the relation between finite and infinite mind. he then proceeds to explain the development of The epic presents an ultimately confused Greek art as the increasingly conscious and picture of all action in which the ostensible articulate attempt to overcome the gaps of agents, the gods, sink to trivial and all too sympathy and understanding that arise when human behavior, while men can obtain a an artifact must mediate between producer heroic stature apparently not accessible to and consumer; the story ends, like so many immortals. The same situation is reflected in the Hegelian narratives, with a moment of attained communicative structure of the epic itself, in recognition or identity in difference among all which the singer claims to be nothing but a the parties to the artistic transaction. mouthpiece for the muse and the audience is In the initial form of the religion of art, alienated from the poem’s content by the real- which Hegel calls “abstract,” a created work ization that the latter tells of human beings of such as a sculpture stands as something of an a long-lost heroic era beside which they appear obstacle between artist and audience. Those insignificant. Hegel takes the presence of fate in who admire the finished piece do not really the epic to be the sign that there is something comprehend it if they focus only on its surface seriously flawed in the way that this artwork beauty and fail to grasp the thought, activity, understands itself and the task of art. The and labor that the artist put into his work. development of art requires a more daring and The artist, too, will reflect on the discrepancy less qualified form of consciousness that will between the static form (of the god or hero) and expel fate, depopulate the heavens, and leave all the life or vitality it was meant to embody. the participants with the deep sense that they By implication, Hegel is critical of a major have learned about their own humanity. tradition in German thought (represented Tragedy takes a significant step in this direc- by Winckelmann and Kant, among others) tion because its characters are themselves according to which Greek sculpture is an poets who are artists insofar as their speeches unsurpassable model; for Hegel it is a failure, “give utterance to the inner essence” despite its beauty. Faced with this failure or (1979: 444). However, the chorus and the impasse artists turn, on Hegel’s analysis, to spectators are still relatively passive and forms that aim at collapsing the distinction removed from the life of the poet-actors. While between artist and audience; these are works of the gods tend to be reduced to the single “living art” such as hymns, Dionysiac revels, or figure of Zeus or to an impersonal fate, either of Olympic games (twentieth-century analogies these still leaves tragedy subject to an uncom- would be participatory theater or “happen- prehended necessity. ings,” just as Hegel’s “abstract art” would find Comedy, the ultimate form of the religion of its parallel in such movements as minimalist art). art, demonstrates the identity of artist-actors and The problem that Hegel finds with the living their audience. While Zeus is dethroned and the work of art is that it fails to achieve a fully con- vortex reigns in his place, all recognize that scious wholeness, or totality, because it must the only ones here are us human beings. The be either completely transient (in active forms mask which stood between artist and audience like the revel) or static and detached (as in more in tragedy now becomes dispensable, and a disciplined, choreographed displays of human mutual recognition is achieved which coin- bodies). What is needed, he says, is a medium cides with an unparalleled “state of spiritual that is both internal and external, exhibiting well-being” – that is, a celebration of human self- characteristics of both motion and rest. This he consciousness. Hegel marks this achieved finds in language, which offers the possibility identity with a profound pun: “The actual self of an identity of meaning for artist, work, of the actor [Schauspieler] coincides with his and audience. Even within this “spiritual” art, persona or mask [Person], just as the spectator however, Hegel sees a series of approximations [Zuschauer] is completely at home in the to this identity in the forms of epic, tragedy, and drama performed before him and sees himself comedy. The content of these genres has to do playing in it” (1979: 452). Production and with the relations of men and gods, and for Hegel consumption or intention and interpretation

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hegel, georg wilhelm friedrich are not, on this dialectical view, always and nec- major impetus in the Western movement, essarily distinct; it is in fact the task of art to bring gathering momentum in the nineteenth century, them together. to accord a significant status to non-Western art. The middle term of the three great art forms hegel’s system of aesthetics is classical art, and here Hegel’s material is For Hegel, aesthetics is concerned essentially drawn mainly from ancient Greece. Here the with the beauty of art rather than with nat- form “is the free and adequate embodiment of ural beauty or some free-floating aesthetic ex- the idea in the shape peculiarly appropriate to perience. This is because art is one of the modes, the idea itself in its essential nature” (1975: 77). along with religion and philosophy, or absolute Although Hegel is still regarded by some as an spirit, in which mind comes to know itself and extreme idealist and rationalist, he argues that its activities. Hegel defines the beauty of art as the anthropomorphism of this form of art is the manifestation of the idea in sensuous form. absolutely necessary, “since spirit appears sen- The idea is not any random thought or concept, suously in a satisfying way only in [a human] but the idea of the whole, or totality, the self- body” (1975: 78). The beautiful bodies of expression and self-understanding that is the aim Greek sculpture are echoed in Greek poetry, of all human thought. Art is a way in which the where word and action are perfectly adequate mind comes home to itself, displaying and to conception and all residues of mystery have reflecting on its truth. Much of the content of been eliminated. The price that must be paid for art is religious, but it must be remembered that the supreme beauty of classical art, however, is for Hegel religion is not intrinsically mysterious; a certain limitation in the depth and intensity it is, rather, a revelation of what mind is. of its spiritual world. In the lectures, Hegel distinguishes three In romantic art, spirit is known as “infinite main forms of art that are differentiated in terms subjectivity” and “absolute inwardness,” such of the relation that holds in each between idea that its riches could never be presented in and sensuous form. In symbolic art there is a dis- any sensuous form. This romantic art (which crepancy between the idea grasped in a relatively Hegel sometimes identifies as Christian art) crude and minimal way and a profusion of often takes as its theme the very inadequacy and specific forms that attempt to embody the idea. insufficiency of bodily beauty; representations The paradigm of such art for Hegel is the reli- of the crucifixion, for example, can be seen as gious art of India and Egypt in which, as he sees negations of the perfect, unblemished bodies of it, there is a restless search for the appropriate Greek sculpture. If classical art is supremely form for the gods. Symbolic art is typically sub- beautiful, romantic art is more spiritual. Hegel lime insofar as it testifies to the insufficiency of traces the development of romantic art from artistic means. Hegel manages thus to demote its explicit concern with Christian themes, the sublime from the position it occupied in through their gradual secularization in the lit- eighteenth-century aesthetics (for instance, in erature of chivalry, which deals with themes of Burke and Kant) as coordinate with or even honor, love, and fidelity, to the formation of mod- more significant than the beautiful; for him, ern characters (like those of Shakespearean the sublime is a lower or preparatory stage of drama) that have an independence and freedom beauty itself, and its relative inadequacy is a not known in art’s earlier phases. It is here function of that indeterminacy and formlessness that he begins to speculate about the dissolu- which impressed earlier thinkers. tion (Auflösung) of art, sometimes referred to The most sophisticated form of symbolic art (a bit simplistically) as “the death of art.” His are works like the sphinxes of Egypt, which claim is that the romantic concentration on embody a sense of mystery and hint at its solu- inwardness and subjectivity has led to a condi- tion as the human form begins to emerge from tion in which art is no longer determined by any animal and geometrical shapes. While Hegel’s specific content; rather, the artists themselves account of non-Western art may sound naively have been liberated through criticism and chauvinistic, it is based on an extraordinary reflection, and now they are radically free in their range of knowledge for a thinker of his time; and choice of styles and themes. Interest in art has the lectures on aesthetics themselves were a shifted to the artist’s persona, and the artist of

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hegel, georg wilhelm friedrich the late romantic phase may exploit this inter- is concerned with appearance as such, where est in a humorous or ironic mode (we might appearance is understood as something that think of Picasso’s many styles, or the irony of must be subjectively entertained. This play Marcel Duchamp, as suggesting the plausibility with appearance allows painting a far greater of Hegel’s projection of art’s new vocation). range of subjects, styles, and treatments than Hegel never claimed that the production and the preceding more material arts. Painting appreciation of art would simply cease; in that portrays not only the many forms of human sense he held no “death of art” thesis. He did consciousness by capturing expression and argue that a certain essential history of art had nuances of mood; it also conveys the subjective come to an end, and that once this history had act of perception as such, when (as in Dutch become an object of knowledge (for aesthetics, painting of the seventeenth century, which the history of art, the museum, and so on) seems to be, for Hegel, the highest variety of artists themselves would become inspired and painting) it exhibits human vision as such cheerful players in an inexhaustible game of the in manifesting evanescent qualities of light, imagination. atmosphere, and texture. Music moves further Coordinate with Hegel’s distinction between into the inner world by abandoning spatial the general symbolic, classic, and romantic form altogether; sound has no obvious material forms of art is his theory of the individual arts embodiment and it must be heard sequentially and their system. He thinks of the individual arts – that is, perceived only in time – which is, of as forming a hierarchy, rising from those most course, the form of the inner life. Even more tied to the constraints of the material world specifically, the musician’s ability to repeat a (e.g., architecture) to those that are first, or theme with variations and the listener’s capa- most ideal, in this respect (e.g., poetry). Art city to grasp and recall it are forms of what becomes actual only in particular works in Hegel calls Erinnerung, reinternalization or a specific media, and every concrete work must making inward again, at a higher level. (For be understood in terms of the specific potentials Hegel, Erinnerung is the very form of spirit’s and limits of the individual art of which it is activity in realizing and becoming aware of an instance. Architecture is the attempt to itself; the English “recollection” is at best a pale master and subordinate an external inorganic translation of this fundamental concept.) medium to make it an appropriate vehicle for Poetry, by which Hegel designates what spirit. Because of the obstinacy of its medium, we would call imaginative literature, is the it is typically a symbolic art; however, it is not supremely inward art. He claims that its exter- exclusively so, and Hegel comments penetrat- nal embodiments are relatively accidental and ingly on architecture’s development from such that it exists completely in the imagination, so enclosed symbolic forms as the Egyptian pyra- that it is fully translatable from one language mids to structures of a more human scale, to another. “Poetry is the universal art of the such as Greek temples, and then to Gothic spirit which has become free in itself and architecture which dematerializes matter in which is not tied down for its realization to soaring cathedrals where light transforms the external sensuous material; instead, it launches resistant stone. Similarly, sculpture is paradig- out exclusively in the inner space and the matically but not exclusively a classical form of inner time of ideas and feelings” (1975: 89). art. In the first instance it presents the image of Poetry is the most philosophical art, exhibiting a god or a human being conceived on the model dialectical relations and structures in the of the gods’ tranquillity and self-sufficiency. imaginative worlds it creates; Hegel devotes Sculpture no longer processes its material about as much space to it as to all of the other externally as architecture does, simply in order arts together. Where much philosophical aes- to bear and distribute weight or provide shelter thetics claims that the meaning of poetry is from the elements, but constructs its works ambiguous, implicit, metaphorical, or sugges- under the aspect of the bodily form. tive, Hegel holds that its meaning is explicit – The individual arts are further dematerialized although we must grasp this explicit meaning in painting, which is a relatively ideal medium in a dialectical way, rather than in terms of the because it is limited to two dimensions and propositional logic of the understanding. He

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hegel, georg wilhelm friedrich analyzes these dialectical structures in consid- ferent social spheres into which the ancient ering the three genres of epic, lyric, and drama world was divided. At the height of modern with respect to their various transformations of drama (e.g., Shakespeare), these individuals the subject–object relation. become poets themselves, showing by their The epic poet might seem to be a subject pas- beautiful speeches that they have risen beyond sively recording a world external to him. Yet the their terrible circumstances to a poetic vision of content of the epic (he is thinking of Homer in their own careers (see the last soliloquies of particular) yields a different view. The hero of Macbeth and Cleopatra). It is this rise to self- the epic is neither simply a product of his world consciousness that is typical of Hegel’s under- nor its cause; epic society cannot be under- standing of art, and which forms the guiding stood either as a collection of human atoms theme of his metanarrative of art’s history. nor as a holistic unit whose properties determine all its members. The hero emerges from his See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century world and is of it, yet he transcends it in his indi- continental aesthetics; art history; beauty; viduality, as Achilles does with his towering danto; function of art; lukács; religion and wrath and his demand for honor from Zeus. The art; sublime. epic world is a poetic one, prior to the fixed ordinances of law and based on more flexible bibliography forms of individual allegiance. Even the items or Primary sources objects of this world are understood in terms of [1796] 1972. “The Earliest System-Programme of their makers and their histories, rather than as German Idealism.” In Hegel’s Development: Toward neutral objects. The lyric stance is that of the the Sunlight. H. S. Harris (trans.). Oxford: Oxford individual poet who has reflectively with- University Press, 510–12. drawn from a regularized world in which he or [1807] 1979. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. A. V. she had been engaged. The lyric is not a Miller (trans.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. merely solipsistic meditation or retreat, however, [1835–8] 1975. Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. 2 vols. T. M. Knox (trans.). Oxford: Oxford but the site of a conflict between the independ- University Press. ent freedom of the poet and its infinitely vari- 1962. Hegel on Tragedy. A. Paolucci & H. Paolucci able subject matter. (eds.). New York: Harper & Row. The drama is the most dialectical of poetic forms because it exhibits both subjects becom- Secondary sources Bungay, Stephen. 1984. Beauty and Truth: A Study of ing objective (the character’s action constitut- Hegel’s Aesthetics. New York: Oxford University ing the dramatic world) and the objective Press. becoming subjective (the world giving rise to Derrida, Jacques. 1986 [1974]. Glas. J. P. Leavey Jr. individual expression). Drama is concerned & R. Rand (trans.). Lincoln: University of Nebraska specifically with conflict and its (possible) reso- Press. lution. Hegel’s analysis of ancient tragedy is Desmond, William. 1986. Art and the Absolute: A that it is an art demonstrating the inevitable Study of Hegel’s Aesthetics. Albany: State University conflict of two forces, each having its own of New York Press. legitimacy. In Antigone, which he calls the Houlgate, Stephen (ed.). 2007. Hegel and the Arts. supreme tragedy, it is the clash between the Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Maker, William (ed.). 2000. Hegel and Aesthetics. male, explicit law of the public world (or state) Albany: State University of New York Press. and the female, implicit law of the private Pöggeler, Otto (ed.). 1981. Hegel in Berlin. Berlin: world or family. Such clashes are necessary in Staatsbibliothek Preubischer Kulturbesitz. the ancient world because human beings there Shapiro, Gary (ed.). 1982. “Hegel on Art and are split between their public and private Literature,” Clio, 11, 4. dimensions; poetry is the way in which that Shapiro, Gary. 1986. “An Ancient Quarrel in Hegel’s world becomes conscious of itself. In modern Phenomenology,” Owl of Minerva, 17, 165–80. drama, dialectical developments are more Steinkraus, Warren & Schmitz, Kenneth (eds.). complex and are not tied to the social structures 1980. Art and Logic in Hegel’s Philosophy. New of the ancient world; modern drama deals with York: Humanities Press. individuals who are no longer types of the dif- gary shapiro

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Heidegger, Martin (1889–1976) German but also as “the poet of the Germans” (1980: philosopher; a pupil of Husserl, and a main in- 214). He did not mean that Hölderlin was spiration for such philosophical movements as ex- already established as a great poet. That istentialism, hermeneutics, and postmodernism. remained to be decided, and it will be decided Heidegger’s essays on art and poetry have only by the German people – or rather, on the mystified the uninitiated and frustrated tradi- basis of whether the German public becomes tionally minded philosophers. Most frustrating a people, a Volk, in listening to Hölderlin’s to aestheticians is that Heidegger does not poetry. In opening up a world, the poet also offer a philosophy of art in the familiar sense, founds a people. Reading Hölderlin is thus so that it is far from easy to assess where he engaging in politics “in its highest and most stands in relation to the standard debates. But authentic sense” (1980: 214). The artwork for his followers this is the measure of his functions in a way that reflects Heidegger’s greatness as he was engaged in the over- understanding of the Greek sense of polis as the coming of aesthetics. He showed how certain place around which all beings appear to a characteristics of Western metaphysics have people as what they are (1992: 89–90). Hence governed the philosophical approach to art: its authentic politics is not so much concerned conceptions of truth as correctness and of with an already established people as it is space as something to be occupied, as well as about a people finding itself, which happens in its reliance on the distinction between form part through an engagement with art. and matter, and its appeal to the lived experi- Heidegger locates the origin of the work of ence of the isolated individual. The challenge his art not in the genius of the artist or the taste of writings pose is to determine how successfully the observer, but in art itself. The claim of the he broke with those conceptions without suc- lecture “The Origin of the Work of Art,” that cumbing to other pitfalls. art is an origin, translates into philosophical Poetry, and the arts more generally, became language Hölderlin’s line, “But what remains central to Heidegger’s presentation of his the poets establish.” It is in this sense that thought during the period immediately after Heidegger talks about the truth of art: it opens the disastrous rectoral address of May 1933 up the new, the excess, over what has gone in which he aligned himself with National before. However, with Hölderlin as his guide to Socialism. During the 1934–5 semester he lec- poetry and the arts in general, Heidegger seems tured on the poetry of Hölderlin (1770–1843), more often to be concerned with translating from which the essay “Hölderlin and the philosophical language into poetic language Essence of Poetry” was largely drawn; in 1935 than vice versa. According to Heidegger, he gave the lecture course “An Introduction poetic language has a unique capacity to to Metaphysics,” which included a close read- introduce and preserve novelty, which is why ing of the chorus on man from Sophocles’ he refers all the arts, and language itself, to Antigone; in 1935 and 1936 he gave in various poetry (2002: 45). He attaches an importance places the lecture “The Origin of the Work of Art” to poetry virtually unparalleled in the philo- which was first published in 1950; during the sophical tradition. It might not be too much semester 1936–7, under the title “The Will to to say that he resolves the “old quarrel between Power as Art,” he delivered the first of four lec- philosophy and poetry” by placing philosophy ture courses on Nietzsche; and in 1941 and at the service of poetry (1979: 190). 1942 he again lectured on Hölderlin’s poetry. The brief history of aesthetics and art to However, although at one time there was a be found in the 1936–7 course on Nietzsche tendency to believe that Heidegger had establishes the philosophical context for read- retreated into art and poetry as a result of his ing Heidegger’s writings on art (1979: 77–91). disillusionment with the reality of National He claims that aesthetics, in the sense of Socialism, the texts themselves tell a different reflection on feelings inspired by the beautiful, story. did not begin until Plato and Aristotle, who To see this one needs to understand what came after the great period of Greek art, and that Heidegger meant when he described Hölderlin it attained its highest point with Hegel and the not simply as “the poet of poets” (2000b: 52), claim that great art, “in its highest vocation,”

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heidegger, martin had become “a thing of the past” (Hegel 1975: 11). West to the dominance within Greek thought But Heidegger ends his history of aesth- of the experience of poiêsis and technê. Whereas etics with Nietzsche and not Hegel. Whereas he was earlier somewhat ambiguous on this Hegel turned to religion and philosophy as the point, in this context he regards it as some- place where the absolute was to be established thing positive that the Greeks lacked a special following the sublation of art, Nietzsche word for art and employed the pair of terms poiê- thought that religion and philosophy had lost sis and technê to cover all man-made products. their creative force and that art was to be Heidegger reminds his readers that in a tech- pursued as the countermovement of nihilism. nological world one has the impression of liv- Heidegger shares Nietzsche’s conviction that ing in an environment in which human beings turning to art is the thinker’s best recourse in seem to encounter only themselves and their this crisis, and he assigns to the thinker the task products. This description recalls the basis that of overcoming aesthetics and so preparing for Hegel gave for establishing the place of art the possible return of great art. within his system: art is “born of the spirit and In “The Origin of the Work of Art” Heidegger born again” (Hegel 1975: 2), and so consti- takes up that task by addressing aesthetics, tutes a site where spirit recognizes itself in its own and especially Hegel’s Aesthetics, in at least products. two different ways. First, “The Origin of the However, according to Heidegger, this Work of Art” confronts the Greek interpretation widespread impression and the Hegelian phi- of art in terms of technê. According to Heidegger, losophy that appeals to it are misleading. technê does not mean “art” or “craft” so much Human beings do not everywhere encounter as “know-how,” the mode of knowing appro- themselves in such a world, because they priate to poiêsis, which itself is to be understood nowhere encounter human essence as such. not just as “production” but as “bringing forth” More precisely, they do not see themselves as (2002: 35). The breadth of the Greek concep- addressed by what Heidegger refers to as “the tion determines not only subsequent philo- historical determinations of Being.” And yet sophical reflection on art, but also the basic the very proximity of making, on the one categories in terms of which all things are hand, and poetry and the arts, on the other – understood, and not just things produced by as suggested by the fact that they were both human beings for their own use. So, according understood by the Greeks in term of poiêsis, to Heidegger, the form/matter distinction or revealing – comes to suggest to Heidegger derives from the experience of making things. that poetry may possibly rescue us from this That this distinction provides one of the most impasse by reawakening our sense of being as pervasive frameworks in terms of which art that which grants to things their appearance and poetry are analyzed within aesthetics (1977: 35). Although the language is obscure underlies the originality of Heidegger’s sug- at this point, it would seem to correspond gestion that the artwork would be better closely to what he understands by the “excess” approached in terms of world and earth. It or “overflowing” of the origin in the earlier opens up a world and sets the world back on the essay on art (2002: 47). To put it another earth of a historical people as the ground on way, essences do not endure permanently so which and in which they dwell. By highlight- as to underwrite timelessly valid concepts. ing the emergence of the earth as nevertheless Essences, including the essence of poetry, are his- self-secluding in the stones of the temple or the torical and belong to a specific time (2000b: 65). sounds of the words of a poem, Heidegger A second way in which “The Origin of the attempts to leave all talk of form and matter Work of Art” can be said to contribute to the behind. The work of art does not use up its overcoming of aesthetics is in its approach to the materials as the worker does when he pro- question of the so-called death of art. Hegel is duces something. not mentioned explicitly by Heidegger in the pub- The culmination of Heidegger’s reflections lished version of “The Origin of the Work of Art” on technê can be found in “The Question con- until the epilogue, but the question of the end cerning Technology.” In this 1953 essay, he of art, reformulated as the question of whether refers the dominance of technology within the great art is still possible, dominates the text

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heidegger, martin and is left open at its conclusion. For Heidegger, counter that tendency without taking the the vocation of art is to be an origin, a distinc- political route he had employed in the 1930s. tive way in which truth, in the Heideggerian In essays from the 1950s that addressed poems sense of “unconcealment,” becomes historical. by Stefan George and Georg Trakl, Heidegger Two of his examples have since become sought an experience with language that famous. Van Gogh’s painting of peasant shoes would be not just a matter of the feelings of a reveals more about such shoes than any direct human subject, but transformative of historical examination of them would show; Heidegger existence. These essays represent one further step says that the painting reveals their truth and that in his longstanding attempt to break the grip of of the world to which they belong. More telling the so-called rational or calculative thinking of still is the example of the Greek temple. That the modern philosophy, and return to the “poetic temple gave “to things their look and to men thinking” characteristic of early Greek thinkers. their outlook on themselves” exemplifies what As the debate continues about how success- it means to write of the truth of the artwork, fully Heidegger’s writings on art twist free of aes- because it seems clearer in this case in what thetics, so does the question of how readily one sense art might be an origin. The example also can separate these writings from his disastrous suggests that an artwork ceases to be a work political engagement in National Socialism. when it no longer opens up a world – which hap- However, there is no doubting the massive pens, in this case, when the gods have fled impact Heidegger has had on the theory and from it (2002: 21). practice of literary criticism and on the philo- Hegel’s question of the death of art, therefore, sophical reflections on the work of art of becomes the question of whether art is to serve thinkers like Hans-Georg Gadamer, Gianni simply as a way of cultivating our feelings and Vattimo, and John Sallis. of maintaining contact with the past, or whether it may still open up or found a world. See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century This was an open question for Heidegger, and continental aesthetics; gadamer; hegel; neither his reference to Vincent Van Gogh in hermeneutics; truth in art. “The Origin of the Work of Art” nor his sub- sequent discussions of Igor Stravinsky, Paul bibliography Klee, Gottfried Benn, Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George, or Georg Trakl provide an Primary sources answer. He contemplated writing an essay on [1950] 2002. “The Origin of the Work of Art.” In Klee that would serve as a continuation of the Off the Beaten Track. J. Young & K. Haynes (trans.). reflections begun in “The Origin of the Work of Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–56. Art,” but when this was abandoned in the late [1953] 2000a. Introduction to Metaphysics. G. Fried 1950s he returned to Hölderlin. In 1959 & R. Polt (trans.). New Haven: Yale University Heidegger wrote a major essay, “Holderlin’s Press. [1954] 1977. “The Question concerning Techno- Earth and Heaven” that, with its reference to logy.” In The Question concerning Technology and “other great beginnings,” hints that he finally Other Essays. W. Lovitt (trans.). New York: Harper abandons his single-minded fixation on the & Row, 3–35. relation of the Germans to the Greeks, and [1960] 1979. The Will to Power as Art. D. F. Krell allows that other peoples have and can make (trans.). New York: Harper & Row. similar contributions (2000b: 201). Never- [1971] 2000b. Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry. theless, this does not eradicate the impression K. Hoeller (trans.). Amherst: Humanity Books. that Heidegger’s essays on art are more about 1980. Hölderlin’s Hymnen “Germanien” und “Der how a people is formed than they are about art. Rhein.” In Gesamtausgabe [Collected Works], vol. 39. Even so, by referring art to the people Frankfurt: Klostermann. [1982] 1992. Parmenides. A. Schuwer & Heidegger did at least expose the isolating R. Rojcewicz (trans.). Bloomington: Indiana tendency characteristic of so much of modern University Press. aesthetics, where the aesthetic experience has [1984] 1996. Hölderlin’s Hymn “The Ister.” often been largely a matter of subjective feeling. W. McNeill & J. Davis (trans.). Bloomington: After World War II Heidegger attempted to Indiana University Press.

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Secondary sources elimination of intentionally complex phenom- Bernasconi, Robert. 1992. Heidegger in Question. ena, and the adequacy of extensionalism, Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press. together with the dawning realization of the De Beistegui, M. 2005. The New Heidegger. London: global importance of the Kantian theme of the Continuum, ch. 5. symbiosis of the structure of the intelligible Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1976 [1960]. “Heidegger’s world and the structure of thinking, and the Later Philosophy.” In Philosophical Hermeneutics. D. E. Linge (trans.). Berkeley: University of Hegelian theme of thinking’s being inherently California Press, 213–28. historicized. Since at least the early hermeneu- Hegel, G. W. F. 1975 [1835–8]. Aesthetics. T. M. Knox tic efforts of Heidegger in Being and Time, the (trans.). 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. latter theme has come to dominate the her- Pöggeler, O. 1987 [1963]. Martin Heidegger’s Path meneutic tradition. of Thinking. D. Magurshak & S. Barber (trans.). The principal figure of post-Heideggerian Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 167–90. hermeneutics, Gadamer, particularly in Truth and Taminiaux. J. 1993 [1982]. “The Hegelian Legacy in Method, has effectively installed the notions Heidegger’s Overcoming of Aesthetics.” In Poetics, of the flux of history, the transience and con- Speculation, and Judgment. M. Gendre (trans.). tingency of cultural tradition, the social emer- Albany: State University of New York Press, 127–52. gence and constructive nature of human selves, and the impossibility of giving logical robert bernasconi and methodological analysis priority over the metaphysics of human existence. One finds cognate developments in any number of distinct hermeneutics Construed as that theory of philosophical programs that have no particularly interpretation that begins more or less with close connection with hermeneutics – and the work of Friedrich Ast (1778–1841) and which affect the theory of artworks and the Friedrich D. E. Schleiermacher (1768–1834), theory of their interpretation – for instance, and includes among its principal lights Deweyan pragmatism, Marxian and early Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), Hans-Georg Frankfurt critical philosophy, Kuhnian-like Gadamer (1900–2002), and Paul Ricoeur philosophies of science, and poststructuralism. (1913–2005), hermeneutics appears to be the Late phenomenology shows similar tenden- unique philosophical tradition spanning two cies, but phenomenology and hermeneutics continuous centuries. It centers on the ana- have been inextricably linked since the work of lysis of human understanding as inseparable Dilthey and Heidegger. from a grasp of cultural context, intention, and Hermeneutics has developed along the fol- historical change. lowing lines: As a distinct movement, hermeneutics begins at the turn of the nineteenth century, in 1 the replacement of a psychologistic inter- the interval just starting to reflect on the pretation of speakers’ linguistic intentions significance of the French Revolution for the by an interpretation that is more directly metaphysics and methodology of history and centered on the collective Geist (Spirit) of human culture, for the understanding of history, particular cultures; and for the historical nature of understanding 2 the replacement of a model of universal and interpretation. It has preserved through human rationality by a more construc- its disputatious career a distinct constellation tivist view of the self, partly adjusted to the of conceptual themes that, until very recently, divergent traditions of different historical has been effectively marginalized, at times cultures (the theme of so-called classical even pronounced pernicious, in the Anglo- historicism, as in the work of Leopold von American literature focused on extensional Ranke (1795–1886) ), and partly adjusted logic, physicalism, and the philosophy of the (particularly toward the end of the twen- physical sciences. tieth century) to the radical historicity of All that changed – quite radically – with late human existence; twentieth-century doubts about the supposed 3 the subordination of logical, methodo- canons of genuine science, reductionism, the logical, and epistemological questions to

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questions concerning the metaphysics of the methodology of “hermeneutic” treatments the historicity of thinking (Heidegger’s and of interpretative judgment is really a special Gadamer’s essential theme); case of the more general question of the possi- 4 the attempt to recover, under radical history, bility and structure of objective judgment some more perspicuous sense of the discipline under conditions of radical history. of interpretative judgment itself, particu- By “radical history” is meant the following larly in the work of Ricoeur and Habermas orientation: – also, more reactively (against Gadamer), 1 Thinking has a history, is an artifact of in the work of Emilio Betti (1890–1969) and history, hence is not reliably invariant in E. D. Hirsch Jr. (b.1928). terms of rationality, norms, values, rules of coherence, and the like. Hermeneutics is becoming increasingly 2 Human existence is distinguished by the difficult to distinguish from theories of inter- nature of reflexive or self-interpreting pretation that have quite different pedigrees. thinking. This is largely because, first, the theme of his- 3 The real structures we impute to physical toricity came to dominate late twentieth-century nature are inseparable from the conditions thought; and, second, hermeneutics has so far of reflexive (self-)understanding. failed to recover in a compelling way a theory 4 However embedded in physical nature, the of interpretative judgment or, indeed, a theory human world is understood only in terms of the clear connection between interpretation of the understanding, mutual and self- as (self-)understanding (Verstehen) and as the directed, of the members of a common cul- description and explanation (Erklären) of phys- tural tradition or society. ical nature. 5 Human beings and the things of their Dilthey has exerted an immense influence world are interpretatively altered and on the late development of hermeneutics by affected by their ongoing efforts at under- entrenching an overstrong disjunction between standing themselves and their world. Verstehen and Erklären with regard to the 6 The intelligible world, as historicized, has human and natural sciences. But more recent no necessary fixity. efforts (notably by Ricoeur and Habermas) to integrate understanding and explanation Put this way, “the” hermeneutic question is have foundered in skirmishes that have post- the essential philosophical puzzle of the late poned a recovery of the methodological side nineteenth century, addressed as much to of hermeneutics. All such efforts have failed logic and the physical sciences as to the to claim the notion of radical history that is human sciences, history, and the interpreta- endorsed in views as disparate as those of tion of art. Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Hermeneutics in the narrow sense may be Foucault. The problem is still very much with divided, very roughly, into two phases: one us, but it is difficult to suppose that late contri- spanning the tradition from Schleiermacher butions to the matter can be expected to con- to Dilthey and, somewhat reactively, even tinue to single out hermeneutics as a distinct, retrogressively (following the appearance of privileged, relatively homogeneous stream of Gadamer’s Truth and Method), to Betti, Hirsch, philosophical analysis. Ricoeur, and Habermas; the other spanning Technically, what is now needed is a sys- the tradition from Heidegger and Gadamer, tematic reconceptualization of the central reaching back to Nietzsche and pressing for- notions that were originally called into play in ward also to nonhermeneuts interested in inter- the methodologically minded early phases of pretation under the flux of history, such as hermeneutics, and remain central to the largely Foucault. The first is methodologically and ahistorical orientation of Anglo-American epistemologically centered, intent on identifying philosophy: namely, reference, predication, a clear sense of the objectivity with which the numerical identity, reidentification, truth, real meaning of a text, linguistic utterance, and the assignment of truth values and action, pattern of social life, artifact, or art- the like. The seemingly restricted question of work is uniquely and reliably determined.

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Originally, in Ast and other early figures, the interpretation of art (or texts) and self- hermeneutics was compartmentalized in terms interpretation are inseparable and affect one of specific procedures for determining original another (subtilitas applicandi). intent within a given historical Geist, with No standard form, therefore, can be ascribed respect to the law or to religion or the like. In to hermeneutics. It ranges from a methodolog- Schleiermacher, a common discipline is gen- ically focused account of interpretation com- eralized for written texts, still strongly cast mitted to the recovery of original authorial in terms of personal intention, though with intent or original geistig meanings suited in some appreciation of the tacit influence of principle to any historical period, to a meta- an encompassing culture. In Dilthey, it is physically focused account of interpretation enlarged still further to range over more than that holds that humanity and our world are con- literary remains, and is more and more centered stituted and continually reconstituted by our on the recovery of historical rather than bio- reflexive efforts at interpretative understand- graphical intention, though with the same ing. These efforts are tacitly skewed in a per- emphasis on a rigorous recovery of meanings. spectival or horizonal way by the conditions of These conceptions somewhat justify Gadamer’s historical formation and ongoing life. well-known charge against romantic herm- The decisive mark of these large changes in eneutics: that the pertinent theorists failed to the hermeneutic tradition, particularly bear- grasp satisfactorily that their interpretation ing on the interpretation of artworks, rests of historical materials was itself historical – with the changes in the conception of the historicized, preformed by the historical “fore- hermeneutic circle that the tradition has favored structuring” of their consciousness (wirkungs- at one time or another. For Ast, for example, geschichtliches Bewusstsein: “effective-historical there is apparently one supreme (“infinite”) consciousness”); hence, that the past cannot be Geist, of which all the diverse cultures of the literally recovered though it can be recon- world are alternative manifestations. Under- structed in relation to some present “horizon.” standing, therefore, is simply the human The second phase is distinctly not method- capacity to find in particular texts “the spirit ological but metaphysical, focused on the of the whole,” proximately, through the inherent conditions of human existence – on various “spirits” of particular cultures, ulti- the fact that humanity is and becomes what, mately in terms of an all-encompassing Geist. under preformative “prejudice,” it understands Schleiermacher is more doubtful about the its own “being” to be (see, especially, Taylor likelihood of recovering a truly “general 1985). Human beings live, are formed by, and hermeneutics” or of grasping the “infinite” change as a result of living in the historical that is language, which appears to be required tradition to which they belong. They are his- in order to resolve the problem of the tories in a sense, whose “present” is already pre- hermeneutic circle adequately. But within formed by the historical “past” that they claim these troubling limits, Schleiermacher empha- to recover and understand. Hence, the inter- sizes an author’s “thought” and the formation pretation of the “texts” (“text” now signifying, of his thought through the genres in which he for Gadamer particularly, any suitably inter- expresses himself, which capture the “whole” of pretable historicized referent: persons, artworks, his historical language and culture. literary texts, events of history) produced in An institution of this sort is fundamental to the past already implicates a present “horizon” all versions of romantic hermeneutics, if we (a tacit, conceptual as well as affective and understand by that term the extension of the practical, orientation in life) – indeed, a “fusion appropriate methodology, beyond narrowly of horizons” (Horizontverschmelzung), a fusion of biographically focused thought, to what is his- recovered past and active present, operative in torically geistig at large, as in Dilthey, Betti, and only in the present ongoing life of actual and Hirsch. But even in Schleiermacher, as societies. In this sense, Gadamer sets certain with the interpretation of the New Testament, strenuous conditions on any would-be theory “a minimum of psychological interpretation of interpretation. His own contribution to the is needed,” he says, “with a predominantly theory of interpreting artworks holds that objective subject.” Interpretation begins, then,

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hermeneutics with a guess that probably fails at once to then also be no need for closure, since every recover either pertinent genres of discourse change in experience would invite the con- (which effectively fix the whole of a text’s struction of a new circle. The admission, in this meaning) or the thought that produces a par- new sense, of the hermeneutic circle confirms ticular text. Hermeneutic skills rework such the irreducibility of what is interpretable to the commentaries in order to bring them into con- nonintensional (or nonintentional) features of gruity with these criterial constraints. physical nature. But to put matters thus still One sees here the incipient structure of a leaves unresolved the methodologically insistent relatively late romantic hermeneutic position question of the rigor of interpretation under such as Hirsch’s, which is characteristically the conditions of radical history. sanguine about the benign form of the We may risk, here, one last finding that hermeneutic circle. The tell-tale difficulty in the hermeneutic tradition would be willing to Hirsch (1967) is a dual one that adversely support: that is, it would be impossible to affects all more or less essentialist conceptions recover any viable sense of the objectivity of an of the circle: (1) there is no satisfactory way of interpretation of a text or artwork without demonstrating that there are relatively fixed supposing that such objectivity lies within the constitutive genres of discourse, in accord competence of the consensual practices of an with which every properly formed “thought” actual historical society. Would-be norms would (author’s or artist’s original intent) is formed and then be constructed rather than discovered, then interpretatively recovered by suitably would be provisional rather than fixed, plural- informed respondents; and (2) there is no satis- istic and relativistic rather than universalized. factory way of fixing constitutive genres so that This means that all presumptions of canon- new poetic or other artistic acts or utterings, pre- ical objectivity, which assume that the inter- sumably formed within them, are truly gov- preted “world” is independent of the “world” of erned by them. the interpreter, utterly fail. The interesting fact Such genres function only heuristically, remains that the devices of truth-claiming dis- then. Only on the assumption that human course – reference, predication, individuation, nature and understanding were essentially identity, the ascription of truth values – must fixed through the whole of history could the all be inherently dependent on the processes of contemporary solution of the hermeneutic cir- historical self-understanding. But then, too, cle possibly be sustained. Hirsch probabilizes there are no privileged cognitive universalities the treatment of genres, but he fails to resolve by which to recover any interpretative canon. the problem just indicated. The hermeneutic The idea that interpretation may be disciplined circle begins to mean only that human under- in a public way remains entirely coherent – standing proceeds by constructing part/whole even ruggedly attractive. constellations of meaning, without relying on methodological rules of any fixed sort. See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century Once the insolubility of the puzzle is continental aesthetics; gadamer; heidegger; acknowledged, it cannot but be difficult to interpretation; text. resist Gadamer’s twin doctrines of “effective- historical consciousness” and “fusion of hori- bibliography zons.” The hermeneutic circle becomes a Ast, Friedrich. 1808. Grundlinien der Grammatik, characterization of the metaphysics of human Hermeneutik und Kritik. Landshut: Thomann. existence, rather than a criterial principle for Dilthey, Wilhelm. 1976 [1900]. “The Development canonical interpretation. One might almost of Hermeneutics.” In Dilthey: Selected Writings. say, trivially, that human understanding pro- H. P. Rickman (ed. & trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge ceeds by way of generating open-ended part/ University Press, 247–63. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1975 [1960]. Truth and whole relations of meaning, since meaning Method. G. Barden & J. Cumming (trans.). New and rationality are inherently holistic notions. York: Seabury. There would then be no sense in speaking of the Heidegger, Martin. 1962 [1927]. Being and Time. right closure of interpretation: closure merely J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson (trans.). New York: becomes practical or heuristic. There would Harper & Row.

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Hirsch, E. D., Jr. 1967. Validity in Interpretation. New film. Not surprisingly, these two approaches Haven: Yale University Press. tend to yield very different interpretations and Ricoeur, Paul. 1981. Hermeneutics and the Human analyses of horror films. Sciences. J. B. Thompson (ed. & trans.). Cam- Psychoanalytic accounts of horror film tend bridge: Cambridge University Press. to focus less on necessary and sufficient condi- Schleiermacher, Friedrich D. E. 1977 [1838]. tions of the genre than on determining its Hermeneutics: The Handwritten Manuscripts. H. Kimmerle (ed.). J. Duke & J. Fortman (trans.). core meanings and underlying themes. Robin Missoula: Scholars Press. Wood (2003) argues that horror films are fun- Taylor, Charles. 1985. Philosophical Papers. 2 vols. damentally about the struggle for recognition Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. of the forces and desires our culture represses, such as surplus sexual energy, female sexual- joseph margolis ity, bisexuality, and children’s sexuality. Since these desires threaten the cultural norms of heterosexual monogamy and the family, they horror Although the horror genre, which must be repressed within the self. But accord- dates back at least as far as the nineteenth cen- ing to Wood, “what is repressed must always tury, covers several art forms, and has its roots strive to return” (2003: 72). Horror films sym- in English and Gothic Romanticism, this dis- bolize the failure of repression through the cussion focuses almost exclusively on horror return of unconscious and dangerous desire, film. It summarizes key theoretical debates which is embodied by a monstrous “other.” regarding the following topics: (1) definitions Otherness represents something that the of horror, (2) attempts to explain the appeal of dominant ideology can neither recognize nor horror, and (3) representations of women in hor- accept, and so must deal with in one of two ways, ror film. either by destroying it or by rendering it harm- For several decades, horror has been among less through assimilation. Otherness can refer the most popular and widely discussed film to things that exist outside of the culture and genres. Filmmakers have produced hundreds of the self or to one’s own culturally unacceptable horror films and created numerous subgenres. desires that one first represses and then projects There are currently dozens of websites, blogs, and outward onto someone or something else in film festivals devoted exclusively to horror film. order to safely disown and discredit it. Some of Hollywood’s most respected and com- Wood interprets horror films as dramatizing mercially successful directors have made hor- the battle between social order and personal ror films, including Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho, desire, or “normality” and otherness. As the em- 1960), Roman Polanski (Repulsion, 1965 and bodiment of otherness, the figure of the mon- Rosemary’s Baby, 1968), Steven Spielberg (Jaws, ster stands in for whatever repressed desires or 1975), Ridley Scott (Alien, 1979), Stanley forces threaten to disrupt the social order of a Kubrick (The Shining, 1980), and Quentin given time. In other words, different monsters Tarantino (Death Proof, 2007). Horror film has reflect different fears. For example, it has been also been widely discussed by cultural theor- argued that the monsters in Cat People (1982), ists, film scholars, and philosophers. The Exorcist (1973), The Brood (1979), and Alien (1979) all represent dangerous female what is horror? sexuality, that the monsters in James Whale’s Most philosophers and film theorists approach Frankenstein (1931) and The Texas Chainsaw the study of horror film from either a cognitivist Massacre (1974), in which the monsters are a or a psychoanalytic perspective. Cognitive film family of retired slaughterhouse workers who theorists often appeal to research in cognitive have been displaced by society, represent the science and typically employ some version of rampant desire of the proletariat, and that the the method of explanation and generalization monsters in Nosferatu (1922) Dressed to Kill developed by Aristotle in the Poetics. In contrast, (1980), and Silence of the Lambs (1991) repre- psychoanalytic film theorists and critics draw on sent repressed bisexuality and homosexuality. thinkers such as Freud, Lacan, and Kristeva Wood’s general theory of horror films does and concentrate on hidden meanings in horror not develop a clear classificatory scheme yet it

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horror nevertheless offers a framework for categorizing one body. It is in virtue of the fantastic nature horror films in social and political terms and a of their biologies that horrific beings elicit criterion for distinguishing progressive from art horror. Consider the monster in John reactionary films. We can interpret films that Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). A famously ter- depict monsters as at least somewhat sympa- rifying scene occurs when it takes the form of thetic as doing social critique and challenging a disembodied head that grows spider-like legs the dominant norms. Films in which monsters and then walks away. Another famous exam- are depicted as pure evil, however, are inter- ple of a fused being is Regan (Linda Blair) in preted as reactionary since these films almost The Exorcist (1973). The film begins to get always end with the annihilation of the monster scary when unexplainable things happen in and the restoration of social order. Examining the house and Regan starts behaving abnorm- the monsters and their meanings provides ally (e.g., urinating on the carpet during her insight into whatever has been repressed in a mother’s dinner party) and saying spooky given culture and thus into whatever is perceived things (e.g., when she tells the astronaut that as most threatening at a given time. he is going to “die up there”), but it grows At the opposite end of the theoretical spectrum horrifying when clear signs indicate that from Wood is analytic philosopher and leading Regan is fused with an evil entity, such as the proponent of cognitive film theory Noël Carroll. first time she speaks with the demon’s voice Carroll’s book-length study of the horror genre or when scratches spelling the word “HELP” are The Philosophy of Horror; or, Paradoxes of the discovered on her torso, looking as if they Heart (1990) convinced analytic philosophers have been scrawled from within. Carroll’s the- and other theorists suspicious of psychoanaly- ory of horrific beings fits these examples and sis that horror is not only a legitimate object of explains why they are so effective at eliciting study, it is an especially philosophical genre. fear and disgust. In contrast to most scholars, Carroll takes a bold position on the nature of horror, identify- the paradox of horror ing a set of conditions that must be met in The “paradox of horror,” which is closely order for a work to be categorized as horror. related to the “paradox of tragedy,” concerns the Utilizing an Aristotelian approach, Carroll question of why we take pleasure in watching defines the horror genre in terms of the emo- horror films. Why do we seek out experiences tional effect it is intended to elicit, which he labels that in ordinary life we try to avoid? Why do we “art horror.” “Art horror” is a combination of delight in being terrified and repulsed? fear, disgust, and physical agitation that occurs According to Carroll, we do not. The pleasure in response to particular types of monsters and we derive from horror films does not come that typically parallels the emotional experi- from our experience of fear and disgust. It ence of the film’s main characters. comes from curiosity. Carroll contends that To qualify as horrific, a monster must be horror plots engage audiences in processes threatening, impure, and inconceivable. Impure of discovery, proof, explanation, hypothesis, in this case refers to something that is “cate- and confirmation, all of which are directed at gorically interstitial, categorically contradic- horrific monsters. Since these monsters are tory, or formless” (Carroll 1990: 32). In short, impossible beings that cannot be explained in horrific monsters must be category violations terms of our existing conceptual schemes, they of some kind. There are multiple types of cate- are intrinsically fascinating. Human charac- gory violation. For example, some horrific beings ters must search for clues to determine what the are structurally fused, that is, they combine monsters are, how they can exist, and how qualities or attributes that are categorically they can be defeated. Like the human charac- distinct or transgress categorical distinctions ters, we yearn to understand these horrific such as inside/outside, living/dead, insect/ beings due to their anomalous nature, and yet human, or flesh/machine (1990: 43). this is precisely what frightens and disgusts us Ghosts, zombies, vampires, and mummies about them. In essence, we tolerate the fear are all both living and dead, and demonically and disgust of art horror because of our deep possessed characters combine two people in desire to comprehend the monsters.

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Most solutions to the paradox of horror are both “other” because they both threaten place far less emphasis than Carroll does on the heterosexual male norm. This is why they the cognitive. Some theorists argue that it is gen- both must be controlled and dominated. uinely fun to be scared during a movie, just as Barbra Creed (1993) analyzes horror’s depiction it is genuinely fun to ride a roller coaster. In nei- of women in terms of the psychoanalytic con- ther case are we in any real danger and so our ception of abjection, as elaborated by Julia fear is exhilarating. Wood (2003) sees horror as Kristeva. According to Creed, horror depicts representing the struggle between oppressive women as monstrous by representing them social norms and our repressed desires. We are and their bodies in particular as abject, and ambivalent toward the monster; it is loath- therefore as something to be expelled, dis- some and threatening but it is also a symbol of owned, or tamed. Although neither Williams nor a disowned part of ourselves. Even as we recoil Creed suggests that horror is completely bad, from the monster, we find its destructive power they both find it deeply problematic. gratifying since it expresses desires we have In her groundbreaking study of the horror been compelled to deny. subgenre the “slasher” film, Carol Clover (1992) Daniel Shaw (2001) proposes that a major complicates traditional accounts of gender in source of the pleasure we derive from horror horror films by identifying multiple respects in films is the vicarious feelings of power and which they challenge and transform represen- mastery they provide. Appealing to Nietzsche’s tational codes of gender and standard modes notion of “will to power,” Shaw asserts that we of identification. Films like The Texas Chain experience increases in power as pleasurable. We Saw Massacre (1974), Halloween (1978), Alien delight in the power struggles in horror, often (1979), Friday the 13th (1980), and Nightmare finding monsters and psychotic killers like on Elm Street (1984) all feature a female pro- Hannibal Lecter compelling due to their awe- tagonist who survives a killing spree, confronts inspiring destructive force. At the same time, a villain, and triumphs in the end. Clover coined we recognize that the suffering the monster the term “final girl” to label this character type. causes is undeserved and so identify with the According to Clover it is not only the final girl human victims as well. This is why our experi- who defies standard cinematic conventions ence of horror is ambivalent. Shaw thinks in slasher films. The killers do as well. Unlike most of the major solutions to the paradox tell most powerful male characters, the killers in part of the story about our attraction to horror, slasher films are effeminate and childlike, but the full story requires us to recognize how expressing infantile rage and disturbed sexual- much we enjoy feeling powerful and domi- ity (e.g., Jason Vorhees, Michael Myers, etc.). nant, even if only vicariously. Representations of a strong and triumphant female and a sexually disturbed and childlike gender and horror male are now generic conventions, and accord- Horror is frequently viewed as an essentially ing to Clover, they are what enable horror misogynist genre, one that reveals fear and films to play with gender identity. She con- hostility toward women and female sexuality. cludes that the female characters in slasher Horror films sexualize violence, celebrate films are “masculine,” and the male characters graphic and sadistic violence against women, “feminine.” and punish female sexuality. Many of them are Clover’s provocative theory of the slasher also believed to privilege the male gaze, rendering film has been extremely influential, inspiring men as active agents who control and dominate debates and discussion not only within aca- and women as passive victims subject to male demic circles but also in popular culture at power. large, but there is a serious problem with Feminists from a variety of traditions have Clover’s account. Although she successfully analyzed the representation of women in hor- identifies a generic formula featuring a tri- ror in order to uncover what it reveals about umphant female, she argues that this female cultural attitudes and fears. Linda Williams is actually a stand-in for an adolescent male. (2002) maintains that horror films associate The protagonist in slasher films has to be women with the monster. Monsters and women a girl, Clover explains, because viewers are

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hume, david uncomfortable with men represented as vul- Grant, Barry Keith (ed.). (1996). The Dread of nerable and terrified. Difference: Gender and Horror Film. Austin: According to Clover then, the atypical char- University of Texas Press. acteristics that set final girls apart from the Jancovich, Mark (ed.). (2002). The Horror Film other females in slasher films – that they are sur- Reader. London: Routledge. vivors, that they are not sexualized, that they Pinedo, Isabel Cristina. (1997). Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing. are intelligent and resourceful, and that they Albany: State Univesity of New York Press. employ an active investigating gaze – make Schneider, Steven J. (ed.). (2004). Horror Film them masculine. It is true that the final girl’s and Psychoanalysis: Freud’s Worst Nightmare. characteristics are unusual given that so many Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. cinematic representations of female characters Schneider, Steven J. & Shaw, Dan (eds.). (2003). depict them as highly sexualized objects, passive, Dark Thoughts: Philosophic Reflections on Cinematic dependent on men, or concerned solely with Horror. Lanham: Scarecrow. finding a male partner or taking care of others. Shaw, Dan. (2001). “Power, Horror, and Ambival- In contrast, the final girl is an active and ence,” Film and Philosophy, special issue on “Horror,” effective agent whose beauty and sexuality are 1–12. Williams, Linda. (2002). “When the Woman Looks.” not on display. But this does not make her less In The Horror Film Reader. Mark Jancovich (ed.). feminine, unless we accept the cultural stereo- London: Routledge, 61–6. types that equate femininity with being sexu- Wood, Robin. (2003). Hollywood from Vietnam alized, passive, and dependent on men. to Reagan . . . And Beyond. Rev. edn. New York: Cynthia Freeland (2002) insists that there Columbia University Press. is greater room for individuality in reactions to amy coplan horror films and resists the assumption that all audiences respond the same way. Freeland acknowledges that there is much that is objec- tionable in horror’s representation of women Hume, David (1711–1776) One of the lead- but points out that horror films often call into ing figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, question traditional value and gender roles asso- David Hume applied the precepts of British ciated with patriarchal institutions. Freeland empiricism to topics in philosophy, economics, is less interested in how audiences respond to history, and politics. Hume’s essay “Of the horror films than in what horror films say, Standard of Taste” (1757) is his longest sus- that is, in how women are presented. If horror tained examination of art and it is generally gives us healthy representations of women, regarded as his major contribution to aes- why explain that away? Why accept out- thetics. However, it is merely one facet of his moded notions of femininity and masculinity in larger project and it can be misunderstood if order to label characters such as Ellen Ripley approached without due consideration of his (Sigourney Weaver) and Clarice Starling (Jodi other writings and his intellectual context. Foster) as masculine? Hume’s first publication, A Treatise of Human Nature, sold poorly. Dismayed, he confined See also catharsis; feminist criticism; fic- most of his subsequent philosophical writing to tion, the paradox of responding to; kris- the more accessible format of the short literary teva; tragedy. essay. Consequently, he never produced the planned segment of the Treatise that was to bibliography address “criticism.” So we must reconstruct Carroll, Noël. (1990). The Philosophy of Horror; or, Hume’s aesthetic theory from a handful of Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge. essays and from scattered comments in his Clover, Carol J. (1992). Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Treatise and the two Enquiries. Readers seeking Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton: Princeton University Press. a clear statement of Hume’s philosophy of art Creed, Barbara. (1993). The Monstrous Feminine. will therefore suffer disappointment. In the London: Routledge. Treatise, for example, the short chapter on Freeland, Cynthia. (2002). The Naked and the Undead: beauty and deformity ignores art and focuses Evil and the Appeal of Horror. Boulder: Westview. on human physical beauty. The discussion is

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hume, david offered solely as a confirmation of Hume’s gen- and theater. In passing, he recognizes that eral theory of the emotions. The Enquiry con- music, painting, and “eloquence” are to be cerning the Principles of Morals contains a few grouped with poetry and essay writing as the short remarks that emphasize the parallels “polite,” “finer,” and “nobler” arts. This group between aesthetic and moral judgment. In is notable within the arts and sciences for keeping with his moral theory, these sources sug- offering beauty, elegance, and wit that is gest (but do not expand on) utilitarian dimen- agreeable to refined audiences. In “Of the Rise sions of aesthetic judgment. Hume repeatedly of the Arts and Sciences,” Hume speculates endorses the standard idea that critical judg- that the polite arts encourage civility and ments rely essentially on pleasures of the therefore flourish in civilized monarchies. A human imagination. However, he does not republic of laws has less need of civility and is provide an account of that doctrine. (He more likely to permit and encourage the sciences removed his only extended discussion of the than the fine arts. These broad remarks are as topic when he edited his final version of An close as Hume comes to offering an explicit Enquiry concerning Human Understanding.) theory of art. Hume’s essays on aesthetics are chiefly con- Hume treats beauty and virtue as equival- cerned with negotiating among a series of ent, or at the very least as two closely related conflicting theses. He concentrates on how species of value. In one of his early essays on the judgments of taste are formed and how they arts, “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion” might be justified. He departs from his contem- (1742), Hume links them so closely that he poraries by abandoning the thesis of a distinct proposes that developing and refining our taste faculty of taste. He consistently emphasizes the concerning beauty and deformity in the arts parallels between moral and aesthetic judg- will improve our general character. Working ments and grounds both kinds of judgment in within the mimetic theory that still prevailed in our felt experiences of pleasurable approval. his century, Hume assumes that the arts are pri- Relying on a fundamental dichotomy between marily concerned with representing human feeling and reason, he contends that judg- affairs. Hence, one cannot be an apt judge of the ments of taste do not involve “knowledge of arts without first becoming a sound judge of truth and falsehood” about objects, but instead human nature. Developing a delicate taste for “gild” objects with “the sentiment of beauty art can be a step toward forming “just” evalu- and deformity” (1998: 163). Yet Hume denies ations of human life, including one’s own situ- that taste can be reduced to mere subjective pref- ation in the face of varying fortunes. This erences. Some works of art are superior to oth- argument prefigures the closing paragraphs of ers. “Of the Standard of Taste” directly tackles Hume’s 1757 essay “Of the Standard of Taste,” the resulting paradox. If a poem’s elegance or where he endorses moral evaluation of art. clumsiness is a “sentiment” or emotion felt by Fifteen years before he links aesthetic and its various readers, how do we support the moral evaluation in that essay, Hume has commonsense view that some poets merit already proposed that the fine arts demand praise but others do not? Although Hume delicate taste, good sense, and sound moral rejects a priori aesthetic principles and entertains judgment of human character. a sweeping academic skepticism about all Written to fill out a planned book of essays universal principles, he says that causal regu- when other, more controversial essays were larities provide an objective basis for distin- deemed unpublishable, “Of Tragedy” and “Of guishing between better and worse taste. In the Standard of Taste” provide Hume’s final summary, Hume’s aesthetic theory is primarily thoughts on aesthetic issues. “Of Tragedy” an account of how evaluative judgments can be addresses the established philosophical para- justified in the absence of their possessing a dox of how depictions of displeasing events truth value. (e.g., in melodramas, tragic theater and litera- Writing at a time when other Enlighten- ture, and historical writing) elicit approval. ment authors actively debated the definition of Hume wonders why our naturally disagree- fine art, Hume ignores that issue. His examples able experience of fear, terror, or anxiety does are drawn almost exclusively from literature not override our pleasurable feelings of “appro-

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hume, david bation” or approval. More to the point, why is disagreement about the precise details of his the pleasure enhanced in proportion to the proposed standard. First, Hume emphasizes degree to which we feel the disagreeable emo- the importance of rules or principles. Yet he tions? The solution, Hume claims, is that any is notoriously unclear about their nature emotion can amplify a different or contrary and role (Mothersill 1984: 188–204). Second, one. Different features of the same work gener- Hume’s argument appears to be circular. Hence, ate the agreeable and disagreeable responses. there is a disagreement about the explanatory Imitation is naturally agreeable to the imagi- adequacy of the proposed standard (Kivy nation. This pleasure can be supplemented by 1967). Third, the essay’s closing remarks on art’s our sense of taste, which responds pleasurably moral dimension introduce additional compli- to the work’s aesthetic achievement. As long as cations. Hume entangles moral and aesthetic the unpleasant responses to the depicted con- sentiment in a way that makes it psychologically tent remain subordinate to these pleasures, impossible to appreciate most art unless one is anxiety and fear strengthen the predominant already capable of making unprejudiced moral sentiment, pleasure. Hence, fictional tragedy is judgments (Mason 2001). aesthetically satisfying. Hume suggests that, In outline, the essay is clear. In conformity by extension, we have a general theory of the with Hume’s revisions to his Enquiry concerning pleasures of poetry, painting, and music. Morals, “Of the Standard of Taste” proposes Unfortunately, Hume complicates his theory that matters of fact are necessary but not in two ways. First, he sometimes proposes that sufficient to justify evaluative judgments. the pleasure “weakens” and even eradicates Hume is an inner sense theorist who treats the disagreeable sentiments. He also talks as aesthetic pleasure as an instinctive and nat- if one emotion is “converted” into the other. ural human response. Natural objects and However, these formulations are difficult to works of art are beautiful or ugly only because reconcile with the idea of a proportion between humans respond to them with subtle “senti- the two feelings, which implies that both are ments” or feelings of pleasurable approval and maintained. Second, Hume allows that the disagreeable disapproval. If humans lacked degree of pleasure depends on the degree of emotions, they would neither formulate nor refinement of taste. Unrefined, “vulgar” tastes grasp evaluative judgments. Good art elicits are pleased by excessive violence that spoils our positive sentiments by employing appro- theatrical works. Lacking admiration for a priate composition and design. play’s more subtle beauties, why do unrefined Hume argues that levels of taste are sup- audiences respond with approval? In their ported by the analogy between taste and ordin- case, the pleasure of imitation enhances the ary perception. Yet he recognizes differences disagreeable emotions aroused by the work’s between “mental” and “bodily” taste. As with content. So it is unclear why pleasure, not sound moral judgment, the “proper senti- pain, is the predominant emotion for those ment” is cognitively complex. It requires that our with unrefined tastes. For these and related first impressions be “corrected by argument reasons, “Of Tragedy” generates more puzzles and reflection” (1998: 76). Hence, a sound than it solves. critic must possess sound understanding. This “Of the Standard of Taste” concentrates on requirement leads some interpreters to think that conflicts between refined and unrefined tastes. Hume’s “true” critic consults aesthetic prin- Hume begins by invoking the parallel between ciples. However, that reading conflicts with the moral and aesthetic judgment. Not every opin- essay’s clear warning that such principles are ion on morality deserves equal consideration, of little value in ethical evaluation. At best, and the same holds for critical judgments of art. Hume recognizes “rules” of good and bad art in It is absurd to suppose that everyone’s taste is order to make the point that human responses equally valid and that everyone’s evaluation are governed by causal regularities, ensuring of Milton’s poetry has equal standing. Hume that the complex object that is Milton’s thus announces his central problem as that Paradise Lost will have the same effect on sim- of distinguishing better from worse critical ilarly constituted audiences. Aesthetic prin- responses. However, there is considerable ciples play an explanatory role, but they risk

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humor rendering Hume’s account incoherent by See also eighteenth-century aesthetics; criti- relegating sentiment to a felt pleasure that lacks cism; fiction, the paradox of responding to; the normative element of genuine approval kant; objectivity and realism in aesthetics; (Shiner 1996). relativism; taste. Building on the hypothesis of causal regu- larities, Hume proposes that taste improves bibliography with experience. Invoking a parallel with Primary sources wine-tasting, he argues that practice and com- [1739] 2000. A Treatise of Human Nature. D. F. parison allow some judges to develop a “delicate” Norton & M. J. Norton (eds.). Oxford: Oxford taste that recognizes objective elements over- University Press. looked by most people. Hence, acquired delicacy [1748] 1999. An Enquiry concerning Human Under- furnishes greater complexity in the resulting standing. T. L. Beauchamp (ed.). Oxford: Oxford sentiments. Because few people have the re- University Press. quisite exposure and practice, few people are [1751] 1998. An Enquiry concerning the Principles of accurate, capable judges of art. Morals. T. L. Beauchamp (ed.). Oxford: Oxford Finally, Hume emphasizes impartiality. For University Press. Hume, the most serious form of corrupting 1987. David Hume: Essays Moral, Political, and Literary. E. F. Miller (ed.). Indianapolis: Liberty “prejudice” is parochial judgment. Good sense Classics. enables a critic to consider a work in light of its originating purpose and context. A “preju- Secondary sources diced” response treats everything as if designed Costelloe, Timothy. 2007. Aesthetics and Morals for the evaluator’s own situation, or it “perverts” in the Philosophy of David Hume. London: the assessment by judging “the persons intro- Routledge Kivy, Peter. 1967. “Hume’s Standard of Taste: duced in tragedy and poetry” without due con- Breaking the Circle,” British Journal of Aesthetics 7, sideration of their own point of view. 57–66. Hence, good taste is a “delicate imagina- Levinson, Jerrold. 2002. “Hume’s Standard of Taste: tion” that is guided by sound reasoning, The Real Problem,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art “improved” and “perfected” by extensive prac- Criticism, 60, 227–38. tice and comparison, and applied with appro- Mason, Michelle. 2001. “Moral Prejudice and priate and unprejudiced understanding of the Aesthetic Deformity: Rereading Hume’s ‘Of the object’s originating circumstances. Hume Standard of Taste’,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art explicitly identifies the “joint verdict” of judges Criticism, 59, 59–71. possessing such taste as the only standard of Mothersill, Mary. 1984. Beauty Restored. Oxford: Clarendon, 177–209. taste. Because both the qualifications and the Neill, Alex. 1998. “ ‘An Unaccountable Pleasure’: consensus of judges are subject to verification, Hume on Tragedy and the Passions,” Hume the normative problem is replaced by two fac- Studies, 24, 335–54. tual questions: Who satisfies this description? Shiner, Roger A. 1996. “Hume and the Causal What do they jointly recommend? Theory of Taste,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Unfortunately, “good sense” is itself an evalu- Criticism, 54, 237–49. ative category, so Hume actually replaces Townsend, Dabney. 2001. Hume’s Aesthetic Theory: one normative category with another (Kivy Taste and Sentiment. London: Routledge. 1967). Furthermore, the absence of fully artic- theodore gracyk ulated rules of art invites the charge that Hume argues in a circle. A taste that rightly ranks works of art is superior because it derives humor Despite the fact that most of the pleasure from the best art. The best art is what- great philosophers from Plato onward have ever the superior critics admire. Superior cri- had something to say on the matter, the ques- tics are initially identified, in part, by their tion of what humor is remains notoriously agreement about those same works. In the problematic. Standardly, most explanations are end, Hume leaves us with the puzzle of why we placed into one or other of three theoretical ought to develop a taste for those works traditions, which attempt to explain the phe- (Levinson 2002). nomenon in terms of incongruity, superiority,

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humor or the release of energy. But before discussing “something sensible, like heights,” she replies these traditions a warning about terminology that it is not heights that kill you; it is the should be sounded. floor.) However, though some humor is well Many thinkers mentioned below write about explained by incongruity resolution, in other laughter rather than humor. But laughter can cases – such as the opening lines of Lewis arise as a result of experiences other than Carroll’s Jabberwocky or nonsensical riddles humor, such as joy, hysteria, or exposure to (“What’s the difference between a duck?” “One nitrous oxide. Though several theorists have of its legs is both the same”) – our amusement attempted to explain all laughter in terms of a seems connected precisely to our inability to find single theoretical formula, most at least include a conceptual schema that allows us to make an attempt to explain humor (and laughter sense of the material. thereat), so in what follows, such theories will Humor theorists have used the word “in- be judged according to their success, or other- congruity” to describe a very wide range of wise, in this enterprise. Also, humor should be humorous phenomena: understood in what follows as the general term 1 logical impossibility (“Lincoln was a great of which wit, satire, jokes, etc., may be viewed Kentuckian. He was born in a log cabin, as subcategories. which he built with his own hands.”). That said, we can go on to identify the three 2 ambiguity (including double entendres and main humor theoretical traditions. the literal interpretations of figures of the incongruity tradition speech, such as Steven Wright’s “I woke up one morning and my girlfriend asked me Probably the most popular of the three among if I slept good. I said, ‘No, I made a few contemporary humor researchers, the incon- mistakes.’ ”). gruity tradition is often viewed as originating in 3 irrelevance (Woodly Allen: “How is it pos- a comment by Kant. For Kant, “laughter is an sible to find meaning in a finite world given affection arising from a strained expectation my waist and shirt size?”). being suddenly reduced to nothing” (1952: 4 general “inappropriateness”: “the linking 199). The idea seems to be as follows. Many jokes of disparates . . . the collision of different set up the mind to follow a particular path, but mental spheres . . . the obtrusion into one the outcome suddenly makes us realize that we context of what belongs in another” have followed completely the wrong path: the one (Monro 1951: 235). we have followed turns out to lead nowhere; or at least not to the same place as the punch line Many examples of humor can be subsumed of the joke. If understood in this way, Kant can under one or other of these headings, yet there be seen as having given birth to the kind of remain doubts as to whether all of the above may incongruity theory more explicitly outlined by be said to be genuinely interchangeable with the Schopenhauer. The core of Schopenhauer’s term “incongruity.” Just as we cannot explain formulation is that “In every case, laughter all humor in terms of incongruity resolution, nei- results from nothing but the suddenly per- ther can we do so in terms of incongruity with- ceived incongruity between a concept and the out stretching the meaning of the term so far real object that had been thought through it in that it ceases to be very informative. some relation; and laughter itself is just the Perhaps the most important objection to expression of this incongruity” (1966: i.59). incongruity theories is that, even if, in any Some recent writers in this tradition have given example of humor, it is possible to argued that what is amusing is not the percep- identify an element of incongruity, it is not tion of an incongruity itself, but rather the reso- necessarily this incongruity itself that causes lution of that incongruity: amusement results amusement. Putting all the emphasis on from fitting what appears to be an anomaly incongruity leaves mysterious why one joke into some conceptual schema. (For instance, will be rated as much funnier than a struc- John Sparkes’s story about his grandmother’s turally identical joke on a different topic. strange phobia: fear of the floor. When asked (Ceteris paribus, some subjects, e.g., sex, tend to by a psychiatrist why she is not afraid of “get a laugh” far more easily than others.)

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Moreover, the incongruity theorist must ex- funny is “something mechanical encrusted on plain why some incongruities are perceived the living” (1956: 84). Each member of society as funny while others are not, and why a par- must pay constant attention to his social sur- ticular incongruity will amuse some but not roundings, and those who fail to do so thereby others. To focus exclusively on incongruity is to demonstrate unsociability, a kind of inelasticity, stress form or structure at the expense of con- which renders them comical. Since nobody tent or context: we need also to consider factors likes being thought of as comical and laughed such as the subject matter, the context within at, having this experience, or seeing a comic which the humor is set, and the attitude of the character treated thus, therefore coerces the hearer or reader, as well as the structure of individual, by humiliation, into acting as a jokes and the cognitive side of humor on social being, as society demands. which the incongruity tradition concentrates. It is difficult to see why, on Bergson’s view, This has led some to reject the incongruity tra- an individual should value a sense of humor as dition, and others to suggest that incongruity strongly as we do: from the individual’s point is a necessary but not sufficient condition. of view, all that can be said in favor of laugh- ter, on Bergson’s account, is that it allows the superiority tradition society to pursue “a utilitarian aim of gen- Though Plato and Aristotle’s brief comments on eral improvement” (Bergson 1956: 73). Both laughter arguably justify placing them in this Hobbes and Bergson tend to overlook the atti- tradition, the most commonly quoted superior- tude of childlike playfulness that is so important ity theorist is Thomas Hobbes. For Hobbes, to the enjoyment of much humor based on “laughter is nothing else but sudden glory aris- nonsense and absurdity, for instance. Also, ing from some sudden conception of some emi- superiority theorists have great difficulty in nency in ourselves, by comparison with the adequately explaining the phenomenon of infirmity of others, or with our own formerly” laughing at oneself. Hobbes claims that the self (1840: 46). We laugh when we realize we are, at whom we laugh is a former self to whom we or perceive ourselves as being, superior in are now superior. But this explanation ignores some way to the object of our laughter. the fact that it is perfectly possible to find one’s Clearly, important areas of humor can be current self genuinely amusing. explained in this way: much humor has a “vic- tim” and involves, in one way or another, the release tradition laughing at the perceived “infirmities of others.” The central idea in this third main tradition is (Consider racist and sexist jokes, or the flaws of that laughter provides a release of tension: many a stock comic character.) But a similar nervous or psychical energy built up in the objection arises as was raised against the nervous system can be discharged through incongruity theorist: why do some feelings of laughter. Though relatively simple versions of superiority result in laughter, while others do this view were propounded by Christian not? Hobbes pays insufficient attention to the defenders of the Feast of Fools and by Herbert object of amusement. It is perfectly possible to Spencer, the most important and elaborately be amused by a piece of humor for its own worked out theory in the tradition is that of sake: in other words, it can often be the object Sigmund Freud. Freud divides jokes into two of amusement itself, rather than the hearer’s feel- main categories: “innocent” and “tenden- ings, that causes laughter. If the incongruity tra- tious,” the latter being subdivided into “hostile” dition puts excessive emphasis on the structure and “obscene” jokes. The pleasure attainable of humor at the expense of the attitude or feel- from innocent jokes comes from their “tech- ings of the laugher, Hobbes seems to make the nique” alone, whereas tendentious jokes have opposite mistake. “purpose” (Tendenz) – such as aggressiveness or Another philosopher who should be men- “exposure” – as well as technique. Civilization tioned in this section is Henri Bergson. For forces us to repress both our aggressive and Bergson, laughter’s function is to act as a our sexual desires. Tendentious jokes allow us social corrective. The key elements in the to enjoy these pleasures, by circumventing the comic are mechanism and inelasticity: what is obstacle that stands in the way of the hostile or

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humor lustful instinct. Such obstacles are of two energy” literally, and thereby to attempt to kinds: external (the difficulty of venting our quantify it. Aspects of the details of the theory aggression on someone more powerful than remain highly dubious too. For example, Freud ourselves, for instance) and internal (our maintains that those who expend most psychi- inner, civilization-induced aversions to smut cal energy in repressing their sexual and hos- and hostility). A tendentious joke either saves tile urges will laugh most at humor which us from having to create the inhibition neces- affords relief from these inhibitions. Yet exper- sary for self-restraint, or allows an already imental research has suggested the opposite: existing inner obstacle to be overcome and the that it is those who readily express sexual and inhibition lifted. This works as follows: the aggressive feelings who laugh most at sexual technique of the joke provides a small amount and aggressive humor. It is also difficult to see of pleasure, the “fore-pleasure,” which acts as why the fore-pleasure, which on Freud’s own an “incentive bonus” by means of which the sup- admission is a small amount of pleasure, is pressed purpose gains sufficient strength to enough to overcome deep-rooted inhibitions. overcome the inhibition and allows the enjoy- Finally, we could object that any explanation of ment of the much greater amount of pleasure humor in terms of energetics merely attempts which can be released from the purpose (Freud to explain what happens when I find something 1976: 188). Since in creating or maintaining funny; it does not explain why I find it so. an inhibition we expend psychical energy, Freud claims, it is plausible to conclude that the beyond essentialism? yield of pleasure derived from a tendentious Perhaps unsurprisingly, the essentialist pre- joke corresponds to the psychical expenditure supposition that there is some feature common that is saved, and the psychical energy saved can to all instances of humor does not seem to have be discharged in laughter. (Freud gives a sim- yielded a fully satisfactory account of humor. ilar explanation of the pleasure derived from Furthermore, a synthesis of such theories innocent jokes: in the enjoyment of nonsense would still not cut the mustard, since their and absurdity, for instance, the psychical inadequacies are not merely those of omission: energy saved is that which one would nor- some of the most important defects are intrin- mally expend on obeying the rules of coherence, sic to the theories, such as the stretching of reason, and logic.) terminology observed in the incongruity tradi- The central idea of laughter’s serving as a tion. In the light of this, it becomes very tempt- release of tension is a plausible one in much ing to be as skeptical about the likely success of humor; the very phrase “comic relief” lends essentialism in humor theory as elsewhere in some support to such a view, and it does seem aesthetics. We also need to be careful about reasonable to say that we operate under a shoe-horning some thinkers into one or other number of constraints, and that laughter can of the three main traditions, as approaching act as a “safety valve.” While these constraints the matter with the traditional trio of the- are not, pace Freud, limited to the pressure to ories in mind can lead us to overlook the restrain sexual and hostile urges – indeed, the significance of some thinkers to the topic. To pressures to live up to the ideals of sexual illustrate this, consider finally a figure typically potency and “macho” aggressiveness might included as just another incongruity theorist: themselves be felt as constraints – it is true that Kierkegaard. we are under pressure to conform to various social and moral norms, and to act rationally. humor and human existence It makes sense to claim that humor which Kierkegaard gives humor an important role in breaks these rules can afford us a release, an ethical and religious worldview, his richest albeit transitory, from these constraints. and most extended discussion of this being in However, Freud’s claims are stronger than the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, published this, and his key error is to offer his theory as a under a pseudonym, Johannes Climacus, who scientific one: his view that all phenomena are describes himself as a “humorist.” Climacus determined by physical and chemical laws develops important existential roles for irony leads him to take the notion of “psychical and humor (subcategories of his more generic

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hutcheson, francis term “the comic”). Irony and humor serve Critchley, Simon. 2002. On Humour. London: as “boundary zones” between the “aesthetic,” Routledge. “ethical,” and “religious” existence-spheres. Freud, Sigmund 1976 [1905]. Jokes and Their The ironist stands at the boundary between Relation to the Unconscious. J. Strachey (trans.). the “aesthetic” and the “ethical” life, having seen Harmondsworth: Penguin. the limitations of the former – a fragmented life Hobbes, Thomas. 1840 [1640]. Human Nature. In The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, vol. iv. which involves an endless evasive toying with W. Molesworth (ed.). London: John Bohn, 1–76. existential possibilities – but without moving to Kant, Immanuel. 1952 [1790]. The Critique of the ethical, in which serious choices and com- Judgement. J. C. Meredith (trans.). Oxford: mitments for one’s own life are made. Whereas Clarendon. irony is proud, and tends to divide one person Kierkegaard, Søren. 1992. [1846]. Concluding from another – Climacus describes it in terms Unscientific Postscript. H. V. Hong & E. H. Hong of self-assertion and “teasing” (1992: 551) – (trans.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. humor is rather more gentle, and is con- Lippitt, John. 2000. Humour and Irony in cerned with those tragicomic elements of the Kierkegaard’s Thought. London: Macmillan. human condition shared by all human beings. Monro, D. H. 1951. Argument of Laughter. Carlton: Melbourne University Press. Humor thus has a sympathy that irony lacks Morreall. John. 1983. Taking Laughter Seriously. (1992: 582), and the humorist understands Albany: State University of New York Press. more profoundly the role of suffering in human Morreall, John (ed.). 1987. The Philosophy of life. This insight into such aspects as suffering Laughter and Humor. Albany: State University of New places humor, rather than irony, at the bound- York Press. ary of the ethical and the religious. Schopenhauer, Arthur. 1966 [1819/1844]. The The overall idea seems to be that, as one World as Will and Representation. 2 vols. E. F. J. Payne ascends the existence-spheres from the aesthetic, (trans.). New York: Dover. to the ethical, to the religious, one develops an john lippitt ever deeper and more profound sense of the comical in life. Hence Climacus’ claim that a sense of and taste for the comic is intimately Hutcheson, Francis (1694–1746) Scottish related to one’s existential capabilities: “the moral and aesthetic philosopher; professor at more competently a person exists, the more he Glasgow University, and a leading representa- will discover the comic” (1992: 462). tive of the “moral sense” school. More recently, this idea has been developed Three important and substantial treatises, by others to suggest that prolonged exposure to published in the first quarter of the eighteenth humor of an appropriate sort can have an century, inaugurated the modern discipline of important role to play in the development of the aesthetics and, at the same time, by no means virtues, as part of the process of moral educa- coincidentally, established what Paul O. tion as “habituation” espoused by Aristotle. Kristeller has called the “modern system of the Thus Kierkegaard’s work can be seen as one way arts.” They are J. P. de Crousaz’s Traité du beau of expanding the scope of philosophizing about (1714), the Abbé Du Bos’s Réflexions critiques humor beyond the three standard theoretical tra- sur la poësie et sur la peinture (1719), and ditions, and into a discussion of the connections Francis Hutcheson’s Inquiry concerning Beauty, between humor, emotion, virtue, and the very Order, Harmony, Design (1725), the first of two nature of being human. works published together under the title, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and See also comedy; irony; kierkegaard; psycho- Virtue. These must be considered the first analysis and art; tragedy. book-length studies in the field of aesthetics and the philosophy of art, at least in the way bibliography we now conceive of them – which is to say, Bergson, Henri. 1956 [1900]. Laughter. C. Brereton as a fully autonomous intellectual enterprise & F. Rothwell (trans.). In Comedy. W. Sypher (ed.). within the general confines of philosophy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, And although Hutcheson’s work is neither the 61–190. first of the three nor the most expansive, it is

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hutcheson, francis unique in the clear philosophical direction that observed” (Hutcheson 1747: 12–13). Thus he was able to give to the subject as he under- the property in “objects” that raises the idea of stood it, in his brief but concentrated monograph. beauty, although it plays the same kind of The model of aesthetic perception that causal role that the primary qualities of exter- Hutcheson chose derived from the Lockean nal objects do in arousing ideas of secondary account of how we perceive secondary qualities. qualities, is not a congeries of primary qualities, Take, for example, my perception of a red barn. not a property of the external world at all, but As Hutcheson would have understood Locke, the relational property of the internal world here is what is happening. The microstructure of ideas. of the material object – the “primary qualities” There are, then, three different “ideas,” – causally interacts with my sense of sight, to properly so called by the Lockean, that are produce in me the sensation of redness. Strictly involved in Hutcheson’s account of aesthetic per- speaking, the term “red” refers to the sensation ception. There is the complex idea, consisting or “idea” that is experienced, because if there of ideas of primary and secondary qualities, were no such idea, there would be no occasion that possesses the relational property of unifor- for me to call the object “red.” It is customary, mity amidst variety. There is the simple idea nevertheless, also to call the object itself “red” of beauty, aroused by that property, that and the “power” it possesses of causing the Hutcheson sometimes describes as something idea of sensation in us “redness.” Redness is a like a secondary quality but more often as a simple quality – which is to say, the sensation “pleasant idea” – by which, clearly, he means or idea is a simple idea, not a complex one. “pleasure.” And there is, finally, the complex idea And the perception of it is nonepistemic in the of uniformity amid variety that one forms when sense that we need know nothing about the one comes to know that uniformity amidst causal apparatus, or what it is in the red object variety is the cause of the idea of beauty. that possesses the appropriate powers, to per- Now each of these ideas can, on the Lockean ceive redness. This basic outline is followed, scheme with which Hutcheson is working, point for point, by Hutcheson in his account be called with some propriety the “idea of of how we perceive what he calls “absolute beauty”; and this has led some to falsely assert beauty,” although some of the points are in the that Hutcheson believed the idea of beauty to nature of analogies rather than literal. be complex. But, speaking with the learned, On his view, “the word beauty is taken for the only the simple idea of beauty, the pleasure idea raised in us, and a sense of beauty for our raised by the sense of beauty, is “beauty” prop- power of receiving this idea” (1973: 34). The erly so called. That is the genuine doctrine. “property” in “objects” that causes this idea of And we know that the idea is simple by virtue beauty to be raised in us is a relation among the merely of the fact that a special “sense” is parts of the object that Hutcheson called (the required for its perception. (Locke required no French had already used the phrase) uni- such “sense” of beauty because for him beauty formity amidst variety; and so “where the uni- was a complex idea.) formity of bodies is equal, the beauty is as the Another mistake to guard against is that of variety; and where the variety is equal, the concluding that Hutcheson is really maintain- beauty is as the uniformity” (1973: 40). This we ing an epistemic account of aesthetic perception know, presumably, by inductive inference. because, on his account, we can consciously per- Analogous to the physical object, the red ceive that certain objects possess uniformity barn, that raises in us the idea of redness, is not amidst variety, the cause of the idea of beauty, a physical object that raises the idea of beauty, whereas we cannot consciously perceive the but rather a different kind of “object” – namely, microstructure of matter that causes the ideas a complex of ideas of primary and secondary of secondary qualities. However, Hutcheson qualities, perceived not by an outer but by an does explicitly say that uniformity amidst vari- “inner” sense: what Hutcheson tended to call, ety functions in a way exactly analogous to in his later writings, “reflex or subsequent, by the way the microstructure of matter func- which certain new forms or perceptions are tions in causing the ideas of secondary qualities; received, in consequence of others previously and he does say explicitly that uniformity

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hutcheson, francis amidst variety causes us to have the idea of same way in the case of relative beauty as in the beauty without our necessarily being aware case of absolute – or it would not have been that the object possesses uniformity amidst introduced in the former at all – Hutcheson variety, or that uniformity amidst variety has must be maintaining, it is clear, that although anything to do with beauty, just as people the complex idea we have of X imitating Y is were seeing red long before they knew any- composed of various “knowings” as well as thing of Locke’s account of perception. Indeed, “perceivings that . . . ,” the uniformity amidst in one place Hutcheson says both in the variety that these conscious “knowings” and same breath. “perceivings that . . .” possess we are not aware of at all. And it is this hidden property But in all these instances of beauty let it be observed that the pleasure is communicated to of our conscious “knowings” and “perceivings those who never reflected on this general founda- that . . .” that causes to arise in us, through tion, and that all here alleged is this, that the our internal sense, the simple, pleasurable idea pleasant sensation arises only from objects in of relative beauty. Whatever may be said of the which there is uniformity amidst variety. We have plausibility of Hutcheson’s position here, its the sensation without knowing what is the cause consistency is undoubted. of it, as a man’s taste may suggest ideas of sweets, acids, bitters, though he be ignorant of the forms See also eighteenth-century aesthetics; beauty. of the small bodies, or their motions, which excite these perceptions in him. (1973: 47) bibliography I have explicated at length Hutcheson’s Primary sources account of what he calls “absolute beauty” [1725] 1738. An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas because that is the part that was most influen- of Beauty and Virtue. 4th edn. London. tial in the eighteenth century. But, in fact, [1738] 1973. Inquiry concerning Beauty, Order, the larger portion of the Inquiry concerning Harmony, Design. P. Kivy (ed.). The Hague: Nijhoff. Beauty is taken up with what he calls “relative 1747. A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy. beauty,” which is to say, the beauty of “imita- Glasgow. tion.” Naturally, what he has uppermost in Secondary sources his mind in this regard is representation in the Kail, Peter J. 2000. “Function and Normativity fine arts. in Hutcheson’s Aesthetic Epistemology,” British One might have expected that tackling the Journal of Aesthetics, 40, 441–51. beauty of imitation would force Hutcheson to Kivy, Peter. 1976. The Seventh Sense: A Study of abandon, for that very different-seeming kind Francis Hutcheson’s Aesthetics and Its Influence of beauty, the causal, nonepistemic account in Eighteenth-Century Britain. New York: Burt that served for absolute beauty. For, after all, Franklin. it would seem palpably obvious that seeing Kivy, Peter. 2007. “The Perception of Beauty in something as a representation or “imitation” of Hutcheson’s First Inquiry: Response to James something else is a clear case of “perceiving Shelley,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 47, 416–31. Matthews, Patricia M. 1998. “Hutcheson on that . . .” Such, however, is not how he saw the Idea of Beauty,” Journal of the History of things. The foundation, for him, is still the Philosophy, 36, 233–59. same: uniformity amidst variety – “this beauty Michael, Emily. 1984. “Francis Hutcheson on [of imitation] is founded on a conformity, or Aesthetic Perception and Aesthetic Pleasure,” a kind of unity between the original and the British Journal of Aesthetics, 34, 241–55. copy” (1973: 54), with the variety, it must Shelley, James. 2007. “Aesthetics and the World at be supposed, being supplied by the fact that Large,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 47, 169–83. the original and the copy are different sorts of Townsend, Dabney. 1987. “From Shaftsbury to things altogether, although unified by the sim- Kant: the Development of the Concept of ilarity of their appearances. Aesthetic Experience,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 48, 287–305. On the assumption, then, that uniformity amidst variety must be functioning in the peter kivy

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iconoclasm and idolatry Assaults against 4 the belief that an image is pornographic or images – iconoclasm – occur in all cultures. may be sexually arousing; In analyzing the various forms of aggression 5 the view that too much wealth is invested against images, one may want to distinguish in a material object, relative to perceived between acts of vandalism (including acts of social need; war), pathological or psychotic violence, and 6 the sense that an image is too beautiful or destruction or mutilation for reasons of prin- too stylish to convey the message it is ciple (political or religious); but in practice the meant to convey (as in those cases where motives are much less clear and much more art and artistry are believed to be too dis- difficult to unravel. There is also more of a con- tracting, such as the sixteenth-century tinuum than may first be apparent between polemics against Michelangelo’s style); spontaneous acts of individual violence and 7 the desire to draw attention to a felt social concerted and organized group hostility. In or personal injustice; situations where public or theological motives 8 the need to avenge such an injustice by are adduced for the iconoclastic deed or event, attacking or destroying a work that is individual psychological motives may well known to be popularly venerated – or one appear to receive a kind of legitimation in which has become a particularly import- the social, legal, theological, or philosophical ant local or national symbol (as with domain. the attacks on Rembrandt’s Nightwatch The term “iconoclasm” is popularly used in Amsterdam, or those on paintings by in a metaphorical sense; it will not be so dis- Dürer in Munich). cussed here. At issue are physical acts against physical images, whether two- or three- Finally, there is the whole gamut of cases dimensional, and sometimes buildings. where the image or building is taken to be a The more clearly definable motivations for symbol of an oppressive, hated, or overthrown iconoclasm include the following: order or individual. This includes the occa- sions when all images that might recall a 1 the desire for publicity (as in the locus clas- deposed regime are removed (as in the per- sicus of this motivation, the destruction sistent removal of images in Old Kingdom of the temple of Diana at Ephesus by Egypt and in the great Soviet iconoclasm of Herostratus, and in any number of psycho- 1989), or where images that stand in one pathic assaults on images in the twentieth way or another for a suppressed religion are century, where the targets have been destroyed. It is in such contexts that one can exceptionally well-known works of art); understand the many instances where the pic- 2 the fear of the life inherent in an image tures and statues of a hated authority have (whether because of the imagined conflation one or another form of violence visited upon of sign and signified, or in the case, as often them, or on parts of them. In almost all such in the Reformation, of images operated by cases it is not hard to see the plausibility of deceptive mechanical means); the rationale. Only in those instances where 3 the desire to demonstrate that an image is the assailant believes that he or she has been not a live thing, in the end, but merely instructed by God or some other supernatural dead material; being or force to attack a work is it difficult

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iconoclasm and idolatry to see the possible continuity with normal so is also to make false gods, which have to be rational behavior. cast down in order to preserve the purity of The range of iconoclastic acts is great: they religion or the state. vary from surface defilement to total destruction. The notion that images are idolatrous forms Among the commonest examples are partial an important element in the motivation for mutilation, as in the removal of sexual organs many iconoclastic acts and attitudes. Images are (in attempts to reduce the putative sexual taken to be idols when they do not represent the affectiveness of the image) or of the limbs of true god; when they are identified with the god unjust judges; or in the removal of those parts or divinity itself (rather than simply as media- of the body – generally the face (the eyes, but tors); and when they are wrongly or abusively often the mouth or nose), or a limb or two – worshipped or venerated (the German Abgott and which most betoken the imagined life of the Dutch Afgod, for example, convey more closely image. The passage from censorship to icono- the sense of a deceptive deviation from the clasm – and vice versa – is a common one. genuine god). They are seductive because they Perhaps the commonest basis for icono- give the illusion of the godly or divine (as in clasm is the belief that the image must be the original sense of eidolon, ghost, phantom). destroyed, or have its putative power reduced, With idolatry there is always a sense of devo- because it is something other than it ought to tion to a substitute for what ought to be the real be; or that it has powers that it ought not to object of devotion: hence idolatry can occur in have; or that it is testimony to skills which are the case of real, physical images, and in the more regarded as supernatural. The aim in all such metaphorical sense in which we speak of “false cases is to deny the power of the image. gods,” usually something that is the subject Among the more characteristic of the icono- of moral disapprobation. For the sixteenth- clastic injunctions is one to be found in Exodus century Protestant reformers, avarice was 20: 3–5 (the first or the first and second of the regarded as an idol just as much as any image. commandments, depending on one’s church), Indeed, one consistent element in all allega- where the injunction, “thou shalt have no tions of idolatry is the moral dimension. There other gods before me . . . [nor] bow down thy- are no cases in which idolatry is taken to be self to them, nor serve them,” is followed by the something good or morally acceptable. firm prohibition (sometimes regarded simply In iconoclastic movements, as well as in as part of the first commandment and sometimes some individual cases, the iconoclasts may – more rigorously – as the second), “thou shalt allege that the images of god (or the approved not make unto thee any graven image, or any images of a particular society, whether god, likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or ruler, or symbol of the regime) are not godly but, that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the rather, idolatrous. As if to demonstrate that water under the earth.” Equally typical is the pas- they do not in fact have the powers attributed sage in the Islamic hadith, where the artist who to them, or which true gods are supposed has the temerity to create figurative images is to have, they are mutilated, overthrown, or summoned, in the next world, before God, and destroyed. At the end of the sixth century, is instructed to breathe life into his creations. Gregory the Great threw the pagan idols – that Failing to do so (since that ability is reserved only is, the statues of classical antiquity – into the to God), he is cast into outer hell for his effron- Tiber. They were idols not only because they tery in attempting to enter, by imitation, what were beautiful and therefore seductive but also is God’s province alone – namely, the creation because they were the replete symbols of a cor- of living beings. In both cases the crime is one rupt religion, only recently hostile to the true one. that falls under the rubric of idolatry. One of the most consistent bases of all those One of the more persistent allegations against reservations about images that terminate in images, especially in Christian cultures, is that their mutilation, removal, or total elimination pictures and statues, being essentially mater- is the association between material images and ial, are by their very nature incapable of ade- sensuality. Precisely because of their material- quately circumscribing the divine, the spiritual, ity they cannot mediate with the world of and the essentially immaterial. To attempt to do the spirit. Both their materiality and their form

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illusion engage and provoke our senses, through the is an error occurring when what one perceives channel of sight. Excessive engagement with the reliably elicits a response that would be ap- aesthetic pleasures of art leads only to luxury propriate to something of a rather different and seduction (as is frequently alleged in the nature. I will first attempt to be more precise still case of the history of the Roman republic); the about the notion, or notions, of illusion; and then purity and primitive virility of the people are bet- turn to illusion’s significance for art. ter preserved if images are not allowed to cor- rupt such virtues. Exotic images, and excessive what is illusion? interest in art, make people soft. Images, espe- Psychology revels in the study of illusions, and cially artistic ones, are thus proscribed in the offers many examples. In the Müller-Lyer illu- interests of the commonweal, of moral purity, sion, two lines of equal length, topped with and of a spirituality untrammeled by sensual- arrowheads pointing in different directions, ity or materiality. look to be different lengths. The “impossible The same fears concerning images surface in triangle” is an open-jawed, three-dimensional modern societies, not simply in relation to the object. Viewed from the right position, any one varieties of pornography, but also, in general, of its corners appears both nearer and farther in relation to television. And just as in the away than each of the others. The Mach band old arguments, words and texts are assigned a effect leads a square of uniform color, set truth value and a spiritual and cultural status against a suitable background, to appear to that images, by their very nature, are not vary in shade across its width. Shepard tones believed to have. They cannot attain this sta- sound as if they are constantly rising in pitch, tus, because they are material and sensual, even though what one is listening to is stable and are perceived by the eyes, the most direct in that respect. But everyday life also throws up channel of all to the senses. Hearing now takes examples. The stationary train you are on the place of seeing, not only as a more reliable seems to move when the adjacent carriage form of perception, but also as a less poten- pulls out of the platform. The moon looks far tially dangerous one. Words replace images in larger when near the horizon than when high societies that are purified of idolatry: written texts in the sky. Given the right size of tile and width in literate societies, the spoken word in illiter- of grout, you see faint spots at the center of ate ones. The way is prepared first by censor- the grout crossings in your shower. As these ship, and then, increasingly, by one or more of examples suggest, illusions come in many the varieties of iconoclasm forms. They may be in two dimensions or three. They may involve shape, color, move- See also censorship; morality and art; ment, or pitch. They might be visual, auditory, pornography; religion and art. or involve proprioception. What one seems to see may merely not exist, or it might be (as in bibliography the case of the impossible triangle) something Freedberg, David. 1985. Iconoclasts and Their that could not do so. Motives. Maarssen: Schwartz. An illusion is always the illusion of some- Freedberg, David. 1989. The Power of Images: Studies thing. There is a way things seem to be, a way in the History and Theory of Response. Chicago: other than they really are. Sometimes the seat University of Chicago Press. of error is belief. On first encountering the Latour, Bruno & Weibel, Peter (eds.). 2002. Müller-Lyer illusion, subjects are likely to Iconoclash: The Image Wars in Science, Religion, and believe that one line is shorter than the other. Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Learning the facts is not, however, always Warnke, Martin (ed.). 1973. Bildersturm: Die enough to banish illusion – the two lines may Zerstörung des Kunstwerks. Munich: Hanser. continue to look different lengths, even when david freedberg one no longer believes they are. Thus illusion might be a matter of error in belief, or it might involve error in experience. We can call the illusion Roughly, an illusion is an error former cognitive and the latter experiential illu- rooted in perception. A little more precisely, it sion. In either case, the error concerns something

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illusion perceived. The illusory object is perceived, and illusion might be found more widely than in either belief or experience ascribe to the thing trompe-l’oeil painting alone – that there are properties it does not really possess. Unless the aspects of it in other painting of a realist nature first part of this condition is met, the case is not (Gombrich 1977), that cinema and theater one of illusion, but of hallucination. might sometimes sustain it (Allen 1995), and It is natural to think that cognitive illusion that it is what modern technology aims for in will normally occur only when experiential reproducing recorded music. illusion does. What, though, is involved in However, even if the attempt to argue this experiential illusion? The simplest thought point is not hopeless, it does not in the end suc- would be that one’s experience of whatever ceed. The trompe-l’oeil ceiling painting is able to one perceives matches that one would have work its magic in part because the context if perceiving something else, something with severely constrains the position from which we a different nature (Clark 1993). However, we can see the work. Other painting, even of a might wonder whether this is in fact the best way highly realistic nature, is all too easily seen for to define experiential illusion. For one thing, dif- what it is, given the spectator’s ability to move ferences in experience will not matter unless they from side to side and back and forth relative to somehow register with the subject. My experi- the canvas, her ability to compare the light ence before object 1 might count as the illusion falling in the gallery with that apparently of perceiving object 2 even though the two falling in the space depicted, the visibility of experiences differ, provided those differences cracks in the picture’s surface and highlights are as nothing to me. Of course, the differences reflecting the incident light, and so forth. that do matter cannot be differences in what I Parallel points hold for cinema, in which, how- believe. Matching belief is definitive of cognitive ever hard it is to see many features of the illusion, and we are currently trying to define screen, one is aware of its flatness, and one’s its experiential form. But there are other experience is sensitive to the fact that the light responses to experience to which we might reflected from it usually varies in intensity far appeal – action and feeling, for example. For less than would light coming from the scenes another thing, some illusions certainly do not represented. involve an experience that matches that we There are more general obstacles to illu- would have before the object illusorily pre- sion’s having a major role in art. Cognitive sented. The illusory spots on the grout, for illusion is surely very rare. Almost always, in instance, have an insubstantial, floating qual- engaging with artworks we know that that is ity quite unlike any that a real spot could dis- what they are, and do not mistake them for what play. If we are right to describe this as the they represent. If this were not so, it would be illusion of seeing spots, then it is not always true hard to appreciate them as art, for that in part that the illusory experience is exactly like that surely involves appreciating that a certain we would have before the object we seem to see. effect has been achieved, and wondering (and To distinguish this from illusions in which that wondering at) how it has been. If we simply took is the case, I will talk of perfect and imperfect expe- artworks for other objects, we could not appre- riential illusion. ciate what is (in one sense) their art. We would be left appreciating only the qualities of what- illusion and art ever it is they seem to put before us. But this point How do the various notions of illusion bear also curtails the role of experiential illusion. on art? Do works of art themselves sustain illu- The central vehicle of our appreciation of art is sion? Some do, for sure. A trompe-l’oeil painting experience. It is in experiencing the work that of ornately molded plasterwork on a ceiling we are alert to what there is to value in it. If we might, seen from far below, look exactly like the avoided cognitive illusion but remained in the molding it depicts. The result might be not grip of illusory experience, we would still be merely perfect experiential illusion, but cogni- confronted merely with whatever the work tive illusion too, at least in those ignorant of the illusorily presents. Our appreciation that an trick. And it is at least not hopeless to argue, effect has been achieved would be limited to as some have done, that perfect experiential belief, to our knowledge that what is before us

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illusion is in fact a work of art. And the prospects for Those imaginings often, in the visual and investigating how the effect has been achieved musical arts, affect the perceptual experience we would be very limited indeed. These points have of the work. (In the literary arts, in con- strongly suggest that the place of illusion, both trast, the thought must be, our distinctive experiential and cognitive, will be strictly lim- engagement with the work lies in imagining ited, even in those arts, such as painting, alone.) The claim that art sustains illusion is thus where illusion most readily occurs. equivalent to the claim that it provokes certain In response, advocates of illusion will vivid imaginings. weaken their claims. Not much art sustains The insight at the heart of this view is that continuous illusion, they concede. But perhaps imaginative engagement is central to a great deal our experience of a good deal of art is illusory of art. The error lies in tying these imaginings some of the time. We swing between succumb- to the notion of illusion. For there is no reason ing to experiential illusion and falling out of it to think that illusion involves the imagination. again. In doing so, we can appreciate art for Psychological study seeks to locate its origins in what it is, and have some chance of discovering the workings of our perceptual systems. To how it achieves its effects (Gombrich 1977). understand why the lines in the Müller-Lyer illu- Thus we have one last distinction between sion look to be different lengths, we need to dis- forms of illusion: continuous and discontinuous. cover what aspects of the figure are operative, There is no space here to explore whether the and how they interact with those features of appeal to discontinuous illusion will restore the visual system used in perceiving relative the notion’s claim to be central to at least some length, so as to produce on the system the arts. Even if it does, when we turn to the arts effect that lines of equal length would have. more generally, the situation is bleaker. The Why think that at any point in this explanation prospects for illusion in any form look so poor, we will need to appeal to the imagination? in music (as opposed to its reproduction), in True, there is a sense of “imagine” in which sculpture, and especially in literature, that if someone did not perceive something (but surely no one would try to persuade us that illu- only seemed to), then he must have imagined sion is central to art per se. it. But in that use of the word, it is simply a gloss on the idea of misperception or false belief. art, illusion, and imagination The insight that art engages our imagination Yet, strangely, that is just what some have appeals to a quite different and more substan- claimed. In Laocoön, G. E. Lessing suggested tial notion, albeit one that is hard to define. that both painting and sculpture on the one Now, it would be natural to think of illusion as hand, and the literary arts on the other, can involving imagining if we took imagination, at engender illusion. He went on to explore the dif- least in its sensory forms, in something like the ferences in what each can illusorily present, way that Hume and many other empiricists and the means by which they do so. More have done, as involving mental states that dif- recently in Feeling and Form Susanne Langer con- fer, in their phenomenology at least, from per- structed a comprehensive theory of the arts, ceptions in only one dimension, a dimension allocating to each a distinctive form of illusion Hume famously labeled “force, or vivacity” it is its peculiar mission to create. What did (1977: book 1, pt. 1, sec. 3). For a maximally these thinkers have in mind? Did they mean by “forceful” or “vivid” imaginative episode will “illusion” something different from any of the then indeed be indistinguishable, to the subject, phenomena described above? If not, were they from perception. Within this framework, it is nat- simply blind to the objections to its role in the ural to think of illusory experience as constituted wider arts just canvassed? by imaginings that attain this unusual level of I suggest that for Lessing and Langer, as for vivacity. But this view of sensory imagining, others who have attempted to apply the notion despite its perennial appeal to layman and of illusion to the arts in general, the notion of expert alike, came under severe criticism in the illusion is inextricably bound to that of imag- last century. At the least, to appeal to it to ining. Art engenders illusion by stimulating explain illusion is to take on a significant theo- particularly vivid imaginings in its audience. retical commitment.

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There is one last possible attraction in at least two senses: First, the capacity to deploying illusion in giving an account of art. experience “mental images,” and, second, Above I have concentrated my criticisms on the capacity to engage in creative thought. views that appeal to perfect experiential illusion, The connection between these two senses is be it continuous or discontinuous. It may seem obscure, partly because each is obscure in that the defender of illusion would do better to itself, and very much dependent upon the appeal to it in its imperfect form, such as that theory with which it is associated. obtaining when we see the shifting, insubstan- tial spots on the grout. The way the spots are the capacity to experience mental images given to us – half-present, half not – may seem Mental images occur in thinking, in dreaming, strikingly akin to the way some forms of art pre- in perceiving, and in remembering. They also sent us with their objects. After all, one might occur when we are trying to imagine some- think, if we see Cromwell in a portrait, or thing (in the second sense of the term). Because Coriolanus brought to life before us on the they occur in so many different contexts, it stage, these objects too have a tenuous percep- would be quite misleading to suppose that tual presence, neither fully there nor wholly a theory of mental images is the same as a absent. Perhaps so. But even if some forms of theory of imagination, in the second sense, or art are significantly like imperfect illusions, in even a necessary part of such a theory. For one certain respects, it does not follow that we thing, there seems nothing wrong in the sug- should explain the former in terms of the latter. gestion that animals have mental images: For each of these phenomena is as puzzling certainly they perceive, dream, and remember as the other. We should not assume that we (after a fashion). But it strains credibility to say already have the sort of theoretical insight into that they have imagination in the second imperfect illusions that could help us in theo- sense – if we mean by this that they can rizing about art. engage in the thought processes involved in storytelling, painting, or creative science. gombrich; imagination; langer; See also A mental image is like a thought in the fol- lessing; picture perception; representation. lowing ways: bibliography 1 It is “of” or “about” something. This feature Allen, Richard. 1995. Projecting Illusion: Film – “intentionality” – implies that a crea- Spectatorship and the Illusion of Reality. Cambridge: ture’s capacity for mental imagery strictly Cambridge University Press. depends upon its cognitive powers. For Clark, Austen. 1993. Sensory Qualities. Oxford: example, if it cannot have thoughts about Clarendon. the past, then it cannot have “memory Gombrich, Ernst. 1977. Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. 5th edn. images” either. Oxford: Phaidon. 2 It may be true or false: a true image of your Gregory, Richard. 1997. Eye and Brain: The Psycho- friend’s face is one that shows him as he is, logy of Seeing. 5th edn. Princeton: Princeton that is, which corresponds to the reality. University Press. 3 It stands to thoughts in relations of impli- Hume, David. 1977 [1739]. A Treatise of Human cation and contradiction. My image of Nature. London: Dent. Venice may contradict your thoughts Langer, Susanne. 1953. Feeling and Form. New about the town; it may also imply them. York: Scribner. Lessing, G. E. 1962 [1766]. Laocoön: An Essay on the However, a mental image is not merely a Limits of Painting and Poetry. E. A. McCormick thought. Images are like perceptions: they (trans.). Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. have a component that we are inclined to call robert hopkins “sensory,” and which relates them to the expe- riences that we obtain through our senses. imagination The word “imagination” is used images and sensory experiences in a variety of ways, usually to denote a mental It is not easy to say, in precise terms, what the capacity. As a technical term of philosophy it has “sensory” character of imagery consists in.

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The following features of images are, however, I may also imagine what it would be like to shared with various other “sensory” experi- see and hear the encounter between them. ences, and could be assumed to provide a In such a case, my imaginative thoughts are prephilosophical definition of the idea: partly embodied in images. Such images differ from dream images and perceptual images, 1 Images can be precisely dated in time: they in that they lie within the province of the will. begin at a certain moment, last for a while, It makes no sense to command a person to and then cease. dream something or to see something. But we 2 They may be more or less intense (like a pain, can certainly command her to imagine some- or a visual experience). This is not a matter thing, and she may “summon” or “construct” of being more or less detailed, but is some- the image without further ado, and using no thing sui generis. method other than the direct application of 3 They can be fully described only by reference her will. to a corresponding perceptual experience: One of Wittgenstein’s most interesting my image of Venice can be conveyed only observations in this area is that mental states by describing what it would be like to can be classified according to whether they are see such and such a vista; my image of a or are not “subject to the will,” and that the dis- piece of music must, likewise, be described tinction cuts across the traditional divisions in terms of how the music is heard, and between the sensory and the intellectual, so on. between the animal and the rational, between 4 There is a “subjective” aspect to every the affective and the cognitive, and even the image, which we may express by saying “passive” and the “active” (as these were that there is a phenomenology or a “what described, for example, by Spinoza). There are it’s like” to have the image. It is doubtful that perceptions that are subject to the will (seeing there is a phenomenology in the case of a an aspect) and also cognitive states (supposing, thought. hypothesizing); but wherever belief or sensation is involved, the will, as it were, withdraws. I can creative imagination and mental imagery command you to suppose that the moon is Mental images occur when we dream, when we made of rock (rather than cheese), but not to remember, and also when we imagine things. believe it; I can command you to injure your Sometimes we describe a person as imagining finger, but not to have a pain in your finger; what he thinks is there but is not. In this sense and so on. “imagining” means something like “suffering an One reason for thinking that memory and cre- illusion,” and to “imagine things” is to acquire ative imagination are closely related is that false beliefs about the real world. Creative imag- both involve imagery, and in both cases the ination, however, is not a matter of illusion. The imaging process remains at least partly within person with a strong imagination does not suf- the domain of the will. When I “summon up fer more false beliefs than his less imaginative remembrance of things past” I am doing some- neighbor: rather, he thinks more widely, more thing that I might have refrained from doing. creatively, less literally. His thought roams I deliberately call to mind the appearance among possibilities and is more ready to “sus- and character of past events and objects, so as pend” both belief and disbelief. Imaginative to undergo again, in some faint and helpless thoughts in this sense are not illusions about the version, the experiences which were once real world, but depictions of a world that is not imprinted on my senses. There is an art in this, only unreal but also known to be so. (To be taken which is not unlike the art employed in fiction, in by this world – for example, by the world of and while not everyone is able to achieve what a play – is to exhibit a deficiency of imagination Proust achieved in reworking the past as rather than a superabundance of it.) though it were entirely the product of creative Imagery has a part to play in creative imag- imagination, there is no doubt that “powers of ination, although it is neither necessary nor recall” and “powers of creation” have, in this sufficient for it. When I imagine, for example, area, much in common and speak to a single a dialogue between Socrates and Xanthippe, emotional need.

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imagination creative imagination thought that p, without affirming it as true; The voluntary nature of imaginative acts gives the thought that p goes beyond what is given a clue to creative imagination. For, whether or to him by his ordinary cognitive and perceptual not it involves imagery, imagination always powers; and his summoning of p is either an act involves the summoning or creating of mental of will, or within the province of his will (so that contents which are not otherwise given (as they he could, e.g., choose at any moment to cancel are given, e.g., in perception and judgment). it, and to summon not-p instead). When, as When I stand before a horse it involves no act may happen, the thought that p contains a of creative imagination to entertain the image perceptual component, it may be embodied in of a horse – this image is implanted in me or absorbed into an image; and this image too by my experience, and is no doing of mine. is an exercise of imagination. Likewise, if I listen to a story of some battle, or Not all creative imagination fits easily into this read an account of it in the newspaper, my model, since not all imagination is an “imagining thoughts are not my own doing, and I play no that . . .” Some works of imagination are pure creative role in the unfolding of them. In gen- images, without subject matter other than eral, things perceived and things believed, in the the sensory forms themselves. For example, normal course of our cognitive activity, are composing a melody is a work of creation: it imprinted upon us, and are both passive and involves putting sounds together to form an independent of our own creative powers. interesting totality. This is a voluntary act, When, however, I summon the image of a which goes beyond what is given in percep- horse in the absence of a real horse, or invent tion; but it is not an expression of a thought the description of a battle which I have heard in Frege’s sense. A melody is not a proposition; about from no other source, my image and my nevertheless, it is like a proposition, in having thought go beyond what is given to me, and an intrinsic order, sense, and communicative lie within the province of my will. Such inven- power. Such processes, which are like thoughts tive acts are paradigm cases of imagination. but which do not involve the creation of imag- And, insofar as they involve thoughts, these inary worlds, may lie, as it were, in the same thoughts are of a distinctive kind. They are not domain as “imagining that . . . ,” and this is beliefs about the actual world, but suppositions what we instinctively feel to be true of music, about an imaginary one. abstract painting, and architecture. Hence we How should we understand such thought freely use the word “imagination” of all the processes? A useful device is suggested by creative arts. Nevertheless, it is a work of the- Frege’s theory of assertion. In the inference ory to show that we are entitled to suppose from p and p implies q to q, it is clear that the that these various exercises of imagination proposition p occurs unasserted in the second involve one mental capacity, rather than several. premise, regardless of whether it is asserted in the first. Yet p is the same in both premises: imaginary worlds otherwise the inference would be fallacious Fiction – whether in drama, poetry, or prose, in through equivocation. It follows that assertion figurative painting or mime – is a prime is no part of the meaning of a sentence – that instance of creative imagination, and one that a proposition does not change merely because also shows the importance of imagery in the full it is affirmed as true. This elementary result elaboration and understanding of imaginative enables us to draw an important conclusion, that thoughts. It is tempting to argue that a fiction the content of a belief may be exactly reproduced is something like a possible world, or at least in a thought that is not a belief, in which the a glimpse into such a world. The work of ima- content is merely “entertained.” This happens gination involves the construction (or, for a all the time in inference. It is also what primarily realist, the discovery) of possibilities. Since our happens in imagination. everyday thought automatically involves us We may therefore venture an account of in assessing possibilities and probabilities, at least one central component of creative the capacity to envisage “possible worlds” is imagination: the capacity to “imagine that p.” already implied in our day-to-day psychology. In imagining that p, a person entertains the For this reason we may wish to affirm the old

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imagination theory (espoused for diverse reasons by Hume, to exercise our sympathies in this seemingly Kant, and Hegel) that imagination is a part of futile way? These are among the most impor- ordinary thought and perception. tant questions in aesthetics. The suggestion that we understand fictions as possible worlds is misleading in various fantasy and imagination ways. First, although we must invoke possible An imaginary world is, ex hypothesi, not real. worlds in order to account for the meaning of Imagination does not aim at truth, as belief modal sentences (about possibilities, necessi- does. On the contrary, it aims, in a sense, to avoid ties, and probabilities), and although modal truth. And yet it is governed by the attempt to thoughts are involved in all scientific thinking, understand its own creations, and to bring them we do not have to envisage these possibilities, or into fruitful relation with the world that is. We to spell them out in narrative terms, in order to expect the work of imagination to cast light make our everyday judgments that depend on on its subject matter, and on the real originals them. Second, when we do spell out the narra- from which its subject matter is ultimately tive of an imaginary world, we are not bound drawn. In short, imaginative thoughts are by possibility. In a tragedy, Aristotle remarked, constrained by the need to be appropriate to impossibilities may be countenanced pro- reality. And though appropriateness is more vided that they are – in the narrative context – nearly a moral than a logical ideal, it is unde- probable. However possible, an improbability niable that “truth to life” is a normal part of it. involves a failure of imaginative drive. What Coleridge’s distinction between fancy and is meant by “probability” here is “truth to imagination may therefore still have a lively character.” Thus, when Fafner the giant, in attraction: we should distinguish disciplined Wagner’s Ring, turns into Fafner the dragon, a storytelling which illuminates reality and profound spiritual and moral truth is enacted enables us in a novel way to come to terms with before us, even though such a transformation it, from the undisciplined flight from reality into is metaphysically impossible (compare Ovid’s worlds of sentimentality and make-believe. Metamorphoses). Fantasy may seem to be a step further along the The creation of an imaginary world is a dis- path taken by imagination; in fact it is a distinct tinct enterprise, with a purpose all of its own. exercise of the mind, involving the creation of Understanding fictions involves recognizing substitute objects for old emotions, rather than the “fictional context,” in which events, persons, new emotions toward the familiar human and objects occur, bracketed not only from the world. The nature of the fantasy object is dictated realm of actuality but also at times from the by the passion that seeks it. (Pornography, realm of possibility. And yet, in the successful therefore, is a prime instance of fantasy.) By con- fiction everything proceeds with its own kind of trast, the truly imaginative object produces necessity: notwithstanding its deliberate unre- and controls our response to it, and thereby edu- ality, it aims always to be “true to life.” cates and renews our passions, so as to redirect The emotional response to imaginary worlds them toward the actual world. is one of the most interesting of all mental phe- nomena. For it seems that we can feel toward imaginative perception these fictitious scenes a version of the emotions There is a particular exercise of the imagination that animate us in our real existence. Yet – that is of vital concern to the student of aes- because the objects of these emotions are not thetics: the kind involved not in creating an only unreal but known to be so – we are not imaginary object but in perceiving it. My motivated to act as we should normally act. On image of the horse that stands before me is the contrary, we relax into our emotions, and a straightforward perception: the horse is live for a while on a plane of pure untroubled “given” by the experience that I cannot help but sympathy, laughing and crying without the have. But my image of the horse presented in slightest moral or physical cost. This mental a picture is not like this at all. First, I neither exercise is a strange one – for in what sense are believe, nor am tempted to believe, that the we really moved by that which has, for us, no horse is real. Second, I perceive the horse only reality? And why should it be so precious to us, to the extent that I am prepared to “go along

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imagination with” the lines and impulse of the painting – I one which not only is peculiar to rational recreate in imagination a living creature, out beings but which also compels them to exercise of what is at best a two-dimensional outline. their reason, to ask “Why?” of every phrase, What I see goes beyond what is given, in just work, and line, and to judge their appropriate- the way that a fictional thought outstrips ness to the familiar world of reality. In the reality. Third, my experience lies within the works of imagination, therefore, a peculiar domain of the will – a fact that is conclusively form of judgment arises: we sense that, however proved by such ambiguous pictures as the freely the imagination may roam, there is a duck/rabbit, in which I can decide at will to see right way and a wrong way to go. And in mak- now a duck, now a rabbit, in the shape before ing this judgment we endeavor to bring the me. (It will be said that this is a special case; on imagination back to earth, to use it as an the contrary, it is merely an emphatic version instrument of knowledge and understanding, of the normal case. Even in the most realistic and rather than an instrument of flight. This is per- unambiguous of Stubbs’s horses, I may choose haps what Freud meant, when he described art to see the creature now as an 18-hand giant, as a passage from fantasy back to reality. It is now as a 15-hand ladies’ horse, now as resting, perhaps, too, why Kant discerned an act of now as poised for movement, and so on. It lies universalizable judgment – a kind of incipient in the logic of the case that what I see is only legislation – behind every aesthetic experience. partly determined by the physical picture in At any rate, it is the origin of criticism, and the which I see it, and needs to be completed by an foundation for our belief that imagination is act of attention.) not merely a fact, but also a value. This “seeing-in” provides a paradigm for many acts of aesthetic attention: as when I See also creativity; fiction, truth in; fic- hear movement in music, hear the tone of tional entities; fiction, the paradox of voice in poetry, see the dignified posture in a responding to; illusion; imaginative resis- building. It also provides us with an interesting tance; metaphor; picture perception; contrast, between seeing X in Y, and noticing pornography; objectivity and realism in a resemblance or analogy between X and Y. aesthetics; sartre; scruton; senses and art, (Clearly, I can notice the resemblance between the; walton. the duck/rabbit and a rabbit even while seeing it as a duck, an experience which forbids me from bibliography seeing it as a rabbit.) This contrast runs paral- Frege, Gottlob. 1952. The Philosophical Writings of lel to that between metaphor and simile, in the Gottlob Frege. P. Geach & M. Black (trans.). first of which one object is (if the metaphor is Oxford: Blackwell. successful) embodied in another, rather than Kant, Immanuel. 1966 [1790]. Critique of Judgment. merely likened to it. Since understanding J. Bernard (trans.). New York: Hafner. metaphor is an integral part of, and paradigm McGinn, Colin. 2004. Mindsight: Image, Dream, Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University case of, all the higher forms of literary experi- Press. ence, it is clear that we have a clue here to the Peacocke, Christopher. 1985. “Imagination, work of the imagination in aesthetic under- Experience and Possibility: A Berkeleian View standing. Defended.” In Essays on Berkeley. J. Foster & H. Robinson (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University imagination and normativity Press, 19–35. Images and metaphors may be more or less Sartre, Jean-Paul. 2004 [1940]. The Imaginary. successful; stories more or less true to life; J. Webber (trans.). London: Routledge. paintings more or less insightful; music more or Scruton, Roger. 1974. Art and Imagination: A Study less sincere. All the works of the imagination in the Philosophy of Mind. London: Methuen. Walton, Kendall L. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe. seem to invite our criticism; for imagination is Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. also involved in understanding them, and once Warnock, Mary. 1976. Imagination. Berkeley: our thought has been released into imaginary University of California Press. worlds it is bound by the laws of this newfound White, Alan R. 1990. The Language of Imagination. freedom. Imagination is a rational capacity, Oxford: Blackwell.

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Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical Investiga- term less permissively than Weatherson, there tions. G. E. M. Anscombe (trans.). Oxford: Blackwell. are few who hold to the original usage. (For a Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1980. Remarks on the Philo- partial exception, see Gendler 2006.) sophy of Psychology, vol. i. G. E. M. Anscombe & G. H. von Wright (eds. & trans.). Oxford: Blackwell. four puzzles Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1980. Remarks on the It is time to go back and describe our phenom- Philosophy of Psychology, vol. ii. G. H. von Wright & H. Nyman (eds. & trans.). Oxford: Blackwell. ena with a bit more care. For, as Kendall L. Wollheim, Richard. 1980. Art and Its Objects. 2nd edn. Walton (2006) notes, the questions addressed Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. under the rubric of imaginative resistance turn out to be a “tangled nest of importantly distinct roger scruton but easily confused puzzles.” Indeed, it looks as if there are at least four such puzzles: those of fictionality, imaginability, phenomenology, and imaginative resistance occurs when a aesthetic value (Weatherson 2004). We will subject finds it difficult to engage in some sort look at each of these in turn. of prompted imaginative activity. Suppose, We can get a handle on the first two puzzles for example, that you were confronted with by contrasting two pairs of notions: truth and a variation of Macbeth where “the facts of belief on the one hand, and truth-in-fiction [Duncan’s] murder remain as they are in fact and make-belief on the other. We start with the presented in the play, but it is prescribed in this first pair. alternate fiction that this was unfortunate Suppose I told you, with the aim of having you only for having interfered with Macbeth’s believe it, that at King’s Cross station there is a 3 sleep” (Moran 1994: 57). If you found it platform 9 /4 that is reached by walking through difficult to imagine this, even though the a brick wall. You would, presumably, demur, author had done everything authors usually do protesting that platforms 9 and 10 at King’s to make such a story fictionally true, then you Cross station are not even adjacent, that peo- would be experiencing imaginative resistance. ple cannot walk through brick walls, and that (Actually, things are a bit more complicated, but you cannot bring yourself to believe something this will do for a first pass.) so patently false. Your resistance here stems from two (related) sources. The first is that it is scope not up to me what is true: what is true depends Early discussions of imaginative resistance on how the world is. The second is that it is not tended to focus on examples like the one above up to you what you believe: what you believe – that is, cases involving “morally deviant” depends on (how you take) the world (to be). (If worlds (Hume 1985; Walton 1994; Gendler you do not believe this, just try. If you cannot, 2000). It is now widely agreed that this initial that very fact proves my point!) characterization was too restrictive. In more But things are very different when it comes recent literature, the term is typically applied to to fiction. If I told you the things about platform 3 any sort of case where subjects find it unex- 9 /4 with the aim of having you make-believe pectedly difficult to (bring themselves to) imag- them, and you were to deny that they were ine what an author describes, or to accept true in the story, or complain that you could such a claim as being true in the story. So, for not bring yourself to imagine something so example, Brian Weatherson (2004) has argued patently absurd, then you would be refusing to that resistance puzzles arise not only for nor- play the fiction game altogether. If I write a story, mative concepts (including thick and thin it is (pretty much) up to me what is true in the moral concepts, aesthetic judgments, and epi- story. And if you are a normal cooperative stemic evaluations), but also for attributions of reader, this will (pretty much) determine what mental states, attributions of content, and you make-believe when you read it. even claims involving constitution or ontolo- What makes imaginative resistance phe- gical status. (We will return below to what nomena puzzling is that they involve viola- Weatherson thinks all these cases have in tions of these default principles. So let us go back common.) Even among those who use the to the four puzzles and see how.

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The fictionality puzzle The principle that it is nomenology, sometimes described as “doubling (pretty much) up to the author what’s true in of the narrator” (Gendler 2000, 2006). her story is sometimes called the principle of Return to the final sentence of our opening authorial authority. In its strongest form, the example (“The murder of Duncan . . . was in principle says that for any set of propositions, no way immoral.”) If the sentence jumps out at an author can make that set of propositions true you as incongruent with the rest of the story in a story merely by stipulating them to be so that your inclination is to respond (to the true. The fictionality puzzle is the puzzle of why, imagined narrator) with something like “That’s in certain cases, the default position of auth- what you think!” then you confront a phe- orial authority breaks down, so that mere nomenological puzzle. authorial say-so is insufficient to make it the case that something is true in a story. The aesthetic value puzzle The fourth puzzle Our opening example illustrates this: the arises from the observation – made (among story recounts the events of Macbeth and closes others) by David Hume – that the presence with the sentence “The murder of Duncan of “[vicious] sentiments . . . detract[s] . . . from was problematic only because it interfered the value of . . . compositions” (1985: 247). with Macbeth’s sleep; it was in no way This is the aesthetic value puzzle. In its most immoral.” If you are inclined to think that it general form, it is the puzzle of why, in certain would not, in fact, be fictionally true in such a cases, texts that evoke other sorts of imagina- story that the murder of Duncan was morally tive resistance are thereby aesthetically com- acceptable, then you confront a fictionality promised. This puzzle is typically discussed puzzle. specifically in the context of morality (e.g., see Bermúdez & Gardiner 2003, as well as references The imaginability puzzle The principle that a in Walton 2006.) normal cooperative reader will (pretty much) Return to our opening example. If you are make-believe (or imagine) whatever the author inclined to think that a story that includes says is true in a story can be called the princi- such a sentiment is thereby aesthetically ple of prompted imagining. In its strongest form, diminished, then you confront an aesthetic the principle says that for any set of propositions, value puzzle. an author can bring a reader to imagine that set of propositions merely by presenting them responses to the reader in an appropriate way in the con- A number of authors have offered systematic text of a story. The imaginability puzzle is the puz- accounts of why resistance arises in certain zle of why, in certain cases, readers display a cases. Because there is incomplete consensus reluctance or inability to engage in some man- about which cases – if any – evoke resistance dated act of imagining, so that typical invitations of the relevant kinds, and because resistance itself to make-believe are insufficient. involves a complicated set of phenomena, such Again, we can use our opening example as accounts tend to be rather complicated. an illustration. Try to imagine that the murder Accounts can be grouped into two basic cat- of Duncan was in no way immoral. If you are egories. The first type, which are sometimes reluctant to do so (or at least, more reluctant called can’t theories, trace the puzzles to features than in other fictional cases) or unable to do so of the fictional world. They maintain that (or at least, if you face more difficulty than in readers are unable to follow the author’s lead other fictional cases), then you confront an because of some problem with the world the imaginability puzzle. author has tried to describe. The second type, which are sometimes called won’t theories, The phenomenological puzzle The third puzzle trace the puzzles to features of the actual world. arises from the observation that passages that They maintain that readers are unwilling to fol- evoke resistance tend to “pop out” in ways that low the author’s lead because doing so would other passages do not. This gives rise to the lead them to look at the (actual) world in a phenomenological puzzle: the puzzle of why cer- way that they prefer to avoid (Gendler 2000, tain passages tend to evoke a particular phe- 2006).

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Can’t theories often embrace some sort of 2002; Matravers 2003; Nichols 2006; Stokes impossibility hypothesis, suggesting that pro- 2006; Doggett & Egan 2007.) positions that evoke (fictional, imaginative, and Many of the most recent discussions of phenomenological) resistance are impossible resistance-related phenomena draw on related in the context of the stories where they appear, work in cognitive and social psychology. Among and that this explains (1) why they fail to be true those making use of such empirical work are in the fiction, (2) why readers fail to imagine Nichols (2004), Levy (2005), and Weinberg & them as true in the fiction, and (3) why they Meskin (2006). evoke in the reader a certain phenomenology. Opponents counter that if a simple impossibil- See also cognitive science and art; fiction, ity hypothesis were correct, we would expect nature of; fiction, the paradox of respond- resistance to arise far more often than it does: ing to; fiction, truth in; hume; imagination; fiction is rife with impossibility. (For further morality and art; truth in art; walton. discussion, see Walton 1994; Gendler 2000; Stock 2005.) bibliography More sophisticated versions of can’t accounts try to finesse this worry. Brian Weatherson Bermúdez, José Luis & Gardiner, Sebastian (eds.). 2003. Art and Morality. London: Routledge. (2004), for example, suggests that resistance Currie, Gregory. 2002. “Desire in Imagination.” In puzzles arise in the face of a certain type of Conceivability and Possibility. T. Szabó Gendler & impossibility. They arise when stories violate a J. Hawthorne (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University principle that he calls Virtue – namely, that “if Press, 201–21. p is the kind of claim that, if true, must be true Doggett, Tyler & Egan, Andy. 2007. “Wanting in virtue of lower-level facts, and if the story is Things You Don’t Want,” Philosophers’ Imprint, about these lower-level facts, then it must be true 7(9), 1–17. in the story that there is some true proposition Gendler, Tamar Szabó. 2000. “The Puzzle of Imagin- r which is about these lower-level facts such that ative Resistance,” Journal of Philosophy, 97, 55–81. p is true in virtue of r” (2004: 18). That is, Gendler, Tamar Szabó. 2006. “Imaginative Resistance Revisited.” In The Architecture of the (fictional, imaginative, and phenomenological) Imagination. S. Nichols (ed.). Oxford: Oxford resistance arises in cases where the lower-level University Press, 149–74. facts of the story and the higher-level claims of Hume, David. 1985 [1757]. “Of the Standard the author exhibit a certain kind of incoherence. of Taste.” In Essays: Moral, Political and Legal. (See also Yablo 2002.) E. F. Miller (ed.) Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, Recent won’t accounts try to accommodate 227–49. this observation. For example, Gendler (2006) Levy, Neil. 2005. “Imaginative Resistance and the distinguishes between two sorts of difficulty Moral/Conventional Distinction,” Philosophical with imaginative engagement – cases involving Psychology, 18, 231–41. imaginative barriers (where the subject finds it Matravers, Derek. 2003. “Fictional Assent and the (So-Called) ‘Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance’.” In difficult to imagine some set of propositions for Imagination, Philosophy and the Arts. M. Kieran & roughly the reasons Weatherson identifies), D. M. Lopes (eds.). London: Routledge, 91–106. and cases involving imaginative impropriety Moran, Richard. 1994. “The Expression of Feeling in (where the subject finds it unseemly to engage Imagination,” Philosophical Review, 103, 75–106. imaginatively with some set or propositions for Nichols, Shaun. 2004. “Imagining and Believing: roughly the reasons earlier won’t accounts The Promise of a Single Code,” Journal of suggested) – and argues that classic cases that Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 62, 129–39. evoke imaginative resistance (such as those Nichols, Shaun. 2006. “Just the Imagination: Why involving morally deviant worlds) are cases Imagining Doesn’t Behave like Believing,” Mind and where both of these sorts of barriers are present. Language, 21, 459–74. Stock, Kathleen. 2005. “Resisting Imaginative Advocates of such views tend to stress the dis- Resistance,” Philosophical Quarterly, 55, 607– tinctive role of imagination in imaginative resis- 24. tance, focusing on ways that imagination does Stokes, Dustin. 2006. “The Evaluative Character and does not implicate the subject’s actual of Imaginative Resistance,” British Journal of beliefs and desires. (For discussions see Currie Aesthetics, 46, 387–405.

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Walton, Kendall L. 1994. “Morals in Fiction and narrator: for example, the “I” in J. D. Salinger’s Fictional Morality,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian The Catcher in the Rye or in Robert Browning’s Society, supp. vol. 68, 27–50. “My Last Duchess.” These narrators are char- Walton, Kendall L. 2006. “On the (So-Called) Puzzle acters within the fictional worlds; the implied of Imaginative Resistance.” In The Architecture of authors of the works, like the actual authors, the Imagination. S. Nichols (ed.). Oxford: Oxford need by no means share their attitudes or val- University Press, 137–48. Weatherson, Brian. 2004. “Morality, Fiction and ues. The case of third-person narration – like Possibility,” Philosophers’ Imprint, 4, 3. Available at Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice or Charles www.philosophersimprint.org/004003/ Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend – is more complex. Weinberg, J. & Meskin, A. 2006. “Puzzling over the Sometimes the narrator is largely invisible Imagination: Philosophical Problems, Architectural (and seemingly “omniscient”), at a distance Solutions.” In The Architecture of the Imagination. from and playing no part in the fictional world. S. Nichols (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, In such cases, on Booth’s account (if not on all 175–202. accounts), the narrator and implied author Yablo, S. 2002. “Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda.” In merge into one (1961: 151). In other cases, Conceivability and Possibility. T. Szabó Gendler & the narrator, as observer and presenter of the J. Hawthorne (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 441–92. fictional world, can to a greater or lesser degree be involved in that world. Booth tamar szabó gendler famously defines the “reliability” of a narrator in relation to the implied author: “I have called a narrator reliable when he speaks for or acts implied author The term “implied author” in accordance with . . . the implied author’s first appeared in Wayne C. Booth’s The Rhetoric norms, unreliable when he does not” (1961: of Fiction (1961) in a discussion of “the intricate 158–9). Though influential, this definition is not relationship of the so-called real author with his universally accepted (Phelan & Rabinowitz various official versions of himself” (1961: 71). 2005: 89–107). Just as the implied author is dis- Booth also speaks of the author’s “second self” tinct from the real author, so an implied reader in this context. The principal motivation behind is distinct from any actual reader. Although postulating an implied author as distinct from the notion of an implied reader is not directly the real author is to accommodate a sense of attributable to Booth, it is anticipated by him an authorial presence within a literary work when he writes that the author “makes his without being committed to direct biographical reader, as he makes his second self, and the most attributions. Implied authors are characterized successful reading is one in which the created by the attitudes, sensibility, ideology, and val- selves, author and reader, can find complete ues underlying and informing a narrative, agreement” (1961: 138). regardless of what might be true or known The notion of an implied author has long about the actual author. Novels by one and been a standard part of the literary critic’s the same author might reveal quite different toolkit. That is not to say that at more techni- implied authors. Booth gives the example of cal levels of critical theory or narratology ques- the novelist Henry Fielding: “the author who tions have not been raised about it (Kindt & greets us on page one of Amelia has none of Müller 2006). Is the idea of “norms” too vague that air of facetiousness combined with grand to be of practical use? Are not the norms them- insouciance that we meet from the beginning selves notoriously difficult to discern? Also, if the in Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones” (1961: 72). implied author is the product of interpretation, In another example, while we might not know is it not contentious to suppose there is some much about the actual beliefs of Shakespeare the single, determinate implied author (suggested by man, we do know that “the implied Shake- “the”) – in effect a single interpretation – associ- speare is thoroughly engaged with life, and he ated with each work? Is it an essential feature of does not conceal his judgment on the selfish, the critical reading that readers give attention to an foolish, and the cruel” (Booth 1961: 76). implied author? Not all theorists accept that it is. If an implied author is distinct from the real A number of other issues, though, are of author it is also distinct from a first-person special relevance to aesthetics. The first concerns

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implied author the debate about intention in criticism. Anti- about an author’s intentions will indeed capture intentionalist critics (those who reject criticism and conform with the author’s actual intentions as the recovery of an author’s actual inten- but in a few cases an aesthetically “better” tions) generally welcome the idea of an implied interpretation – consistent with text and con- author (or similar notions) for distancing text – might emerge, and be permitted, that criticism from biography. Thus W. K. Wimsatt reveals a discrepancy. Although the case is not and Monroe C. Beardsley in “The Intentional entirely the same, something similar occurs Fallacy” insist that however personal a poem’s when an implied author, constructed by a meaning “we ought to impute the thoughts competent reader, diverges significantly in and attitudes of the poem immediately to the dra- attitudes or values from an actual author and matic speaker, and if to the author at all, only this in turn is not attributable to any conscious by an act of biographical inference” (1970: intention on the part of the actual author. 348). In contrast, strong intentionalists (e.g., Another area where the implied author, or Juhl 1980) tend to reject the introduction of an related conceptions, makes an appearance implied author as superfluous, being content to is in modern theories of expression in art. refer always and only to the actual author. Classical expression theories, associated with However, the matter can become compli- philosophers like Benedetto Croce and R. G. cated, depending on just how the notion of an Collingwood, drawing on ideas from early implied author is conceived. On one interpre- nineteenth-century Romanticism, locate emo- tation, the implied author is simply an aspect tions expressed in, say, poetry or music dir- of the real author presented in a work; on ectly with the states of mind of artists. For another interpretation, the implied author is Collingwood, for example, the expression of entirely a construct by the reader from objec- an emotion through art is a complex kind of tive features of a text. The former suggests self-discovery. In modern theories it is more that the implied author can still fall within the common to attribute expressed emotions to a scope of intentionalist reasoning, such that “persona” rather than an actual person. One truths about the implied author are not totally such theory is developed by Jerrold Levinson independent of truths about the actual author: in relation to music. Levinson argues that a “a work’s manifesting some attitude is equival- passage of music is expressive of an emotion if ent to the artist manifesting that attitude in it can be “readily and aptly heard by an appro- the work” (Gaut 2007: 107). The latter, on the priately backgrounded listener as the expression other hand, suggests that the implied author is [of that emotion] . . . by an indefinite agent, just another element in critical interpretation the music’s persona” (1996: 107). This, again, with no implications concerning the actual involves a distancing of the emotion from the author. Alexander Nehamas has given the term actual artist. In similar fashion, in what she calls “postulated author” to a conception of this a “new romantic theory of expression,” Jenefer kind, similar to, but not identical with, Booth’s Robinson also attributes emotions to a “per- original “implied author.” For Nehamas “[t]he sona” rather than directly to the artist: “If an author is postulated as the agent whose artwork is an expression of emotion, then ...the actions account for the text’s features; he is work is evidence that a persona (which could a character, a hypothesis which is accepted but need not be the artist) is experiencing/has provisionally, guides interpretation, and is in experienced this emotion” (2005: 271). turn modified in its light” (1981: 145). In developing a theory of literary style in Not unrelatedly, a connection has been made terms of expression, Robinson makes explicit re- with “hypothetical intentionalism” (Stecker ference to an implied author: “what count as the 1997: ch.10), proponents of which are pre- elements of a style are precisely those verbal ele- pared to countenance interpretations based on ments which contribute to the expression of hypothesized intentions that do not coincide the implied author’s personality” (1985: 243). with an author’s actual intentions. (It is a For Robinson, individual style is a function of moot point whether this theory is really a ver- the manner in which actions are performed – sion of intentionalism at all.) No doubt in most in the literary case, such actions as describing cases a fully informed reader’s hypotheses a setting, portraying character, manipulating

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indian aesthetics plot – and the actions express the personality of Booth, Wayne C. 1988. The Company We Keep: An the agent: for literary works this is not necessar- Ethics of Fiction. Berkeley: University of California ily the actual author, only the implied author. Press. There is also a connection with ethical criti- Bordwell, David. 1985. Narration in the Fiction Film. cism. Booth, in a later work (1988), proposes Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. that a literary work’s aesthetic value can par- Currie, Gregory. 1995. “Unreliability Refigured: Narrative in Literature and Film,” Journal of tially be judged in terms of a reader’s inclina- Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 53, 19–29. tion to become friends with its implied author. Gaut, Berys. 2007. Art, Emotion and Ethics. Oxford: To the extent that judging someone as a friend Oxford University Press. rests on a judgment of their moral character, Herman, Luc & Vervaeck, Bart. 2005. Handbook of then works whose implied authors are morally Narrative Analysis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska praiseworthy are works meriting positive Press. appraisal. Perhaps the metaphor of being a Juhl, P. D. 1980. Interpretation: An Essay in the Philo- “friend” of an implied author is difficult to sophy of Literary Criticism. Princeton: Princeton sustain and open to counterexample (Gaut University Press. 2007: 111–14) but ethical criticism has been Kindt, Tom & Müller, Hans-Harald. 2006. The Implied Author: Concept and Controversy. New defended along similar lines without appeal to York: de Gruyter. friendship, for example by Berys Gaut, who Levinson, Jerrold. 1996. The Pleasures of Aesthetics: seeks to show that the morally good character Philosophical Essays. Ithaca: Cornell University (“moral beauty”) of a “manifested author” can Press. indicate aesthetic beauty in a work (2007: 6). Nehamas, Alexander. 1981. “The Postulated Finally, it is noteworthy that the conception Author: Critical Monism as a Regulative Ideal,” of an implied author has been taken up in rela- Critical Inquiry, 8, 133–49. tion to arts other than literature. For example, Phelan, James & Rabinowitz, Peter J. 2005. A there is a lively debate in film theory about the Companion to Narrative Theory. Oxford: Blackwell. role of narrators or “authors” in film interpre- Robinson, Jenefer M. 1985. “Style and Personality in the Literary Work,” Philosophical Review, 94, tation. While some (e.g., Currie 1995) have 227–47. explicitly defended an indispensable role for Robinson, Jenefer M. 2005. Deeper than Reason. implied authors in film, others (e.g., Bordwell Oxford: Clarendon. 1985) have rejected this. Kendall L. Walton Stecker, Robert. 1997. Artworks: Definition, Meaning, (1987) has introduced a broader notion of Value. University Park: Pennsylvania State “apparent artist” applying across different art University Press. forms, including painting, as part of an account Walton, Kendall L. 1987. “Style and the Products and of style. The style of a work, he argues, rests on Processes of Art.” In The Concept of Style. facts about an apparent artist (“what actions Expanded edn. B. Lang (ed.). Ithaca: Cornell seem to have been performed in creating” the University Press, 72–103. Wimsatt, W. K., Jr. & Beardsley, Monroe C. 1970 work (1987: 88) ). These facts might diverge [1946]. “The Intentional Fallacy.” In Problems in from facts about the actual artist (how the Aesthetics. 2nd edn. M. Weitz (ed.). New York: work was actually created). In this Walton’s Macmillan, 347–60. notion follows a familiar pattern in all such postulations – distancing the implied from the peter lamarque real artist – but unlike the Boothian implied author, Walton’s “apparent artist” is not restricted to attitudes and “norms.” Indian aesthetics “The life that flows through my veins, day and night, / Dances in See also literature; collingwood; criticism; croce; expression; intention and interpreta- wondrous rhyme in the heavens, / Courses through the pores of the earth, / Scattering joy tion; “intentional fallacy”; interpreta- tion, aims of; style; walton. to leaves, flowers and grains” (Rabindranath Tagore, Vichitra). The music of these words bibliography jumps out of the pages and engulfs us. We Booth, Wayne C. 1961. The Rhetoric of Fiction. admire a poem because of its melody and spon- Chicago: University of Chicago Press. taneity, depth of imagination, and (what Keats

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indian aesthetics calls) “fine excess,” and because of the ambience of a class. It is because all people have one it creates. It draws us in, and we melt into it. common core, that they all come within the class But what are the conditions that contribute to of humanity and are considered as essentially the making of a poem? This is a question to the same. What we have said about jati is ana- which Indian rhetoricians have attended very logous to Bertrand Russell’s enunciation of a carefully, and the outcome is an array of diver- universal as an eternal timeless entity that gent views. may be shared by many particulars. But prati- The word that enters the vocabulary of bha is not a universal, since it does not belong every view relating to the making of a poem is to many persons; the poetic flame is not lit in pratibha. There is uniform recognition of prati- all souls. bha as an important requisite for poetic cre- Again, the relation between a jati and the ation. This does not mean that pratibha is members it embraces is intrinsic (samavaya); confined to discussions of poetry alone; on the one cannot remain without the other; human- contrary, it figures crucially in Indian deliber- ity and the particular individuals under it are ation on every form of creative activity, includ- united into an essential bond of correlation. ing visual art and music. So to discuss pratibha Jati is manifested only in the context of this in connection with poetry is to discuss not just inseparable relation. But the bond between one particular issue about poetry, but the issue pratibha and the aesthetic form it creates is on which Indian thinking about art has not one of samavaya. Pratibha remains, even in focused. Since the concept plays a central role the absence of poetic production, just like the in Indian aesthetics, Indian philosophers have cloud before the shower it brings. Even if a poet devoted much of their time and energy to the ceases to write poems for the time being, his cre- delineation of it. ative power is still with him. Hence pratibha is What is pratibha? How is it to be explained? a specimen of non-jati. It is an unseen power As a universal (jati), or as an unanalyz- capable of being inferred only from its effects. able, ultimate, concept? Is pratibha inborn It is unanalyzable and beyond the bounds of or spontaneous (sahaja or naisargiki), or can it a precise and clear-cut definition. Therefore, be acquired? Is it sufficient for any creative Jagannatha (1913: ch. 1) rightly describes it as production? an ultimate concept (akhanda upadhi). First, pratibha means creative (poetic) dis- But what is the secret behind the blossoming position, or “internal disposition” (antargata of pratibha? Is it spontaneous, natural, like our bhava), as Bharata (1967: 7.2) designates it; breath? Or is it a matter of acquisition, a result without it poetry is impossible or, if attempted, of hard toil? The consensus of opinion among ridiculous. Or it is a state in which, in the Indian philosophers is that the creative power words of Stephen Spender (1964), one writes is a native endowment blossoming without one’s best poetry, and which leads to the sud- any reason, though a few like Rudrata (1906) den germination of a line or phrase or something also concede some role to training and learning, still vague, a dim cloud of an idea which the poet or knowledge and scholarship (vyutpatti), in feels must be condensed into a shower of the development of the creative (poetic) dispo- words; and thus a miraculous poem grows. sition. They stress the spontaneity of pratibha, Hence pratibha is also a power (sakti), a spark but at the same time acknowledge that pratibha that triggers a poem conveying new, wonder- may be acquired. However, for Jagannatha, ful, and charming combinations and relations pratibha is not a natural propensity but an out- of words and things. come of unimpeded cultivation (utpadya); and The central question is about the fundamen- perhaps he is alone in this conviction. tal identity of pratibha. Is it universal (jati)? The The crucial issue is whether pratibha is suffi- answer is, perhaps, no. The reasons may not be cient. Different answers to this question may be far to seek. Jati is nitya, eternal or atemporal, but categorized as follows: pratibha may wane with the passage of time, on account of old age and infirmity. Again, jati is 1 Pratibha is the only requisite for a poetic distinct from, but inheres in, many individuals. composition. It is alpha and omega. This is There is the same universal in all the individuals the view of Jagannatha.

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2 Inborn pratibha is the fundamental condition the old fallacy of plurality of causes? If the for propelling a poetic creation, but this effects emanate from two different sets of does not remove the necessity for vyutpatti causes, how do they become the same pratibha? and abhyasa (practice), though they are Jagannatha holds that there are two types lower in the hierarchy. This constitutes the of poetic disposition – one activated by divine view of Anandavardhana, Vagbhata and merit, the other by proficiency and effort. others. These two kinds of pratibha do not coalesce, 3 Equal emphasis is placed on inborn cre- because their roots are different, but the same ative disposition, training and knowledge, difficulty arises. How can two different pratibhas and untiring practice as working conjointly (causes) lead to one and the same effect or toward the making of a poem. This view is one and the same poetic composition (kavya)? held by Dandin, Mammata, Vamana, and Jagannatha escapes this difficulty by arguing others. that pratibha caused by merit leads to one kind of poetry, while that created by vyutpatti and Jagannatha, as noted, regards pratibha as abhyasa leads to a different kind of poetry. the sole factor for creating poetry; and he But what is the reason for insisting that explains it as inaugurating the sudden flash of there are different kinds of pratibha? Is it sound and sense tinged with emotion. But this because it has different roots/causes? If so, the pratibha, or creative disposition, is not inborn, picture is not very convincing. I may earn or sahaja; in some it is the outcome of divine a given amount of money either by winning a grace, while in others, the outcome of special lottery or by delivering lectures, but I have proficiency and practice. This generation of earned the same money, not money of different pratibha through different causes is analogous kinds. Does pratibha, strictly speaking, admit of to the generation of fire sometimes from grass kinds? The difficulty is particularly increased and sometimes from a piece of wood. by Jagannatha’s contention that pratibha is an Therefore, it would be wrong to assert that unanalyzable concept. This means that we the creative power is the product of divine cannot devise any criterion to separate different grace, proficiency, and repeated practice taken kinds of poetic power. A related problem is together. We cannot argue that proficiency how poetry produced by pratibha via divine and repeated practice alone give birth to creative grace can be of a different kind from that inau- power, for this power is noticeable even in a child gurated by pratibha via vyutpatti and abhyasa. prior to his learning the ways of the world or Perhaps these difficulties are linked with his venturing into poetical composition. Of Jagannatha’s appraisal of poetic disposition as course, one may argue that, in the case of such being acquired or caused. For this poetic dis- a child, learning and practice in previous position, arguably, is unlearned; it gushes incarnations contribute toward the production forth without any reason. Spender has written of pratibha. But the effect is explicable without of how a certain line, “a language of flesh indulging in the assumption of learning and and rose,” “flashed into [his] head” during a practice in previous incarnations. If it is wrong train journey through the coalfields of the to account for pratibha in terms of vyutpatti and Black Country, when a stranger remarked, abhyasa alone, it is equally wrong to account for “Everything there is man-made” (1964: 41). His it in terms of divine grace alone. For people observation serves to highlight the fact that who could not compose poems in earlier years poetic disposition is the spontaneous aware- may do so later, after prolonged training and ness of a line or a phrase, of a “rhythm, a practice. To hold that this is made possible by dance, a fury,” waiting to be realized in a divine grace is to render inexplicable the non- poem. It is the inborn music that the poet con- manifestation of pratibha in their early years. denses into a shower of words. If the poetic In some people, then, pratibha flows from sense or disposition is not already there in its own the grace of God, but in others it arises from right, with all its warmth and spontaneity, proficiency and practice, and it is through this vyutpatti and abhyasa or any other kind of creative propensity that poetry comes into being. accomplishment cannot kindle it. It is not But does this not entangle us in perplexity and without reason that Dandin and others have

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indian aesthetics looked on pratibha as being primarily naisargiki but also by lack of proficiency. Absence of (congenital or natural). proficiency can be as conspicuous as that of There is, however, another variation of pratibha. Poetic sense cannot bloom into the Jagannatha’s theme, dwelling equally on pra- flower of poetry without the aid of knowledge tibha as the womb of poetry, though with a and practice. All of them work together and different accent on proficiency and practice. need each other, as when a seed shoots up into Vagbhata, Hemacandra, and others agree a plant only when it comes in contact with with Abhinavagupta (1990) that creativity is earth and water. Creativity unfolds through the fundamentally an internal disposition, or a combination of pratibha, vyutpatti, and abhyasa. consciousness, or a sentience (prajna) capable And this is the view of Dandin, Bhamaha, of creating excellent objects, or giving birth to Mammata, Rudrata, and Vamana. I shall elab- poems possessed of relishable feeling, clarity, orate and defend this position. and beauty. At the same time they acknowledge Nothing mysterious is claimed when we some accessory role of vyutpatti and abhyasa. emphasize the necessity of pratibha for poetic art. For them, vyutpatti means proficiency in the Just as one cannot be a musician without ways of the world, in the different branches of musical sense, one cannot write poems without learning, such as grammar and history, along having a poetic disposition. A poem arises only with intimate familiarity with masterpieces. when a glimmer of an idea appears in the con- Abhyasa is repeated practice, intensive, unin- sciousness awaiting the appropriate words. terrupted writing. But neither vyutpatti nor Unless there is this poetic spark, there is no abhyasa can give rise to poetry: this is the priv- poem. That is why Vamana, Rudrata, and ilege belonging to pratibha alone. To say that others have described pratibha as the very seed kavya (poetic composition) emerges in collabo- of poetry. Without this seed, knowledge or ration with pratibha and vyutpatti is incorrect. practice leads only to prodigal expenditure of pen For, if pratibha is competent enough to create and ink. elegant poems with charming or beautiful But, equally, pratibha alone is not enough images, sounds, and ideas, vyutpatti loses its for poetic creation. Vyutpatti, as already noted, efficacy in this causal story. What, then, is the is knowledge of or proficiency in meter, lexicon, function of vyutpatti and abhyasa? They do not grammar, fine arts, and ways of the world. Let figure in the causal story; nonetheless, they us now explore why this knowledge is essential contribute to poetry – each in its own benign for a poetic composition. Poetry has a melodi- way. Proficiency ornaments a poem, adds ous form of its own which distinguishes it from charm to it, while practice enhances the flow of the formal aridity of philosophical discourse. creative production. In the words of Rabindranath, it is invigor- Yet the picture remains unclear. If pratibha ated with the music of rhyme, the harmony is capable of producing charming poems, of sounds, the glamor and sonority of words, why the necessity for vyutpatti to make them and their clever but graceful concatenation charming? And it is perhaps disheartening to see (Tagore 1943). This propels Vamana to find knowledge and practice given such secondary the soul of a poem in diction. This diction roles. Anandavardhana (1990) does not give relates to the density of words, their particular knowledge its proper due when he holds that it arrangements, which give a poem a distinct- is possible to conceal lack of knowledge by the ive tonality, charm, and flavor. Hence writing inborn poetic power, but not conversely; lack of poems demands command over meter, gram- poetic capability is immediately obvious to the mar, “significant form,” lexicon, and language. reader. This places more confidence in pratibha At the same time, poetry is not merely, than in knowledge, and denies that natural nor a kind of, musical elocution alone, as poetic sense, refined intellect, and unflagging Mallarmé, Valéry, and Sartre are wont to effort contribute in equal measure to the mak- think. Sartre, in particular, holds that poetry is ing of poems. opaque, existing in itself and without reference But this is not a correct way of looking at beyond itself. Poetry, according to him, does not the modalities of poetic creation. A poem is say or communicate anything: it only captures deprived of its effect not only by lack of pratibha, the inner depth and music of words. In the

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ineffability realm of poems we are concerned with words Spender again, “different from the kind of con- as words, with their sonority and length, with centration required for working out a sum. It is their masculine or feminine endings and not a focusing of the attention in a special way, so with what they are about. In a poem, “once and that the poet is aware of all the implications and for all [the poet] has chosen the poetic attitude possible developments of his idea” (1964: 35). which considers words as things and not as This expresses the kernel of what Vamana signs” (Sartre 2001: 278). would like to say about concentration. But he Mallarmé, Valéry, and Sartre wanted to make also wants to drive home how concentration poetry as abstract as music, which is identified requires a right time and place: the place primarily in terms of its internal harmony. should be secluded, and the time is the fourth They thought that the artistic creation of a quarter of the night (1977: 92–3). The seclu- poet reveals its glory when divested of content sion and silence constitute the conditions or meaning. But poetry is not analogous to within which a poem comes to life. music. The signification of a melody, provided we can speak of signification at all, is nothing See also poetry; art history; conservation outside of its inner pattern. Even if music does and restoration; rasa; relativism. not say anything about the world, its beauty and vitality are yet manifested in the graceful bibliography combination of notes. Its beauty lies in its Abhinavagupta. 1990 [1928]. The “DhvanyAloka” of significant form. But this is not the case with Fnandavardhana with the “Locana” of Abhinavagupta. poetry. It is anchored in language, and lan- D. H. H. Ingalls, J. M. Masson, & M. V. Patwardhan guage is so enmeshed in meaning that a poem (trans.). D. H. H. Ingalls (ed.). Cambridge, MA: reaches us not only through the melody of its Harvard University Press. Based on Dhvanyalo- kalocana. Bombay: Nirnaya Sagara, 1928. form, its tonality: we want to know what it Bharata. 1967 [1894]. Natya Sastra. M. Ghosh (ed. & says. We are affected by a poem only when it is trans.) 2 vols. 2nd rev. edn. Calcutta: Granthalaya. infused with a richer meaning, a profound Dandin. 1965. Kavyadarsa. H. Bhattacharya (ed.). way of looking at the world that is woven Calcutta: Sanskrit Book Depot. by intellect and deep feeling. This is exactly the Jagannatha. 1913. Rasagangadhara. Bombay: point that Rabindranath has emphasized – the Nirnaya Sagara. union of form and content. That is why his Mammata. 1991. Kavyaprakasa [The Poetic Light]. poems are always tied up with intimate per- Poona: Anandasrama. ception of the world. Now, if this is not trivial, Rudrata. 1906. Kavyalamkara. Bombay: Nirnaya if a poem conveys a deeper realization of life and Sagara. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 2001 [1947]. “What is the world, if it is not an escape from but into the Literature?” In Continental Aesthetics: Romanticism world, the necessity of having knowledge or to Postmodernism. R. Kearney & D. Rasmussen experience of the ways of the world cannot be (eds.). Malden: Blackwell, 276–87. overestimated in the story of making poems Spender, Stephen. 1964. “The Making of a Poem.” Last but not least, pratibha should be united In Creativity in the Arts. V. Tomas (ed.). not only with vyutpatti but also with the pain Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 35–48. of devoted undertaking, serious effort (abhyasa). Tagore, Rabindranath. 1943. Sahityer Svarupa. Spender reminds us how, after writing a poem, Calcutta: Visva Bharati. he tries several revisions of it before he feels his Tagore, Rabindranath. 1978. Angels of Surplus: way toward clarification, music, and inner Some Essays and Addresses on Aesthetics. S. Ghose (ed.). Calcutta: Visva-Bharati. feeling (1964: 39). The lesson is obvious: the Vamana. 1977. Kavyalamkarasutravrtti. A. C. Basu need for several versions, for sweat and toil, (ed.). Calcutta: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar. before a poem emerges in its complete grandeur. Along with pratibha, vyutpatti, and abhyasa, kalyan sen gupta brief mention should be made of another important factor contributing to the making of a poem. This is what Vamana calls concentra- ineffability That which cannot be commun- tion (cittaikagryamavadhanam). Concentration icated, nor even expressed perhaps, by words for the purposes of writing poetry is, to invoke (in their literal uses, at least). Reviewing a

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ineffability performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony the something is not identifiable” (Dufrenne in 1810, E. T. A. Hoffmann wrote that “music 1973: 119). opens up an unknown realm to man ...in The urge to carve out an autonomous role for which he leaves behind all the feelings which art was strengthened by various philosophical are determinable by concepts in order to devote developments. These include the Romantics’ himself to the unsayable” (quoted in Bowie elevation of the emotions to crucial cognitive 1990: 184). The date is of some significance in functions and the German idealists’ view of that one does not find, much before the begin- consciousness and reality as a seamless unity, ning of the nineteenth century, many similar with its corollary that “to attempt to objectify claims for the power of art, especially music, our relationship to nature” through the cat- to “open up” the ineffable – meaning what can- egorizing apparatus of language “must be a not be represented or communicated through failure. The turn to art became the attempt to (literal) language, and deriving from a Latin say the unsayable” (Bowie 1990: 80). Later verb meaning “to speak.” there emerged theories of meaning, like the Ancient thinkers, indeed, tended to regard verificationism of the Vienna Circle, which so art as an obstacle to insight into the ineffable restricted the range of what is literally signifiable realm – whether because, as in Plato’s Republic, by words that, if meanings outside this range can it anchors us in the world of mere appearance be conveyed at all, it must be through the or because, as for Chuang Tzu (Zhuangzi), its medium of poetic language or other arts. artificiality is inimical to the “natural” attitude As these remarks suggest, there is no single that responds to the intimations of the Tao, thesis of art and the ineffable, and the true which is “beyond words.” It is important, here, complexity of the discussion becomes apparent not to confuse the rather modern claim that art from the plethora of answers to the following can communicate what is ineffable with an questions: What kinds of item are ineffable? older one to the effect that it can and should Why are they ineffable? How does art never- remind us that there exists such a realm. Zen theless succeed in acquainting us with them? artists, one reads, aimed at “the evocation . . . Answers to the “what?” question range from of an atmosphere of mystery (yEgen),” but “subjective” items like feelings to “objective” insisted that this mystery “remained inexpress- ones like a thing’s true essence; from “inten- ible” in any medium (Hrdlimka & Hrdlimková tional” items, such as meanings, to minute 1989: 56). perceptual features of an artwork. Reasons Over the last two centuries claims like why items may be ineffable range from the Hoffmann’s have multiplied to the point of uncanniness of certain feelings evoked by a becoming clichés in some circles. Develop- painting or poem to the unarticulated “one- ments in both art and philosophy help to ness” of the reality revealed in a work. explain this. Within the growth of art forms As to how a work might convey the ineffable, that were neither representational in aim nor, schematic suggestions include mimicry (as as with Beethoven’s music, designed merely to Schopenhauer seemed to think, in the case of amuse or entertain, the question of the function music’s depiction of the unconceptualizable and justification of art assumed some urgency. will), showing or presenting, incorporating or A tempting answer has been that the artist’s role embodying, and evoking or evincing. There is is to communicate what cannot be communic- no unanimity, moreover, as to the meaning of ated through ordinary, literal language – a view the term “ineffable.” For some, “that is ineffa- encapsulated in Dewey’s dramatic remark that ble for which there . . . can be no suitable “if all meanings could be adequately expressed words” (Kennick 1967: 181); for others, there by words, the arts of painting and music would may be suitable words, but ineffability remains not exist” (quoted in Kennick 1961: 309). The if we possess no procedure for correctly apply- doughtiest opponents of “realism” and “repre- ing them; and for yet others, more moderately, sentationalism” seem to find it difficult totally something is ineffable when no description, to renounce a signifying role for art. “Even in however correctly applied, serves to com- the most extreme experiments in abstraction municate its nature to people lacking direct ...something is being represented . . . even if acquaintance with it. (It is in this last sense,

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ineffability of course, that several philosophers, such as Critics of aesthetic ineffabilism, then, must Rudolf Carnap, have regarded colors and other reject both the diagnoses of our difficulties in “simple” qualities as ineffable.) telling of aesthetic encounters and the theories To lend some order to the motley of claims on of meaning that make ineffabilism seem tempt- behalf of art’s capacity to “eff” the ineffable, it ing or even inevitable. Thus a critic may con- is useful to distinguish two broad directions cede to Schleiermacher that, in one sense, no from which most such claims are reached. The description can do full justice to the “complete first takes as a datum the experience that determinacy” of an artwork, but argue that people may have when, trying to describe an this is due not to its language-defying unique- encounter with an artwork, they find them- ness, but to the unsurprising fact that there is selves unable, to their satisfaction, to tell other always more that can be said about a work – or people just how it was (Cavell 1976: 191–3). any individual object, for that matter – however The attempt is then made to diagnose this frus- long we go on describing it. trating situation. Thus it might be concluded, Again, if “communicating a feeling” means in the manner of Schleiermacher, that what producing that feeling in another person, then resists communication – words being general in a description of a painting is unlikely to com- their application – is the “complete determin- municate what the painting does. But, a critic acy of the singular,” unique work (quoted in will point out, this is an attenuated sense of Bowie 1990: 169). “communicate,” and one in which a painting Proceeding from the second direction, one is no more ineffable than a wasp sting, which begins with a theory of language and its limits also causes a feeling that a description of the and then proposes how artworks sometimes sting fortunately does not. As for the theories manage to transcend those limits. For example, of meaning that inspire aesthetic ineffabilism, the young Wittgenstein held, roughly, that these are typically guilty, it is charged, of a only contingent propositions stating empir- “mimetic fallacy” in assuming that for a sentence ical facts can strictly say anything, for they to express or state X, it must somehow be like alone have informational content. Other kinds X – in terms of shared elements or structure, say. of utterance may nevertheless show what is Langer is surely mistaken to hold that the nat- unsayable (for instance, that the world is a ural resemblance between a melody and an totality). Wittgenstein is therefore able to emotion – both may rise and fall, and have write, apropos of a poem by Ludwig Uhland, that climaxes – automatically makes the melody the unutterable is “unutterably contained in a more adequate expression of the emotion what has been uttered,” and that the poet than a description of it (unless, of course, she is succeeds in conveying it precisely through not stipulatively defining “expression” as resem- trying to state it (and thereby producing non- blance, in which case her point is trivial). sense) (in McGuinness 1988: 251). More sympathetic critics try to discern in the Some authors take both directions. Susanne claims of ineffabilism expressions, exaggerated Langer, for instance, explains the difficulty in or misleading though they may be, of what are communicating an experience of an artwork by nevertheless important insights into art and the fact that the knowledge of feeling and sen- our responses to it. Thus it is at once true tience it affords is too exact to be captured by and of significance for sensibility and taste the “crude designations” – “joy,” “sorrow” and that artistic performances (in music, dance, or so on – of our psychological vocabulary. She whatever) possess features that are perceptu- claims, in addition, that literal language com- ally discriminable, but which could only be municates by means of structured propositions linguistically differentiated in a language too that are “incommensurable” with the unarticu- complex and cumbersome to be manageable lated stream of our “inner life.” Art manages to by speakers. This is why sensitive listeners can express the relevant knowledge of feeling and hear, yet not describe, the differences between sentience because its devices – melodies, for two violinists’ renditions of a certain trill; and example, or Joycean “stream of consciousness” why, more generally, a performance may have monologues – are commensurable with these a “corona” that the audience, while sensitive “inner” processes (1957: 91–5, 22–6). to it, is unable to articulate (Raffman 1993).

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Note, though, that such ineffable features work, since it is defined by means of ostensive are not peculiar to artistic performances, reference to the latter – “that Grande Jatte feel- since car engines may have them as much as ing,” “that Appassionata mood,” or whatever violins; and that it would be wrong to speak, (see Collingwood 1938 for a somewhat similar in connection with such features, of works view). “expressing” or “communicating” anything A second claim deserving serious attention ineffable. extrapolates to works of art a point sometimes Again, it is of the first importance that some made concerning certain metaphors – some paintings, like Van Gogh’s of a pair of old of which, after all, merit Paul Ricoeur’s label shoes, inspire a vivid sense of the sheer materi- “poems in miniature” (Cooper 1986). Literal ality, the “mere thingness,” of what they descriptions of the world, it is argued, presup- depict, so that in viewing them the usual cat- pose that things “open” or manifest themselves egories in terms of which we categorize the to us in some ways (e.g., as tools) and not others. things (e.g., as shoes) are put in abeyance, as it The purpose or effect of some metaphors may were. But it will not follow, as Heidegger per- be to open up new ways, so that they prime us haps thinks, that we are thereby acquainted to experience things under aspects less sedi- with “a nameless, preconceptualizable . . . stuff.” mented than the usual ones. In his sonnet, For, as one critic puts it, “to confront an entity “The world is too much with us,” Wordsworth simply as a material object in its own right deploys a range of metaphors to induce in us a rather than as a specific kind of thing, is not to pantheistic perception of the natural world as strip away all conceptual structures” (Mulhall replete with purpose and significance. But why 1990: 154). All that may be “stripped away,” should this vision not be conveyable by literal rather in keeping with Kant’s criterion for statements of the poet’s pantheistic beliefs? the “disinterested” aesthetic attitude, are the The reply will be that having such a vision is everyday functional and pragmatic categories no more exhausted by assenting to such in which we usually characterize things. propositions than, say, the moral point of view Is it possible to be still more sympathetic and is equivalent to subscribing to a set of ethical discern truth, and not simply misleadingly propositions. In both cases, the propositions voiced insights, in some versions of ineffabilism? are intelligible only to those who, as Heidegger Two very different, though not incompatible, puts it, “comport” themselves toward the claims deserve close consideration. The first world in certain ways, who display a readiness begins with the frequent observation that in to behave, respond, feel, and speak in appropriate giving expression to, say, a feeling, the artist does manners. not always, nor even often, start with a clear, Propositions and the beliefs they state are determinate experience that he or she only then derivative, intellectualized registers of the later translates into paint, stone, or sounds. “comportments.” If some metaphors may be Rather, it is precisely through constructing the usefully regarded in the above light, there is no work that the feeling assumes a determinate obvious reason why certain paintings and shape and identity. If the artist is right to insist, other artworks should not also be so regarded. as many artists do, that no other work would Perhaps, indeed, it was a similar point, in have been an expression of just that feeling, it connection with music, that Hoffmann was will follow that the feeling cannot be identified trying to make in the quote with which we in isolation from its manifestation in that work. began. Beethoven’s music, like Wordsworth’s In the terminology of the later Wittgenstein, metaphors, might “open” us to, and give voice the work will be an Äusserung (“utterance,” to, a “comportment” toward things which, as “expression”) of the feeling: something that is the precondition for articulated statements of a a criterion for the feeling and not a symptom or view of the world, cannot be reduced to such causal product of some “inner” state identifi- statements. able independently from the work (Mulhall 1990). The feeling will then be ineffable in See also expression; function of art; the sense, at least, that it could not be com- langer; metaphor; testimony in aesthetics; municated to someone unacquainted with the wittgenstein.

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ingarden, roman bibliography 2 The artistically valuable work of art con- Bowie, Andrew. 1990. Aesthetics and Subjectivity: tains the aesthetically valuable qualities in From Kant to Nietzsche. Manchester: Manchester potentiality. University Press. 3 Most of the sentences of the literary work of Cavell, Stanley. 1976. Must We Mean What We Say? art are quasi-judgments: unlike the predica- Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. tive statements of nonliterary text, they Collingwood, R. G. 1938. The Principles of Art. Oxford: Clarendon. have no referents outside the presented Cooper, David E. 1986. Metaphor. Oxford: Blackwell, world. ch. 4. 4 The literary work has also a quasi-temporal Dufrenne, Mikel. 1973. The Phenomenology of dimension in the succession of its sen- Aesthetic Experience. A. Anderson (trans.). Evanston: tences and larger units. Northwestern University Press. 5 The work itself should be distinguished Hrdlimka, Z. & Hrdlimková, V. 1989. The Art of from each of its concretizations constituted Japanese Gardening. London: Hamlyn. during the reading or staging (filming) of it. Kennick, W. E. 1961. “Art and the Ineffable,” 6 Unlike the concretizations, the work itself is Journal of Philosophy, 58, 309–20. schematic – it contains “places of indeter- Kennick, W. E. 1967. “The Ineffable.” In Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. iv. P. Edwards (ed.). New York: minacy,” which in the course of reading Macmillan, 181–3. are to a large extent eliminated. Langer, Susanne K. 1957. Problems of Art. New 7 The literary work is a purely intentional York: Scribner. object, which originated in the creative acts McGuinness, B. F. 1988. Wittgenstein, A Life: Young of the author and which is embodied in Ludwig, 1889–1921. Berkeley: University of some form of material substratum. Yet it California Press. has an enduring identity that transcends Mulhall, Stephen. 1990. On Being in the World: the multiplicity of acts of consciousness Wittgenstein and Heidegger on Seeing Aspects. and mundane reproductions. In principle, London: Routledge. it can be shared by anyone, and always Raffman, Diana. 1993. Language, Music and Mind. Boston: MIT Press. as identically the same despite the differ- ences in interpretations and evaluations. david e. cooper (1973b: preface)

Phenomenologically speaking, The Literary Ingarden, Roman (1893–1970) Polish philo- Work of Art presents the content of the idea of sopher, best known for his application of any literary work of art whatsoever, arrived at phenomenology to the study of literature. through Husserl’s famed method of eidetic intu- He studied under Kazimierz Twardowski and ition, which Ingarden favored over any empir- Husserl and wrote voluminously in many ical studies. Similarly, in his subsequent books areas of philosophy, most notably aesthetics. he presents the results of his phenomenological Here his work remains unrivaled in its scope and analyses of the various types of cognition of depth of analysis, especially in the philosophy the literary work; of the ontological peculiari- of literature, mostly discussed in his The ties of other types of art (1989); of the nature Literary Work of Art and The Cognition of the of artistic creation; of the ontology and phe- Literary Work of Art. nomenology of artistic and aesthetic values; of The main theses of the first book are as the nature of the aesthetic experience and the follows: constitution of the aesthetic object; of problems 1 The literary work of art is a multilayered cre- of the cognition of the constituted aesthetic ation consisting of (a) the stratum of word object; of the study of aesthetic and metaphys- sounds and higher sound formations, (b) ical qualities; and of the seven different notions the layer of meanings of words and sen- of truth in art. All these analyses are supported tences, (c) the layer of schematized aspects not only by rigorous argumentation, but also, (Ansichten) through which the objects are and most importantly, by intuitive evidence – presented, and (d) the layer of the pre- that is, the description of the phenomena as they sented objects themselves. are directly experienced.

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Ingarden’s thesis of works of art as purely interpretations and evaluations of the same intentional bears close affinities with Husserl’s work of art is solved in a way precluding both treatment of “objectivities of understanding” essentialist and relativist conclusions. The aes- as irreal in his Formal and Transcendental Logic thetic values differ, but so do the objects of (see preface to The Literary Work of Art for which they are values. The artistic value of the Ingarden’s discussion of similarities and differ- work of art itself remains the same, and it is the ences between Husserl and himself). Ingarden’s function of the work’s ability to inspire a multi- thesis entails the following claims. First, against plicity of valuable aesthetic experiences and physicalism: works of art are logically and concretizations. essentially distinct from their material embod- Aesthetic qualities and values were the sub- iment – musical works from the concrete phys- ject of Ingarden’s many analyses, published ical sounds or material notation, pictures from in 1969 and in many collections of articles and the pigment on canvas, film from the ribbons lectures. He made lists of hundreds of words of celluloid. Second, against psychologism: denoting such qualities in both German and works of art cannot be identified with the men- Polish, and was aware of the necessity of cre- tal processes of the artists and perceivers. ating new words capable of expressing further Third, against Platonic idealism: works of art differentiations between them. derive their existence from the acts of the Over 70 years after the publication of The artist’s consciousness, and can be appreciated Literary Work of Art, Ingarden’s contribution only through aesthetic concretizations – their to the philosophy of art remains unmatched “life” comes to an end when they are forgotten. – and virtually unknown, especially among Fourth, against traditional realism: a work of art Anglo-American philosophers. His two main is schematic and two-sided. One side is the works on literature were translated only in work itself, the history of its composition, its 1973, and in such a way that his dazzling reception, and its intentional stratification. constructions and captivating style were lost The other side is its content, which is the in the complexity of the argument. In Europe, proper object of our aesthetic appreciation. his influence has already been considerable: It is the content that contains “places of Nicolai Hartmann, Emil Steiger, and Mikel indeterminacy.” For example, some of the Dufrenne have appropriated some of his find- qualities of characters in a novel, of tones in ings, and others have used his methodology music, or of action in a film are simply not in their analyses of concrete texts, especially specified by the author. Since they cannot be art critics in Poland and Germany. Many appreciated as such, the performers of a musi- philosophers have taken an interest in the cal work, for example, have to decide “which problems that Ingarden thematized – among tones in the totality of tonal material should be others, Heidegger, Sartre, Langer, Wollheim, emphasized . . . and whether the tones should and Margolis. sound ‘soft’ or ‘hard,’ and so on” (1989: 106). New translations should attract more inter- Similarly, the reader is free to envision his est in Ingarden’s aesthetics, but appreciation favorite characters in the way he likes, within of the complete system is hardly possible the limits delineated by the text. Each success- without knowledge of the ontological and ful aesthetic concretization carries with it vari- phenomenological foundations for the grand ous aesthetic qualities synthesized into a ontologico-metaphysical edifice begun in the coherent, valuable whole, which is its aes- three-volume Der Streit um die Existenz der thetic value. Since perceivers differ in indi- Welt (“The Controversy over the Existence of vidual preferences, education, expectations, the World”). The metaphysical part was not imagination, temperament, and so forth, they completed, but these volumes contain many complete the indeterminacies and constitute significant distinctions important for a com- the aesthetic qualities in ways that also exhibit prehensive view of Ingarden’s philosophy of significant differences. Add to this the changes art: for instance, the distinction between in the whole cultural atmosphere, in lan- existential, formal, and material ontology; guage, in musical instruments – and the puz- the problem of the identity of real, ideal, and zle of differences obtaining between various purely intentional objects, and of states of

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intention and interpretation affairs, processes, and relations; nine conceptions equally tempting to assume that the meaning of matter–form relations; and no fewer than of a work is what its creator intended to say. 64 possible solutions of the realism/idealism These two assumptions have, however, been controversy. under continuous attack in twentieth-century Like every great philosophical system, literary theory. Thus Eliot wrote in 1919 that Ingarden’s is both comprehensive and incom- “honest criticism . . . is directed not upon the poet plete, which makes it all the more fascinating but the poetry.” At the same time the Russian for students of aesthetics, not least because it Formalists lay emphasis on the effect of the invites us to continue where Ingarden left off. public words of the poem and excluded any interest in the private psychology of the poet, a See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century view echoed by the New Critics and canonized continental aesthetics; dufrenne; ontology in Beardsley and Wimsatt’s “The Intentional of artworks; performance. Fallacy” (1946). Again structuralists such as Barthes and Sartre and poststructuralists such bibliography as Derrida have directed attention to the words of the text, which may in their view yield Primary sources infinitely more than the creator of the work [1931] 1973a. The Literary Work of Art. G. G. could intentionally have conceived. Grabowicz (trans.). Evanston: Northwestern A battery of arguments has been offered University Press. [1937] 1973b. The Cognition of the Literary Work against the relevance of reference to artists of Art. R. A. Crowley & K. R. Olsen (trans.). and their intentions. The most important of Evanston: Northwestern University Press. (From these consist of three major lines of attack. First, 1968 German-language edn.) there is what may be called the “two-objects [1962] 1989. Ontology of the Work of Art: The argument.” The first premise (Beardsley 1981: Musical Work, the Picture, the Architectural Work, 25) is that the work itself is one thing, and the the Film. R. Meyer & J. T. Goldthwait (trans.). creator of the work, including his or her inten- Athens: Ohio University Press. (From 1962 tions, quite another. To that is added the German-language edn.) premise that the critic’s task is solely to con- 1964, 1965, 1974. Der Streit um die Existenz der centrate on the work itself. And from that it fol- Welt. 3 vols. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 1985. Selected Papers in Aesthetics. P. J. McCormick lows that any references to artists, including (ed.). Washington DC: Catholic University of reference to such states of mind as intentions, America Press. is irrelevant. Those, such as Beardsley, who deploy this Secondary sources argument do not deny that inferences can be Mitscherling, Jeffrey Anthony. 1997. Roman made from facts about the work to facts about Ingarden’s Ontology and Aesthetics. Ottawa: its creator, and from facts about its creator to University of Ottawa Press. facts about the work. But inferences from facts wojciech chojna about the work to facts about its creator are relevant only to biographical inquiries, not to criticism of the work. When the inference is intention and interpretation It is com- from facts about the artist to facts about the monplace for us to judge the things people do work, the inference is dispensable. To test the by reference to their purposes and intentions. It inference, we must eventually go to the work is equally commonplace to assume that what we to check that it actually has the inferred prop- understand when we understand an utterance erties. But, then, we could have gone directly is what its speaker intended to convey. Given to the work without taking a detour through the these propensities, it is tempting to assume artist. Thus, inferences from artist to work are that since a work of art is something that dispensable and inferences from work to artist someone has made, it is to be judged, at least are irrelevant. in part, by reference to the purposes of its cre- One objection to the two-objects argument ator. And since, additionally, many works of art, (Lyas 1973) is that it is not always possible to notably literary works, have a meaning, it is distinguish talking about works from talking

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intention and interpretation about their creators. The distinction does work of a language is not closed. I can extend the when terms such as “graceful” are being used. system, as when – and this is commonplace in Again, we can distinguish calling a requiem poetry – I project a word into new contexts: for sad from saying of its creator that he or she was example, when I take the word “vivid” from its sad when composing it. But when a critic calls original use to talk of colors and use it to char- Lady Chatterley’s Lover, say, “pretentious,” or acterize turns of phrase. This projection is not Swift’s A Modest Proposal “ironic,” then a re- something done by the language itself, but ference seems to be made to qualities that the something that speakers of the language must creator displays in his or her work. do. This is related to a point made by Merleau- A second major argument against the relev- Ponty (1964: 30): the language is inert until put ance of references to intention attempts to into force by individual speakers. And to that I establish the irrelevance of intention to the add that, although the words used by speakers interpretation of meaning. The claim is that must have, antecedently, a public meaning, the meanings of words, singly or in combina- literary interpretation is not typically con- tions, depend on the public rules of syntax and cerned with the semantic meaning of words semantics and not on the private intentions of or sentences. That is usually not in question. speakers. Hence, to interpret a poem we need Rather it is the point of using those words and only dictionaries and grammars. Here a power- sentences that is the interpretative problem. ful argument can be derived using the prac- For example, in Kafka’s story “Report to an tices of Lewis Carroll’s Humpty-Dumpty, who Academy,” an individual who claims formerly claimed to be able to make a word mean what- to have been an ape reports the story of his trans- ever he wanted by his mere act of will. This formation to a scientific society. The words meant, of course, that he had to explain each of this fictional speaker are easy to understand. of his words as he used them. Suppose, now, Nor is his point in question. What cries out for that Humpty-Dumpty decides that by “glory” interpretation is the point (Kafka’s) of this he will mean “fine knock-down argument.” strange story told by its strange speaker. He explains this by saying. “By ‘glory’ I mean It is sometimes said that, all the same, the ‘fine knock-down argument’.” But, on his own reader is allowed a complete liberty to play account, he now has to explain what he means with the infinite possibilities of interpretation by “fine knockdown argument.” Suppose he allowed by the words of a language. That sug- says, “By that phrase I meant ‘stickleback’.” gestion invites two responses. First, it becomes But now the question repeats itself: “And what unclear, if there is such a complete liberty, did you mean by ‘stickleback’?” Now, either what the study of literature as a discipline is to there is an infinite regress of such explana- become. How, if at all, will interpretations be tions, in which case the speaker can never assessed? Second, although a work may contain succeed in making his meaning clear, or even- more than its writer ever intended, it may still tually he will have to use words that have an be the case that the greater part of what the work agreed public meaning independently of his contains will be due to the controlling intelli- will. And then his claim that meaning can be gence of its creator. To ignore this will be to given only by private acts of will refutes itself. ignore part of what is actually there in the There is a kind of linguistic meaning, then, work: and since critics are supposed to report that is ultimately grounded in public structures what is there, to ignore this aspect is to fail of rules and agreements and not private inten- one’s critical duty. tional acts. Call this semantic meaning. Since a The third major argument derives from the literary work is nothing other than a set of fact that we sometimes do not realize the words, it would seem that we can set aside intentions with which we set out to act. This artists and their intentions and let the words implies that even if an artist intended to say or speak for themselves. do something in a work, there is no guarantee Powerful though this argument is, it does that this intention will always be realized. not eliminate authors and their intentions. When one does fail in trying to carry out an First – a point made by Derrida in breaking intention, one will end up doing something with structuralism – the set of structural rules else. I may intend to shoot the hostage-taker but

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intention and interpretation shoot the hostage instead. Notice that in this fully aware of context and convention and situation I fail to do what I intend, but I also uses them flawlessly to say or do what she do something, something I did not intend. intends (Nathan 1993). One can add a more rel- What can happen with shooters can happen ativistic version of this view that would claim with authors – they may intend to represent one the meaning of the work is variable depending thing, but fail in carrying this out and end up on the artist hypothesized to be behind it, and representing something else. it is reasonable to posit any number of such This is a successful argument against the hypothetical artists for the sake of enhanced identity thesis: the view that the meaning of a appreciation of the work (Currie 1993). literary work is identical to what the author Unlike hypothetical intentionalism, moderate intended to do in the work. Since some of these actual intentionalism makes a subclass of actual intentions might go unrealized, they won’t intentions – the successfully realized ones – contribute to work meaning. constitutive of work meaning. However, they If intentions cannot be the whole story could not be the only constituents, since we about meaning in works, it does not follow already know that when an intention fails to that they cannot be part of the story. That be realized, something meaningful can result, leaves the challenge of making explicit what the though it diverges from intended meaning. exact role might be. In the last 20 years, there The challenge for a proponent of moderate have been two major projects that attempt to actual intentionalism is threefold: to give a do this: hypothetical intentionalism and mod- coherent account of a realized intention, to erate actual intentionalism. identify other constituents of meaning, and The guiding thought behind both views is finally to explain how these various con- that we should distinguish between intended stituents hang together to result in a work’s or utterer’s meaning and utterance meaning. meaning. At present there are several versions Work meaning is a species of the latter kind of of moderate actual intentionalism which vary meaning. Each view interprets this idea in a in their conceptions of realized intentions and different way. the degree to which they tackle the other two Hypothetical intentionalists still use the con- challenges (Iseminger 1993; Carroll 2001; cept of intention to characterize work meaning, Stecker 2003; Livingston 2005). A rough but but eliminate reference to the actual intentions not inaccurate idea of the position advocated of actual artists as a constituent of work mean- by moderate actual intentionalism is that the ing. The meaning of a work is a hypothetical meaning of a work is a function of the real- intention that may differ from the author’s ized intentions of its creator in combina- actual intention. There are different versions of tion with the relevant conventions in place hypothetical intentionalism that result from when the work was created and the context different conceptions of the target audience, of creation. the basis of their hypothesis, and the intention hypothesized. There are indefinitely many pos- See also literature; poetry; beardsley; sible versions of hypothetical intentionalism, implied author; “intentional fallacy”; inter- but here are some conceptions of the meaning- pretation; interpretation, aims of; struc- constituting hypothesis that have actually turalism and poststructuralism. been advanced: the hypothesis of the intended audience about what the actual author’s bibliography intentions might be using the evidence that Beardsley, Monroe C. 1981. Aesthetics: Problems in would be available to them in the public realm the Philosophy of Criticism. 2nd edn. Indianapolis: (Tolhurst 1979), the hypothesis of an ideal Hackett. audience – one that knows the artist’s whole Beardsley, Monroe C. & Wimsatt, W. K., Jr. 1946. “The Intentional Fallacy,” Sewanee Review, 54, oeuvre and other publicly available facts 468–88. concerning the context of creation – about Carroll, Noël. 2001. Beyond Aesthetics. Cambridge: what the actual artist’s intention might be Cambridge University Press, 157–213. (Levinson 1996), the hypothesis about the Currie, Gregory. 1993. “Interpretation and Objectiv- intention of an ideal utterer of the text who is ity,” Mind, 102, 413–28.

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Davies, Stephen. 2006. “Authors’ Intentions, Liter- and its creator are two discrete entities, the ary Interpretation, and Literary Value,” British critic’s sole proper concern being the former. Journal of Aesthetics, 46, 223–47. Influential though “The Intentional Fallacy” Eliot, T. S. 1953. Selected Prose. Harmondsworth: was, it is more a set of assertions than a clearly Penguin. articulated body of argument, and the target of Iseminger, Gary. 1993. “An Intentional Demonstra- its attack is not always clear. Beardsley (1970, tion.” In Intention and Interpretation. G. Iseminger (ed.). Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981) and Wimsatt (1976) later attempted to 76–96. redress this unclarity. It is possible, however, to Levinson, Jerrold. 1996. The Pleasures of Aesthetics. detect at least two suppositions on which “The Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 175–213. Intentional Fallacy” is based. First, there is the Livingston, Paisley. 2005. Art and Intention. Oxford: supposition that a work of literature is a public Oxford University Press, 135–74. object available for “objective” scrutiny and an Lyas, Colin. 1973. “Personal Qualities and the intention is a “private” object in the writer’s mind Intentional Fallacy.” In Philosophy and the Arts. unavailable to the audience of a work. Granted G. Vesey (ed.). London: Macmillan, 194–210. that the work is one thing and the author’s Merleau-Ponty, M. 1964. Signs. R. McCleary (trans.). intention another, and granted that the job Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Nathan, Daniel O. 1993. “Irony, Metaphor and the of a critic of a work of literature is to talk Problem of Intention.” In Intention and Interpreta- about that work and nothing else, it follows tion. G. Iseminger (ed.). Philadelphia: Temple that reference to the author is irrelevant. For University Press, 183–202. the author just is a different object from the Stecker, Robert. 2003. Interpretation and Construc- work itself. Hence the intentional fallacy is a tion: Art, Speech and the Law. Oxford: Blackwell. fallacy of irrelevance: required to talk about Tolhurst, William. 1979. “On What a Text Is and the work itself, the critic who commits this How It Means,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 19, fallacy digresses into talk about a different 3–14. thing altogether – the author and her or his colin lyas & robert stecker intentions. This first supposition, that an intention is a private event in a mind and a work a public “intentional fallacy” takes its name from event in the world, seems committed to a view a seminal article with that title published by of mind that would occasion severe problems Monroe C. Beardsley and William K. Wimsatt for an account of knowledge of other minds. Here in 1946. The initial emphasis of the article is there is a dilemma for Beardsley and Wimsatt. on a denial of the relevance of a reference to On the one hand, if intention is a private event intention in literary evaluation: the denial that in a mind, knowledge of it seems in jeopardy. “in order to judge a poet’s performance we At times this conclusion seems almost welcome must know what he intended” (Beardsley & (Wimsatt 1976): intention really is unavail- Wimsatt 1976: 4), where “intention” is under- able and private, so we are left only with the stood as “the design or plan in the author’s public work of art. But that buys the irrelev- mind.” ance of intention only at the cost of making However, and somewhat confusingly, the any knowledge of any mind impossible. The article has a wider scope than this. In addition alternative is to adopt an account of intention there is, first, the denial that reference to inten- according to which states of mind, such as tion has any relevance to the interpretation of a intentions, can be seen in and known through literary work. Second, there is the claim that the their manifestations in action and behavior. true speaker of a poem is a “dramatic speaker” But then intention, though undoubtedly a in the poem who is not to be identified with psychological state, ceases to be unavailable its creator (who may be pretending to speak to others because it can display itself in action: in that voice). Third, there is the much more and since a literary work may be the product general claim that “personal studies” – that is, of a complex set of actions, it is unclear why investigations into the biography and psycho- we should not see its creator’s intentions logy of writers – can be distinguished from made manifest in it (as they clearly are in, say, “poetic studies.” The belief is that a work of art Milton’s Paradise Lost).

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“intentional fallacy” It should be noted, as Beardsley and ironic utterance and on another occasion to Wimsatt stress, that an author may not be make a nonironic one is the same in both the most reliable source of information about cases. The difference between an ironic and his or her intentions. But that does not mean nonironic utterance must lie elsewhere, and a we should ignore authorial assertions about plausible place to look is in the communicative intentions but only that we should not ignore intention of the utterer. Attempts in “The other evidence of their intentions that their Intentional Fallacy” to show that allusion in works themselves provide, which can some- poetry can be handled without reference to times override what the writer says about his intention are not happily framed (see Wheeler or her work. As Wimsatt (1976: 131) somewhat 1977). inconsistently says, a poet’s denial of ironic Recent defenders of anti-intentionalism intent may be belied by his or her performance. (Levinson 1996; Nathan 2006) have attem- The second supposition made in “The Inten- pted to reply to this objection. One proposal is tional Fallacy” is about meaning. The claim is that, although we cannot account for irony that the meaning of a word is a public matter, merely by appeal to dictionaries and gram- to be determined by dictionaries and not by mars, the ironic nature of a passage is not references to the intentions of its users. A poet grounded in the intention of its actual author. cannot make the word “cup” mean “saucer” just Rather it is grounded in contextual clues to be by declaring an intention so to use the term. He found either in the work itself or the situation or she may mean that by it, but that is not what in which it is “uttered.” Thus, it is claimed the word means. And what words used in sen- that what makes ironic the suggestion found tences mean is decided by equally public rules in A Modest Proposal that fricasseeing Irish of syntax and semantics. From this it seems to babies would have the double advantage of follow that if we wish to know the meaning of controlling and feeding the local population is a poem, we can determine this by reference to “a confluence of linguistic clues found in the text dictionaries and grammars. We do not need of the essay as a whole and the connotation to make reference to the intentions of authors. of words like ‘fricassee’ . . .” (Nathan 2006: Beardsley and Wimsatt say, “The poem belongs 285). However, this very example reveals a to the public. It is embodied in the language, problem with the idea. For A Modest Proposal to the peculiar possession of the public” (1946; work (“as intended,” one is very tempted to Beardsley 1981: 25). Hence the distinction in say) we have to imagine that a fictional author “The Intentional Fallacy” between “internal” is seriously proposing cooking Irish infants. So evidence of the meaning of the poem, discovered at one level – call it the level of representation through “syntax and semantics, grammar and – it make sense to read the proposal as serious. dictionaries,” and “external” evidence, such as How do we come to understand that the level letters and diaries of the author, which are of representation is not the ultimate level at “not part of the work as a linguistic fact.” which to understand the work? Linguistic Critics (Cioffi 1963–4) have queried this clues might be of some use here but only once distinction between internal and external evid- we understand what they are clues to. Clearly ence, which is anyway muddied by Beardsley they are not clues to what is represented in the and Wimsatt, who introduce an intermediate text or even the attitude of the fictional author category of “semi-private” meaning (1946). of it. They are clues to the point of creating the Further, although at one level the meaning representation and its fictional author. They of a poem can be settled by dictionaries and are clues to Swift’s communicative or literary grammars, this still leaves scope for references intention in creating this work. It is that which to authorial intentions. For there remains the is satirical rather than serious. Of course, it is question about what the author was doing in not enough for Swift to have this intention for using those words: Was he being ironic? Did the work to be a satire and for the proposal to he wish to make allusions? Those questions be ironic. He must provide clues in the text so seem prima facie to involve reference to inten- the intention can be grasped and in that way tion, since the semantically encoded meaning be successfully realized. But that is just what of a sentence used on one occasion to make an Swift does.

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Ultimately, even the anti-intentionalists Wheeler, M. 1977. “Biography, Literary Influence and have to admit that we cannot avoid appealing Allusion as Aspects of Source Studies,” British to intentions in interpreting works for with- Journal of Aesthetics, 2, 149–60. out such an appeal we lack a reason to move Wimsatt, W. K. 1976. “Genesis: A Fallacy beyond the level of representation. Their fallback Revisited.” In On Literary Intention. D. Newton-de position is that when we ask about the point of Molina (ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 116–38. a representation we are not asking about an actual intention but a purely hypothetical one. colin lyas & robert stecker It is simply a convention of interpretation to ask what intention would best explain the significant features of the work and the best interpretation The theory of interpretation interpretations provide the best explanations, has changed so rapidly that one could not whether the actual artist had them or not. have anticipated the radical themes favored But that seems just incorrect. If we could in the 2000s from their sources in the 1950s. establish that Swift really intended to argue in The salient disputes about the nature of inter- A Modest Proposal that cannibalism was the pretation have indeed taken the most extreme best solution to Ireland’s food problems, then it forms in our time, and exhibit a certain dialec- would turn out not to be a satire, and it would tical boldness that justifies confining our atten- have meant just what it says at the level of tion to a handful of conceptual options. The representation. If some of the choice of words suggestion here is that nearly everything of might be taken as clues to the contrary, that importance about interpretation can be recov- would signal a degree of ineptitude, or perhaps ered through the economies of a small number mental instability, rather than irony. After all, of alternative strategies. Swift’s contemporary Bishop Berkeley wrote A first pass at managing the unwieldy works in which he advocated incredible pow- spread of contemporary theories follows the ers to tar water and others where he expressed lead of organizing answers to cognate ques- equally strange views about the nature of tions regarding the nature of the human sci- tables. The works could easily be read as ences. Two opposing intuitions dominate our satires of contemporary medicine and philoso- thinking there. On one, every would-be science phy respectively, if we did not know they were preserves objectivity more or less in accord meant in all seriousness. with the model that treats physics as the paradigm of all science. The Vienna Circle, log- ical positivism, and the unity of science move- See also literature; poetry; beardsley; implied author; intention and interpetation; inter- ment all accept this model. pretation; interpretation, aims of; irony. The other intuition, drawn from an entirely different post-Kantian tradition that counts Wilhelm Dilthey as its most distinctive cham- bibliography pion, emphasizes that: Beardsley, M. C. 1970. The Possibility of Criticism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. 1 the human sciences are, methodologically, Beardsley, M. C. 1981. Aesthetics: Problems in the Philo- sui generis; sophy of Criticism. 2nd edn. Indianapolis: Hackett. 2 objectivity cannot be construed in the Beardsley, M. C. & Wimsatt, W. K., Jr. 1946. “The same way as in the physical sciences; Intentional Fallacy,” Sewanee Review, 54, 468– 3 the human sciences are primarily centered 88; extensively reprinted. on the meanings and the semiotic and Cioffi, Frank. 1963–4. “Intention and Interpreta- interpretable features of the things of the tion in Criticism,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian human world; and Society, 64, 85–106. 4 the actual properties of the “objects” of Levinson, Jerrold. 1996. The Pleasures of Aesthetics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 175–213. that world – those that are interpretable Nathan, Daniel O. 2006. “Art, Meaning and Artist’s – may (the matter is disputed) be altered Meaning.” In Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics in a distinctive way as a direct result of and the Philosophy of Art. M. Kieran (ed.). Oxford: their interpretation under the conditions of Blackwell, 282–95. changing history.

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On the first intuition, knowledge is essen- so-called post-Heideggerian hermeneutics, as tially ahistorical, even in admitting historical practiced, for instance, by the doyen of con- progress among the sciences; on the second, par- temporary Western hermeneutics, Hans-Georg ticularly as we approach the viewpoint of the Gadamer. For the moment, we may simply 2000s, the historicity of knowledge becomes take note of the fact that Hirsch’s methodology deeper and more problematic. is utterly opposed to Beardsley’s as well as to The methodological treatment of interpreta- Gadamer’s; Hirsch simply favors an entirely tion in the arts within the Anglo-American different model of the human sciences from literature (critical as well as philosophical) that of the unity program; and, within the that dominated the 1950s through the mid German tradition of the Geisteswissenschaften, 1970s noticeably favored the New Criticism he opposes Gadamer’s relatively radical his- and romantic hermeneutics. In the philoso- toricizing of hermeneutics. phical literature, there can be little doubt that Beardsley advances three principles regard- the influential views of Monroe C. Beardsley ing art and its interpretation: first, the “prin- characteristically defined the task of interpre- ciple of independence” – that literary works tation in a strongly empirical manner that exist as individuals and can be distinguished from deliberately approached the supposed rigor other things; second, the “principle of autonomy” favored by the unity of science program with- – that literary works are self-sufficient entities, out ever formally urging a specific connection. whose properties are decisive in checking Beardsley conveys the conviction that art- interpretations and judgments; and third, the works – literature preeminently but not ex- “principle of the intolerability of incompat- clusively – may be treated, for the purpose of ibles” – that if two interpretations are logically objectively testing interpretative claims, as incompatible, they cannot both be true. “objects” not significantly different for method- Beardsley’s model, then, brings critical dis- ological purposes from the objects of any other course into a congenial alliance with empiri- bona fide science. Even their “meanings,” cer- cism. In this sense, it marks one extreme pole tainly a mark that differentiates poems from of interpretative theory. Romantic hermeneu- stones, are objectively “there, in” the poem, tics may be straightforwardly characterized as according to Beardsley. opposing Beardsley’s first two principles, but On the view he professed, the historical and not in the interest of opposing the third; and biographical circumstances of an artist’s life post-Heideggerian hermeneutics, particularly could only be causally – that is, extrinsically – Gadamer’s, opposes (at least implicitly) all connected with the production of particular three principles. The hermeneuts, of course, artworks, and could not bear directly in any per- adhere one way or another to the post-Kantian tinent way at all on the empirical analysis of bifurcation of the sciences. Also, one finds no dis- their actual properties or meanings. For similar cussion within any of these three models of the reasons, the artist’s or author’s intention in necessity of adhering to a bivalent logic. producing particular poems or paintings proved Hirsch’s model is probably the most ramified quite irrelevant in determining the specific version of the romantic theory that may be meaning that an interpretative critic might found in English. Opposing Beardsley, Hirsch is correctly explicate. These are the essential extremely cautious about speaking of a poem or themes of “The Intentional Fallacy” – probably story as of an actual “object” that is “given” or one of the most celebrated (and condemned) of encountered in experience. He speaks instead of contemporary philosophical essays on the arts. “manuscripts,” “holographs,” written remains, These claims also deliberately rule out as and the like – which, properly examined, per- illicit the master thesis of the alternative inter- mit us to construct or reconstruct a reasonable pretative methodology of romantic hermeneu- conception of a text or artwork open to inter- tics. Beardsley explicitly excoriates the views pretation. Both phases of this effort – the imag- of E. D. Hirsch Jr., a well-known American inative reconstruction of a text and the proper literary critic and theorist who has sought to reading of the text thus constructed – involve redeem a conservative sense of interpretative interpretation, in the sense that they involve the objectivity and rigor from the extravagances of recovery of original authorial intent. Evidence

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interpretation may be adduced, then, including biographical, closure; whereas, for the romantic, closure is historical, and stylistic remains, that enables us objectively and uniquely imposed on interpre- to form a correct conception of the “text” that tation by reference jointly to original intent some inscription imaginatively subtends. and constitutive genres. The upshot is that The text is a representation of an author’s cre- Gadamer construes hermeneutics only in terms ative intention; the author, as an apt member of the metaphysics of culture and human exis- of a particular culture, intends, in uttering tence, not in terms of the logic and methodo- some inscription or other, to conform to the logy of interpretation, about which he has essential organizing literary genres of his next to nothing to say. own cultural world; and apt readers, guided by Gadamer’s theory precludes the fixity and an understanding of those genres, are able to determinacy of texts or other interpretable ref- recover an author’s meaning from his inscrip- erents. There are no such “objects.” Similarly, tion. The poem is reconstructed in the shared it precludes the adequacy of a bivalent logic space of common culture, through imagination. applied to interpretation. Interpretation is at Hirsch is committed to texts having uniquely best “authentic,” rather than true or accurate. determinate meanings. Still, he admits that it It will pay us to collect, here, certain general may be impossible to recover those meanings philosophical doctrines regarding interpreta- with certainty. But this fact signifies our limited tion that may help to offset the impression access to the Geist of a culture, rather than the (otherwise nearly ineluctable) that recent cur- arguable truth that the supposed constitutive rents in theorizing are simply irresponsible, genres are themselves no more than heuristic inadequately developed, even incoherent. Recent artifacts: (1) contingently posited within the theories of interpretation are conceptually changing course of history, (2) not necessary for inseparable from equally radical larger recon- the intelligibility of any creative or interpreta- structions of the very nature of science, philo- tive act, and (3) themselves freely altered and sophy, intellectual inquiry in general. affected by ongoing artistic and critical efforts. The master themes of the larger reconstruc- Hirsch opposes (1)–(3). tion may be roughly tallied as follows: This bears directly on Gadamer’s seemingly 1 There is no privileged access to what is true unanswerable challenge to the romantic about the world. hermeneutic view. Gadamer claims that the 2 There is no principled disjunction between romantic fails to acknowledge that his own the structures of human thinking and the interpretation of a text is itself historicized – structures of the encountered world. structured, oriented, limited, biased by the 3 Human thinking, reason, science, inquiry, process of enculturation. Gadamer explicitly logic have a history, hence are not reliably holds that the events to be interpreted must be invariant over the whole of history. constructed and reconstructed from a changing 4 There are no de re or de dicto necessities. present vantage point in history, and that the 5 The reflexive critique of thinking and interpretation of that construction cannot fail inquiry is subject to the same constraints of to reflect the historically contingent “preju- history that infect the thinking and judgment dice” from which any critic or historian makes that it seeks to organize in a rationally sys- his effort. So the historical past – a fortiori, tematic way. “original historical intent” – is itself an inter- pretative construction from the present; and It would not be unreasonable to affirm that the interpretation of what is thus constructed these five doctrines dominated Western think- is organized by a consciousness itself shaped by ing by the end of the twentieth century. They ongoing history. are certainly not incontestable, but it would be Gadamer radicalizes the famous “hermeneu- extremely difficult to specify any thesis that tic circle.” The circle – that is, the thesis that the either had a stronger backing among the per- meaning of an entire text depends on its parts tinent professions. So (1)–(5) constitute a very and the meaning of its parts depends on the distinct revolution of sorts; each doctrine has meaning of the whole text – now cannot be made its way against formidable opposition assigned more than a provisional or heuristic over the centuries. The result is that the

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interpretation remarkable flurry of recent radical theories of (reconstructed, of course, in a way not altogether interpretation that converge with the general different from the hermeneut’s). The mean- thrust of (1)–(5) also entrenches the expectation ing of Velázquez’s painting may be assigned that the assessment of their advantage will in terms that would have been inaccessible accord with those same developments. to Velázquez himself and would have been Once this much is in place, we may go on to incompatible with any canon rightly drawn add some further doctrines that cohere with from his period; and yet Foucault’s interpreta- (1)–(5) but are more narrowly pertinent to the tion is strongly congruent with the details of radical claims of recent interpretative theories. the painting viewed in terms of the history of These are bound to be more controversial. But its reception as well as Foucault’s own theory the argument may be made that if (1)–(5) were of the historicity of interpretation. conceded, it would be very difficult indeed to Foucault is nearly unique in pursuing his deny these further claims. Here, then, is a com- thesis in the radically historicized way in pendium of the most important of them: which he does. Both Bloom (1975) and Barthes offer what may be called formal analogues of 6 The referents of the human world – art- Foucault’s fully historicized notion of epistemes, works, in particular – lack fixed natures, in a sense not altogether unlike that in which have only histories (predicatively) or are Wittgenstein’s notion of Lebensformen is a (referentially) only histories. formal (i.e., nonhistoricized) analogue of 7 Interpretation is primarily addressed to Foucault’s epistemes. Bloom easily confirms the those features of given referents that are energy, promise, and distinctive rigor of an linguistic, semiotic, significative, symbolic, interpretative practice that deliberately works rhetorical, stylistic, historical, traditional, through the “misprision” of a “strong” poet or the like, but they are real features of the or ancestral text. (Here, one might think of (human) world, irreducible to the physical, Euripides’ Iphigenia as a misprision of Homer.) and subject to change through the pro- For Bloom, poetry is interpretative criticism cesses of history and reinterpretation. (“verse-criticism”), and criticism is an attenu- 8 Objectivity with respect to the description ated poetry (“prose-poetry”). That is, both may and interpretation of the human world be said to depend on the same logic, although is methodologically distinct from that interpretation makes explicit truth claims. accorded physical nature. It makes no Barthes’s S/Z (1974) may well be the most sense to suppose that the human world is sustained, explicitly poststructuralist attempt at in any regard independent of the actual an interpretative practice that tests the limits of process of human (reflexive) understand- arbitrariness within the familiar boundaries of ing, in contrast to what is often conjec- the whole of Western culture. In the process, tured regarding physical nature. Barthes explores the difference between what he 9 Whatever is interpretable is, in principle, (elsewhere) calls “readerly” reading (interpre- open to infinitely many interpretations, tation) and “writerly” reading, which in effect both synchronically and diachronically. demonstrates, by example, the compatibility The important point is that each member of of an interpretative practice more or less the set of (1)–(9) is internally coherent, and the in accord with a large subset of (1)–(9) and a entire set is consistent and coherent. More more conventional practice – one that con- than that, the entire thrust of the late twen- verges, say, with something like the limiting tieth century very strongly favors large subsets models championed by Beardsley or Hirsch. of (1)–(9). That is, one can actually construe “canonical” This may be shown, for instance, in the theories – those that insist on a determinate critical practice and/or theories of Barthes, object of interpretation, or on a strong bivalence Foucault, and Bloom, at least. For instance, for determinate authorial intentions or the like Foucault (1973), in the interpretation of – as special cases falling within the terms of Velázquez’s painting Las Meninas, pursues a reference of a larger practice. Reading Barthes rigorous application of his (our) own concep- thus, a comprehensive overview of inter- tual orientation to that of the earlier period pretative theories may be formed, admittedly

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interpretation, aims of prejudicial to the exclusionary pretensions of the appreciation of abstract paintings and “pure” “canon,” but coherent and hospitable enough music also involves interpretation, since we in terms of the rising themes of the end of the must ascribe some overarching structure to twentieth century. There is every reason to the artistic manifold in terms of which we can believe that the larger vision has introduced see the elements of that manifold standing in relatively permanent changes in the theory of certain relations to one another. interpretation interpretation. In any case, its innovations also plays an ineliminable role in the perform- cannot be discounted without recovering the ance arts, where the interpretative burden falls older canons of general philosophy. upon performers or presenters of works. It is also undeniable that artworks admit See also barthes; beardsley; canon; criticism; of differing interpretations in both the critical and foucault; gadamer; hermeneutics; “inten- the performative sense. While aficionados of tional fallacy”; interpretation, aims of; Mozart debate the merits of different inter- meaning constructivism; structuralism and pretations of a given string quartet, literary poststructuralism; text; truth in art. criticism is rife with differences, such as that between Cleanth Brooks and F. W. Bateson bibliography over whether the final stanza of Wordsworth’s Barthes, Roland. 1974. S/Z. R. Miller (trans.). New poem “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” York: Hill & Wang. expresses, as Brooks maintained, the poet’s Beardsley, Monroe C. 1970. The Possibility of horror at the inertness of his beloved, or, as Criticism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Bateson argued, the pantheistic sentiment that Bloom, Harold. 1975. A Map of Misreading. Oxford: she is now part of the greater life of Nature. Oxford University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1973. The Order of Things. A. Indeed, Robert Matthews (1977) claims that it Sheridan (trans.). New York: Vintage. is the essence of interpretation, as opposed to Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1975. Truth and Method. description or mere execution, that the inter- G. Barden & J. Cumming (trans.). New York: preter is not in a position to know whether the Seabury. claims made are true, and thus that interpreta- Hirsch, E. D., Jr. 1967. Validity in Interpretation. New tions are underdetermined by the available Haven: Yale University Press. evidence. Thus, any situation that involves Ingarden, Roman. 1973. The Cognition of the Literary interpretation is one in which alternative and Work of Art. R. A. Crowley & K. R. Olsen (trans.). even incompatible interpretations may be Evanston: Northwestern University Press. equally acceptable. Iser, Wolfgang. 1978. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins While openness to different performative University Press. interpretations is generally celebrated in the Margolis, Joseph. 1989. “Reinterpreting Interpreta- performing arts, there is disagreement as to tion,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 47, the significance of differences in critical inter- 237–51. pretation. Much of this disagreement is Wimsatt, William K., Jr. 1954. The Verbal Icon. grounded in a deeper disagreement about the Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. (Contains aims of critical interpretation. For those who both “The Intentional Fallacy” and “The Affective adhere to the idea that the goal of criticism Fallacy,” coauthored with Monroe C. Beardsley.) is what Richard Wollheim (1980) termed joseph margolis “retrieval,” the indeterminacy identified by Matthews is merely epistemic, and the work, taken to be the product of its creator’s working interpretation, aims of Interpretation is in a particular art-historical context, admits in an essential element in our appreciative principle of a single “true” interpretation that engagement with works of art of all kinds. In captures those meanings the artist succeeded the case of narrative or representational artworks in realizing in her work. The aim of interpreta- this is uncontroversial, since the appreciation of tion, as retrieval, is to furnish the reader with such works requires that we ascribe “thematic” such an interpretation. Apparently conflict- content that goes beyond what can be given in ing interpretations of a work either admit of a description of the artistic manifold. But the reconciliation as elements in a single correct

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interpretation, aims of interpretation, or cannot both be correct. experience of both the work and the world. Even Interpretation, if aimed at retrieval, can admit historically anachronistic interpretations, she of incompatible right interpretations only if claims, “contribute to the enrichment of expe- there are conflicting right accounts of the rience . . . of the work” (1982: 141). Alan H. meanings that the artist succeed in realizing in Goldman (1990) argues for a similar conclusion, her work – if, for example, the correct inter- holding that the aim of interpretation is “to pretation of the work depends on the inten- maximize the artistic value of the interpreted tions of the artist, which are themselves taken work,” where to accomplish this goal may re- to be genuinely (and not merely epistemically) quire that we depart from what would be indeterminate. regarded as historically accurate interpretation. Matthews himself subscribes not only to an A similar conception of literary interpreta- epistemic thesis about the indeterminacy of tion as essentially creative has been proposed interpretation but also to the substantive the- separately by Roland Barthes (1977) and sis that, in artistic interpretation, there is typic- Michel Foucault (1986). Advocating what he ally no “fact” independent of the evidence terms the “proliferation of meaning,” Foucault available to interpreters that could make one of rejects, as repressive and ideologically based, the a pair of conflicting interpretations true. While practice of constraining the interpretation of some interpretations are more acceptable than literary texts by referring them to an author. others, this is to be explained in terms of rela- According to what Barthes terms the écriture the- tive plausibility, as measured against some dis- sis, the texts generated by literary authors are ciplinary norm of acceptability, rather than in to be viewed as pieces of writing that are, by the terms of truth. Opponents of such a view, how- very process of their creation, divorced from ever, challenge these claims, arguing that a their origins. “Texts,” as Barthes terms them, are plausible interpretation is one that is plausibly to be distinguished from “works,” the kinds of true, and that the underdetermination thesis semantically constrained entities with which rests on too thin a conception of available evid- literary critics have traditionally taken them- ence (Stecker 1994: 198–9). selves to deal. A text, for Barthes, “answers not But, once the retrievalist goal of truth is to an interpretation, even a liberal one, but to called into question, a more pluralistic con- an explosion, a dissemination” (1977: 159). ception of the aims of interpretation becomes It is clearly possible to treat the products of attractive. Susan Feagin (1982), for example, literary activity as “texts,” in Barthes’s sense, and suggests that we see the tolerance, in critical to seek various values in the “proliferation of practice, of a plurality of apparently incompat- meaning,” and the fruits of such a practice ible readings of a literary work as a reason to may on occasion prove significant. But this reevaluate our understanding of the legitimate is quite compatible, as it stands, with the goals of interpretation and the sorts of standards retrievalist’s claims about what is involved in the to which it is accountable. She argues that we interpretation of works. Writers like Feagin and should not think of radically differing interpre- Goldman, on the other hand, take themselves tations of a literary work as “incompatible.” to be offering an alternative to the retrievalist Such a characterization rests on the mistaken conception, and it is less clear how such views assumption that literary interpretation aims might be reconciled. Robert Stecker, however, at discovering some independently existing has argued for such a reconciliation between meaning of a work. Rather, we should view what he terms “critical monism” and “critical interpretation as a creative activity whose goal pluralism” (1994: 193): critical pluralism is is to provide the reader with “a theoretical the view that “there are many acceptable framework of understanding” for a work, a interpretations of many artworks that cannot framework that renders it coherent and per- be conjoined into a single correct interpretation.” mits the reader to ascribe a sense to it. We Critical monism, on the other hand, is the view then evaluate different such frameworks not that “there is a single, comprehensive, true according to whether they correspond to the (correct) interpretation for each work of art.” “true meaning” of the work but in terms of The claim that critical pluralism and critical how the readings they engender enrich our monism are compatible turns on the distinction

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interpretation, aims of between (1) truth or correctness, and (2) interpretations, this suggests a difficulty with acceptability. The quest for “true” or “correct” Stecker’s proposal for reconciling critical interpretations of artworks is the retrievalist monism and critical pluralism (David Davies project of understanding a work as the product, 1996). For, while critical monism seems to for the most part, of design by its historical cre- presuppose a broadly contextualist conception ator. But critical monism can be reconciled of the literary work, it is not obvious how such with critical pluralism once we recognize that a conception can support an interesting form of there are other legitimate aims of art interpre- critical pluralism. Certainly, if Stephen Davies tation, and that the acceptability of an inter- is right about the implications of contextualism, pretation is relative to interpretative aim. Such the anachronistic interpretations canvassed aims might include “making a work relevant or by Feagin and Goldman cannot be interpreta- significant to a certain sort of audience, identi- tions of works but only interpretations of their fying what is cognitively valuable in a work, or decontextualized artistic vehicles. In what sense . . . enhancing the reader’s aesthetic experi- can an anachronistic interpretation of Hamlet, ence of a work” (Stecker 2003: 54). Inter- for example, be an acceptable interpretation of pretations of works that satisfy such alternative the work, if, as the defense of critical monism aims can be acceptable, insofar as they try to requires, we take the work to incorporate achieve an understanding of a work, where the aspects of the context of creation of the text acceptability of the latter is a matter of render- which rule out the possession of anachronistic ing the work coherent in a way that promotes properties? appreciation. Acceptable interpretations that Stecker, however, counters this objection by aim in this way at maximizing the value of the insisting on the legitimacy of interpretations work to the receiver are constrained to a cer- that identify what a work could mean in what tain extent in that they must be “consistent he terms the “pragmatic” sense: “We assert with some facts about the work” (1994: 194), that a work could mean something relative to but this also allows them to conflict with other a point of view or set of constraints. We ignore such facts. or bracket off something we do know about the In what respects, however, can an interpre- work for the purpose of pursuing a particular tation conflict with certain facts about a work interpretive aim” (2003: 66). It might be asked, while still being an interpretation of the work, however, whether works, construed contextu- rather than a reading of a Barthian text? This ally, have “pragmatically possible” interpreta- question is addressed by Stephen Davies. He tions in this sense? Once we “bracket off” what claims that interpretation is pursued for the are, for the contextualist, constitutive features pleasure that goes with understanding a work, of the work, why think that it is the work that where such understanding is achieved by con- can be taken to have the ascribed meanings, sidering the readings that can be “put upon” rather than an entity, or a class of entities, that that work. In response to the charge that this would resemble the work in certain respects? licenses anachronistic interpretations, he states However we resolve these questions, it should that all right interpretations must respect the be clear that the legitimacy of claims about identity of the work: “If a particular work the aims of artistic interpretation depends on becomes the work that it is in virtue of being the position we adopt on the nature of art- embedded in a particular culture, time, and works themselves. Thus we cannot unprob- social practice, a concern with interpreting lematically appeal to interpretative pluralism to that work must consider only the readings con- settle questions about the ontology of art, as sistent with the conventions of language and lit- some have sought to do (Goodman & Elgin erature at the time of the work’s creation ...An 1988). interpretation is true if it is true-to-the-work, that is, if it deals with at least one of the meanings See also literature; barthes; critical monism the work (as opposed to a context-less text) can and pluralism; foucault; implied author; support” (1995: 9–10). intention and interpretation; interpreta- If Davies’s point holds for “acceptable” inter- tion; meaning constructivism; ontological pretations of a work just as much as for true contextualism; performance; text; wollheim.

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irony bibliography different kinds of objects – single utterances, Barthes, Roland. 1977. “From Work to Text.” In discursive styles, and events, for example. Image–Music–Text. S. Heath (ed.). Glasgow: There is irony as a particular trope or figure Fontana, 155–64. of speech, classically illustrated by a remark Davies, David. 1996. “Interpretive Pluralism and like “What a fine friend!” said of someone who the Ontology of Art,” Revue Internationale de turned out to be treacherous. But it is wrong to Philosophie, 198, 577–92. Davies, Stephen. 1995. “Relativism in Interpreta- generalize from this example and define irony, tion,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 53, as many dictionaries do, as “meaning the 8–13. opposite of what is actually said.” Not only Feagin, Susan L. 1982. “Incompatible Interpretations does that definition fit lying as much as irony, of Art,” Philosophy and Literature, 6, 133–46. but the ironist by no means always intends to Goldman, Alan H. 1990. “Interpreting Art and convey the opposite of what the words literally Literature,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, say. “Ah, some Raphaels!” said at an exhibition 48, 205–14. of a new third-rate artist, is not meant to con- Goodman, Nelson & Elgin, Catherine Z. 1988. vey, pointlessly, that the paintings are not by Reconceptions in Philosophy and Other Arts and Raphael. So the usual definition needs double Sciences. London: Routledge. Foucault, Michel. 1986. “What is an Author?” In amending. While an ironic trope must convey The Foucault Reader. P. Rabinow (ed.). New York: something that vividly contrasts with what is Pantheon, 101–20. literally meant by the words, this need not be Matthews, Robert. 1977. “Describing and the “opposite” of the latter. And the utterance Interpreting Works of Art,” Journal of Aesthetics is not intended to deceive generally, since and Art Criticism, 36, 5–14. some people, at least, are meant to “catch on.” Stecker, Robert. 1994. “Art Interpretation,” Journal Ironic speech and writing do not, typically, of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 52, 193–206. consist in the production of ironic tropes, and Stecker, Robert. 2003. Interpretation and Construction. it is not for the production of these that writers Oxford: Blackwell. such as Swift, Voltaire, Heine, and Anthony Wollheim, Richard. 1980. “Criticism as Retrieval.” In Art and Its Objects. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Powell are celebrated as masters of irony. That Cambridge University Press, 185–204. there are other modes of ironic discourse is established by the existence of so-called david davies “Socratic irony.” In Plato’s dialogues, Socrates characteristically feigns modest ignorance of a topic and sympathy with his opponent’s posi- irony is a topic of interest to philosophy, not tion, thereby leading him on until the absurdity least the philosophy of literature, for several of that position becomes clear. Another ironic reasons. To begin, it is a many-sided concept device – employed, for example, by Voltaire, in within which distinctions need to be made and Candide – is an ingénu character, the exagger- connections sought. Second, since irony involves ated naivety of whose questions and observa- a kind of simulation – the Greek eironeia means tions throws into relief the pomposity and “simulated ignorance” – we need to explain pretentiousness of the views expressed by both why we indulge in it and how we manage other characters in the work. to communicate through it. There is, third, a Such devices of irony have at least two recurrent claim to the effect that the world or broad features in common with the trope of existence is inherently ironic which requires irony. The words used by a speaker or a char- investigation. Finally, we need to understand and acter in a book are not intended to convey, to assess the surprisingly frequent claims that an alert audience at least, the attitude they irony is central to serious literature, that – in superficially convey. And the purpose of the Roland Barthes’s words – it is “the essence of devices, as with the “Raphael” example, is a writing” (quoted in Culler 1983: 86). critical one – typically ridicule, mockery, and the like. types of irony It is less easy to perceive connections Whether or not it is actually ambiguous, “irony” between these forms of verbal irony and that is certainly applied to several categorically which we attribute to events or circumstances

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– such as those in the O. Henry story where a proper discourse, such as truth-telling. The husband sells his watch to buy a comb for his reader then searches, by way of interpretation, wife who, in the mean time, has sold her hair for an intention behind the utterance that to buy a chain for the husband’s watch. But here would save the writer from the charge of too, ridicule is effected through vivid contrast, culpably having violated any “maxims” (Grice for the wonderful incongruence between the 1975). But while this may fit some cases, actions of husband and wife serves to mock the it suffers from the false assumption that the sentimental optimism that pervades a certain ironist must always intend to convey some romantic and literary tradition. So viewed, the particular propositional message. While Swift irony belongs not to the events in themselves, must certainly be understood as ridiculing but to the mute comment they pass on certain the solutions to “the Irish problem” offered by beliefs and sentiments. In so-called “tragic contemporary politicians, there is no reason to irony,” too – though ridicule is no longer quite assume he was also trying to communicate the point – the irony owes to the incongruence some specific proposition(s) about Ireland. between the actual dispensation of Fate and Generally speaking, irony aims more to the protagonist’s own understanding of events. express fairly unspecific attitudes than to com- municate particular beliefs. explaining irony The typical purposes of ironic devices are “world-irony” ridicule, mockery, and the like. But why It is not only words, but events too, which get should we achieve this by using words to con- described as ironic, and some philosophers vey something different from what they stand- have even wanted to describe the world – or his- ardly convey? A plausible suggestion is that tory, or existence – as ironic. Thus Hegel’s ref- irony has the same kind of attraction as criti- erence to “the universal irony of the world” cism through mimicry. The ironist “echoes” was picked up by the young Kierkegaard, who the words that someone holding the opinions took it to mean that “each particular historical mocked actually or might well have used actuality ...bears within itself the seeds of its (Sperber & Wilson 1981, and, for some re- own destruction” (Kierkegaard 1965: 278). servations, Cooper 1986.) Thus, Socrates But it is hard to see why something’s contain- ridicules his opponents through mimicking ing the seeds of its own destruction should, by the speech of their obsequious disciples. But itself, make us regard its existence as ironic. why should we so often prefer this roundabout Time-bombs are not ironic. As with “the irony tactic instead of coming “straight out” with of events,” however, perhaps the point should our criticisms? One explanation appeals to our be not that the world (history, etc.) is per se ironic fondness for belonging to in-groups. It is a fea- but that there is an ironic contrast between ture of much of the best irony that it is recog- how it really is and certain conceptions of it – nized only by people with the appropriate as the arena of undisturbed progress, for exam- knowledge, acumen, and intimacy with the ple. To the naive observer, the stages of world speaker or writer. A Modest Proposal, in which history have a meaning that the real processes Swift “advocated” eating Irish babies to solve the of history, as discerned by Hegel or Kierkegaard, population problem, was taken by many read- serve to mock. ers as a serious recommendation. Why we should take an in-group pleasure in having the irony and the essence of writing right credentials for catching on to “coded” While many writers are esteemed precisely communications is a question that belongs, because of their mastery of irony, there are presumably, in the recesses of philosophical many others who would not usually be thought anthropology. of as ironists, but who are also admired – The problem of how an audience catches on Tennyson, Dostoevsky, Zola, and Hemingway, to the ironist’s intentions is a vexed one. One pro- for example. So it comes as a surprise to be told posal appeals to the recognition that if the that irony is of the essence of good literature. writer intended his or her words literally there Yet, since the time of Friedrich Schlegel at would then be a violation of some “maxim” of least, this is the claim of several literary critics.

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The nineteenth-century Romantic Karl Solger properly aware of them should visibly “hover” called irony “the most complete fruit of the above the text, reminding readers of its artificial artistic understanding” (quoted in Schmitt nature through such devices as “authorial 1980: 115); for Thomas Mann “irony ...is interference” (Schlegel 1958). (A classic ex- the sense of art itself” (1974: 353); while for ample of this device is Thomas Mann’s use, in Barthes, as we saw, it is “the true test of writ- Doktor Faustus, of a narrator who continually ing as writing . . . the essence of writing.” (For intrudes himself between the story and the further claims of this kind, especially ones reader.) made by French poststructuralists, such as In a different development, favored among Jacques Derrida, see Wilde 1981; Colebrook structuralists and deconstructionists, the focus 2003.) is on the alleged ironic gap between the One version of these large claims is inspired author’s effort to convey a certain message by the idea of world-, or historical, irony men- and his inability to “control” how the text tioned above. Kierkegaard, for example, argues will in fact be understood. This gap is due to a that since “actuality” is itself ironic, it is the “play of codes” that intervenes between the writer’s duty to take a “negative,” distanced author’s intentions and the readers and may stance toward it. And Lukács holds that since severely refract the text’s intended meaning. existence, in modernity at least, is one of The honest author, once again, will admit to intrinsic “dissonance, breakdown or failure,” this “contradiction” and, like Flaubert accord- the novel which is true to existence must be ing to Roland Barthes, will write in a manner “essentially ironigenic” (quoted in Muecke “fraught with uncertainty” by way of con- 1982: 96). Such views will not, of course, be firming that “the meaning of the work” is not appealing unless one shares these writers’ governed by the author (quoted in Culler visions of existence. And even if one does share 1983: 86). them, one might think that there are other It is not possible here properly to assess these aspects of existence with which literature claims about the nature of literature, but we might respectably deal. Moreover, an unre- can question the appropriateness of expressing lenting diet of novels about failed aspirations or them in the form of a thesis about literature’s the burgeoning of the seeds of self-destruction essential irony. At least four observations are might soon become indigestible. One can read pertinent. Tender is the Night or The Heart of Darkness only so many times. (1) It is misleading to speak of the ironic More common, however, is an appeal not to nature of writing when what is apparently the irony of the world that literature is about, meant is that there is something ironic in the but to something inherent in literature itself. act of writing or the condition of being a The general thought is that paradox and irony writer. There is irony, no doubt, in a virgin necessarily infect authorship and literary texts, writing a novel of torrid sexual passion, but it and can be mitigated only by writing in a self- need not therefore be an ironic novel. consciously ironic manner that reveals to the (2) We should note how much of our famil- reader the contradictions inherent in the craft. iar concept of irony is being left out in the The emphasis, in one development of this claim that all writing is ironic and in the re- thought, is on the ironic contrast or “contra- commendation that authors should therefore diction” between a text’s status as an artifice and write in a self-consciously ironic manner. In its effect on readers of immersing them in a particular, the typical purpose of irony – world of events and characters that can seem ridicule, and the like – is being ignored. The as real and natural as the actual world. alleged contrast between the artificiality of the Related to this is the contrast between the text and its realistic effect on readers, for exam- apparent passion and commitment that may per- ple, hardly serves to mock or pass critical com- vade a text and the comparatively cool detach- ment on anything. Nor is it clear that a device ment the author requires in order to craft it. like “authorial interference” has a purpose that Schlegel, who makes much of such “contradic- deserves to be called ironic in the way that, tions,” urges that the honest author who is say, Socrates’ “simulated ignorance” does.

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(3) Where connections between the ironies Colebrook, Claire. 2003. Irony. London: Routledge. discussed by the theorists mentioned and our Cooper, David E. 1986. Metaphor. Oxford: Blackwell. familiar concept can be discerned, they are Cooper, David E. 1989. “Irony and ‘the Essence of tenuous and superficial. It may be that the Writing’,” Philosophical Papers, 18, 53–73. author is “detached” from the story he tells, and Culler, Jonathan. 1983. Barthes. London: Fontana. that the ironic speaker is also detached from Grice, H. P. 1985. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics, vol. iii. P. Cole & J. Morgan the words she utters. But the two kinds of (eds.). London: Academic Press, 41–58. detachment are quite different. The author is Kierkegaard, Søren. 1965 [1841]. The Concept of detached from, say, the passions and commit- Irony. New York: Harper & Row. ments of his characters, whereas the speaker is Mann, Thomas. 1974. Gesammelte Werke, vol. x: detached from her words in that she does not Die Kunst des Romans [The Art of the Novel]. believe what they literally express. Again, Frankfurt: Fischer. there may be a gap between what the author Muecke, D. C. 1982. Irony and the Ironic. London: intends and the meaning of his or her text, and Methuen. a gap between the ironic speaker’s intention and Schlegel, Friedrich von. 1958 [1797]. “Lyceum- the meaning of her words. But, once more, the Fragmente.” In Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, vol. ii. 35 vols. E. Behler (ed.). Munich: gaps are quite different. In the one case, it is F. Schöningh, 147–63. between what the author wants to convey and Schmitt, H.-J. (ed.). 1980. Romantik, vol. i. Stuttgart: how his or her readers – because of a “play of Reclam. codes” or whatever – interpret the text. In the Sperber, Dan & Wilson, Deirdre. 1981. “Irony and the other case, the gap is between what the Use–Mention Distinction.” In Radical Pragmatics. speaker wants to convey and what is literally P. Cole (ed.). London: Academic Press, 295–318. conveyed by the words uttered. It is certainly not Wilde, Alan. 1981. Horizons of Assent: Modernism, Post- part of our ordinary understanding that an Modernism, and the Ironic Imagination. Baltimore: ironist must fail to communicate what he or she Johns Hopkins University Press. intends to. david e. cooper (4) Even if the author’s position is inher- ently ironic, it will not follow that the text Islamic aesthetics A number of aesthetic should be written in a manner that makes this issues arise in Islamic culture. Many countries painfully visible to readers – through “authorial in the Islamic world produced, and continue to interference,” say, or a style “fraught with produce, exquisite forms of art, and their com- uncertainty.” Only someone who would wel- position has often been linked with Islam as a come “the death of the novel” and other gen- religion. There has been an extensive debate res could want all authors to emulate Thomas on whether Islam allows art, what sorts of art Mann, Samuel Beckett, and others who parade it allows, and how the religion has played a role their predicament as writers. There are, after all, in the sorts of art that have evolved in the many important features of the writer’s situ- Islamic world. There is also a protracted dis- ation – from the need to make a living to the cussion of the beauty of the Qur’an and its influence of certain literary traditions. But it is aesthetic nature, since the inimitable beauty not desirable, obligatory, or even possible for the of the Book is taken by many commentators to author to keep reminding readers of all these be a proof of its veracity. There has also been aspects of the literary enterprise. An author who among the classical Islamic philosophers a pro- tries to do this may soon be without readers. tracted discussion on how to use Aristotelian logic to understand the structure of literary art. See also literature; barthes; deconstruction; humor; “intentional fallacy”; metaphor; the aesthetics of the qur’an schlegel, f.; structuralism and poststruc- The Qur’an is not taken to be poetry (shir) on turalism. the lines of ordinary Arabic poetry, but it is certainly regarded as eloquent, designed as it was bibliography to impress a community, the Arabs, who val- Booth, Wayne C. 1975. A Rhetoric of Irony. Chicago: ued language and the evocative uses to which University of Chicago Press. it could be put. The Qur’an challenges (tahaddi)

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islamic aesthetics those who do not accept it to produce something having accepted that, it has been possible to criti- like it, or better than it, and here is meant usu- cize the style of the Book from the point of ally a combination of the excellent doctrines view of the Arabic language, and this suggests that it includes, plus the wonderful style of the that the beauty of the text is not as evident as Book. A tradition of exposition has arisen that has been suggested. It is worth pointing out, defends and promotes the beauty of the text, and though, what a high standard that Qur’an sets that explores alternative formulations of the itself here, since other religions do not on the verses of the Book, but these alternatives have whole base their acceptance on the beauty of been judged inferior to the original. The Qur’an their main text. Not only is the Qur’an taken to is said to be the direct word of God, unmediated be beautiful, it is taken to be miraculously by human beings, and to have been expressed in beautiful, so no human being could have been such a perfect way that everyone can understand capable of producing such a text. This is a very it, and also be impressed with its aesthetic powerful claim, and throughout Islamic his- qualities. It is not the only revelation sent to tory there have been many attempts to estab- humanity, but it is the final, most complete, and lish it on a sound theoretical basis. It is worth most perfect revelation, which is reflected in its adding that Islam classically regards beauty to aesthetic quality. be an objective feature of the world (it is one of Despite this emphasis on beauty, the Qur’an God’s names, for instance), and so the defini- makes clear that it does not regard itself as tion of the Qur’an as miraculously beautiful is poetry, although parts of it clearly are poetic. often accepted as a matter of fact, not opinion. The disinclination to refer to itself as poetry is probably due to a desire not to link itself too beauty and perfection closely with the sort of poetry common in the This stress on the objectivity of aesthetics has jahaliyyah, the pre-Islamic period, which while been very much a theme in Islamic thought. often excellent tended to focus on secular or even In the earliest philosophical approaches Pytha- romantic themes that might be thought inap- goreanism was popular, with its theory that propriate to associate with a religious text such the structure of the universe leads to beauty, as the Qur’an. The trouble with poetry is per- which is a reflection of celestial motion. Beauty haps that it seeks to manipulate and impress its is a function of perfection, and since God is the audience entirely through its form and not most perfect being, he is also the most beaut- necessarily through its matter, and this is far too iful. The harmony of the spheres represents superficial for the sort of message that the divine beauty to a degree. Al-Kindi (c.805– Qur’an produces. On the other hand, there are c.873) defended a theory of this kind. This view problems with the emphasis on the beauty of the came to be replaced by a version of Neoplaton- Book, since it is not clear how the challenge to ism. This approach interprets art as expressive produce something similar would cope with of greater levels of truth and perfection mediated those who honestly endeavor to do just that, and through the use of imagination, and considers who prefer their results to the Qur’an. Also, literary work in particular as comprehensible there are those who speak Arabic and who through its use of the syllogistic form to work remain unimpressed with the style of the Book, toward a conclusion. This conclusion is usually and even criticize it for what they take to be its taken to be experienced as an emotion. Poetry tendentious form and repetitive nature. is certainly not the most secure form of reason- It is very difficult to judge the Qur’an aes- ing that one could employ, since it starts not thetically since it has played such a large role with demonstrative principles nor even with in the construction of what has come to be legal or theological ideas, but with the sorts known as classical Arabic. The rules of the of ideas that move people and that they gener- language itself are highly informed by the ally accept. However, once these ideas are Qur’an, and even for non-Muslims in the Arab accepted, the skillful poet moves his audience to world, the Qur’an is an important document the conclusion that he has in mind through for understanding the Arabic language, so it is his careful and considered use of language. problematic to use the standards of that language A reasoning process is involved here, since the to assess the style of the Qur’an. Yet even conclusion is not something that arbitrarily

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islamic aesthetics follows from what precedes it. The main photographs, paintings, and other representa- Islamic philosophers in the Peripatetic tradi- tions of the human form. The idea that there is tion, including al-Farabi (c.872–950), Ibn just one essence of Islam that is embodied in its Sina (d.1037), and Ibn Rushd (1126–98) all art is neat, but it is difficult to accept when one developed forms of this theory, and adapted is confronted with the variety of artistic styles Aristotle’s thought on poetry to the sort of found throughout the Islamic world, which verse that had arisen in the Islamic world. continues to produce art today in very different Imagination is significant in assessing art, ways in different places. Islam is not the only since imagination represents a combination of culture to have produced a sophisticated calli- rationality and emotion, both of which are graphic tradition, for example, and some of the essential in aesthetics. Rationality operates by others like those of China or western Europe have making our ideas more abstract and logical, very different ideological bases for wishing to while our physical nature demands that our express themselves through lettering. There emotions are also engaged. Aesthetic state- are huge problems, then, in seeking a simple ments are then both logical and emotional. explanation for the nature of Islamic art in a par- ticular definition of Islam itself, a problem that islamic art as specifically islamic exists in relation to other “religious” art also. A popular way of analyzing Islamic art is very much in line with its foundations in Islam. music Why would we call it “Islamic,” after all, unless There has been a protracted controversy in it shared some features with the religion of Islamic law about the acceptability of music. Islam, and was influenced by Islam? This type Some think that all music is forbidden. Others of analysis is often combined with an approach refer to an apparently approving comment to Islam on Sufi or mystical lines, where Islam made by the Prophet to a particular event is seen as having an essence and that essence which would have involved music, and take it is best represented by Sufism. The fact that to be allowed, albeit perhaps with restrictions. Sufis believe that God is everywhere can be These could involve limiting instruments to represented by the geometrical designs so com- those contemporary with the Prophet, and not mon in much Islamic art, which seem to be listening to women singing. Music, like art unending and constantly self-generating. The in general, can be classified as distracting fact that some interpretations of Islam are Muslims from the important things in life, like critical of the representation of living things worship, but some Muslims argue that music can is seen as an explanation for the enthusiasm be used as an aid to religion by encouraging par- for abstract shapes and calligraphy, rather ticipation and devotion. Indeed, the adhan, the than pictures of human beings and animals. call to prayer, is often very beautiful, and the Calligraphy itself, with its very beautiful multi- recitation of the Qur’an can also be a potent aes- plicity of styles and shapes, is seen as a thetic event. reflection of the Islamic concentration on the art history; conservation and word, especially the word of God, and on the idea See also restoration; religion and art. that with that word one possesses everything worth having, with the result that figurative art bibliography becomes unnecessary and superfluous. Black, Deborah. 1990. Logic and Aristotle’s “Rhetoric” There have been iconoclastic schools of and “Poetics” in Medieval Arabic Philosophy. Leiden: thought in Islam, as in other religions, but Brill. how influential they were in structuring art Kemal, Salim. 1991. The Poetics of Alfarabi and is a matter of opinion. It is certainly the case that Avicenna. Leiden: Brill. there has been much figurative art in Islam, espe- Kemal, Salim. 1996. “Aesthetics.” In History of cially in civilizations such as Persia that have Islamic Philosophy. S. Nasr & O. Leaman (eds.). a long tradition of such work, and even today London: Routledge, 969–78. there seems to be little theological difficulty Leaman, Oliver. 2004. Islamic Aesthetics: An Introduc- tion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. in most Islamic societies with representation of animals and people, given the ubiquity of oliver leaman

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Japanese aesthetics Historically, the rocks to clarify and enhance their native char- Japanese aesthetic tradition has emphasized acteristics, a process referred to as kowan ni discipline-specific teachings for practitioners of shitagau (obeying the request of the object). artistic activities. Manuals provide instruction The same exhortation to observe, respect, not only in techniques and rules for such dis- and give expression to the object’s distinctive ciplines as literature, painting, calligraphy, qualities extends to other aesthetic disciplines. flower arrangement, garden-making, Noh The aim of flower arrangement is to let flowers theater, and tea ceremony, but also in the ap- articulate themselves (ikasu: “let live”). Mimesis propriate attitude and worldview required to in painting is intended to capture “the spirit of master them. Only after wide-ranging Western the object.” Noh actors are urged to “enter into” influences entered Japan in the late nineteenth the characters and express their “essence” century did intellectuals begin to produce gen- rather than simply to mimic their outward eral and comprehensive overviews of Japanese appearances and actions. In his instructions aesthetics. These efforts were partly inspired on haiku-making, the seventeenth-century by the sudden exposure to systematic Western master poet Matsuo Bashd wrote, “of the philosophy and aesthetics. They were also pine-tree learn from the pine-tree” and “of the motivated by Japan’s struggle at the time to bamboo learn from the bamboo.” When suc- come up with something “truly” or “purely” cessful, a resulting work is said to exude the air Japanese in order to secure its national identity of “naturalness” or “spontaneity,” identified as (and superiority in some cases) against a rising the most important artistic virtue in a Japanese tide of Westernization. aesthetic tradition that emphasizes the art of Despite this historically contextual attempt artlessness. at a general aesthetic theory and its origin as This object-centered creative process also discipline-specific instructions, certain prin- underlies the making of everyday artifacts, as ciples emerge that characterize the Japanese in the production of lacquerware, pottery, tex- aesthetic tradition. tiles, woodwork, and metalwork. In addition, First, from the earliest written artistic instruc- Japanese packaging that makes use of such tions, Ki no Tsurayuki’s preface to KokinshE materials as bamboo, paper, straw, and wood (“Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems,” is designed to maximize the materials’ own 905) and Tachibana-no-Toshitsuna’s Sakuteiki characteristics. This same principle is applied (“Records of Garden Making,” 11th century), to food preparation, both in cooking and one principle that predominates in the Japanese presentation. tradition of art-making is that artistic inspira- The respectful attitude toward objects that tion comes directly from a subject matter or informs the artistic and design process can be material object. As explained more fully by found in Shintoism, Japan’s indigenous reli- eighteenth-century nativist philologist Motoori gion, and in Zen Buddhism, which was trans- Norinaga in his theory of mono no aware (sen- mitted to Japan from China between the late sitivity to things), the art of poetry-making twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Both is to express one’s empathy with the emotive emphasize the sacredness of this world rather quality of an object, which is often taken than of the other world. Zen Buddhism also from nature. Similarly, in Sakuteiki, Toshitsuna urges “forgetting” or “overcoming” one’s ego describes the art of garden-making as arranging as a necessary condition for enlightenment.

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Artistic discipline similarly consists not only of viewing in spring, still practiced today. sharpening skills and cultivating creativity but Furthermore, seasons are considered import- more importantly of practicing a way of life ant in food preparation and interior decoration, thoroughly dedicated to art-making without not only for such formal occasions as the tea cer- any ulterior motive, such as fame or fortune. emony, but also in people’s everyday lives. Thus, the traditional terminology for each Another important principle in the Japanese artistic medium ends with the suffix dD, mean- aesthetic tradition is also other-regarding: the ing “the way.” SadD, kadD, shodD, and kadD refer, respectful attitude toward the experiences of respectively, to “the way” of tea, flower arrange- other people. While not involving formal art ment, calligraphy, and poetry. All are subsumed objects or activities, the court sensibility in the under the term geidD, meaning “the way of the Heian period (794–1185) sets the stage for arts.” The attitude of disinterestedness that is this ethos and its subsequent development. often considered necessary for one to have an This sensibility is perhaps best illustrated in the aesthetic experience in Western aesthetics is courtship ritual carried out by exchanging thus rather required of the artist, craftsperson, letters. All aesthetic details, such as paper, or designer in the Japanese tradition. poetry, calligraphy, folding, infused fragrance, This thoroughgoing transcendence of self as and attached flower or leaf, are selected by a “way” of mastering an artistic discipline also considering what would most please the recip- applies to the Japanese martial arts, such as ient of the letter. This other-directed concern, kyEdD (the way of archery) and kendD (the sometimes referred to as elegance, characterizes way of swordsmanship). Martial arts training “a good person,” according to Heian sensibility. manuals emphasize cultivation of a correct Considered a moral virtue, concern for the attitude and composure rather than of specific other person’s experience is similarly expressed skills. Success is said to result from overcom- aesthetically in the art of tea ceremony. The ing one’s self-consciousness and desire for host’s utmost effort to welcome and please the winning. guests is reflected in the meticulous attention While not imbued with the same spiritual to details. These include the choice and place- significance, Japanese appreciation of nature ment of the utensils, tea bowls, and interior also depends on how an object or phenomenon decorations; the preparation of food, tea, and the is defined by its distinctive characteristics. This tea hut; the care of the garden and its various is best illustrated by the appreciation of sea- implements such as a water basin and step- sonableness. With four distinct seasons, Japan ping-stones; and even the preparation of the has always celebrated the aesthetic appeal of toilet. each. For example, the KokinshE and subse- This consideration for others’ experience quent court-sponsored anthologies of poems also enriches the content of aesthetic experience are organized according to season; and one of through multisensory appeal. Just as the aes- the most influential works of Japanese literature, thetics of courtship letters engages not only the eleventh-century Makura no SDshi (Pillow the visual and literary but also the tactile and Book) by court lady Sei Shdnagon, begins its olfactory sensations, Japanese garden design, collection of essays and vignettes by extolling architecture, packaging, food, pottery, and tea the beauty of each season. Sensitivity toward, ceremony all highlight various sensations. The and appreciation of, each season applies even tactile sensation is emphasized when holding to elements which in themselves might not a pottery piece, or when walking on stepping- ordinarily be “appreciated,” such as heat and stones, an aged wooden corridor, or a straw mat. humidity or freezing wind. This aesthetic Straw mats also impart a distinctive smell, as do appreciation is clearly evident in the rules of com- such packaging materials as bamboo leaves position for haiku poetry, established in the or cedar. Visual attraction is important for seventeenth century, which require that one sea- food arrangement, while bodily engagement son word (kigo) be included in each 17-syllable is required not only in eating but also in poem. This same appreciation gave rise to performing the tea ceremony or opening a festivals celebrating the beauty of each season, package. Furthermore, sensitivity to the temporal the best-known of which is cherry-blossom sequence in which the experience unfolds

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japanese aesthetics is reflected in various techniques of garden special attraction for signs of aging, such as design. It is also expressed in the several steps cracked pottery or lacquerware worn from required for opening a carefully wrapped pack- repeated usage. age, and in the arrangement and simultaneous Even within the Japanese tradition, such serving of different food items that allow one to qualities are considered challenging to the ex- compose one’s own order of eating. periencing agents, because flowers in full bloom, Japanese aesthetics thus emphasizes multi- gold-gilded objects, and clear and straightforward sensory bodily engagement as a way of gaining artistic expressions are assumed to be easier to aesthetic experience. This lack of distinction appreciate. Thus, just as the Japanese aesthetic between higher and lower senses, as well as that tradition challenges the makers of objects to between mind and body, results in what might be open-minded, that is, to let the object and be characterized as a kind of egalitarianism, materials speak for themselves in the creative another important principle in Japanese aes- process, it also encourages the experiencing thetics. During the Westernization period, agents to be open-minded enough to accept Japanese aestheticians were concerned with and appreciate those qualities not normally developing a comprehensive aesthetic theory appreciated. Furthermore, if a certain moral focused on what would be equivalent to the mod- stance, such as care and respect for the experi- ern Western notion of “fine arts.” However, encing agents, is expected of the makers of art Japanese aesthetic tradition is more diverse, and other objects, the sensitivity to recognize and embracing not only those art media familiar to appreciate its aesthetic expression is required the West, but also the tea ceremony, flower on the part of the experiencing agent. In short, arrangement, and martial arts, as well as what moral and spiritual discipline is inseparable in the West are considered “crafts,” such as the from engaging in aesthetic experience, whether design of everyday objects. as a provider or as a recipient. This tendency toward egalitarianism also Thus, the Japanese aesthetic tradition opens extends to the qualities for aesthetic apprecia- possible areas for inquiry not often explored tion. Opulent, gorgeous, and luxurious beauty, in modern Western aesthetics. They include typically considered worthy of aesthetic appre- the relationship between the aesthetic and ciation, certainly exists in Japanese arts and its moral and spiritual considerations in the other objects. However, more challenging qual- sense explained above, creative activity that is ities that are not normally appreciated in the object/material-centered, and the appreciation West, such as imperfection, defect, desolate- of multisensory experiences and those qualities ness, and impoverished or aged appearance, that are typically depreciated. are appreciated equally, or sometimes more than their opposites. These qualities are referred to as See also aesthetics of food and drink; aes- wabi and sabi, originally designating desolate- thetics of the everyday; chinese aesthetics; ness in tea ceremony and rusticity or forlorn- forgery; gardens. ness in haiku. They are highly valued in Japan for their aestheticization of contingency and bibliography the transience of life, and for their power to Hume, Nancy (ed.). 1995. Japanese Aesthetics and stimulate the imagination. This aesthetic taste Culture: A Reader. Albany: State University of New results in minimalism, which is expressed in York Press. literature and painting through implication Izutsu, Toshihiko & Izutsu, Toyo. 1981. The Theory and suggestion, rather than clarity and expli- of Beauty in the Classical Aesthetics of Japan. The citness. It is also reflected in the extreme brevity Hague: Nijhoff. of haiku, the sparse interior of Japanese built Keene, Donald (ed.). 1955. Anthology of Japanese structures, such as the tea hut, and the mini- Literature. New York: Grove. Marra, Michael (ed. & trans.). 2001. A History of mum movement of the actors in Noh theater. Modern Japanese Aesthetics. Honolulu: University of It also extends to a preference for phenomena Hawai’i Press. that are less than optimal, such as the moon Marra, Michael (ed.). 2002. Japanese Hermeneutics: obscured by clouds and cherry blossoms falling Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation. from their branches. Finally, there exists a Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

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Marra, Michael (ed. & trans.). 1999. Modern Japanese Tradition. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Aesthetics: A Reader. Honolulu: University of Press. Hawai’i Press. Ueda, Makoto. 1967. Literary and Art Theories in Saito, Yuriko. 1998. “Japanese Aesthetic Appreci- Japan. Cleveland: Press of Case Western Reserve ation of Nature.” In Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, University. vol. iii. M. Kelly (ed.). New York: Oxford University Yanagi, Sdetsu. 1972. The Unknown Craftsman: A Press, 343–6. Japanese Insight into Beauty. B. Leach (adapted). Saito, Yuriko. 1998. “Japanese Aesthetics.” In Tokyo: Kodansha International. Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, vol. ii. M. Kelly (ed.). yuriko saito New York: Oxford University Press, 553–5. Tsunoda, Ryesaku, de Bary, Wm. Theodore, & Keene, Donald (eds.). 1964. Sources of Japanese judgment, aesthetic see aesthetic judgment.

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Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804) The greatest in trying to paraphrase them. This free flight eighteenth-century German philosopher, and of the imagination is an activity that is worth- one of the subject’s most influential figures, in while for its own sake, giving to works of art epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics as well an intellectual as well as a purely aesthetic as aesthetics; a leading champion of European appeal, without which, says Kant, they would Enlightenment. lack “soul.” The invention of aesthetic ideas is Kant’s analysis of the nature of aesthetic ascribed to genius, while their expression in judgment forms the first part of his third beautiful forms, on which their communic- Critique, the Critique of Judgment (1790), the ability depends, is ascribed to the faculty of second part of which is an investigation into taste. the role of teleological judgments in our The “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” (part 1 descriptions of the natural world. This division of the third Critique) is chiefly concerned with corresponds to the ways in which the apparent the question of how aesthetic judgments can purposiveness of natural forms may be viewed: be subjective and yet universally valid. Kant either subjectively (the aesthetic standpoint), distinguishes two main types of aesthetic or objectively (the teleological standpoint). judgment: judgments about the beautiful, or The most influential part of Kant’s theory of aes- pure judgments of taste, and judgments about thetic value concerns the notion of beauty, the sublime. The most obvious difference which he treats as applying primarily to natu- between them is that, whereas the beautiful is ral objects and only secondarily to works of grounded in the spatial and temporal form of art. However, he considers the value of a work objects (figure and play), and thus on that of fine art to depend not only on its beauty, but which is limited in space and time, the sublime also on its being the vehicle for aesthetic ideas. depends on that sense of limitlessness which is An aesthetic idea is an intuition of the cre- evoked by the unimaginably vast (the mathe- ative imagination for which an adequate con- matically sublime) and the overwhelmingly cept can never be found. It is the counterpart powerful (the dynamically sublime). of an idea of reason for which no intuition is Strictly speaking, our experience of the sub- adequate. The latter include such nonempirical lime is only partly aesthetic because, unlike notions as God, eternity, virtue. Aesthetic ideas the beautiful, it needs to be mediated by ideas may go some way toward giving sensory em- of reason and morality. In the case of the bodiment to such ideas, but without imparting mathematically sublime, such as the starry knowledge of any kind. Their other role is to heavens, reason is exalted by enabling us to “body forth to sense” empirical notions such as think of what lies outside the reach of the love, death, and fame, but “with a completeness imagination as a totality; and in the case of the of which nature affords no parallel” (1952: dynamically sublime, such as a storm at sea, we 177). They provide the imagination with a are reminded of our worth as moral beings in powerful incentive “to spread its flight over a contrast to the weakness of our empirical whole host of kindred representations that selves. In both cases, an otherwise unpleasing provoke more thought than admits of expres- experience is tempered by feelings of admiration sion in a concept determined by words.” Their and respect. It would be fair to say, however, that expression is typically symbolic, but as no although Kant’s account of the sublime contains truth is being asserted, there would be no point many points of interest, it lacks both the

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kant, immanuel plausibility and the overall importance of his Kant’s own criterion of disinterestedness is account of the beautiful. stricter than the one given above, for he defines To find a thing beautiful, whether it be nat- “interest” as “the delight which we connect ural or humanly made, is to take pleasure in with the representation of the real existence it simply on account of how it looks or sounds. of the object. Such a delight, therefore, always This means, says Kant, that judgments of involves a reference to the faculty of desire, beauty – or judgments of taste, as he calls either as its determining ground, or else as them – are based on the feelings of pleasure necessarily implicated with its determining or displeasure that denote nothing in the ground” (1952: 42). Further, “one must not be object and so cannot be other than subjective. in the least prepossessed in favour of the real exis- Such judgments can be neither true nor false, tence of the thing, but must preserve complete since to discriminate on the basis of feeling indifference in this respect in order to play the alone is to contribute nothing to knowledge. The part of judge in matters of taste” (1952: 43). most they can aspire to is a kind of intersub- Part of what is being claimed here is that jective validity. aesthetic delight is delight in what appears to In the four sections, or “moments,” of his the subject regardless of its ontological status. “Analytic of the Beautiful,” Kant attempts to Compare, for example, the indifference of the define beauty in terms of the type of pleasure it traveler in a desert who admires the beauty of affords. From this it emerges that beauty is a per- what he takes to be a lake, on learning that it ceptual form whose subjective finality is felt as is only a mirage, with the disappointment of the a disinterested, universally communicable, traveler who is dying of thirst. Since aesthetic and necessary pleasure. Its finality assures us value resides in the pleasure taken in the that it is worth contemplating for its own sake, intentional object, the real nature of the object although it is only through feeling that this is irrelevant. On the other hand, the same feature can be apprehended. Thus, to understand might be said of the reflective pleasure we the nature of beauty, we need to understand the sometimes take in smells, tastes and colors, nature of aesthetic pleasure. which Kant regards as being merely sensory and Kant distinguishes three types of pleasure: so “interested.” pleasure in the agreeable, or gratification; This shows that disinterestedness on its own pleasure in the good, or approval; and pleasure is not a sufficient condition for pleasure to in the beautiful, or free liking. Only the last is count as aesthetic, despite some suggestions disinterested. To reflect on a thing in a disin- to the contrary (e.g., at 1952: 49), although it terested way is to adopt a nonmoral, nonprac- might still be a necessary condition. However, tical, nonegoistic attitude toward it. Hence if Kant’s other three conditions – universal any value that we attach to it belongs to it communicability, necessity, and the subjective alone and is not dependent on considerations of finality of the intentional object – are taken morality, utility, personal advantage, or sensory into account, then a more adequate criterion gratification. If aesthetic merit is conferred on emerges. things as a result of such a contemplative atti- Clearly, Kant is mistaken in supposing that tude, then it follows that aesthetic values are disinterested pleasure can be taken only in the nonderivative and so autonomous – as Kant perceptual form of the object and never in claimed moral values also to be. Few ideas in the what he terms “the matter of sensation.” If history of aesthetics have been more pervasive smells and tastes are to be excluded from the than that of the disinterestedness of the aesthetic realm of the aesthetic, it should be on grounds attitude. It has figured prominently, in various other than interest; for example, their incapa- guises, in the writings of eighteenth-century city for formal organization or the more personal English empiricists and of nineteenth-century and idiosyncratic nature of our response to German idealists, and in much twentieth- them, which would breach the universality century writing. The idea can be traced back condition. Again, Kant’s insistence on treating to Lord Shaftesbury, but Kant was the first to our delight in color as merely sensory seems to incorporate it into a theory about the logical be a mistake, since it is no more dependent on character of aesthetic judgment. our antecedent needs or desires than is our

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kant, immanuel delight in perceptual form. Moreover, colors judges “not merely for himself, but for all men, are capable of formal arrangement, although and then speaks of beauty as if it were a prop- it must be admitted that one’s response to erty of all things” (1952: 52); for example, color is likely to be more personal than one’s “This rose is beautiful.” response to shape, say; people have their To call something beautiful is to put it “on a favorite colors but not their favorite shapes. pedestal” and demand the same delight from A more general objection might be raised others. The disinterestedness helps to explain against Kant’s insistence that we “must preserve why we feel entitled to do this. “For where any complete indifference” as to the real existence one is conscious that his delight in an object of the thing in order to judge it aesthetically on is with him independent of interest, it is the grounds that most aesthetically sensitive peo- inevitable that he should look on the object as ple would in fact regard an object’s beauty as a one containing a ground of delight for all men” very good reason for wanting to preserve it. (1952: 50). In other words, if one is aware This objection is perhaps unfair to Kant, since that one’s delight in the beautiful is not depen- nothing he says rules out the possibility of dent on any fact about oneself that might be treating one’s disinterested pleasure in beauti- peculiar to oneself, as with needs, desires and ful things as a first-order attitude, and one’s appetites, then one is entitled to assume – or at approval of their existence as a logically inde- least one has no reason for not assuming – that pendent second-order attitude. Thus one it is grounded on something which one shares might, for example, feel, as Aristotle did, that one with all human beings, that is, with beings had a duty to develop one’s perceptual and who are both animal and rational and who cognitive powers to their fullest extent, and share one’s perceptual and cognitive faculties. to see this as a practical benefit of, albeit not This does not, of course, prove that our aes- the purpose of, aesthetic reflection. One would thetic feelings must in principle be universally then have a moral reason for preserving communicable, but it does help to explain beauty. Kant, too, might have a further motive why we should feel them to be so. It helps to for doing so in that he sees the beautiful as a explain, for instance, in a very general way, why symbol of the moral. Nevertheless, the first- we would be extremely puzzled by someone order attitude in no way determines the second- who genuinely considered a typical multi- order attitude, and may even be in conflict storey car park to be more beautiful than the with it. For example, it is quite possible to Taj Mahal, but not surprised by an Inuit who disapprove of beautiful things and want to genuinely preferred the taste of raw whale destroy them, as some Puritans have done, blubber to lobster soufflé. It is true that one can while being fully sensible of their beauty. This often predict with a fair degree of accuracy might be a way, albeit an extreme one, of what others will find agreeable or disagree- asserting the supremacy of moral or religious able, and thus make judgments with which values over aesthetic ones. most, if not all, people would concur, for exam- According to Kant, the disinterestedness of ple, that the smell of freshly roasted coffee is deli- pure judgments of taste helps to explain the cious. However, to demand universal assent to possibility of their universal validity, which is a pure judgment or taste is not to predict a sim- what chiefly distinguishes them from judg- ilar reaction in others, but to require it. In ments upon the merely agreeable. Both are other words, others ought to agree, even if they singular judgments in which the subject makes do not. Judgments upon the agreeable, on the his judgment on the basis of an immediate, other hand, can at best aspire only to a general and therefore subjective, response to a particu- validity and contain no hidden “ought.” lar object; for instance, “This is delicious,” The aesthetic “ought” differs from the “This is beautiful.” In each case, the proof of the “ought” of practical judgment in not resting pudding is in the eating, as it were. The crucial on the concept of an end. This is because when difference is that, whereas in the case of the an object pleases aesthetically in the Kantian agreeable the subject only judges for himself – sense, it does so apart from any concept. To judge for instance, “This Canary wine is agreeable to a thing purely beautiful is to judge it on the basis me” – in the case of the beautiful the subject of perceptual form alone without reference to

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kant, immanuel how it might be described or what purpose, if and understanding. We know a priori, Kant any, it might serve. The case is otherwise with says, that such harmonious interaction is pos- the good, whether morally good or only usefully sible because it is a necessary condition of the good, for a thing can be good or bad, right or possibility of all empirical knowledge. In other wrong, only under a description which must words, the mere possibility of the universal include reference to an end: in the case of an communicability of empirical truth, which is object, its purpose; in the case of an action, the objective, assures us of the possibility of the intention behind it. All such judgments are universal communicability of aesthetic feeling, “interested” in Kant’s sense, for “the good is the which is subjective. object of will” and “to will something, and to take There are two types of form: figure, which is a delight in its existence, that is to take an the product of design; and play, which is the interest in it, are identical” (1952: 48). product of composition. Painting is an example For this reason, an object cannot be judged of the first and music of the second. Dance beautiful or ugly on the basis of a general combines the two. Subjective finality can be description of it, as can the rightness or wrong- ascribed to the form when it is so well adapted ness of an action. Thus aesthetic disagree- to our powers of cognition that it is found ments cannot be settled by rational argument pleasing for its own sake. When this happens, in the way that moral and practical disagree- the imagination, whose normal role is to sup- ments can; that is to say, “there can be no rule ply data for the understanding to synthesize, according to which any one is to be compelled enters into a free, self-sustaining, and harmo- to recognize anything as beautiful.” For where nious interaction with understanding, whose there are no concepts there can be no rules, or normal role is to bring the data under concepts at least no rules capable of formulation. Thus with a view either to knowledge or to action. The holds good the dictum that there can be no dis- interaction is free, because unconstrained by puting about tastes. determinate concepts. Thus, the form of final- The only procedure for settling aesthetic ity has the appearance of purposiveness or disagreements is for the parties concerned to design, but without purpose. It is that for the sake attend to the object with greater care, in case of which we exercise our perceptual powers, the perceptual form has not been properly when we have no practical or theoretical inter- apprehended. But even when those features of est in the object. the object that contribute to its beauty can be named, no rule can be formulated which says See also eighteenth-century aesthetics; aes- that any object possessing such features must thetic attitude; aesthetic judgment; aes- be beautiful. One can, of course, improve one’s thetic pleasure; beauty; creativity; lukács; taste by exercising one’s perpetual and ima- religion and art; sublime; shaftesbury; taste. ginative faculties in the right way on objects which are considered exemplary in respect of bibliography their beauty, but one cannot be forced to aban- don a judgment simply because others dis- Primary sources agree with it (1952: 137–9). [1790] 1952. The Critique of Judgement. J. C. Meredith (trans.). Oxford: Clarendon. (Translation 1st pub. A pure judgment of taste is, then, one that 1928.) expresses a disinterested and universally com- [1790] 1987. Critique of Judgment. W. S. Pluhar municable pleasure in the perceptual form of an (trans.). Indianapolis: Hackett. object, considered apart from any concept. The [1790] 2000. Critique of the Power of Judgment. subjective principle that determines what it is P. Guyer & E. Matthews (trans.). Cambridge: about the perceptual form that pleases or dis- Cambridge University Press. pleases by feeling alone, Kant calls the “Form Secondary sources of Finality.” Since the form of finality can only Cohen, Ted & Guyer, Paul (eds.). 1982. Essays in Kant’s be felt and not known, there is very little that Aesthetics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. can be said about it apart from its effect on Coleman, Francis X. J. 1974. The Harmony of Reason: the subject, which is to induce a harmonious A Study in Kant’s Aesthetics. Pittsburgh: University interaction between the faculties of imagination of Pittsburgh Press.

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Crawford, Donald W. 1974. Kant’s Aesthetic Theory. Kierkegaard’s manner of presenting his Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. views on aesthetics was possible only for a Gasché, Rodolphe. 2003. The Idea of Form: writer capable of the range of experiments Rethinking Kant’s Aesthetics. Stanford: Stanford in style and thought exhibited in his private University Press. papers as well as in his published work, and it Guyer, Paul. 1997. Kant and the Claims of Taste. 2nd is this which gives his writing special distinction edn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kemal, Salim. 1986. Kant and Fine Art. Oxford: (the modern editions of 1983 and 1987 collate Clarendon. material from the private papers with the pub- McCloskey, Mary A. 1987. Kant’s Aesthetic. London: lished work). His pseudonymous writing has to Macmillan. do, he says, with deliberately created “author- Osborne, Harold. 1968. Aesthetics and Art Criticism. personalities” (1987: ii.451) by means of London: Longman. which he enables his readers to explore aes- Schaper, Eva (ed.). 1979. Studies in Kant’s Aesthetics. thetics, and themselves, and to discover what Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. finally matters to them. Scruton, Roger. 1982. Kant. Oxford: Oxford Univer- There are three main aesthetic “ideas,” sity Press. which represent the lyric (Don Juan – sensuous Warnock, Mary. 1976. Imagination. Berkeley: University of California Press. immediacy), the epic (the wandering Jew – Wicks, Robert. 2007. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook despair), and the dramatic (Faust – doubt). to Kant on Judgement. London: Routledge. Don Juan belongs to the Middle Ages, while david whewell Faust is a parody of the Reformation, aban- doned to himself and needing completion in the wandering Jew. The latter is the unhappi- Kierkegaard, Søren (1813–1855) Danish est of men because he cannot die; he stands for philosopher and theologian; an inspiration, in the aesthetic, without meaning or purpose, the twentieth century, for both existentialism and powerless against the boredom of the and Protestant thought. modern age. In “The Seducer’s Diary” (a story In Either/Or (1843) Kierkegaard writes within Either/Or), he entertains himself by cre- pseudonymously to his symparanekromenoi ating in a young girl, “the motions of infinity” (“fellow-moribunds”) of his own sense of the (1987: i.392), in which she learns “to swing her- nihilism of his age (1987: i.168). Describing the self, to rock herself in moods, to confuse poetry “music of the storm,” he comments: “People and actuality, truth and fiction, to frolic in do say that the voice of the divine is not in the infinity.” driving wind but in the soft breeze, but our There are, then, those like the Seducer for ears, after all, are constructed not to pick up the whom life becomes a stage and those who per- soft breeze but to swallow the uproar of the ele- form, for example, “The Immediate Erotic ments.” The vortex is the world’s core principle, Stages; or, The Musical Erotic,” of which the and he wishes that “it might erupt with deep- supreme example is Mozart’s Don Giovanni. In seated resentment and shake off the moun- this work is to be found the “thoroughgoing tains and the nations and the cultural works and mutual permeation” of form and subject mat- man’s clever inventions.” ter, like for like (1987: i.52–3). The Don’s sen- Whether or not he was right to find the suous immediacy has its absolute medium in sources of nihilism in the work of Fichte, in the music, in its power, life, movement, continual Romantics, or in Hegelianism, he searched for unrest, continual succession (1987: i.71). We an understanding of “the aesthetic” (an exis- lose ourselves in the music in which the Don tential category) in relation to this vortex, unfurls himself. But a different form, and loving poetry and art and all the works of the therefore a different response, is appropriate imagination (aesthetics as artistic practice) for different subject matter. So in a comedy like while setting limits to them (1987: ii.273). The First Love, a play Kierkegaard saw, what is For, as he says (under one of his pseudonyms), important is that: “they provide only an imperfect reconcilia- In it there must not be a single character, not a tion with life . . . when you fix your eye upon single situation, that could claim to survive the poetry and art you are not looking at actuality.” downfall that irony from the outset prepared for

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each and all in it. When the curtain falls, every- will be destroyed – amid the universal hilarity thing is forgotten, nothing but nothing remains, and of wits and wags who think it is all a joke” that is the only thing one sees; and the only thing (1987: i.30). He is to be ridiculed if there is only one hears is a laughter, like a sound of nature, that the endless shadow-play to see, rather than does not issue from any one person but is the lan- the need to give birth to the self (1987: ii.206). guage of a world force, and this force is irony. “Therefore it is quite all right that in modern (1987: i.273). drama the bad is always represented by the It is a reflection on Emmeline (a character in most brilliantly gifted characters, whereas the The First Love) and her illusions, disclosed by good, the upright, is represented by the grocer’s the comedy, remaining afterwards for contem- apprentice. The spectators find this entirely plation, and fostered by repeatedly seeing the appropriate and learn from the play what they comedy, which distinguishes watching it from already knew, that it is far beneath their dignity losing ourselves in the Don’s music. to be classed with a grocer’s apprentice” Kierkegaard also explores the relation be- (1987: ii.228). tween the ancient and the modern in tragedy. The crucial difference is that modern tragedy has See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century no “epic foreground,” for the hero or heroine continental aesthetics; humor; irony; moral- stands or falls entirely on his or her own deeds. ity and art. “The wrath of the gods is terrible, but still the pain is not as great as in modern tragedy, bibliography where the hero suffers his total guilt, is trans- parent to himself in the suffering of his guilt” Primary sources (1987: i.148). And in a remarkable piece of [1843] 1983. Fear and Trembling, Repetition. H. V. Hong & E. H. Hong (eds. & trans.). Princeton: necromantic fantasy, he sketches how he Princeton University Press. would recharacterize Antigone (in marked con- [1843] 1987. Either/Or. 2 vols. H. V. Hong & E. H. trast to Hegel, in his Aesthetics). It is precisely Hong (eds. & trans.). Princeton: Princeton Univer- that capacity for reflection associated with sity Press. comedy, but now, as it were, attributable to a character in tragedy itself, which robs tragedy Secondary sources of something essential to it; for “the power Pattison, George. 1991. Kierkegaard: The Aesthetic and the Religious. London: Macmillan. which is the source of the suffering has lost its Walsh, Sylvia. 1994. Living Poetically: Kierkegaard’s meaning” and the spectator has lost the com- Existential Aesthetics. University Park: Pennsylvania passion which is tragedy’s authentic expression. State University of Press. Reflection can still leave one with illusion, or ann loades drive one from aesthetics to ethics, from the masks of the self’s shadow-play as in Repetition (1983: ii.156), which have their place in a life, to feel oneself present as a character in a kitsch is a category term referring to a type drama that the deity is writing, in which poet, of aesthetically impoverished art, artifact, per- prompter and actor are at one (1987: ii.137). formance, or practice that commonly relies And some things, such as daily dying, or the on banal subject matter and stock emotional patience that contends against time (1987: responses. The term, however, is used more or ii.135–6), cannot be portrayed in poetry or art less loosely, sometimes in reference to a wide – there is no form for them. variety of somewhat incongruous items made Finally, it is an image taken from the theater in a slapdash manner, sometimes making no that provides Kierkegaard with the form for reference to absurdity or poor technique but the content of his own authorship. “In a theater, instead to a particular type of emotional appeal. it happened that a fire started offstage. The Given the cluster of associations that has clown came out to tell the audience. They grown around the term, a precise definition of thought it was a joke and applauded. He told “kitsch” is difficult to formulate. The term was them again, and they became still more hilari- originally used in connection with sketchy ous. This is the way, I suppose, that the world tourist art that became popular in Germany in

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kitsch the latter half of the nineteenth century. Such 2 Kitsch evokes emotion that is enjoyed in an sketches were cheap and produced in large effortless way. quantity. (Indeed, the German verb verkitschen 3 Kitsch presents reality in an unrealistic means “to make cheaply.”) Kitsch has accord- way. ingly become associated with consumer society and mass production, although being pro- The formulaic character and the effortless duced on a mass scale is not a necessary crite- enjoyment associated with kitsch were among rion. Early kitsch products appealed to middle the features that led Clement Greenberg to class sensibilities, and the term has acquired denounce it in his famous 1939 essay “Avant- the association of pandering to those who seek Garde and Kitsch.” Greenberg claimed that easy gratification and are not very selective kitsch debases aesthetic sensibilities by encour- about the style or quality of what they buy. In aging mindlessness in its audience. He objected light of the fact that souvenir art was the ini- that its formulaic character effectively pre- tial paradigm of kitsch, moreover, the associa- digested kitsch for its audience. By contrast tion of emotional appeal is a basic connotation with the avant-garde, which aimed to confront of the term. the viewer and demand reflection, kitsch was an Kitsch always involves some kind of defici- artistic type of pabulum, offering only familiar ency, but a variety of particular inadequacies are elements to elicit trained responses from spec- associated with it, and this adds to the difficulty tators. Perhaps ironically, the primary example of defining it. Among its alleged faults are of kitsch that Greenberg employs, a painting insincerity, bad taste, tackiness, a formulaic by Repin that allegedly appealed to peasants, and facile character, incongruous juxtaposition, appears to have been an amalgam of various vagueness, incompatibility between form and paintings that he had seen rather than a par- function, overly simplistic presentation, and false ticular actual work. representation of reality. The label has been Thomas Kulka emphasizes the formulaic applied to objects and performances on the basis character and the effortless enjoyment of of some but not all of these characterizations. kitsch when he defines kitsch as being charged A further complication for a definition of with stock emotions, involving themes or kitsch is that while the term is commonly used objects that are effortlessly identifiable, and to identify certain objects, the nature of the failing to substantially enrich our associations appeals that kitsch makes is typically a basis relating to the depicted themes or objects. Like for considering them to be kitsch. This being Greenberg, Kulka faults the derivative nature the case, it is possible that objects that are of kitsch and the unchallenging entertain- not themselves kitsch might be employed in a ment that it offers. These two features work manner that yields kitschy results. An example together, so that one responds effortlessly might be the use of the image of the American to what is presented precisely because it is flag on neckties or suspenders. The American so familiar. Typically, the themes or objects flag itself is not kitsch, nor is an image of the depicted resonate with important concerns in flag. Serious historical paintings and works by human life, such as family, friendship, patrio- Jasper Johns can utilize the flag in a way that tism, etc. Kulka points out that the spectator is not kitsch. But by virtue of the incompatibil- responds to the gestalt of what is depicted, not ity of form (the image of a banner celebrating to the representation as such. a nation state) and function (to accessorize an Strictly speaking, then, the viewer is not outfit of clothing or to hold up a pair of pants) responding aesthetically to the object at all, the flag on these items of clothing may well but using the object’s representational gesture be kitsch. as a basis for emotional response. The effect, What, then, makes kitsch kitsch? Analysts of as Kulka puts it, is entirely parasitic on the kitsch commonly associate at least three crite- referent. Kitsch tends to be representational, ria with it: and its representations refer to some element in a network of cultural associations. Kitsch 1 Kitsch involves the formulaic and makes treats subject matter that we associate with use of stock elements. some basic human concern, and we respond

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kitsch to this general concern more than to the presenting organized formations of beautiful object itself. The object itself is relevant only to young people, who metonymically remind the extent that it conjures up an important viewers of all that is great about their country. human theme and prompts an emotional reac- Many critics of kitsch have argued that it tion to it. presents reality in an unrealistic way, and for Kitsch, generally speaking, trades in atmo- this reason they see it as morally objectionable. spheres. It evokes feelings, and the enjoyment Kitsch excludes whatever is objectionable in of kitsch is largely a matter of taking satisfac- our world, thereby encouraging a distorted tion in the fact of having these feelings. Milan view of reality. Kitsch is “the absolute denial of Kundera, in his novel The Unbearable Lightness shit,” in Kundera’s striking phrase (1984: of Being, proposes that the emotions kitsch eli- 248). This deceptive portrayal of reality can be cits are inherently reflective and involve our pernicious because it encourages a sense that indulging the impression that the rest of the some aspects of the world (children or one’s population shares our emotions with us. country, for example) are absolutely good, with the implication that some others are Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. absolutely bad. Kitsch thus imposes an abso- The first tear says: How nice to see children run- lutistic schema of good and evil on whatever ning on the grass! we encounter. This in turn can motivate a The second tear says: How nice to be moved, sense that the absolutely good features of the together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch world must be protected against anything that kitsch. (Kundera 1984: 251) would threaten them, that is, the completely evil. By virtue of the binary values that kitsch Kitsch, on this view, appeals to our sense of imposes, kitsch is particularly serviceable for human solidarity and promotes the belief that propagandistic purposes. It facilitates absolute the rest of the world values just what we do. distinctions that propagandists can seize on. Despite its universal pretensions, the images Merely presenting one’s party as the sponsor of (broadly construed) that kitsch presents make some kitsch entertainment, such as the May Day reference to cultural beliefs about the world parade, facilitates associations between one’s and important human goals. These beliefs are cause and the pleasure one takes in the kitsch. semiconscious but reinforced through many The propagandist can suggest, moreover, that cultural practices. They are also connected one is really sharing one’s feeling, not with all to other beliefs in a network of associations. people in the world, but with the good people, Thus, an image of the American flag is related that is, those on the side of their cause by con- for many Americans, at least, to ideas of the trast to their opponents. The fact that kitsch was United States, power, prestige, home, the Amer- a favored propagandistic tool of the Nazis indi- ican population, the American landscape, a cates that the ends supported by kitsch have comforting sense of membership, patriotism, sometimes been sinister. etc. The image of the flag serves as an icon that Despite these objections to kitsch and the brings to partial awareness the whole back- general complaint that it is aesthetically shal- ground structure of associations. And the satis- low, some commentators see kitsch as rela- faction one takes in the kitsch is generalized to tively harmless. Some accept the verdict that implicate this entire structure. kitsch is aesthetically worthless, but never- A consequence is that the kitsch object theless think it is morally innocent. These cri- reinforces culturally embedded beliefs about tics tend to doubt that kitsch plays a very the way the world is organized and where one significant role in how people understand real- fits within it. Kitsch allows one to enjoy one’s ity. Others consider kitsch to be innocently feelings about these beliefs, and the kitsch enjoyable if one approaches it from an ironical object seems to affirm these feelings. Milan point of view. Such critics sometimes relabel the Kundera, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, kitsch that is appropriated in this tongue-in- takes the May Day parade in eastern bloc cheek manner “camp.” They tend to consider Czechoslovakia as an instance of kitsch. The aim the bad taste or incongruity of kitsch to be part of the parade is to arouse patriotic feelings by of its charm.

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Even some of those who take kitsch to be on a French government doctoral research morally damaging believe that its harms can be fellowship, and worked as research assistant defused by seeing its appeals for what they are. at Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Laboratory of Social Kundera, for example, contends, “As soon as Anthropology. Lucien Goldmann directed her kitsch is recognized for the lie it is, it moves doctoral thesis, a study of the emergence of the into the context of non-kitsch, thus losing its novel in the late medieval period as exemplified authoritarian power and becoming as touching by the writings of Antoine de la Sale. Published as any other human weakness.” An ironical in 1970 as Le texte du roman (“The Text of the stance is essential, as he sees it, for we cannot Novel”), this study draws upon the “postfor- do without kitsch with its pretensions of human malism” of Mikhail Bakhtin, in particular his brotherhood and its oversimplifications. As he account of the heterogeneity of the textual and concludes, “No matter how we scorn it, kitsch cultural materials making up the novel form, and is an integral part of the human condition” analyzes the shift in the concept of the “sign,” (1984: 256). from meaning as closure to open-ended processes of signification. See also mass art; sentimentality. In Séméiotiké: recherches pour une sémanalyse (1969), the neologism “semanalysis,” stemming bibliography from the conjunction of semiotics and psycho- Boyers, Robert & Boyers, Peg (eds.). 1990. “On Kitsch: analysis, is defined as a “critique of meaning, of A Symposium,” Salmagundi, 85–6, 198–312. its elements and laws,” “conceiving of meaning Calinescu, Matei. 1987. Five Faces of Modernity: not as a sign-system but as a signifying pro- Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Post- cess.” Rejecting the static model of language modernism. Durham: Duke University Press. upheld in much semiotic and linguistic theory, Crick, Philip. 1983. “Kitsch,” British Journal of Kristeva focuses attention on the conditions Aesthetics, 23, 48–52. of meaning-production. Psychoanalytic theor- Dorfles, Gillo. 1968. Kitsch: The World of Bad Taste. ies of language and signification, particularly New York: Universe. Jacques Lacan’s reformulations of Freudian Greenberg, Clement. 1961 [1939]. “Avant-Garde and Kitsch.” In Art and Culture. Boston: Beacon, thought, become increasingly central to this 3–21. project. Kristeva’s intention is to bring issues of Harries, Karsten. 1968. The Meaning of Modern Art. subjectivity and the role of the “speaking sub- Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ject” into play: questions largely excluded from Higgins, Kathleen. 1992. “Sweet Kitsch.” In The semiotic and linguistic theory – social and psy- Philosophy of the Visual Arts. P. Alperson (ed.). chic processes, the pre- or extralinguistic, and New York: Oxford University Press, 568–81. the dynamic and “wild” language of literary texts Kulka, Tomas. 1996. Kitsch and Art. University – thus become central. Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. These concerns are developed in one of her Kundera, Milan. 1984. The Unbearable Lightness of most important works, originally her doctoral Being. New York: Harper & Row. Solomon, Robert C. 1991. “In Defense of Kitsch,” thesis, published as La révolution du langage poé- Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 49, 1–14. tique (first published in 1974; Revolution in Poetic Language, 1984). This ambitious study kathleen marie higgins is both an account of avant-garde literary and linguistic practices at the end of the nine- teenth century, making particular reference Kristeva, Julia (b.1941) Naturalized French to works by Lautréamont and Mallarmé, and an theorist of language, literature, and psycho- attempt to produce a comprehensive theory analysis: an important influence on several of poetic language, drawing on a variety of late twentieth-century intellectual develop- theoretical traditions and modes of analysis – ments, including feminist criticism. philosophical, linguistic, and psychoanalytic. Born in Bulgaria, Kristeva studied linguistics Of its many theoretical strands, two of the and literature at the University of Sofia, while most important are Kristeva’s use of psycho- working as a journalist on a newspaper for analysis and of Hegelian dialectics, particu- communist youth. She went to Paris in 1966 larly her reformulation of Hegelian negativity

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kristeva, julia as motion and process, expulsion or “rejec- dominant theme of these essays is, in accord with tion” (rejet). In articulating an account of the Tel Quel project, the articulation of the links the “semiotic” and the “symbolic” as the two between language, subjectivity, and transgres- modalities of all processes of signification, she sion in the avant-garde text. The influence of draws on Freud’s distinction between pre- Roland Barthes’s work was of paramount oedipal and oedipal sexual drives and Lacan’s importance to this project, not least in the cor- concepts of “imaginary” and “symbolic.” respondences he claimed between the chal- Following Plato’s Timaeus, she defines the lenge to literary conventions and subversion at place of the presymbolic or “semiotic” (where a social and political level. the symbolic is understood as the condition of The more overtly “political” involvements ordered, “rational” signification) as the space of the Tel Quel group were at their height at of the maternal chora (enclosed space, womb, the beginning of the 1970s, when it broke off receptacle), which in turn corresponds to the relations with the French Communist Party “poetic” function of language. “The chora,” and declared its support for the Chinese Kristeva writes, “as rupture and articulations Cultural Revolution. Kristeva’s account of her (rhythm), precedes evidence, verisimilitude, visit to China was published as About Chinese spatiality and temporality.” It is also seen as Women (1977). The Tel Quel group’s Maoist the space of instinctual drives and of a “bodily” affiliations did not survive long after this relationship to the rhythmic-intonational visit, and Kristeva has ascribed her own more aspects of language. pronounced withdrawal from direct political The “semiotic,” then, is represented as the involvement to her disillusionment with aspects transgressive, “feminine” materiality of signi- of Chinese society. Similarly, despite the cen- fication, which becomes evident in “madness, trality of her work to feminist theory, she has holiness and poetry” and surfaces in literary expressed ambivalence toward feminism as a texts, particularly those of the avant-garde, as social and political movement, though repeat- musicality and linguistic play. It should be edly emphasizing the importance of addressing noted, however, that Kristeva’s concept of women’s psychic and social condition. the relationship between “semiotic” and “sym- The consolidation of Kristeva’s theoret- bolic” is a dialectical one; the order of the ical concerns with “the individual life” may “symbolic” and the “thetic” allows the “semiotic” be linked to her increased professional and entrance into social and psychic relations, intellectual engagement with psychoanalysis. allowing negativity a mode of articulation. During the mid 1970s she trained as an ana- The “semiotic” has to work through the very lyst, starting her own psychoanalytic practice order of logical and syntactic functioning that in 1979. Since 1980, her theoretical work has it subverts, in order to enter into representation demonstrated a very close engagement with at all; the “symbolic,” which is the realm of the psychoanalytic theory, and art and literature are speaking subject, makes positionality (psychic, used extensively to explore psychoanalytic social, and political) possible. concepts and psychic processes. In Powers of Kristeva’s relationship to the contemporary Horror (1982), she analyzes the concept of avant-garde should be understood in the con- “abjection” and “horror,” incorporating in text of her involvement with the journal Tel these terms her earlier focus on “negativity” and Quel, her primary intellectual forum from the late rejet. “Abjection” is described as “what disturbs 1960s until 1983, when it was reformulated identity, system, order”; the “abject” can be ex- under the title L’Infini. Philippe Sellers, avant- emplified by those “unclean” and “improper” garde novelist and essayist, has edited it in aspects of corporeality and instinctual life both its manifestations, and Kristeva has been which are disavowed in order for the subject to closely involved with his work. In her collection enter into the “symbolic order.” Drawing on of essays, Polylogue, the title essay is a review Freud’s cultural criticism, particularly Totem of Sellers’ novel H, which she describes as and Taboo and Civilization and Its Discontents, “external polylogue” rather than “internal and Mary Douglas’s Purity and Danger, monologue”; the collection also contains essays Kristeva’s “anthropological” focus is also on on Antonin Artaud and Georges Bataille. The the ways in which societies and religions have

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kristeva, julia erected taboos against the “abjects” (food, Published in 1990, Kristeva’s first novel, The waste, and the bodily signs of sexual differ- Samurai (1990), which is a roman-à-clef about ence). What is expelled, however, is never Parisian intellectuals, marks a turn in her wholly destroyed, but remains as an ambiguous, career toward fiction writing. She has since liminal area of instability threatening the indi- written several additional novels, including vidual’s assumption of unity and cohesion. The Old Man and the Wolves (1994), Possessions In the last part of Powers of Horror, Kristeva (1998), and Murder in Byzantium (2006). turns to the work of Céline, whose writing “speaks” horror and whose political vision, See also barthes; feminist criticism; horror; including a violent antisemitism, is to be psychoanalysis and art. understood as a symptom, which both enacts and exposes the horror and fascination of psy- bibliography chic violence. More generally, in her later 1969. Séméiotiké: recherches pour une sémanalyse. work she emphasizes that “the problem of art Paris: Seuil. in the twentieth century is a continual con- 1970. Le texte du roman: approche sémiologique d’une frontation with psychosis ...a crisis of subjec- structure discursive transformationnelle. The Hague: tivity which is the basis for all creation.” In Mouton. [1974] 1977. About Chinese Women. A. Barrows Black Sun: Depression and Melancholy (1989), she (trans.). London: Boyars. discusses the work of Holbein, Dostoevsky, [1974] 1984. Revolution in Poetic Language. M. Nerval, and Duras, writers and artists for Waller (trans.). New York: Columbia University whom “the experience of art was lived as a sal- Press. vation” or, as in Nerval’s case, where art failed [1977] 1984. Polylogue. Paris: Seuil. (Part trans. to save. as Desire in Language by T. Gora, A. Jardine, & Other works include a volume on Proust L. Roudiez. Oxford: Blackwell.) and the experience of literature, Time and Sense [1980] 1982. Powers of Horror. L. Roudiez (trans.). (1996), and Tales of Love (1987), in which New York: Columbia University Press. images of Western love are analyzed in myth and [1983] 1987. Tales of Love. L. Roudiez (trans.). New York: Columbia University Press. religion and through figures such as Don Juan [1987] 1989. Black Sun: Depression and Melancholy. and Romeo and Juliet, which “have woven our L. Roudiez (trans.). New York: Columbia amorous imaginary.” The concept of maternal University Press. love also plays a crucial role in this text, as [1988] 1991. Strangers to Ourselves. L. Roudiez elsewhere in Kristeva’s work. She has also (trans.). Brighton: Harvester. addressed the themes of foreignness, exile, and 1990. Lettre ouverte à Harlem Désir. Paris: Rivages. nationalism in her Étrangers à nous-mêmes [1990] 1992. The Samurai. B. Bray (trans.). New (Strangers to Ourselves) (1991) and Lettre York: Columbia University Press. ouverte à Harlem Désir (“An Open Letter to [1991] 1994. The Old Man and the Wolves. B. Bray Harlem Désir”) (1990). Kristeva has con- (trans.). New York: Columbia University Press. [1994] 1996. Time and Sense: Proust and the fronted the common tendency to associate Interpretation of Literature. R. Guberman (trans.). genius exclusively with males through her Le New York: Columbia University Press. genie féminin (1999–2002), a trilogy of intel- [1996] 1998. Possessions. B. Bray (trans.). New lectual biographies focusing, respectively, on York: Columbia University Press. Hannah Arendt, Melanie Klein, and Colette. [1996] 2000. The Sense and Nonsense of Revolt. J. Kristeva’s engagement with the aesthetic took Herman (trans.). New York: Columbia University a different turn when she served as the invited Press. curator of an exhibition of artworks on the [1997] 2002. Intimate Revolt: The Powers and Limits theme of decapitation at the Louvre, entitled of Psychoanalysis. 2 vols. J. Herman (trans.). New Visions capitales. More theoretically, in The York: Columbia University Press. 1998. Visions capitales. Paris: Réunion des musées Sense and Nonsense of Revolt (2000), she considers nationaux. the role art (in particular, installation art) can 1999–2002. Le génie féminin: la vie, la folie, les mots: play in helping to restore a sense of connected- Hannah Arendt, Melanie Klein, Colette. Paris: Fayard. ness to bodily sensation, which she considers a 2002. The Portable Kristeva. K. Oliver (ed.). New common malaise in the contemporary world. York: Columbia University Press.

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2004. Colette. J. M. Todd (trans.). New York: Keltner, Stacy & Oliver, Kelly. 2008. Julia Kristeva: Columbia University Press. Between Politics and Aesthetics. Albany: State [2004] 2006. Murder in Byzantium. C. J. Delogu University of New York Press. (trans.). New York: Columbia University Press. Kolocotroni, Vassiliki. 1991. “Interview with Julia 2005. La haine et le pardon. Fayard: Paris. Kristeva,” Textual Practice, 5(2), 157–70. Lechte, John. 1990. Julia Kristeva. London: Secondary sources Routledge. Beardsworth, Sara. 2004. Julia Kristeva: Psycho- Moi, T. (ed.). 1986. The Kristeva Reader. Oxford: analysis and Modernity. Albany: State University of Blackwell. New York Press. Fletcher, J. & Benjamin, A. (eds.). 1990. Abjection, laura marcus Melancholia and Love. London: Routledge.

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Langer, Susanne (1895–1985) American of abstractive rationality. With the early philosopher, best known for her contributions Wittgenstein, Langer holds that our discursive to philosophical anthropology and aesthetics; thought, expressed in language, offers logical pic- one of the most important aestheticians of the tures of states of affairs in the world. Because twentieth century. Her views on art are integ- of its complex syntactic nature and immense rated with a general philosophical position of vocabulary, language must build up its picture some intricacy. Her aesthetic theory had its from discrete units governed by logical laws. It genesis in her book on the nature of symbolism cannot even begin to present the world simul and meaning, Philosophy in a New Key (first totum. Langer believes that here a crucial error published in 1942), became the focus in its has been made: since discursive language has sequel, Feeling and Form (1953), and was ex- been the medium of philosophical reflection, panded in the three volumes of Mind: An Essay philosophy has been willing to identify mean- on Human Feeling (1967, 1972, 1982) In all ing with discursivity. Hence the question “What these works, Langer wove together an astound- is the meaning of art?” became an undesirable ing variety of influences with a sensitive under- either/or: either a work had no meaning or its standing of art. The writings of A. N. Whitehead, meaning could be translated into literal, pro- Ernst Cassirer, Wittgenstein, C. S. Peirce, and positional language. Her challenge is to offer a Rudolf Carnap feature strongly in her work, nondiscursive mode of symbolism, a “presenta- not to mention those of biologists, psycho- tional” mode, which begins with the “grammar logists, anthropologists, and numerous writers of the eye and ear” in sensation and then on art. Only the portion of her work directly con- becomes highly articulated in art (1957a: 89). cerned with the aesthetic is considered here. Through symbolism we gradually organize Langer began by accepting the great divi- our world of meaning. Even in perceiving ordi- sion made by positivism between cognitive and nary objects, we are transforming a complex emotive expression, but it was her intention to manifold of sensation into a “virtual world” of rescue the emotive from being dismissed as general symbols (1957a: 144). Beginning meaningless by describing how it exhibits an with dreams, our awareness of meaning grows alternative form of meaning best illustrated through the use of metaphoric thinking. In by art. Human beings are essentially symbolic tribal culture, the awareness of presentational animals; this capacity cannot be regarded as a meaning lies at the root of totemism. Myth mere extension of animal psychology. Her last constitutes a further development toward a work undertook to describe the “great shift” symbolic understanding of the great forces from the rhythmic patterns of organisms, to governing human existence. But here, with symbolic meaning, to mind. By then, in her Cassirer, Langer believes that a fork in the road view, feeling mediated between the biological is taken: discursive understanding must drop the and the symbolic, lying as it does at the very basis metaphoric for the literal mode, aiming at of rationality (1967: 23). metaphysical rigor and scientific description; Symbolism is the capacity to think about the myth, further developed, becomes the something without implying that object’s exis- epic – that is, art. Science and art are the two tence, differing in this way from the denotative ultimate refinements of meaning, the one con- function of a sign (or “signal”). Experience suming our practical concern with nature, the exhibits certain forms that provide the basis other our power of “envisagement.”

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In Philosophy in a New Key, Langer discusses contain feelings, but do not feel them” (1953: 22). music as the paradigm instance of presenta- Since “significant form” is the essence of art, art tional meaning because it best exhibits the dis- is defined as “the creation of forms symbolic of tinctive concern with “pure form” (1957a: 208). human feeling” (1953: 40). “Creation” must All works of art aspire toward “significant form,” refer, then, to the creation of such symbols, not she claims, adopting Clive Bell’s term while to the ordinary production of artifacts. One can rejecting his psychologistic view that it ex- produce painted canvases, but one may or may presses a distinct “aesthetic” emotion. Music is not create significant forms in the process. not a psychological expression of emotions, Langer’s discussion of “semblance” contains but a logical, symbolic expression about feel- the cardinal points of her theory. Artworks are ings. Thus it reflects the composer’s knowledge distinguished from ordinary objects above all of human feeling, not his emotional constitu- by their sheer “otherness,” their “unreality,” giv- tion at the time. Music seems to resemble lan- ing a sense of illusion. The art image is not guage; we speak of its syntax and vocabulary. copied, but created, making a “virtual object.” But it has no literal meaning: it is an “uncon- Unlike ordinary objects, the virtual object does summated symbol” expressing “vital import.” It not exist for all the senses, but focuses instead cannot achieve the denotational conditions on one or two. Adopting Jung’s term, Langer of conventional linguistic reference. Music calls this character “semblance,” though it expresses the “forms of human feeling” and is also has strong affinities to what Schiller called “our myth of the inner life” (1957a: 235, 245; Schein. The semblance or Schein of a work see also 1953: 27). disengages us entirely from the practical While the plastic arts, like painting, easily demands of belief, making it a “strange guest” become “model-bound” and so become con- among “the highly substantial realities of the fused with the goal of literal representation, natural world.” Like discursive meaning, the pre- music demonstrates that art is truly about sentational symbol reveals “a new dimension significant form. The plastic arts can express apart from the familiar world,” the dimension significant form through depicting objects; of articulate but nondiscursive feeling (1953: music does not. It is the work as a whole 50). Works of art are not representations of which bears artistic or “vital import,” convey- objects in the natural world so much as explo- ing “knowledge by acquaintance” rather than rations in this dimension of meaning. And indirect “knowledge about.” The arts in the yet Langer insists that what art expresses are past have drawn on myth and religion, but no the forms of life, of vital feeling, “forms of longer need to do so. Art, thus liberated, can growth and of attenuation, flowing and stow- freely serve human expressivity. ing, conflict and resolution,” and so on – “the Feeling and Form continues these general elusive yet familiar patterns of sentience,” as themes, applying them to the entire range of the she calls it elsewhere (1953: 27, 52). Art is arts. One of the strengths of this work lies in “essentially organic,” creating the appearance Langer’s concrete applications. Her grander of life (1953: 373). Her Essay itself addresses claim is to organize the whole of aesthetics by the question, “Why must artistic form, to be focusing on the question of creation. “Once expressive of feeling, always be so-called ‘living you answer the question ‘What does art create?’, form’?” (1967: xv). all the further questions of why and how, of per- The artist abstracts the significant form from sonality, of talent and genius, etc., seem to experience and uses it to create an object that emerge in a new light from this central thesis” directly expresses it. Thus there can be no real (1953: 10). The perennial paradoxes that distinction between the form and its “content.” have stymied aesthetics, most notably that The “content” of a work is its import, and this between “feeling and form” (feeling leading to accounts for its “transparency,” its alien pres- subjectivist theories, form to objectivist ones), will ence that reveals immediately a dimension of disappear. Feeling and form are not opposed. meaning, the idea of feeling. Insofar as a work Feelings may be objectively symbolized in cer- of art confuses this significant form with other tain forms, which then are capable of being aims, such as utilitarian or representational abstracted in experience. Hence “art works ones, or simply fails to create a truly expressive

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lessing, gotthold ephraim form, it ceases to be art. There are no high or Danto, Arthur C. 1984. “Mind as Feeling; Form as low arts, simply good and bad artworks. A Presence,” Journal of Philosophy, 81, 641–6. great work, presumably, is one that powerfully Davies, Stephen. 1994. Musical Meaning and Expres- expresses a highly significant feeling. This sion. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, ch. 3. symbol of feeling is intuitively grasped. Even Hagberg, Garry. 1984. “Art and the Unsayable: though a work may take time to unfold, from Langer’s Tractarian Aesthetics,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 24, 325–40. the beginning there is an “intuition of the Laird, Addis. 1999. Of Mind and Music. Ithaca: whole presented feeling” (1953: 379). Cornell University Press. All of these themes are developed in her last Welsh, Paul. 1955. “Discursive and Presentational work, a work at once in the tradition of a phi- Symbols,” Mind, 64, 181–99. losophy of symbolic form, like Cassirer’s, and a thomas m. alexander process metaphysics which, like that of her “great mentor” Whitehead, makes feeling and creativity the basis of nature. It would be easy to question some of the sharp distinctions Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1729–1781) she sets forth (especially the fundamental one German dramatist and literary critic, and emi- of presentational versus discursive meaning); nent figure in the German Enlightenment. her eclecticism; the repetition of such central Lessing’s contribution to philosophical aes- terms as “significant form” which remain thetics is both prescriptive and systematic. nonetheless vague; the fact that, for all her In Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and stress on the “logical” nature of presentational Poetry (1766) and the Hamburg Dramaturgy symbols, they are objects of intuition pure and (1767–9) he reflects normatively on the con- simple; and her claim that language has an straints that guide artists working within origin in an expressive rather than a commun- different forms of art, constraints which he icative need. But this would be to miss the presents as systematically derivable from the fact that, in a century dominated by factual nature of their chosen media and genres. description and logical justification, Langer What these constraints are and why they arise saw the problem of mind also in terms of sym- are the central topics of these two works. The bol, ritual, myth, expression, and feeling. She former structures discussion around the prove- argued for a view of nature in which form nance and aesthetic character of the famous and creativity are at work in the very heart statue in the Vatican Museum that depicts of things. the death of the Trojan priest Laocoön; the lat- ter discloses aesthetic principles that guided See also twentieth-century anglo-american two years of theater reviewing in Hamburg. aesthetics; aesthetic education; bell; emotion; The arts discussed are painting, sculpture, expression; illusion; ineffability; symbol. poetry, and drama. All are mimetic in their content, and what they all represent are bodies bibliography in space or events in time. In either case they present those things to the senses; to the eye, Primary sources as in painting and sculpture and drama, or to [1942] 1957a. Philosophy in a New Key. 3rd edn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. the ear, which takes in the recital of poetry 1953. Feeling and Form. New York: Scribner. as a prelude to the formation of vivid images in 1957b. Problems of Art. New York: Scribner. the mind’s eye. 1967, 1972, 1982. Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling. Normatively, medium determines content in 3 vols. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. these arts, Lessing holds, because the prime measure of artistic success lies in the power Secondary sources a work has to affect its beholder or audience. Bertocci, Peter. 1970. “Susanne K. Langer’s Theory of Feeling and Mind,” Review of Metaphysics, 23, Within any particular art, that power will be 527–51. greater as the artist exploits to the limit the Budd, Malcolm. 1985. Music and the Emotions: The potentialities that are offered by the medium that Philosophical Theories. London: Routledge & Kegan bounds it. Reflection on fundamental differ- Paul, ch. 6. ences between the various mimesis-permitting

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lessing, gotthold ephraim media shows how wrong it must be to think in draw on something other than what is most the traditional way of painting as a sort of immediately present as we read. visual poetry or of poetry as a kind of painting By way of contrast, we must presume that any for the ear. Horace’s dictum Ut pictura poesis sequence of actions presented in the theater or could not be farther from the truth. in an epic may be made increasingly vivid to our The medium of statuary and painting is a two- imagination as the elements presented at any or three-dimensional material object, a canvas given moment of apprehension are understood or a block of stone; in poetry and drama it is the in terms of the remembered past that leads up temporally extended reading of a text or the per- to them. That is, the represented action has its formance of a play. These truths will encourage own vivacity of the moment as we are taken successful practitioners of the figurative arts through it scene by scene, which vivacity is to concern themselves with the representation itself amplified in consciousness as our memory of bodies, and those of the narrative ones with of the previously presented elements fills out representation of actions, bodies being things what we encounter at this or that moment of that, like the canvas or the block of stone that the poem’s or the play’s development. In terms depict them, exist all at once, while drama and of the effects they produce, figurative and nar- poetry best represent what takes place over rative arts are systematically quite different time, like the reading of the poem or the per- here. The artist ignores this difference at his peril. formance of the play (1984: ch. 16). Of course, the nature of the medium does The large normative claim here is reached in not set the limits of poetry and art utterly two steps. Step one: medium bears on content inflexibly. A painting or a statue can indeed because what carries the representation, the present an action in progress or a moment of canvas or stone in the one case, the perfor- an action, as does the Laocoön group itself; mance or the reading in the other, either equally, a poem can well enough represent a exists entirely at any one moment or else only body, as does Homer in his depiction of comes to be complete as it is produced through Achilles’ shield. However, for Lessing these time from beginning to end. So the beholder divergences from the norm are achieved indi- takes in all the represented content in the for- rectly, so that in the former case we see a body mer cases more or less at once as he contem- as it is at the “pregnant moment” of the action plates the canvas or moves around the statue, (1984: ch. 19), allowing us to envisage in whereas audiences only take in a play or a imagination the stages that led up to that poem bit by bit in the temporally extended moment and the effects to which it gave rise. process of viewing the performance or reading Analogously, in the case of Achilles’ shield, the the work. poet can describe it piece by piece, but hardly Step two: in the figurative arts, the content in a way that allows the hearer to build up a best fitted to evoke powerful affect is the picture of the shield that is almost as vivid as human body in space; in the narrative arts, it that which the artist can present to the eye. is action that takes place over time. In either case What the poet does to avoid the flatness that what effect can be achieved depends on the must threaten is to describe the object in terms way the spectator or hearer apprehends the of either its effect on others (1984: ch. 18), or content that the works represent. Perception else, as in the case of Achilles’ shield, the pro- of a statue or a picture of beautiful Helen, say, cess of making its various panels. taken in at one go may make an indelibly vivid The way in which medium constrains con- impression on us that no poetic description of tent is thus highly normative. The poem is her could match. Compare that with the image most successful as it takes us through action a poem conjures up by means of its temporally in time; the painted or sculpted work of art so extended presentation of the whole. That will as it presents a human body to view, and any inevitably suffer from our reliance on memory artist striving for greatness and renown needs of parts that are no longer present by the time to be guided by the differential potentialities of the whole is complete. The vivacity of what his medium. “What each genre does best, and is then summoned up to the mind’s eye is com- what no other genre can do as well determines promised just because in constructing it we its own essential province” (1962: §77). To

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lessing, gotthold ephraim convince ourselves of this Lessing holds we concerned with the purification (Reinigung) or need only consider the paradigms of art, the clarification of the spectator’s feelings through finest works inherited from classical antiquity. the arousal of fear and pity. To achieve that at The normative character of the story pre- all effectively our imaginative engagement sumes it settled what the fundamental goal of needs to be with the suffering of people not too the various mimetic arts should be, and while dissimilar from ourselves. There our emotions Lessing never discusses that issue at length, are agreeably “purified” by being directed at remarks he makes en passant and his own dra- their truly appropriate and proper objects. And mas reveal the leading assumptions that guide because tragic theater provides its greatest him. The most important thing he says comes satisfactions through such effects, it is liable in the course of a seemingly banal reflection to provide a schooling of the emotions and an about painting. This is that while the painter outlook on the world that Lessing holds to be can represent just about anything, if his work firmly tied to the formation of dispositions is truly to belong to fine art, it must aim at the to properly virtuous action in our wider lives production of “agreeable feelings” (angenehme (1962: §§75–6). Empfindungen) (1984: ch. 24). Such feelings The fear that is so central to tragedy is the fear are the natural and proper response to beauty. that the sort of stress that the dramas’ central If this is the model the figurative artist follows, figures undergo could well befall ourselves, success will be achieved by those beautiful rep- and it is that thought that remains alive when resentations of objects that are apt forcefully to the final curtain comes down in the form of the produce that response in the beholder’s mind. pity that we carry away with us even as the fear The questions that then open up are just the performance has induced fades. Further- what forms are beautiful ones, and how they are more, being sympathetic to Aristotle’s doctrine related to the spectator’s all-important agreeable of the mean, Lessing likes to think that the response. Once more Lessing is not very forth- agreeable feelings schooled in the theater are coming. In chapter 20 of Laocoön he speaks of liable to be engendered in any spectator who is beauty as the harmonious balance of the man- initially devoid of feeling, as well as tempered in ifold parts of an object that can be taken in by one whose reactions are initially unruly and the eye all at once, but that familiar trope is unin- excessive. formative about the beautiful object itself, and The systematic nature of Lessing’s thought is in its allusion to harmony inevitably throws at its sharpest in the way in which he holds the the weight of the idea onto the nature of the norms that apply to one form of art to be con- response, onto those “agreeable feelings.” stant across the others, differing only insofar as Yet, any hasty accusation of banality would is demanded by the specific genre and medium be misplaced. To arrive at Lessing’s consid- in which it represents its objects. Speaking of ered view, we must first set aside the too easy tragedy, he says: “A tragedy is a poem which assumption that the agreeable feelings on arouses pity. By genus, it is the representation which everything turns are just sentiments or of an action; according to its species, one sensations that it is agreeable or pleasant for the that represents an action worthy of pity. From subject to entertain. Rather, the requisite feel- these two notions all its rules may be com- ings or responses are agreeable at large, and pletely deduced: they even fix its dramatic agreeable just through being fully suited to form” (1962: §77). In critical mood, one might their objects, to the mimetic content that the suspect that there is little here that carries over artist offers. The agreeableness in question is systematically to figurative art or poetry. thus more answerable to the rightness of the However, Lessing is not talking here about induced emotion in its place than to the way the drama in general, but about just one of its subject feels himself affected by the represented specific genres. Taking a step back, we have a content. higher generic classification of dramas as rep- That this is a thought Lessing would acknowl- resentations of action through acted perform- edge and endorse is clear from the Dramaturgy’s ance. It takes the species, namely tragedy, to discussion of tragedy (see §§75–7), which, introduce the particular responses of pity, which following Aristotle, Lessing holds to be essentially Lessing insists extends “to all philanthropic

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lewis, c(larence) i(rving) feeling,” and fear, which covers not just distress beauty’s crucially defining feature will be com- before imminent misfortune, but also distress- mon to the arts that possess it, namely their ing attitudes to present or past ill, affliction, liability to arouse agreeable, properly clarified, and grief. Other passions can be refined and feeling in their respective audiences. Interest- clarified elsewhere, since “not all genres can ingly, Lessing even allows that in poetry ugli- improve everything, at least not as completely ness can agreeably refine our sense of the risible as any other.” and ludicrous (as does Homer’s Thersites) or, This suggests that we should expect “agree- when it is combined with evil, horror, as does able feelings” to be generated not just by other Shakespeare’s Richard III. Both sorts of case species of drama than tragedy, such as comedy, involve attitudinal reactions that the narrative but also by other sorts of art as well. In respect arts are adapted to “purify,” clarify, and refine. of sculpture this is just what we do find Lessing Beauty then has extensive place at the core of saying about the Laocoön group. For the preg- fine narrative as well as fine figurative art. nant moment of that episode is represented Lessing’s claim to be a systematic thinker stands. by the priest fighting off the snakes constricting him and his sons, not shrieking out in agony, See also eighteenth-century aesthetics; drama; but wearing an expression which mingles poetry; sculpture; aristotle; beauty; cathar- pain and beauty. That, says Lessing (1984: sis; depiction; genre; tragedy. ch. 6), gives rise to the idea of manly dignity and courageous endurance, clearly attitudes bibliography which are based in feeling and which he thinks Primary sources it proper for us to adopt in the face of extreme [1766] 1984. Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits adversity. On that score those attitudes will of Poetry and Painting. E. McCormick (trans.). count as relevantly “agreeable,” making the Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. group beautiful in its way and an outstanding [1767–9] 1962. Hamburg Dramaturgy. H. Zimmern artistic success. (trans.). New York: Dover When Lessing hazards his definition of Secondary sources beauty as pertaining to something that can be Allison, H. E. 1966. Lessing and the Enlightenment. Ann surveyed all at once, he says that that is the Arbor: University of Michigan Press. proper business of painting, so that “it and it Lamport, F. J. 1981. Lessing and the Drama. Oxford: alone can represent bodily beauty” (1984: ch. Clarendon. 20). Understandably enough, that has inclined Savile, Anthony. 1987. Aesthetic Reconstructions: critics to suppose that since Lessing thinks of The Seminal Writings of Lessing, Kant and Schiller. beauty as what gives rise to mere pleasing sen- Oxford: Blackwell. timent, there is little system in his thought and Fischer, Barbara & Fox, Thomas C. (eds.). 2005. also that he must hold the artist in far lower A Companion to the Works of Gotthold Ephraim esteem than the poet or dramatist. Yet once Lessing. Rochester: Camden House. we understand the “agreeableness of feeling” anthony savile more generously, the apparent trivialization and denigration of the figurative arts that depends on such a narrow conception of beauty Lewis, C(larence) I(rving) (1883–1964) dissolves. Nor does the criticism revive in the face Although this distinguished Harvard professor of Lessing saying that the depiction of bodily is primarily known for his groundbreaking beauty belongs to painting alone and lies with- work in modal logic, his rarely cited contribu- out the poet’s range, since we must not over- tions to aesthetics include an account of aesthetic look the fact that he simply gives a different name experience as well as an early articulation of a to the poet’s “transitory beauty,” one to which contextualist position in the ontology of artis- “we wish to return time and again,” to wit, tic and aesthetic objects. Lewis’s discussion of “charm” (Reiz) (1984: ch. 21). So beauty does these topics occupies two chapters of his 1946 have its place in poetry as well as in painting; treatise, An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. it is just not the bodily beauty peculiar to To understand Lewis’s views in aesthetics, the painter that we find there. That being so, one must first grasp some of his positions in

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lewis, c(larence) i(rving) the theory of value. Lewis followed W. D. Ross as a capacity to give rise to a certain type of expe- (1930: 130) in espousing an axiological rience when contemplated in the right circum- “experientialism”: were there no sentience or stances and by the right kind of contemplators. subjective experience in the universe, value Lewis comments that “to say that a value is would not exist. Experiences can be instru- inherent in an object, is not necessarily to mentally useful in promoting other ends, but locate this value in the physical properties of it” every experience has some positive or negative (1946: 477). intrinsic valence: there is no “zero” to be plot- Lewis’s remarks on the ontology of the ted on a linear dimension of value (1946: aesthetic object (which he labeled “aesthetic 402). This valence or “felt quality” of experience essences”) are consonant with this more gen- is not a matter of a second-order belief to the eral point about value. He examines the idea effect that a given stretch of experience has a that all objects of aesthetic experience are particular sort of intrinsic merit or demerit; either physical individuals, abstract entities, or instead it is a “mode of presentation.” “Value– an “ideal” intended by some artist. Deeming disvalue is that mode or aspect of the given or these options unsatisfactory, he asserts that the contemplated to which desire and aversion although aesthetic experience often involves are addressed; and it is that by apprehension of contemplation of particular artistic artifacts or which the inclination to action is normally natural objects or scenes, the aesthetic object is elicited” (1946: 403). Lewis is careful not to never only the physical object. Nor can it be a equate this claim about the positive or negative purely abstract type and still be the object of immediate valence of all experience with any a genuinely aesthetic experience. Instead, the form of reductive hedonism, according to aesthetic object “is to be located in an associ- which pleasure and pain are the only bases of ated context of the physically presented thing” noninstrumental value. An experience can be (1946: 475). distressing, challenging, or tense, yet nonethe- Lewis traces a spectrum, at one end of which less carry an overall positive valence, and not he locates those cases, such as poetry, where “the only in terms of perceived longer-term payoffs. aesthetic essence” is presented by a physical An experience’s immediate, positive valence entity (the spoken or written string of words) yet can, for example, derive from “the sense of is clearly not reducible to that particular item integrity in firmly fronting ‘the unpleasant’ because its appreciation requires attention to as well as ‘pleasure’ ” (1946: 405). When an the context associated with the physical entity experience carries a strong, positive intrinsic that presents the poem – part of that context valence, the experience is valued for its own sake being the linguistic and other conventions that and the person would not rationally choose to govern both the creation and interpretation of forego it, other things being equal. the work of art. Whatever the subject must Lewis uses the term “inherent value” to refer bring to the presentation in order to under- to an object’s capacity to give rise to immedi- stand the poem correctly belongs to the poem, ately valenced experiences. The term “inherent” and anyone who fails to take this “associated may have led some philosophers to believe that context” into account fails to apprehend the Lewis blurred two different axiological distinc- object’s actual aesthetic character. At the other tions, namely, the distinction between instru- end of Lewis’s spectrum are natural objects mental and final value, on the one hand, and the aesthetic appreciation of which is more a the distinction between a value based entirely matter of the contemplation of the object’s on some item’s intrinsic or inherent properties, purely physical properties, and less a matter of and a value that emerges or supervenes on a their contextualization by the observer. Yet broader, relational basis. For Lewis, to say that Lewis asserts that “there is no physical object something has inherent value is to say that it the esthetic evaluation of which is altogether is prone, when contemplated under the right cir- independent of its relations to some context,” cumstances, to give rise to experiences that are if only because the qualitative essence which positively or negatively valenced in a primarily is incorporated in the object is “theoretically (but not exclusively) noninstrumental way. repeatable in some other physical object” (1946: The inherent value is “in” the object, but only 477). Lewis considers that the theoretical

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lewis, c(larence) i(rving) possibility of indistinguishable objects cannot be which are in turn connected to beliefs about the squared with the idea that the object of aesthetic final ends to be served by various actions. He value could be a particular physical object. The does, however, require that the intrinsic value object is instead a physical thing that serves to be “predominant” in relation to instrumental present the aesthetic essence, as contextual- assessments. He also requires that the positive ized in a manner which is neither arbitrary nor valence must be possessed to a “high degree”: subjective. there are no negative, or even mildly positive, Lewis suggests that as a result of the intrin- aesthetic experiences. sic valence of experience there is a broad sense Another condition involves the necessity of in which all experiences or “direct apprehen- what Lewis somewhat misleadingly labels “the sions” are aesthetic. Yet he goes on to delineate esthetic attitude.” Lewis does not mean by this a more limited concept of aesthetic experience that the subject must voluntarily adopt a special corresponding to the appreciation of art, nature, attitude or stance, and he explicitly criticizes the and aspects of everyday life. He prefaces his thought that “deliberateness of attention” is attempt to elucidate this narrower concept of characteristic of “the more truly esthetic atti- aesthetic experience with some reflections tude” (1946: 384). What Lewis does require is concerning the status and purpose of such an that the subject be absorbed in the content of elucidation. He begins by underscoring his the experience. The subject must be attentive recognition of the multifarious nature of usage to the object and must not be distracted from of “aesthetic” and related terms. The task of its contemplation by thoughts about what it the elucidation cannot plausibly be described can later be used for (1946: 456). Lewis does as that of providing a philosophically precise not expand on what he means by “contempla- identification of “the” concept of aesthetic tion,” but it may be surmised that in using the experience that lies latent in current usage. As word to evoke a fully attentive and active con- several different coherent elucidations are pos- dition, he drew upon the one source he explicitly sible, the key question is what grounds could cites in his two chapters on aesthetics, namely, motivate the selection of any one of them. D. W. Prall’s Aesthetic Analysis of 1936. Lewis was enough of a student of John Dewey Lewis goes on to sketch additional con- to believe that classifications and reasoning straints on the kinds of contemplative, posi- are motivated by practical interests as well as tively valenced experience that should bear the purely epistemic grounds. In the case of “the aes- name “aesthetic” given his reconstruction of thetic,” Lewis adverts to the idea that univer- the concept. More specifically, Lewis believes sal or near-universal human interests are the that any possessive or contemplative attitudes final court of appeal. His point is that all people vitiate the experience and prevent it from tend to have an interest in knowing what being aesthetic. The consumer who relishes kinds of experiences are and are not intrinsically acquisition or ownership may be contemplating worth having, and the concept of aesthetic the acquired object and thereby having a posi- experience that he seeks to identify responds to tively valenced experience, but this is not, and serves that interest. according to Lewis, an aesthetic experience Lewis’s distinction between aesthetic experi- (in his narrow sense). Lewis does not give ence in the broad and narrow senses is based much of a justification for this claim, and one on several logically distinct conditions. He may be led to wonder whether it does not lead states that in the narrow sense, aesthetic expe- him in the direction of a content-based con- rience must carry an intrinsic, positive valence. ception, the thought being that the reason Lewis does not require that to be aesthetic, an why possessive attitudes are inappropriate is experience must involve only this kind of posi- that they lead the contemplator’s attention tive valuation, as in the angelic idea that the away from those properties of the object that aesthetic attitude requires the adoption of a deserve to be identified as its specifically aesthetic “purely disinterested” relation to some object. qualities. Yet Lewis does not develop an inde- For Lewis, an experience’s intrinsic quality is also pendent, nonaxiological account of the dis- commonly accompanied by various instru- tinction between aesthetic and nonaesthetic mental valuations and means–end calculations, qualities. A possible justification for what

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Lewis calls the “moralistic” conditions on aes- Secondary sources thetic experience might be found in his emphasis Garvin, Lucius. 1949. “Relativism in Professor on the universality of the interests to be served Lewis’s Theory of Esthetic Value,” Journal of by the concept, the thought being that the Philosophy, 46, 169–76. contemplation of possessive or competitive re- Livingston, Paisley. 2004. “C. I. Lewis and the lations does not correspond to such an interest. Outlines of Aesthetic Experience,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 44, 378–92. Gathering these points, we can say that for Livingston, Paisley. 2006. “Utile et dulce: A Lewis, an experience is aesthetic just in case it Response to Noël Carroll,” British Journal of has a strongly positive intrinsic value that is pre- Aesthetics, 46, 274–81. ponderant in relation to whatever instrumen- Prall, D. W. 1936. Aesthetic Analysis. New York: tal value the experience may also have; the Thomas Y. Cromwell. experience must correspond to the distinctive Ross, W. D. 1930. The Right and the Good. Oxford: character of some external object and be Clarendon. indicative of that object’s reliable and distinctive Schilpp, Paul Arthur. (ed.). 1968. The Philosophy of power to occasion strong, positive intrinsic C. I. Lewis. La Salle: Open Court. valuation; furthermore, it must involve an Stolnitz, Jerome. 1960. “On Objective Relativism in Aesthetics,” Journal of Philosophy, 57, 261–76. absorbed and active contemplation of the object and cannot be a matter of a competitive paisley livingston or possessive attitude. Critical discussion of Lewis’s work on aes- thetics has largely focused on the problem of jus- Lukács, Georg [György Szegedy von Lukács] tifying aesthetic judgments (e.g., Garvin 1949; (1885–1971) Hungarian Marxist philosopher Stolnitz 1960), a principal worry being that and literary critic; a member of Nagy’s shortlived Lewis does not tell us under what conditions government in 1956. His work on aesthetics valenced experiences of an object are or are includes theory and its application in a wide not indicative of its inherent value. It is far range of literary studies. His career and his study from obvious, however, that this epistemologi- of aesthetics falls into two main parts: his pre- cal problem has disastrous implications for all Marxist period extending until the end of World of Lewis’s arguments, or for a neo-Lewisian War I, and that following his conversion to account of aesthetic experience (Livingston Marxism. His interest in aesthetics is a main fac- 2004, 2006). Although Lewis’s discussions of tor connecting his pre-Marxist and his Marxist aesthetic experience and the ontology of art writings. When he converted to Marxism, he had have been mentioned briefly in passing by already written two books on aesthetics. Marx such figures as Monroe C. Beardsley, Richard and Engels provided hints, but did not develop Wollheim, and Francis Sparshott, his contribu- a systematic theory of the subject. Lukács’s tions to the field, and in particular his precocious claim that his own contribution is the first contextualism, merit broader recognition and attempt to work out a Marxist aesthetic theory renewed consideration. in systematic form has gained acceptance. His brilliant early Marxist work, History and See also aesthetic attitude; aesthetic plea- Class Consciousness (1923), has profoundly influ- sure; aesthetic properties; ontological con- enced the Marxist discussion but has had little textualism. impact on non-Marxist philosophy. His contri- bution to aesthetic theory may ultimately turn bibliography out to be his most important contribution to phi- losophy in general. Although his views on aes- Primary sources thetics have attracted more attention than other 1946. An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. La aspects of his position, they have not been dis- Salle: Open Court. 1969. Values and Imperatives: Studies in Ethics. J. cussed as often as their intrinsic importance Lange (ed.). Stanford: Stanford University Press. seems to merit. With some exceptions, studies 1970. Collected Papers of Clarence Irving Lewis. of his aesthetic ideas seem mainly to be con- J. Goheen & J. Mothershead Jr. (eds.). Stanford: fined to his later Marxist position, with little Stanford University Press. attention to his pre-Marxist writings.

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His views on aesthetics cannot be under- somewhat different perspective, completed the stood without reference to his cultural back- realization of his youthful dream. ground. Lukács, who spoke German at home – The manuscripts of Lukács’s pre-Marxist his mother was Austrian – grew up bilingual. writings on aesthetics were lost for more than Although widely read, with the exception of 50 years. They started to reemerge in the the Marxist classics he rarely refers to writers 1960s, and have been published as two separ- outside the German cultural sphere, and then ate works, representing successive versions of usually in a disparaging manner. Before he his pre-Marxist aesthetic theory: The Heidelberg began to work out his theory of aesthetics, Philosophy of Art and The Heidelberg Aesthetics. he had already acquired extensive experience Both texts are strongly Kantian in flavor, and in literary criticism and a solid literary back- both begin with the Kantian question: “Works ground. Lukács regarded his work in aesthet- of art exist – how are they possible?” ics as his main theme. But it is clear that his early Although in some ways similar, these two aes- views on the subject underwent a transforma- thetics are also very different. One observer tion in the course of his long career. During his has described the difference as that between a period in Heidelberg before World War I, he was synthesis of life philosophy (Lebensphilosophie) already interested in Hegel’s position. This and Kantianism on the one hand, and an interest only deepened in later years. But his extremely dualistic form of Kantianism on the early work on aesthetics was strongly Kantian other. The former work seems almost unre- and Neo-Kantian, with particular attention to lated to Hegelian influence, and Hegel is never the views of Emil Lask. In his later, Marxist, writ- named in it. In the latter, Hegel is an import- ing, Lukács was reacting, as he was aware, ant presence, although the influence of the against his own earlier views. His later under- Heidelberg Neo-Kantian Emil Lask, whom standing of aesthetics, like his Marxist position Lukács knew and thought well of, is even more in general, is marked by flashes of insight, but significant. Yet there is a Hegelian aspect even also by great intellectual rigidity. Lukács is in the first text, since he states here the import- never an indifferent writer, even in his most dog- ance of the conception of the aesthetic object matic moments. Yet it is often the case that his as a concrete totality (alluding to the central insights need to be sought out and separated Hegelian category), and in the second text he from the rigid Marxist framework in which insists on the Hegelian view of spirit as a con- they are housed. cretely developing totality. It would be a mistake to see Lukács’s profes- The first book is based on an insight of sion of Marxist faith as marking a radical break Lukács’s friend Leo Popper concerning the in his thought, for it exhibits rather greater transcendent character of the work of art that continuity than is often realized. He stresses cannot be reduced to any experience of it, and that in his initial work as a literary critic and the spectator’s or receiver’s view of it. The essay writer he sought to base himself on Kant’s work of art is, then, located in a sphere beyond and then later on Hegel’s aesthetics. The failure the world of everyday experience within which of his early work in aesthetics, begun in the win- it is manifested. In this study Lukács develops ter of 1911–12, was followed by his book, The the twofold relation between the creator and the Theory of the Novel, which already showed a turn- receiver to the work of art. In his phenomenolog- ing toward problems of the nature and inter- ical sketch of the creative and receptive aspects, pretation of history, with respect to which the he draws a quasi-Kantian distinction between specifically aesthetic questions are merely phenomenological experience and imaginative symptomatic. Further attention to ethics, history, reconstruction. In his analysis of the historicity and economics was followed by his conversion and timelessness of the work of art, he follows to Marxism and a period of political activity. Lask’s view of the timeless validity (Geltung) of His renewed attention to aesthetic questions value, which he here applies to the problem of around 1930, after he withdrew from overt aesthetics. Aesthetic perception, according to political activity, led to the systematic aes- Lukács, is the timeless relation to value. thetics that arose as the natural consequence The second study is a wholly new attempt of a lengthy concern and, in this way, from a to work out his own theory. It begins with

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lukács, georg the injunction to analyze the transcendental Lukács departs from Hegel in his adoption of philosophical significance, objective structure, a version of the reflection theory of knowledge and value of the sensory form of the aesthetic (Widerspiegelungstheorie) developed by Engels object – what Last describes as the logically and Lenin. It is fair to regard his Marxist aes- naked givenness of its aesthetic character. The thetics as a persistent effort to apply the official art object is here understood as a complex form Marxist materialist theory of reflection to aes- whose autonomous value requires elucidation. thetic objects. His aesthetic theory is realistic, In the discussion of the subject–object relation since the problem is less that of beauty than of in aesthetics, Lukács considers the irreducible objective knowledge. He regards mimesis, or distance between subject and object, whose imitation, as a mere species of reflection. The absolute value is essentially grasped as a tran- work of art forms a structured unity spanning scendental ought and endless task for the sub- concrete contradictions. The greater its span, the ject. Turning finally to the idea of beauty, he better the work. A successful work of art is said provides an ideal-typical analysis of beauty to be a microcosm that reflects or evokes the posited as absolute. Then follows a discussion social context out of which it arises, including of the speculative conception of the development intentions, ethical life, good and evil. Art has a of the idea of beauty, with special attention to specifically human meaning, since it functions Hegel, as well as to Kant and to Goethe. There as the human memory, so to speak. is no discussion of the so-called substantial- The key category of Lukács’s Marxist aes- ethical idea. thetics, particularity (Besonderheit) (1987: The third, specifically Marxist, aesthetics, ii.180), is borrowed from Goethe and inter- the massive work known as The Specific Nature preted from a Hegelian perspective. Hegel dis- of the Aesthetic, is often regarded as Lukács’s most cusses particularity as the mediating factor nearly finished work – in effect, his master- between universality and individuality, as the piece. Its Marxist perspective differentiates it reality of the individual. For Lukács, drawing on from his pre-Marxist aesthetic writings. Influ- his earlier concern with this category, particu- enced by Neo-Kantianism, life philosophy, larity is best adapted to the essential structure Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and many others of aesthetics. In his view, the world of art is the including Hegel, Lukács became resolutely world of human being, and through particularity Marxist. He made important contributions to one can grasp the objective unity of the sub- Marxist theory and defended the idea of an jective and the objective elements in the artwork. independent Marxist aesthetics, which he began to work out in a systematic form. Yet there See also hegel; kant; marxism and art. is an obvious continuity between his pre- Marxist and Marxist aesthetic positions. In his bibliography earlier writings, Lukács took a determinedly Primary sources dualist line in his emphasis on the independ- [1912–14] 1974. Heidelberger Philosophie der Kunst. ence of form. In his Marxist works, he held that G. Markus & F. Benseler (eds.). Darmstadt: form was determined by content. His Marxist Luchterhand. approach to aesthetics resolves the dualism of [1916–18] 1974. Heidelberger Ästhetik. G. Markus & his Heidelberg period, which had opposed the F. Benseler (eds.). Darmstadt: Luchterhand. work of art as transcendent and artistic experi- [1920] 1971. Theory of the Novel. A. Bostock ence as immanent. (trans.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. In general terms, Lukács’s Marxist aesthetics [1923] 1971. History and Class Consciousness. R. Livingstone (trans.). London: Merlin. is strongly Hegelian. Like Hegel, he is con- 1987. Die Eigenart des Ästhetischen. 2 vols. Berlin: cerned with aesthetics as a form of knowledge, Aufbau. and regards it as concerned with a specific type of activity arising out of ordinary life Secondary sources (Alltagssein). Again following Hegel, he under- Jung, Werner. 1989. Georg Lukács. Stuttgart: Metzler. stands the specifically aesthetic as constituting Királyfalvi, Béla. 1975. The Aesthetics of Gyorgy Lukács. Princeton: Princeton University Press. an ever more concrete objective totality through a process of gradual development. tom rockmore

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Margolis, Joseph (b.1924) American philo- through the work’s situation and role in a sopher who has written extensively on the matrix of cultural practice, in the world of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, human culture and history. This, in turn, leads and philosophy of language, as well as making Margolis back to general ontological concerns significant contributions in aesthetics. His extra- about the metaphysics of culture and history, aesthetics writings are closely integrated with and their relation to the natural world (which his major themes in the philosophy of art, and he treats in his trilogy, The Persistence of help ground them. Though there is hardly an Reality). important topic in aesthetics that Margolis has Recognition of the cultural constitution of not touched on (from the definition of art to art also supports the second dominant theme of the question of metaphor, to the “autographic” Margolis’s aesthetics: relativism. This theme identity of dance, to the nature of pictorial has always been central to his philosophy, representation), and though his thought has even before his theory of culture emergence. continuously evolved not only in terms of par- But it is deeply reinforced by it. For, given the ticular issues but also in terms of general philo- variety and change of cultures – or of change sophical approach (from mainstream analytic historically within a culture – if the work’s philosophy to a new pragmatism which at- meaning is culturally constituted and if the tempts to blend the analytic and post-Hegelian culture allows for various ways of constitut- Continental traditions), his philosophy of art is ing or appropriating artworks – authorially or perhaps best represented by three main themes. nonauthorially directed, Christian, Marxist, The first is works of art as physically em- Freudian, and so on – relativism of some sort bodied and culturally emergent entities. This seems hard to avoid. Margolis (1980) has ontological position aims to find a middle labored to articulate a “robust relativism” that ground between idealist theories of the art- avoids the charges of logical inconsistency work (Crocean, phenomenological, and so on) and “anything goes” subjectivism that are usu- and the opposite extreme of a reductive mater- ally advanced against relativism. Though he ialist nominalism, where artworks are sim- eschews foundationalist ideas of transparency ply identified with the physical objects (the and cognitive privilege, he recognizes that material tokens) through which they are man- our account of an artwork is always some- ifested. Margolis’s position, which is an analogue how constrained by relevant realities, and that of his (Strawsonian) account of persons as irre- some accounts are therefore better, more plau- ducibly complex individuals bearing two differ- sible, and more justifiable than others. For a ent (though structurally related) categories of time he located some of these constraints in a predicates rather than as compound entities of fixed, determinate core of descriptive propert- body and mind, is that artworks are similarly ies of the work on which interpretations and irreducibly complex. They are and must be evaluations had to be based, but during the embodied in the spatiotemporal world in order 1980s he abandoned this idea through incre- for them to serve their aesthetic functions and asing emphasis on the role of interpretation to allow for stable reidentification for art criti- (Margolis 1989b), for the distinction between cism, but their identity or constitutive proper- what is a descriptive fact about an artwork and ties transcend their physical make-up. These an interpretation of it is often itself a matter of properties, largely those of meaning, emerge interpretation.

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Margolis’s third theme of interpretation, follows from the Marxist theory of the relation long central to his aesthetics of relativism, of superstructure and base. In general terms, the latterly has been developed in wider ways basic principle is that art, like all higher activ- which dovetail with his metaphysics of culture ities, belongs to the cultural superstructure (including the ontology of artworks) and and is determined by sociohistorical condi- which reflect his shift away from traditional tions, in particular economic ones. It is argued analytic philosophy and aesthetics. This shift that a connection can always and must be involves “hermeneuticizing” naturalism, recog- traced between a work of art and its socio- nizing that interpretation not only functions historical matrix, since art is in some sense a to explain or elucidate the entities or texts that reflection of social reality. we encounter but that it is already actively Marxist writers on aesthetics, particularly involved in constituting those entities as enti- Georg Lukács, have gone to some lengths to con- ties for interpretation. In other words, the cul- struct a Marxist aesthetics on the basis of hints tural world – that is, not merely the artworld contained in the writings of Marx (1818–83) but the human Lebenswelt – is one whose and Engels (1820–95). The list of Marxist and objects are constructed through interpretative non-Marxist writers influenced by the Marxist efforts, which means through language, and approach to art in general is long and distin- thus its objects are better understood as texts guished, including, apart from Lukács, Edmund rather than as “objects” in the traditional nat- Wilson, Peter Demetz, Theodor Adorno, Frederic uralistic sense. Margolis’s most recent work Jameson, Ernst Bloch, Lucien Goldmann, Hans focuses on the relations between constitutive and Mayer, Bertolt Brecht, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, explanatory interpretation. and Christopher Caudwell. There are a number of different, even incompatible, views of Marxist See also hermeneutics; interpretation; mean- aesthetics, all of which claim to find support in ing constructivism; ontological contextual- the classical Marxist texts, above all in the ism; relativism; text. writings of Marx and Engels. The official Marxist insistence on social real- bibliography ism, prominent in Lukács’s writings, has no clear anticipation in Marx’s position but is Primary sources based squarely on certain indications in the 1965. The Language of Art and Art Criticism. Detroit: later Engels. The positions of Marx and Engels Wayne State University Press. 1978. Persons and Minds. Dordrecht: Reidel. are demonstrably different (although this dif- 1980. Art and Philosophy. Atlantic Highlands: ference is not often observed by commenta- Humanities Press. tors). For political reasons, it was routinely 1983. Culture and Cultural Entities. Dordrecht: Reidel. denied by official Marxism for decades. The 1986, 1987, 1989a. The Persistence of Reality. 3 vols. usual tendency to conflate the views of Marx Oxford: Blackwell. and Engels is present as well in the Marxist 1989b. “Reinterpreting Interpretation,” Journal of approach to art. Although their writings have Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 47, 237–51. been seen as providing the basic principles of a 1995. Interpretation Radical but Not Unruly. Marxist theory of art and aesthetics, the precise Berkeley: University of California Press. relation of the resultant theory to the views of 1999. What, After All, Is a Work of Art? University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. the founders is controversial. Both Marx and Engels had early literary richard shusterman ambitions that largely evaporated when, still young and unknown left-wing radicals, they became acquainted in the early 1840s. Both Marxism and art Marxism has proved very retained a lifelong interest in literature, although fertile in the areas of aesthetic and literary criti- their backgrounds and literary tastes differed cism, though less so in the actual production of widely. In the field of literature as elsewhere, works of art in virtue of certain limitations Engels was largely self-taught. As a young associated with the rigid application of the man, he wrote poetry and literary criticism. He Marxist point of view. The Marxist view of art also translated Thomas Carlyle. Engels’s literary

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marxism and art taste was formed by nineteenth-century He refers to the well-known fact that artistic Romanticism, and included an appreciation of flowering is on occasion unrelated to the nationalist German poetry. general development of society, to its mater- Marx had an excellent education in clas- ial foundation. He maintains that Greek art sical languages in the German high school specifically presupposes Greek mythology. The (Gymnasium), which influenced his later problem, as he remarks, is not that Greek artis- appreciation of art and literature. His literary tic production is bound up with a certain social tastes remained within the framework of stage, but, rather, that Greek art has a univer- eighteenth-century classicism. He shared the sal value unrelated to its material conditions. widespread German intellectual grecophilia, Here, Marx is more faithful to his aesthetic illustrated by Winckelmann, Goethe, and Hegel. judgment than to his theoretical commitment. His favorite authors were Aeschylus, Shake- The result is a clear contradiction between his speare, and Goethe. When he began his uni- artistic sensitivity, honed by his classical edu- versity studies in Bonn, Marx spent most of his cation, and the theory he recommends. His time studying Greek art and mythology as well evident appreciation of the permanent value of as writing poetry. He also attempted a novel Greek art clearly contradicts his effort, in this (uncompleted) and wrote the draft of a tragedy. and other texts, to comprehend all forms of After 1837 he did not return to the study of aes- culture as a function of the underlying eco- thetics, although there is an aesthetic cast to nomic organization of society. some of his writings, and on occasion he con- The difference in literary background and cerned himself with specific aesthetic questions. taste is evident in the different reactions of An important example of the aesthetic bent Marx and Engels to specific literary works, par- to Marx’s thought is his conception of human ticularly the Greek classics. Whereas Marx was being. In the Paris Manuscripts (1844), he deeply interested in the artistic merits of Greek argues that alienation is the result of the literature, Engels more than once treated the institution of private property, characteristic world classics merely as illustrations of basic of capitalism. As a result of the transition to economic principles – for instance, he once communism, in which private property is abol- remarked that Homer’s Iliad represents the ished, Marx foresees the opportunity for what highest point of Greek barbarism. might be called the full development or fulfill- Nonetheless, Marx and Engels share a broad ment of human being. In the third of the perspective. The common element that sub- Paris Manuscripts, full human development is tends their rather different approaches is their described as the full development of the various basic commitment to a contextualist approach senses. It is characterized from a slightly differ- to aesthetics. In aesthetics, contextualism of all ent perspective in The German Ideology (1845–6) kinds differs from isolationism in insisting on – in a famous passage often criticized for its the importance of context to comprehend the romantic idealism – as the real possibility, fol- work of art. Hegel is a contextualist in virtue of lowing on from the abolition of the division of his insistence on the inseparability of the result labor that prevails in capitalism, for each per- from the process leading up to it. Typically, he son to perform a full variety of tasks. The aes- is concerned with art less as a form of beauty thetic view of human being as self-realizing in than as offering a particular access to truth. In its free activity is indebted to Schiller’s idea of Marxism, art is typically held to offer insight into the aesthetic as the basic harmonizing element the nature of the society in which it emerges. of human life. The central shared insight, that takes many The fragmentary nature of Marx’s com- different forms even in the works of Marx and ments on aesthetic themes does not represent Engels, is the approach to art and other forms a mature aesthetic theory. In his writings, the of culture as a function of an underlying eco- most considered passage on aesthetic themes nomic dimension of society. This is the famous occurs in the introduction to the Grundrisse relation of superstructure to base, or the effort (“Rough Draft”) (1857–8). Here he advances the to comprehend all spiritual or mental phenom- idea of the uneven development of material ena – everything that for Hegel would fall production in relation to artistic development. under the heading of spirit (Geist) – as directly

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marxism and art or indirectly a function of material relations. In With respect to the precise understanding of this approach, the meaning of the term “mate- the relation of superstructure and base, the rial” is left undefined. Although Marxism is inconsistency of Marx’s texts no doubt reflects widely identified with historical materialism his inability to resolve the problem in his own and even dialectical materialism, Marx’s own mind. It is notable that in a number of letters position, unlike Marxism, is independent of written after Marx’s death, toward the end of his any particular view of matter. Yet it is clear that own life, Engels took a somewhat softer, inter- Marx and Marxism share the idea that all cul- actionist line. Examples include the letter to tural phenomena can be regarded against the J. Bloch (September 21, 1890) in which Engels background of the form of society in which asserted that “according to the materialist they arise. conception of history the determining element The central view that matter determines in history is ultimately the production and spirit, including art, underlies the specifically reproduction in real life,” as well as the letter Marxist approach to aesthetics. It is possible to to H. Starkenburg (January 25, 1894) in distinguish stages in the development of the which, in a passage that weakens the concept superstructure–base relation. In The German of economic determination beyond all intelli- Ideology, in opposition to the usual view of gibility, Engels writes: “The further the particu- German philosophy, Marx and Engels assert: lar sphere which we are investigating is removed from the economic sphere and approaches The production of ideas, of conceptions, of con- that of pure ideology, the more shall we find sciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material mental it exhibiting accidents in its development, the intercourse of men, the language of real life. more will its curve run in a zig-zag” (Marx & Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of Engels 1942: 475–518). men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their The view of aesthetics, as well as all other cul- material behaviour. The same applies to mental pro- tural phenomena, as deriving from – in effect, duction as expressed in the language of politics, as produced by – the economic structure of laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc. of a society is independent of the realist cast of people. (1970: 47) most Marxist aesthetics. Marx’s position is A different form of this view is provided in the often regarded as realist, but there is absolutely famous preface to A Contribution to the Critique nothing in his writings to indicate a view of of Political Economy (1859). In an influential pas- aesthetic realism. On the other hand, this sage, Marx writes: doctrine finds support in the later Engels, in the period following Marx’s death. In letters In the social production of their life, men enter into to two aspiring novelists, Minna Kautsky and definite relations that are indispensable and inde- Margret Harkness, Engels made clear his rejec- pendent of their will, relations of production tion of so-called tendency literature, which which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total directly espoused the “correct” political mes- of these relations of production constitutes the sage, in favor of a realist approach from which economic structure of society, the real founda- the “correct” perspective could emerge. In his tion, on which rises a legal and political super- objection to Harkness, who regarded her novel structure and to which correspond definite forms as realist, Engels maintained that it was not real- of social consciousness. The mode of production of ist enough. Realism, he argued, requires the material life conditions the social, political and faithful reproduction of detail as well as truth- intellectual life process in general. It is not the ful representation of typical characters under typ- consciousness of men that determines their being, ical circumstances. but, on the contrary, their social being that deter- Several examples will serve to illustrate mines their consciousness. (Tucker 1978: 4) the range of Marxist aesthetic theory. Before Instead of the more indeterminate relation, the Russian Revolution, Plekhanov, Lenin’s Marx here substitutes a causal determinism of teacher, attacked doctrines of art for art’s sake the form of society on the cultural phenomena, and the separation of the artist, in either the- including aesthetic phenomena, that occur ory or practice, from society in Art and Social within it. Life (1912). After the revolution, there was a

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mass art debate between Marxists and formalists. Trotsky Lukács, Georg. 1964. Studies in European Realism. argued in Literature and Revolution (1924) that E. Bone (trans.). New York: Grosset & Dunlap. art has its own peculiar laws and cannot Marcuse, Herbert. 1978. The Aesthetic Dimension: be reduced to economic motifs. In line with Towards a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics. Boston: his doctrine of “partyness” (partiinost), Lenin Beacon. maintained that the writer should put art at the Marx, Karl. 1973 [1857–8]. Grundrisse. M. Nicolaus (trans.). Harmondsworth: Penguin. service of the party. At the First All-Union Marx, Karl & Engels, Friedrich. 1942. Selected Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934, the party Correspondence. D. Torr (trans.). New York: established control over the topic in adopting International Publishers. the view expressed by Engels in his letter to Marx, Karl & Engels, Friedrich. 1970 [1845–6]. Margret Harkness. According to this view, in The German Ideology, pt. 1. C. J. Arthur (ed.). New order to forward the revolutionary develop- York: International Publishers. ments himself, the artist is to reveal the Tucker, R. C. (ed.). 1978. The Marx–Engels Reader. New moving social forces and portray his or her York: Norton. characters as expressions of these forces. tom rockmore In the twentieth century, Marxist aesthetics has developed in a series of different directions. One theme is the contemporary viability of the mass art is art that is mass produced, typically concept of realism that led to an important by an automated technology, for mass con- debate between Lukács, who represents the sumption. The category of mass art includes classical nineteenth-century literary perspective, motion pictures, television, radio dramas, and Brecht, who argues that this perspective photography, music (recorded and broadcast), is no longer appropriate for twentieth-century bestselling novels, comics, fiction magazines, audiences. A second view is the theory of art and so forth. Mass artworks are such that they as ideology, now prominently represented by can be tokened in multiple instances. The last Terry Eagleton (1990). A third topic is the link installment of the Harry Potter series, for of aesthetics and politics that is developed, for example, sold literally millions of copies. instance, in Marcuse’s (1978) view of aesthet- Although there are examples of certain ics as pointing toward a better world. Fourth, ancient, mass-produced artifacts with some there is the effort to relate forms of art to forms claim to the status of art – such as coins, tiles, of society, as in Caudwell’s (1937) discussion of and engravings – prototypical mass art really poetry. A fifth theme is the notion of aesthetic only comes to the fore and emerges with mass value. Lukács (1964), for example, insists on industrial society. Indeed, one might think of it, realism, as exemplified by Balzac, since great first and foremost, as art for the teeming popu- literature is said to penetrate beneath the surface lations of urban, industrial centers. Pulp to reveal social reality, with all its contradic- fiction is an early example of mass art. Printed tions. Conversely, the same author dismisses on cheap pulp paper – from which the category the importance of such writers as Beckett and derives its name – items like Harry Enton’s Frank Kafka as mere reflections of a decadent capital- Reade and His Steam Man of the Plains (1878) ist society. Although Marxist aesthetics has were affordable by city workers who consumed traditionally been one of the most viable this and other pulp fictions in great quantities. branches of Marxist theory, it remains to be seen Likewise, in time, photographs, motion pic- if it will maintain its vigor after the political col- tures, radio, vinyl recordings, and so on were lapse of official Marxism in eastern Europe. added to the list of affordable, mass-produced art, or, as some might prefer to call it, entertainment. See also adorno; aestheticism; lukács; realism. Since it is mass produced, mass art needs a mass audience. Initially it was aimed at a bibliography working class audience, although by now it is Caudwell, Christopher. 1937. Illusion and Reality: A consumed by virtually everyone across class Study of the Sources of Poetry. London: Macmillan. lines in modern, industrialized societies. Perhaps Eagleton, Terry. 1990. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. in large measure because of this association Oxford: Blackwell. with the lower classes, for much of its history,

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mass art mass art has been disparaged by the propon- three criteria, but which no one would count ents of elite art, including philosophers of art who as examples of mass art. Andy Warhol’s have, for the most part, either ignored mass Empire and Stan Brakhage’s Scenes from under art altogether, or even argued that it is not Childhood are artworks of which there can be art, properly so called, at all. So one task for a multiple copies and they were produced and philosophy of mass art is to address the reasons distributed by the same network of mass pro- previous philosophers have invoked to cashier duction technologies as were Casablanca and mass art from the order of art. However, before The Bandwagon, but no one imagines them to be that can be done, we need an account of what mass art. it is to be a mass artwork. Why not? Because mass art is intended for mass consumption. That is not to say that all defining mass art mass art is massively consumed. Most mass- Mass art is designed and produced for large market music, for example, flops. Nevertheless, audiences, usually by automated, industrial mass art aspires to command a mass audience. procedures, such as printing, which gave rise to Mass art is a subcategory of popular art, its one of the first mass art forms, the novel. Mass differentiating mark being that it is mass artworks are such that they can be consumed produced whereas popular art, as such, need not at two or more – often many more – reception be multiple-instance art. On the other hand, nei- sites simultaneously. The movie Jumper opened ther Empire nor Scenes from under Childhood in 3,428 theaters in the United States alone. was designed to attract mass audiences. For our purposes, each copy of a mass-market Undoubtedly, Warhol and Brakhage would novel can be considered a reception site, as is have been very happy had their films broken box your television set, your radio, your iPod, and office records. But they did not do what one so forth. Mass artworks, like TV programs such needs to do in order to assure that outcome. They as Lost, can be seen by millions of people in dif- did not make films that were accessible to broad ferent cities, countries, and continents at the audiences with diverse backgrounds. Warhol same time, in contrast to live theatrical perfor- and Brakhage made work that was accessible mances, which can be played only before one primarily for the narrow band of people who had audience, at one place, at one time. A similar knowledge of the issues and strategies of the contrast can be drawn between a live concert avant-garde cinema, as well as a feeling, an and a mass-produced CD and a handmade appetite, and an appreciation for it. painting versus a photograph. Avant-garde art is esoteric; mass art is exo- Mass art can be consumed at multiple recep- teric. Mass art is designed to engage mass tion sites because mass art is art that can be audiences. In order to secure a mass audience, instantiated in multiple tokens or instances. the mass artwork has to be comprehensible to These instances are produced and/or dis- the average man or woman on the street. To this tributed to often far-flung audiences by means end, it trades in widely shared stereotypes of mass production technologies. In capitalist and narrative and pictorial structures that are countries, this is done for profit, but noncapi- easily mastered by nearly anyone. Mass art, in talist regimes may also take an interest in the contrast to avant-garde art, is prototypic- production and distribution of mass art, fre- ally designed with the intention that it be quently as a means for disseminating ideology. very user-friendly. Ideally, the mass artwork is So far, then, we see that something is a structured in such a way that large numbers of mass artwork only if (1) it is an artwork, (2) of people will be able to understand it effortlessly, the multiple-instance variety, that is, (3) pro- virtually on first contact. Avant-garde art – duced and/or distributed by a mass production including that which is multiply tokenable due technology. However, although these repre- to its provenance in mass production tech- sent necessary conditions for membership in nologies – is typically made to be difficult, to defy, the category of mass artwork, they are not to rebuff, and even to outrage the plain viewer, conjointly sufficient. They are not sufficient reader, and/or listener. because there can be avant-garde artworks, With this contrast with technologically such as experimental films, that meet these based, avant-garde art in mind, we are now in

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mass art a position to say that something is a mass art- Therefore, mass artworks are not truly art- work if and only if it is (1) an artwork of (2) the works. They are kitsch. multiple-instance variety, that (3) is produced The passivity argument builds upon notions and/or distributed by a mass production tech- with which we are already familiar from the for- nology, and (4) which artwork is intention- mulaic argument. Mass artworks are formu- ally designed to gravitate in its creative choices laic. The use of formulas makes mass artworks (e.g., its narrative forms, symbolism, sonic easy to absorb. In fact, the audience can pro- structures, intended affect, and/or even its cess the mass artwork with so little effort that content) toward those choices that promise following a mass artwork does not call on the accessibility with minimum effort, virtually on viewer, listener, or reader to do anything. The first contact, for the largest numbers of relatively art is spoon-fed to the consumer. The audience untutored or plain viewers, listeners, and/or is passive. readers. But genuine art requires activity on the part However, if it is the accessibility condition that of the audience. Real art encourages the audi- enables us to zero in on the concept of mass art, ence to participate – to interpret the work, to it is also this very condition that has prompted struggle with ambivalent feelings, to be open some philosophers to deny categorically that to new experiences, to concentrate, to adopt mass art can be genuine art, properly so called. new perspectives, and so on. Authentic art is difficult in a way that demands effort and can mass art really be art? activity from the audience. This too fits nicely Putatively what makes a recording of the with the modernist preference for difficult art that musical South Pacific a token of a mass artwork compels the audience to actively co-construct in contrast to a recording of Schoenberg’s Moses the artwork. So, if something is a real artwork, and Aaron is that the former but not the latter it engenders active or participatory engage- is accessible to the plain listener, untutored ment on the part of its audience. Mass art- in modernist music. In order to be extensively works are passively absorbed. Mass artworks do accessible, the mass artwork exploits stereotypes, not engender active engagement. Therefore, formulas, simple contrasts (e.g., stark oppositions mass artworks are not real artworks. Thus, of good and evil), highly legible harmonic pat- mass artworks are kitsch. terns, and so forth. Features like these make the These arguments rest respectively on the mass artwork easy for the untutored viewer, lis- ideas that genuine art is not formulaic and tener, or reader to negotiate. But philosophers that it engenders activity, whereas mass art and theorists of art who are suspicious of the cre- is formulaic and induces passive absorption. dentials of mass art think that mass art is too With respect to the charge that mass art is easy to be the real thing. Instead it is something formulaic, the defender of the potential art else – kitsch or perhaps pseudo-art. status of mass art will agree that this is true. Among the arguments that mass art is not However, the friend of mass art can then go on genuine art, there are two interconnected to challenge the idea that genuine art is not for- arguments that can be labeled the formulaic mulaic. Shakespeare’s sonnets adhere to certain argument and the passivity argument. The formulas as do Beethoven’s sonata allegros. formulaic argument correctly points out that Many Greek tragedies follow the patent dis- mass art is formulaic. For example, it is com- tilled by Aristotle; they possess beginnings, prised of many genres that employ routine plot middles, and ends, with reversals, recogni- structures and stock characters and situations. tions, and calamities, etc. No one could deny this. However, the next step It is stupendously false that all genuine art in the argument lays down the premise that is nonformulaic. Thus, the fact that mass art authentic artworks, as opposed to pseudo- is formulaic should not weigh against the pos- artworks or kitsch, do not employ formulas. sibility that mass art can be art, properly so Genuine art abides the modernist imperative called. Indeed, that Charlie Chaplin may share to “make it new.” Thus, if certain alleged certain formulas with commedia dell’arte should artworks traffic in the formulaic, they are not encourage us to count his work as art and not truly artworks. Mass artworks are formulaic. to discount its art status.

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Furthermore, the passivity argument over- Novitz, David. 1989. “Ways of Artmaking: The High states the degree to which, in the pursuit of and The Popular in Art,” British Journal of accessibility, a mass artwork reduces its audi- Aesthetics, 29, 213–39. ences to inaction. Mass artworks can call for a Novitz, David. 1992. “Noël Carroll’s Theory of Mass great deal of co-construction from spectators. Art,” Philosophic Exchange, 23, 51–62. Consider The Sopranos, with its multiple story- noël carroll lines and large cast of central characters. Simply following it requires a great deal of mental activity from the audience. The audience is meaning constructivism is a convenient hardly passive. As we watch the story unfold, label for a collection of views about the objects we are constantly on the lookout for clues as to and nature of interpretation, including the in- what might happen next. Moreover, we are terpretation of artworks. Radical constructivism constantly struggling with our feelings toward is the view that interpretations create new Tony Soprano – sympathizing with him one objects. Moderate constructivism is the view that moment, horrified by him in the next. He is interpretations alter their objects. Historical con- certainly not the sort of stock character that structivism is the view that changes that occur the formulaic argument claims populates mass in an artwork’s historical or cultural context art throughout. change its meaning. One kind of change that can Nor does the suggestion that genuine art do this is the way the work is interpreted, but must be difficult ring true. Pride and Prejudice is for the historical constructivist, this is not the not difficult, but no one has suggested that it only way such change can occur. is not properly identified as art. Not even all All of these views oppose a certain picture of modernist art is difficult. Who does not get what goes on when we interpret artworks and Picassos’ visual joke involving the bull’s head other “intentional” objects. According to this pic- made out of a bicycle seat and handlebars? But ture, interpretations attempt to discover relevant does that require more audience activity or truths about their objects, truths that are not participation than following an episode of The obvious before we interpret them. For example, Sopranos? interpretations of artworks attempt to discover Two of the most frequent arguments against what artistically important properties works the proposal that mass artworks can be art possess, when it is not obvious which proper- are the formulaic argument and the passivity ties these are. On this picture interpretation is argument. Neither carries the day. Thus, discovery. It neither brings any object into although there may be some putative examples existence nor changes any of its artistically of mass artworks that are not genuine art- important properties. We have to now inquire works, there are others that are not only art- how each version of constructivism diverges works but great artworks. from this picture and what might motivate this divergence. See also motion pictures; photography; kitsch; popular art; technology and art. Radical constructivism differs from this pic- ture in asserting that the object of interpretation bibliography is in some sense created by the interpretation. Adorno, Theodor W. 1991. The Culture Industry: That sounds paradoxical because (among Selected Essays on Mass Culture. J. M. Bernstein other reasons) it raises the question: why was (ed.). London: Routledge. an interpretative act undertaken in the first Carroll, Noël. 1998. Philosophy of Mass Art. Oxford: place? Did there not have to be something that Oxford University Press. we wanted to understand or appreciate that Collingwood, R. G. 1969 [1938]. The Principles of we were thinking about when we undertook this Art. Oxford: Clarendon. act, and while we were engaged in it? Since Greenberg, Clement. 1986. “The Avant-Garde and Kitsch.” In Clement Greenberg: Collected Essays and this object exists prior to interpretation, it can- Criticism, vol. i. J. O’Brien (ed.). Chicago: Univer- not be an object created by an interpretation. sity of Chicago Press, 5–22. The radical constructivist does not deny the Nehamas, Alexander. 1988. “Plato and the Mass existence of this prior object of interpreta- Media,” Monist, 71, 214–35. tion. He or she asserts that when we interpret,

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meaning constructivism beside this object and the interpretation it eli- people started using it to refer to a large island cits, there is a third object the interpretation off the east coast of Africa. Eventually this usage brings into existence. stuck. There are two ways of looking at what One motivation for this is the thought that happened. (1) Because some “interpreted” objects of interpretation are intentional objects (misinterpreted) “Madagascar” in a certain construed as objects of thought. But this by way, a new word came into existence spelled just itself does not get us very far. “Intentional like the old one for which the “interpretation” object” is ambiguous in many ways and any- was correct. (2) Because some interpreted thing can be an object of thought from art- “Madagascar” in a certain way, the original works to aardvarks. Those who appeal to word came to take on a new meaning. intentional objects sometimes think of them as Both construals are plausible accounts of objects that exist in thought, or depend on what happened. On each construal both the thought for their existence. A straightforward word referring to the African mainland and proposal is this: the initial object of interpreta- the word referring to the island are public tion is either an object that exists indepen- objects. So the question is: can either construal dently of the interpreter’s thoughts, or an be plausibly carried over to the interpretation object as conceived by the interpreter prior to of artworks? interpretation. The subsequent object is one In favor of the radical constructivist appro- conceived by the interpreter after interpreta- ach to these matters, consider the following sup- tion. These objects have different properties, so posedly analogical case. Suppose Attawamp they are two. makes a sign that, in his language (Wampian) This proposal can be criticized on several means “no trespassing.” A thousand years grounds. Even if we agree that objects of inter- later Sue discovers this sign in her garden in pretation are objects that exist in thought, remarkably good shape and sees a string of why suppose we have two objects rather than symbols on it that looks like “be back in five min- one that has undergone change? The initial utes.” Being an English speaker, Sue realizes she object exists at the start of an interpretative can use these symbols in a sign for her shop to act. The subsequent object exists at the end of indicate that she will be back soon when she has an interpretative act. The same object can to close it to run a short errand. Notice what have different properties at different times. So, has happened. Because different meanings are unless we have a clear way to count objects that assigned to the string of symbols, we end up with exist in thought, it is not clear how to choose two signs, though they are “embodied” in a between radical and moderate constructivist single physical object. In a sense, Attawamp and construals of what has happened. Sue “interpret” the string differently in terms of But it is not clear that either construal is the different meanings assigned to the string by desirable. Both seem to make the object of their respective languages. So perhaps different interpretation dependent on the mind of the interpretations of the same public artwork interpreter. It is more plausible to think of the (prior object) end up creating new works (sub- object as a public one. The conceptions we sequent objects). have of it may change over time, but why However, this proposal is much less plaus- think it changes, with every change in our ible when applied to artworks than in the case conception? Unless constructivists can propose of the signs. There, it is the different uses of the a way of construing objects of interpretation as string of symbols (shapes) within two different public objects, their proposals lack plausibility. languages to say two different things that Artworks are objects that exist in the public plausibly creates two signs. When we give an domain, but they also depend for their exis- interpretation of an artwork, we are not using tence on human practices and institutions. the artwork to say or do something, as the There are other objects like this that behave in artist might plausibly be said to do, but we are ways a constructivist might predict. Consider making an assertion about it. Just as I cannot words, in particular, the word “Madagascar.” use your utterance to say something that I Originally it referred to a part of the African intend to convey, the interpreter cannot use mainland. Through misunderstanding some an artwork to say something he intends to

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meaning constructivism convey. He can assert that the work conveys but there is no reason so far to think that was what he has in mind, but then his assertion not always true. would be false. He can assert that the work Historical constructivism provides such a could be construed as conveying what he has reason. The historical constructivist claims in mind. That might be true and a worthwhile that changes in the work’s historical or cultural interpretation of the work, but it would create context change its meaning. It may have one no new object. It would simply say something meaning when it first appears and a different about the original object – that it could be con- meaning 100 years later in virtue of the new strued in a certain way. Notice that if Sue gave context it is in at the later time. So it may be an interpretation in this sense of the original sign plausible to claim, after the appearance of and asserted that in Wampian it says “be back Freudian psychoanalytic theory, that Hamlet in five minutes” she would be mistaken and cre- hesitates because of Oedipal feelings of guilt ate no new sign. but not plausible to impute this at an earlier time. Let us now turn to the moderate constructivist If this claim is coupled with the idea that a idea that interpretations alter their objects work’s meaning at any time is constituted by the by what they say about them. Do artworks properties plausibly imputed to it, then its undergo changes in their meaning as the word meaning would change over time. “Madagascar” perhaps did? An argument in This proposal is among the more reasonable favor of this position turns on the idea that art- constructivist claims. Nevertheless, there are works are indeterminate in certain respects, grounds to doubt that it is correct. The proposal and when an interpretation “imputes” a prop- assumes that a property applies (or plausibly erty to a work, it removes an indeterminacy, applies) to a work only when people become thereby altering the work. To illustrate this equipped with the concept of that property. idea, assume that the play Hamlet does not Arguably, people did not become equipped provide a definite answer to the question: what with the concept of an Oedipus complex until motivates the character Hamlet to delay the early twentieth century. But it is a mistake revenging the death of is father? The play is in to make this assumption. If that were true, a sense indeterminate with respect to that nothing would have any properties at all prior property of Hamlet’s motivational structure. to the existence of concept users, and that is Different interpretations of Hamlet nevertheless absurd. The same evidence that Hamlet is impute different motives to the character in motivated by an Oedipus complex – such as delaying action. the scene in Gertrude’s bedroom – existed at the However the sort of indeterminacy we have work’s creation. What awaited the twentieth been considering is to be understood, it has century was the ability to use the evidence so far provided no reason to think that the to apply the concept. Here is an analogy. The imputation of properties to works changes concept of the baroque came into existence the works in any way. The works themselves well after baroque works were composed. For would appear to remain indeterminate regard- this reason, composers of the baroque period ing the interpretative issues, and what the did not apply the concept of the baroque to interpretation does is provide a way the work their work. Nevertheless, their works always can be taken – an optional way at that since belonged to the baroque style and period the work, by hypothesis, does not require or because they always had the properties that prescribe the assignment of the property in make them baroque. question. Further, since a work that is indeter- A complication in this argument is intro- minate about an interpretative issue may per- duced by the use of the word “plausible” in mit imputations of incompatible properties by the formulation of the constructivist thesis. different interpretations of it, a moderate con- Perhaps the evidence for the Oedipal interpre- structivist could not claim that the work has been tation of Hamlet always existed, but the inter- altered in all the ways it has been interpreted, pretation would not have been found plausible since no one work could actually come to have until the twentieth century. Since the con- all those properties. It might be true that the structivist thesis is put in terms of the proper- work can plausibly be taken in all those ways, ties plausibly imputed to it at a time, it might

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merleau-ponty, maurice still be argued that these properties change Stecker, Robert. 2003. Interpretation and Construc- over time. To evaluate this claim, we have to tion: Art, Speech and the Law. Oxford: Blackwell. distinguish between what is found plausible Thom, Paul. 2000. Making Sense. Lanham: Rowman and what is plausible. Presumably, plausibility & Littlefield. per se is a function of the evidence or reasons robert stecker that exist for a hypothesis. If evidence was always there, the plausibility of the Oedipal interpretation does not change over time. What changes is people’s ability to appreciate Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1908–1961) the evidence. French philosopher of the period following Constructivists still may not be convinced. World War II, best known for his analyses of They could perhaps argue that the meaning of human existence, perception, and action in a work at a time is a function of the plausible Phenomenology of Perception (1945); cofounder interpretations that its audience can appreciate with Jean-Paul Sartre of the literary magazine at that time. This surely does vary over differ- Les Temps modernes, and professor at the ent times. But why should we suppose that a Universities of Lyons and Paris; later (1952– work’s meaning must always be accessible to a 61) held the chair of philosophy at the Collège given actual audience and capable of being de France. His writings cover a wide range, “appreciated” by it? The debate between pro- from philosophical psychology and philosophy ponents and opponents of constructivism will not of language to political philosophy, philosophy be definitively settled until we have a clearer idea of history, and the philosophy of art. of what artworks are and what properties, Like his friend (and sometimes friendly including meaning properties, they possess. opponent) Sartre, with whom his thought had much in common, Merleau-Ponty had no fully See also critical monism and pluralism; developed aesthetics. Yet, again as with Sartre, interpretation; interpretation, aims of; he often wrote critical essays on the arts – margolis; relativism. chiefly on painting, but also on the novel and film (some are included in Sense and Non- bibliography Sense). Moreover, his entire approach to the Krausz, Michael. 1993. Rightness and Reasons: human situation was aesthetic and has impli- Interpretation in Cultural Practices. Ithaca: Cornell cations for aesthetics. University Press. At the core of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy is Krausz, Michael. (ed.). 2002. Is There a Single Right an attempt to recapture in experience (and Interpretation? University Park: Pennsylvania to analyze) what it is like to encounter the State University Press. world in a “primordial” way – that is, prior to Lamarque, Peter. 2000. “Objects of Interpretation,” describing and explaining it in objective, scientific Metaphilosophy, 31(1/2), 96–124. terms. Drawing on the gestaltists, he proposes McFee, Graham. 1992. “The Historical Character of Art: A Reappraisal,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 32, that one’s primordial experience is to exist 307–19. toward things through a living (perceiving, Margolis, Joseph. 1995. Interpretation Radical but feeling, and acting) body. It is to struggle to Not Unruly: The New Puzzle of the Arts and History. achieve equilibrium with things against the Berkeley: University of California Press. background posed by the global environment, Margolis, Joseph. 2000. “Relativism and Interpret- on the one hand, and one’s “body schema,” one’s ive Objectivity,” Metaphilosophy, 31(1/2), 200– developed repertoire of perceptual-motor skills 26. and habits, on the other. Through this recipro- Percival, Philip. 2002. “Can Novel Critical Interpreta- cal interplay, as he sees it, one’s way of being tions Create Artworks Distinct from Themselves?” in the world and the primary perceptual world In Is There a Single Right Interpretation? M. Krausz (ed.). University Park: Pennsylvania State Univer- itself become formed and instituted. Since the sity Press, 181–208. environment includes others, one becomes Stecker, Robert. 1997. “The Constructivist’s an embodied social being and one’s perceived Dilemma,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 55, world becomes a social world as well. Each 43–51. bodily movement, each object one sees and

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merleau-ponty, maurice responds to, each performance one carries out, academic painting, with its linear, “objective” is thus, in a sense, an aesthetic achievement – realism, on the one hand, and his friends the an expression of the meaning of one’s indi- Impressionists on the other, who, like him, vidual style within a concrete situation. The wished to reject that sort of realism, but who involved, living body is to be understood as an seemed to leave natural things behind entirely expressive medium, and every perception, feel- and focus solely on light, air, and patches of ing, and action as a work of art. color. What Cézanne finally managed to do, From this starting point, it is quite natural for Merleau-Ponty thinks, was to cut through the Merleau-Ponty to go on to say that a work of conceptual biases of these other styles and, art is itself a kind of expressive body: like the like a faithful phenomenologist, let the solid, body, “a novel, a poem, a picture, a piece of weighty, voluminous presence of perceived music are individuals, that is to say beings in things appear. By attending to surfaces and which it is impossible to distinguish the expres- the structures perceptible beneath them, by sive vehicle from its meaning, whose meanings painting the modulations of color at the edges are accessible only in direct contact, and which of things and including perspectival distor- radiate their significance without leaving their tions, he made canvases in which these ele- temporal and spatial position” (1962: 151). ments “are no longer visible in their own right, Works of art thus have a kind of gestural but rather contribute, as they do in natural meaning. Of course, they exhibit a complex vision, to the impression of an emerging order, vocabulary and syntax. But we comprehend of an object in the act of appearing, organizing them, Merleau-Ponty suggests, in much the itself before our eyes” (1964a: 14). way that we grasp the meanings of bodily ges- In the last work that he saw published (“Eye tures – not, in the first instance, by thinking and Mind” (1960), in 1964c: 159–90), written about them, by trying to decipher them, but for the first issue of Art de France, he returns rather by lending our bodies to them, by living to Cézanne, as well as Klee, Matisse, and oth- through their words, lines, colors, or sounds, and ers, to suggest that painting can have a dis- following out their tacit perceptual implica- tinctive ontological function. Precisely because tions. The process of creating artworks is also painting does not “copy” things, and because best understood as a prereflective, bodily one. it does not offer things to thought as does In this way it is like creative speech: “Like the science but presents them immediately and functioning of the body, that of words and bodily, in their depth and movement, so that we paintings remains mysterious to me: words, seem to be “present at the fission of Being from lines, colors which express my thoughts come the inside” – for these reasons painting gives from me like gestures; they are forced upon me us a true sense of “the internal animation” of by what I want to say as my gestures are by the world and what it means “to see” it what I want to do” (1964b: 75). Descartes was (1964c: 186). therefore wrong: neither in speaking nor in painting are there two actions, one of thinking See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century and another of mobilizing the body – on the con- continental aesthetics; dufrenne; expres- trary, one thinks with one’s words and with sion; sartre. one’s hand, brush, and paints. Nor is there an idea behind the word or the work, or some- bibliography where beyond them, but only in them and inseparable from them. Merleau-Ponty’s thesis Primary sources throughout is that the possibility of both lan- [1945] 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. C. Smith guage and painting rests upon the primordial, (trans.). New York: Humanities Press. expressive possibilities of the human body. [1948] 1964a. Sense and Non-Sense. H. L. Dreyfus & P. A. Dreyfus (trans.). Evanston: Northwestern Merleau-Ponty was enamored of Cézanne. He University Press. saw in Cézanne a philosopher – indeed, he saw [1960] 1964b. Signs. R. McCleary (trans.). himself – working with paint. In “Cézanne’s Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Doubt” (1945), he shows how Cézanne strug- 1964c. The Primacy of Perception. J. M. Edie (ed. & gled to define his own style in the face of trans.) Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

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Secondary sources Another approach centers on language; it Kaelin, Eugene F. 1966. An Existentialist Aesthetic. holds that, in routinely accommodating itself Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. to broader and broader segments of human john j. compton experience, a language acquires a metaphoric character as an autonomous function of its historical development. Explication here in- metaphor A verbal composition which, on the volves the study of linguistic change – in par- basis of novel semantic relations among its ticular, an examination of how the words of components, evokes a complex and productive a language widen their extensions in conse- set of mental responses. Ever since Aristotle’s quence of their use to comprehend new objects Poetics, there has been widespread agreement and ideas. A variant of this position makes on the important role played by metaphor in an even stronger claim – that language is literature, especially poetry. Metaphor has been metaphoric ab origine, its metaphoric character seen – by, among others, Shelley, Valéry, and deriving from the very fact that, as we might put I. A. Richards – as a main source of both the plea- it, words are not the things they refer to. sure and the interest to be gained from poems. It might appear that the remaining compo- More recently, philosophers have become aware nent in our analysis is not capable of pre- of the considerable difficulties surrounding this judicially asserting itself – that is, that the concept, and it is on these theoretical problems constitution of the world is simply what it is and that this essay concentrates. cannot be made to function other than pas- Theories of metaphor may be divided into sively in the linguistic transaction – and thus those that see metaphor as a secondary use of that the role played by the world in that trans- language, a departure from its basic function of action cannot be exploited for metaphoric pur- describing our responses to the outside world, poses. This is no doubt true; at the same time, and those that see it as an essential character- however, nothing prevents someone from istic, inherent in the nature of language itself. employing in the interpretation of metaphor a Implicit in this is the assumption that conception of the world that is at variance with language is a means for transacting relations empirical conditions. Thus, flowers may not between the thoughts that a speaker has and laugh or feel happy in our world, but one can conditions as they obtain in the world. One of conceive of a world in which such states of the inferences from this assumption is, then, that affairs are possible. Conceptions of this sort, it a speaker, in carrying out such a transaction, should be noted, are not (conceptual) prepos- can use the language in a manner which is fac- sessions; they come into being in the act of tually objective and epistemically neutral – a use, interpreting metaphors literally. thus, in which the function of language is When regarded as the modified use of literal purely descriptive and its use strictly literal. language, metaphor may take one of two basic Metaphor on this view is some modification or forms: in one, the modification reflects itself in extension of literal language and is to be expli- an incongruity between the literal sense of the cated by the use of linguistic analysis or the the- expression and the (nonlinguistic) environ- ory of speech acts. ment in which it occurs; in the other, the Alternatively, one may regard the role incongruity is reflected in the expression itself. played by one or another of the components in Thus, in responding to an opponent’s argu- the linguistic transaction as functioning not ment, a speaker might say, “That’s a pile of neutrally but with a characteristic predilection. garbage”; a poet, to describe the formation of dew Thus, one may regard the thought component at nightfall, might say, “When the weak day as so indoctrinated by human experience that weeps.” The latter expression – Shelley’s – is syn- all such transactions are epistemically tenden- tactically well formed, but it is semantically tious and the language consequently biased. It deviant, in that the grammar of English does not is a corollary of this position that language is “sanction” predicating weak and weep of day. In congenitally and pervasively metaphoric, and the first type of metaphor, on the other hand, that explication is to be achieved by examining nothing in the expression is linguistically the conceptual prepossessions of the speaker. unorthodox; there is, however, a form of

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metaphor deviance in the use to which the expression is have only their literal meaning. However, the put; we might refer to metaphors of this type as consequence for Davidson is not semantic devi- pragmatically deviant. ance but patent or obvious falsity. Moreover, As the example in the preceding paragraph rationalization of the expression’s metaphoric indicates, the deviant character of metaphor is quality is not accomplished by adverting to the a consequence of collocations that comprise speaker’s meaning; instead, the interpretat- incompatible semantic valences. Beardsley ive activity is localized in the reader of the (1962) remarks on this semantic opposition or metaphor, who will be set to calibrating a “tension” in metaphor, and argues that from this series of novel and provocative juxtapositions opposition a “twist of meaning” is forced; in “the of objects and ideas. It is in the prompting of these spiteful sun,” for instance, the predicate “spite- novel relationships, which the “patently” false ful” acquires a new intension, “perhaps one expression causes the reader to notice, that the that it has in no other context.” metaphoric function consists. Black (1954–5) characterizes his approach to That metaphor is a question primarily of the analysis of metaphor as “interactional.” thought and only secondarily of language is Taking as his example “Man is a wolf,” he the argument of Lakoff and Johnson (1980). defines two subjects: principal (“man”) and According to them, our experience of the subsidiary (“wolf”). To each of these subjects world – its physical features and human activ- there pertains a “system of associated com- ities – implicitly conditions our mental devel- monplaces,” these being beliefs that the average opment in such a way that certain concepts person holds about the referents of the names. become so impressed on our thought processes In the construal process these commonplaces that we are predisposed to respond “metaphor- interact, some being, as it were, transferred ically” to the affairs of everyday life. Thus, from one to the other subject and its import such notions as “Argument is war,” “Time is assimilated into the “meaning” of that subject, money,” and “Happy is up” are for Lakoff and others being filtered out as incompatible. Black Johnson conceptual metaphors, mental figures does not explicitly invoke semantic deviance in in which elements from one domain are his discussion, but it figures implicitly in that his mapped onto correlative elements of another. In interactional process is a nontrivial function a conceptual metaphor like “Time is money,” ele- only if some sort of deviance is assumed. ments like concreteness, short supply, and In the face of semantic deviance, Searle value are mapped from the source domain, (1979) refers, in his analysis of metaphor, to the money, on to the target domain, time – the difference between sentence meaning and mapping manifesting itself in such locutions as speaker’s meaning. This prizing apart of the “I spent a solid week on that problem,” “I can’t speech act into two separate components is a tac- spare the time,” “That cost me a night’s sleep.” tic used by Searle also in his analysis of irony As these examples make evident, conceptual and indirect speech acts. In all these cases, the metaphors (which need not be articulated as speaker says one thing but intends another. such) leave their traces in (and may be inferred Thus, in “Sally is a block of ice,” the rational- from) the expressions that we use in everyday ization of its metaphoric function does not take speech. Of the linguistic expressions them- the form of operations performed on the utter- selves, Lakoff and Johnson claim that they too ance itself; the metaphoric meaning devolves, are metaphoric; in fact, vitally metaphoric, rather, on what the speaker had in mind when and this despite the fact that the senses of uttering the sentence – namely, that Sally is a the words occurring in these expressions are cold, unresponsive person. It is a significant “conventionally fixed within the lexicon of aspect of Searle’s approach that the words in a English.” metaphoric expression comprise or have con- In the treatment provided by Levin (1988) it ferred on them no additional, special, ad hoc, or is again the thought component that figures “metaphoric” meaning – in this respect differ- as the essential focus. Instead, however, of that ing from Beardsley and Black. focus bearing on preconceived experiential Davidson (1979) is in agreement with notions (the conceptual metaphors of Lakoff Searle that the words in a metaphoric utterance and Johnson), it bears, rather, on the responses

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modernism and postmodernism that one might make to metaphors that one which the emergent sense gets registered in encounters in poetry. Consider again Shelley’s the lexicon of the language. Additionally, one “When the weak day weeps.” However one might invoke the role played in these develop- approaches their analysis, it is clear that, if ments by catachresis, in which the range of a taken literally, the truth claims made by most word is extended not to replace an already metaphors (Shelley’s example being paradig- existing word but, rather, to fill a lexical gap. matic in this regard) describe conditions that are ontologically and empirically bizarre. Levin See also poetry; ineffability; irony. proposes that instead of trying to rationalize the meaning of such metaphors – make their bibliography interpretation conform to conditions in the Beardsley, Monroe C. 1962. “The Metaphorical actual world – one takes them at face value and Twist,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, attempts, rather, to conceive of a “world” in 22, 293–307. which what the metaphor purports to describe Black, Max. 1954–5. “Metaphor,” Proceedings of the represents a possible state of affairs. This Aristotelian Society, 55, 273–94. Carroll, Noël. 2001. “Visual Metaphor.” In Beyond approach to metaphor might be called concep- Aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University tional in nature. Press, 347–68. It is a natural proclivity of language to Cohen, Ted. 1999. “Identifying with Metaphor: widen the scope and applicability of its seman- Metaphors of Personal Identification,” Journal of tic units. Thus, in its normal use and develop- Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 57, 399–409. ment the meaning of a word will automatically Cooper, David E. 1986. Metaphor. Oxford: Blackwell. gain new senses as the range and nature of its Davidson, Donald. 1979. “What Metaphors Mean.” reference is extended. A large part of this pro- In On Metaphor. S. Sacks (ed.). Chicago: University cess is routine, raising no theoretical problems of Chicago Press, 29–45. and requiring no particular comment. When a Derrida, Jacques. 1974. “White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy,” F. C. T. word like “leaf,” say, is applied successively to Moore (trans.), New Literary History, 6, 5–74. different individual leaves, to various species of Gaut, Berys. 1997. “Metaphor and the Understand- leaves, and further extends its range to desig- ing of Art,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 97, nate the sections of a shutter or the pages of a 223–41. book, the semantic consequences of the exten- Kittay, Eva F. 1987. Metaphor: Its Cognitive Force and sion are comparatively unproblematic. This is Linguistic Structure. Oxford: Clarendon. because the referents, throughout the extension, Lakoff, George & Johnson, Mark. 1980. Metaphors We are uniformly concrete. Something significant Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. emerges, however, when the extension in Levin, S. R. 1988. Metaphoric Worlds: Conceptions of question represents a move from the domain of a Romantic Nature. New Haven: Yale University Press. physical to that of mental activities. For inas- Ortony, Andrew (ed.). 1979. Metaphor and Thought. much as a good deal of the scientific and philo- Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. sophical literature is conducted via words Ricoeur, Paul. 1977. The Rule of Metaphor: Multi- which have made just this semantic transfer, the Disciplinary Studies in the Creation of Meaning in question is raised as to whether language can Language. R. Czerny (trans.). Toronto: University of still be used to describe reality straightfor- Toronto Press. wardly; or whether language is not in fact fun- Sacks, Sheldon (ed.). 1979. On Metaphor. Chicago: damentally and ineluctably metaphoric. University of Chicago Press. Derrida (1974) adopts the latter of these Searle, John R. 1979. “Metaphor.” In Metaphor and alternatives, and educes from it the following Thought. A. Ortony (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 92–123. argument: if it is the case that philosophical lan- guage is intrinsically metaphoric, then it follows samuel r. levin that no noncircular account can be given of metaphor, since the language of that account would itself be metaphoric. As a temper to the modernism and postmodernism Modern- drastic nature of this conclusion, one might ism held sway over creative activity in most raise the issue of dead metaphor, in the case of of the arts for the greater part of the twentieth

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modernism and postmodernism century, and it is only since the 1970s with championed the cause of “writerly” fiction in his the rise of postmodernism that its dominance famous essay “The Death of the Author.” has been significantly challenged. The critical Writerly fiction challenged the reader by leav- element of the modernist aesthetic was its ing gaps that were open to multiple interpre- commitment to originality; the objective being, tation, thus involving the reader in the act in the poet Ezra Pound’s ringing declaration, of creation; whereas its opposite, “readerly” to “make it new” each time around (1934). fiction, left no such loose ends and constrained Creative artists were to be prized above all for the reader into the interpretation of the narra- their “imaginative individuality” (Gay 2007: 1). tive that the author wanted. For Barthes, In practice this commitment led to systematic writerly fiction marked the “death of the author” experimentation with form, with artists reject- and the “birth of the reader” (1977: 148). ing most of the norms that had governed artis- Although writerly fiction could be found tic practice hitherto. Tradition was no longer to throughout literary history (Laurence Sterne’s be taken as a guide, with what Peter Gay has Tristram Shandy (1759–67) manifestly fits the dubbed “the lure of heresy” proving a much description), it was most obviously to be found stronger force (2007: 3). in the modern era in the work of such authors The notion of progress so embedded in as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, and their modernity came to be just as critical a require- often highly complex experiments in form ment in the creative domain. Painting and (e.g., the use of stream of consciousness). sculpture became abstract, music atonal, Readerly fiction could be found in abundance fiction fragmented in terms of its plot and nar- in the realist tradition of novel writing, as in the rative and often deliberately opaque in style, nineteenth century. architecture geometrically regular in shape The self-referential quality that Greenberg and unornamented (the “International Style,” so admired in modernist painting carried over or the “new brutalism” as it came to be called into literature too, and writing about the act of by detractors). Vassily Kandinsky and Pablo writing became a recurrent motif among mod- Picasso emerged as the new models in art, ernist authors. This was a tendency that even- Arnold Schoenberg in music, and James Joyce tually came to be attacked by critics like John in literature; although it is worth noting that Barth, one of the leading figures in the devel- modernism is varied enough in styles and opment of the postmodernist style in fiction, practices for some commentators to prefer to for whom ultimately it led to the “literature of speak of “modernisms” instead. exhaustion” (1967), and with that a worrying One of the most influential theorists of mod- loss of interest on the part of the general public. ernism was the art critic Clement Greenberg, for Postmodernism, on the other hand, has whom the defining quality of modernist paint- largely rejected the obsession with originality and ing was its “painterly” quality. What this formal experiment, reviving older styles and entailed was that painting was supposed to be modes in a deliberate attempt to open up more about the art of painting itself: “The essence of of a dialogue with the past than modernist modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of char- aesthetics permitted. Cultural commentators acteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the speak of a condition of postmodernity develop- discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in ing in the latter decades of the twentieth century, order to entrench it more firmly in its area of when political and institutional authority competence” (1961: 101). Painters were in in the West came to lose much of their aura consequence expected to distance themselves among the general public. For Jean-François from the realist tradition and its use of the Lyotard “incredulity toward metanarratives” technique of perspective. Greenberg advocated (1984: xxiv) was the dominant feature of this “flatness” and abstraction instead, with formal trend, and postmodernism is to be regarded as features coming to dominate the artist’s con- an attempt to theorize this across the many cerns; Cubism and Abstract Expressionism being areas of our culture. An attitude of incredulity pertinent examples of this ethos in practice. toward the dominant metanarratives in the Roland Barthes was to come up with a sim- aesthetic realm is certainly to be noted among ilar criterion for judging literature when he both critics and creative artists from about the

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1960s onward. John Barth called for a return shapes (e.g., twists and spirals). Some architec- to plot and linear narrative in literature, for tural theorists insisted that the divide between example, arguing that this would constitute serious and popular needed to be abolished as a “literature of replenishment” to counteract well, and that the playful qualities of the latter modernism’s “literature of exhaustion” (1980). were being undervalued by the profession; Many artists have returned to figurative paint- ideas that are most memorably argued for in ing, and composers have reembraced tonality Learning from Las Vegas (Venturi et al. 1977), (although minimalism tends to have a very where commercial architecture is taken as a restricted range in this latter respect, with source of aesthetic inspiration. rhythm coming to be the dominant feature in Overall, the postmodern aesthetic in archi- many cases). tecture has been heavily biased toward pas- The architectural theorist Charles Jencks tiche – what the theorist Kenneth Frampton has has been one of the most significant influences rather frostily called “the cannibalization of in postmodern aesthetics, particularly through architectural form” (1992: 306) – and indeed his concept of “double coding.” Jencks devised that has proved to be a critical aspect of the post- the concept as a way of encouraging architects modern aesthetic in general, one of its major to take more account of public opinion by methods of constructing a dialogue with the past. moving away from the “new brutalism,” Arguably the quintessential example of the which was far more popular with architects double coding ethic is to be found in Umberto than it ever was with the general public, who Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose (1983), simul- tended to find the tower blocks so closely asso- taneously a murder mystery much in the ciated with this style, and still so prominent a classic style of Sherlock Holmes – the lead part of cityscapes across the globe, soulless and character is called William of Baskerville, for alienating in the main. The ideal for Jencks example, echoing the Holmes adventure The was buildings that could appeal to both profes- Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) – and a sionals and lay persons alike, buildings that reflection on semiotic theory, as well as on the were “double coded,” having elements that conflicting claims of Aristotelian and Platonic could be appreciated by both constituencies. aesthetics. The book was a bestseller, largely on Architects were asked to bring back ornamen- the grounds of its cleverly constructed murder tation and to experiment with mixing styles mystery set in what for the twentieth-century from the past and present, on the assumption reader was the exotic world of a medieval that the public would be more willing to accept monastery; but it was also an intellectual tri- the new when it came accompanied by the umph, offering many important insights into the familiar. There was a clear sense of a dialogue nature and workings of semiotic theory and with the past when this was adopted as archi- classical aesthetics. It remains a model of how tectural practice, with such buildings being to double code creative work, as well as an conspicuously more user-friendly. excellent example of the art of pastiche. An The architectural style which has developed even more self-conscious use of pastiche can be from ideas like Jencks’s is unashamedly eclec- found in the work of the British author Peter tic, combining past and present styles with Ackroyd, who in his novel Hawksmoor (1985) abandon, and largely jettisoning the obsession set half the action in present-day London and with straight lines and geometrical regularity half back in the early eighteenth century, clev- that had characterized the new brutalism. erly imitating the writing style of eighteenth-cen- (Jencks himself had notoriously claimed that tury fiction throughout the latter sections. modern architecture had died at the precise Postmodernism’s dialogue with the past also moment in July 1972 when the typically new comes with a dose of irony, however, and that brutalist Pruitt-Igoe housing scheme in St. is another key aspect of the postmodernist aes- Louis was demolished by the city authorities thetic. There can be a very “knowing” quality (1991: 23).) There was also a move to introduce to postmodern creative practice, an acknowledg- more popular elements into architectural prac- ment that although older forms and themes tice as well, with bright colors coming back are being reappropriated, they can never mean into play, as well as playful and often eccentric the same thing to us now as when they were

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morality and art fresh to their original creators. Whether future Venturi, Robert, Brown, Denise Scott, & Izenour, generations will be as amused by this ironic Steven. 1977. Learning from Las Vegas: The attitude remains to be seen, and there are Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. 2nd already signs that it is losing its effectiveness and edn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. coming to be regarded as rather trite. Gilbert stuart sim Adair’s critical observation, that “the past (mostly the recent past) has been transformed into a mammoth lucky dip . . . All you have to morality and art The relation between art do, if you are a maker of TV commercials, or and morality has been of recurrent interest pop promos, a designer of shop windows or to Western philosophy and literary criticism record sleeves, . . . an architect, a painter, even since at least the time of Plato. Some concerns a marketing entrepreneur, is plunge in and have been about the causal effects of art on scoop out whatever happens to address your people’s morals. Popular films, music, and particular need” (1992: 17), is evidence of a videogames have been condemned on grounds growing concern that postmodern artistic of their alleged tendencies to produce moral practice can be lazy and often lacking in real cre- depravity. This causal claim is essentially ativity. Perhaps the wheel has come full circle empirical and is best determined by psycholo- and a new form of modernism is due to come gical and sociological studies. Some questions on stream. concerning the relation of art to morality are more properly philosophical. One might won- See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century der how artistic evaluations stand in relation to continental aesthetics; abstraction; aristo- moral evaluations: do they differ, for instance, tle; barthes; deconstruction; irony; plato; in their realism, objectivity, or relativity? A dis- structuralism and poststructuralism. tinct question is whether the moral features of artworks are relevant to their artistic value, bibliography and if so, whether the moral merits of artworks always count toward their artistic value. This Adair, Gilbert. 1992. The Postmodernist Always Rings Twice: Reflections on Culture in the 90s. London: question has dominated much of the recent Fourth Estate. debate about the relation of art to morality, Barth, John. 1967. “The Literature of Exhaustion,” and it is the issue that we will address here. Atlantic Monthly, 220, 29–34. An initial puzzle concerns what it means to Barth, John. 1980. “The Literature of call an artwork morally good or bad. Moral Replenishment: Postmodernist Fiction,” Atlantic properties apply to people and their actions but Monthly, 245, 65–71. not, it seems, to mere objects. A willow might Barthes, Roland. 1977. “The Death of the Author.” metaphorically weep, but no willow has ever In Image Music Text. S. Heath (ed. & trans.). done anything morally wrong. In this spirit London: Fontana, 142–8. Oscar Wilde denies that artworks can properly Eco, Umberto. 1983. The Name of the Rose. W. Weaver (trans.). London: Secker & Warburg. be called moral or immoral: “There is no such Frampton, Kenneth. 1992. Modern Architecture: thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are A Critical History. 3rd edn. London: Thames & well written, or badly written. That is all” Hudson. (1992: 3). One reply is that when we morally Gay, Peter. 2007. Modernism: The Lure of Heresy judge works it is really their effects that we are from Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond. London: morally assessing. However, this returns us to Heinemann. the causal question and its properly empirical Greenberg, Clement. 1961. “Modernist Painting,” resolution. And even morally bad books may Arts Yearbook, 4, 101–8. have morally good effects (and vice versa), due Jencks, Charles. 1991. The Language of Post-Modern to adventitious circumstances of their recep- Architecture. 6th edn. London: Academy Editions. Lyotard, Jean-François. 1984 [1979]. The tion: the publication of a racist work might Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. G. alert readers to racism and enhance their Bennington & B. Massumi (trans.). Manchester: efforts to combat it. A better response to the Manchester University Press. Wildean worry is to note that works are the Pound, Ezra. 1934. Make It New. London: Faber. products of actions and we can talk about

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morality and art what the author (whether the actual, implied, If autonomism is rejected, moral flaws are or postulated) is doing in the work; so we can sometimes aesthetically relevant. Two rival morally assess the author’s actions manifested positions are compatible with this claim. The in the work (Devereaux 2004). first is moralism or ethicism, which in one for- If it makes sense to assess works morally, the mulation holds that a work of art is always question arises of whether this has anything to aesthetically flawed insofar as it possesses an do with their artistic or aesthetic value. (I will aesthetically relevant ethical flaw (Gaut 2007: use “artistic” and “aesthetic” interchangeably ch. 3). This position does not hold that all here.) Autonomists or aestheticists deny that moral flaws of artworks are aesthetically relev- moral values are ever relevant to the artistic ant; but when they are, moral flaws always value of works. Autonomism, which owes a count as aesthetic flaws. The position is plural- debt to formalism (Beardsley 1981), appeals to ist, holding that there is a plurality of artistic val- various considerations, but two stand out. One ues, so that an ethical flaw is only one ground is an adherence to the idea that there is an for aesthetic condemnation of a work. In con- aesthetic attitude, characterized in terms of trast, a position that has been variously called disinterest, that is, by a lack of concern with prac- immoralism (Kieran 2003) or the antitheoretical tical engagement with the object of aesthetic view (Jacobson 2006) agrees that moral flaws attention. Since the moral attitude grounds a are sometimes aesthetically relevant, but holds practical concern, the aesthetic and the moral that when they are so, sometimes a work is aes- are, it is held, independent of each other. Some thetically flawed insofar as it is morally flawed, have responded by denying the existence of an and sometimes it is aesthetically meritorious aesthetic attitude (Dickie 1964). But it can also insofar as it is morally flawed. Whether a be queried whether, even if it exists, the atti- moral flaw counts as an aesthetic flaw depends tude is characterized by disinterest in the sense on its context in the work; so I will term this view of lack of practical concern for its object: the contextualism. The participants in this debate can artist, the student studying for an exam, and be marshaled in terms of this distinction. But it the art valuer can all have practical concerns, should be noted that, while Carroll (1996) but nevertheless be adopting an aesthetic describes his position as moderate moralism, at attitude toward the art object. some points he seems to allow that moral defects A second autonomist point is that a great deal may contribute positively to the aesthetic value of good and indeed great art has been morally of a work, in which case he is a contextualist. suspect or just downright evil: “Rape, pillage, But I will classify him here as a moralist. murder, human and animal sacrifice, concubi- Moralists have given a variety of arguments nage, and slavery in the Iliad; misogyny in the in favor of their view. An argument from Oresteia and countless other works; bloodcur- friendship holds that artistically evaluating a dling vengeance; anti-Semitism in more works literary work is akin to evaluating its implied of literature than one can count, including author as a friend; since a person’s moral good- works by Shakespeare and Dickens; racism ness counts toward him being a good friend, the and sexism likewise” (Posner 1997: 5; see also moral goodness of works contributes to their Gass 1993). The examples might be disputed, artistic worth (Booth 1988). The moral beauty but the general point has force: great works argument holds that if a person has a morally may have considerable ethical flaws. The good character, then she possesses a kind opponent of autonomism would be thus well of inner beauty; so the moral worth of the advised to concede that lack of moral blemish author, as manifested in a work, counts under cannot be a necessary condition for an art- certain circumstances as an aesthetic excel- work to be good, still less for it to be great. But lence in the work (Gaut 2007: ch. 6). And the if the anti-autonomist is a pluralist about artis- two most widely employed arguments are the tic values, she can hold merely that one ground cognitive and merited response arguments. for holding a work to be artistically flawed is that The cognitive argument appeals to a claim it is morally flawed. And she may note that a about the cognitive value of art (Nussbaum great deal of artistic and critical practice has been 1990; Carroll 1998). Most broadly, it holds informed by moral ambitions. that the fact that a work teaches us something

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morality and art is, under certain circumstances, an artistic think about racist and sexist humor (Gaut 2007: merit in the work; so if a work teaches us 237–51). Jacobson’s antitheoretical version of something morally important, this is, under contextualism, which apparently holds that the relevant circumstances, an artistic merit in nothing in general can be said about when the work. This argument has to specify the rel- and why ethical flaws count as aesthetic mer- evant circumstances, since clearly not everything its and when as aesthetic flaws, also exposes him a work teaches us is germane to its artistic to an autonomist attack. For the autonomist can value. Ian Rankin’s wonderful John Rebus claim that the reason that no general account novels are so geographically accurate that one can be given is because there is no relation can navigate around parts of Edinburgh using between the aesthetic and the ethical realms. them, but that fact does not constitute an artis- Matthew Kieran has developed a contextualist tic merit in them. The argument also requires position that has the salient advantage that it a defense of cognitivism about artistic values and provides an account of when and why ethical that claim has been attacked by autonomists flaws are sometimes aesthetic flaws and some- (Lamarque 2006). Some moralists have devel- times aesthetic merits. Kieran is a cognitivist, but oped a specification of the relevance condition denies that cognitivism entails moralism. On and a defense of cognitivism, by arguing that one the contrary, we can sometimes learn from a can learn through the imagining deployed in art- work precisely because it advocates immoral works (Gaut 2007: chs. 7–8). views; so an ethical flaw will be an aesthetic The merited response argument holds, merit when it promotes learning (Kieran roughly, that when a work manifests attitudes, 2003). Autonomists will question the cogni- it standardly does so by prescribing (inviting) tivist assumption that the argument shares its audience to have certain responses. The with most versions of moralism. A moralist responses a work prescribes are of aesthetic response is that the argument elides the dis- relevance. Prescribed responses are not always tinction between whether the work merely merited, which is an aesthetic failure in the asks its audience to imagine the morally bad work; and one ground for holding these views without advocating them (say, inviting the responses to be unmerited is that they are audience to imagine the attitudes of a serial unethical. So if a work manifests unethical killer) or whether it actually endorses those attitudes in its prescribed responses, then the views (advocates serial murder). We can be work has an aesthetic flaw. For instance, de Sade taught something by the former act of imagin- manifests approval of sexual torture by inviting ing, which in itself is not morally problematic his readers to enjoy torture scenarios; these (a detective might imagine the killer’s attitudes prescribed responses are aesthetically relevant in the course of trying to catch him). But if the to assessing his works; enjoying spectacles of sex- work advocates something that is morally bad ual torture is unmerited because unethical; so and false (that murder is good), it is cognitively his works are aesthetically flawed insofar as as well as morally flawed. Endorsing immoral they possess this ethical flaw (Gaut 1998; views introduces a cognitive flaw into a work, 2007: ch. 10; see also Carroll 1996). so a cognitivist ought to be a moralist, not a con- Contextualists have argued for their position textualist (Gaut 2007: 184–6). mainly by attacking the arguments for moral- The question of the relation between moral ism. Jacobson (2006) maintains that the merited and artistic values has, then, been the subject response argument is invalid, since it moves from of an intriguing three-cornered fight between the claim that it is wrong to adopt a response autonomists, moralists, and contextualists. to the claim that the response is unwarranted: Since this dispute has in one form or another for instance, it may be wrong to be amused by been with us since Plato, the only prediction that a joke but the joke might nevertheless be one can make with confidence is that the funny. The moralist can reply that there is no debate will continue. invalid transition: the claim is that the joke is not funny, or is at least flawed in its humor, by See also aestheticism; censorship; cognitive virtue of its immorality; and that is something value of art; erotic art and obscenity; ima- that has intuitive support, including in what we ginative resistance; pornography.

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museums bibliography different philosophical persuasions, and it is Beardsley, Monroe. 1981. Aesthetics: Problems in the only within the last decade that journals like the Philosophy of Criticism. 2nd edn. Indianapolis: Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism have car- Hackett. ried articles devoted to the subject. This leakage Booth, Wayne. 1988. The Company We Keep: An from Cultural Studies and the new discipline of Ethics of Fiction. Berkeley: University of California Museum Studies has, however, hardly affected Press. Carroll, Noël. 1996. “Moderate Moralism,” British the reigning orthodoxy in aesthetics, which Journal of Aesthetics, 36, 223–38. identifies the autonomy of art with a transcen- Carroll, Noël. 1998. “Art, Narrative, and Moral dence of social and historical context. And yet Understanding.” In Aesthetics and Ethics: Essays it is in large part the museum that, by provid- at the Intersection. J. Levinson (ed.). Cambridge: ing an institutional (and physical) form for Cambridge University Press, 126–60. art’s autonomy, has created the possibility of Devereaux, Mary. 2004. “Moral Judgments and aesthetic experience as conceptualized by aes- Works of Art: The Case of Narrative Literature,” thetic theory. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 62, 3–11. The transformative effect of the museum on Dickie, George. 1964. “The Myth of the Aesthetic the nature of art objects was noted in 1815 by Attitude,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 1, 56–65. Quatremère de Quincy, for whom the display of Gass, William. 1993. “Goodness Knows Nothing of works removed from their original political, Beauty: On the Distance between Morality and religious, and moral uses could mean nothing Art.” In Reflecting on Art. J. Fisher (ed.). Mountain “but to say that society has no use for them” View: Mayfield, 108–15. (1989: 37). Yet, even while protesting against Gaut, Berys. 1998. “The Ethical Criticism of Art.” In Napoleon’s removal of classical statues from Aesthetics and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection. J. Rome in 1796, Quatremère saw that city as itself Levinson (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University a museum: a prototype of history museums, Press, 182–203. theme parks, and allied forms of display that aim Gaut, Berys. 2007. Art, Emotion and Ethics. Oxford: at presenting an experience to which the Oxford University Press. Jacobson, Daniel. 2006. “Ethical Criticism and the viewer, distanced by history and cultural dif- Vice of Moderation.” In Contemporary Debates in ference, can have only a spectator’s, an aesthetic, Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. M. Kieran relation. (ed.). Oxford: Blackwell, 342–55. Quatremère’s complaint was echoed by John Kieran, Matthew. 2003. “Forbidden Knowledge: Dewey, who contrasted his own understand- The Challenge of Immoralism.” In Art and ing of art as enhanced experience with “the Morality. J. Bermúdez & S. Gardner (eds.). London: museum conception of art.” The museum, by Routledge, 56–73. separating artworks from their indigenous sta- Lamarque, Peter. 2006. “Cognitive Values in the tus, had given them a new one, “that of being Arts: Marking the Boundaries.” In Contemporary specimens of fine art and nothing else.” By the Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. M. Kieran (ed.). Oxford: Blackwell, 127–39. same token, Dewey was careful to note, it also Nussbaum, Martha. 1990. Love’s Knowledge: Essays set these objects “apart from common experi- on Philosophy and Literature. Oxford: Oxford ence” and enabled them to “serve as insignia of University Press. taste and certificates of special culture” (1980: Posner, Richard. 1997. “Against Ethical Criticism,” 6–9). Although he identified the museum and Philosophy and Literature, 21, 1–27. the notion of art associated with it as peculiar Wilde, Oscar. 1992. The Picture of Dorian Gray. to modern, originally Western, society, Dewey Ware: Wordsworth. followed the chief convention of aesthetic the- berys gaut ory in constructing a theory of art in abstrac- tion from historical specificity and so without further mention of museums. museums Despite its evident centrality to However, it can well be said that without the modern experience of art, the museum the museum the idea of art as a cross-cultural, has been largely absent, as idea or institution, transhistorical phenomenon, which under- from the contemporary literature of aesthetics. pins even Dewey’s account, would not have The word scarcely appears in texts of the most achieved social visibility. It is no coincidence that

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museums the onset of what has been named “the museum in 1776 involved the rehanging of Museum Age” coincided, in the later eigh- paintings in simple, uniform frames, with clear teenth century, with the development of the labels, grouped by national schools and art- modern system of the arts, as a domain of historical periods. objects and practices sharing what were now The official in charge of this installation, called “aesthetic properties.” The museum’s Chrétien de Mechel, described his aim in the insti- role in this development was to represent, in tution’s catalogue as the construction of “a the display of the objects collected in it, their Repository where the history of art is made vis- shared character as “works of art.” Its organ- ible.” This aim was criticized at the time (in von ization came to embody the classification of Rittershausen’s commentary on the Vienna artworks, by nationality and period, and as collection, 1785) as an elevation of science between “high” and “decorative” arts: over over aesthetic sensibility (Bazin 1967: 159). time its inclusion of ever more types of object An ideal of the museum as an institution dedi- – ancient Middle Eastern, Asian, “primitive,” cated to purely aesthetic experience is visible “folk,” and so on – actualized the extension of also in such texts as Goethe’s description of the label “art” over an expanding domain. It was the Dresden Gallery in 1768 as a “temple,” a the new uses that these items, stripped of any “place consecrated to the holy ends of art” original functions, acquired in the museum – as (Bazin 1967: 160). The conflict between his- elements of history and as materials for the torical knowledge and aesthetic contemplation construction of a mode of sensibility character- – a conflict inherent in the modern idea of art, ized by distance from material necessity and so which seeks transcendent meaning in a histor- free to cultivate responsiveness to experience – ically diverse range of objects – has structured that appeared as the autonomy of art. debate in the museum field ever since. The The establishment of the museum both former seems the clear victor in the practical responded to and fostered the modern idea of terms defined by the average visitor, who art as the product of individual creative acts, rarely pauses in contemplation of an individual rather than as the performance of a contracted work but tends to be drawn by the architecture service. “Set at a distance from their original of the institution toward a survey of the entire uses, past works can be joined by new ones collection. Nonetheless, the museum remains at produced specifically for display as works of once the repository of art history and a testimony art” (Mattick 2003: 112). The museum thus pro- to the supposedly nonhistorical character of vides the ideal context, at once physical and ideo- art’s meaning. logical, for new as well as old art, a model for R. G. Saisselin has noted resemblances the other main locations of display, the gallery between the museum and that other institution and the collector’s home. In particular, by of the modern era, the department store, “an deciding what to collect and what part of their anti-museum of modern, productive, dynamic collections to display, museums play a central capitalist production in which objets d’art [are] role in shaping and reshaping the artistic but one possible line of goods.” While the store canon operative at any moment. displays the world of (mass-produced) com- The princely art gallery, from which the modities, the museum presents an array of museum evolved, typically aimed at impressing (unique) items not for sale, but nonetheless visitors with the power and wisdom of the bearing the high prices earned by being objects prince. Accordingly, the collection was used “beyond price.” Taking the place occupied in ear- decoratively; in the hanging of pictures, “size, lier European society by the church, palace, colour and subject matter determined the and villa, these two spaces define the nature of arrangement, and paintings were often cut art in modern society, as they “correspond to the down or enlarged to fit into the ensemble” internal contradictions of bourgeois aesthetics (Duncan & Wallach 1980: 455; see also Bazin which are founded on idealism in a world that 1967: ch. 7). In contrast, museums early on in its daily business is anything but ideal” made the works displayed the center of atten- (Saisselin 1984: 42, 47). tion. For example, the transformation of Beginning most notably with the dislocation the Royal Collection in Vienna into a public of art in Europe during the French Revolution

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museums and the Napoleonic wars, the great museum col- only one sign of the adaptation of the museum lections were shaped by way of conquest and to corporate culture, along with organiza- purchase, and today bear testimony to such tional restructuring and such gambits as their political-economic processes as imperialistic self-promotion as locales for business social expansion and the rise of economic powers in affairs. During the last decade, as contemporary North America and Japan. While its omnivorous art “has more and more clearly come to sym- collecting exemplifies the unique openness of bolize, and even generate, a city’s identity as bourgeois culture to the practices and products modern, up-to-date, part of the fast-paced of other societies, the museum also embodies the international world of the moneyed and cut- redefinition of all cultures in terms of its own. ting-edge elite . . . museums have increasingly In particular, by exhibiting works of many emphasized collecting and exhibiting contem- types and from many disparate cultures in the porary art” and there has been a flurry of con- same space, the museum activates the modern struction of new museums dedicated to it concept of art and so implicitly proclaims the (Siegel 2006). A particularly noteworthy form essential, timeless character of modern social of this is the phenomenon of museums devoted constructs generally. Thus the museum has to the collections of wealthy individuals, cele- celebrated both the innovative individual – brating their personal prowess as business artist and collector – central to bourgeois ide- people and collectors. ology and proclaimed the freedom of art from An exhibition space open to all, the museum the constraints of social history. not only created new modes of object display but Whether instituted under royal, papal, also called for a new collective subject to expe- parliamentary, or revolutionary auspices, the rience them. “This new collective in the face of museum was from the start “one of the funda- which all future art will exist and agonize is ‘the mental institutions of the modern state” (Bazin public.’ It is for the public that society in the new 1967: 159). Indeed, as Duncan and Wallach democratic age retraces in social space – observe, “in common with ancient ceremonial through the creation of zoos, libraries, parks, monuments, museums embody and make vis- museums, and concert halls – the amenities of ible the idea of the state,” traditionally “by the leisure and privilege once held by a few within use of a Roman-derived architectural rhetoric” the private space of moneyed or aristocratic (1980: 449). Analogously to the way in which property” (Fisher 1975: 598–9). As a public the state is supposed to incarnate the social institution, the museum suggests the idea that interest in contrast to the competitive conflict aesthetic experience is in principle universal; of wills that structures civil society, the realm variations in the understanding and apprecia- of art signifies the claim of capitalism’s higher tion of art seem, then, to be a matter of individual orders to rise above the confines of commerce ability, of the “eye.” But this ability – “artistic as worthy inheritors of the aristocratic culture competence,” as Bourdieu and Darbel (1990) call of the past. Involvement with the autonomous it – depends on possession of a store of know- artwork represents detachment from the claims ledge derived from the formal and informal of practical life, even while its ownership and education in general reserved for the upper enjoyment require both money and the time classes. Given the class character of culture, made possible by money, and so signify finan- the love of art – or the capacity for aesthetic ex- cial success along with cultural superiority perience – serves to legitimate privilege, in a As modern society has changed, forms of differentiation of haves from have-nots that museum have changed with it. The converted renders its social and economic basis invisible. European palaces and the neoclassical structures During the last half-century, what might that in the USA expressed the imperial ambitions be described as capitalism’s overcoming of its of turn-of-the-century robber barons have former sense of inferiority with respect to the been joined – sometimes literally – by the mod- social order it replaced in Europe, and its ernist building styles favored by the corporations forthright celebration of market-certified success, which after World War II became the primary have led to a striking decline in the felt anti- funders of museum construction and exhibi- pathy between art and bourgeois life central to tion programs. The change in architecture is the nineteenth-century ideal of culture. One

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museums element of this is the transformation of the Bourdieu, P. & Darbel, A. 1990 [1969]. The Love of museum from a hallowed haunt of an aesthete Art. C. Beattie & N. Merriman (trans.). Stanford: minority into a thronged station of touristic Stanford University Press. pilgrimage. As art has become a central ele- Dewey, John. 1980 [1934]. Art as Experience. New ment of upper-income people’s leisure activity, York: Perigree. museums have become more visitor-friendly Duncan, C. & Wallach, A. 1980. “The Universal Survey Museum,” Art History, 3, 448–74. (with more explanatory labels, brochures, Fisher, P. 1975. “The Future’s Past,” New Literary acoustiguides, etc.) while expanding auxili- History, 6, 587–606. ary services like shops and restaurants (see Mattick, Paul. 2003. “Context.” In Critical Terms for Merriman 1989). It nevertheless remains true Art History. R. S. Nelson & R. Shiff (eds.). Chicago: that a chief function of museums “is to reinforce University of Chicago Press, 110–27. for some the feeling of belonging and for others Merriman, N. 1989. “Museum Visiting as a Cultural the feeling of exclusion” (Bourdieu & Darbel Institution.” In The New Museology. P. Vergo (ed.). 1990: 112). The possibility that the powers of London: Reaktion, 149–71. subjective response called for by the museum’s Quatremère de Quincy, A.-C. 1989 [1815]. appropriation of aristocratic pleasures could Considérations morales sur la destination des ouvrages de I’art [Moral Considerations on the truly become the property of all remains to be Purpose of Works of Art]. Paris: Fayard. realized by a future social transformation. Saisselin, R. G. 1984. The Bourgeois and the Bibelot. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. See also art history; cultural appropriation; Siegel, E. K. 2006. “On Wisconson.” In Between dewey. the Lakes: Artists Respond to Madison. Madison: Madison Art Center. bibliography Bazin, G. 1967. The Museum Age. New York: Universe. paul mattick

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narrative “Narrative” appears in the English verse), etc. And while narrative itself is theor- language in the sixteenth century first as de- etically innocuous and of minimal theoretical signating a legal document (1537) “which con- interest, various types of narrative can and do tains a statement of alleged or relevant facts have great cultural and, indeed, epistemolog- closely connected with the matter or purpose of ical interest. But the interest is not due to the the document; spec. a statement of the parties fact that something is a narrative but that it to a deed and the cause of its granting” (Oxford is literary, fictional, historical, etc. English Dictionary), and then, a few years later This point is worth making since there has (1571), in the more general and nontechnical been a tendency in recent literary and cultural sense of “An account of a series of events, facts, theory to assign to narrative a “deep” signi- etc., given in order and with the establishing of ficance. Until the early 1960s, the notion of connections between them.” It is only in the mid narrative was employed essentially as a non- nineteenth century (1843) that it enters the theoretical, nontechnical concept in literary vocabulary of literary criticism as designating criticism. Then, with the effort to establish the “The part of a text, esp. a work of fiction, which disciplinary respectability of literary criticism by represents the sequence of events, as distin- “theorizing” it, narrative became a technical con- guished from that dealing with dialogue, de- cept. The theorizing of criticism was based in scription, etc.” (Oxford English Dictionary). The Saussurean structuralist linguistics, and rested conditions for what counts as a narrative as it on the assumption that there was a strong appears in these usages are simple and define a analogy between linguistic entities like the phenomenon that is of little intrinsic interest. sentence and the literary work. The literary Certain negative conclusions can be drawn work could be segmented in the same way as a about narrative on the basis of this very simple sentence, and the structure into which these definition. The notion of narrative is distinct from segments entered could be described in a notions such as fiction, story, tale, and plot, “grammar.” Just as Saussure had developed a though all of these may have narrative as an structural description of the sentence and rules element. There is nothing in the notion of nar- for how to combine its constituent entities, one rative itself that licenses the conclusion that could develop a structural description of the narratives have a special cognitive function, literary text, breaking it down into constituent that is, that they have or do not have a refer- minimal units, and look for general rules for how ential function; that they necessarily consti- these units could combine to yield (literary) tute or construct fact rather than describe meaning. Structuralist theory did not, how- them; that they do or do not make claim to truth; ever, stop at applying the analogy to literary that they have the function generally of impos- works, but suggested that it would also hold for ing meaning and structure on “the world,” on all kinds of cultural expressions. one’s “life.” For structuralist theory the concept of nar- Narrative in this traditional sense can be of rative was particularly suitable as a technical different kinds. There are literary narratives concept. It enabled theorists to emphasize (and within this kind there is narrative poetry, what they saw as the commonalities between epics, novels, etc.); there are fictional narra- different kinds of stories: folktales, myths, tives, historical narratives, scientific narratives novels, epics tales, historical accounts, scien- (the Big Bang Theory of the origin of the uni- tific accounts, etc., and thus enabled them to

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narrative develop a theory that would ostensibly apply to The assimilation of narrative per se to liter- a wide range of cultural phenomena rather ary narrative had two particularly important than just to literature. This gave the theory consequences. The view of narrative as impos- explanatory power. It enabled theorists to ing order and creating meaning gave narrative explore the elements common to all “narrative a new importance. It could be seen as a way of forms,” oral and written, verse and prose, fac- imposing order and meaning on “reality,” tual and fictional (Scholes & Kellogg 1966). whether that reality was the historical past, However, this exploration was based in a the identity of the individual, the physical theory of the novel, and was essentially an world, the social world, or the world of ideas. attempt to extend the theory of the novel to other This new importance assigned to narrative kinds of story types. Literary narrative became also led to its being sought and found every- the paradigmatic type of narrative and it was where. Or to put it in slightly different terms, a this kind of narrative that became the object of number of different kinds of human discursive study in “narratology,” a name modeled on practices came to be conceptualized as narra- “biology” and “sociology” (Todorov 1969), the tives in the literary sense, thus giving the new “science of narrative” created by structuralism. science of narrative an object worthy of atten- The assimilation of narrative per se to liter- tion and inquiry. This science of narrative also ary narrative might have some initial plausibility identified for itself precursors which had estab- because there are certain features that all lished the deep significance of certain kinds of types of narrative share. They are narrated by narrative: Vladimir Propp’s Morfologiya skazki a narrator, and insofar as they are narrations, (1928; Morphology of the Folk Tale), which cre- narratives are human creations. The narrator ated a model for folktales based on seven employs a specific language, which is not neu- “spheres of action” and 31 “functions” of nar- tral (transparent) but has a range of rhetorical rative, and Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Anthropologie features chosen by the narrator for a specific pur- structurale (1958; Structural Anthropology), pose. The narrator always presents a certain kind which outlined a “grammar” of mythology. of perspective and exercises choice in picking The view of narrative as imposing order and out the events that make up the narrative. All meaning was attacked in poststructuralist the- types of narrative have a structure, even ory. As in so many areas of poststructuralism, though it may be minimal: the events of a the criticism of the structuralist theory of nar- narrative must be linked in some way even rative was conservative rather than radical. It though the link may simply be a chronological did not reject the concepts and framework of one (“The king died and then the queen died”). analysis, but only the thesis that the meaning And all narratives have a temporal dimension. and order produced by narrative was substan- The consequence of adopting literary narra- tive and true. In fact, the attack on the mean- tive as paradigmatic was that those features ing-producing function of narrative took its that are characteristic of this type of narrative point of departure in the second important were assumed to be features of narrative per se consequence of assimilating narrative per se to and assumed to play the same role and to receive literary narrative: the adoption of the view the same emphasis in other types of narrative that narrative did not have referential function as they do in literary narrative. Literary narrat- and consequently could not be true or false. In ives are made up in a strong sense: they create this perspective, the order and meaning cre- characters, objects, and events and structure ated by narrative were seen as social con- these in accordance with certain conventions structs without any basis in the world outside (literary narratives have a beginning, a middle, the narrative. Indeed, narrative created not and an end); they present a perspective on the only the order and meaning it presented but events they describe, a perspective which is also the objects and events that constituted defined through a variety of rhetorical devices; that order. There was no final narrative and through these various means the literary (grand récit) about the world, which could narrative creates coherence and meaning but reveal an objective order, nor a final narrative it does so without employing reference to a about the historical past, the self, the social world external to the narrative. world, or the world of ideas, which was

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narrative the true narrative. There were just different In literary criticism and theory, where nar- narratives. rative as a technical concept was first intro- When the concept of narrative was intro- duced, the answer about usefulness can be duced first in literary theory and then into a somewhat more positive. The “science of nar- broader cultural theory, it was employed as a rative” has been unable to answer the question critical primitive. It was assumed that the con- about the “nature of narrative,” that is, unable cept as such was unproblematic and that it to reach any sort of agreement concerning the referred to a phenomenon, which could be the elements and structural principles of narrative. object of study and be described in a theory. The Also in this area, the concept of narrative and, question that was raised neither in literary consequently, the nature of narrative itself theory nor when the concept of literary narra- remains Protean. However, narrative theory, tive was extended to other forms of cultural inspired in particular by Gérard Genette’s discourse was whether the concept of narrative work, has produced a vocabulary for discuss- was a useful critical instrument. Narrative in the ing narrative which can be used eclectically sense in which it appears in cultural theory is and which has provided critics of the novel, a theoretical construct: narrative is not a given the epic, and, indeed, of film with a useful tool- that awaits discovery and description. The box. To that extent the attempt to move from a question of usefulness is therefore centrally nontechnical concept of narrative as designat- important. ing “The part of a text, esp. a work of fiction, The question can be briefly answered insofar which represents the sequence of events, as as the application of the concept to discourses distinguished from that dealing with dialogue, other than literature is concerned, and written description, etc.” to a well-defined technical history provides a touchstone. First, histor- concept of narrative has brought the discip- ical accounts are not necessarily constituted lines of literary studies and film studies a step through a narrative. An article presenting the forward. results of an inquiry into the income of hand- loom weavers in Flanders from 1650 to 1660 See also literature; fiction, truth in; struc- will not in any sense constitute a narrative. turalism and poststructuralism. When a historical account does make use of narrative it is subject to constraints that are bibliography absent in the case of literary narratives: in a his- Chatman, Seymour. 1978. Story and Discourse: torical narrative the referential function is cen- Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: tral, and it is subject to the requirement that Cornell University Press. it be a true and accurate account of events. On Danto, Arthur C. 2007. Narration and Knowledge. the other hand, a historical narrative does not 3rd rev. edn. New York: Columbia University Press. have a formulaic structure that can be captured Genette, Gérard. 1980. Narrative Discourse. J. E. in a theory. It can be fairly clearly structured or Lewin (trans.). Oxford: Blackwell. Hutto, Daniel D. (ed.). 2007. Narrative and Under- it can have only a very loose structure. It needs standing Persons: Royal Institute of Philosophy only to be “An account of a series of events, facts, Supplements. Cambridge: Cambridge University etc., given in order and with the establishing Press. of connections between them.” And it does not Lamarque, Peter. 2004. “On Not Expecting Too present a story with a meaning. Indeed, the Much from Narrative,” Mind and Language, 19, establishment of the academic discipline of 393–408. historiography came about through a series of Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1993 [1958]. Structural steps where the moralizing of history was rejected Anthropology, vol. i. C. Jacobson & G. Grundfest as were those historians who wrote grand nar- Schoepf (trans.). Harmondsworth: Penguin. ratives employing an attractive literary style. So Mitchell, W. J. T. (ed.). 1981. On Narrative. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. in relation to history, the concept of literary nar- Phelan, James & Rabinowitz, Peter J. (eds.). 2005. A rative is not helpful. Indeed, in the philosophy Companion to Narrative Theory. Oxford: Blackwell. of history the notion of narrative has been Propp, Vladimir. 1968 [1928]. Morphology of the developed in another direction in an attempt to Folk Tale. 2nd rev. edn. L. Scott (trans.). Austin: develop a notion of “narrative explanation.” University of Texas Press.

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Scholes, Robert & Kellogg, Robert L. 1966. The insecurity of the individual in the face of the Nature of Narrative. Oxford: Oxford University Press. “terror and horror” of (Darwinian) nature Todorov, Tzvetan. 1969. Grammaire du Décaméron. The belongs inalienably to its metaphysical essence: Hague: Mouton. “Socratism,” the conviction that science is cap- stein haugom olsen able of knowing and even “correcting” being, is a destructive illusion. History is a mere flux of generation and destruction to which we are nature, aesthetics of see aesthetics of the powerless to impart direction or significance. environment; gardens. Faced with such nausea-inspiring “absur- dity,” we cannot do better than learn from the Greeks. They, though deeply sensitive to the Nietzsche, Friedrich (Wilhelm) (1844– “wisdom of Silenus” – “best of all is not to be 1900) German philosopher and poet; at first born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second a champion of Wagner, but later his bitterest best for you is to die soon” – not only survived critic. Unrecognized during the sane years of his but also constructed a culture the like of life, he has exerted a huge influence in the which has never since been seen. The Greeks, twentieth century, for example, on existential- Nietzsche holds, survived through their art: ism and postmodernism. Nietzsche’s thought more specifically, through their two types of about art (indeed, his philosophy in general) art – “Apollonian,” the art of, for example, may be divided into four sharply contrasting Homer; and “Dionysian,” the later art of the periods: an early period centered on The Birth great tragedians Sophocles and Aeschylus. of Tragedy (1872); a “positivistic” period centered (The claim that the music dramas of Richard on Human, All Too Human (1878); the period Wagner represent a rebirth of Dionysian art of The Gay Science (1882–7) and Thus Spoke constitutes the main propaganda point of The Zarathustra (1883–6); and his last year before Birth of Tragedy.) the onset of madness, 1888, the central work Nietzsche describes Apollonian art as a of which is Twilight of the Idols. (It must be “radiant glorification” of the phenomena of added, however, that this opinion, as with human existence by means of which the Greeks almost everything to do with Nietzsche, is “overcame . . . or at any rate veiled” (1966a: §3) highly controversial.) from themselves the horrors of life. In the “dream-birth” of their gods and heroes they THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY produced a beautiful, “transfigured” portrait of Nietzsche’s interest in art is marked by an themselves that “seduced” them into a favorable intense seriousness, an attribute he shares with evaluation of life as such. Typically, Nietzsche his mentor, Schopenhauer. Fundamentally, he elucidates transfiguration in terms of “illusion” asks but one question: what can art do for life? and even “lies.” But we cannot understand How can it help us flourish, or at least survive? Apollonian seduction as sentimentality, a sim- And he possesses but one evaluative criterion: ple censoring of the horrible, for he also says that good art is art that “promotes” life, bad art in Apollonian art “all things, whether good or that which “hinders” it. At some stages in his evil [böse] are deified” (1966a: §3; emphasis career he sees art as, literally, a life-saving added). The way to understand this idea of a activity, our only salvation from “nausea and beautiful illusion that is yet in some way truth- suicide.” At others, he sees it as useless, hostile ful is to think of Uccello’s Battle of San Romano even, to the promotion of life. At these or of that modern epic, the Western. In art (or, moments, with the radicalism of a Plato, he more generally, consciousness) of this kind, does not hesitate to demand its elimination war, pain, and death exist yet are “overcome,” from our culture. swamped, by our sense of the power and The sense of life as deeply problematic is magnificence, the style of its heroes. Dazzled by something Nietzsche took over from the self- their beauty, we are desensitized to the horrors confessed pessimist, Schopenhauer. In The they confront. Birth of Tragedy (alternatively titled Hellenism What now of the Dionysian solution to the and Pessimism) he emphasizes that the radical problem of living? To understand this, we have

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nietzsche, friedrich (wilhelm) to take account of the fact that The Birth departed from Bayreuth in the middle of its of Tragedy takes over, assumes as given, first festival. This dramatic change in his per- Schopenhauer’s version of Kantian idealism. sonal life was the outward manifestation of a According to this, the everyday world of plurality profound change in philosophical outlook, a and individuality is mere appearance or phe- change that found expression in Human, All nomenon. Beyond or behind the principium Too Human. The Birth of Tragedy, dominated individuationis lies reality itself, the monistic by Schopenhauer’s pessimistic transcendental- thing in itself called by both Schopenhauer ism and its musico-dramatic expression in and Nietzsche “the will,” and by the latter also Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, had been the prod- “the primal unity.” According to the meta- uct and expression of romantic alienation from physics in question, this is what constitutes worldly reality in general, and from the materi- our true identity. alism and scientific optimism of the nineteenth Nietzsche’s account of Dionysian art comes century in particular. But in Human, All Too as an answer to Aristotle’s question as to the Human all such “untimeliness” disappears. The nature of the “tragic effect.” Why is it that we idea of a “metaphysical world” relative to which voluntarily subject ourselves to depictions of nature is mere appearance is held up to ridicule. the terrible in life, the downfall and destruction All that exists is material reality. Moreover, it of human beings of more than usual power is a reality in principle capable of being under- and quality? Presumably, we must derive some stood, even controlled, by human beings. In kind of satisfaction. But what is its nature? short, the hitherto despised position of Socratism Schopenhauer had classified the tragic effect comes now to be occupied by Nietzsche. as the highest species of the “feeling of the sub- In line with this newfound optimism, art lime,” the feeling of fearless exultation that comes to be seen as useless – an object, even, we sometimes experience when confronting of contempt. Its function, as conceived in The the normally fearful – for example, a storm or Birth of Tragedy, was to protect us from the hor- waterfall. He, following Kant, explains this as a rors of human reality. But now we need no becoming alive to the “supersensible,” supra- such protection or “narcoticizing.” On the con- individual aspect of one’s being. And Nietzsche trary, we need to look at reality as unflinchingly does the same: the “artistic taming of the hor- as possible. The more we look, particularly, to rible” is, he says, “the sublime” (1966a: §7). In the metaphysical comforts of art, the less we are tragedy, though forced to witness the destruc- inclined to change that in the world which dis- tion of its hero, “we are not to become rigid with turbs us. Art, like religion, is the opiate of the fear: a metaphysical comfort tears us momen- neurotic. (Indeed art is religion: the feelings tarily from the bustle of changing figures. We served and promoted by religion are able to really are, for a brief moment, the primordial survive because, submerged in the vagueness of being itself” (1966a: §17). In Greek tragedy art, they have been severed from those cogni- this effect is achieved through the singing of the tive claims that have become ludicrous to chorus. Though we partially empathize with the the post-Enlightenment thinker.) Thankfully, tragic hero, our primary identification is with however, concludes Nietzsche, we are moving the chorus. This leads us to view the action into a postartistic culture. We live in the from a Dionysian, metaphysical perspective, “evening twilight of art”: “the scientific man is and through this we experience an exultant the further evolution of the artistic” (1986: affirmation of our supra-individual identity. §§222–3). Tragedy has the quasi-religious function of “redeem[ing] us from the greedy thirst for this THE GAY SCIENCE existence.” With an “admonishing gesture” it Here we confront yet another abrupt shift “reminds us of another existence and a higher in Nietzsche’s stance toward life and toward pleasure” (1966a: §21). art. As “aesthetic phenomenon,” we are told, “existence is still bearable for us.” But without HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN the aestheticization of life, the realization that In 1876, unable to sustain his friendship “delusion and error are conditions of human with Wagner any longer, Nietzsche abruptly knowledge” would lead us to “nausea and suicide”

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(1968a: §107). We are back, in short, with the rather like a well-constructed Bildungsroman. failure of Socratism: the brief reconciliation Construing one’s life so that one can will its eter- is over. We face, once again, our powerless- nal recurrence, unlike “profound superficial- ness ultimately to know and hence to impose ity,” is entirely “honest”: one wills, loves all of significant form on the world. Its character is “in one’s life, and there is none of the “looking all eternity chaos” (1968a: §109). away,” evasion, falsification, self-deception, Faced with this terrible knowledge brought and repression that is involved in the life of by that intellectual “honesty” which defines artifice. But it is an honesty achievable only by the scientist in general and the philosopher in that ideal fiction, the Übermensch (overman). particular, we must turn from science to art, that Only such a being would have the “over- “cult of the untrue” (1968a: §107) – not, or not flowing” psychic health necessary to incorpor- primarily, the art of artworks, but art, rather, ate the horrors of the world into a lovable, which has our own life as its product. We must beautiful whole. We, like Nietzsche’s alter ego learn from artists, learn in particular to utilize Zarathustra, remain “convalescents,” unable “artistic distance” (1968a: §§78, 107) so that to will the eternal recurrence. Lacking über- by standing back from an object “there is a menschlich health, we cannot but retreat into pro- good deal that one no longer sees and much the found superficiality. eye has to add if we are still to see [anything] . . . at all.” Yet we must be “wiser” than they. TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS For their subtle powers of transfiguration usu- The idea of the beautifying illusion as a solution ally stop with the artwork, whereas “we want to the predicament of living continued to have to be poets of our lives” (1968a: §299). We want a powerful hold over Nietzsche in the last year and need to write for ourselves, in particular, of his productive life: “Truth is ugly. We possess not the suicide-threatening life of honesty, but, art lest we perish of the truth” (1968b: §822), rather, a “mocking, light, fleeting, divinely runs an unpublished note from 1888. But untroubled, divinely artificial” kind of life that what distinguishes Twilight of the Idols from “like a pure flame licks into unclouded skies.” The Gay Science is a renewed interest in the Above all, we must learn from the Greeks, who tragic effect. What the tragedian communic- knew that to live requires one to “stop coura- ates, Nietzsche says, is a state of “[being] with- geously at the surface,” to be “superficial – out out fear in the face of the fearful . . . courage and of profundity” (1968a: §4). freedom of feeling before a powerful enemy, It is not difficult to recognize here a return both before a sublime calamity” (1966b: §9, 24). to the pessimism of The Birth of Tragedy and to What is this freedom of feeling? It is “the will to the Apollonian solution of redemption through life rejoicing over its own inexhaustibility . . . illusion. As in The Birth of Tragedy, however, be[ing] oneself the eternal joy of becoming.” Nietzsche contemplates a second art solution And, he points out, “herewith I again touch the to the predicament of living. This crucially point from which I once went forth: The Birth involves the idea of willing the “eternal recur- of Tragedy” (1966b: §10, 5). There is, that is, a rence” of everything in one’s life (1968a: cyclical quality to Nietzsche’s thought about §341), an idea which may be seen as equiva- art: at the end of his career, as at the beginning, lent to the injunction to amor fati, to love every- he offers us not merely the beautiful but also the thing that has happened in one’s life – indeed sublime as solutions to the problem of living: not in the world. merely the transfiguration of the world of indi- How is such “redemption” of the totality of viduals, but also its transcendence. the past possible? By discovering a “personal Different though they are, Nietzsche’s providence” even in the most problematic Apollonian and Dionysian solutions share events in one’s past; through seeing “how pal- with each other (and with Schopenhauer) the pably always everything that happens to us desire to escape the actuality of human life. turns out for the best” (1968a: §277). But to Though he would not wish to admit this, they do this one must be an artist: one must script are both species of – to use his own language – for oneself such a personality that the vicissitudes “romanticism.” For all his tough talk about of one’s past acquire a cumulative value honesty, courage, and facing up to life as the

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“will to power,” Nietzsche’s thought about art former, indicates what is to be achieved, and is, at the end as at the beginning, the product effectively mandates “make it so!” Playscripts are of a wounded consciousness. equivalent. These are work-specifying notations. To be correctly interpreted, scores must be See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century read according to the appropriate notational continental aesthetics; function of art; and performance conventions. Sometimes the schopenhauer; tragedy; wagner. notation is not to be read literally; for instance, sometimes a note is to be sharpened or flattened bibliography without this being shown in the notation. Primary sources Sometimes what is notated has the force [1872] 1966a. The Birth of Tragedy. W. Kaufmann merely of a recommendation, such as fingering (trans.). New York: Vintage (Includes The Case of indications. Sometimes what is required is Wagner.) not shown in the notation, for example, that [1878] 1986. Human, All Too Human. R. Hollingdale melodies are to be decorated when repeated. (trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The relevant conventions and practices have [1882] 1968a. The Gay Science. W. Kaufmann changed over time. Phrasing indications had the (trans.). New York: Vintage. status of recommendations in 1700 but were [1901] 1968b. The Will to Power. W. Kaufmann & mandatory by 1850; the same is true of the R. Hollingdale (trans.). New York: Vintage. 1966b. The Portable Nietzsche. W. Kaufmann (ed. & specified instrumentation. In general, the his- trans.). New York: Vintage. (Contains Thus Spoke torical trend was for scores both to indicate Zarathustra (1883–5), Twilight of the Idols (1888), and to mandate more detail. This is likely to be and Nietzsche contra Wagner.) connected to the standardization of instru- 1983. Untimely Meditations, vol. iv. R. Hollingdale ments and of orchestras, a more consistent and (trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. higher quality of professionalism among per- (Contains Richard Wagner at Bayreuth (1876).) formers, and the composer’s decreasing in- Secondary sources volvement in performances of his works. Heller, Erich. 1988. The Importance of Nietzsche. What is indicated may be precise (middle C) Chicago: University of Chicago Press. or vague (the tempo indication “fast”). Instruc- Higgins, Kathleen Marie. 1987. Nietzsche’s Zarat- tions of the latter kind indicate not that hustra. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. the notation is inadequate to specifying its Nehamas, Alexander. 1985. Nietzsche: Life as Liter- work, but rather that the given work is vague ature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (within conventionally established limits) in Ridley, Aaron. 2007. Nietzsche on Art. New York: some aspects of its constitution. Routledge. However detailed the notation is, it under- Schacht, Richard. 1983. Nietzsche. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. determines much of the concrete detail of Silk, M. S. & Stern, J. P. 1981. Nietzsche on Tragedy. its accurate performances and so they differ. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Performances always are richer in properties Young, Julian. 1992. Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Art. than the works they are of. Typically, a play- Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. script indicates what is to be said, but not its julian young accent, phrasing, pace, or tone; as well, it is rare that accompanying gestures, facial expressions, physical interactions between the actors, and non-Western art see african aesthetics; so forth are specified. These matters are left to amerindian aesthetics; chinese aesthetics; the performers’ (or director’s) discretion. The indian aesthetics; islamic aesthetics; decisions taken on such matters contribute to japanese aesthetics; rasa. the performers’ interpretation of the work. A difficult case to classify is that of the architect’s plan. It is addressed to those who notations Musical scores are paradigmatic of will instance the work, but their doing so is artistic notations, as is their function of specify- not usually regarded as a performance or as ing works for performance. The work’s creator allowing much interpretative freedom. Yet, if writes them and through them addresses the per- we allow that the architectural work is created

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notations when the plan is done, whether or not the Notational recordings may be made of per- building is built, just as we allow for finished formances that do not instance works; for but unperformed musical works and plays, the instance, the transcriber might notate a freely plan might best be regarded as work-specifying. improvised jazz solo from a recording of it. A similarly difficult case is that of the movie Where they are of work performances, notational script. Again, if we think of a remake based on recordings might target the performance, the the same script as a further instance of the same interpretation, or the work. That is, there may work, the script looks to be work-specifying. be performance-recording and interpretation- The alternative to these conclusions holds that recording notations, as well as work-recording the remake is a different but related movie, ones. Typically, a notational record of a perform- even when based on the same script, in which ance would record all its individual idiosyn- case the script is best thought of as a sketch or crasies, nuances, and micro-details, perhaps design for the work, but not as work-specifying. even its errors. A notational record of an inter- The corresponding view for architecture would pretation would capture not only the work but hold that an architectural work is not created also the way it is shaped for performance in the until the building is built. How we should set- given interpretation. A notational record of a tle such problem cases depends on the ontology work would indicate only what is work-consti- appropriate to works of the kinds in question. tutive. Notational records of interpretations or It can be clear that sketches, drafts, and performances are likely to include nonstand- designs prefigure the work, as aspects of the pro- ard notational characters, drawings, or written cess of its creation, rather than functioning as descriptions, because they aim to capture the work specifications. This is especially apparent kinds of details not usually covered in nota- where the artwork is singular and not for tions designed for work specification. The tran- performance, such as a hewn statue or an oil scriptions by Béla Bartók of Serbo-Croatian painting. In formulating or experimenting folksongs employ so many supplementary signs with the work, the artist might make prepara- that they are almost unreadable. tory drawings and models. These are not work A special instance of a notational recording notations. Though the distinction can be more is that of mnemonic notations. These have the difficult to draw in practice, the same applies to function of reminding performers (or their notes and drafts of dramatic works, musical teachers) of a piece with which they have a prior works, novels, and poems, and also to unused familiarity. These frequently underspecify the movie takes. work, leaving memory to fill in what is missing. Not all works for performance are trans- For instance, one might record a melody sim- mitted via work-specifying notations. Instead, ply by its direction of movement (First note, Up, a model performance might be given, and the Down, and Same), which may be sufficient to work then be passed on by performers who bring the melody to mind. For instance, the recall the work-relevant details of that perfor- last movement theme of Beethoven’s Ninth mance. This is commonly the case with dance, Symphony then would be FUUSDDDDUUSD- as well as in folk and oral traditions of music, SUUUSDDDDUUDDS, UUDUUUDDUUUDD- saga, and drama. Several notations for dance DUD, etc. The earliest musical notations were exist, though none is as entrenched as is the mnemonics, often of a rather simple kind. standard musical notation. These could be and Another anomalous work-recording nota- have been used to specify dance works. More tion is that of the pictographs that accompany often, though, they are written down after the some purely electronic musical works. Such fact, and often not by the choreographer, as notations are not addressed to performers – such a way of recording the work. In the musical case, pieces are for playback, not performance – and such notations are called “transcriptions,” they would be difficult to interpret sonically in though I will use the general term “work- any case. One reason for their production was recording notations.” A notation that is work- that, at one time, composers could copyright only recording describes the work and lacks the scores, not musical works as such. normative, directive force of notations with a On a liberal view of what counts as a nota- work-specifying function. tion, we could regard photographs of singular

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notations paintings and statues as notational records of feature is relevant to the work’s identity. By con- those works. The same might apply to copies in trast, it is a hallmark of allographic arts that the same or similar media, as well as to verbal they are notational; such works are defined descriptions of their appearance. And to return by their “spelling” and any accurate rendition to the sketches made in advance of the work, of this spelling instances the work, whatever we might regard these, if not as records, then other differences there are between renditions. as notational predictions or precursors of their Goodman goes on to consider the features that works. must be met by a notation if it is to unequivo- So far the focus has fallen here on the rela- cally specify a work and concludes it must tion between notations and works for per- be unambiguous and both syntactically and formance. Other kinds of works, especially semantically disjoint and differentiated. In multiply instanced ones, can be or are notated. other words, the notational elements cannot A novel, for instance, is characterized by a cer- overlap and every mark can be assigned to tain word sequence, and we might reasonably only one of any two notational elements. characterize an inscription of that sequence as Where elements in actual musical notations a work-constituting notation. Instead of being fall short of these standards, Goodman denies addressed to performers, that notation realizes that they specify work-identifying features. In the work, with the first instance that comes consequence, he regards tempo, improvised complete from the author’s hand setting the cadenzas, trills, figured basses, and the like as standard by which the faithfulness of later not part of the work, but rather as aspects of the copies or clones is judged. performer’s interpretation. Here poetry is problematic. If one thinks of Goodman’s attempt to exclude social con- poetry as to be read out, in effect to be performed, ventions and practices, so that the work can be the text of the poem is work specifying, but if specified purely in terms of its notation, means it is not to be read out the text is work consti- that he must either strip the work of features that tuting. Again, ontological analysis would be seem essential to its identity or treat every needed to settle the issue, or to demonstrate that work as created under a symbol system that is poems come in a variety of ontological types, unique to it (or, perhaps, to its composer) some of which are for performance and some not. (Davies 2001). This reductio should lead us to I call the written text of the novel work con- conclude both that there are no purely allo- stitutive because its analogic nature gives the graphic works and that acknowledgment of audience direct access to the work. On this the sociohistorical context as relevant to the basis, we might distinguish work-constitutive artwork’s identity undermines Goodman’s dis- notations from work-encoding notations. Examples tinction between autographic and allographic of the latter might include printouts of text, works (Levinson 1990). music, or movies as a sequence of 1s and 0s, or See also drama; music and song; authenticity electromagnetic tapes and computer files, or and art; goodman; ontological contextualism; grooves in vinyl records. To provide access ontology of artworks; performance. to the work, these must be decoded in some appropriate fashion, where decoding is a bibliography mechanical rather than an interpretative pro- Benesh, Rudolf & Benesh, Joan. 1956. An cess. In this schema, prints of movies are work- Introduction to Dance Notation. London: Adam & encoding notations because, though the frames Charles Black. are analogic, it is only when a print is screened Davies, Stephen. 2001. Musical Works and Performances: A Philosophical Exploration. Oxford: that the movie moves as it should. Other bor- Clarendon, ch. 3. derline cases include silkscreens, etched plates, Goodman, Nelson. 1976. Languages of Art. 2nd edn. woodcuts, statue molds, and photo negatives. Indianapolis: Hackett. Earlier I suggested that, on a liberal account, Laban, Rudolf. 1956. Principles of Dance and we might count one picture as a notational Movement Notation. London: Macdonald & Evans. record of another. The philosopher who wrote Levinson, Jerrold. 1990. Music, Art, and Meta- most on notations, Nelson Goodman (1976), physics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, ch. 5. would object. Paintings are autographic; every stephen davies

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objectivity and realism in aesthetics There think that something like this picture holds is objectivity in an area if it makes sense to in the case of shape. Our judgments of shape think of judgments on those matters as in represent facts about the shape of things as some way correct or incorrect, as right or obtaining, facts that we take to be independent wrong. Realism about a given area, in con- of those judgments, and indeed which we trast, is the claim that judgments on that topic can make sense of independently of our judg- are right or wrong because they describe dis- ing shape at all. The judgments are based on tinctive aspects of reality, the nature of which responses, perceptions of shape, that them- determines which of our judgments are cor- selves represent certain things as the case (that rect. Thus, while questions of objectivity focus what is before me is such and such a shape). on our judgments, questions of realism focus on Moreover, when things go right, our judg- the world those judgments concern. (That, at ments align with reality in the simplest way: least, is how I will use the terms. Some writers for example, we judge to be cubes all and treat the two as more or less synonymous.) only things that have a certain feature – they We can distinguish three aspects to any area are cubic. of discourse: the judgments we make on the topic Aesthetic matters might be thought to fit (either the mental act of judging that an object this strong realist picture too (Moore 1993: has some feature, or the act of expressing that 248–51). Below we will see some reasons for judgment verbally); the reactions to the world doubting that they do. I begin, however, with on which we base those judgments, be they views that take aesthetic discourse to lack cer- perceptions, feelings, or other mental states; tain features required for strong realism. and the features of the world that provoke Indeed, I start with views that lie at the other those reactions. Where not only realism but end of the spectrum, views that reject, not only realism in the strongest form is appropriate, we realism, but objectivity too. get something like the following picture. (1) The expressivist about aesthetics (Ayer The judgments in the discourse represent 1952) denies that our aesthetic judgments certain facts as obtaining. (2) Those facts are represent at all. Claim (1) is thus false of aesthetic represented as holding independently of the discourse, and so therefore are (2) and (3). But particular judgments we make about them. (3) the reason aesthetic judgments fail to repre- We can make sense of what those facts are sent is that the mental states that ground them without referring to our practice of making are not representational either. The reactions on such judgments, or the reactions on which which I base my judgments in aesthetic matters those judgments are based. (4) Those reactions are feelings, in key part of pleasure and dis- are cognitive: they, like the judgments they pleasure. These do not purport to capture how ground, represent those facts as obtaining. things are. They may be caused by certain (5) In favorable conditions, the pattern in our aspects of the world around me, but they no judgments (finding these things to be F, and more represent those aspects than a stinging sen- these things not to be) reflects some pattern in sation represents the nettle that was its cause. the world. (6) That correlation takes the most Thus the expressivist about aesthetics takes (4) straightforward form: judgments ascribing a to be false too, and to provide the fundamental single feature will be made in response to the point of contrast with matters such as shape. In presence of a single feature in the world. We may consequence, when we say, for instance, that

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objectivity and realism in aesthetics something is beautiful, we are not describing the other facts about the object. For the expres- world but giving voice to (“expressing”) the sivist, however, my feelings alone govern what pleasure the object has stirred. The classic I appropriately say, and nothing renders the feel- analogy here is with expressions of pain or of ings themselves appropriate or otherwise. If approval such as “ouch” or “hooray.” Note the only one of a pair of identical nettles stings me, suggestion is not that these various expres- the situation is odd; but there is nothing wrong sions mean “I take pleasure in/feel pain in my saying “ouch” to one and not to the at/approve of this.” For they would then be other. Thus, if we model the aesthetic case as representations of facts after all – facts about my closely on that of pain as the expressivist sug- responses. Rather, the claim is that language gests, some of the normativity of aesthetic here does not perform a representational func- judgment is left out. Nor is this the only omis- tion at all, but an expressive one. sion. Given that the feelings that supposedly There is something to be said in favor of ground aesthetic judgment can be neither expressivism’s claim that neither (1) nor (4) appropriate nor otherwise, the expressivist can holds in aesthetics. The idea that aesthetic make no sense of the idea that my judgment judgment is rooted in noncognitive responses, conflicts with yours. Yet we do take disagree- of pleasure, displeasure, and perhaps other ment to be possible in aesthetics. There must, feelings, is one with a distinguished history it seems, be more to aesthetic judgment than the (Kant 2000: §1; Hume 2004: 495). And it is expression of a noncognitive response. very plausible that when we utter aesthetic The error theorist (Mackie 1977) takes this judgments at least part of what we do is to moral to heart. On this view, aesthetic judgments express responses provoked by the object are just as much claims about the world as are judged. As many have noted, in some sense judgments of shape. There is a gulf between the right to offer an aesthetic judgment them, but it lies at the level of the world requires one to have experienced the object for described, rather than the semantics of our oneself, and to have responded to it in the claims. For while our aesthetic talk describes a appropriate way (Kant 2000: §33; Wollheim realm of distinct aesthetic properties, there are 1980: 234; Mothersill 1986). The expressivist in fact no such properties for it to describe can explain what goes wrong in such cases, and accurately or otherwise. There are shapes, col- why. Since the judgment’s role in our lan- ors perhaps, various properties studied by the guage is to express a certain response, to utter sciences and captured in everyday perception. the judgment when one lacks the response is to But there is not, in addition to these, beauty and misuse the words. (Compare “ouch” as uttered elegance, ugliness or lack of grace. When we by someone in pain, and by someone who is not.) examine the world reflectively, we find that However, expressivism is too crude. It the subject matter of aesthetic discourse goes implies that the only way in which our aes- missing. Thus, while the expressivist denies thetic judgments can be appropriate (or other- that aesthetic judgments are even candidates for wise) is as sincere (or not) expressions of truth, the error theorist accepts that they are feeling. There seems more room for right and candidates, but denies that any are in fact true. wrong here than this allows. For one thing, (They are either false or lack a truth value alto- each individual’s aesthetic judgments should gether.) In aesthetics, strong realism’s (5) and reflect the supervenience of aesthetic on non- (6) fail to hold. aesthetic matters. If you take two items to be Error theory is first and foremost a rejection perfectly alike in nonaesthetic respects, you of realism. However, in effect it rejects objectivity cannot reasonably take them to differ aesthet- too. It does so on the basis of three assumptions. ically. For instance, two paintings that present First, the content of our aesthetic claims is very the same appearance and that share a history committing: a realm of metaphysically distinc- (perhaps they were painted simultaneously by tive mind-independent properties, the distribu- an ambidextrous artist) cannot differ in beauty tion of which would provide the standard of or artistic merit: if one is a masterpiece, the correctness for our aesthetic judgments. Second, other is. At least to this limited extent, your judg- the only correctness that could apply to those ments of aesthetic quality are answerable to judgments would be truth and falsity. Third,

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objectivity and realism in aesthetics truth should itself be understood as correspon- is that not already enough for truth? (See dence between the content of one’s judgments Wright 1992: ch. 2.) The idea that there is at and the nature of mind-independent reality. least a notion of truth that is minimal in this way Given these assumptions, objectivity in aes- challenges the error theorist’s third assump- thetics requires realism. (See Zangwill 2001: tion. Even if he is right that truth provides ch. 9 for someone who accepts this entailment, the only option for correctness in aesthetics but uses it to reason to realism from objectiv- (assumption two), truth may not require real- ity.) Arguments against a realm of distinct ity to be as, according to assumption one, aes- mind-independent aesthetic properties, some thetic judgments claim. Instead, there can be of which we will consider below, then per- truth provided aesthetic talk exhibits enough suade the error theorist that, since realism is “discipline”: in effect, that it is governed by false, objectivity also fails. norms that ensure that not anything goes. Each assumption has been questioned. One Undermining the error theorist’s third assump- way to undermine the second is to consider tion in this way prevents him from building his quasi-realism. In effect, this is expressivism back position around the claim that no aesthetic in more sophisticated form. The quasi-realist pro- claim is true, at least until he says more about ject (Blackburn 1984, 1993) is to retain the idea the notion of truth he has in mind. that aesthetic judgments are at root grounded However, it is the error theorist’s first in noncognitive responses such as pleasure, assumption that is his Achilles heel. What while explaining how aesthetic discourse compels us to interpret talk about beauty, ele- nonetheless comes to have many of the features gance, or clumsiness in such a way as to a realist would expect. The project has been ensure that it all comes out false? It is a famil- worked through furthest in ethics. There, iar idea that interpretation, either of others’ one can perhaps see how we might not merely utterances or our own, should in part be express our moral attitudes, of approval or dis- guided by charity: it should ascribe error to approval toward certain actions, social struc- speakers only where their mistake is compre- tures, character traits, and the like, but seek to hensible (Davidson 1984). The error theorist’s find a way to bring others to share those atti- first assumption flies in the face of this prin- tudes. A form of language that at first merely ciple. What, then, justifies his understanding of expresses feelings might thus come to mimic our aesthetic talk? Of course, we do talk of aes- some of the features of descriptive discourse – thetic properties. But why think that the prop- allowing, for instance, that if my feelings and erties we are describing are to be understood as yours do not align, there is something undesir- the error theorist construes them – as wholly able in the situation (an expressivist analogue independent of our engagement with them? of disagreement over matters of fact). One The alternative is to take aesthetic talk to upshot of working this program through might concern properties that are in some sense be that the quasi-realist can make sense of anthropocentric. They are to be understood in some analogue of truth, as that at which utter- part by reference to our responses to them – thus ances in this ultimately expressive discourse rejecting the strong realist’s (3). (The natural should aim. That would provide us with right analogy here is with secondary qualities, such and wrong in aesthetics, without truth proper as color.) This idea appears repeatedly in one – contra the error theorist’s second assump- form or another throughout the history of aes- tion. It is far from clear whether this project can thetics. In its latest guise, it takes the form of the succeed in any area (Geach 1965; Hale 1993), idea that aesthetic properties are response- and its prospects in aesthetics in particular dependent. What it is for something to be, say, have been explored to only a limited degree beautiful, is for it to elicit a certain response (Scruton 1974; Hopkins 2001). However, its (pleasure, perhaps) in us. Such a view will see ambitions alone raise the possibility of making aesthetic properties as fitting the following sense of correctness without truth. template: X is F (e.g., beautiful) if and only if X Some consider that possibility unstable. If our would elicit response R (e.g., pleasure) from judgments in a given area are directed toward subjects S under conditions C. With the gaps a certain goal, and they sometimes attain it, why filled in, this might be offered as a claim about

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objectivity and realism in aesthetics what, for example, “X is beautiful” means; but responses to them, and “mere” complexes of need not be so. The thought might be only that world-plus-response, can in the end be sus- the right-hand side of the biconditional states tained (McDowell 1988). For these thinkers, the conditions under which the left-hand side response-dependence offers a way to make is true. (Compare: X is water if and only if X is sense of aesthetic properties without meta-

H20.) Either way, the response-dependence physical excess: it promises a moderate form of account of aesthetic properties promises to realism (e.g., Pettit 1983). All should agree, state conditions for the truth of our aesthetic however, that there can be no realism without claims (thus offering more than the express- objectivity, and that response-dependence has ivist would accept) without (as error theory yet to earn even that. To do so, it needs to fill does) beefing up those conditions to the point the gaps in the template above. In particular, at which they prove impossible to meet. it has to find a way to specify the observers There are certainly grounds for thinking whose responses fix what is (say) beautiful, that, if there are aesthetic properties, they take and the conditions under which those responses the anthropocentric form response-dependence occur. If it can do that, objectivity will have been describes. For, whatever aesthetic properties secured. Judgments will be right or wrong, as are, they are surely either themselves values for that matter will be the responses on which (e.g., beauty or artistic merit), or intimately they are based, depending on whether they connected to such values (e.g., elegance or accord or not with the responses and judg- clumsiness). How can we make sense of values, ments of those observers under those condi- without invoking the fact that they are valued tions. (Strong realism’s (2) will have been by someone (Railton 1998)? Again, aesthetic preserved.) The question, however, is whether properties seem to play no role in the order those specifications can be made. Can we, of things except via their effects on conscious sub- without falling into triviality or simply assum- jects. Perhaps it was the ugliness of Quasimodo ing objectivity, make sense of some judgers that led to his life being so hard, and beauty is and conditions as those whose judgments as often made as found. But such properties determine the aesthetic facts? play a causal part only via affecting, or being There are certainly the materials with affected by, us. Like colors, they have no “cos- which to begin. We might borrow ideas from mological role” (Wright 1992: ch. 5) independ- Hume (2004), who made the first, and still one ently of their causes and effects in conscious of the most thorough, attempts to solve this states. Why, then, suppose that there is any pro- problem. For instance, one of his thoughts was perty here independently of those states? that the key observers are those who are most Finally, it is surely plausible in aesthetics, as discriminating, that is, those who are best at in ethics (Nagel 1986: ch. 8), that the truth telling one possible object of aesthetic appraisal cannot in principle lie beyond our reach. Could (in the relevant category, be it mountain the majority of our collective aesthetic judg- views, or baroque cello concertos) from others. ments be seriously wrong? The possibility is Or we might appeal to ideas that Hume did not not clearly coherent. But why not, if we can consider, such as that of a trajectory within an make sense of the aesthetic facts independently individual’s taste. If everyone who enjoys P. G. of our reactions to them? Wodehouse, on reading the comic novels of Some might counter that it is just as hard to Evelyn Waugh comes to prefer those, then the make sense of properties, and facts involving “ideal critic,” at least of comic literature, them, that do need characterizing by reference should be one who has made that transition, to our responses: real properties cannot impli- rather than one who has not. cate observation of them in this way. Those A more serious challenge to the response- drawn to that thought may find in response- dependence project, and indeed to the dependence a source of objectivity for aesthetic prospects for aesthetic objectivity or realism judgment, but not a form of realism. Others, more generally, lies in the seemingly ineradicable however, are less fastidious. They wonder presence of disagreement. The threat takes two whether the contrast between “real” proper- forms. First, the extent of actual disagreement ties understandable independently of our threatens to show that aesthetic discourse is not

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objectivity and realism in aesthetics objective (so we should stop attempting to by the nature of the object we are judging, but make sense of how it can be so). Given how far also by irreducibly idiosyncratic aspects of our folk disagree on what is beautiful or artistically personalities and sensibilities. Ideal observers worthwhile, why think there is any room here could avoid dependence on such features only for right or wrong? The question is all the more by ceasing to be recognizable as responding pressing once we compare judgments across aesthetically at all. Disagreement deriving from cultures and historical periods, and once we these differences between observers is blameless: note that there may be more disagreement it impugns neither judgment. Since it is the than is at first apparent. For, as Hume noted, responses of ideal observers in those conditions people may agree that, say, the works of that fix which judgments are right and wrong, Shakespeare are excellent, and yet still dis- and hence fix the aesthetic facts (as the response- agree about why they are so. And we may dependence view conceives them), if ideal think (although Hume did not) that there is no observers can issue conflicting judgments, it corresponding chance of finding real agree- seems there cannot after all be one right judg- ment beneath apparent dispute. For in aes- ment, or any fact of the matter for judgments thetics, unlike morals, there do not seem to to reflect (Goldman 1995; Bender 1996). The be principles underlying our particular judg- question facing such views, and the moderate ments, principles on which we might agree; realism they offer, is whether they can specify the disagreement lying merely in whether, or conditions and observers so as to exclude this how, they apply to the case in hand. possibility. Serious as this challenge is, we should not give Less moderate forms of realism might avoid in too readily. The mere fact of disagreement this difficulty. By locating the reality that proves nothing: the most objective matter can underpins the correctness of judgment in facts provoke conflict in views, sometimes of an independent of the responses of observers entrenched and widespread nature. (Consider (ideal or otherwise), they need not let the past debates over whether the earth is flat.) presence of correctness turn on how certain What matters is what explains disagreement. observers would respond. Above I have Realist and objectivist views can do this. If sketched other objections that such views the conditions for discovery are unfavorable might instead face. Let me close by indicating enough, anyone can make the wrong judg- what sorts of position the theoretical space ment. However, disagreement does tend to offers, at the more determinedly realist end. exert dialectical pressure in the other direction. Stronger forms of realism might be natural- There must be some explanation for every ist or not. Nonnaturalist realisms are closest judgment reached on a given question. The to the strong form with which we began. more disagreement there is, the more judg- Naturalist realism is in some ways more subtle. ments must be explained without appeal to the The naturalist will try to identify aesthetic idea that they are correct, or that they reflect properties with properties of the kind science how reality is. But the richer our explanatory studies. To uncover what those naturalistic resources for explaining judgments without properties are, she may appeal to the evolu- appeal to their rightness/reality, the better able tionary benefits of engaging with them. It is we are to use those resources to explain every highly unlikely that, say, beauty corresponds in judgment on the matter. If no such judgment a straightforward way to some simple property needs explaining by leaning on these ideas, we studied by science. What, after all, do the have one reason fewer for supposing that judg- many and various things we call beautiful ments on that matter can be right, or that there have in common? But it might be that some com- are facts of the matter for them to reflect. plex or disjunctive property can be found to The second problem posed by disagreement play this role. Suppose, for instance, it turns out confronts the response-dependence view more that health in one’s mate offers reproductive directly. The worry is that, however “ideal” advantage, and that symmetry in features is conditions and observers are specified, it will an indicator of long-term health. Such symme- always be possible for those observers to disagree. try might then be one natural property Our aesthetic responses are not driven simply correlating with beauty. It would not be alone

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– sometimes we find asymmetrical things McDowell, John. 1988. “Values and Secondary beautiful, perhaps precisely for that reason. Qualities.” In Essays on Moral Realism. G. Sayre- But symmetry might form one element in a McCord (ed.). Ithaca: Cornell University Press, complex disjunction, one disjunct from that 166–80. disjunction always being present when beauty Mackie, John. 1977. Ethics: Inventing Right and is. (Thus, while the response-dependence view Wrong. New York: Penguin. Moore, G. E. 1993 [1903]. Principia Ethica. T. takes beauty to be a disposition to elicit a cer- Baldwin (ed.). Rev. edn. Cambridge: Cambridge tain response; the naturalist identifies beauty University Press. with the complex property that is that disposi- Mothersill, Mary. 1986. Beauty Restored. Oxford: tion’s categorical ground.) So the naturalist Clarendon. will accept every claim the strong realist Nagel, Thomas. 1986. The View from Nowhere. makes bar (6): there is no simple correspondence Oxford: Oxford University Press. between patterns in judgment and patterns in Pettit, Philip. 1983. “The Possibility of Aesthetic the world. As a corollary, she is likely to take Realism.” In Pleasure, Preference and Value. E. the judgments we make as representing the Schaper (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University complex disjunctive natural property in a way Press, 17–38. Railton. Peter. 1998. “Aesthetic Value, Moral Value that conceals, to some extent, its true nature. and the Ambitions of Naturalism.” In Aesthetics and Ethics. J. Levinson (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge See also aesthetic judgment; aesthetic prop- University Press, 59–105. erties; cognitive science and art; evolution, Scruton, Roger. 1974. Art and Imagination: A Study art, and aesthetics; hume; kant; relativism; in the Philosophy of Mind. London: Methuen. taste. Wollheim, Richard. 1980. Art and Its Objects. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wright, Crispin. 1992. Truth and Objectivity. bibliography Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ayer, A. J. 1952 [1936]. Language, Truth and Logic. Zangwill, Nick. 2001. The Metaphysics of Beauty. New York: Dover. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Bender, John. 1996. “Realism, Supervenience robert hopkins and Irresolvable Aesthetic Disputes,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 56, 283–97. Blackburn, Simon. 1984. Spreading the Word. Oxford: Clarendon. ontological contextualism proposes that Blackburn, Simon. 1993. Essays in Quasi-Realism. sociohistorical contingencies play an essential Oxford: Oxford University Press. role in fixing the identity and content of art- Budd, Malcolm. 1995. Values of Art. London: works. For example, a work’s level of original- Penguin. ity depends on what else has been done in its Davidson, Donald. 1984. Inquiries into Truth and genre, and a poetic or musical allusion cannot Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon. exist without the prior existence of the work Geach, P. T. 1965. “Assertion,” Philosophical Review, 74, 449–65. to which it alludes. According to Arthur C. Goldman, Alan H. 1995. Aesthetic Value. Boulder: Danto’s version of the theory, “the aesthetic Westview. qualities of the work are a function of their Hale, R. 1993. “Can There be a Logic of Attitudes?” own historical identity” (1981: 111). Hence, In Reality, Representation and Projection. J. Haldane contextualists deny that any work of art would & C. Wright (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University be the very same work if it were instead created Press, 337–63. in a significantly different time and place, or by Hopkins, Robert. 2001. “Kant, Quasi-Realism and the means of different art practices. Autonomy of Aesthetic Judgement,” European For example, contextualists propose that a Journal of Philosophy, 9, 166–89. twenty-first-century painting that looks exactly Hume, David. 2004 [1757]. “Of the Standard of Taste.” In Philosophy: Basic Readings. N. like a nineteenth-century Dutch still-life will Warburton (ed.). London: Routledge, 493–507. have artistic and aesthetic properties that can- Kant, Immanuel. 2000 [1790]. Critique of the Power not belong to the seventeenth-century painting, of Judgment. P. Guyer & E. Matthews (trans.). and vice versa. These differences are crucial Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. to the interpretation and appreciation of each

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ontological contextualism painting. This point is independent of whether features depend on art practices that exist at the the recent painting has been put forward as a time and place of its creation. faked seventeenth-century still-life. Even if it Beyond this core idea about identity, contex- is clearly labeled as a new work, perhaps with tualists disagree on the scope of the relevant con- the title Homage to a Dutch Still-Life, the newer text. Three important areas of disagreement painting has at least one important property, that are the relevance of events and interpretations of paying homage to the seventeenth century, that occur after a work has been created, the that cannot be possessed by any seventeenth- relevance of historical authorship to artwork century still-life. identity, and the extent to which different As this example suggests, contextualists often identity conditions hold for artworks of the discuss cases of perceptually indiscernible same general type. Contextualists contend that objects with distinct identities. As such, con- these disagreements can be resolved only by textualism extends Danto’s influential explo- acknowledging and understanding art’s fun- rations of two sorts of indiscernibles. First, damental historicity. However, if we must artists such as Duchamp and Warhol created consult historical practices in the art of paint- works of art with content not possessed by ing in order to determine whether a planned indiscernible nonart counterparts. Second, restoration of an early Renaissance fresco would two works of art can be perceptually indis- actually have the effect of destroying it, then cernible and possess very different content. we have already granted that distinct criteria Either way, audience indifference to a work’s art- might apply in different eras and for the vari- historical context will lead to superficial and ous arts. It might turn out that some works gain inappropriate responses. or lose essential properties due to their ongoing Where Danto concentrates on visual and histories, that authorship is more relevant for literary works, many contextualists concen- some kinds of works, and that two works in what trate on puzzles generated by the performing arts. seems to be a unified art form might be very dif- Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in F minor ferent kinds of things. The remainder of this entry (Op. 20, no. 5) was composed for four instruments. will take up these three issues in turn. But suppose four cellists follow the score on Contextualism is frequently defended with the four cellos, transposing three of the parts in insight that some features of artworks become order to accommodate the cello’s lower range. accessible only to respondents who grasp the art- There is overwhelming consensus among con- historical context in which they were actually textualists that, questions of musicality aside, created. Because the piano is a percussive the result is simply not a performance of that instrument, the “singing” quality of a piano musical work. Haydn created a musical work melody emerges only through its contrast with for violins, viola, and cello. In the string quar- other piano compositions and performing styles tet tradition, three cellos cannot be substituted (Walton 1970). Consequently, ontological con- for the violins and viola. Furthermore, it is textualism highlights connections between not merely a question of whether the perform- ontological and epistemological issues. ance sounds as Haydn intended it to sound. However, many works of art have features Contextualists also hold that playing the string that cannot be identified or appreciated until quartet on four electronic keyboards that are pro- they are evaluated in light of later art history. grammed to sound like the appropriate string As a result, some contextualists contend that instrument does not yield a performance of properties gained after a work’s creation can that string quartet. An instance must be be relevant to its identity. A work’s history derived by the correct process in order to be an of influence and critical reception can trans- instance of that work. At best, a sonic replica form its identity (McFee 1980; Danto 1981; is a derivative work whose identity is, in turn, Bacharach 2005). Most contextualists respond dependent on the historical fact of its deriva- that, with rare exception, the relevant history tion from the earlier work. Such examples is restricted to events and actions preceding a confirm that the essential properties of works of work’s creation. So we must take care not to art cannot be restricted to their perceptually conflate the conditions that allow audiences accessible features. Many of a work’s essential to recognize a property with the art-historical

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ontological contextualism facts that make it possible in the first place. art diverts attention from the many art traditions Relationships that create a relational property that are indifferent to the place of a work within are not always sufficient to reveal its presence; an individual’s oeuvre. Furthermore, even in hence many works of art remain misunder- those cases where oeuvre is relevant, we need stood or wrongly valued until subsequent art his- more information about the art-historical tra- tory reveals them in a new light. This is not to dition in order to decide whether the resulting deny that some properties, such as being an difference involves an essential rather than an influence on later generations, arise due to accidental property. Not every difference is subsequent history. However, there is no good equally relevant to work identity. For example, reason to treat these properties as essential to art history provides examples of works wrongly the works in question (Levinson 1990; Stecker assigned to one artist and then subsequently 2003). reassigned. On Levinson’s hypothesis, any Contextualists also debate whether the such reassignment involves recovery of a dif- artist’s identity is always part of an artwork’s ferent and previously unknown work. Many identity. Some contend that Claude Monet philosophers find it more plausible to say that could not have painted Sunset and Fog at the same work was previously misunderstood Eragny simply because that painting was the in some way. Epistemic access has changed work of Camille Pissarro. Here, being painted by rather than the identity of the work. Finally, Pissarro is regarded as essential to that paint- Stephen Davies (2001: 73–86) denies that two ing. Had Monet painted an indiscernible paint- artists invariably carve out distinct creative con- ing, at least one of its essential properties texts. After all, collaborations between artists are would be different and so it would be a differ- sometimes followed by significant independent ent work of art. Jerrold Levinson (1990) argues careers (e.g., Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel, and that the artist’s identity is crucial in just this way. John Lennon and Paul McCartney). For a time, His primary argument is that a work’s position the two artists shared a common creative con- within an artist’s oeuvre determines a number text. If later achievements in an oeuvre are rel- of its properties, and so the work’s identity evant to the identity of earlier works, then the depends on the artist’s identity. For example, sup- later, independent works of both collaborators pose Igor Stravinsky never composed The Rite are equally relevant to the identity of their earlier, of Spring and Serge Prokofiev composed a work shared work. Since collaboration demonstrates late in his own career that sounds just like it; that two artists can share an art-historical Prokofiev’s work would have very different context, we cannot generalize to the desired expressive properties than Stravinsky’s Rite of conclusion that any two artists invariably Spring. Similarly, Monet’s frequent practice of inhabit different art-historical contexts. repeatedly painting the same scene was not Turning to our final issue, contextualists adopted by Pissarro, so the existence of only one need not assume that all paintings or musical painting of a particular scene at Eragny would works are of a single ontological kind. Although be significant for Monet in a way that is not true ontological theorizing is greatly simplified by the of Pissarro’s actual painting. Generalizing, it thesis that each art form has a uniform onto- appears that another artist could not have logy, contextualists question this hypothesis. created any work of art that another artist did Different artworks are of distinct ontological create (Rohrbaugh 2005). Levinson’s argu- types and these types are themselves the prod- ment explicitly identifies an underlying prin- uct of sociohistorical contingencies. Hence, ciple that any two artists invariably inhabit any art form can develop ontological variety. different art-historical contexts. Each artist’s For example, a pair of indiscernible paint- own personal history is a relevant historical ings might be distinct works of art because context that cannot be duplicated by any other they belong to distinct ontological categories. individual. Although a seventeenth-century Dutch still- Other contextualists respond that considera- life ceases to exist if the canvas is destroyed, tion of oeuvre is relevant for only a limited an indiscernible twenty-first-century painting number of recent art movements. Excessive might be created by a process that permits focus on a relatively narrow range of Western its multiple instantiation. Suppose the newer

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ontological contextualism painting was generated by a computer- composers’ intentions about instrumentation. At controlled process that mass produces oil the other extreme, Pierre Schaeffer’s musique paintings. Like an etching or a cast sculpture, concrète was composed on recorded tape, so the computer program could allow for the its public presentation involves playbacks of painting’s subsequent reinstantiation and thus recorded sound rather than performance on permit its survival despite the destruction of its instruments. These and countless other exam- first instance. In contrast, painting a new can- ples show that, depending on which musical tra- vas to replace a seventeenth-century painting dition generates a particular work, fewer or yields a second painting rather than a second more audible properties are essential to work instance of the first, so the replacement paint- identity and thus to the identity of whatever is ing does nothing to preserve the first’s exis- heard by an audience. Furthermore, these dif- tence. (This point should not be confused with ferences demonstrate that different kinds of the fact that copies often provide epistemic entities can be musical works, leading Stephen access to important features of lost works. In a Davies to defend the position that music is cre- context that distinguishes between originals ated in at least six different ontological categories. and copies, epistemic access does not ensure Some ontologists challenge contextualism ontological equivalence.) Although some con- on the grounds that we can construct a simpler, textualists contend that the history of painting unified ontology (D. Davies 2004). Others dis- is such that paintings, unlike prints, are inca- tinguish between artistic and aesthetic proper- pable of multiple instantiation (Levinson 1990), ties and argue that contextualism holds for others contend that the historical record artistic but not aesthetic properties (Zangwill includes numerous paintings for which no 2001). In reply, contextualists deny that works original/copy distinction can be made among of art always fit comfortably into ontological multiple versions (Gracyk 2001). categories developed to handle philosophical Music offers rich evidence of art’s ontological problems unrelated to philosophy of art. It is not variety. Knowing that something is a musical obvious that art-kinds can be collapsed into work does not itself inform us of its ontological familiar ontological categories. Theories that kind, nor of its proper mode of appreciation. For rely on only one (Currie 1989; D. Davies 2004) example, although performances of Haydn’s or two (Wollheim 1980) ontological categories String Quartet in F minor have a stipulated are revisionist recommendations that down- instrumentation, some of J. S. Bach’s works are play art’s fundamental historicity. In contrast, for unspecified Klavier or keyboard. Although contextualism is a descriptive enterprise that these works by Bach and Haydn belong to a sin- requires mapping out the ontological cate- gle art-kind in being notated works for perfor- gories generated by historical and contemporary mance, Bach’s Klavier compositions permit far practices. Repositioned to the meta-ontological more variability of timbre than do Haydn’s level, contextualism supports methodological string quartets. Furthermore, Haydn did not openness to ontological variety. expect performers to engage in extensive im- Amie Thomasson (2004) defends ontological provisation when playing his string quartets, variety by appeal to theories of reference. The whereas many of Bach’s notated works rely on correct reference of any unit of language is figured bass, a practice in which the composer determined by the beliefs and practices of lan- supplies a bass line and basic chords and then guage users. Hence, the name of a particular expects performers to supply improvised middle work of art refers to one object rather than to lines. Although Bach and Haydn share a another as a result of sociohistorical contin- common tradition in the same century, their gencies. The same holds true for general art-kind shared reliance on notation specifies neither terms, such as “painting” and “symphony.” the kinds nor degree of heard properties that are There is no alternative, a priori method for essential to work identity. To complicate mat- connecting terms with their referents. As a ters, many musical works are not notated and result, there is some remote possibility that still others cannot be realized through perfor- additional historical inquiry will reveal that mance. A great deal of music arises in oral tra- Vermeer did not paint Girl with a Pearl Earring, ditions where it does not make sense to consult in which case the phrase “Vermeer’s Girl with

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ontology of artworks a Pearl Earring” incorrectly describes the object Stecker, Robert. 2003. Interpretation and Construc- it is commonly thought to describe. However, tion: Art, Speech, and the Law. Malden: Blackwell. there is no plausible account of language and Thomasson, Amie. 2004. “The Ontology of Art.” In meaning that would allow us to be similarly mis- The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics. Peter Kivy (ed.). taken about the meaning of an art-kind term like Oxford: Blackwell, 78–92. “painting.” Thus, the only method for deter- Walton, Kendall L. 1970. “Categories of Art,” Philosophical Review, 79, 334–67. mining what paintings are, and thus for deter- Wollheim, Richard. 1980. Art and its Objects. 2nd edn. mining their ontological status, is to examine Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. the beliefs and practices that link these terms to Zangwill, Nick. 2001. The Metaphysics of Beauty. their referents. Consistency among the relev- Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ant beliefs and practices must take priority theodore gracyk over theoretical elegance or uniformity. The final step is to admit that the beliefs and prac- tices governing the identity conditions of Vermeer’s paintings diverge significantly from ontology of artworks Branch of aesthetics those governing “string quartet” in the phrase which examines the kind(s) of existence pos- “Haydn’s last string quartet.” Again, we might sessed by works of art (including literary and prove wrong about which work is Haydn’s last musical works). Not until the twentieth century string quartet, but we certainly have a handle did the ontology of artworks become a regular on which practices are relevant to distinguish- and sustained topic of discussion among philo- ing string quartets from symphonies, much sophers. Of course, one finds remarks on the less from paintings. These divergences are so topic in the writings of earlier philosophers; substantial that we must regard paintings and but those remarks were either undeveloped or, string quartets as distinct kinds of things. Hence, as in the case of Hegel, not picked up by other contextualism endorses ontological variety. philosophers. In this century, Roman Ingarden has been far and away the most prominent See also twentieth-century anglo-american figure on the Continent and, after him, Benedetto aesthetics; “artworld”; authenticity and art; danto; feminist aesthetics; formalism; mean- Croce. By contrast, in the Anglo-American tra- ing constructivism; ontology of artworks; dition contributions have come from many dif- performance. ferent quarters, and no one thinker has stood out from the others in the way that Ingarden bibliography has stood out among Continental philosophers. Bacharach, Sondra. 2005. “Toward a Metaphysical The phenomena which a satisfactory onto- Historicism,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Critic- logy of art must organize and account for are ism, 63, 165–74. extraordinarily rich and diverse. Let us begin Currie, Gregory. 1989. An Ontology of Art. New with a quick survey, couched in ordinary lan- York: St. Martin’s. guage, of those phenomena; and then move on Danto, Arthur C. 1981. The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Cambridge, MA: Harvard to look at some of the theories. University Press. In several of the arts (e.g., music, dance, and Davies, David. 2004. Art as Performance. Malden: drama) we regularly work with the distinction Blackwell. between a performance of something and that Davies, Stephen. 2001. Musical Works and Perform- which is (or can be) performed. Let us call the ances. Oxford: Clarendon. latter a performable. In music, at least, one may Gracyk, Theodore. 2001. “Who is the Artist if have either of two quite different entities Works of Art are Action Types?” Journal of in mind when speaking of a performance. One Aesthetic Education, 35(2), 11–24. may have in mind an act of performing the Levinson, Jerrold. 1990. Music, Art, and Meta- work. Or one may have in mind an occurrence physics: Essays in Philosophical Aesthetics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. of the work performed. Let us regiment our use McFee, Graham. 1980. “The Historicity of Art,” of the language a bit, and call only the latter a Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 38, 307–24. performance. Rohrbaugh, Guy. 2005. “I Could Have Done That,” That we do in fact operate with the distinc- British Journal of Aesthetics, 45, 209–28. tion between performables and performances is

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ontology of artworks clear from the following three considerations we distinguish between a particular casting (of which the second and third are, strictly and that work of which it is one of the castings. speaking, applications of the first). First, a per- And now and then in architecture we find formance will always diverge in certain of its need for a counterpart distinction – between, say, properties from the work of which it is a an example of one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s performance; and often, where it need not usonian houses, and that Usonian House itself diverge, it will in fact diverge. Thus it comes of which the house is one of the examples. about that critics make such remarks as “All the The considerations which compel these dis- energy of the first movement of the concerto was tinctions are, in their structure, exactly the missing in last night’s performance.” To speak same as those which compelled the distinction thus is to work with a performable/perfor- between performables and their performances. mance distinction, and to claim that, though the A given impression of a print may well have first movement of the performable has the come into existence after the print itself had been property of being energetic, the first movement created, and may well go out of existence of last night’s performance lacked that property. before the print does. We speak of two different Second, our way of using the language of iden- castings of the same sculpture. And a particu- tity and diversity indicates that we are working lar usonian house may, to cope with the high with the performable/performance distinction. rainfall of its climate, have a drain spout where For we speak of the same work as having distinct the Usonian House itself, of which it is an performances (occurrences). But in general, example, has none. In literature and film we also two distinct things cannot both be identical work with such distinctions. For most works of with some one thing. That leaves open the literature, there are many copies of the same lit- abstract possibility that one of the perform- erary work – and when there are not in fact ances is identical with the performable and the many copies, there could always be. And in other is not; but that just seems incoherent. film there are many copies of the same work of The conclusion must be that our way of using cinematic art – or, once again, if there are not, the concepts of identity and diversity in speak- that is purely accidental; there could be. ing of the performance arts indicates that we do It will be convenient to have one set of terms indeed operate with a distinction between per- to mark all these different, but parallel, distinc- formables and performances. tions. Let us follow an increasingly common Third, our way of using the concept of exis- practice, and borrow from C. S. Peirce the tence indicates the same thing. We often speak terms “type” and “token.” Peirce introduced of works as existing before any performance of these terms to mark the distinction between a them has taken place. Then, after the work has word understood as something that can be existed for some time, a performance of it takes repeatedly inscribed or pronounced, and a place; after a while, the performance is over, word understood as an inscription or sounding while the work endures. Here too, then, we out. The former he called a type and the latter assume the distinction. It is worth adding that he called a token. We will call an impression of in dance and drama we regularly find reason to an art print a token, and the work of which it is introduce an entity that comes in between the an impression a type; a performance of musical work and its performances. We speak of a pro- work a token, the work of which it is a perfor- duction. And a certain production of a work mance a type; and so on. is neither the work itself nor is it a particular One notices a tendency, in those who first performance. (It is, in fact, another sort of begin reflecting on the ontology of artworks, to performable.) think that the performed work in music is the In certain of the nonperforming arts we same as its score, when there is a score, as work with distinctions closely similar to the there is a tendency to think of the performed performable/performance distinction. When work in drama as identical with its script. But, dealing with graphic art prints, for example, quite clearly, this is mistaken; and our ordin- we regularly distinguish between a particular ary distinction between a work of music and impression and the work of which it is one of the its score, a work of drama and its script, and so impressions. When dealing with cast sculpture, on, is to be honored. For not only may a work

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ontology of artworks of music exist without ever having been scored; developed in the twentieth century have also all the score impressions may be destroyed and been unitive, in the sense that they deny any the work still endure – by virtue, for example, fundamental ontological distinction as that of being lodged in people’s memories. It may be between types and tokens. Let us begin by con- added that the type/token distinction also has sidering some of these uniform and unitive applications to scores, scripts, and drawings. theories. We speak of paintings and noncast sculp- In the first half of the twentieth century, tures differently. Here we do not operate with mentalistic theories of the ontological nature of anything like the type/token distinction. Of artworks enjoyed a good deal of popularity. course, there are reproductions of paintings We can take the theory of R. G. Collingwood and copies of noncast sculptures. But these are as representative. In The Principles of Art, not originals in the way in which impressions Collingwood (1970) observed that one can of prints and castings of sculptures are originals. compose tunes and poems in one’s head; he went In the field of graphic art prints, we distinguish on from there, and from a few other consider- between an impression and a reproduction of the ations, to conclude that the work of art is a impression; this is exactly like the distinction mental object. He conceded, of course, that between a painting and a reproduction of the musicians make sounds with instruments, that painting. What is missing in our talk of paint- painters cause viscous pigment to adhere to ings is that other distinction that we work with canvas, that sculptors chisel away at marble and in the field of graphic arts – the distinction wood, and so forth. But no such physical enti- between an original impression of a print and ties are works of art, insisted Collingwood; they the print of which it is an impression. are devices that serve, when perceived with The type/token distinction has even more appropriate imagination, to communicate a pervasive application in the arts than so far work of art from one mind to another – from the indicated. And where it does have application, creator’s mind to the minds of members of the it is often worth reflecting on the subtle differ- public. On this view, performances, impres- ences in how the distinction finds application. sions, castings, copies, and the like are not So the above must be taken as an indication of works of art – as paintings are not. They are, the phenomena that an ontology of artworks all of them, “mere” devices for transmitting the must take into account, not as an ample and work of art from the mind of the artist to the suitably qualified description of the phenomena. minds of his or her public. In my statement of the phenomena I have Collingwood’s theory has a rather large highlighted the distinction between those arts number of consequences that, in combination in which we make use of one or another ver- or singly, have by most thinkers been regarded sion of the type/token distinction, and those as a reductio ad absurdum. Among such are arts such as painting in which we do not make these: on this view one can, in principle, create use of any such distinction. Some of those who a “painting” entirely in one’s head, without have written on the ontology of art have ever making pigment adhere to surface; and the regarded this distinction as not ontologically object that one hangs on a wall and puts in a significant, and have gone on to develop crate for shipping to an art show is not a work ontologies of artworks that are uniform across of art. What is called “Van Gogh’s Starry Night” the distinct arts. We may call them uniform does not hang on any wall. Furthermore, on this theories – in distinction from nonuniform the- view, a work is not in existence when no one ories. Of course, there may be uniformity has it in mind. Works typically go in and out of across the arts with respect to the type/token dis- existence; they exist intermittently. tinction and nonuniformity in respect to other Nominalistic theories of the ontology of art- ontologically significant distinctions; for exam- works deny that there are any such entities as ple, some of the arts are obviously temporal in those we have singled out as types; there are only ways that others are not. Unfortunately, it will tokens. Thus, they too are unitive uniform the- be necessary here to exclude those other dis- ories. Of course, as indicated above, it certainly tinctions from consideration. In turn, a good appears that in our discourse about the arts many of the uniform theories that have been we commit ourselves to the existence of types.

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Thus, to make his theory plausible, the nomi- relevant to aesthetic appreciation, but also nalist has to make it seem plausible that we do some features of how he discovers it are relevant. not thus commit ourselves – for example, by He calls those features that are thus relevant making it seem plausible that reductive analy- the artist’s heuristic path. And his ontological ses can be given of all true sentences that proposal is that works of art are action types of appear to commit their users to the existence of the following sort: someone’s discovering a types, a “reductive analysis” of such a sen- certain structure via a certain heuristic path. tence being another sentence which asserts Discoveries of the same structure via different the same proposition but clearly does not com- heuristic paths are instances of different works, mit its users to the existence of types. It is as are discoveries of different structures via the probably fair to say that no nominalist theorists same heuristic path. The structures as such have in fact made it seem plausible that reduct- are not works at all. ive analyses can be given of all such sentences. Currie is led to this unusual view from his con- Nelson Goodman is the most aggressively viction that “distinct works may possess the nominalistic of all those who have written same structure.” For example, though it is the- about the arts. But nominalism functions for oretically possible that Beethoven and Brahms Goodman more as ideal than as project; and, should independently have discovered and certainly, it is not in his hands a completed pro- composed the same musical structure, their ject. In his Languages of Art, Goodman (1968) works would nonetheless have different prop- makes clear his commitment to a nominalistic erties – for instance, Brahms’s might be Liszt- ontology. But he says that in the book he will influenced, Beethoven’s would not be. But one speak with the “vulgar” rather than with the and the same entity cannot both have and lack “learned”; and he offers very few suggestions a certain property. “In cases like that,” says as to how vulgar talk might be replaced with Currie (1989: 65), “what differentiates the learned. works is the circumstances in which the com- A complex variant on the more or less poser or author arrived at the structure.” standard nominalism to which Goodman is But is it decisively clear that the property we attracted has been developed by Joseph wish to attribute to what Brahms composed is Margolis (1980). On Margolis’s view, works of being Liszt-influenced? May it not rather be the art are all tokens of a special sort; namely, they relational property of being such that this com- are “culturally emergent entities” which, though posing of it was Liszt-influenced? Obviously, one embodied in physical objects, are not to be and the same entity may have both that prop- identified with those objects. Margolis concedes erty and this other one: being such that that that in our discourse about the arts we also refer composing of it was not Liszt-influenced. Thus it to types; but in his ontology he insists that is questionable that the argument even gets there exist no such entities. As he realizes, this off the ground. To this we may add that the commits him to the position that it is possible theory has a good many counterintuitive con- to refer to entities that do not exist – indeed, to sequences; for example, since on this view a work entities that in no sense whatsoever “are.” of music is a composing, and composings are not The observation that the nominalist tries to the sorts of things that can be heard, it follows achieve a unitive uniform theory by denying the that works of music cannot be heard. existence of types leads one to wonder whether The views that we have considered are all uni- anyone has tried to achieve a unitive uniform tive uniform theories. A dualist uniform theory, theory by moving in the opposite direction – by contrast, would contend that, though our denying tokens rather than types. Exactly such ordinary ways of speaking do not reveal it, the a theory has been proposed by Gregory Currie type/token distinction does in fact have appli- in An Ontology of Art (1989). Currie thinks cation in the arts of painting and noncast that an artist, in composing or creating, discovers sculpture. It is rather often said, for example, that a certain structure – of words, of sounds, we might well have a technology for making of colors, or whatever. He adds that the artist copies of paintings – not reproductions, but always does this in a certain way; and he copies – looking as much like the “original” as insists that not only is what the artist discovers you please. All those copies would then be

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“originals,” in the same way that all the impres- Many significant positions staked out during sions of a print are “originals”; and it is purely the twentieth century in the extraordinarily accidental, of no ontological significance, that rich discussion concerning the ontology of art- we have no such technology – or that we do works have not been presented here; many have it but do not use it. significant contributors to the discussion have But the argument is fallacious, in an inter- not been cited. In particular, nothing has esting way. What brings it about that a set of been said about any of the so-called ontolo- print impressions are all impressions of the gical contextualist theories that have emerged same print is not that they are indiscernibly alike; in recent years. they may be very far from that. So, too, what brings it about that a series of musical perfor- See also twentieth-century anglo-american mances are all performances of the same work aesthetics; collingwood; definition of “art”; is not that they sound indiscernibly alike; they goodman; ingarden; margolis; notations; may sound very different indeed. Two perfor- ontological contextualism; performance. mances are performances of the same work if they are brought about under the guidance of bibliography the same set of rules for correctness in perfor- Collingwood, R. G. 1970 [1938]. The Principles of mance. And they may satisfy that condition, Art. Oxford: Clarendon. while yet sounding very different. Our practice Currie, Gregory. 1989. An Ontology of Art. New of painting might have been such that painters York: St. Martin’s. ordained rules for correctness of instances; but Goodman, Nelson. 1968. Languages of Art. New York: Bobbs-Merrill. in fact it is not like that. Ingarden, Roman. 1973 [1931]. The Literary Work A nonuniform theory of the ontology of art- of Art. G. G. Grabowicz (trans.). Evanston: North- works will regard the type/token distinction as western University Press. present in some of the arts and not in others. Levinson, Jerrold. 1990. Music, Art, and Meta- It turns out that the main work of accounting physics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. for this difference will have to be done by an Margolis, Joseph. 1980. Art and Philosophy. Atlantic appropriate theory of the nature of artistic Highlands: Humanities Press. types. Ingarden on the Continent, and I myself Wollheim, Richard. 1971. Art and Its Objects. New in the Anglo-American tradition, have developed York: Harper & Row. the most elaborate theories of artistic types. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 1980. Works and Worlds of Art. Oxford: Clarendon. Taking as my cue the phenomenon just men- tioned of rules for correctness, I argue that artis- nicholas wolterstorff tic types are a special sort of kinds; I call them norm kinds. It is typical of natural kinds that there can be both well-formed and malformed originality A work of art can be an original, examples; there are, for instance, malformed in the sense that it can be an authentic work examples of the horse. In a similar way, there by so-and-so, without having any degree of are incorrect performances of musical and dra- originality. What is originality and what, if matic works, defective castings of sculptures, and anything, does it have to do with artistic or so on. Thus, artistic types are not sets; for a set aesthetic value? A common response to the cannot have different members from those it does first question holds that to have originality is to have, whereas artistic types can have more or be a historical first in some important respect – fewer tokens than they do have. Artistic types the historically first instance of a kind that are instead kinds; for kinds can have more or might have other instances, produced by other fewer examples than they do have. But, more artists. (An example would be the first expres- specifically, they are norm kinds. One composes sionist painting.) We can begin by working a work of music by selecting a set of rules for with this definition of “originality,” refining it correctness of (musical) performance; thereby as necessary. However, if this is what original- one selects a certain norm kind. That, then, ity is, it at least needs explaining why original- is the work that one has composed, which is then ity is relevant to artistic or aesthetic value. available for performance. Presumably the first work to attain a certain level

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originality of artistic or aesthetic awfulness is original in in the context of some theory of art. Townsend the sense in question. If being original (in that is clear that merely giving originality some sense) is sufficient for having value, a work can important role in a theory of art does not be of positive historical significance because it suffice to show how originality adds aesthetic has negative artistic value. It is at least unclear value. The expression theory, Townsend how having this significance could at the same observes, can appeal to originality as part of its time guarantee the work some positive artistic account of what distinguishes aesthetic from value. nonaesthetic expression of emotion. However, On one view, originality (in the sense of all this shows is how originality might be a being a historical first) is not an aesthetic value condition on being a work of art. It does not by itself, though it is a component of a work of show how being original adds to a work’s aes- art’s total value (Meiland 2004). Critiquing thetic value. What is wanted, according to this position requires fixing what falls under Townsend, is a theory in which the role ori- the notion of total value. Does total value ginality plays in art supports the claim that ori- include any value the work of art might have, ginality confers artistic value. Townsend offers such as economic value or even its value as a his own theory of art as an example. This theory potential source of heat? If so, originality could links originality and creativity to what hap- add to a work’s total value by giving it histor- pens when artists think of themselves as part ical value. But as yet we have no reason to of their work. For Townsend, originality is an think that an increase in total value is an aesthetic value when what is novel in the increase in artistic value. After all, a work’s work is its giving creative expression to a new total value can be increased without increasing power of the artist’s mind. its artistic value – by, say, increasing its eco- Is expressing a new power of the artist’s nomic value. Perhaps total value is supposed to mind artistically valuable? It might be, if the new be restricted to only those values that arguably mental power can find creative expression are forms of artistic value. Even if so, the ques- only in a work art. But, even if a certain men- tion remains how being original contributes to tal power can find creative expression only in total value in that sense. a work, it is not clear why that power must be Some philosophers hold that the contribution new for its expression to be of artistic value. a work’s originality makes to its aesthetic value Whether the historical novelty here lies in cannot be understood by considering original- the newness of the power or in its expression ity in isolation from other forms of artistic (or both), it remains unclear why novelty value. For example, Alan H. Goldman (1995) adds value over and above the value the work claims that a work must have other positive derives from being the creative expression artistic values if originality is to add to its value (novel or not) of some power (new or not) of the as art. Being a historical first adds value only artist’s mind. to art that would otherwise have artistic value. A view made popular by Arthur C. Danto Generalized to historical matters of any sort, this (1984, 1997), if not one he would necessarily explains why not everything that is a histor- claim as his own, has it that originality in art ical first has historical value. What it does not is a matter of the work’s occupying a special explain is why the value added when the his- place in the development of art. This fits torical first involves an artistically valuable Townsend’s bill, in that it accounts for the work of art is artistic rather than historical. artistic value of originality in the context of a Is there some special way of being a his- theory of art. It does so in a way that explains torical first that ensures that a work of art what is special about a work’s being a histor- displaying originality has positive artistic or ical first. For it limits originality in art to those aesthetic value? If there is, perhaps this special works that found new art movements. This way can be used to refine the notion of artistic kind of originality is directly relevant to a work’s originality, so as to secure its link to artistic value. artistic value, since the value of a work is Consider Dabney Townsend’s view. determined by the extent to which it advances Townsend (1997) argues that for originality art’s evolution, an evolution that ultimately, for to be an aesthetic value, it has to be understood Danto, sees art transformed into philosophy.

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One problem with this view is that it seems value of originality does not derive from historical too narrow, implying as it does that very few novelty. What matters is the way in which works have the relevant sort of originality. positive artistic qualities are present in a work The view also implies that a work’s originality when they constitute part of what it is for it to cannot be cited to explain its impact on art be the work it is, and thus, in one sense of the history, since its originality just consists in words, unique, irreplaceable. Unlike Goldman, its having the impact it does. The cost of con- Sparshott is not saying that originality adds necting originality to artistic value in this way value if a work of art has other artistic values. is having to adopt a very narrow understand- It is the way in which the work has the values ing of the latter. it does that makes it unique. It is unique in virtue Francis Sparshott’s understanding of ori- of having the positive artistic qualities it does in ginality and its relation to artistic value, just the way it does, whether or not it is the first like Townsend’s, is part of his theory of art. to have them. Sparshott holds that a work of art has artistic value merely in virtue of having originality, See also authenticity and art; creativity; which he equates with a specific sort of danto; expression theory; forgery; theories uniqueness. Arguably, the uniqueness that of art. Sparshott has in mind is not that something has bibliography through being a historical first in some special way. Sparshott stresses that the uniqueness of Crowther, Paul. 1991. “Creativity and Originality in Art,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 31, 301–9. a work of art does not require (or ordinarily Danto, Arthur C. 1984. “The End of Art.” In The Death involve) breaking from past traditions or initi- of Art. B. Lang (ed.). New York: Haven, 5–35. ating new movements. What matters for a Danto, Arthur C. 1997. After the End of Art: work’s originality is not its doing something Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. for the first time, but the way in which it does Princeton: Princeton University Press. what other works do. To explain what he has Goldman, Alan H. 1995. Aesthetic Value. Boulder: in mind, Sparshott draws an analogy with the Westview. special sort of uniqueness a loved one has for Guyer, Paul. 2003. “Exemplary Originality: Genius, his lover. Someone is loved for the special way Universality and Individuality.” In The Creation of he does the things we all do, a way that makes Art: New Essays in Philosophical Aesthetics. B. Gaut & P. Livingston (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge him irreplaceable. Similarly, it is the special University Press, 116–37. way in which a work does what other works also Levinson, Jerrold. 1980. “Aesthetic Uniqueness,” do, not its independence from existing tradi- Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 38, 435– tions or movements, or its possession of other 50. artistic or aesthetic values, that makes it unique. Meiland, Jack. 2004. “Originals, Copies, and What is compelling about Sparshott’s ana- Aesthetic Value.” In Aesthetics and the Philosophy logy is its applying to art the notion of someone of Art. P. Lamarque & S. H. Olsen (ed.). Oxford: who is unique in that he is irreplaceable in our Blackwell, 375–82. affections, not because of positive qualities that Sibley, Frank. 1985. “Originality and Value,” British can be found in no one else, but because of just Journal of Aesthetics, 25, 169–84. Sparshott, Francis. 1982. The Theory of the Arts. how positive qualities are present in him. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Those qualities are part of the way the loved one Sparshott, Francis. 1983. “The Disappointed Art is who he is, and so are in part constitutive of Lover.” In The Forger’s Art. D. Dutton (ed.). what about him is loved. The positive value of Berkeley: University of California Press, 246–63. the loved one’s being just who he is can be Townsend, Dabney. 1997. An Introduction to found in no one else, however like him they may Aesthetics. Oxford: Blackwell. be. Technically, Sparshott’s notion of original- Vermazen, Bruce. 1991. “The Aesthetic Value of ity entails that every original work is a histor- Originality,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 16, ical first, since it is the only work that presents 266–79. its qualities just as it does. But for Sparshott, the george bailey

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painting see drawing, painting, and print- Works in the performing arts typically admit making; depiction; picture perception; repre- of multiple instances and frequently involve sentation. notations, but these features do not distinguish them from many works in the other arts. For performance Within the major performing example, novels may have multiple instances; arts of the Western tradition – drama, ballet, statues may be produced on the basis of opera, both instrumental and vocal music, sketches and models. In the performing arts, and, possibly, narrative forms of poetry – per- the work is conceived for performance and formance need not involve the presentation of is completed when a specification for perfor- an independently identifiable work; that is, mance or a model instance is produced. The performances may be improvised, as is often the work is not identical with the script or score, case with mime, for example. Moreover, within but comes into existence through, and usually these arts, some works do not require perfor- at the same time as, the production of the mance; a musical work may consist of taped nat- specification. As a result, a play is completed ural sounds. Usually, though, the performing arts when it is scripted, even if it is destined involve the presentation of works that derive never to be performed. A novel must exist in their independence from their instances either at least one instance, but a performing work from the existence of notated specifications for need have no instances. And, while a statue performances (such as scripts or musical scores) may be produced from plans, the existence of the or from the creation of model instances, faith- work relies on the execution of the plan. That fulness to which is preserved within the perfor- is, the plan in these cases is a plan for the cre- mance tradition. Ballet typifies this latter case. ation of the work itself; whereas, where the Works in the performing arts have some- performing arts use notations, those notations times been identified with their notations (or with specify not how the work is to be created, classes of performances compliant with their but, instead, how the created work is to be notations). But notations need not be involved instanced. In terms of the distinction drawn in the creation of such works. More to the here, cinema is not a performing art as such, point, notations sometimes leave work-consti- though dramatic (and musical) performance tutive elements unspecified and sometimes usually is involved in the creation of the cinem- include specifications that are not work-consti- atic work. tutive. For instance, in an early eighteenth- Specifications of works intended for perform- century musical work it may be understood ance are frequently minimal, leaving consider- that the performer is required to embellish the able freedom to the performer in the realization notated melody or to fill in the figured bass, of the work. Typically this is the case with jazz, whereas written phrasing or dynamics in the for example. Even where the specification is score of the same piece might make interpreta- detailed, it underdetermines vital aspects of tive recommendations that the performer is any performance. For instance, playwrights do free to ignore. Whether all constitutive aspects not usually notate the timing and nuances of of the work are notated and whether every- phrasing to be employed by the actors. To the thing that is notated is constitutive depends on extent that performers, in presenting the work, the background of conventions against which must go beyond what is provided by the work’s the piece’s creator works. creator, performance is essentially creative. At

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performance this minimal level, creativity in performance is (1) There is disagreement about the onto- consistent with dull, mechanical rendition, logical character of musical works, with some however. Primarily we value the performer’s cre- authors seeing them as “pure” sound struc- ativity when this involves skills that bring the tures and others viewing them as including work vividly to life. among their constitutive elements the instru- Where performance takes as its point the ments and performance practices known to presentation of an artist’s work, achieving a and specified by the composer or mandated by fair degree of accuracy must be its first goal. One the conventions of the time. What one takes to can perform a Balanchine ballet only if one be required of an accurate performance depends attempts to preserve what constitutes the work on one’s view of the ontological character of the as the particular piece that Balanchine cre- work. Authors in the first camp, who see mus- ated. Audiences are interested in works, gener- ical works as thin in properties, regard the ally, as the works of artists. Given this, it is authenticity movement as going beyond what is reasonable to regard performers as having a required in the name of accuracy. “Authentic” duty to the audience to do what is in their performances have no more claim to legitimacy power to render the work accurately. Perfor- than do many “inauthentic” performances. By mances also serve other goals, though. They contrast, those who take the view that musical should be stimulating, revelatory, and so on. works are thick with properties regard the pur- Perhaps a first performance should aim for as suit of accuracy as requiring the approach much clarity of form and content as is consis- adopted by the authenticity movement. But it tent with the artist’s instructions, but if a work should be noted that what composers can is already well known to the audience it can be determine as constitutive of their works varies appropriate to aim for adventurous and idio- considerably from place to place and time to syncratic approaches to its interpretation. This time, which suggests that musical works display may be why Shakespeare’s best-known plays or considerable ontological variety. If authenticity Mozart’s operas are often radically transformed is mainly a matter of accuracy, then the auth- in modern-day productions. entic performance of jazz or fifteenth-century How should inaccuracies in performance be masses is far less restrictive of performers than regarded? One might deny that a performance is the authentic performance of Berlioz. differing in the smallest detail from what is (2) There is also dispute over the desirabil- constitutive of the work is a performance of it, ity of authenticity in musical performances of as Goodman (1976) notoriously does. This works of the past. If the aim of authenticity approach is counterintuitive, however, given is to provide access to the experience of the that works often remain identifiable in perfor- music that the composer’s contemporaries mances with many inaccuracies. A normative should have had, and if historical and cultural approach to the issue is more reasonable. An differences between us and them prevent our inaccurate rendition is a performance of a sharing that experience, then the pursuit of given work if it is the performer’s intention to authenticity is pointless. In this view, works perform that work and if the work remains re- are reconstituted through time so that, strictly cognizable within the performance. A perfor- speaking, it is not Beethoven’s symphonies mance may be the worse for inaccuracies, but (as he would have recognized them) that we it can be good overall, because accuracy is not appreciate. An alternative position holds that we the sole criterion of value for performances. can narrow the gap that separates us from We would not usually condemn a live perfor- the past and from other cultures, and thereby mance that achieves spontaneous vibrancy at experience works of these times and places the cost of minor errors. as the works of their creators, though doing Within classical music, since the 1960s there so requires sensitivity to the art-historical con- has been a marked move toward “authentic” ventions and practices presupposed by the or “historically informed” performance. The works’ creators and original performers, along goals and achievements of this movement are with suspension of expectations and habits hotly debated. Two lines of argument should be acquired in appreciating different, more familiar distinguished. kinds of works.

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A final, different issue: sometimes it is said that Goodman, Nelson. 1976. Languages of Art. 2nd edn. the critic is like the performer in generating the Indianapolis: Hackett. work’s properties through his or her interpre- Hamilton, James R. 2001. “Theatrical Performance tation of it. There are parallels between the and Interpretation,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art two activities – both the performer and the Criticism, 59, 307–12. critic must understand the work if they are to Hamilton, James R. 2007. The Art of Theater. Malden: Blackwell. perform their jobs convincingly, even if the Kivy, Peter. 1995. Authenticities: Philosophical Reflec- performer’s understanding is more practical tions on Musical Performance. Ithaca: Cornell and may be difficult to articulate. But if the University Press. suggestion is that critics and performers Levinson, Jerrold. 1993. “Performative vs. Critical do essentially the same thing, the distinction Interpretation in Music.” In The Interpretation of between the performing and nonperforming Music. M. Krausz (ed.). Oxford: Clarendon, 33–60. arts drawn above collapses. Yet that distinction Osipovich, David. 2006. “What is a Theatrical does seem to be widely acknowledged, and on Performance?” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Critic- the following grounds. ism, 64, 461–70. The playwright and the composer create Saltz, David Z. 2001. “What Theatrical Performance Is (Not): The Interpretation Fallacy,” Journal of works for performance. The contribution of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 59, 299–306. the performer is anticipated and desired by the Thom, Paul. 1993. For an Audience: A Philosophy work’s creator. The performer mediates between of the Performing Arts. Philadelphia: Temple Uni- the artist and his or her public, most of whom versity Press. would otherwise lack access to the artist’s Thom, Paul. 2007. The Musician as Interpreter. work. By contrast, the critic’s efforts, useful University Park: Pennsylvania State University and interesting though they may be, are not Press. necessary for the work to reach its audience stephen davies and, in that sense, are uninvited. Moreover, criticism concerns itself with performances of works, as well as with the works themselves, but performance art The performing arts are we would not normally consider the presenta- those artistic practices whose primary pur- tion of the critic’s views as a performance of the pose is to prepare and present “artistic perfor- performance. Performance interpretations pre- mances” – performances that make perceptually sent a way of playing the piece, whereas critics’ manifest to receivers qualities that bear on the interpretations are concerned with explaining appreciation of works of art. A performance its meaning or import (Levinson 1993). may be artistic in this sense if either (1) it is itself an object of artistic appreciation, or (2) it plays dance; drama; music and song; See also an essential part in the appreciation of one or authenticity and art; goodman; notations; more other things that are objects of artistic ontological contextualism; ontology of appreciation. We are most familiar with per- artworks; performance art; style. formances that, whether or not they are artis- bibliography tic in the first of these senses (see Kivy 1995; Brown, Lee B. 2000. “ ‘Feeling My Way’: Jazz Davies 2003), are artistic in the second sense. Improvisation and Its Vicissitudes – A Plea for Examples would be performances of independ- Imperfection,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art ently identifiable works such as Shakespeare’s Criticism, 58, 112–23. Hamlet or Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata. Davies, Stephen. 1987. “Authenticity in Musical We may term the latter “performed works” Performance,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 27, and the former “work-performances.” 39–50. In attempting to locate works of “perfor- Davies, Stephen. 2001. Musical Works and Perform- mance art” in this more general context of ances. Oxford: Clarendon. Dipert, Randall R. 1988. “Toward a Genuine Philo- artistic performance, the most obvious strat- sophy of the Performing Arts,” Reason Papers, 13, egy would be to identify them with particular 182–200. performance events that – in contrast with Godlovitch, Stan. 1998. Musical Performance. work-performances – are artistic in the first London: Routledge. but not in the second of the above senses. But

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performance art this would conflict in at least two ways with widely ignored, expressions were in perfor- our antecedent classification of artworks. First, mance. Often, this involved theatrical perfor- it would make free jazz improvisations works mances that stressed provocation, interaction of performance art. Second, it would exclude with the audience, and the rejection of the tra- accepted works of performance art that are ditional theatrical idea that performance is themselves performed works admitting of work-performance. Such performances drew multiple performances (e.g., works by Robert upon such nonartistic practices as the circus, Wilson and Laurie Anderson). While some vaudeville, cabaret, and puppet shows, and have sought to restrict performance artworks sought to relocate art in public space rather than to nonrepeatable events – Alan Kaprow, for in galleries. The focus was not, as in theater tra- example, so restricted the use of the term “hap- ditionally conceived, on the representation of pening” – artistic practice does not conform to action and the rendering of a text, but on the these suggestions, and neither shall we. performers themselves and the visual aspects – Given these difficulties, it is perhaps better to the spectacle – of the performance. The con- identify works of performance art through joining of different traditional artistic media in their relation to certain historically situated such performances is well illustrated in the traditions of artistic making, traditions from Bauhaus conception of the “total artwork,” which they emerge or by reference to which they something echoed in the “happenings” of the define themselves. This is the approach taken by 1950s and 1960s and also in later works by two prominent writers on this issue, RoseLee artists such as Robert Wilson. Goldberg (2001), who has authored an auth- Carroll takes avant-garde theater, as repre- oritative history of performance art, and Noël sented in particular by Artaud, to be one of Carroll (1986), who situates performance art- two sources of the interest in performance in works in relation to theoretical and practical the art of the 1970s and the 1980s. He dis- innovation in the visual and theatrical arts in tinguishes between what he terms “art perfor- the latter half of the twentieth century. Both mance” and “performance art.” The former authors resist the invitation to define “perfor- originated in the 1960s as a reaction to certain mance art,” on the grounds that the phenom- perceived problems with the ways in which ena we seek to capture under that label are too visual artworks were presented in galleries. diverse. Goldberg (2001: 9) stresses that much The doctrine of “medium-purity,” promoted twentieth-century performance art stems from most forcefully by Clement Greenberg, was seen artists’ dissatisfaction with more established as denying the relevance of the artist’s perfor- artistic practices, and with working within mance, as exemplified in the action painting the limitations of particular artistic media. of Jackson Pollock. “Art performance” manifested Performance art often draws in a single work itself initially in “happenings” that rejected upon different such media – literature, poetry, both the idea of the purity and autonomy of dif- theater, music, dance, architecture, and paint- ferent artistic media, and the focusing of artis- ing, as well as video, film, slides, and narrative tic interest on formal properties of objects – deploying them in ways that by their very nov- divorced from the activities of artists. One of the elty defeat any attempt at definition: all that can most famous such performances took place at be said is that performance art is “live art by Black Mountain College in North Carolina in artists,” but, as we have seen, this is at best a 1952, and involved collaborations, under the necessary condition for being performance art aegis of John Cage, between musicians, choreo- in the accepted sense. graphers, poets, painters, and film-makers. Goldberg traces the roots of performance art Later exponents of “art performance” included in the second half of the twentieth century to individual artists such as Vito Acconci, who such earlier movements as Italian Futurism, used his body as a medium for exploring and Russian Constructivism, Dada, Surrealism, expressing themes relating to human interac- and Bauhaus. In each case, she maintains, the tion, and Gilbert and George, who produced “object” works customarily associated with works of “live sculpture.” While their artistic these movements come out of an artistically vehicles are performances, these works, like revolutionary impulse whose initial, but now traditional visual artworks, are made accessible

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performance art to audiences in art galleries, but through the performance artworks and works of theater, visual or verbal “records” or “documentations” the most useful distinguishing marks may be the of the performances. Carroll, like Goldberg, reliance, in the articulation of content in per- stresses the awareness, on the part of those formance art, on the visual and the spectacu- involved in the development of “art perfor- lar rather than the textual and the narrative, mance,” of the earlier traditions of Futurism and on the performer as performer rather than and Dada. as representation. (For the contrary view that “Performance art,” in Carroll’s sense, devel- theatrical performances are themselves works oped out of traditional theater, as a reaction of performance art, see Hamilton 2007). In the against the idea that dramatic performance case of what Carroll terms “art performance,” should be a vehicle for a literary text. It on the other hand, difficulties arise from the inti- stressed, rather, the performative aspects of mate relations between much recent art per- group or individual activity on a stage, and the formance and conceptual art. Goldberg, for values, such as spectacle, realizable through example, notes that performance art fits very nat- such activity. The orientation of traditional urally with the conceptualist’s hostility toward theater toward representation, spectatorship, the “art object” as commodity. Performance and fidelity to the text was replaced by a con- art, as event, is by its very nature transient cern with the presentational, the participatory, and, insofar as it involves the artist’s body as and the visual and gestural. In dance, this material, cannot be bought and sold in the manifested itself in the interest in the body in standard way. motion in the work of choreographers like In cases where the performance seems Yvonne Rainer – something that echoes designed to function as a materialization, in the interests of the Futurists in the body as and through the artist’s activity, of the con- mechanism and in “Taylorism,” the study of ceptual content of the work, the line between efficient movement in the work environment. performance art and conceptual art becomes Rather than the performer mediating between difficult to draw. For example, as with some the audience and a character that she represents, works by Yoko Ono (Goldberg 2001: 154), the there is a focus on performativity, the unmedi- work may offer a set of instructions for a per- ated interaction between the performer and formance, with no apparent requirement that her audience. Recent work in “performance art” those instructions be put into practice in order in Carroll’s sense has generated and in turn for the work to be fully appreciated. It is the very been influenced by philosophically inflected idea of carrying out a particular performance studies of performativity by those working that serves to articulate an artistic content, it in “performance studies” (e.g., see Parker & seems. More problematic still are early works Sedgwick 1995). by Vito Acconci – normally classified as par- Performance art of both kinds raises a num- adigm examples of performance art – such as ber of distinctive philosophical questions. First, Following Piece, a particular extended activity as already noted, it is difficult to delimit the undertaken by Acconci in 1969 in New York extent of the art form other than by reference City. The piece required that, on 23 consecutive to various historical traditions, which them- days, he followed people at random until it selves comprise much that is not obviously became impossible to do so. While many of itself performance art. The latter, as noted, Acconci’s other performances of that time are overlaps with and incorporates other art forms documented by a cinematic record, Following in significant respects. Attempts at clarifying Piece is represented in galleries by just a few still the nature of performance art are also likely photographs staged by Acconci after the event to be frustrated by the generally transgressive – indeed, he failed to perform the required agenda that has driven much work in the field. actions on some of the 23 specified days. It is In the case of total artworks, this is perhaps not tempting to say, again, that the artistic content a serious problem, because, while such works is articulated by the idea of carrying out such a incorporate different artistic media, the multi- performance, given that we are offered only plicity of media itself provides a distinguishing sparse visual assistance if we try to appreciate criterion. In the case of the overlap between the work. Other late modern works prescribing

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perspective particular performances raise similar issues Parker, Andrew & Sedgwick, Eve (eds.). 1995. Per- (see Davies 2003, 2007). formativity and Performance. New York: Routledge. These examples are troubling because, as david davies we have noted, the stress on “performativity” in works of performance art suggests that appreciating such works requires an immediate, or at least a cinematically mediated, engagement perspective In the pictorial arts, the term by the receiver with the performance itself. “perspective” generally refers to the system of Where the performance is a singular event artificial perspective, whereas “aerial perspective” presented to an audience on a given occasion, refers to the depiction of the loss of clarity in form we are prepared to say, as with unrecorded and color in the far distance. Artificial perspec- work-performances of musical works, that tive, the subject of this article, is the method “you had to be there” to appreciate the per- for depicting space which was invented by formance. But, where no opportunity for such Filippo Brunelleschi in Florence in the 1420s and an engagement is ever offered, the status of a perfected by writers and artists in the course piece as performance art becomes unclear. of the fifteenth century, notably Leon Battista Finally, there is a further issue about the Alberti, Lorenzo Ghiberti, and Piero della accessibility of much performance art. Even if Francesca. The invention of artificial perspective we are present during the performance event(s), marks a watershed in the history of changing a proper grasp of the work will often require that attitudes toward images, their use, and their we bring considerable contextualizing knowledge manufacture in western Europe, dividing the to bear upon what is manifest to us. Many per- mystery of the icon from the secular magic of formance works are motivated by social and illusionism. For this reason, it has always fas- political concerns of the artist. For example, cinated historians of art. However, it has the use of the artist’s body in a performance become the subject of philosophical contro- lends itself to the expression of themes about gen- versy only in the twentieth century, as a result der and embodiment that have been central to of an article published by Erwin Panofsky in feminist thinking. Performance art therefore 1927. provides an interesting challenge to those Panofsky’s ideas were partly influenced by the “empiricist” theories of artistic appreciation that German mathematician Guido Hauck, who try to exclude such contextualizing knowledge had elaborated a curvilinear alternative to the from the proper appreciation of artworks. system of artificial perspective some 50 years earlier. But the influence of the Neo-Kantian See also conceptual art; performance. philosopher Ernst Cassirer was more important. Following Kant, Cassirer (1953–7) believed bibliography that the mind imposes a form on the ultimate material of experience, that this is an absolute Carroll, Nöel. 1986. “Performance Art,” Formations, 3(1), 63–79. and invariable prerequisite for cognition, and Davies, David. 2003. Art as Performance. Oxford: that the form itself is determined not by the Blackwell, ch. 9. objects we apprehend, but by the structure of Davies, David. 2007. “Telling Pictures: The Place human sensibility and understanding. How- of Narrative in Late-Modern Visual Art.” In ever, Cassirer argued that human knowledge Philosophy and Conceptual Art. P. Goldie & and experience are conditioned in this way not E. Schellekens (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University only by the fixed and unalterable canons of Press, 138–56. space, time, and causality but also by the vari- Goldberg, RoseLee. 2001. Performance Art: From able “symbolic forms” of language, mythology, Futurism to the Present. Rev. & expanded edn. art, and science. London: Thames & Hudson. Hamilton, James. 2007. The Art of Theater. Oxford: Panofsky’s article, entitled “Die Perspektive Blackwell. als ‘symbolische Form’,” presents the case for Kivy, Peter. 1995. Authenticities: Philosophical regarding artificial perspective as a symbolic Reflections on Musical Performance. Ithaca: Cornell form. It cannot, Panofsky argues, claim to be a University Press, ch. 5. uniquely valid method for representing space as

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perspective we see it because it is based on two important trick in the armoury of illusionistic art” (1977: assumptions: “first, that we see with a single 205). The trick is turned by applying a set of motionless eye; and second, that the plane sec- rules, but the impression it causes in a specta- tion through the cone of sight is an adequate tor proves that artificial perspective is far from reproduction of our visual image. The fact is, being an arbitrary code. “What may make a however, that these assumptions involve an painting like a distant view through a window extremely bold abstraction from reality (if, in this . . . is the similarity between the mental activi- context, we may call the subjective visual ties that both can arouse” (1973: 240), and impression ‘reality’)” (1927: 260). therefore “the goal which the artist seeks . . . [is] The first assumption is evidently false; the sec- a psychological effect” (1982: 228). Artificial ond, Panofsky argues, is no closer to the truth perspective, he argues, tends to produce this than the first. His argument is obscure and effect. Pirenne argues in a similar vein that a pic- somewhat confused. However, he claims that ture painted in perspective will “produce visual perspective pictures represent the visual field as percepts in the observers . . . which resemble if it were flat, whereas in fact it is shaped like a those which would be given by the (actual or sphere; that the system of perspective records the imaginary) scene represented” (1970: 10). influence of distance on apparent size in a way As these quotations reveal, not only is the sta- which accords more closely with the images on tus of artificial perspective disputed, it is also our retinas than with our visual impressions, uncertain what would settle the matter. In where the influence of distance is compensated order to prove that artificial perspective has or for by psychological mechanisms; and that does not have a singular authority, independent the system of perspective is designed to pro- of custom and convention, should we attempt duce pictures on flat surfaces and represents to measure the geometrical differences between straight lines as straight, whereas the retina is a picture painted in perspective and a retinal concave, and so straight lines are represented image? Should we compare the pattern of light on its surface by curves. It follows, Panofsky reflected by such a picture with the pattern argues, that artificial perspective is – to borrow a reflected by the scene depicted? Or should we phrase that Cassirer used to describe language investigate the psychological episode that the – “a magic mirror which falsifies and distorts the picture is apt to cause? forms of reality in its own characteristic way” I suspect that none of these strategies is the (1946: 137) and which influences our percep- right one. In order to decide whether Brunel- tion and our imagination accordingly. leschi and his followers devised an ingenious Since the publication of Panofsky’s paper, code or discovered a method for reproducing the many distinguished theorists of art, psycho- visible form of space, we must first appreciate logists, and philosophers have addressed the that the system of artificial perspective is a question of whether the system of artificial per- synthesis of the various techniques for depict- spective is best regarded as an elaborate code or ing nonplanar spatial relations that already as a discovery about the form of visible space. existed – overlapping, foreshortening, and per- Following Panofsky, Read claims that “the the- spective diminution. (No special techniques for ory of perspective . . . is a scientific convention; depicting planar spatial relations – above, it is merely one way of describing space and has below, to the left of, to the right of – are needed, no absolute validity” (1956: 67). Goodman for they can be reproduced on the painted sur- argues that “the bundle of light rays delivered face.) If we can explain what these relatively to the eye by the picture [of a building] drawn primitive techniques accomplish, and how in standard perspective is very different from the they accomplish it, we shall find it easier to bundle delivered” by the building itself, and he understand their harmonious integration into therefore maintains, as do Read and Panofsky, a unified system, and the awkward puzzle that that “the behavior of light sanctions neither Panofsky created may be solved more easily. our usual nor any other way of rendering Overlapping, which is the simplest tech- space” (1968: 19). nique for depicting nonplanar spatial relations, On the other hand, Gombrich describes was already used by Egyptian artists in the Old artificial perspective as “the most important Kingdom to depict the partial occlusion of one

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perspective object by another. The object that is partly world, but features of our subjective visual im- hidden from sight is only partly depicted, and pressions. To take a recent example, Christopher the part of the painted or carved surface that Peacocke writes as follows: would otherwise depict this hidden part depicts instead the part of the object in front that Suppose you are standing on a road which stretches from you in a straight line to the horizon. hides it. There are two trees at the roadside, one a hundred Foreshortening and perspective diminution yards from you, the other two hundred. Your are more sophisticated techniques, but they experience represents these objects as being of the serve essentially similar purposes. Foreshor- same physical height and other dimensions; that tening allows a painter to depict what philo- is, taking your experience at face value you would sophers have misleadingly called “apparent judge that the trees are roughly the same physical shape” – that is, an object’s outline or silhou- size . . . Yet there is also some sense in which the ette. “Occlusion shape” is a less tendentious nearer tree occupies more of your visual field than term. A circular plate viewed obliquely has an the more distant tree. This is as much a feature of elliptical occlusion shape: it will occlude an your experience itself as is its representing the trees as being the same height. (1983: 12) elliptical patch on a plane perpendicular to the line of sight. An object’s occlusion shape is a In Peacocke’s view, this shows that visual function of its actual shape and its orientation experience has certain features that do not relative to the line of sight of a spectator, and “represent the environment of the experiencer so foreshortening allows a painter to depict not as being in a certain way,” because “no veridi- only the shape of an object, but also its orien- cal experience can represent one tree as larger tation. Thus, a panel by Uccello in the National than another and also as the same size as the Gallery, London, which depicts the battle of other” (1983: 5, 12). I do not intend to say any- San Romano, includes a fallen knight lying thing about Peacocke’s view that visual expe- along a line orthogonal to the picture plane. rience involves mental representations. What Needless to say, this is a feat of artistry that was is relevant for present purposes is the idea, beyond the powers of the artists who depicted plainly present in this passage, that the relative the many fallen warriors on the Bayeux occlusion size of the two trees is not actually Tapestry or the Narmer Palette. a feature of the visible environment but of the Perspective diminution allows a painter to visual impressions of the person who sees depict relative occlusion size. If I hold out my the trees. hands in front of me, and extend one arm fur- This idea is mistaken. Their relative occlusion ther than the other, my hands will not appear size is a visible property of two trees, no less than to differ in size, but the greater occlusion size of their relative size. (And the occlusion shape of the nearer hand will be evident: the nearer a plate is a visible property of the plate, no less hand will occlude a larger patch on a plane per- than its shape.) This is clear from the fact that pendicular to my line of sight. The relative I can mistake the relative occlusion size of occlusion size of two objects is a function of two trees, and my mistake can be corrected by their relative size and their relative distance measurement and geometrical calculation. For from the spectator, and so perspective diminu- example, I might guess that the nearer tree has tion allows a painter to make a picture in double the occlusion size of the further tree, which one object is further from the spectator and be surprised to discover that the correct ratio than another without depicting partial occlusion. is three or four to one. By and large, painters (It seems likely that painted scenery employing with a traditional academic training will be perspective diminution was introduced by good at giving accurate reports of occlusion Sophocles, and that the technique was per- shape and relative occlusion size, and the rest fected by Agatharcus of Samos, when he of us not so good. painted a backcloth for a revival of a play by Perhaps the temptation to deny that occlu- Aeschylus in the 430s bce.) sion shape and relative occlusion size are vis- Many philosophers have mistakenly sup- ible features of our physical environment is due posed that occlusion shape and relative occlusion to the fact that the shape of an object’s outline size are not visible properties of the physical will change as we move around it, although the

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perspective object itself does not undergo any change; and suppose that artificial perspective aims at “an the relative occlusion size of the two trees adequate reproduction of our visual image.” in Peacocke’s example will change as we move (There is an important ambiguity here, since from one end of the avenue to the other, in this context “reproduce” can mean either although the trees do not change or move. “make a copy of” or “produce artificially.” This However, it does not follow that occlusion ambiguity, which recapitulates an ancient shape and relative occlusion size are not visible ambiguity in the meaning of “mimesis,” has features of our physical environment, or that had its own repercussions, but they are beyond when we describe them we are talking about our the scope of this entry.) visual impressions (let alone about features of Once the mistake has been corrected, we can these impressions which do not in themselves see overlapping, foreshortening, and perspective “represent the environment of the experiencer diminution for what they are: techniques for as being in a certain way”). After all, the dis- depicting nonplanar spatial relations. Over- tance between me and the door changes as I lapping allows the painter to make a picture in walk toward it, without the door moving; but which one object is further from the spectator this does not show that the changing distance than another, in the manner described above. between me and the door is not really a feature (However, their relative distance from the of my physical environment, but is in some spectator will be indeterminate.) Foreshor- peculiar way merely a feature of my subjective tening allows the painter to depict orientation experience. relative to the line of sight of the spectator, Relative occlusion size, like partial occlu- by making the shape of the part of a picture sion, is relative to a point of view, and occlusion that depicts an object the same as the object’s shape is relative to a line of sight, but this does occlusion shape. Perspective diminution allows not impugn their objectivity in the least, or the painter to depict relative distance from the imply that they are nebulous, merely apparent, spectator, by making the relative size of the or unreal. Nor does it imply a contradiction to parts of a picture that depicts various objects suppose that two trees appear to be (and actu- the same as the objects’ relative occlusion size. ally are) the same height while their occlusion (Shading is a close cousin of foreshortening: it size, relative to my point of view, appears to allows an artist to depict orientation relative be (and actually is) different. Despite what to the source of illumination.) Peacocke says, this is no more contradictory than Before the invention of artificial perspective, the fact that a single object may be big relative these techniques for depicting nonplanar spa- to one thing and small relative to another. tial relations were used independently. They The notion that occlusion properties are were also used inconsistently. For example, in merely apparent, subjective, or unreal is one the panel from Duccio’s Maestà that depicts of the commonest errors in the philosophical the flagellation, Pontius Pilate appears to be canon, and its influence on the theory of paint- standing both behind and in front of a column. ing is unmistakable. For if we imagine that the The invention of artificial perspective was a elliptical occlusion shape of a circular plate systematizing achievement: it integrated the viewed obliquely belongs in the metaphys- existing techniques for the depiction of non- ically subordinate category of mere appear- planar spatial relations into a harmonious ance, or that it is a feature of the subjective visual unity, and thereby guaranteed a consistent experience of a person looking at the plate, pattern of spatial relations between the parts of then we are bound to conclude that a painting a depicted scene. which depicts a plate foreshortened shows the What conclusions should we draw about plate as it appears to us rather than as it is, or the debate initiated by the publication of that the technique of foreshortening aims to Panofsky’s paper? Panofsky himself was right reproduce a feature of our subjective visual to deny that “we see with a single motionless experience. Indeed, this conclusion was already eye,” but wrong when he maintained that drawn by Plato, in the Sophist (235d–236c). artificial perspective is based on the assump- Twenty-three centuries later the same notion, tion that we do; and wrong when he stated, but given a Kantian inflection, led Panofsky to in the concluding paragraph of his paper,

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picture perception that artificial perspective is “an ordering of picture perception Pictures present us visual appearance . . . transforming reality into with aspects of our worlds. We can see in pic- appearance.” Goodman was right to insist that tures landscapes, familiar or unknown faces, or “the bundle of light rays delivered to the eye any of the numerous objects that inhabit our by the picture [of a building] drawn in standard environment, but what is the nature of this perspective is very different from the bundle perceptual experience? Specifically, how does delivered” by the building itself, but wrong to it relate, in terms of its character and content, conclude that artificial perspective is merely a to ordinary perception? This is a question that conventional method of projection which has philosophical studies of pictorial perception been sanctioned by habit. Gombrich was right aim to answer, in an effort to understand the to deny this, but wrong to base his view on the nature of pictorial representation and the claim that “what may make a painting like a dis- source of the distinctive pleasure that it can tant view through a window . . . is the similar- afford the viewer. ity between the mental activities that both can One way to think of pictorial perception is arouse.” Alberti was closest to the truth when as continuous with ordinary perception. One he stated that “the function of the eye in vision might think, for instance, that in seeing a need not be considered in this place” (1966: 47), picture of a tree one has an experience that and confined his discussion of perspective to exactly matches in phenomenology the experi- geometry. ence of seeing the depicted tree face to face. In pictorial theory this idea has been associated depiction; gombrich; goodman; illusion; See also with Ernst Gombrich who, in that context, picture perception; representation. describes pictorial perception as a case of illu- bibliography sion. This description seems apposite since Alberti, Leon Battista. 1966 [1435]. On Painting. J. R. such a perceptual experience would misrepre- Spencer (trans.). New Haven: Yale University Press. sent the physical properties of the object of per- Cassirer, Ernst. 1946 [1925]. Language and Myth. ception. Is this, however, a correct description S. Langer (trans.). New York: Harper. of pictorial perception? It seems not. If in see- Cassirer, Ernst. 1953–7 [1923–9]. The Philosophy of ing a picture we had an experience as of really Symbolic Forms. 3 vols. R. Manheim (trans.). New seeing the objects depicted therein then (1) pic- Haven: Yale University Press. torial space would be experienced as actual Gombrich, E. H. 1973. “Illusion in Art.” In Illusion three-dimensional space, while (2) recognition in Nature and Art. E. H. Gombrich & R. L. Gregory of the subject matter would “absorb” properties (eds.). London: Duckworth, 193–243. of the medium so that, for instance, an etching Gombrich, E. H. 1977. Art and Illusion. 5th edn. Oxford: Phaidon. and a color photograph of the same scene Gombrich, E. H. 1982. “Experiment and Experience would look the same to the viewer, as they in the Arts.” In The Image and the Eye. Oxford: would both look indistinguishable from the Phaidon, 215–43. actual scene depicted. Obviously this is not so. Goodman, Nelson. 1968. Languages of Art. With the exception of trompe-l’oeil pictures, we Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. appreciate the two-dimensionality of a pictorial Kemp, M. 1990. The Science of Art. New Haven: Yale configuration, while we know from our experi- University Press. ence with pictures that a color photograph of a Panofsky, E. 1927. “Die Perspektive als ‘symbolische given scene looks different from an etching or Form’.” In Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg. a drawing of the same scene. How these pictures Leipzig: Teubner, 258–330. Peacocke, Christopher. 1983. Sense and Content. look different has to do not with their subject – Oxford: Oxford University Press. which is shared – but with the medium, that is, Pirenne, M. H. 1970. Optics, Painting and Photo- with what materials have been used and how graphy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. these have been handled by the artist to repre- Read, Herbert. 1956. The Art of Sculpture. London: sent the relevant subject. Faber. Against the illusion theory it thus seems White, J. 1967. The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial that, ordinarily, seeing an object in a picture is Space. 2nd edn. London: Faber. not continuous with seeing that object face john hyman to face, to the extent that in pictorial seeing the

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picture perception perceiver is aware of the medium (i.e., of the pic- picture represents. He argues however that torial surface and the marks on that surface) this twofold experience, seeing-in, has to be as well as the object of representation. This understood as an experience of resemblance: the insight has been central to Richard Wollheim’s marks on the pictorial surface are seen as account of pictorial representation. According resembling something else, that is, the object that to Wollheim, the capacity to generate a twofold the picture thereby represents, in terms of out- perceptual experience is distinctive of pictorial line shape. Outline shape, Hopkins explains, forms of representation. Specifically, the per- is a visible property of things, albeit a property ceptual experience that pictures foster has a that they have only in relation to some point: distinctive phenomenology; it is a single expe- it is a matter of the combined directions of the rience that consists of two aspects of awareness: parts of an object from a point in its surround- the configurational aspect of awareness, which ings. To the extent that outline shape ignores relates to the marked surface; and the recogni- the third dimension it is a property that pictures tional aspect of awareness, which relates to the and their objects can share. object of representation. Wollheim names this When the viewer experiences a resemblance twofold perceptual experience “seeing-in” and in outline shape between the marks on a explains that it is not unique to pictorial repre- pictorial surface and the object represented sentation: although commonly triggered by therein, both the marks and the object figure in pictures, seeing-in may further occur in our her awareness. The experience thus exhibits encounter with adequately differentiated surfaces twofoldness, so it can be properly character- that are not, and are not believed to be, repre- ized as an experience of seeing-in. However, sentational (for instance, rock formations). In Hopkins’s account of seeing-in deviates from contrast to such surfaces, however, pictures, Wollheim’s characterization of the experience according to Wollheim, do not just permit in one important respect: whereas Wollheim but require seeing-in; while, further, there is a takes seeing-in to involve perceptual aware- standard of correctness set by the intentions of ness of the represented object (which is actually the artist, for what is to be seen in a picture. absent from the viewer’s visual field), for The success of Wollheim’s theory rests, in Hopkins it is only the thought of the object part, on the intelligibility of seeing-in: we need – specifically of the object’s outline shape – to understand how two disparate (and, in cer- that is part of the experience. Hopkins thus tain respects, incompatible) objects of awareness escapes the illusionistic insights that lurk in – one of which, furthermore, is actually absent Wollheim’s description of seeing-in. Although from the viewer’s visual field – merge, in the the viewer is not perceptually aware of the rep- viewer’s experience, into an integrated whole. resented object, still (1) the thought of the Wollheim only provides a negative specifica- object transforms the look of the marks in a way tion. We are not to model our understanding of that we could characterize, in part, by reference each aspect of seeing-in on the face-to-face to the object and its properties; (2) the object is experience after which it can be described, and thereby part of the experience, in accordance to which it is partly analogous, as the phe- with the requirements of seeing-in. The experi- nomenology of the relevant experiences is enced resemblance theory thus seems to provide incommensurable. If so, however, we seem a coherent characterization of seeing-in. Doubts to have no resources to understand the phe- have been expressed (e.g., in Lopes 2005), nomenological character and the content of however, about Hopkins’s claim that outline seeing-in. Unless more can be said by way of shape is a visible property, moreover a property explanation – an explanation that Wollheim of pictorial designs that we can perceive before does not provide – the notion of seeing-in is we identify what a picture depicts. incomprehensible. An alternative characterization of seeing-in An attempt to meet this challenge can be has been suggested by Kendall L. Walton. found in the work of Robert Hopkins. Hopkins Pictures are, for Walton, props in visual games agrees with Wollheim that in seeing a pictorial of make-believe, that is, they prescribe visual representation the viewer is aware of the pictorial imaginings with a particular content. In look- marks as marks, as well as of the object that the ing at a picture of X one is to imagine that

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picture perception one’s looking at the canvas is looking at X. For claims – and the seeing-in theory at least instance, it is appropriate (but also required), explains why this is so. Moreover, as John according to Walton, that on observing Hyman notes, the belief that trompe-l’oeil pictures Meindert Hobbema’s The Water Mill with the are designed to produce an illusion and sustain Great Red Roof, one imagines one’s observation it for as long as the viewer sees the painting, is of the canvas to be of a mill (1990: 293). an exaggeration “which distorts the aim and the Walton argues that the imaginings thus pre- effect of trompe-l’oeil painting. The play ele- scribed could plausibly amount to seeing-in, ment would be lost and the enjoyment of skill since (1) both the marked surface and the and virtuosity, which trompe-l’oeil cultivates object depicted therein are in some way part of and caters to, would be frustrated if it were the experience, and (2) the experience is visual true. That is why, as Ruskin remarks, trompe- since it is a case of visual imagining exercised l’oeil invariably ‘has some means of proving at on an actual act of seeing. There has been the same time that it is an illusion’ ” (Hyman some concern, however, over this claim. It is a 2006: 132). If this is the case, the trompe-l’oeil requirement of seeing-in that the viewer is objection to the seeing-in theory is met – once aware of the pictorial marks as marks. This the representational character of what is seen condition does not seem to hold in Walton’s is acknowledged, the technique comes to the fore account, where the viewer is expected to ima- and the medium is thereby evident. At this gine that the marks are, or her looking at them point the trompe-l’oeil picture not just is but is, something else, that is, her looking at the rep- also can be seen as a pictorial representation. resented object. Besides, it is doubtful whether As the case of trompe-l’oeil pictures illus- the imaginary experience that Walton descr- trates, the representational character of an ibes is indeed one we customarily have, and are object should be manifest in our visual experi- expected to have, in front of pictures. ence (along with what the object represents) if Philosophical debate regarding seeing-in this object is to be seen as a picture. Although does not focus solely on the characterization of the precise character and scope of seeing-in is the experience. Wollheim’s claim that seeing-in still an object of debate among pictorial theorists, is definitive of pictorial representation, that is, it seems that it is only within a theory that that pictures do not just permit but require appeals to seeing-in that we can accommodate seeing-in, is another source of disagreement this fact. The analysis of seeing-in is, for this rea- among pictorial theorists. Lopes (1996), for son, among the most vital projects in pictorial instance, acknowledges that pictures often theory. trigger a twofold perceptual experience, but he drawing, painting, and printmaking; doubts that pictorial perception is, by default, See also photography; depiction; gombrich; illusion; a case of seeing-in. Seeing-in, he argues, is rel- perspective; representation; style; walton; evant to art pictures, especially art pictures of wollheim. a certain “painterly” style, but it is arguable whether documentary or illustrative pictures bibliography require awareness of their medium. Moreover, Budd, Malcolm. 1992. “On Looking at a Picture.” an account of pictorial representation in terms In Psychoanalysis, Mind and Art: Perspectives on of seeing-in would exclude trompe-l’oeil pic- Richard Wollheim. J. Hopkins & A. Savile (eds.). tures (i.e., pictures designed to produce an illu- Oxford: Blackwell, 259–80. sion, prohibiting awareness of their media Gombrich, Ernst. 1977. Art and Illusion: A Study in the properties) from the domain of pictorial repre- Psychology of Pictorial Representation. 5th edn. sentation by fiat. But trompe-l’oeil pictures, London: Phaidon. Lopes notes, are pictures and a comprehensive Hopkins, Robert. 1998. Picture, Image and Experi- account of pictorial representation ought to ence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hopkins, Robert. 2003. “What Makes Representa- recognize them as such. tional Painting Truly Visual?” Proceedings of the It should be acknowledged, however, that Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. 77, 149–67. trompe-l’oeil pictures are quite extraordinary Hopkins, Robert. 2005. “The Speaking Image: Visual pictures – perhaps they even lie at the bound- Communication and the Nature of Depiction.” aries of pictorial representation, as Wollheim In Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the

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Philosophy of Art. M. Kieran (ed.). Oxford: framework – ultimately a metaphysics – of Blackwell, 145–59. truth and goodness. Behind Platonic concerns Hyman, John. 2006. The Objective Eye: Color, Form, with the musico-poetic and figurative arts, and Reality in the Theory of Art. Chicago: Uni- therefore, lies a conviction of the unity of all versity of Chicago Press. value. This appears, for example, in dissatisfac- Levinson, Jerold. 2001. “Wollheim on Pictorial tion with functional and relativist definitions of Representation.” In Richard Wollheim on the Art of Painting. R. van Gerwen (ed.). Cambridge: “beauty,” and the assumption of the latter’s Cambridge University Press, 28–38. inseparability from goodness, in Hippias Major. Lopes, Dominic McIver. 1996. Understanding Pictures. A related impetus emerges in the Republic’s Oxford: Oxford University Press. claim (5.475–6) that “lovers of sights and Lopes, Dominic McIver. 2005. “The Domain of sounds,” including devotees of poetry, music, Depiction.” In Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and and painting, perceive only sensory reflections the Philosophy of Art. M. Kieran (ed.). Oxford: of beauty and cannot grasp the principle of Blackwell, 160–74. “beauty (in) itself.” In the Symposium, Diotima’s Nanay, Bence. 2005. “Is Twofoldness Necessary speech (201–12), a mixture of logic and for Representational Seeing?” British Journal of visionary mysticism, makes beauty the object Aesthetics, 4, 248–57. Walton, Kendall L. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe. of a desire (whose roots are erotic) for what is Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. intrinsically and permanently valuable: among Walton, Kendall L. 1992a. “Seeing-In and Seeing- much else, Diotima locates poetic creativity Fictionally.” In Psychoanalysis, Mind and Art. within this expanded model of the soul’s erotic J. Hopkins & A. Savile (eds.). Oxford: Blackwell, aspirations. 280–91. Because of its importance in education and Walton, Kendall L. 1992b. “Looking at Pictures its general cultural prestige, poetry was of par- and Looking at Things.” In The Philosophy of the ticular importance to Plato. Following earlier Visual Arts. P. Alperson (ed.). New York: Oxford Greek philosophers like Xenophanes who had University Press, 103–13. pursued the “ancient quarrel between philo- Wollheim, Richard. 1980. Art and Its Objects. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. sophy and poetry” (Republic 10.607b), he Wollheim, Richard. 1987. Painting as an Art. challenges poetry’s ethical, psychological, and London: Thames & Hudson. religious credentials; but he also evinces an Wollheim, Richard. 2003. “What Makes Repres- unceasing fascination for poetry’s emotional entational Painting Truly Visual?” Proceedings of the and dramatic power, which he tries to rival Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. 77, 131–47. in his own writing. One recurrent issue is katerina bantinaki whether poets create from knowledge and conscious skill (technê) or are reliant on non- rational inspiration. The Ion approaches this Plato (c.427–347 bce) Greek philosopher: question obliquely, via an examination of the disciple of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle. basis for critical interpretation of poetry. But its His dialogues are arguably the most influential famous image of the poet composing when philosophical works ever written. They con- ecstatically possessed by a divine force (533–4) tain the first extended investigations of many is an arguably ironic hypothesis that the of the central issues of ethics, metaphysics, dialogue’s quest for an understanding of “the politics, and representational art. art of poetry as a whole” (532c) leaves unre- Plato can be regarded, with equal reason, solved. In the Phaedrus, Socrates at one point as both the founder of philosophical aesthetics ranks technê below inspiration in poetic cre- and the fiercest critic of aesthetics’ right to an ativity (245a), but at another (268–9) he autonomous existence. Questions about poetry, suggests that expert poets have systematic music, painting, and dance, as well as broader knowledge of how to produce unified works. As reflections on the nature of beauty, are appro- always with Plato, individual passages have ached from diverse angles throughout his dramatic contexts that do not reveal a fixed works. The unifying thread is a requirement that authorial viewpoint. the possibilities of artistic form, meaning, and The two most important Platonic critiques beauty should be appraised within a larger of poetry, with subordinate consideration of

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plato other mimetic art forms, occur in the Republic. simulations) to demote mimetic art to a level The first, in Books 2–3 (376–98, with related “twice removed from the truth.” In addition, after discussion of music at 398–403), starts by he has trenchantly questioned the common repudiating the ideas of vengeful gods and Greek view of poets as knowledgeable, wise volatile heroes found in the greatest Greek “guides to life,” Socrates suggests that mimesis poets, especially Homer and the tragedians. It appeals only to “low” parts of the soul: paint- then proceeds to an analysis of narrative form, ing to a sensory susceptibility to illusions, focusing in particular on the special psycho- poetry to the irrational grip of emotion. The lat- logical power of dramatic impersonation (for ter charge is given special weight: “even the best which the term “mimesis” is here reserved): of us,” Socrates says (605c–d), cannot resist this is said to mold the mind and “self” of any- the emotional power of the greatest poetry, one who identifies with the viewpoint of a especially tragedy. But as in book 3, something character. The critique as a whole evaluates more than a puritanical impulse is at work in poetic works by three interlocking criteria: the text. Socrates concludes the discussion by “truth” (construed here as partly normative); actually hoping that poetry’s “banishment” the ethical paradigms conveyed (explicitly or can be reversed: admitting his own quasi- implicitly) by poetic narratives; and the psy- erotic attachment to poetry, he invites the chological benefit or harm to an audience of defenders of the art to produce a new justifica- internalizing those paradigms. Socrates’ pro- tion of it that will harmonize ethical benefit posed exclusion of the most imaginative poets and psychological pleasure (10.607–8). from the ideal city (3.398a) should not be The combination of arguments in Republic, reduced to crude censorship: it is a symbolic chal- books 2–3 and 10, as elsewhere in Platonic lenge to the values of Plato’s culture rather treatments of mimetic art, is more ambivalent than a blueprint for action. Despite a passing than might appear at first glance. Socrates shows allusion to the possibility of aesthetic “play” a troubled awareness of the capacity of poetry (3.396e), the argument refuses to allow artis- and music to touch deep psychic roots in ways tic representation an autotelic status: its power that can bypass rationality; but he remains to “enter the interior of the soul” (401d) and open to the possibility that such power might influence the lives of both individuals and be harnessed to the good of the soul and the com- groups is too great for that. Far from pro- munity. Plato’s own writing, indeed, with its pounding a narrow puritanism, the eventual wealth of imagery and dramatic finesse, can be goal of the discussion is claimed as “the erotics considered as an attempt to pursue that pos- of the beautiful” (3.403c), a principle that sibility: Plato was recognized as a “poetic” applies to music, painting, architecture, and philosopher by some ancient readers, as well as other forces that shape the city’s cultural envi- by his Renaissance and Romantic admirers. ronment (400–2). Characteristically, Plato The Republic itself ends with an eschatological leaves sensitive readers with the impression myth that uses intense narrative and visionary that artistic image-making has been both imagination to emulate poetic myths of the questioned and potentially reclaimed for a afterlife, especially Homer’s Odyssey. better world. But engagement with existing art forms is After the Republic’s elaborate exploration of also sustained, right up to the final dialogues, psychology and metaphysics in its middle through critical analysis. The Laws contains books, the dialogue returns to poetry in book 10 several passages that sketch issues and problems (595–608). Here mimesis assumes a broader for aesthetics, some of them complex, obscure, sense of depictive representation; the argu- yet probing (and still relatively neglected). ment accordingly starts from an analogy with The richest are in books 2 (653–71) and 7 painting. In a gesture which can be read as a (796–817): they encompass ideas about provocation to “lovers of sights and sounds” mimetic art and cultural recreation; the psy- (above), Socrates asks what mimesis can offer chological roots of aesthetic form and order; that a mere mirror cannot; and he uses a the importance of moral feelings in art; the tripartite metaphysical hierarchy (of unchang- value of certain types of artistic tradition; ing “forms,” individual objects, and mere the nature of representation in poetry, music,

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plotinus dance, and painting. Nowhere do Plato’s Plotinus (204–c.270) Greek philosopher of arguments relinquish the underlying demand the Christian era; the best-known Neoplatonist that the expressiveness of artistic images be thinker, and a major influence on Western grounded in a unified conception of value; the mysticism. beauty of art depends on ethical beauty (Laws Born in Egypt and educated at Alexandria, 2.654b–c). This principle betokens something Plotinus joined the emperor Gordian III on an more than a moralistic denial of aesthetics. expedition to Persia in 242, hoping to learn Just as in other dialogues (e.g., see Republic about Persian mystical philosophy. In the event, 4.420c–d, Phaedrus 268–9 on the importance Gordian was killed and Plotinus traveled to of formal unity), the Laws intimates an aware- Rome, where he established an academy and ness of the need for “internal” principles of came to be favored by the emperor Gallienus. artistic excellence and recognizes unsolved He was regarded as a spiritual master, known problems: the relationship between pleasure for gentility and kindness and reputed to be and other criteria of artistic value remains a mystic. vexed (Laws 2.667). The dialogues do not Porphyry, one of his students, was his bio- claim to have the final answers. grapher and edited his works. These are known Plato is the only great questioner of art and collectively as the Enneads, and consist of six aesthetic experience who can also count as a pro- books each of nine chapters (ennea: “nine”). found lover of art; even Tolstoy was not both Chapter 6 of book 1, entitled “On Beauty,” these things simultaneously and throughout contains Plotinus’ most systematic treatment his life. In the Laws, Plato calls philosophy of this issue. Aesthetics is prominent within itself “the most beautiful and truest tragedy” Plotinus’ entire system, and from this single (7.817), an alternative vision of life’s funda- chapter one may learn much of his general mental meaning. There is a vital sense in philosophical outlook. For many centuries, the which Plato’s aesthetics is embodied in the essay “On Beauty” was the only known part of entirety of his own philosophical creativity. the Enneads. Plotinian philosophy is essentially Platonistic, See also aesthetics in antiquity; medieval and and this provides a key to understanding his renaissance aesthetics; aristotle; creativity. emphasis on the importance of aesthetic expe- rience in advancing from miserable ignorance bibliography to mystical transcendence. From the earliest speculative philosophers (the Pre-Socratics) Primary sources Plato had inherited a belief in the possibility of 1997. Plato: Complete Works. J. M. Cooper (ed.). comprehending reality by relating apparently Indianapolis: Hackett. disparate phenomena to some deeper ordering Secondary sources and unifying principles. Plotinus follows Plato Asmis, Elizabeth. 1992. “Plato on Poetic Creativity.” in taking the ordering principles to be forms In Cambridge Companion to Plato. R. Kraut (ed.). that organize quantities of matter into intelligible Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 338– unities. Variants on this basic theme are com- 64. mon within ancient and medieval philosophy, Burnyeat, Myles. 1999. “Culture and Society in and are important to the aesthetic theories of Plato’s Republic,” Tanner Lectures on Human these periods, which generally treat the experi- Values, 20, 217–324. ence of beauty as a mode of knowledge of (or Halliwell, Stephen. 2002. The Aesthetics of Mimesis: identification with) reality. Ancient Texts and Modern Problems. Princeton: Plotinus’ version of the “philosophy of form” Princeton University Press. Janaway, C. 1995. Images of Excellence: Plato’s is esoteric but recognizably related to aspects of Critique of the Arts. Oxford: Clarendon. Christian theology, which it deeply influenced. At the heart of things is a transcendent divine stephen halliwell reality that escapes all categories of description. Nonetheless, it has three modes, or aspects (hypostases). First and foremost it is ultimate pleasure, aesthetic see aesthetic pleasure. unity (the one); second, it is both intellect and

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plotinus what intellect knows (mind or thought); and, things – beauty is “variably realizable.” third, it is the source of life (the soul). Emanat- Equally, however, it raises the question of ing out of this “primal core” is the remainder nonempirical beauty, such as that of a proof, or of things, ordered according to their degree a virtuous character. Plotinus not only recog- of existence or participation in the nature of nizes the aesthetic quality of these, but regards innermost reality. All entities seek union with nonsensible beauty as being of a higher order, the divinity, and strive to move inwards and claims that the ascent through the hierar- toward it, seeking to realize their potential for chy of beauty-inducing forms is the pathway to perfection and aspiring to the condition of mystical union with the one, an aspect of pure, self-originating, matterless form. which (in its hypostasis as mind) is the dazzling Aesthetic experience plays an important self-existent form of beauty: role in this process of self-perfection. In “On Like anyone just awakened the soul cannot look Beauty,” Plotinus wonders what precise condi- at bright objects. It must be persuaded to look first tions are necessary and sufficient for beauty, and at beautiful habits, then the works of beauty pro- first considers the suggestion that the essence duced not by craftsmen’s skill but by the virtue of of beauty is symmetry (Enneads 1.6.1). This men known for their goodness, then the souls of is dismissed, however, because some beautiful those known for beautiful deeds . . . Only the mind’s things, such as single colors and musical notes, eye can contemplate this mighty beauty ...So are simple (without parts) and hence lack sym- ascending, the soul will come first to Mind . . . metry; while some symmetrical things, such and to the intelligible realm where Beauty dwells. as some faces, lack beauty. Also, Plotinus (Enneads 1.6.9) assumes a principle of composition according These ideas may strike us as extravagant to which a complex entity can have a given and even unintelligible. But Plotinus is worth property only if its parts have it independently reading, both in order to make sense of work in of their membership of the whole. Instead, medieval and Renaissance thought, and to see beauty is taken to be unity or oneness, by how aesthetics could have a central place which he means formal unity: “In what is nat- within a well-built philosophical and religious urally unified, its parts being all alike, beauty is system. present to the whole” (Enneads 1.6.2). This is a comprehensive notion covering both simples See also aesthetics in antiquity; medieval and complexes. Different answers to the ques- and renaissance aesthetics; beauty; ineffa- tion “What is it?” – for instance, “red,” “middle bility; plato. C,” “a square,” “a horse,” and so on – all intro- duce unifying forms which impose an inte- bibliography grated nature on the matter in which they inhere. When we experience such forms we Primary sources derive pleasure from this perceived unity, and 1988. Plotinus, vol. vi: Ennead 6.1–5. Loeb Classical the soul is also awakened to its co-natural Library. A. H. Armstrong (trans.). Cambridge, affinity with the source of empirical and other MA: Harvard University Press. forms – namely, divinity in its aspects of one- 1989. The Essential Plotinus. E. O’Brien (ed. & trans.). Indianapolis: Hackett. ness, mind and soul. Beauty is generally a supervenient quality – Secondary sources that is to say, one which results from the organ- Anton, J. P. 1964. “Plotinus’ Refutation of Beauty as ization of matter by formal principles. The Symmetry,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, beauty of a (near-)perfect pattern, say, consists 23, 233–7. in the ordering of stuff (wood, paint, and so on) Beardsley, Monroe C. 1975. Aesthetics from Classical according to a geometrical ideal, and this is Greece to the Present Day. Montgomery: University of Alabama Press. true also of the constituent parts of the pattern, Geerson, L. (ed.). 1996. The Cambridge Companion such as lines and curves, considered in their own to Plotinus. Cambridge: Cambridge University right. Since it does not identify empirical Press. beauty with any particular form, this view Gurtler, G. M. 1989. “Plotinus and Byzantine allows for indefinitely many kinds of beautiful Aesthetics,” Modern Schoolman, 67, 275–84.

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Miller, C. L. 1977. “Union with the One, Ennead 6, and potential. It holds that popular art should 9, 8–11,” New Scholasticism, 51, 182–95. be improved because it leaves much to be O’Meara, Dominic J. 1993. Plotinus. Oxford: Oxford desired, but that it can be improved because it University Press. can achieve real aesthetic merit and serve wor- john haldane thy social goals (Shusterman 1992). Though we should focus on the aesthetic arguments against popular art, it is import- popular art is a contested topic. Even its ant to note that perhaps the most damaging name evokes controversy. While those sym- indictments are not directed at popular art’s pathetic to popular art call it such, those who aesthetic status but at its pernicious sociocul- traditionally opposed it prefer to label it “mass tural influence. Yet these more general indict- art” – the term “mass” suggesting an undiffer- ments seem to rest on aesthetic considerations. entiated (and possibly even subhuman) con- For example, the charges that popular art cor- glomerate rather than merely the idea of rupts high culture by borrowing from it and by mass-media technology. The idea of entertain- luring away potential artists and audiences ment for the masses as a ploy of capitalist dom- presume that popular art’s borrowings are to no ination is associated with the notion of the good aesthetic purpose (since works of high art “culture industry” (an influential term coined borrow from each other with no consequent by Horkheimer & Adorno 1986) but some the- complaint). Similarly, the charges that popular orists use the term “mass art” more neutrally culture is emotionally destructive because it to define it in terms of appeal to the largest produces spurious gratification, and is intellec- audience (Carroll 1998). Popular art can be tually destructive because of its superficiality usefully distinguished from this notion of mass and escapism, rest on the presumed aesthetic art in that popular art does not require a inability of popular art to produce genuine aes- mass audience but only a sufficiently multi- thetic pleasure through meaningful form and tudinous one to establish adequate popularity content. Further, the charges that popular art (Shusterman 1992). In this way, genres or “not only reduces the level of cultural quality . styles that are clearly oppositional to main- . . but also encourages totalitarianism by cre- stream culture (e.g., rap or heavy metal music) ating a passive audience peculiarly responsive can be recognized as popular art though they to the techniques of mass persuasion” (Gans never try to reach the largest possible audience. 1974: 19) rest on the assumptions that popu- The main aesthetic issue is not the definition lar art’s products are invariably of negative of popular art but whether it really deserves artis- aesthetic value and so necessarily lower taste, tic status and can exhibit genuine aesthetic and that they necessarily require a mindless, pas- merit. Cultural critics through the latter part of sive response because they can neither inspire the twentieth century tended to consider it nor reward any aesthetic attention beyond intrinsically and necessarily an aesthetic failure uncritical passivity. and a corruptive danger to high art. Though In considering the arguments against the it was never a central concern of traditional aesthetic legitimacy of popular art, it would be philosophical aesthetics, the value of popular art futile to attempt a total whitewash, for much has recently become an important aesthetic of popular art is lamentably unaesthetic and topic, because of the increasing dominance of socially noxious. What philosophers need to mass-media culture and the growing alien- consider, however, is the validity of arguments ation of much of the public from contemporary claiming to show that popular art is necessar- avant-garde forms of high art. ily an aesthetic failure – that, in the words of The most reasonable position on this issue lies Dwight Macdonald, “there are theoretical rea- between the condemnatory pessimism shared by sons why Mass Culture is not and can never be reactionary high-culture elitists and left-wing any good” (1957: 69). We shall consider six such Marxists of the Frankfurt school, and the cele- charges. bratory optimism of popular culture enthusiasts. It is a position of meliorism, which recognizes pop- (1) Popular art fails to provide real aesthetic ular art’s flaws and abuses, but also its merits satisfactions but provides only spurious ones,

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popular art which are “washed-out,” vicarious, escapist, which they disagree. Empirical studies of tele- and ephemeral. There are several problems vision watching (see Fiske 1987) show this is with this charge, apart from the problem of false. Second, there is the charge that popular knowing what “spurious” satisfaction is. For art’s products necessarily lack sufficient com- most of the public, the pleasures of popular art plexity, subtlety, and levels of meaning so that (such as movies and rock music) are surely as they may be comprehensible to the large audi- intense, real, and direct as those derived from ences that popular art seeks to please. But high art, which also has an escapist dimen- again, the argument presumes the inability of sion. Nor do high and low art always differ popular art’s audience to appreciate any intel- with respect to the ephemerality of their pleas- lectual complexity, and, again, empirical evid- ures. But even if our pleasure from a pop song ence shows that they do. Intellectualist critics is briefer than that from a sonnet, this does not typically fail to recognize the multilayered and entail this pleasure’s illegitimacy or unreality. nuanced meanings of popular art. Moreover, the argument that popular art can (4) The common claim that popular art is produce only ephemeral pleasures is flawed in necessarily uncreative relies on three lines of forgetting that many of the great classics of argument: its standardization and technolo- high art (for instance, Greek and Shakespearean gical production preclude creativity because drama) were originally produced and con- they limit individuality; its group production and sumed as popular art. division of labor frustrate original expression (2) It is argued that popular art can provide because they involve more than one artists’ no real aesthetic pleasure because it requires decisions; the desire to entertain a large no effort but only passivity. As Horkheimer audience is incompatible with individual self- and Adorno remark, its “pleasure hardens into expression, hence with creativity. All these boredom because it must not demand any arguments rest on the premise that aesthetic cre- effort . . . No independent thinking must be ation is necessarily individualistic – a question- expected from the audience”; anything “calling able romantic myth nourished by liberalism’s for mental effort is painstakingly avoided” ideology of individualism, and one which belies (1986: 137). One of the problems with this art’s essential communal dimension. argument is that it equates all effort with The sonnet’s length is just as rigidly standard “mental effort” or “independent thinking.” as the TV situation comedy’s, and the use of tech- Critics of popular art tend to forget that there nology is present in high as well as popular art, are forms of aesthetically rewarding activity where it serves less as a barrier than as a spur other than intellectual exertion (e.g., dancing). to creativity. As for the second argument, we can Moreover, these critics too often make the mis- grant no contradiction between collective pro- take of assuming that because some popular duction and artistic creativity without thereby art can be enjoyed without intellectual effort challenging the aesthetic legitimacy of Greek it can never sustain or reward intellectual temples, Gothic churches, and the works of interest. But from the fact that something can oral literary traditions. The third argument, be enjoyed on a shallow level, it does not follow that popular art cannot be creative because that it must be so enjoyed and has nothing else it must offer homogenized fare to meet an to offer. average of tastes, involves a number of errors. (3) The charge of popular art’s intellectual It confuses a “multitudinous audience” with a shallowness typically breaks down into two “mass audience.” Popularity requires only the subcharges. The first is that it cannot deal with former. A particular taste group sharing a dis- the real problems of life in a serious way tinct social or ethnic background or specific because its aim is to distract the masses and keep subculture may be clearly distinguishable from them in a false contentment by showing them what is considered the homogeneous mass only what they can easily understand and audience. accept. But this argument falsely assumes that Moreover, popular artists are also con- consumers of popular art are just too stupid to sumers of popular art and form part of its audi- understand more than the obvious, and that ence, often sharing the tastes of those toward they are incapable of appreciating views with whom their work is directed. Here there can be

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pornography no real conflict between wanting to express properly assessed only by examining concrete oneself creatively and wanting to please one’s examples, and the reader is referred to Cavell large audience. Finally, the argument that (1981), Shusterman (1992), Carroll (1998), popular art requires conformity to accepted and Irwin & Gracia (2006). stereotypes rests on the empirically falsified premise that its consumers are too simple- See also music and song; adorno; mass art. minded to appreciate views that are unfamiliar or unacceptable to them. bibliography (5) A fifth charge often leveled at popular Adorno, Theodor W. 1984 [1970]. Aesthetic Theory. art is that it lacks the autonomy necessary for G. Adorno & R. Tiedemann (eds.). C. Lenhardt true artistic status (see Adorno 1984; Bourdieu (trans.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction. Cambridge, MA: 1984). Popular art forfeits this status by its Harvard University Press. desire to entertain and serve human needs Carroll, Noël. 1998. Mass Art. New York: Oxford rather than purely artistic ends. Such inferences University Press. rest on defining art as essentially opposed to Cavell, Stanley. 1981. Pursuits of Happiness. life. But why should this view be accepted? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Originating in Plato’s attack on art as doubly Fiske, John. 1987. Television Culture. London: removed from reality, and reinforced by Kant’s Routledge & Kegan Paul. aesthetic of disinterestedness (defined as indif- Gans, Herbert. 1974. Popular Culture and High ference to real existence and praxis), this view Culture. New York: Basic Books. allows philosophy, even in defending art, to Horkheimer, M. & Adorno, T. W. 1986. The Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York: Continuum. assert art’s difference from the real so as to Irwin, William & Gracia, Jorge (eds.). 2006. The ensure philosophy’s sovereignty in determining Philosophical Interpretation of Popular Culture. reality and the conduct of life. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. But surely art forms part of our reality and Macdonald, Dwight. 1957 [1946]. “A Theory of practical life? Music is used to lull babies to Mass Culture.” In Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in sleep. Poetry is used for prayer and courtship, America. B. Rosenberg & D. White (eds.). Glencoe: fiction to inculcate moral lessons, architecture Free Press, 59–73. to create living and working spaces. Moreover, Shusterman, Richard. 1992. Pragmatist Aesthetics: today’s developments in postmodern culture Living Beauty, Rethinking Art. Oxford: Blackwell. suggest the increasing implosion of the aes- richard shusterman thetic into all areas of life. (6) Finally, popular art is condemned for not achieving adequate form. Usually it is not pornography Etymologically, the word unity but formal complexity that is denied to pop- means writing associated with the brothel, and ular artworks, and used to distinguish them it applies most specifically to a genre of fiction from genuine art. For Bourdieu, popular art which draws its materials from sexual fantasy involves “the subordination of form to func- and consists almost exclusively of detailed tion” and “content,” and thus cannot achieve descriptions of sexual activity, tireless and the complex formal effects of high art, “which sometimes elaborately perverse. It typically are only appreciated relationally, through a lacks any interest of character or plot. In its “ideal comparison with other works which is incom- type,” developed by the Marquis de Sade patible with immersion in the . . . [content] (1740–1814) in such works as Justine and given” (1984: 4, 34). But this formal complex- The 120 Days of Sodom, the apparatus also ity of intertextuality is also often present in includes, for instance, an isolated, luxurious works of popular art, many of which self- chateau, and silent servants. Such features are consciously allude to each other. Nor are these now less common, though they can still some- allusions and their formal aesthetic effects times be found in examples with more literary unappreciated by the popular art audience, pretension, such as The Story of O, published who are generally more literate in their artistic under the pseudonym Pauline Réage, a well- traditions than are the audiences of high art in known book which also preserves the Sadean theirs. The formal quality of popular art can be emphasis on cruelty. In recent times the

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pornography strictly sadistic aspect has generally been more open questions about the relation of pornogra- cultivated in other media. phy to other notions – in particular, those of the Written pornography seems to have first obscene and the erotic. Even leaving aside its appeared, at any rate in Europe, in the middle technical use in English law, “obscene” in its of the seventeenth century. The first original ordinary use is a strongly negative term, sug- English prose pornography (as opposed to gesting the hideous, repulsive, or unaccept- translations), and also the first to take the form able; “erotic,” on the other hand, has more of a narrative rather than a dialogue, was John positive connotations in contemporary society. Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure Pornography is sometimes taken to be neces- (1748) – better known as Fanny Hill. However, sarily associated with obscenity; sometimes it is visual representations with an explicit sexual contrasted with the erotic. If pornography is content go back to ancient times and appear in defined merely in terms of a certain content almost all cultures, and some of them (such as and a certain intention, it will remain for dis- murals at Pompeii and some Attic vase paint- cussion whether all pornography is obscene, ing) seem designed to elicit the same kind of or to what extent it can be erotic. interest as written pornography. The word Such discussions naturally bear on a further “pornographic” is now applied to works in any question – whether there can be a porno- medium, and by far the largest proportion of graphic work of art. There is strong pressure to pornography now current consists of material use “pornographic” in an unequivocally nega- in mechanically reproduced visual forms, such tive way, to imply condemnation on moral and as photographic magazines, cinema films, and social grounds, or aesthetic grounds, or both. In images available through the Internet. this sense, the pornographic is often contrasted Particularly in relation to this visual material, with art. It may also be contrasted with the a distinction is often drawn between “hard-core” erotic, pornography being specially associated and “soft-core” pornography. The distinction has with cruelty and violence, particularly against a complex structure, but roughly speaking women, while the erotic is taken to imply the subject matter of soft-core pornography sexual relations that are both gentler and excludes violence, and if males are represented more equal. If the term is used in this way, at all, they are not visibly aroused. It is inter- there is a danger that different issues may be esting for the psychology of pornography that run together, and some important questions magazines of the kind standardly for sale in begged: it may be harder, for instance, to separ- respectable newsagents in Europe and North ate, intellectually and politically, the ques- America, which have soft-core illustrations, tion of whether some objectionable work has often contain writing which, if the distinction merit from the question of whether it should is applied to text, must count as hard-core. In be rejected (for instance, banned) whatever the case of films, soft-core pornography may pos- its merit. sess more ambitious production values than It would be naive to suppose that in this area hard-core, sometimes aiming for distribution definitional issues could be uncontentiously in ordinary cinemas as opposed to specialist settled without ideological implications. For porno houses. one thing “pornography” is a candidate for Although the term “pornography” is applied legal use in regulating, and perhaps trying to to works in any medium, it may still be taken suppress, objectionable material. More generally, to refer to what is, in a very broad sense, a and more deeply, the nature and definition of genre. A pornographic work is one that com- pornography are necessarily at issue when it bines a certain content, explicitly sexual re- is asked what exactly is objectionable about presentation, with a certain intention, sexual such material. Pornography is found in varying arousal. (Pornographic material is, of course, degrees offensive by many people, and some of often sold in sex shops and used in connection it is deeply offensive to almost everybody. Is with sexual activity, particularly masturba- this best explained by general psychological tion.) A feature of this definition, as opposed to theory, or in cultural (and therefore perhaps more wide-ranging or, again, evaluative pro- more local) terms? To what extent can any posals for the use of the word, is that it leaves such questions be discussed without bringing

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pragmatist aesthetics in considerations that are in a broad sense class of works distinguished by the extremity of political? their sexual content – or indeed, at the limit, by The most radical cultural analysis of por- their having explicit sexual content at all. On nography since around 1980 has come from the other hand, a radical feminist critique is likely feminist critics. Most pornography is intended to want to distance itself from conventional for and used by men, and consists of represen- puritanism, and to encourage the expression of tations of women and of heterosexual activity some rather than other kinds of sexuality and serving male fantasies. Most pornography eroticism. It is thus involved, just as much involving same-sex activity between women is as are traditional approaches, in making dis- also intended for men (there is usually at least criminations between kinds of sexual content one sequence of this kind in the standard – discriminations which inevitably run into pornographic film). However, pornography is not familiar ethical, psychological, and (if enfor- exclusively related to men’s fantasies about cement is proposed) legal complexities of separ- women. There is a great deal of male homo- ating some kinds of sexual representation sexual pornography intended for male homo- from others. sexuals, and also pornography which is used by women and on an equal basis by heterosexual See also censorship; erotic art and obscenity; couples. Moreover, it is not necessarily true feminist aesthetics; feminist standpoint that the more extreme or the “harder” a piece aesthetics; imagination; morality and art. of pornography is, the more sexist it is. Much of the most extreme pornography indeed ex- bibliography presses violence against women; but, with Dworkin, Ronald. 1985 [1981]. “Do We Have a more widely available material, it is significant Right to Pornography?” In A Matter of Principle. that the distinction between hard core and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. soft core, mentioned above, is itself drawn on Dwyer, Susan (ed.). 1995. The Problem of Porno- graphy. Belmont: Wadsworth. sexist lines: it is soft-core pornography that Eaton, A. W. 2007. “A Sensible Antiporn exclusively offers women to the view of a male Feminism,” Ethics, 117, 674–715. figure who is either outside the representation MacKinnon, Catherine A. 1987. Feminism or unaffected within it. Unmodified. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University The radical feminist thesis is that not just Press, 335–72. the fantasy but also the reality of male domin- Peckham, Morse. 1969. Art and Pornography. New ation is central to pornography, and that sadis- York: Basic Books. tic pornography involving women is only the Shrage, Laurie. 2007. “Feminist Perspectives on most overt and unmediated expression of male Sex Markets.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of social power. Moreover, the objectifying male Philosophy. E. N. Zalta (ed.). Available at http:// plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2007/entries/fem- gaze to which pornography offers itself is inist-sex-markets/ thought to be implicit not only throughout the West, Caroline. 2005. “Pornography and Censor- commercial media, but in much high art. This ship.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. outlook reinterprets the relation of pornography E. N. Zalta (ed.). Available at http://plato. to other phenomena. Traditional views, whether stanford.edu/archives/fall2005/entries/pornogra- liberal or conservative, are disposed to regard phy-censorship/ pornography as a particular and restricted Williams Committee Report. 1979. Obscenity and phenomenon, and extreme sadistic pornography Film Censorship. Cmnd 7772. London: HMSO. as even more so; but a radical feminist ap- bernard williams proach is likely to see the overtly sadistic vari- eties of pornography, and the phenomenon in general, as merely less reticent versions of pragmatist aesthetics Like pragmatism what is more acceptably expressed elsewhere. itself, pragmatist aesthetics is a tradition with This approach leads to new emphases in the different voices that, nevertheless, tend to con- definition of pornography, but they involve a verge on certain key themes. Perhaps the most conflict. On the one hand, it should be less crucial points of convergence are the centrality significant in this perspective to pick out a of experience in aesthetics and the way that

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pragmatist aesthetics aesthetic experience extends well beyond the senting the peak of human experience. Dewey circumscribed field of fine art to pervade mani- was, of course, extremely appreciative of science, fold dimensions of life, action, and culture. but he still claims that “art, the mode of activ- Hence for pragmatism, aesthetics cannot be ity that is charged with meanings capable of narrowly equated with the philosophy of art, at immediately enjoyed possession, is the culmi- least when art is understood in the modern nation of nature,” and that “ ‘science’ is properly institutional sense of the established fine arts a handmaiden that conduces natural events to of high culture. this happy issue” (1987: 33). Pragmatist aesthetics received its first sys- (4) Pragmatism is a philosophy of continu- tematic formulation in John Dewey’s classic ities rather than dichotomies. Hence Dewey Art as Experience, first published in 1934. affirmed the continuity of art and science, Charles S. Peirce and William James had an since both disciplines are creative, symbolic, appreciation of the aesthetic but did not sub- well-formed expressions that emerge from and stantively theorize about it (though Peirce had restructure life’s experience and that demand a very substantive semiotics). Ralph Waldo intelligence, skill, and trained knowledge in Emerson and the African American philo- order to improve experience. Pragmatism is sopher and cultural critic Alain Locke (both critical of the dualisms that dominate aesthetic sometimes associated with pragmatism) antic- theory (e.g., art/life, art/nature, fine/practical art, ipated several of the key ideas that Dewey high/popular art, spatial/temporal art, aesthetic/ developed into the first systematic pragmatist practical, artists/ordinary people). Emerson aesthetic. We can introduce it in terms of famously critiques the institutional compart- eight themes. mentalization of human life that produces fragmentary monsters instead of complete (1) Naturalism. Though art can be cor- humans, while Alain Locke’s aesthetics sug- rectly described as cultural and even spiritual, gests that the richness and value of an artwork pragmatism insists on art’s deep roots in the (or a culture as a whole) tend to be enhanced natural world, in the elemental desires, needs, through the tasteful mixing and interaction of and rhythms of the human organism interact- different elements. ing with that world. Emerson defines art as (5) One of contemporary theory’s most pop- “nature passed through the alembic of man” ular dualisms is that between nature and cul- (1990: 133), just as Dewey held that “under- ture. Defying these dichotomies, Emerson and neath the rhythm of every art and every work Dewey explain art as much through cultural his- of art, there lies . . . the basic pattern of relations tory as through nature, showing that not only of the live creature to his environment” (1987: the content but the very concept of art has 155–6). For Emerson and Dewey, art is not pur- altered through historical change. As Dewey out- sued purely for its own sake but for the sake of lines the historic reasons for “the compart- better living and the highest art is “the art of life.” mental conception of fine art” in terms of the (2) Art’s service to life implies a rejection of growth of museums through modern national- the traditional aesthetic/practical opposition ism, imperialism, and capitalism, so Emerson that defines art by its contemplative non- traced our culture’s evolution from the aes- instrumentality. Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetics thetic unity of beauty and use in ancient contrastingly insists on art’s wide-ranging Greece to modern art’s romantic, antifunc- functionality, while affirming the pleasures of its tional aestheticism. immanent experience (including its pleasures of (6) Among pragmatism’s most distinctive dynamic form). “The work of esthetic art satisfies features is its attitude of meliorism, its desire not many ends . . . It serves life rather than pre- simply to understand reality but to improve it. scribing a defined and limited mode of living” Aesthetics’ prime goal should not be formal (1987: 140). Emerson likewise demands that art, definitions of art and beauty but rather in serving life, be both practical and moral. improved aesthetic experience. Locke appre- (3) Recognition of art’s deep functionality ciatively studied the negro spirituals not for and immediate experience of vital delight leads mere theory but to develop its potential for Emerson to celebrate art over science as repre- new creativity and transformation. Moreover,

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pragmatist aesthetics pragmatism includes Emerson’s view that art sharing of this experience with his audience itself has higher ends than its objects: “nothing makes them into new artists (1990: 119, 189, less than the creation of man and nature is its 192, 200). end” (Emerson 1990: 192). (7) One vital area for melioristic transfor- dewey’s influence mation is the democratization of art, the goal of Dewey’s ideas had impact on the artworld, broadening the notion of art to embrace the influencing such important painters as Robert experience and expression of more people from Motherwell, Thomas Hart Benton, Jackson more classes, races, and walks of life. Opposing Pollock, Alan Kaprow (who helped create the elitism of high culture that divides society the genre of performance art known as the and dries up the fountains of invention, “happening”). In academic philosophy, however, Emerson recommends “the literature of the his influence in aesthetics fell into decline poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy of between the 1950s and 1990s through the the street, the meaning of household life” as “the rise of analytic philosophy. Though Monroe C. topics of the time” that art should treat (1990: Beardsley was clearly influenced by Dewey’s 50). Dewey similarly blasted the stultifying theory of aesthetic experience and made it the elitism of “the museum-conception of fine key to his own definitions of art and aesthetic art” that denies legitimacy to popular art. value, Beardsley’s analytic definitions and aims Unfortunately, Dewey fails to provide popular were remote from Dewey. Other philosophers art with any of the sort of careful, appreciative, grounded in analytic philosophy, however, legitimizing critical study that by his own have built on Deweyan insights to develop account seems necessary. In contrast, Locke pragmatist approaches to such traditional provides very detailed practical criticism and topics as the interpretation and definition of legitimizing study of the African American art and to more distinctively contemporary popular arts, not only the musical arts (especially issues ranging from mass-media arts and multi- of spirituals and jazz) for which African culturalism to postmodernism and the styliza- Americans were most respected, but also the arts tions of the art of living. of literature, drama, painting, and sculpture. Nelson Goodman develops Dewey’s theme of (8) Central to Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetics the continuity of art and science. Rejecting the is the primacy of experience in art. Dewey idea of “autonomous aesthetic objects,” valued famously distinguishes the physical object as merely for the pleasure of their form, Goodman mere “art product” from the heightened expe- urges the fundamental unity of art and science riential activity that is the real artwork: “the through their common cognitive function. actual work of art is what the product does Hence, aesthetics should be placed with philo- with and in experience” – first, the creating sophy of science and should be conceived as an artist’s experience, then that of the work’s integral part of metaphysics and epistemology. audience (1987: 9, 87, 121, 167). For Dewey, Aesthetic value is subsumed under cognitive the aesthetic experience that defines art is an excellence. Despite his attempt to supply intensified, well structured, directly fulfilling extremely strict definitions of works of art in experience that involves heightened vitality terms of the conditions of identity and authen- and feeling and that stands out from the ordin- ticity of the material objects that exemplify ary flow of experience as something special, them, Goodman insists with Dewey (and as an experience that is strongly felt, unified, Beardsley) that what matters aesthetically is distinctive, and memorable. Emerson also not precisely what the material art object is stressed the concept of deeply felt experience in but how it functions in dynamic experience. art and in life more generally. Since life means He therefore advocates that we replace the movement, a life-serving art cannot be a mat- question “what is art?” with the question ter of lifeless artifacts but implies dynamic, “when is art?” (1969: 259; 1978: 70, 102; changing, lived experience. Hence “true art is 1984: 6, 148). Moreover, Goodman offers a never fixed, but also flowing.” “The true poem critique of contemporary museum practices is in the poet’s mind,” for “the poet has ...a and ideology that greatly resembles the spirit new experience to unfold,” and through the of Dewey’s critique of the museum conception

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pragmatist aesthetics of fine art, though Goodman (1984), of course, expressing “scepticism about ‘aesthetics’ as a field has a very different style of argumentation. of inquiry” formulating general principles about Both thinkers warn against the fetishization the arts and judgments of aesthetic value, call- and compartmentalization of art objects, argu- ing it “another of Kant’s bad ideas” (2001: ing instead that our purpose should be the 156). maximization of the active use of such objects in the production of aesthetic experience. See also beardsley; goodman; museums; onto- Other philosophers trained in the analytic logical contextualism. tradition (e.g., Joseph Margolis, Richard Rorty, and Richard Shusterman) have used pragma- bibliography tist ideas to show how the interpretation of Beardsley, Monroe C. 1958. Aesthetics: Problems in the artworks can be meaningful and valid with- Philosophy of Criticism. New York: Harcourt, out the need to posit fixed entities as the Brace & World. unchanging objects of these valid interpretations. Dewey, John. 1987 [1934]. Art as Experience. Their arguments explain how traditionally Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. entrenched but dialogically open practices can Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1990. Ralph Waldo be enough to secure identity of reference for dis- Emerson: A Critical Edition of the Major Works. Richard Poirier (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University cussion of the work (and thus ensure that we Press. can meaningfully talk about the same work) Goodman, Nelson. 1969. Languages of Art. Oxford: without positing that there is therefore a fixed, Oxford University Press. substantive nature of the artwork that perma- Goodman, Nelson. 1978. Ways of Worldmaking. nently defines its identity and grounds all valid Indianapolis: Hackett. interpretation. This basic strategy of distin- Goodman, Nelson. 1984. Of Mind and Other Matters. guishing between substantive and referential Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. identity is formulated in different ways by Locke, Alain. 1925. The New Negro. New York: these contemporary pragmatists. These theorists Albert & Charles Boni. stress the historicity and culturally embedded Margolis, Joseph. 1999. What, After All, is a Work of Art? University Park: Pennsylvania State nature of artworks. Opposing the idea (shared University Press. by Rorty, Margolis, and the literary pragmatist Rorty, Richard. 1984. Consequences of Pragmatism. Stanley Fish) that all our aesthetic experience Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. is interpretative, Shusterman (1992) deploys Rorty, Richard. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Dewey (but also Wittgenstein) in arguing for Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University some level of experience “beneath interpretation” Press. and even beneath language. Rorty, Richard. 1991. Objectivism, Relativism, and As Goodman revived Dewey’s continuum of Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. art and science, so Rorty (1989) extends Rorty, Richard. 2001. “Response to Richard Dewey’s pragmatist blending of aesthetics and Shusterman.” In Richard Rorty: Critical Dialogues. M. Festenstein & S. Thompson (eds.). Cambridge: ethics by advocating “the aesthetic life” as an Polity, 153–7. ethics of “self-enrichment,” “self-enlargement,” Shusterman, Richard. 1992. Pragmatist Aesthetics: and “self-creation.” Rorty’s vision of the aesthetic Living Beauty, Rethinking Art. Oxford: Blackwell. life has been criticized for its reductive isolation Shusterman, Richard. 1999. “Emerson’s Pragmatist in the private sphere, its narrowing focus on lan- Aesthetics,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, guage, and its failure to engage with popular art 207, 87–99. forms. In contrast, Shusterman urges greater Shusterman, Richard. 2000. Performing Live. appreciation of the aesthetic experience of pop- Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ular arts by providing detailed aesthetic analy- Shusterman, Richard. 2002. Surface and Depth: ses of contemporary popular art genres (e.g., rap Dialectics of Criticism and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. and country music) and of somatic-centered disciplines that can augment our aesthetic richard shusterman experience and creative power in the art of liv- ing. Rorty counters not only by questioning the idea of a somatic aesthetics but even by properties, aesthetic see aesthetic properties.

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psychoanalysis and art psychoanalysis and art Psychoanalysis is a only partially resolved and may continue to field of inquiry into the human mind and men- plague an individual throughout adulthood. tal development, aimed at therapy for mental The conflicts between instinctual desires disorders. Psychoanalysis is committed to the and the demands of society and the superego lead premise that unconscious motives are the fun- to many desires becoming repressed – that is, damental impetus and determinants of form exiled into unconsciousness. Similarly, memor- for human productions and behavior. It seeks ies of experiences that conflict with the psyche’s to translate the obvious import of everyday internalized notions of acceptability tend to be human activities into their hidden, uncon- repressed. Psychoanalysis attempts to recover scious messages. Art figures in psychoanalytic and treat the motives for neurotic behavior discussion primarily as a product of human by unburying repressed ideas, memories, and creation, to be decoded into the unconscious desires. Among the techniques that psycho- motives that it represents. analysis employs in this effort are the analysis of A number of psychoanalytic theorists, how- dreams (which are believed to express repressed ever, provide suggestions regarding the pleasure ideas in a disguised way) and free association the audience takes in artworks. In addition, (in which a patient freely says to the analyst psychoanalytic theory has served as the start- whatever comes to mind, in the hope that these ing point for certain twentieth-century schools may trigger forgotten but significant memories). of art and art criticism. Thus, while psychoan- Although he describes his own artistic sensi- alysts’ accounts of art rarely amount to aesthetic tivity to form and artistic methods as deficient, theory as such, their writings touch on many Freud contends that psychoanalysis can legiti- matters of relevance to aesthetics. mately approach artworks in the same manner Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), the founder of as it approaches dreams or neurotic symp- psychoanalysis, elaborates a theory of mind toms. “The product itself after all must admit that treats the human psyche as comprising of such an analysis, if it really is an effective multiple dynamic components. An entirely expression of the intentions and emotional unconscious segment, which Freud calls the activities of the artist” (1966–74: xiii. 212). “id,” is comprised of basic instinctual drives. Freud’s writings on the artist and artworks Another, largely conscious, component, called are, consequently, focused on the artist’s psycho- the “ego,” attempts to reconcile the demands of biography and its relation to his or her the instincts with the demands of the larger artworks. world. In the course of the ego’s efforts, a part Freud approaches the creative work and of it branches off into a third component of rel- products of artists with the full arsenal of his ative independence. This component is called the psychoanalytic methodology. In artworks as “superego.” It internalizes parental and social in dreams, he takes the surface or “manifest demands, and it serves as an internal control and content” to be a deceptive camouflage for censor over the ego’s activities. underlying, “latent” meanings. He also seeks the Freud analyzes mental disorders in terms formal determinants of an artwork, as of all of disharmony among these components. Dis- products of human making, in the artist’s per- orders arise, for example, as the result of a sonal biography. The form of Michelangelo’s conflict between the id’s demands – frequently Moses, for example, is motivated, according sexual – and the ego’s and the superego’s to Freud, by his longstanding irritation over efforts to steer the mind into conformity with many inconsiderate outbursts made by the pope socially imposed criteria for respectability. whose grave the sculpture adorns. Michelangelo They may also result from the ego’s inability to depicted Moses as one who overcomes rage maintain some autonomy from the superego or as posthumous critique of the dead pope, who external reality. Normal childhood develop- lacked the dignified restraint of the sculpture. ment involves a series of stages in which the id’s Freud’s account of the psychology motivat- demands are gradually brought under the con- ing art is unlikely to charm many artists. trol of the ego. The route involves numerous He compares artists to children, their activity to conflicts among the elements of the psyche neurosis, and their achievements to symptoms and external reality, conflicts which may be of narcissism. Artists, according to Freud, are

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“people who have no occasion to submit their Essays on Sexuality: “There is to my mind no inner life to the strict control of reason” doubt that the concept of ‘beautiful’ has its (quoted in Spector 1972: 33). Through art, roots in sexual excitation and that its original they indulge desires that most adults have put meaning was ‘sexually stimulating’ ” (1966– aside. The original motivation of psychic life, in 74: vii.156 n.). the Freudian account, is the desire to pursue Artists, then, are sufficiently in control of pleasure, a driving force that Freud terms “the themselves to be able to sublimate their raging pleasure principle.” Maturation involves the desires. Despite their relative developmental individual’s recognition that pleasure is more immaturity, a good artist is, in Freud’s view, certain if one submits to the constraints of real- sufficiently connected to intersubjective reality ity – and a constraining “reality principle” to communicate with his or her audience. emerges. The artist, however, unlike the aver- Nonetheless, the artist’s motivations are personal age adult, continues through creative activity and fundamentally narcissistic. The audience to gratify the pleasure principle without might be repelled were it not for what Freud accepting limitation by the reality principle. describes as “the essential ars poetica.” This Freud’s “Creative Writers and Daydreaming” technique involves the artist’s use of disguises compares artistic activity directly to immature to conceal the work’s egoistic character in aes- behavior. He considers both daydreaming and thetic form. The latter is akin to sexual fore- literary art to be psychologically akin to chil- pleasure, for it is an incentive, providing an dren’s play. All three are motivated by uncon- increment of pleasure in order to provoke the scious desires. Children’s play is motivated by release of greater pleasure. In the literary case, the wish to be grown up. But the overriding the reader’s ultimate enjoyment is a release wishes of adults are more embarrassing desires of mental tensions that is available through of an erotic and ambitious nature. The average the work’s providing a context in which his or adult, therefore, does not freely display his or her her own daydreams can be enjoyed without motives in public, as the playing child does, shame. but satisfies them only in imagination, in the Although Freud does not analyze the tech- form of fantasies. The artist, by contrast, is a kind niques utilized by artists in giving form to their of exhibitionist who publicly displays his or her work, his analysis of the formative principles at fantasies. work in dreams (and jokes) is suggestive in this That literature serves the same function as connection. Among the formative principles fantasy is suggested, Freud claims, by the num- active in what Freud calls “the dreamwork” ber of works that have a hero who is the cen- are “condensation” (which conjoins elements of ter of the reader’s interest and sympathy. The two or more constituent images into a composite hero of all novels is “His Majesty the Ego” – the image); “displacement” (in which the psycho- very hero of daydreams (1966–74: ix.150). logical significance of one object is assumed The ego is the hero even in novels that treat by a substitute); “representation” (in which several characters with similar sympathy. In thoughts are translated into images); and “sec- such cases, the ego is simply divided into sev- ondary revision” (a vaguely described process eral component egos. that renders the disparate elements comprising The artist’s creativity is, in Freud’s view, pri- the dream into a coherent, intelligible whole). marily motivated by repressed sexual desires. Otto Rank (1884–1939) explicitly set out to He sees the artist as an introvert whose erotic extend Freudian psychoanalytic theory to illu- desires are more powerful than those of the minate art, myth, and creativity. He initially ordinary human being, but whose impulses attracted Freud’s attention with his study are diverted into the nonsexual activity of The Arts, which elaborates a psychology of the art. Artistic activity might be taken as the artist’s personality on the basis of Freudian paradigm for what Freud labels “sublimation,” theory. Rank analyzes the artist as intermedi- a process in which sexual urges are given an ate between the dreamer, as described in indirect outlet for their expression. He contends Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams of 1900, and the that all forms of cultural achievement are neurotic, similar to both in being motivated by products of sublimation. He writes in Three repressed sexual wishes.

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Rank’s later work, Art and Artist: Creative tial nature. The two approaches ought to com- Urge and Personality Development (1932), plement one another, but the influence of departs from Freudian theory in emphasizing will Freud’s psychoanalytic theory has led many to as the guiding force in the development of the the erroneous expectation that Freudian ana- creative personality, and in analyzing artistic cre- lysis can explain art. Given that Freud treats art ation as a function of the interaction of both indi- on a par with a psychopathological symptom, vidual and collective factors. The latter stem from Jung considers this view pernicious, for it social environment and societal ideology, and misses the deeper significance of art. ensure the intelligibility of the artwork’s form. Jung distinguishes two different types of Analyzing all human creative impulses as artistic creation, the psychological and the aimed at the “constructive harmonization” of the visionary. The psychological type involves a independent individual and the collective, Rank calculated project on the part of the artist. contends that the creative person succeeds Such creation draws from conscious life, and where the neurotic fails. The artist triumphs over deals with matters assimilated by the poet’s biology, mastering the ego to a greater degree psyche. The material is the stuff of human than most individuals. Rank postulates that experience generally, and the artist offers the the collective factor involved in artistic cre- audience a greater depth of insight into ordinary ation is a spiritual principle – “genius” – work- matters than they typically have. Neverthe- ing in the artist, and he contends that the less, the resulting artwork remains within the artist has a rather spiritual aim – the achieve- sphere of what is psychologically intelligible ment of a kind of immortality through art. to the artist and (presumably) to his or her Rank does, however, follow the lead of audience. Freud’s biologism (the belief that psycholo- Visionary artistic creation, by contrast, gical processes can be reductively explained in involves an imagistic richness that outstrips terms of physiological ones) in his analysis of the artist’s capacity for expression. The mate- artistic form. Speculating on the significance of rial is unfamiliar and surpasses understanding. the birth trauma for the individual’s psycho- The work disturbs its audience; nonetheless it logical life, Rank believes that artistic form is pregnant with meaning. Jung describes this refers back to the primal form of the mother’s kind of art as “sublime,” and compares the act body. The mother’s body is also the content of of its creation to Nietzsche’s Dionysian experi- much art, according to Rank, albeit presented ence. The experience from which the artist in an idealized form. draws in such work is not personal, but collec- Carl G. Jung (1875–1961) argues that tive. The images provided by the work represent Freud’s analysis does not do justice to the real archaic psychic structures that are commonly significance of art, as either a psychological active in the unconscious of every individual. or an aesthetic phenomenon. In general, he Such structures populate what Jung describes contends that Freud is too reductivist in his as the “collective unconscious,” a psychic theorizing, attempting to explain all psychic layer that exists along with, but deeper than, the phenomena in terms of the vicissitudes of the personal unconscious. The basic structures individual’s repressed sexual desires. Jung inhabiting the collective unconscious are what denies that sexual desire can account for all vari- he calls “archetypes.” Archetypes are deeply eties of psychic phenomena (unless one broad- rooted, nearly automatic patterns of instinc- ens the definition of “sexual” to the point of tive behavior that are aroused when an indi- vacuity). Moreover, he denies that personal vidual’s circumstances correspond to a typical, psychobiography is the ground on which all psy- universal human experience (for instance, chological structures develop. losing a loved one, becoming a parent). The While eager to distance himself from Freud, archetypes themselves are unconscious, but Jung follows him in distinguishing the psycho- they appear to consciousness in the form of analytic approach to art from an aesthetic images that represent instincts. The charac- approach. The former can give an account of art ters of the world’s mythologies, for example, as a phenomenon derived from psychic motives; are archetypal images for archetypes, as are but aesthetics alone considers art in its essen- provocative images of visionary art.

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Art, according to Jung, is indispensable for cul- the affective dimension of language. According ture. Just as he contends that dreams provide to Kristeva, these tones and rhythms are compensatory images to correct the errors of means for the discharge of bodily drives, which consciousness, he argues that art provides is how language comes to have its significance compensation for the errors of nations and for us. Communication is a matter of interac- eras. Art serves this role only insofar as it is tion with others, and this depends on our lan- a symbol – that is, only insofar as primordial guage having emotional force. The semiotic images are active behind artistic ones. By side of language reflects and conveys the definition, visionary art serves this role. Jung nuances of feeling and interconnection. Our grants, however, that psychological art, too, engagement with the social world is a matter may be symbolic. In such cases, both artist of emotion, and signs need to be related to our and the contemporary audience typically have interactions with others, not just to other similar difficulty recognizing this content. signs. Language has vitality because it is Sometimes, though, such art becomes the focus more than the manipulation of signs; it also of a revival in a later epoch, when the conscious- expresses our drives and emotions. Poetic ness of the age has grown to such a point that language, in particular, is heavily infused with it can recognize what an earlier era missed. semiotic meaning. In general, Kristeva con- Whichever mode of creation is involved in the tends that poetic and artistic expression aims to making of the work, the creative impulse is an express the semiotic in the symbolic. autonomous complex, a split-off part of the Many other psychoanalytic theorists have psyche that leads its own life outside the con- deviated from Freud’s views, while nonetheless trol of consciousness. The difference between the building on elements of his model. Ernst Kris two modes of creation depends on the artist’s (1952) describes the process of artistic creation conscious relation to the complex. The psycho- as “regression in the service of the ego.” He is logical artist, who feels at one with the creative convinced, contra Freud, that art is considerably process, has acquiesced to the unconscious more controlled than is fantasy, and that the ego orders of the complex from the beginning; the plays the role of critic and director for the visionary artist, who has not acquiesced in this material that emerges from the unconscious. way, has been caught unawares. Ernest Schachtel grants the ego’s role in direct- Jung emphatically denies that artistic activ- ing unconscious material, but claims that ity is comparable to psychopathology, but the artist has greater than average access to he does contend that artistic activity makes unconscious material because he or she is artists, as a group, more susceptible to certain unusually open to the world and trusts his or kinds of psychopathological conditions. Any her own perception. Jack J. Spector (1972) autonomous complex draws energy away from suggests taking further Freud’s concept of consciousness. Thus, the energy that fuels “ideational mimetics,” which draws on the the unconscious direction of creative work is tendency to form mimetic representations of drawn away from conscious control of the per- concepts that one is entertaining, often as a sonality. For some artists, this diversion of consequence of observing others’ behavior or energy results in “the instinctual side of the receiving communications from others. Spector personality” prevailing over the ethical, “the believes that an elaboration of this concept infantile over the mature, and the unadapted might have led to an aesthetics based on over the adapted” (Jung 1966: 79). empathy, which would be particularly illumi- According to Julia Kristeva (b.1941), linguis- nating with respect to performance. tic signification has two aspects, the semiotic and the symbolic. The symbolic aspect is meaning the impact of psychoanalysis on art and in a narrow sense, which for Kristeva is a func- art criticism tion of words’ syntactic roles within a gram- Much twentieth-century art is informed by matical system. A sign refers to other elements Freudian themes (for instance, the Oedipal within the language by virtue of their relative complex, the psychological significance of roles within the structure of grammar. Semiotic dreaming, the importance of the unconscious). meaning involves tones and rhythms; it includes Indeed, the impact of Freudian theory on the

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psychoanalysis and art populace at large is so pervasive that the burden Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva) tools for of proof would rest on anyone who claimed unpacking the significance of art. Critics have that a given artwork or school was completely employed psychoanalytic theory in diverse uninfluenced by psychoanalytic thought. projects, such as seeking repressed content in Certain schools of art have explicitly drawn the manifest form of artworks; interpreting inspiration from Freud. Most notorious among the behavior of literary characters in psycho- these are the Surrealists. Growing out of the analytic terms; analyzing artworks in terms of Dada movement, which was not unified in the artist’s psychobiography; and utilizing psy- its responses to Freud, Surrealism employed choanalytic concepts (such as “displacement” Freudian concepts to its own purposes. Sur- and “condensation”) as fundamental terms in realist poets employed free association (a criticism. method they valorized as a form of “automa- While formalists and others have opposed tism”) as a means of tapping the unconscious. the Freudian emphasis on the artist’s biography They enlisted the resultant dreamlike imagery as a key to the artwork, the range of employ- in their poetry, aiming to jar and provoke their ments of psychoanalytic theory in criticism audience into an altered state of responsive- suggests that it will continue to be a major ness. Surrealist theorists, notably André Breton, catalyst for art and literary criticism, as well as also attempted to expand Freud’s theories a stimulus for art. regarding the importance of sexuality into a new collective mythology, focused on achieving See also aesthetic pleasure; creativity; criti- the heights of sexual satisfaction with a mythic cism; humor; kristeva; nietzsche; symbol. female principle. Breton developed images of a number of female love deities, who were to bibliography supplement the collection of psychologically Bersani, Leo. 1986. The Freudian Body: Psychoanalysis significant figures (such as family members) and Art. New York: Columbia University Press. so important to Freud’s theory. Freud, Sigmund. 1966–74. The Standard Edition of The Surrealists took issue with Freud on the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. many points, particularly on matters con- 24 vols. Vols. iv & v: The Interpretation of Dreams. cerned with therapy. Unlike Freud, they aimed Vol. vii: A Case of Hysteria, Three Essays on Sexuality, and Other Works. Vol. ix: Jensen’s “Gradiva” and Other to liberate the id, giving it dominant control over Works. Vol. xiii: Totem and Taboo and Other Works. J. the psyche. They also valued mental disorder Strachey (ed. & trans.). London: Hogarth. as a means of breaking down the barriers Jung, C. G. 1966. The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. between art and life. The Surrealists’ interest in 24 vols. Vol. xv: The Spirit in Man, Art, and Liter- spiritualism also clashed with Freud’s clinical, ature. R. F. C. Hull (trans.). Princeton: Princeton biologistic approach to aberrant mental phe- University Press. nomena. Freud himself took issue with his Kofman, Sara. 1988. The Childhood of Art: An Surrealist followers; and in general, he dis- Interpretation of Freud’s Aesthetics. W. Woodhill liked modern art. He rejected the products of (trans.). New York: Columbia University Press. another school motivated by his theories, the Kris, Ernst. 1952. Psychonalytic Explorations in Art. New York: International Universities Press. expressionist movement, which attempted to Kristeva, Julia. 1980. Desire in Language. T. Gora, represent the primitive processes of inner life. A. Jardine, & L. Roudiez (trans.). L. Roudiez (ed.). A more recent artistic trend that Freud’s theo- New York: Columbia University Press. ries partially inspired is the post-World War II Kristeva, Julia. 1980. Revolution in Poetic Language. tendency in some American painting to work T. Gora, A. Jardine, & L. Roudiez (trans.). L. Roudiez with mythic elements. Perhaps this phenom- (ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. enon draws greater inspiration from Jung, whose Rank, Otto. 1932. Art and Artist: Creative Urge and concept of the archetypes provides a means Personality Development. New York: Tudor. of theoretically bridging personal images and Spector, Jack J. 1972. The Aesthetics of Freud: A Study collective themes. in Psychoanalysis and Art. New York: Praeger. Wollheim, Richard. 1974. On Art and the Mind. Many twentieth-century art and literary Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. critics have seen in the theories of Freud and other psychoanalytic theorists (among them kathleen marie higgins

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race and aesthetics Theoretical reflection comportment, Frantz Fanon formulates the on the connections between aesthetics and notion of the historico-racial schema of the race may appear to be a relatively recent phe- body, which is made up by “the white man, who nomenon, associated with the emergence of had woven me out of a thousand details, anec- postcolonial theory and critical race studies. dotes, stories” (1967: 111). This influential Yet, philosophers have long developed their idea points to the role of aesthetic fantasies, accounts of the nature and social effects of images, and narratives in the production of taste by reference to presumed differences racialized modes of corporeal consciousness between the aesthetic propensities and prac- and orientation. In addition, Fanon identifies tices of the white subject of cultivation and ruptures in the body schema wrought by his racial others (West 1982; Roelofs 2005). racism. Addressing the violence summarily Shaftesbury, Hume, Burke, and Kant are among comprised under the repetitive, fearful, stereo- the thinkers who have delineated taste’s ethi- typed phrase “Look, a Negro!” he writes: “My cal and political functioning with the help of body was given back to me sprawled out, dis- racial designations. They implicitly consider torted, recolored, clad in mourning in that aesthetic creation and judgment instrumental white winter day” (1967: 110–13). Racializa- in the realization of cultural constellations that tion fundamentally structures embodiment, observe moral, epistemic, social, and political instituting social asymmetries, norms, and hierarchies among white European men and hierarchies at the level of corporeal life. As women of the middle classes on the one hand, such it pervades the embodied reality inhabited and blacks, Arabs, Indians, and peasants on by those who are categorized as white people the other hand. This intellectual history, con- of Anglo-European descent, whose bodies joined with traditions of (neo)colonialism and are implicitly normalized, no less than that of other cultural institutions that render racism those who are marked as people of color, who a systemic phenomenon, leave the field of are alternately rendered invisible and hyper- aesthetics mired in racial constellations that visible under regimes of seeing that privilege contemporary critics are working to undo whiteness while implementing detailed rankings (Anzaldúa 1987; Bhabha 1994; Davis 1998; among multiple racial identifications. Extra- Chow 2002). Given the depth of racialization as polating from the visual register of racialization, a structural register of sociality, community, and we can bring into view the racial workings individual agency, such theorists do not aspire of feeling, touching, smelling, tasting, sounding, to color blindness but hope to supplant prob- listening, mobility, proximity, distance, togeth- lematic forms of racialized experience, cre- erness, and isolation, which contribute to ation, and evaluation by more just and less the distinctive patterns of racialization char- oppressive modes of meaning production. acterizing embodied existence. Given that these bodily modes participate in aesthetic race and the body production and reception, aesthetic agency One prominent resource for understanding can be seen to lend support to and, in turn, aesthetics in light of its imbrications with race acquire support from structures of racializa- is theories of racial embodiment. Referring to the tion. Critical approaches to matters of race body image, that is to say, the implicit sense of thus both demand and enable critical perspec- the body that organizes and directs bodily tives on aesthetic questions.

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race and aesthetics race and the everyday race and culture The bodily dimensions of racialization testify For many philosophers, including Scottish to the functioning of race as a regulatory force Enlightenment thinkers, Kant, Schiller, and controlling quotidian aesthetic life. Race oper- Hegel, the aesthetic participates in the realiza- ates not merely as a naturalist postulate – a pre- tion of a progressive trajectory of cultivation, sumption about the biological characteristics leading from less developed stages of culture of populations – but is to be comprehended as to more advanced ones. The ensuing picture of a set of cultural regimens, casting ethnicities culture institutes a divide between modernity as identities to be managed and policed, and to and the premodern that, postcolonial critics be produced as a form of labor (Chow 2002). have argued, keeps reiterating a racialized and An aesthetic technology guiding daily occupa- colonial framing of subjectivity, and yet at the tions and interactions, race can be found at same time creates a space for critical recon- work in the systemic organization of social figurations of cultural agency and identifica- space through surveillance procedures, com- tion. Homi Bhabha witnesses a split between modified transactions, and official as well as developmental trajectories that are imagined incidental encounters between embodied sub- as realizing a static ethical model of the nation, jects (Ahmed 2000). To reflect on the racial- and ongoing significatory processes that keep the ization of everyday existence is to think about nation’s image in motion, incessantly renewing the ways racial norms and histories delineate the alterity of the nation and of its representa- the constraints and possibilities of social tions, and resisting stabilization. He contends exchanges and individual itineraries of becom- that modern cultures are marked by disparate, ing. Aesthetic values are implicated in such incommensurable, temporal frameworks. Far racialization, both as products and carriers from homogeneous, fixed grounds or origins of racial meanings. Transnational capitalism for identity, national cultures constitute liminal and the racialized global division of labor formations that are continually being repro- that sustain the contemporary world order duced. Eluding any singular, unambivalent thrive on the flows of ever renewing aesthetic cultural order, liminal positions, according to desire for consumption goods that under- Bhabha, hold out resources for resistance and write a sense of the ordinary and the unusual. transformation. They enable us to shift and Yet, while aesthetic conduct constitutes a tweak given conditions for cultural produc- powerful motor of modes of racialization under tion. Artistic and cultural critiques, specifically, late capitalism, cultural critics also attribute can allow for what Bhabha calls “a postcolonial oppositional capacities to tactics of aesthetic translation of modernity” (1994: 241), making dislocation. Nelly Richard (2004) describes room for the articulation and negotiation of how aesthetic performances disturb the trans- hybrid identities and differences. Such hybrid- parent vocabularies of market rationality that ity is not to be hailed as a utopian condition render commercial pleasure compelling and – far from that – but must be interrogated efface state-sanctioned violence from the with respect to the structures of profitability, public domain. Such performances unsettle entrapment, and abjection it entails (Chow linguistic practices that lock the affective 2002). More generally, in view of slavery, implications of historical violence in an colonialism, labor markets, cultural capital, unspeakable past and sustain the collective and other forms of racialized power, post- illusion of having broken with this past. colonial perspectives challenge aesthetics to Likewise, pointing to the role of racial repre- rethink the web of interconnected assump- sentations as a form of sociopolitical ima- tions about culture, the public, and the nation gination, Robert Gooding-Williams (2006) underlying philosophical theories of the mean- considers aesthetic protest capable of unhing- ing and ontology of artworks and other cultural ing racial ideologies, for example, by demythi- artifacts. fying powerful political allegories, such as the Racial hierarchies are crisscrossed by other fantasy, repeated in movies as well as court- hierarchies in which they find support and rooms, that considers blackness antithetical that help to buttress them (see below). to social order. Divisions between high or avant-garde art and

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race and aesthetics popular or mass culture are among the binaries are being developed that can acknowledge eth- that shore up and find sustenance in normatively ically desirable as well as undesirable dimensions marked racial differentiations (as inflected by and of racial subjectivity and community. inflecting differences of class, gender, and so on). Oppositions between theoretical abstrac- race and intersectionality tion and the realm of cultural praxis (including Since the 1970s, numerous theorists have art) are also among the hierarchies that carry argued that racial formations both rely on and socially normative codings. Challenging racial- influence constructions of gender, economic ization by other names, such as “culture,” disparity, and other dimensions of difference. “value,” “the sublime,” or “taste,” critics place There is no generic racial identity shared by such dualities under suspension, initiating all members of a given race. A person’s racial methods of cultural analysis designed to work identity is shaped, in part, by this person’s eco- around the proliferating logics of difference nomic background, nationality, ethnicity, gen- just outlined. der, age, and degree of able-bodiedness. The list goes on. The concept of intersectionality race and the interpretation, criticism, and refers to the ways in which racial identities are production of art inflected by notions such as gender and class, While some explicitly reject the notion of the and, more generally, analytically entwined aesthetic on account of its entanglements with with an extensive range of social categories. ethnocentric and racist formations of differ- Given the mutual imbrications of racial forma- ence, it is unlikely that we can simply cast off tions with structures of class and gender, the this pervasive, globally circulating web of norms aesthetic workings of race cannot be compre- and idioms in which we are mired. Faced with hended apart from their entanglements with the the limitations of liberal conceptions of artistic operations of other categories. To sidestep the interpretation, criticism, and creation in cap- collaborations among multiple axes of differ- turing the operations of race in the cultural ence in the production of racial constellations field, thinkers have adopted Marxist, feminist, is to project an overly homogeneous notion psychoanalytical, phenomenological, and de- of racialized subjectivity. Likewise, to ignore constructive approaches that recognize the the functioning of race in inquiries addressed embeddedness of artworks and interpreters in at aesthetic constructions of, say, masculinity encompassing frameworks of symbol production. or national identity is to efface the hetero- Numerous contemporary theorists and artists geneity of these formations. Intersectionality draw on aesthetic concepts and strategies as demonstrates that approaches to race in aes- resources for cultural invention and critique. thetics share fundamental interests with other Philosophers and cultural critics have devised disciplinary subfields such as feminist, cross- strategies of reading that trace the racial pro- cultural, and queer aesthetics, as well as stud- duction of aesthetic meanings, experiences, ies of the connections between the aesthetic and judgments (Anzaldúa 1987; Bhabha and what is construed as the political, the eco- 1994; Davis 1998; Chow 2002; Roelofs 2005; nomic, the public, the domestic, the local, the Gooding-Williams 2006). Accordingly, cul- national, and the transnational. tural participants and analysts have begun A great deal of philosophical work on the critically to factor race into the delineation of intersection of aesthetics and race has taken the artworld and the concept of art. They have place in interdisciplinary contexts, and this field brought race to bear on the nature of aesthetic of inquiry represents a theoretically rich and evaluation and the idea of aesthetic value. growing area of reflection that goes to the heart Artistic value still tends to be differentiated of the epistemological, metaphysical, historical, from market status (see Richard 2004) ethical, and political concerns that are often notwithstanding its historical imbrications considered to constitute philosophy’s core pre- with racial economies. While matters of race occupations in various philosophical traditions. throw a wrench into theoretical frameworks that separate the aesthetic from the political See also canon; feminist aesthetics; feminist and the economic, more complex perspectives standpoint aesthetics.

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rasa bibliography The NAWyaRAstra analyzes various affective Ahmed, Sara. 2000. Strange Encounters: Embodied elements of drama, each of which plays a role Others in Post-Coloniality. London: Routledge. in the production of rasa. Although the text Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera: does not clearly distinguish the terms, a rasa The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt is generally taken to be an emotional state Lute. achieved by the spectator, while a bhAva is Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge. an emotion represented in a drama. Ideally a A A Chow, Rey. 2002. The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit drama presents a sth yibh va (durable emo- of Capitalism. New York: Columbia University tion), a stable emotion that is the overarching Press. affective tone of the work as a whole. This tone, Davis, Angela Y. 1998. Blues Legacies and Black however, may be accomplished by means of Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and various emotions presented over the course Billie Holiday. New York: Random House. of a work. Only certain emotions are both so Fanon, Frantz. 1967. Black Skin, White Masks. C. L. essential within human experience and suffi- Markmann (trans.). New York: Grove. ciently presentable to serve as the overall emo- Gooding-Williams, Robert. 2006. Look, a Negro! tional quality of an entire dramatic presentation. Philosophical Essays on Race, Culture and Politics. New AW RA York: Routledge. The N ya stra lists eight: erotic love (rati), A R Richard, Nelly. 2004. Cultural Residues: Chile in mirth (h sya), sorrow ( oka), anger (krodha), Transition. A. West-Durán & T. Quester (trans.). energy (utsAha), fear (bhaya), disgust ( jugupsA), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. and astonishment (vismaya). Roelofs, Monique. 2005. “Racialization as an Several components are involved in the Aesthetic Production: What does the Aesthetic do production of a sthAyibhAva within the play. for Whiteness and Blackness and Vice Versa?” In First, there are the persons, objects, and cir- White on White / Black on Black. G. Yancy (ed.). cumstances that incite the emotion. These are Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 83–124. called the vibhAvas, or “determinants” in the West, Cornel. 1982. “A Genealogy of Modern translation of Manomohan Ghosh (Bharata- Racism.” In Prophesy Deliverance! Towards an Afro- American Revolutionary Christianity. Philadelphia: muni 1967). Second, there are those expressive Westminster Press, 47–65. gestures and behaviors that reveal that a char- acter is in a particular emotional state. These monique roelofs are called the anubhAvas, or “consequents,” in that they are the result of an emotional condi- tion. Third, there are the various transitory rasa is a Sanskrit term meaning “taste,” mental states that figure in the extended expe- “juice,” or “flavor.” In the context of aesthetics, rience of an overall emotional tone. These are it refers to the experience of the full savor of the 33 vyabhichAribhAvas, or “complementary an emotion provoked in an audience member psychological states.” These include a mixed through an artistic performance. By extension, assortment of conditions, specifically, the term is also sometimes used in reference to visual artworks that analogously convey emo- discouragement, weakness, apprehension, envy, tional savor to the spectator. intoxication, weariness, indolence, depression, The canonical text in which the term rasa is anxiety, distraction, recollection, contentment, used aesthetically is the NAWyaRAstra, attributed shame, inconstancy, joy, agitation, stupor, arro- gance, despair, impatience, sleep, epilepsy, dreaming, to Bharata but composed over three centuries awakening, indignation, dissimulation, cruelty, (200–500). This text is a compendium of prac- assurance, sickness, insanity, death, fright and tical knowledge about producing dramatic deliberation. (Bharata-muni 1967: 102) performances, which were assumed to include music and dance as well as performed scripts. The list of rasas, or emotional savors, that may The NAWyaRAstra presents the production of rasa be produced in the audience, correlates with the in audience members as the aim of a dramatic list of sthAyibhAvas. While the sthAyibhAvas are production. The technical features of drama emotions that a particular character under- that it prescribes are presented as means for goes in specific situations, the rasas are under- fulfilling this ultimate goal. stood to be the essences or universal forms of

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rasa basic emotions. The NAWyaRAstra lists eight transpersonal. This requires empathy, and the rasas: the erotic (RVXgAra), the comic (hAsya), achievement of rasa is an accomplishment. the pathetic (i.e., sorrowful) (karuUa), the furi- Abhinava claims that unconscious memory ous (raudra), the heroic (vCra), the terrible traces (saTskAra), built up through previous (bhayAnaka), the odious (bCbhatsa), and the lives as well as the present one, enable the spec- marvelous (adbhuta). A ninth rasa, tranquillity tator to empathize with an emotion presented or quiescence (RAnta), was later added to this list in a dramatic production. Latent impressions by some commentators. of the same kind of emotion are stimulated Whether the presentation of a sthAyibhAva by the performance (or some other kind of leads to the experience of a rasa depends not only affect-producing stimulus, such as a scene on the skill of those involved in the production. that might move a poet to write). The rasika, or The cultivation of the spectator is also crucial. cultivated spectator, recognizes the congru- Bharata suggests that one should not expect indi- ence between the remembered emotion and viduals of inferior character to experience rasa, that experienced by the character. This is no matter how good the performance. The possible because the rasika has broken through ideal candidate for an experience of rasa would the sense that one’s emotion is one’s own pos- be an audience member who is session and come to see it as a type that all human beings share, and which one can savor possessed of [good] character, high birth, quiet reflectively. behaviour and learning, are desirous of fame, virtue, are impartial, advanced in age, proficient in Abhinava identifies seven obstacles that can drama in all its six limbs, alert, honest, unaffected interfere in the production of rasa by a drama, by passion, expert in playing the four kinds of several of which occur through faults in the play, musical instrument, very virtuous, acquainted but some through faults in the viewer. First, one with the Costumes and Make-up, the rules of might find the play unconvincing, and thus be dialects, the four kinds of Histrionic Repre- unable to take the emotions portrayed ser- sentation, grammar, prosody, and various [other] iously. Second, one might relate to the drama Q astras, are experts in different arts and crafts, in a manner that is too self-interested, and find and have fine sense of the Sentiments and the oneself reminded of one’s personal problems. Psychological States. (Bharata-muni 1967: 523) Third, one might be too absorbed in one’s own In addition, such a person should be of feelings to move beyond an egotistical outlook. “unruffled sense” as well as “honest, expert in Fourth, one may be obstructed by an incapa- the discussion of pros and cons, detector of city in a sense organ that is needed in order to faults and appreciator [of merits]” and also experience the drama. Fifth, the play might experience “gladness on seeing a person glad, not be clear enough to convey emotion effec- and sorrow on seeing him sorry,” and be one tively. Sixth, the play may be too diffused to who “feels miserable on seeing him miserable” convey a dominant mental state. Seventh, (Bharata-muni 1967: 523–4). Bharata grants one might be confused by certain particular that this combination of social status, education, expressions and be in doubt as to what emotional artistic skill, and moral character is unlikely to content they are intended to convey. coincide fully in the same person. Nevertheless, Abhinava accepts RAnta, or tranquillity, as his list provides insight into the degree to a rasa in itself, and he claims that it is the which the experience of rasa is an achievement aim toward which all other rasas lead. This is on the part of the audience member. because RAnta is the most serene mental state. The NAWyaRAstra was lost and rediscovered In this respect it resembles the supreme human in the nineteenth century in the context of goal of mokSa, or spiritual liberation. A monist, a commentary by Abhinavagupta (11th cen- Abhinava understands mokSa as complete tury). Abhinava associates rasa with spiritual identification with the universal conscious- development in a way that the NAWyaRAstra ness, the one reality, which he identifies as does not. According to Abhinava the experience Qiva. Each of us is a manifestation of this single of rasa involves breaking through egotistic consciousness, and our ultimate spiritual goal obsession with one’s personal emotions to is to realize that we are not distinct beings but an appreciation of emotional types that are one with Qiva, our true Self. While QAnta falls

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rasa short of complete liberation, it gives us a taste list coincides with lists of basic emotions, there of mokSa by lifting us above our ordinary sense would still be cultural differences in the way of identification with our egos and offering these emotions are understood and the appro- us a glimpse of the transpersonal outlook of priate occasions and means for expressing the liberated being. them. Nevertheless, rasa theory offers an Abhinava is not the only theorist who asso- account of the power that art sometimes has to ciates rasa with spiritual aims. According to speak beyond its time and place and to widen Repagisvamin and other Bengali Vaisuavites the capacity of its audience for empathic emo- (i.e., devotees of Vishnu) of the sixteenth cen- tional concern. tury, RVXgAra (the erotic) is the supreme rasa. The ultimate form of this rasa occurs in the See also indian aesthetics; relativism. context of bhakti, devotion to god (understood here as Vishnu, often in the form of his avatar bibliography Krishna), expressed in a variety of sometimes fnandavardhana & Abhinavagupta. 1990. The ecstatic devotional practices. “DhvanyAloka” of Fnandavardhana with the “Locana” Aesthetic issues relating to rasa include the of Abhinavagupta. D. H. H. Ingalls, J. M. Masson, & status of the specific eight types identified by M. V. Patwardhan (trans.). D. H. H. Ingalls (ed.). Bharata. Is this to be taken as a complete Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. AW RA list? Is the addition of RAntarasa by later com- Bharata-muni (ascribed). 1967. The N ya stra. 2 mentators acceptable? One might question this vols. Rev. 2nd edn. M. Ghosh (ed. & trans.). Calcutta: Granthalaya. not only on the basis of Bharata’s authority, but Bharata-Muni (ascribed). 1970. Aesthetic Rapture: also on the ground that tranquillity might be The RasAdhyAya of the NAWyaRAstra, J. M. Masson & understood as the absence of certain distressing M. V. Patwardhan (ed. & trans.). Poona: Deccan emotions rather than an emotion itself. Or one College. might raise pragmatic concerns: if rasa is expe- Chakrabarti, Arindam. 2002. “Disgust and the Ugly rienced when a performer conveys a related in Indian Aesthetics.” In La Pluralità Estetica: sthAyibhAva to the spectator, how would a per- Lasciti e irradiazioni oltre il Novecento, Associazione former theatrically express the appropriately Italiana Studi di Estetica, Annali 2000–2001. peaceful sthAyibhAva of RAntarasa? If the addition Torino: Trauben. of RAntarasa is justified, moreover, one might con- Chari, V. K. 1990. Sanskrit Criticism. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. clude that the list could in principle be further Gerow, Edwin. 1994. “Abhinavagupta’s Aesthetics as expanded. a Speculative Paradigm,” Journal of the American Another issue concerns the universality of Oriental Society, 114, 186–204. rasas. Certain Indian commentators have Gerow, Edwin. 1997. “Indian Aesthetics: A accepted rasa theory as applicable to poetry Philosophical Survey.” In A Companion to World and other art forms. But does it apply in all cul- Philosophies. E. Deutsch & R. Bontekoe (eds.). tures as well? Granted that the production is an Malden: Blackwell, 304–23. explicit aim of both performers and spectators Goswamy, B. N. 1986. “Rasa: Delight of the Rason.” in the Indian dramatic tradition, and in the In Essence of Indian Art. San Francisco: Asian Art Indonesian and Malaysian traditions that were Museum of San Francisco, 17–30. Keith, Arthur Berriedale. 1924. The Sanskrit Drama: influenced by Indian drama, is a spectator Its Origin, Development, Theory and Practice. likely to experience rasa through dramas in Oxford: Oxford University Press. other traditions? And more generally, is rasa the- Masson, J. Moussaieff & Patwardhan, M. V. 1969. ory universally relevant to art? QAntarasa and Abhinavagupta’s Philosophy of Rasa theory also raises questions about Aesthetics. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research whether there are certain universal emotions to Institute. which art may appeal. Bharata’s specific list Shweder, Richard A. & Haidt, Jonathan. 2000. “The does not converge with contemporary propos- Cultural Psychology of the Emotions: Ancient and als for a list of basic emotions, which are fre- New.” In Handbook of the Emotions. M. Lewis & quently individuated in terms of patterns of J. M. Haviland-Jones (eds.). 2nd edn. New York: Guilford, 397–414. brain activation and/or hard-wired facial expression. Even if some subset of Bharata’s kathleen marie higgins

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realism realism The English term “realism” was It is easy to exaggerate the extent to which introduced into literary criticism by Samuel our visual experience is modified by art. Oscar Taylor Coleridge in 1817, and into art criti- Wilde famously remarked that nobody had cism by John Ruskin in 1856, by which time the noticed the fog in London until it appeared in French and German equivalents were already Impressionist paintings, but in fact writers well established. Almost as soon as réalisme have generally described optical effects long appeared in print, both the term and the style before painters learned to represent them. For were regarded with suspicion and distaste. example, the spinning highlights on a chariot Baudelaire described it as “a vague and elastic wheel were described by the Latin poet word”; and Flaubert – who was considered one Prudentius many centuries before Velazquez of the “high priests” of realism, as he himself put captured this effect in paint. it – vehemently denied that it applied to him. Be that as it may, if the art we see modifies During the twentieth century, the feeling of our visual habits and influences the resem- unease increased, and today art history, philo- blances we perceive, it does not follow that sophy, and literary studies are all gripped by fidelity to nature is a vacuous idea. For this skepticism about the idea that art or literature may also be something that we must learn to can reveal the world to us as it is in reality, see and judge correctly, and art may be a independently of the conventions and local source from which we learn. In a similar way, perspectives, the prejudices and values, that progress in the physical sciences has enabled us limit and control art, as they limit and control to refine our observations of natural effects, the whole of human life. Presumably, realistic and these observations have in turn enabled us art must be closer to reality than other kinds to test scientific theories. There is nothing sus- of art. But does art of this kind exist, or is picious about this interaction between theory the name propaganda and a sham, like “The and observation, and nothing that should Ministry of Truth” in Orwell’s 1984? make us wonder whether we possess a “constant I believe that the concept of realism can and independent” standard, with which sci- serve a useful purpose, as long as we abandon entific theories can be assessed. Science some- the idea that realistic art has a unique sanction, times progresses in this way, step by step, or a unique ability to express the truth, and placing its weight on one foot while it moves the instead consider what the art that historians other one; and there is no reason why art and critics describe as “realist” or “realistic” is should not sometimes do the same. really like. Philosophers who write about real- Nevertheless, Goodman is right to think that ism generally focus on the visual arts, and for the concepts of resemblance and fidelity to the most part I shall do the same. nature are too vague and too metaphorical to Among philosophers, Nelson Goodman was explain what realism is. In fact, it is unwise the most influential twentieth-century skeptic to assume that realism is a single phenomenon about realism in painting and sculpture. “The or style. We need to look at art-historical and literal or realistic or naturalistic system of theoretical texts, and try to discern what their representation,” Goodman writes, “is simply authors were referring to when they used the customary one.” Realism, he argues, is the terms “realism” and “realistic,” without not a matter of fidelity to nature, and cannot be assuming that they are unambiguous, or that measured by resemblance. For our judgments realistic works of art in one period or tradition of resemblance are influenced by our visual must resemble realistic works in another. habits, and our visual habits are influenced We can begin to map the ground the term in turn by the kinds of representations we covers by distinguishing between subject are used to seeing. Hence, resemblance cannot matter and technique. Let us take subject be a “constant and independent” standard matter first. Realism, in this sense, is about the against which works of art can be measured, choice of subject matter and the manner in because “the criteria of resemblance vary which it is treated. with changes in representational practice” For example, compare Ingres’s painting (Goodman 1968: 39 n. 31; see also Jakobson of 1808, The Valpincon Bather and Degas’s 1921). (mistitled) pastel of 1885, Girl Drying Herself,

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realism in the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/xdb/ASP/databaseGener (Readers are invited to search for images al.asp). On the earlier vase, which was decorated online.) One salient difference between these by the Euphiletos painter in about 530 bce, the works is that the surface of Ingres’s painting is exertion of the burly runners is conveyed in a almost transparent – the brush strokes are marvelously vivid way, but their anatomy is barely visible – whereas Degas draws attention sketchy and their posture is wrong. By con- to the individual strokes that were deposited on trast, the Berlin Painter, who painted the later the surface of the paper as the pastel crayon was vase, evidently preferred grace to exertion, and rubbed back and forth. But let us set this dif- these men look as if they are setting out on a ference in the use of materials aside, and con- gentle jog. But their anatomy is depicted with sider the ways in which the two artists treated a plausible economy of means, and the for- the theme of the female nude. In Ingres’s ward arm is placed, as it is in nature, opposite painting, sensuality is perfectly translated into the forward leg. The differences we would line and surface: the refined outline of the have in mind if we described the later painting bather’s body, and the surface of her shoulders as more realistic than the earlier one are not dif- and broad back, beautifully modeled by the ferences in subject matter. They are differences diagonally falling light. Compare the ungainly in the technical resources the artist was able pose of the woman in Degas’s drawing, her feet to control. planted steadily on the ground, her bottom Realism in technique can be defined in terms sticking out just enough to balance the weight of three main properties, which I shall call of her head, and the rapid gesture with which accuracy, animation, and modality. she pulls her shift over her head. There is By accuracy, I mean the accurate depiction of clearly a sense in which Degas’s drawing is the a kind of material or object or activity, such as more realistic treatment of the theme. water or satin, a palm tree or a dove, sleeping, Realism, in this sense, is opposed to idealism, galloping, or making love. (The accurate depic- classicism, or romanticism. It represents the tion of people, places, and events is related, but lower social classes, comic as opposed to tragic distinct.) Accuracy combines a degree of indi- material, daily life as opposed to myth. In the viduation or precision with the avoidance of ide- paintings of Courbet, Manet, and Degas, and in alization, fantasy, error, and deceit, and it is a the novels of Balzac and Flaubert, the so-called salient characteristic of realistic art. For exam- hierarchy of genres, which promoted the ple, neither of the two vase paintings of runners representation of history, myth, or allegory, is is artificial or unskilled. But the depiction of definitively set aside, and the everyday lives of posture in the later painting is more accurate, people belonging to the lower classes are taken because when a man runs, his forward arm seriously, and placed in a definite period of really is opposite his forward leg. It was not nec- contemporary history. “Realism” becomes the essary to use a camera with a rapid shutter name of a self-conscious movement only in the speed to discover this, as it was necessary to dis- nineteenth century, but its themes appear in art cover how a horse gallops. But both discover- in every age. In his famous study of realism in ies made it possible for artists to represent literature, from Homer to Virginia Woolf, Erich motion with greater accuracy than before. Auerbach (1969) argues that it is in the The second element of realism in technique gospels, where God lives among the humblest is animation, which combines mobility with the members of society, that the roots of modern expression of emotion, character, or thought. For realism first appear. example, the first painful grimace in a surviv- Realism in technique is an entirely different ing Greek vase painting is in the tondo of a cup phenomenon, which can be traced back to decorated by the Sosias Painter in about 500 bce, the revolutionary developments in Greek art which represents Achilles binding the wound on between the sixth and fourth centuries bce. For Patroclus’ arm (Berlin, Antikensammlung; item example, compare two paintings of runners 200108 at www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/xdb/ASP/ on Panathenaic amphorae, which were made databaseGeneral.asp). The tense expression on about 50 years apart (New York, Metropolitan Patroclus’ face is marked by three curved lines Museum of Art: items 301692 and 303085 at between his mouth and cheek and the artist has

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realism added a little white pigment to show him bar- example, Giotto and Caravaggio to the difference ing his teeth with pain. He has also depicted him between Morse code and semaphore or to the turning away from Achilles, and bracing his foot difference between English and French. We against the tondo’s frame. should compare it to the difference between Animation points toward the third and most the English of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and the general measure of realism in technique, English of Milton’s Paradise Lost. The technical namely, modality, by which I mean the extent resources of pictorial art are always limited in of the range of questions it is possible to ask about their expressive range, as languages are also a depicted scene. The principal measure of bound to be; and these technical resources, realism in Greek art in particular, and of real- like languages, can expand in different directions ism in technique generally, is the range of to express new ideas and new observations. questions we can ask about what a work of art The development of realistic technique is the represents: Is this man angry or impassive? Is expansion of the modality of art, in other he despondent or alert? Is he Semitic or words, the expansion of what it is possible for Egyptian? Is he young or old? Is he fat or thin? art to represent. Is his cloak made of linen or of wool? Is he The critics (e.g., Roman Jakobson), philo- standing in the shade or in the sun? Is he run- sophers (e.g., Nelson Goodman), and art his- ning, walking, jumping, or standing still? torians (e.g., Leo Steinberg) in the twentieth The most popular way of arguing that real- century who were skeptical about realism ism is a myth is to compare art and language. wanted to deny that art can be judged by a sin- Philosophers and art historians like to describe gle standard that is valid at all times and in all art as if it were a kind of language, both to places, and they wanted to insist that the art that emphasize the extent to which artists rely on is described as “realist” or “realistic” proceeds systems of conventions, and also to discour- from the artist’s values, methods, and view- age the idea that some styles are more truthful, points, no less than other kinds of art. They were or closer to reality, than others. The things right on both counts. But it does not follow we say are not truer or closer to reality if we that the idea of realism is a myth, invented to say them in French; and it turns out that pretend that one kind of art is the most universal they are not truer or closer to reality if we and genuine, sanctioned by reason and the paint them in French either. We call art “real- destiny of all mankind. Nor does it follow that istic,” it has been said, when we find the “realism” is merely an honorific term, which we artist’s style easy to absorb or understand, apply to art in a familiar style. We can be plu- because the conventions are familiar – like our ralists about art without denying the reality native tongue. and the importance of realism. The comparison between artistic styles and languages makes sense, as long as languages are See also goodman; illusion; representation; not confused with scripts or codes. For exam- truth in art. ple, the hieroglyphic and hieratic Egyptian scripts do not differ in the information they can bibliography be used to record, and neither do Morse code Auerbach, Erich. 1969. Mimesis. Princeton: and semaphore. But languages obviously differ Princeton University Press. widely in their expressive powers. The Psalms Gombrich, E. H. 1977. Art and Illusion. 5th edn. are not inferior as poetry to Shakespeare’s son- Oxford: Phaidon. nets, but the language at Shakespeare’s dis- Goodman, Nelson. 1968. Languages of Art. posal was much richer than the language Indianapolis: Hackett. available to the Psalmist. “All you need is love” Goodman, Nelson. 1983. “Realism, Relativism, and can probably be translated into every human Reality,” New Literary History, 14, 269–72. Hyman, John. 2006. The Objective Eye. Chicago: language that is known, but the same is not true University of Chicago Press. of “Energy is equivalent to mass.” Jakobson, Roman. Language in Literature. K. The analogy between artistic styles and Pomorska & S. Rudy (eds.). Cambridge, MA: languages is useful, if we get it right. But we Harvard University Press. (Includes “On Realism in should not compare the difference between, for Art” (1921), 19–27.)

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Nochlin, Linda. 1971. Realism. Harmondsworth: between different modes of artistic and cultural Penguin. practice. Yet dogmatic relativism in both its Rosen, Charles & Zerner, Henri. 1984. Romanticism aesthetic and epistemological forms is far from and Realism: Mythology of Nineteenth-Century Art. a contemporary phenomenon, having its roots London: Faber. both in the pluralist outlook of Michel de john hyman Montaigne (1533–92) and the skepticism of Pyrrho of Elis (c.360–270 bce). Dogmatic relativism is, arguably, doubly relativism assumes variant forms, the most inconsistent. First, the conviction that the common being (1) dogmatic relativism, which absence or unknowability of universal truths denies either the existence or the knowabil- about art and artistic interpretation implies ity of ahistorical, universal, or eternal truths that all views about the nature of art or aesthetics about art’s alleged intrinsic nature or the qual- are as good as one another, self-defeatingly ities of aesthetic appreciation, concluding that proclaims precisely the universalism that it all truth claims about art and our modes of denies. Second, all views about art’s character understanding it are unverifiable and, con- or the qualities of aesthetic response are equival- sequently, equivalent to each other; and (2) a ent only insofar as they fail to match up to the pragmatic or commonsense relativism, which supposed universal criteria of artistic and aes- simply recognizes an evident plurality of crite- thetic truth. Yet to claim this is inadvertently ria between cultures concerning what counts to lay down what such criteria are or ought as an artwork, as the beautiful, or as meaning to be, which, in turn, is to contravene the in the interpretation of art, without claiming, premise of the argument – namely, that there as dogmatic relativism does, that “anything are no such criteria or that, even if there are, goes.” Pragmatic relativism recognizes the pos- they are unknowable. Dogmatic relativism can sibility of talking about “truths” within distinct consequently be accused of an inverted abso- cultural horizons, without laying claim to a uni- lutism and an attitude of ressentiment – that is, versality other than that which constitutes a it implicitly lays down the conditions whereby specific cultural community. all truth claims would not be equivalent and, Dogmatic relativism is commonly associated insofar as it is forced to realize that such uni- with a belief in the absence of, or loss of faith versal conditions are unattainable, it closes its in, immutable critical standards in aesthetics and eyes to the rich plurality of truth claims in art criticism. It is allied with similar pessimistic variant artistic traditions by consigning all to an convictions in epistemology and moral theory. indifferent equivalence. Nietzsche is often taken to be one of the most Whereas dogmatic relativism defines itself modern sources of contemporary dogmatic rel- in relation to a yearning for a universal stand- ativism, insofar as from the pronouncement ard of truth and appraisal in the arts that is that “everything is false” he drew the conclu- unattainable, pragmatic aesthetic relativism sion that “everything is permitted” (Nietzsche does not. It simply recognizes the de facto exis- 1968: §602). Such extreme relativism is asso- tence of a plurality of modes of appreciation ciated with a form of nihilism that denies the and idioms of truth claim, not only in a cul- possibility of any lasting foundation to either epi- ture but also between cultures. The possibility stemological or interpretative principles, and of rival, if not contradictory, practices and that historical pessimists such as Paul Johnson conceptual employments is accepted, and an have seen as the dominant Weltanschauung of attempt to formulate a general theory of art the twentieth century: “a world adrift, having that might sublate such difference is eschewed. left its moorings in traditional law and moral- Most important, pragmatic or cultural rela- ity” (Johnson 1983: 48). Similar sentiments tivism is not wedded to the pernicious indiffer- have been repeatedly echoed across twentieth- ence of the “anything goes” doctrine, but, on the century Europe, as avant-gardism, Dadaism, contrary, defends the possibility of localized modernism and Abstract Expressionism, and, truth claims integral to different artistic and more recently, deconstruction have challenged cultural horizons. Whereas dogmatic rela- every supposed critical verity and boundary tivism inadvertently endorses the foundational

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relativism in truth claims (that is to say, because no aesthetics can be appraised. On the contrary, we universal foundation can be established, no can attempt only to reconcile any “conflict of universal truth can be endorsed), pragmatic interpretation” by appeal to those standards relativism does not. It perceives truth claims to forged in the course of a culture’s develop- rest on and to be relative to distinct cultural prac- ment. Pragmatic relativism in effect attempts to tices. In other words, pragmatic relativism is bypass or neutralize the issue of the absence of plainly not a variant of subjectivism, but it is con- objective foundations, by showing that truth sistent with appeals to intersubjective criteria for claims in and about the arts gain their warrant aesthetic appraisals within particular aesthetic from the competence of those practices which communities. forward them. Thinkers such as Habermas and David Hume recognized that the denial of Apel have consequently examined the param- universal truth claims about art’s essential eters of such competence in order to establish nature does not lead to the conclusion “every- intersubjective criteria for such truth claims, thing is permitted.” Although the proposition while recognizing that such criteria are histor- that beauty “exists merely in the mind that ically malleable and to an extent renegotiable contemplates” things and not in things them- within a given community. Nevertheless, though selves “seems to have attained the sanction the truth claims of different cultural practices of common sense, there is . . . [also] a species never have the force of universal claims, they of common sense which opposes it” (Hume are not made on subjectivist grounds. The 1995: 257). That “species of common sense” re- weight of the traditions and practices that sup- cognizes that established critical consensus, port them is such as to make them relatively shared practices of critical discernment, com- objective – that is, in Gadamer’s phrase “beyond parative knowledge of different artistic tradi- our willing and doing” (1989: foreword). tions, and the suppression of overt personal or Pragmatic relativism is therefore wedded to cultural prejudice, all serve the attainment of a the view that no work of art possesses a universal standard of taste by which the various senti- property that makes it universally a work of art, ments of men may be reconciled. Though the and recognizes that works of art are only what judgments legitimated by such standards will not they are within specific cultures. Further- have the binding force of a priori reasoning, more, it holds that how works of art are per- Hume recognizes the solid consensus and ceived, evaluated, interpreted, described, and experimental reasoning which sustain them; judged depends on the norms and practices and he understands, furthermore, how aes- of different cultures. The plurality of such prac- thetic education is dependent on the recognition tices does not, on a critical level, imply a crude and acceptance of such argumentation. subjectivism, as each culture can establish its Though belonging to a very different philo- own intersubjective criteria for truth claims sophical tradition, Gadamer presents a similar and aesthetic evaluation. line of reasoning. He shares Hume’s skepti- Of the problems associated with pragmatic rel- cism regarding a priori claims to fixed episte- ativism, three stand out: mological foundations, and yet is vehemently opposed to any form of subjectivism. In Truth and 1 The position cannot be formally substanti- Method, he argues that all truth claims by and ated without self-contradiction. Pragmatic about art are inevitably preconditioned by the relativism cannot simultaneously declare norms and values of the cultural horizon that itself to be the most appropriate way of shape them and are, in a foundational sense, looking at the arts and advocate a plurality relative. Nevertheless, the localized cultural of interpretative values. claims to truth that Gadamer defends gain 2 Consequently, the pragmatic relativist can their authority from what can be argumenta- only “show” rather than demonstrate his tively validated by a community of interpreters commitment. Nietzsche and Derrida recog- whose experience is such as to substantiate nize in different ways that perspectivism and and reendorse their warrant. Gadamer does stylistic pluralism (both variants of prag- not suggest an ahistorical or transcultural matic relativism) can be merely insinuated platform from which conflicting truth claims in rather than proved. It is for this reason that

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pragmatic relativism has been treated with bibliography such ridicule in some academic communities. Bernstein, Richard J. 1983. Beyond Objectivism and 3 Though pragmatic relativism can success- Relativism. Oxford: Blackwell. fully challenge subjectivism on the grounds Craige, B. J. 1983. Relativism in the Arts. Athens: that the truth claims relative to a given University of Georgia Press. tradition are not arbitrary but gain their war- Gadamer, H. G. 1989 [1960]. Truth and Method. J. Weinsheimer & D. G. Marshall (trans.). 2nd edn. rant from a historically established consen- New York: Crossroad. sus, it can do little when a consensus and Hermerén, Göran. 1988. The Nature of Aesthetic the norms which sustain it are challenged Qualities. Lund: Lund University Press. by competing values. Reasoned arbitration Hollis, Martin & Lukes, Stephen. 1982. Rationality and is possible only when the disputants within Relativism. Oxford: Blackwell. a tradition agree as to the identity of their Hume, David. 1995 [1757]. “Of the Standard of tradition. When what constitutes a tradition Taste.” In The Philosophy of Art: Readings Ancient and is in question, appeal to shared norms or Modern. A. Neill & A. Ridley (eds.). New York: practices to warrant a given claim is obvi- McGraw-Hill, 254–68. ously impossible. Johnson, Paul. 1983. A History of the Modern World: From 1917 to the 1980s. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Despite its difficulties, pragmatic relativism is Margolis, Joseph. 1982. “The Reasonableness of both plausible and persuasive. First, it is essen- Relativism,” Philosophy and Phenomenological tially a modest position, seeking not to impose Research, 42, 91–7. the truth claims of, say, the Western tradition Margolis, Joseph. 1986. Pragmatism without of aesthetics over the rasa (taste) doctrine of Foundations: Reconciling Realism and Relativism. India, but to recognize and learn from the Oxford: Blackwell. nature and conceptual parameters of both. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1968 [1901]. The Will to Second, pragmatic relativism is primarily an Power. W. Kaufmann & R. Hollingdale (trans.). open-spirited stance that, by being receptive to New York: Vintage. the truth claims of other traditions and cul- nicholas davey tures, places great emphasis on understanding through difference rather than similarity. Third, pragmatic relativism entails presupposi- religion and art In the Middle Ages, art, tions that, in effect, allow it to add to an science, philosophy, history, and practical life understanding of an artwork. If there are fixed were all offshoots of religion. Nowadays, how- truths about art and the norms of its appre- ever, they are usually treated as separate ciation, the task of criticism would merely be discourses. The most sustained attempts to to identify their concrete exemplifications. chart their boundaries have been made within Interpretation would be replaced by descriptive the idealist tradition. Here each is assumed typology. However, the lack of universal foun- to be a particular mode, or phase, of Geist (the dations implies that what is accepted as an German word for both “mind” and “spirit”). artwork is differently determined by different Typical idealist thinkers in this respect are interpretative traditions. Changes and alter- Kant, Schiller, Hegel, Croce, Collingwood, ations to those traditions will, historically Oakeshott, and (up to a point, since he also has speaking, cumulatively expand our under- naturalistic leanings) Santayana. standing of art. Pragmatic relativism not The key tenet of idealism is that reality is only recognizes but extends the knowledge- first and foremost mental. (Nature and the constitutive role of interpretation, whereas, physical world are, quite literally, abstractions commitment to any form of foundationalism from reality so defined.) That is, reality is vir- limits interpretation to the mere rendition of the tually indistinguishable from consciousness or art’s alleged timeless essence. its contents. Anything wholly transcendental – that is, permanently inaccessible to con- See also feminist standpoint aesthetics; sciousness – might as well, at least for a strict gadamer; hume; indian aesthetics; niet- Hegelian, not exist. A thing exists, ultimately, zsche; rasa; taste; tradition. only so far as it can exist for us.

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Nevertheless, for many idealists, the phe- that being the principle behind the so-called nomenal world (the world as it appears to con- “functionalist” aesthetic.) sciousness) is shot through with intimations of Though Kant has illuminating things to say transcendence. For Kant, since the transcen- about art, he invariably regards its beauty as dental is ex hypothesi inscrutable, traditional inferior to that of nature. (According to his theology is impossible. The divine (which is biographers, Kant was notoriously indifferent normally thought of as transcendental) cannot to art, especially music, which not only “plays be known, “proved,” or reasoned about. At merely with sensations,” but also disturbs the best it can be intuited from the manifest facts neighbors.) But what he says about the relation of ethical and aesthetic life. of the aesthetic and the moral to the transcen- Judgments in both spheres (“this is good,” dental is clearly suggestive in respect of any joint “that is beautiful,” etc.) possess a peculiar sub- consideration of art and religion, particularly as jective immediacy that seems to confirm their regards the sublime. Our response to the sub- implicit claim to objective, universal validity. The lime in nature (or, one might add, in art, self is necessarily their focus, but their intrinsic though Kant doubts whether art can ever be structure is such as to point away from it, truly sublime) prefigures the religious attitude. toward the transcendental. The reality of the It consists in the awareness of an awesome transcendental is underwritten by the fact that limitlessness and unbounded power, but one in the experiencing self must logically belong to it, which our natural fear of such a power is since it cannot simultaneously be an object of qualified by the sense of our own righteousness its own observation. and innocence when confronted by it. In ethical life, according to Kant, we are This ambivalent response differs from the governed by an imperative that no naturalistic superstitious, self-abasing terror of the savage. or utilitarian considerations can fully explain. The civilized person’s fortitude and self-respect No doubt the cohesion of society, like our – that is, his own sublimity of character – at once aggregate self-interest, is furthered by obser- enable him to triumph over a threatening vance of the moral law, but that is not, subjec- nature and reconcile him with it (quite how is tively speaking, why we observe it. We observe unclear), so that he not only participates in its it simply because we know we must; and that power but also discerns in it an underlying, inscrutable, but undeniable, “must” points to a and ultimately benevolent, divinity. transcendent source. A command cannot issue Schiller’s account of the sublime, as of aes- from nowhere. thetic experience generally, has much in com- Aesthetic judgment similarly legislates for mon with Kant’s. Hegel’s aesthetics, however, all observers. A thing can be pleasing, but are different. They are art- rather than nature- not beautiful, for me alone. If it really is beau- centered. Art is superior to nature as a vehicle tiful, you too are in a sense “obliged” to see it of the divine, because, like the Absolute Mind as such. The beautiful, like the good, is not (or Idea) of which the universe as a whole con- independent of the observer’s subjectivity, sists, and unlike nature, it too is self-conscious, since a thing’s beauty, though objective, must or a product of self-consciousness. The divine, be subjectively experienced. It cannot simply however, is not transcendent, since there is no be taken on authority or accepted as a piece of transcendence. Hegel’s “God,” therefore, is information. more or less a figure of speech, being simply the The beautiful is, however, independent of immanent Absolute risen to self-consciousness the observer’s self-interest. This makes it in the world which it has itself created or apprehensible only by those, the good, who “posited.” A prime medium through which it can suspend their self-interest. On the other rises to self-consciousness is art, defined as hand, unlike goodness, it is also independent of “the sensuous embodiment of the Idea.” the observer’s moral interests and enthusi- In primitive or “symbolic” art the Absolute asms. It is not its goodness that makes a thing fails to achieve full articulation, being over- beautiful, but its appearance of “free” or self- whelmed by the “crassness” (as Hegel calls it) of governed purposiveness. (Not, be it noted, its the natural world. This is because humankind, appearance of serving some extraneous purpose, or incarnate Mind, is yet undeveloped, and is

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religion and art hence still too deeply enmeshed in that world. that, unlike religion (or at least, dogmatic reli- At the other extreme, in modern or “romantic” gion), it recognizes the limits of the sayable. art, form has been outstripped by content. Nevertheless, what cannot be said can still be Mind is now so self-aware that representations suggested; and art’s suggestiveness, for all that of nature (which is not self-aware) are inade- its medium is fiction, is actually truer to the com- quate fully to embody it. Art has finally been plexities of experience than the cut-and-dried fac- superseded by philosophy (most notably Hegel’s tual claims of religion or philosophy. own), in which alone the Absolute is com- A tacit presupposition of this view is that all pletely realized, and of which even religion is a art, even nonrealist art, is in some sense repre- mere shadow. (This is inevitable, and no cause sentational. (So-called “expressive” art may be for regret.) Only in “classical” art, epitomized by thought to represent inner, “subjective” expe- Greco-Roman sculpture, are form and content rience, which eludes one-to-one pictorial or wholly in balance, since only then was the linguistic articulation.) Art points beyond itself evolving Idea precisely matched to the natural to a reality apprehensible by no other means. forms available for its representation – that is, It elicits meaning and coherence from experi- the human body, used to depict the gods. ence. It reconciles us to life by exposing some Hegel’s aesthetics, like his ethics, are a branch of its mysteries as superficial, and persuading us of his metaphysics. The Beautiful is essentially humbly to accept the rest. In short, it does an “appearance” of the True, of ultimate real- what religion offers to do, only more honestly. ity. If it be asked why the Real should manifest It achieves symbolic “truth” precisely by for- itself in beauty, the reason lies in its essential swearing any claim to literal veracity. organic harmony, or unity in diversity, which All this raises the question as to whether is also the principle of the Beautiful. religious art can be called art at all, unless reli- The earlier Collingwood, like Hegel, sees reli- gion itself is somehow to be regarded as imper- gion as a more “advanced” phase of Geist than fect art. Clearly, on the idealist view, both art art. For religion, though defective, deliberately and religion offer to reveal structure and aims at truth, while art (like primitive man) meaning in the cosmos. The difference is that is indifferent to truth, making no distinction art knows itself to be fiction, whereas religion between fact and imagination. Religion is the claims to be true. It demands active belief, prototype of science, history, and philosophy. where art demands at most Coleridge’s “willing Other thinkers (including Santayana and the suspension of disbelief.” later Collingwood) have seen art as superior Excluding jokes such as trompe-l’oeil, where to religion, precisely because, in its purest or most the delight lies precisely in the illusion’s being mature form, it actively asserts nothing. “The detected, art that invites literal or near-literal poet nothing affirms,” said Sir Philip Sidney, “and belief is fantasy art. Its aim is to excite pleasur- therefore never lieth.” able emotions by presenting an illusory world The idea that art (or the highest art) is more submissive to the subject’s self-indulgent essentially nondeclarative points in two direc- desires than the real one can be. Accordingly it tions. On the one hand it leads to aestheticism, will usually employ more surface verisimili- the view central to the so-called aesthetic tude, and less obvious stylization, than art movement (e.g., Pater, Whistler, Wilde), to which has no such extraneous purpose, or Bloomsbury aesthetics (e.g., Fry, Bell), and whose purpose is simply to focus attention on to Oakeshott, that aesthetic experience, and the object for its own sake. thus art, is sui generis. A wholly distinct Hence there arises the paradox that fantasy and autonomous province of experience, it is art often seems more “real” than what Colling- reducible to no other and is valuable precisely wood called “art proper,” or even than nature. on that account, as satisfying a similarly An obvious example is pornography, which has unique human need. come overwhelmingly to rely on photographic On the other hand, art’s nondeclarative images. For a photograph seems to present the character is taken by some (mostly critics, object directly, rather than to depict it; to be not such as Matthew Arnold and F. R. Leavis, art, but fact. It thus exacts a minimum of rather than philosophers) merely to indicate imaginative effort from the spectator.

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Collingwood (1938) stigmatized pornography A vulgar advertisement may sell a product as typical of “amusement art,” while regarding better than a sophisticated one. A sentimental religious art as “magical art”. Amusement art religious print may conduce to piety as effectively excites emotions simply in order that we may as an artistic masterpiece, and more. From a reli- enjoy the sensation of having them without gious standpoint, as from any other of a pri- the responsibilities involved in acting on them. marily purposive character, “good” art, or “art It is, in Collingwood’s view, a substitute for proper,” is superfluous, except as a lexicon of action. proven techniques of emotional stimulation. These reservations, of course, could apply Indeed, in and for itself, “art proper” might equally to sentimental or any other amusement even be harmful. The object of religion is to open art. Following Mill’s somewhat erratic train of the mind to transcendent things, and there- thought in his On Liberty and Utilitarianism, after to close it. In the religious view the com- I. A. Richards suggested that any “impulse” plexities of experience to which “art proper” might legitimately be satisfied so long as its exposes us are at best irrelevant, and at worst being so did not thwart the satisfaction of a return to the chaos and doubt from which reli- “superior” impulses. Ignoring the question as gion rescues us. to what “superior” might mean, however, it It might be said, nevertheless, that “art may be felt in general that amusement art proper” is itself insufficiently distinguishable is tolerable or even valuable so long as the from magical art. The outlook that Arnoldians consumer himself understands it to be such, believe it to promote is effectively moral, even and is therefore in no danger of being mas- quasi-religious, and can scarcely fail to find tered by his fantasy, that is, of mistaking it expression in behavior. Certainly, nineteenth- for reality. century realists such as George Eliot, Trollope, But clearly we have to do here not with fan- and Tolstoy claimed to be writing with a moral tasy in a pejorative sense, rather with something purpose, revealing the hidden order of things and like play (a category central to Schiller’s aes- extending human sympathies. How much dif- thetics). Play may be considered either as a ference is there, logically speaking, between necessary liberation from the practical (or, an art that professes (and achieves) such aims, some would say, “serious”) business of life, or and explicitly magical art (i.e., emotionally as a rehearsal for it. (Indeed, both functions manipulative art governed by an extrinsic, seem on reflection to be intrinsic to the idea.) nonartistic purpose)? In the first capacity it recalls the aestheticist view The answer might be that whatever such of art, in the second the Arnold–Leavis view, that authors intended, and whatever effects their is, of art as a means of grasping and mastering work actually had, what made it “art proper” a complex reality. But either option must ren- was the fact that in practice it did not sub- der dubious the distinction between amuse- ordinate the immediate aesthetic aim (either ment art and “art proper.” The real distinction truth to the object represented, or fidelity to is between “art proper” and fantasy art as pre- the integrity of the artistic creation as such, or viously defined. both) to any prior goal, moral or otherwise. Magical art stimulates emotions (martial, This patient refusal to jump to conclusions, or patriotic, revolutionary, religious, acquisitive, to bend the artistic process into premature moral, etc.) with a view to their being dis- conformity with them, would itself constitute a charged in the appropriate actions. Its value moral phenomenon and a moral example. therefore will depend entirely on that of the Science and history present parallel cases. ends it serves. The sole criterion will be tech- How far religion also does so – and here obvi- nical or pragmatic, concerning the efficiency ous political analogies suggest themselves with which the required emotion is stimulated. – will depend on whether we see religion Beauty might conceivably do this (though not primarily as a “world-open” receptivity to the on Kant’s view), but will otherwise be inciden- transcendent, or as a “world-closed” claim tal. For crudity, either of execution or of the emo- finally to have captured it in doctrine. If the first, tion demanded, will not matter so long as the how is religion to be distinguished from art or emotion is, in fact, evoked and acted upon. from its supposed effects?

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Those are questions that can be answered bibliography neither simply, nor here. However, many post- Collingwood, R. G. 1924. Speculum Mentis; or, The Map Enlightenment thinkers have been struck by of Knowledge. Oxford: Clarendon. the likeness of artistic experience, not to religious Collingwood, R. G. 1938. The Principles of Art. belief or doctrine, but to religious practice, of Oxford: Clarendon. the kind based on myth, custom, and ritual. Croce, Benedetto. 1909 [1902]. Aesthetic: As Science of Expression and General Linguistic. D. Ainslie Here the underlying beliefs demand no intel- (trans.). London: Macmillan. lectual assent, because they are already tacitly Hegel, G. W. F. 1979 [1835–8]. Introduction to embodied in the practice itself, as it is com- Aesthetics. T. M. Knox (trans.). C. Karelis (ed.). munally experienced and renewed. Oxford: Clarendon. The most notable champion of this view was Kant, Immanuel. 1969 [1790]. The Critique of Judge- Richard Wagner, who thought of his own art ment. J. C. Meredith (trans.). Oxford: Clarendon. precisely as renewing the human community Leavis, F. R. & Wellek, René. 1964. “Literary despite being self-consciously mythic. (He was Criticism and Philosophy,” Scrutiny, 5, 4; 6, 1–2; greatly influenced by Greek tragedy.) His last repr. in The Importance of Scrutiny. E. Bentley (ed.). work Parsifal (1882) is actually about religion, New York: New York University Press. Santayana, George. 1922 [1905]. Reason in Art: The and certainly excites religious emotions. But so Life of Reason, vol. iv. New York: Scribner. far from requiring religious belief in the spectator, Schiller, Friedrich von. 1966. Naïve and Sentimental it could even be seen as an effectual, human- Poetry (1795) and On the Sublime (1801). J. A. Elias istic substitute for it. Wagner was not a literal (trans.). New York: Ungar. believer, but said he had written Parsifal to give Scruton, Roger. 2003. Death-Devoted Heart: An a nonreligious age some idea of what religion Account of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.” London: might mean, and to activate that meaning in his Continuum, esp. ch. 1. audience. The whole work is about commun- Wagner, Richard. 1897 [1880]. “Religion and Art.” ity, how it lapses through sin and consequently In Prose Works of Richard Wagner, vol. vi. W. A. Ellis decays, and how the offender is reintegrated and (trans.). London: Reeves, 211–52; also available at http://users. belgacom. net/wagnerlibrary/prose/ is restored, through compassion, forgiveness, wlpr0126.htm and sacrifice. Parsifal, in fact, functions as a myth, but one that, being explicitly fictional, is robert grant merely entertained, not asserted (if it were, it could not be perceived as myth). Wagner thought the essential functions of reli- representation One of the most general gion could be fulfilled by art, at least of this kind. and important notions in philosophy as a But it could be objected that an emotional sub- whole and the philosophy of art in particular. stitute for religion is easily found, since what Despite, or perhaps because of this, it is very hard is depicted in Parsifal is religious experience, to say anything illuminating about the nature and one needs only to empathize with it. And of representation per se, a difficulty that also indeed there have been many, starting with hampers adequate discussion of the nature and Nietzsche, who regard Parsifal as mere decadent significance of representation in art. I concen- religiosity. However, this view might equally trate on the notion of representation considered betray a deep-seated fear of that primal trust – independently of art, clarifying it as best I can, T. S. Eliot’s “awful daring of a moment’s sur- and introducing some useful distinctions render” – without which there is no true inti- within the phenomenon as a whole. When I turn macy, or real relationship with others and the to representation in art, I do little more than world. Significantly, Parsifal is the ultimate identify the key questions it raises, questions that subtext of Eliot’s modernist landmark The will find proper discussion in other entries. Waste Land (1922). (Sometimes “representation” is used to mean something only pictures and perhaps sculp- See also photography; aestheticism; catharsis; tures do. I intend by it something very much collingwood; hegel; ineffability; islamic aes- more general. The representation unique to thetics; kant; pornography; schiller; sublime; pictures (depiction) is just one of many forms testimony in aesthetics; truth in art; wagner. representation, in my sense, might take.)

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representation representation in general to particular mental states – sensations and It is often said that one thing represents perceptions are, in different ways, particularly another when it stands for, symbolizes, or is in contentious cases – than in the claim that at least some sense “about” it. Thus my name represents some mental states represent. If representation me; a photograph in a newspaper represents a is found in both “inner” and “outer” meaning- scene in some troubled African city; a perfor- bearing entities and states, this places further mance of Julius Caesar represents the long-dead pressures on any claims we make about it. dictator and the excesses of power; and a bit of One thing we can do without running into old wood, in the hands of a child, represents trouble is to draw some distinctions. First, a rifle. Where there is representation, there is while some representations take propositional meaning or content, that is what is repre- content, others are object-directed. The belief or sented, along (where appropriate) with how it fear that the world is warming fall into the for- is represented as being. So the meaning of my mer camp, as, moving to nonmental represen- name is me, and the content of the photograph tations, does the sentence I utter when I tell you above is (in part) a dirty street of ramshackle what I believe. A picture of the consequences houses, with a road block at the end, manned of climate change, in contrast, has a content that by soldiers lolling in the midday heat. It is easy is not propositional. Perhaps it shows a dried- for most of us to know that this is what is rep- up lake, the surrounding trees withered, the resented; we only have to look at the picture. bottom cluttered with the rotting bodies of In the case of my name, in contrast, looking grounded fish. Although we can capture some will not suffice. In addition to recognizing the of this content in propositions, the whole marks as that symbol, we need to know whom resists summary in a series, however long, of the name is used to refer to. But, easy or not, “that” clauses. This is something the picture has the possibility of working out or otherwise in common with some mental states, such as coming to know content, that is of interpretation, (arguably) perceptions and visual imaginings. is always present where representation is. That is one reason why the natural way to It would be a mistake, however, to take our convey such a state to someone else is to draw usage of any of the terms now before us as reli- a picture of what one has seen or imagined, able guides to the phenomenon. It is natural rather than describing it in words. Second, enough to say that the dark skies in the north object-directed representations might ascribe represent the coming storm; that the difficulties properties to the objects, or they might not. My in our recent relations are not about you, but name does not convey a proposition, but nor about me and my insecurities; or that America does it tell you anything about me: you might stands for the freedom to be selfish, or represents guess my sex from it, but if you guess wrong you the last best hope for mankind. With a bit of inge- will not blame the name for misdescribing me. nuity, we could redescribe these phenomena in A portrait of me, in contrast, will represent me terms of “symbolizing,” “meaning,” “content,” as having certain features. If I do not have that and allowing for “interpretation.” Yet, while long nose or thick head of hair, the represen- various phenomena are here described, none is tation is inaccurate. Accuracy and inaccuracy the one that interests us. The moral is that are the analogues in object-directed represen- ordinary language does not mark that phe- tations of truth and falsity in those with pro- nomenon at all neatly. positional contents. Third, both accuracy and One of the most significant turns in truth, and their opposites, are in play only if the Anglophone philosophy in the last half- representation seeks to show how things are. century has been the extension of the scope of There are other options, including showing representation to cover, not merely external how things are to be, ordering them to be symbols, but our own mental states. The claim that way, exploring the merely possible (how is that it is not only words, pictures, gestures, things might be), and so on. The easiest purchase and the like that bear content: our beliefs, on these differences comes from considering desires, emotions, imaginings, and perceptual language. The distinctions between asserting, states do so too. The idea is not uncontrover- supposing, ordering, expressing a wish, and sial, though it is more controversial as applied so on find analogues in other representations,

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representation both external and mental. Finally, reflection where there are conditions under which the on language naturally suggests a fourth dis- individual, state, or event in question might tinction, between literal and metaphorical uses usefully be described as accurate or true. What or meanings. With an eye on the role of repre- is harder to see is how to fill out this sketch sentation in art, we might think this last dis- so as to accommodate the various options tinction will be of particular importance. noted above. Applied to language alone, the However, it is at least unclear how far the approach needs extending (somehow) to cover notion of metaphor can apply beyond linguis- (1) meaningful parts of truth-bearing sen- tic representations in their assertoric mode. tences, such as names and property terms; (For an attempt to describe pictorial metaphor, (2) utterances that are not apt for truth at all see Wollheim 1987: ch. 4.) (such as orders and expressions of wishes); and By now we have uncovered a framework (3) metaphorical uses. Applied to representations of ideas rich enough to find no easy parallel in general, we can add to these challenges beyond the realm of genuine representation. their analogues for object-directed external But none of this amounts to a definition of the symbols and mental states. notion. That is not something we will attempt The other idea is that nothing is a represen- to do. But we can at least consider two more sub- tation intrinsically; representing requires the stantive claims that promise to hold at something right context. If we restrict our attention to like the right level of generality. Although external representations, that context seems each starts from an everyday idea, each has to be one of certain human purposes. External found a sophisticated working out within the representations are all artifacts – that is one philosophy of language – that part of philoso- reason for thinking that the dark sky does not phy that, despite its natural focus, has most (in our sense) represent the oncoming storm. thoroughly investigated the notion of repre- More precisely, they are artifacts designed sentation per se. for communication. A sophisticated working The first idea is simply that there must, as through of this idea can be found in the writ- it were, be some gap between a representation ings of Paul Grice (1989). For Grice, external and the object or state of affairs it represents. representations are items, states of affairs, or Perhaps the most useful form of this idea lies in events we produce with a complex intention. At the dictum that where there is representation its core lies the intention to bring about a cer- there must be the possibility of misrepresenta- tain effect in another’s mind – to get her to tion – falsity or inaccuracy, depending on entertain a certain thought. But the overall whether the representation is propositional or intention includes the intention that the other object-directed. And the most sophisticated recognize that this is our intention. She is to development of that dictum that might direct us grasp the thought, and to grasp that we pro- to a claim about representation per se is the duced whatever noises, marks, or gestures we thought that the meaning of language ulti- produced precisely in order to get her to have mately lies in the conditions under which that thought. Indeed, this higher-level intention utterances in it would be true. That is, the (that our intention be recognized) is itself one meaning of a sentence is given by its truth con- we intend her to recognize. ditions. What it is for a bit of language to have Grice’s idea applies from the first to external meaning is thus for it to have truth conditions. representations that are nonlinguistic; some of And since nothing counts as language unless his own examples include gestures. Although ini- it counts as meaningful, having truth conditions tially confined to the communication of propo- is what defines those of our noises and scribblings sitional contents, the strategy might generalize that count as linguistic representations from to cover object-directed property-ascribing those that do not. (For a highly influential advo- representations, such as pictures (see Abell cacy of this approach see Davidson 1984.) 2005). Although it is not clear how to extend Although the claim thus far is limited to the ideas to cover all representational moods language, it is not hard to see in broad outline (asserting, ordering, wishing, supposing, . . .), how to generalize it. We merely add accuracy there are no compelling grounds for pessimism to truth, and claim that there is representation on that count. What the Gricean approach

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representation certainly cannot do, however, is to give an precursor, rather than an instance, of art account of mental representation. It takes that proper; there are many external symbols that notion for granted, in helping itself to speakers’ do not begin to qualify as artistic. Thus if art is intentions and the thoughts they aim to representation, it is representation under certain engender in the listener. The gain that accom- conditions, with a certain purpose, in a certain panies this cost is that Grice can hope to say context, or with certain further features. But more about how external representation comes even so modified, the proposal still faces a seri- to be than the appeal to truth conditions can. ous challenge. Much art is representational, it Our discussion so far has stuck stubbornly at is true; but some, apparently, is not. The chal- a stratospheric level of generality. If we were lenge is usually framed by appeal both to cer- to drop a little toward the specific, we would tain traditional fine arts (music and abstract discuss the various forms external representa- painting) and to the decorative arts (pottery, tion can take. Pictures and words, gestures intaglio work, and the like). The discussion and theatrical performances, three-dimensional above allows us to note one factor that compli- models and numerical symbols all represent, but cates the dialectic here. It is usually suggested they do so in very different ways. Whatever that nonrepresentational art is art nonethe- representation per se is taken to be, there are less at least in part because it is expressive. different ways of fitting the template thus laid Whether this bolsters or undermines the chal- down. Moreover, these different forms of repre- lenge these examples pose turns on whether sentation have different features and powers – expression can itself be treated as just another not just in the terms above, such as whether they form of representation. For all the intuitive are propositional or object-directed, whether appeal of the distinction between the two, it is they are capable of, or perhaps stuck with, far from clear that our efforts to clarify the assertion as opposed to the other “moods”; but notion of representation leave expression dis- also in terms of the sorts of thing they can rep- tinct from it. Once we have extended the appeal resent. For instance, while pictures, one might to truth/accuracy conditions, or to Gricean think, can represent only what can be seen, lan- communicative intentions, to the point at guage suffers no similar limitation. Conversely, which they cover all uncontroversial cases of pictures might be taken to capture appear- representation, how can we be sure that they ances as words cannot. The differences will not equally apply to expression? Thus, between the various forms of representation until further progress is made in understanding would repay far more intense study than phi- the notion of representation, the force of the losophy has so far granted them. One, but only prime objection to the representational theory one, reason for correcting this neglect lies in the of art remains uncertain. philosophy of art. Let us turn to the idea that representation holds the key, if not to art’s nature, then to its representation in art value, to why it matters to us. Again, the Although representation is central to a good deal extent of nonartistic representation suggests of art, and although a considerable part of the that a full account will have to say more. (At philosophy of art is concerned with represent- least assuming that art does matter to us in ways ing in one way or another, the philosophical that mere representations do not.) The bare questions concerning art’s relation to repre- idea will need supplementing, for instance by senting per se can be framed very simply. Can appeal to the idea that art, unlike humdrum rep- art be defined in terms of representation? And resentations, somehow bears many meanings does representation somehow hold the key all at once, that its meanings resonate at the to some or all of the value of art? Let us very margins with rich connotations, or that it cap- briefly consider each in turn. tures the ineffable. All these ideas – perhaps they Representation cannot alone provide a are only facets of a single idea – have found definition of art. Our discussion has been struc- repeated advocates in the history of aesthetics. tured around the thought that a good deal (For a recent example, see Danto 1981.) Again, of representation is found outside art. Even set- the threat from nonrepresentational artworks ting aside mental representation as at best the will require a different treatment.

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Whether or not that approach is ultimately To teach people how to “see clearly” was the pro- fruitful, there is a related line of inquiry to ject that shaped Ruskin’s life-work, as reflected explore. Representation per se may not hold in his writing on a vast range of topics, from the key to the value of art per se, but it could Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites to Tintoretto still be that the differing value of the different and Carpaccio, from Venetian Gothic archi- representational arts turns in key part on the tecture and the Alps to minerals and birds. different forms of representation they involve. (The Library Edition of the Works extends to To take just one prominent example, repre- 39 volumes.) senting in the way it does, that is depicting, Three problems associated with defining is surely a deep feature of painting, one that Ruskin’s aesthetics actually help to explain its aligns it with sculpture and opposes it to liter- nature. First, he is contradictory, not only from ature. Understanding what these different art work to work, but sometimes within a single forms offer might in part involve appreciating work. Ruskin himself claimed that he was the differing ways they represent. never satisfied that he had “handled a subject properly” until he had contradicted himself “at See also drawing, painting, and printmaking; least three times.” (R. G. Collingwood com- abstraction; depiction; expression; illusion; pares Ruskin with Hegel, both “historicists,” in metaphor; perspective; picture perception; this regard; see Hewison 1976: 206.) Second, realism; symbol; theories of art. although there are many continuities in bibliography Ruskin’s aesthetics (and these might be called “Ruskinian”), his individual observations must Abell, Catharine. 2005. “Pictorial Implicature,” always be read in relation to the immediate Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 63, 55–66. Danto, Arthur C. 1981. The Transfiguration of the context in which they were first made. Much of Commonplace. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer- his writing – particularly in the middle and sity Press. late periods – was for a specific purpose, and was Davidson, Donald. 1984. Inquiries into Truth and addressed to a specific audience or readership. Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon. Ruskin enjoyed working against the grain, and Goodman, Nelson. 1969. Languages of Art. 2nd edn. was a master of irony that is easily missed Oxford: Oxford University Press. when read out of context. Third, although he Grice, Paul. 1989. Studies in the Way of Words. stated that no true disciple of his would ever be Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. a “Ruskinian,” we find that not only his admir- Walton, Kendall L. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe: ers, but also many Victorian public buildings that On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. he himself hated, were frequently described as Wollheim, Richard. 1987. Painting as an Art. “Ruskinian,” both during and after his lifetime. London: Thames & Hudson. Ruskin’s mind can in certain respects be compared to that of Coleridge: both are robert hopkins multifaceted, encyclopedic, dynamic, religious. Unlike Coleridge’s concept of the imagination, however, Ruskin’s concept is based on what he Ruskin, John (1819–1900) English art critic, understood to be the truth of “fact” (including educator, economist, and social reformer. such Old Testament “facts” as the Fall). As Ruskin is Britain’s greatest critic of art and Hewison summarizes Ruskin, the “penetrative society. His aesthetics is grounded in his think- imagination” deals with external fact and the ing on the morality of art (his refusal to separ- inner truth it reveals, seeing the object or idea ate aesthetics from ethics is always in evidence), in its entirety: the “associative imagination” and focuses on three relationships: expresses the artist’s thought, conveying 1 between art (man’s creation) and nature the vision of the penetrative imagination: the (God’s creation); “contemplative imagination” deals with re- 2 between art (including architecture, “the membered or abstract ideas, and acts as a distinctively political art”) and the values of metaphor-making faculty. This last became the society in which it was created; increasingly important in practice from the 3 between the viewer and the object. 1860s, when Ruskin’s interest in myth

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ruskin, john deepened, but contemplation (Greek: theôria) perspective in which the city is seen as being had been central to his thought since Modern under judgment after the “fall” that was the Painters, vol. ii (of 1846): “Now the mere ani- Renaissance. The famous chapter in vol. ii mal consciousness of the pleasantness [the on “The Nature of Gothic” had a separate pleasures of sight] I call Aesthesis; but the and influential afterlife as a key text for the exulting, reverent, and grateful perception of it Working Men’s College Movement, and for I call Theoria. For this, and this only, is the full William Morris, who reprinted it in the beauti- comprehension and contemplation of the fully designed Kelmscott edition. Beautiful as a gift of God” (1903–12: iv.42). Having completed Modern Painters in the The “theoretic faculty” perceives two kinds of years immediately before and after his “un- beauty. “Typical Beauty” is that external qual- conversion” from evangelical dogma (1858). ity of bodies which “may be shown to be in some Ruskin developed the social ramifications of sort typical of the Divine attributes,” while his thought (already present in The Seven “Vital Beauty” is “the appearance of felicitous Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice) fulfillment of function in living things, more in a series of books and lectures in the 1860s. especially of the joyful and right exertion of (A statement from Unto This Last is character- perfect life in man.” Landow (1971: 178–9) istic: “There is no wealth but life.”) In the sub- argues that, unlike vital beauty, the idea of sequent decade two new platforms became typical beauty lost its force when Ruskin’s reli- available to him: the newly founded Slade gious beliefs changed. Professorship of Fine Art at Oxford, and his Unlike Coleridge, the evangelical Ruskin monthly Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen makes no claim for the creative power of the and Labourers of Great Britain. Much autobio- imagination, guarding against the danger that graphical writing is woven into the latter, and the self might usurp God’s role as creator. He then reworked in Praeterita, written in the invented the term “pathetic fallacy” (in Modern 1880s in increasingly difficult circumstances Painters, vol. iii) to describe the “error” of pro- associated with his mental decline in retire- jecting onto external things attributes of the per- ment at Brantwood, in the Lake District. ceiving mind under the influence of emotion. Praeterita is the autobiography of a brilliant Charles Kingsley’s “They rowed her in across the draughtsman, art critic, and social critic, for rolling foam – / The cruel, crawling foam” whom theory and practice, art and society, are evokes from Ruskin the dry comment, “The interrelated rather than separate entities. foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl.” The work that first made a great impact on See also imagination. the artworld when Ruskin was only 24 – the bibliography anonymous first volume of Modern Painters – proclaimed the undervalued Turner to be the Primary sources greatest English artist because he painted the 1903–12. The Works of John Ruskin. 39 vols. E. T. Cook facts of nature truthfully. Its subtitle reflects & A. Wedderburn (eds.). Library Edition. London: the youthful ambition of its author, who was Allen. ignorant of the German founders of modern 1843–60. Modern Painters. Vols. iii–vii in Library aesthetics: “Their Superiority in the Art of Edition. 1849. The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Vol. viii in Landscape Painting to all the Ancient Masters, Library Edition. proved by examples of The True, The Beautiful 1851–3. The Stones of Venice. Vols. ix–xi in Library and The Intellectual, from the Works of Edition. Modern Artists, especially from those of J. M. W. 1859. The Two Paths. Vol. xvi in Library Edition. Turner, Esq., R.A.” Having developed his 1871–84. Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen aesthetic theories in vol. ii, Ruskin interrupted and Labourers of Great Britain. Vols. xxvii–xxix in his work on Modern Painters in order to Library Edition. study architecture, defining its “Seven Lamps” Secondary sources as those of sacrifice, truth, power, beauty, life, Fraser, Hilary. 1986. Beauty and Belief: Aesthetics memory, and obedience, and writing his history and Religion in Victorian Literature. Cambridge: of The Stones of Venice, from an apocalyptic Cambridge University Press.

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Hewison, Robert. 1976. John Ruskin: The Argument of Landow, George P. 1971. The Aesthetic and Critical the Eye. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Theories of John Ruskin. Princeton: Princeton Hilton, Timothy. 1985. John Ruskin: The Early University Press. Years, 1819–1859. New Haven: Yale University Wheeler, Michael. 1999. Ruskin’s God. Cambridge: Press. Cambridge University Press. Hilton, Timothy. 2000. John Ruskin: The Later Years. New Haven: Yale University Press. michael wheeler

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Santayana, George (1863–1952) Spanish feeling what is in truth only an expression of it.” philosopher and novelist; for many years at This might be seen as a form of self-scolding, Harvard University. Santayana somewhere or a way of guarding against the neglectful notes that philosophers come to aesthetics obliteration of an important distinction. But through opposite routes – as metaphysicians the distinction that he makes does not actually who need to complete their systems, and as mark out different phases or moments of expe- artists who need to generalize about their rience, or different sections of his own texts. experiences. He belonged in both camps, with As further indication of his way with dis- emphasis on the latter. He was an obvious lit- tinctions, Santayana objects, on theoretical erary artist in his poetry and fiction, but he grounds, to calling beauty a “manifestation of was a poet-philosopher all the time, even when God to the senses.” Such an observation is he was a metaphysician. While he wrote about obscure and beyond truth or falsehood, albeit art intermittently, particularly in The Sense of high-minded. But then an analysis of what is Beauty and Reason in Art, he sought to be art- meant by God, an unpacking of the metaphor, ful in all of his writings, including his “theor- reveals how and why the attributes of God etical” ones. are indeed an appropriate way to reach an His central work in aesthetics is that early and understanding of beauty. In a word, a good most remarkable book, The Sense of Beauty: metaphor can give a scrawny theory some its subtitle is Being the Outline(s) of Aesthetic divine afflatus and some cognitive force. Art Theory. Santayana reveals his hand, and his and philosophy always were one enterprise! approach, when he says at the very outset: The presumed structure of Santayana’s “theo- “The sense of beauty has a more important retical” work is the barest skeleton upon which place in life than aesthetic theory has ever various comments, or “little essays,” are hung. taken in philosophy.” And, indeed, the stylistic The parts of the treatise, which The Sense of beauty of this treatise is as telling as its philo- Beauty might be said to be, are quite incidental sophical or theoretical side, and must properly to a process that is fundamentally critical, lit- be seen as part of its “statement.” Santayana also erary, and ironic. The dynamic of making and says: “To feel beauty is a better thing than to unmaking distinctions, the play of perspectives understand how we came to feel it.” He certainly – not the semblance of structure which these feels it, and might even be said to explain how distinctions might have been thought to have he comes to feel it. But, as always, he explains created – constitute the essential quality of it more as a literary critic than as a meta- Santayana’s presentation. physician. He addresses himself to the task of The organization of the book, such as it is, con- creating literary art as surely as he works at sists of part 1 on the nature of beauty; parts 2, discovering any principles of art in a theoreti- 3, and 4 on matter, form, and expression. In part cal fashion. 1, Santayana distinguishes the moral and the Santayana is cavalier about distinctions, aesthetic, or work and play. He teases the dis- even the distinction between theory and art, tinction and accords it some initial and con- between comprehension and inspiration: “But ventional deference. But then he undermines the recognition of the superiority of aesthetics it and shows in effect how any adequate value in experience to aesthetics in theory ought not theory must ambiguously embrace both the to make us accept as an explanation of aesthetic moral and the aesthetic.

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Beauty is defined in part 1 as “objectified rich in historical antecedents. It has no clear pleasure,” or “pleasure regarded as the quality influences and effects, yet shows remarkable of an object.” It suggests a psychological tend- anticipation of what is happening in aesthetic ency or process in us, whereby we attribute or theory and criticism one hundred years after its affix our feelings to things. It is a provocative appearance. It is at once sui generis yet full of definition, but leaves the locus of pleasure perennial wisdom. somewhat problematic. The lower senses, taste and touch, are mostly bodily and not objectifi- See also expression; religion and art. able. Smell seems mildly but vaguely objectifi- able. Hearing and seeing take us entirely from bibliography the organs whereby we perceive, to the objects Primary sources out there that we esteem and enjoy. Santayana [1896] 1988. The Sense of Beauty. W. G. Holzberger was never entirely satisfied with this approach, & H. J. Saatkamp Jr. (eds.). Cambridge, MA: MIT and at a later date wrote self-critically of his ten- Press. dency to “skirt psychologism.” [1905] 1955. The Life of Reason, vol. iv: Reason in Art. Part 4, on the concept of expression, is most New York: Scribner. startling and unusual. Expression is an evoca- Secondary sources tion of memory, the bringing of some associa- Schilpp, P. A. (ed.). 1951. The Philosophy of George tion to mind, in the presence of sensed matter Santayana. New York: Tudor. and form. The memory may be vague; some emotion may persist, with the details of its morris grossman occasion forgotten. Indeed, vagueness some- times helps make possible the fusion of present and past. Santayana’s theory of expression, if it Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905–1980) French can be called a theory, undermines any clear and novelist, playwright, journalist, literary critic, traditional notions about the fixity of the art political activist, and philosopher, and one of the object. In principle, any sensation or idea or con- most influential intellectuals of the twentieth cept can conjoin or fuse with any other, and this century. Sartre’s voluminous writings never is what his “theory” asserts. But in practice, as included a philosophy of art in the traditional we know from the associations we attempt in sense, although a case can be made (and he him- the making of metaphors, not everything self insisted) that aesthetics is implicit in every- tossed into the air can be said to fly. Theory can- thing he wrote (Schilpp 1981: 15). not quite account for art, or substitute for it. Sartre is best known for his philosophy of Santayana’s concept of expression, one “existentialism” – the view that in human beings might say, is the general case of which certain “existence precedes essence,” that humans late twentieth-century and radical views about first come on the scene and only then define who art are so many special instances. Theories can they are or who they ought to be. In early writ- attach to sensuous objects as surely as senti- ings, such as the novel Nausea (1938), the mental memories can. That an object is offered wartime plays The Flies (1943) and No Exit for appreciation by the artworld demonstrates (1945), and up through the massive philo- an “expressive value” in it. Expression allows sophical work Being and Nothingness (1943) and any association – a previous sensuous memory, the lecture “Existentialism is a Humanism” a mood, a thought, a theory – to attach itself to (1946), he develops a view of freedom accord- the presently perceived object. More exactly, ing to which each human being, facing what- Santayana’s notion of expression allows this, and ever “coefficient of adversity” in his situating our experience of art confirms that such things conditions, is completely responsible for the happen. But it is a question of sensibility, and fundamental values he or she chooses to follow. criticism, as to whether an association “works,” Sartre described this “human condition” as and whether or not it succeeds effectively in similar to the challenge confronting an artist – affiliating with a sensuous object. to invent without being given any standards in Santayana’s The Sense of Beauty fits into advance. However, he thought, that as people no clear tradition of aesthetic writing, yet is invent they should strive to avoid forms of

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“bad faith” in which they cover up their free- (or art) criticism is to exhibit, in the work, dom; they should assume full responsibility for the interplay between freedom and situation their actions and act so as to recognize and which constitutes the creator’s distinctive view promote freedom for everyone. In the case of of things; and also, since the work is “an act of the French writer after World War II, Sartre confidence in the freedom of men” (1988: 67), argued that this meant a new kind of literature, the critic must assess its import for the human an “engaged” literature. So in 1945, with a situation of freedom and unfreedom in which it group of friends, he founded a literary magazine, speaks. In his essay “Black Orpheus” (1948), Les Temps modernes, to encourage writers who Sartre admires African poetry for its dynamism would recognize their social role and work “to and because it makes blackness a symbol of change simultaneously the social condition openness, of freedom. He praises the sculptor of man and the concept he has of himself” Giacometti’s embodiment of the forces of repul- (Sartre 1988: 255). On this basis, he criticized sion and attraction which keep people at a dis- “art for art’s sake” and the cult of “genius,” and tance while together; and he prefers Tintoretto he indicted a number of earlier writers, includ- to Titian because he sees in the former’s ing Baudelaire, for elaborate efforts to hide expressiveness and violence a rejection of the their freedom and social responsibility from Venetian establishment which Titian, with his themselves. smooth and idealized figures, served so slav- In later years, Sartre seemed to judge less ishly (Sartre 1963b). and interpret more. In plays such as The Devil The theoretical basis for Sartre’s view of the and the Good Lord (1951) and The Condemned of work of art lies not only in his ontology of free- Altona (1960), in critical studies like that of the dom but in his early phenomenological ana- criminal literary figure Jean Genet, and the lysis of the imagination in Psychology of the never completed study of the novelist Flaubert, Imagination (1940). Here he describes imagin- The Idiot of the Family (1971–2), Sartre recog- ing not as “having images” somehow internal nized far greater complexity and force of cir- to consciousness, but as a distinctive way of hav- cumstance in human life, and in the creative ing a world – a way of intending an object, of artist’s life in particular. He came to believe making it present, but in a mode of absence, or that human values are largely interiorized as “irréel.” In imagining the Parthenon, he from one’s family history and one’s situating says, one takes a certain sensuous content or institutions and practices. Still, he thought physical object (perhaps a sketch) as some- that we never simply return what we have thing that is not, as the Parthenon that is else- been given. There is always an element of where. One conjures the world not present. freedom. Indeed, in a figure such as Genet, One may also conjure a world that is not Sartre thinks, one can come to see this freedom real at all. This is what happens on seeing a per- “at grips with destiny, crushed at first by its mis- formance of Hamlet, on hearing a performance chances, then turning upon them and digest- of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, or when ing them little by little . . . [one can learn] the viewing a Matisse. One picks up the solicitations choice that a writer makes of himself, of his of the perceived thing (the actor’s voice and life and of the meaning of the universe, includ- movements, the scraping of strings and hooting ing even the formal characteristics of his of horns, the colored shapes on canvas) and style and composition, even the structure of transforms them into an imaginative con- his images and of the particularity of his sciousness of the Prince of Denmark, the sym- tastes” (1963a: 584). phony, or a dancing woman – with all the As Sartre saw it, a work of literature, and any feelings appropriate to those things. work of art, is a free, imaginative creation All works of art are, in this sense, beyond the addressed to other freedoms. It has a kind of real, not anywhere. “Aesthetic contemplation autonomy and offers aesthetic enjoyment sim- is an induced dream,” Sartre says, and “Beauty ply in arousing the reader’s (viewer’s, listener’s) is a value which applies only to the imaginary free response. At the same time, it discloses the and which entails a negation of the world” world in some of its aspects and, often, for a (1948: 282). This is its seductive power. The determinate audience. The function of literary artist is, in a way, an escapist (Sartre thinks

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Flaubert was almost neurotically so). None- 1841 and occupied until his death. His theless, the sort of imaginative negation at Philosophy of Art (1802–3) attempts a system- stake, not only in creating but in responding to atic philosophical articulation of the arts, in a work of art, may also disclose the world as it which art has a status equal to philosophy. is – through Hamlet, the symphony, and the In his earlier System of Transcendental flying figure, we are afforded a fresh perspective Idealism (1800) he saw art as the “organ of on ordinary things. This is particularly true for philosophy,” because it can show what philo- literary texts. And, Sartre points out, our own sophical concepts cannot: the absolute. By the freedom is inevitably engaged with the free- middle of the nineteenth century such ideas, dom of others, and with the freedom of the which had been the foundation of romantic art artist, in the aesthetic response we make to and philosophy, often came to be regarded, such works and in the moral and social particularly in the English-speaking world, as response we make to them as well. mere mystical hyperbole. They did live on in artistic movements such as Symbolism, but See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century they played less and less of a role in the domin- continental aesthetics; imagination; indian ant strands of philosophy. Behind the ideas of aesthetics; merleau-ponty; truth in art. the early Schelling lies the notion that art has truth status, a notion that lost currency in the bibliography light both of the advances of the natural sciences and of the clarification of the truth status of Primary sources propositions in analytical philosophy. [1940] 1948. Psychology of the Imagination. B. Frechtman (trans.). New York: Philosophical The notion of the truth of art was revived Library. in a philosophically viable way by the work [1946] 1947. Existentialism. B. Frechtman (trans.). of T. W. Adorno, as well as by Hans-Georg New York: Philosophical Library. (Includes Gadamer, on the basis of the work of his “Existentialism is a Humanism.”) teacher, Heidegger, and plays a subterranean [1952] 1963a. Saint-Genet, Actor and Martyr. B. role in poststructuralism (Bowie 1990). If we Frechtman (trans.). New York: Braziller. take account of these approaches we are 1963b. Essays in Aesthetics. W. Baskin (ed. & trans.). now in a better position to understand why New York: Philosophical Library. Schelling’s early work gave such importance to 1988. “What is Literature?” and Other Essays. S. Ungar art than if we rely on philosophical approaches (intro.) Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Includes “Black Orpheus,” 289–330.) oriented toward the natural sciences as the sole arbiters of truth. This essay concentrates Secondary sources on the System of Transcendental Idealism as it Kaelin, Eugene F. 1966. An Existentialist Aesthetic. is Schelling’s most important and influential Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. contribution to the understanding of art’s im- McBride, William L. (ed.). 1996. Existentialist Litera- portance to philosophy; despite some remarkable ture and Aesthetics. New York: Routledge. insights into art’s relationship to mythology Schilpp, Paul Arthur. 1981. The Philosophy of Jean- Paul Sartre. La Salle: Open Court. and into some of the specific arts, especially music, the Philosophy of Art does not have the john j. compton same degree of importance. The work of the early Schelling is part of the flowering of philosophy in Germany initiated by Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Kant’s critical philosophy. In common with (1775–1854) German idealist philosopher. many of his contemporaries, and J. G. Fichte in The first philosopher to write a philosophy of particular, Schelling regarded Kant’s division of art. Schelling was educated together with the world into “representations” and “things Hegel and Hölderlin in a Tübingen seminary. He in themselves,” and the concomitant division occupied various chairs of philosophy, in, for between theoretical and practical reason, as a example, Jena, Würzburg, and Munich, finish- failure to achieve Kant’s own stated aim. As Kant ing his career in what had been Hegel’s chair had made clear, philosophy had to arrive at an of philosophy in Berlin, which he took on in explanation of the world and our place in it with

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schelling, friedrich wilhelm joseph von its own means, without using theology as a flowing molecules of a stream when they form basis. This could not, though, be done at the an eddy. The very need for synthetic judg- expense of separating thought and being. The ments derives from the fact that what is being desire to avoid this separation led to an orien- synthesized is split within itself: objects are tation toward monism, and its key exponent, determined by their not being other objects; Spinoza. At the same time, the fear was that they cannot be fully themselves without the Spinoza’s philosophy led, as F. H. Jacobi saw it, other objects from which they are separated. to “nihilism,” to the world of reductionist con- Nature must, then, unite itself because it is ceptions of modern science. divided within itself. This reductionist view was precisely what If the objects of scientific knowledge are to be Kant’s insistence on practical reason was subsumed under general laws that interrelate, meant to overcome, in the name of reason, they must, as Kant had realized in the Critique the capacity to have purposes that are not of Judgment, ultimately share the same status. determined by natural causality. Fichte made The model of this is the organism, whose parts Kant’s practical philosophy primary: even the cannot be themselves without each other. This subject’s cognitive relationship to the world notion of the relation of parts to whole made was grounded in its “activity.” This activity, Kant link the natural organism to the artwork. which Kant himself saw as a “spontaneity,” in Schelling went beyond Kant by suggesting that it could not be explained in terms of the law that, as we ourselves are part of nature, what of causality, Fichte made into the very prin- knows in us must have an organic relationship ciple of reality. Without the cognitive activity to what is known; there can be no ultimate of the subject there would not be a world to know division between the two. This is what he (though there might still be a world). The rea- means by the absolute. The question is how son the world is intelligible has to lie, as Kant philosophy can explicate this link between had shown, in the subject. Fichte dealt with the knowing and being known. problem of the resistance of the “external” Schelling suggests, with prophetic con- world by making it the reflection back into the sequences, that the forces of Fichte’s conscious subject of its own activity. If this were not the philosophical “I” have an “unconscious” history, case it would, he claimed, be impossible to which it is the task of transcendental philoso- understand how it is that we can feel the re- phy to retrace. The structure of this argument sistance of the world; without an identity prefigures both Hegel’s genetic account of self- between what can feel and what is felt, one is consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit, stuck with the Cartesian problems which Kant and psychoanalysis. How can it be, though, had not fully escaped. The prior factor has to that philosophy should have access to what is be that which allows one to be aware of even unconscious? Schelling argues that we will the most mechanical phenomena, which, for never understand the forces that give rise to self- Fichte, was self-consciousness. consciousness if we try to do so in terms of How is it that Schelling’s version of these conceptual knowledge. How can unconscious ideas leads him to privilege art over philosophy? forces appear as themselves to the conscious The linking factor between Spinoza and Fichte mind? Freud will later make it clear that we do is, for Schelling, the notion of that which is not have cognitive access to drives, only to the cause of itself. In Spinoza, this is “God,” in their “representations,” though he still thinks Fichte the “I” (as a spontaneity). Schelling’s we can make psychoanalysis into a positive early key idea was that, instead of being the inac- science; Schelling is led to the idea of the object cessible thing in itself that Kant made it in the that cannot be conceived of merely as a Critique of Pure Reason, nature in itself was causally determined natural object, in order to “productive.” Kantian synthetic judgments deal suggest how we can understand “unconscious with the world as “product,” as that which activity” via “conscious activity.” This object is appears at a particular moment; Naturphilo- a product of spontaneity, the work of art. sophie, in Schelling’s sense, deals with the The artwork begins with the conscious “productivity,” which gives rise to transient intention of the artist, but it must be the result “products” by opposing itself to itself, like the of more than conscious reflection and technique

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schelling, friedrich wilhelm joseph von if it is to achieve aesthetic status. A work of art moving away, after the beginning of the century, is not art because it shares the same deter- from the Romantic position. In the Philosophy minable attributes as some other objects but of Art he moves toward the position of his iden- rather because it reveals the world in a way tity philosophy, which, like Hegel’s after it, which only it can: a chemical or physical ana- claims to be able to show the absolute in philo- lysis of a Rembrandt painting tells us nothing sophy by articulated insight into the finitude about it as a work of art. There is no cognitive of particular knowledge. This leads him to a sys- criterion that allows us to judge whether tematic philosophical presentation of the vari- something is art or not. The work of art is what ous forms of art, of the kind more familiar from unifies “unconscious” production – the pro- Hegel’s Aesthetics. ductivity which gives rise to natural products The hopes invested in art as the means of com- – with “conscious” production, which allows us municating a “mythology of reason” that will to know nature as an object of science. As reconcile the contradictions in modern soci- such, the work of art is the only means of eties between sensuousness and reason, which direct access to the absolute, because it over- are present in the System of Transcendental comes the division between the conscious sub- Idealism (and, in a different way, in the work ject and the object world by revealing the of Schiller), give way in the work of the ground they both share. Philosophy cannot later Schelling to a conviction that great art represent this ground because this would depends on the right social conditions to flour- entail making it into an object of reflexive ish and thus cannot really help create these knowledge by saying what it is (matter, mind, conditions. At the same time, the key philo- energy, or whatever). As soon as one attempts sophical thought of the System of Transcend- to do this one is forced to relate the absolute to ental Idealism, that philosophy has to come to what it is not, and it thereby loses any possibility terms with a ground of reflexive thinking of being absolute. which transcends it, remains central to the Talk of the absolute makes everyone uneasy. later Schelling, particularly in his critique of However, what Schelling means becomes clear Hegel, and has a significant influence on in the way he claims that both science and art thinkers like Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, are means of revealing the absolute. Science, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, all of whom see art though, is faced with an endless task, in that as vital to philosophy. each new revelation is arrived at via the exclu- sion of other possibilities: successive networks See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century of interdepending theories, as modern science continental aesthetics; hegel; heidegger; shows (and as Kant realized in the Critique of kant; science and art. Judgment), do not allow one to arrive at some- thing noncontingent. In art this failure is bibliography constitutive: the very fact that artworks are “capable of an infinite interpretation,” and our Primary sources awareness of this fact, demonstrate the real [1797] 1988. Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature. E. E. nature of being, as that which cannot ever be Harris & P. Heath (trans.). R. Stern (intro.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. known in its entirety. Each interpretation may [1800] 1978. System of Transcendental Idealism. disclose an aspect of the work, but at the same P. Heath (trans.). M. Vater (intro.). Charlottesville: time it hides other aspects. Virginia University Press. Science and art depend on the same activity, [1802–3] 1988. Philosophy of Art. D. W. Stott (ed. & which we can regard, in the light of Heidegger trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota (who relies on Schelling to a far greater extent Press. than he ever admitted), as ways of disclosing the 1856–61. Sämmtliche Werke. K. F. A. Schelling world that share the same source. Many of (ed.). Stuttgart: Cotta. these ideas were the common property of the Secondary sources Jena Circle of Romantic thinkers, which Bowie, Andrew. 1990. Aesthetics and Subjectivity: included Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis, and to From Kant to Nietzsche. Manchester: Manchester which Schelling belonged for a time, before University Press.

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Frank, Manfred. 1989. Einführung in die frühroman- claiming an a priori connection between beauty tische Ästhetik [Introduction to Early Romantic and freedom. He defines beauty as “freedom in Aesthetics]. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. appearances,” and also speaks of it as the neces- Jähnig, Dieter. 1966, 1969. Schelling: Die Kunst in der sary means for attaining freedom. The claim Philosophie [Art in Philosophy]. 2 vols. Pfullingen: “freedom only through beauty” can be taken in Neske. different senses – practical, as saying that a lib- andrew bowie eral society requires the development of aesthetic sensibility; and also theoretical, as attempting to bridge the Kantian gulf between the worlds Schiller, (Johann Christoph) Friedrich von of nature and freedom. The dual nature of his (1759–1805) German dramatist, poet, and thesis is the expression of the duality of his philosopher; a major figure in the Sturm und own make-up as poet and philosopher. This Drang movement and in the Weimar culture complexity does not make for easy under- of the late eighteenth century. All Schiller’s standing, but his relentless defense of his thesis philosophical writings, with the exception of presents a refreshing challenge. an early dissertation on the mind–body problem, Although he is generally regarded as a were devoted to aesthetic topics and are in the Kantian, he endeavored to correct Kant’s for- form either of letters or of essays. His reputa- malism and criticized his treatment of beauty in tion as a philosopher rests largely on his a correspondence with C. G. Körner, between major work, On the Aesthetic Education of Man January and March 1793, which was intended (1794–5), a series of 27 letters written to his as the basis of a dialogue that never material- patron, the Duke of Augustenburg and some- ized (the book was to be titled “Kallias”). He times called his Aesthetic Letters. attacked the subjectivity of Kant’s theory, His aesthetics has often seemed enigmatic. Its which treated the aesthetic as yet another character is apparent from the dictum: “It is only compartment in an already overcompart- through beauty that man makes his way to mentalized theory of mind; and rejected his dis- freedom” (1967: letter 2, para. 5), which sets tinction between free and dependent beauty, the practical concept of freedom alongside the because the formality of the former notion was theoretical concept of beauty, crossing bound- unacceptable and the linking of beauty with per- aries between ethics, politics, and aesthetics. fection of a kind in the latter was too rational. Why Schiller elected to treat aesthetics in Instead, he advanced his own view of beauty as this dynamic manner requires explanation. objective, as pertaining to objects in the world His dictum, which has the ring of a political slo- of appearances, which linked beauty to the gan, presupposes that humans are in a condi- senses, as opposed to the intellect or subjec- tion of un-freedom, which, Schiller believed, tive pleasure. He saw his theory as resolving resulted both from social and economic divisions, the controversy between rationalist, empiricist, devised by the human intellect, and from and idealist theories of beauty. But his tactics crude sensuality encouraged by materialism. ignore the fact of aesthetic disagreement, and The way he envisaged that this condition endow beauty with a mystical power to create could be corrected depended on his theory of harmony. human nature, that “the will is the genetic His ambiguous concept of aesthetic education characteristic of man as a species, and even refers not to an education in the fine arts but reason is only its eternal rule” (1966: 193). Thus to his interest in an ideal humanity that can be a powerful means for changing the will was achieved only through beauty and art. For needed. Schiller identified this as beauty. Schiller, the ideal was not beyond the world of He describes his inquiry as “concerning art sensible appearances, as it was for Kant. It and beauty” (1967: letter 1, para. 1), but does referred to wholeness in which reason and the not discuss these concepts, being primarily senses are in tandem. It had already been concerned with their effects on moral charac- exemplified in the rounded humanity of the ter and action. What effects works of art have, ancient Greeks, and he believed that in order to if any, is a contingent matter and the concern correct “barbarian” and “savage” tendencies of psychologists and sociologists; but Schiller was in human nature it must reemerge. But this

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schiller, (johann christoph) friedrich von leaves open the question of whether his main para. 5), has to do with our ability to distance interest was the concept of beauty or the per- ourselves from matter through the special fectibility of human nature. His definition of aesthetic senses of sight and hearing, and to beauty as “living form” (1967: letter 15, para. create appearances by giving form to what is 3) not only characterizes beautiful objects, but, formless. Although it can be argued that touch he also claimed, creates beautiful human and smell are also aesthetic senses, Schiller beings, showing how closely the public world rightly implies that in an aesthetic context we of appearances was associated by him with the are not concerned with physical properties of realms of consciousness and moral character – objects such as weight, volume, and so on, but which prompted Hegel to comment (favorably) with appearance of color, shape, texture, and that Schiller’s aesthetics was one of “totality and sound. For Schiller, an interest in semblance is reconciliation.” the hallmark of a liberal society, in which the His strategy for proving this large claim is conditions for egocentricity to flourish have cumbersome, for he employs two methods: one been eradicated. Within the “joyous Kingdom relating to evolution, which pertains to the of play” the Kantian virtue of dignity has been world of nature; and the other to transcenden- replaced by grace, which is a kind of beauty, tal deduction, which is the tool of reason. By applying to character as well as appearance the latter method, two fundamental and neces- and implying spontaneity and lack of con- sary drives in human nature – the formal straint. Only the sketchiest outline of the ideal (Formtrieb), representing the rational, abstract society is given (1967: letter 27). aspect, and the sensuous (sinnliche Trieb), rep- Whether Schiller succeeds in showing that resenting the concrete aspect of experience – are beauty can bridge the gap between the worlds shown to be capable of being brought into an of nature and freedom depends on the sense in ideal equilibrium. From this state of psycholog- which these terms are taken. The thrust of ical harmony the play drive (Spieltrieb) emerges. his argument is to establish the priority of the Although this concept is derived from Kant’s aesthetic dimension in human development. view of aesthetic judgment as the free play of But he is inconsistent, sometimes speaking of the cognitive faculties, the idea that human the aesthetic as a transitional stage between beings reach their fullest potential when “play- nature and morality or freedom, and at others ing” with beauty is Schiller’s unique contribu- as the ultimate achievement for humanity. tion. It introduces the notion of an aesthetic With regard to his aim of showing that beauty attitude as detachment from practical or intel- creates beautiful human beings, the difficulty of lectual concerns. The play drive is also treated proof is considerable and too much is uncriti- as evolving from animal play (1967: letter 26), cally assumed. For example, aesthetic education which is the result of a superfluity of energy; takes it for granted that emotions can be but the essence of aesthetic play is that it trained. There are times in his argument when employs both sense and reason in a recreative an ideal human nature takes priority. For harmony. Schiller’s argument becomes convo- instance, his concern to show that the ability luted because he not only argues that beauty to instill a mood of serene disengagement from is necessary for human wellbeing, but also any proclivity to action or intellectual activity shows how our psychological make-up can be is the mark of aesthetic excellence, leads him to conditioned by the effects of two kinds of overlook differences between art forms (1967: beauty, energizing and melting, so that ideal letter 22). beauty will be attained. But causal accounts do Schiller occupies a rightful place in the not establish anything of importance for aes- development of post-Kantian idealist aesthetics, thetics. Furthermore, psychological condition- although he was an eclectic thinker who drew ing is inimical to education. on the theories of Goethe, Herder, Fichte, and A more plausible account, showing that the Wilhelm von Humboldt, as well as those of development of aesthetic sensibility is essential Kant. His theory of beauty has been seminal. for a liberal society, is given in terms of sem- Croce’s expression theory defends the priority of blance (Schein). Aesthetic semblance, which is the aesthetic over other areas of human activ- distinguished from illusion (1967: letter 26, ity; and the concepts of living form, semblance,

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schlegel, august wilhelm von and aesthetic education have had an extensive distinction between classical (or ancient) and influence on twentieth-century aesthetics. Romantic (or modern) forms of literature. Schiller’s aesthetics also provides an intro- He was born into a literary family. His father, duction to standard problems – the definition of Johann Adolf, a high official in the Lutheran beauty; the question of an aesthetic attitude; church, was a religious poet and a friend and what constitutes aesthetic excellence; the rela- associate of Gottlieb Rabener, Christian Gellert, tion between art and morality. He has become and Friedrich Klopstock. His uncle, Johann a focus of interest for late twentieth-century Elias, was a dramatist. His brother, Friedrich, was British and Continental philosophers, espe- a well-known poet and thinker, regarded as the cially the hermeneutic philosopher, Gadamer, most penetrating mind among the founders whose defense of a liaison between philosophy of German Romanticism. August studied theo- and poetry is after Schiller’s own heart. logy and then philology at the University of Göttingen. After three years as a tutor in a pri- See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century vate family, he lectured on aesthetics in Jena continental aesthetics; aesthetic attitude; beginning in 1798, where, with his brother, aesthetic education; gadamer; kant. the philosopher and poet Novalis, and Ludwig Tieck he laid the critical foundations of bibliography Romanticism. While in Jena, his wife left him for the well-known idealist philosopher, F. W. Primary sources J. Schelling. From 1804 to 1817 he traveled in [1793] 1966. “On the Sublime.” In Two Essays by the entourage of Mme de Staël, whose De Friedrich von Schiller: Naive and Sentimental Poetry and On the Sublime. J. A. Elias (trans.). New York: l’Allemagne (“On Germany”) expands many of Ungar. his views. He also studied oriental languages [1794–5] 1967. On the Aesthetic Education of Man. and became, in 1818, the first professor of E. M. Wilkinson & L. A. Willoughby (eds. & trans.). Indology in Germany. He became professor in Oxford: Clarendon. Berlin in 1819. August Schlegel wrote dramas in the clas- Secondary sources sical style and much verse, though without Gardiner, Patrick. 1979. “Freedom as an Aesthetic Idea.” In The Idea of Freedom. A. Ryan (ed.). great success. He was a critic, producing Oxford: Oxford University Press, 27–39. his Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature – Kooy, Michael J. 2002. Coleridge, Schiller, and widely recognized as a crucial statement of Aesthetic Education. New York: Palgrave. Romanticism – in 1809, and a translator: he Miller, R. D. 1970. Schiller and the Ideal of Freedom. translated Bhagavadgita (1823), the dramas of Oxford: Clarendon. Calderón, and the poetry of Petrarch and Savile, Anthony. 1987. Aesthetic Reconstructions: Dante. With Tieck, he is most important for his The Seminal Writings of Lessing, Kant and Schiller. translations of Shakespeare’s plays. Oxford: Blackwell. The term “romantic” emerged in the second Schaper, Eva. 1985. “Towards the Aesthetic: A half of the seventeenth century in both Journey with Friedrich Schiller,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 25, 153–68. England and France. It then meant “as in the romances,” with special reference to medieval margaret paton romances and Ariosto and Tasso. When the term arrived in Germany in the late eighteenth century, it was used as a synonym for Schlegel, August Wilhelm von (1767– “Gothic.” It appears that Novalis invented the 1845) German poet, critic, and scholar. By the words Romantik and Romantiker at the end of the time of his death, with his younger brother eighteenth century. For Novalis, the former Friedrich, August Schlegel was recognized as meant someone who composed romances and a founder of the modern Romantic school of fairy-tales, and the latter was synonymous German literature. In the classical–modern with Romankünstler. Friedrich Schlegel defined debate he generally favored the modern over the romantic poetry as “progressive Universalpoesie.” classical. He is important for his success in Slightly later he connected the term “romantic” clarifying the meaning of romanticism via his with Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Italian poetry.

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He considered that in his unromantic age only to classical or ancient literature, was spread by the novels of Jean-Paul (Richter) were roman- other writers, especially through the efforts of tic. He also claimed that all poetry must be Mme de Staël. Her De l’Allemagne appeared in romantic. 1813 in London, and was then republished in Statements of August’s in several series of Paris in 1814, several months after a French lectures, especially those delivered in Vienna translation of Schlegel’s Lectures on Dramatic in 1808–9, were more influential in fixing the Art and Literature. Her restatement of his parallels image of Romanticism. (The contrast of the of classical and sculpturesque, romantic and classical and the romantic is implicit, but not yet picturesque, helped to popularize his view. In this explicit, in the lectures on aesthetics given in Jena way, Schlegel’s ideas exerted a decisive influ- in 1798.) In the lectures that he gave in Berlin ence, first in France, where Stendhal was the from 1801 to 1804, he compared the difference first to declare himself a Romantic, and then between the classical and the romantic with that throughout Europe – particularly Italy, Spain, between ancient and modern poetry. In this Portugal, and Poland. In Russia, Pushkin formulation, the romantic is progressive and labeled his Prisoner of the Caucasus a Romantic Christian. In his account of romantic literature, poem; and Coleridge, in England, made use he distinguished between form and content. of Schlegel’s ideas in his lectures delivered He described the great Italian writers Dante, between 1808 and 1818 and published later as Petrarch, and Boccaccio as the founders of Shakespearean Criticism. modern romanticism; despite their admiration for classical literature they struck out on their See also criticism; schlegel, f. own, and their own form and expression were unclassical. Thus Dante, who admired Virgil, bibliography produced something different from and better Primary sources than the Aeneid. This is also the case with [1809] 1884. Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. Michelangelo and Raphael in the field of art. In J. Black (trans.). London: Bell. Schlegel’s typology, examples of romantic lit- [1809] 1884. Vorlesungen über schöne Kunst und erature include the Nibelungenlied and other Literatur. Heilbronn: Henniger. German heroic poems, the King Arthur and Charlemagne romances, and Spanish litera- Secondary sources ture from El Cid to Don Quixote. Schlegel took Beiser, Frederick C. 2006. The Romantic Imperative: The Concept of Early German Romanticism. Cambridge, up the theme again in his Vienna lectures, MA: Harvard University Press. published in 1809–11, which were quickly Haym, R. 1972. Die Romantische Schule. Darmstadt: translated into the major European languages. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. The object of the Vienna lectures is both a gen- Pinkard, Terry. 2002. German Philosophy 1760– eral survey of drama in different periods and 1860: The Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge: Cam- nations, and the exposition of a series of gen- bridge University Press. eral ideas in order to evaluate their true artis- Wellek, René. 1955. A History of Modern Criticism, tic merit. Schlegel insisted that it is for the vol. ii. New Haven: Yale University Press. philosophical theory of poetry and of the fine arts tom rockmore to establish the fundamental laws of the beautiful. He associated the romantic/classical antithesis with those of the organic/mechani- Schlegel, Friedrich von (1772–1829) A cal and the plastic/picturesque. He opposed many-sided cultural figure, Schlegel is best ancient literature and its neoclassical successor, known with his brother, August, as one of the a form of poetry allegedly representing perfec- leaders of the German Romantic movement. tion, to the romantic drama of Shakespeare He made contributions to the theory and prac- and Caldérón, that is supposedly representa- tice of painting and to the evaluation of Gothic tive of so-called infinite desire. architecture, and he established Sanskrit stud- The influence of Schlegel’s identification of ies in Germany. He lectured on philosophy romanticism with modern literature, as opposed and history, and on literature, of which he

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schlegel, friedrich von published an important history. He was also published Über die Sprache und Weisheit der active as a diplomat. The son of a Lutheran Inder (“On the Language and Wisdom of the minister, he was the youngest of five brothers. Indians“). He was appointed court secretary to For more than a century he was less well Archduke Charles in 1809 and, after the peace known than his elder brother, August, but he of 1814, Metternich’s representative from is now generally regarded as a more significant the Viennese court in Frankfurt. In Vienna, he figure. Many of the views that August later lectured on modern history in 1810 and on popularized were either restatements or modi- ancient and modern literature in 1812. From fications of Friedrich’s ideas. 1820 to 1823, with Adam Müller he edited Friedrich initially studied law in Göttingen and the review Concordia. His Philosophie des Lebens Leipzig, but quickly abandoned it for literary pur- (“Philosophy of Life”) appeared in 1828. suits. In 1804 he married Dorothea Viet, the After Novalis, Schlegel was the outstanding daughter of Moses Mendelssohn. His novel literary theoretician of the first phase of Roman- Lucinde (1799), advocating free love and writ- ticism (the Frühromantik, c.1795–1801), and as ten while he was courting his future wife, who philosopher and historian he was one of the was married to someone else at the time, main representatives of later Romanticism. His caused an enduring scandal. Both he and Romanticism evolved from what was initially an Dorothea converted to Roman Catholicism in entirely classical approach to literature. The 1808 – a change that was to be important term “romantic” was employed beginning in for the later evolution of Schlegel’s thought. about 1810 by the opponents of this tendency; Although his conversion was sometimes seen as the term “Romantic school” was popularized the indirect result of the failure of August’s by Heine in 1836. Schlegel’s theory, never marriage and his own subsequent break with stated in systematic form, can be deduced from his brother, Schlegel understood it as part of his writings. Here we can look to a series of a continuous process. The conversion later led important articles published in Athenaeum, in him away from certain of his early concerns, which the term “romantic” was understood in including his interest in the East arising out of an imprecise sense as “not classical.” As well as his study of Sanskrit, and his pantheism. His reli- the Schlegels, the contributors to this journal gious views subsequently colored all his later included Novalis. Schleiermacher, Ludwig writings. Tieck, and the Naturphilosoph (“philosopher of As a lecturer at the University of Jena, nature”) Hülsen. Schlegel studied the ideas of Kant (which he The typical Romantic mixture of idealistic rejected); those of Fichte, which remained a philosophy and romantic poetry reflects an basic influence on his thought; and those of alienation from contemporary society that is Schelling. In Berlin, he studied Schleiermacher, exemplified by Friedrich Schlegel’s writings. Spinoza, Leibniz, and Schiller. Like Schelling, He was concerned to find a way to take up the Schlegel knew Fichte, whom he regarded as difference between the ancient and the modern, the greatest living metaphysical thinker even or the classical and the romantic, into a wider though he objected to the abstract character of unity. He wrote essays entitled “Athenaeum Fichte’s thought; the parallels between the Fragments,” “On Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister,” views of Schlegel and of Schelling, insofar as both “Ideas” and “Conversation on Poetry.” In the were influenced by Fichte’s, led each to accuse Athenaeum Fragments Schlegel commented on the other of plagiarism. philosophy and politics and formulated his lit- With August, Friedrich founded and edited erary theory. His main ideas are illustrated in the journal Athenaeum (1798–1800), which the following, frequently cited, passage: laid the conceptual foundations of German Romantic poetry is a progressive universal poetry. Romanticism and was regarded by his con- Its destiny is not merely to unite all the separate temporaries as the organ of the Romantic genres of poetry and to put poetry into contact with school. In 1802 he went to Paris, where he stud- philosophy and rhetoric. Its aim and mission is, now ied Sanskrit and Persian, lectured on philosophy, to mingle, now to fuse poetry and prose, genius and and edited the journal Europa. In 1808 he criticism, the poetry of the educated and the

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poetry of the people, to make life and society bibliography poetic, to poeticize wit, to fill and saturate the forms of art with matters of genuine cultural Primary sources value and to quicken them with the vibrations 1966. Kritische Friedrich Schlegel Ausgabe. E. Behler of humor. It embraces everything that is poetic, from (ed.). Paderborn: Schöningh. the most comprehensive system of art . . . to the sigh 1978. Kritische und Theoretische Schriften. A. or kiss which the poetic child expresses in artless Huyssen (ed.). Stuttgart: Reclam. song. It can lose itself so completely in its subject Secondary sources matter that one may consider its supreme purpose Beiser, Frederick C. 2006. The Romantic Imperative: The to be the characterization of poetic individuals of Concept of Early German Romanticism. Cambridge, every kind, and yet there is no form better suited MA: Harvard University Press. to the complete self-expression of the spirit of the Eichner, Hans. 1970. Friedrich Schlegel. New York: author, so that many an artist who merely Twayne. wanted to write a Roman willy-nilly portrayed Pinkard, Terry. 2002. German Philosophy 1760– himself. It alone can, like the epic, become a mir- 1860: The Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge: Cam- ror of the whole surrounding world, a portrait of bridge University Press. the age. And yet it can, more than any other art Wellek, René. 1955. A History of Modern Criticism, vol. form, hover on the wings of poetic reflection ii. New Haven: Yale University Press, 5–35. between the portrayed object and the portraying artist, free from all real and ideal interests . . . tom rockmore [The] essential nature [of the romantic genre is] that it is eternally becoming and can never be perfected. No theory can exhaust it, and only a Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860) Ger- divinatory criticism could dare to attempt to man philosopher; one of Kant’s greatest critics, characterize its ideal. It alone is infinite, as it alone and a major influence, especially in ethics and is free; its supreme law is that the caprice of the aesthetics, on later writers, including Nietzsche author shall be subject to no law. The romantic and Wittgenstein. genre is the only one that is more than a genre, but Schopenhauer is unusual among the great is, as it were, poetry itself, for in a certain sense, all poetry is or ought to be romantic. (Quoted in philosophers in according to the arts a central Eichner 1970: 57–8) place in his philosophical system. Schopenhauer saw himself as a disciple of Kant in his general Writing in the wake of the French Revolu- philosophy, with the crucial difference that he tion, Schlegel here regards romantic poetry, thought it possible to know the nature of the real- like Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre (“Theory of ity that lies beyond sensuous experience, with- Knowledge”) and Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, as out resorting to the elaborate jiggery-pokery in corresponding to the spirit of the times and as which Kant indulged in his metaphysics of surpassing all limits. What he calls progressive morality. Schopenhauer believed that the ulti- universal poetry is intended to unite all the dif- mate reality is will – more precisely, the will-to- ferent forms of poetry that it will bring into live – ubiquitous and undifferentiated. contact with philosophy and rhetoric. The aim In our own everyday activity of willing we in view is to be reached through irony and wit. come into contact with this ultimate reality, Irony surpasses every limit and wit is understood though in a deceptive form, since each of us as a fragmentary expression of genius that believes that he is a separate will: this is the fun- knows no bounds. Unlike other types of litera- damental error of the principium individuationis, ture that have already attained fixed form and, but if we accept his arguments on the subject, hence, can be described, romanticism is and Schopenhauer believes, we shall grasp that in will remain in a state of becoming. It follows that fact we are all parts of the single will. This a romantic work of art, be it philosophical or leads him directly to his most celebrated view, poetical, must retain a fragmentary character. his pessimism. Since in willing, which we do all Schlegel finds in romantic poetry the literary the time, we are trying to change the state we equivalent of the idealist conception of the sub- are in, it follows that that state is felt to be ject as unlimited and, hence, as free. unsatisfactory. But as soon as we achieve what we were willing (something that occurs less See also irony; schlegel, a. often than we would wish), we are propelled into

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schopenhauer, arthur willing something else, that being our essential jealousy and betrayal: it is just that he does not nature. But it is also the essential nature of admit that there are any positive states, such everything else, so the world is a scene of per- as fulfilled love – or, indeed, any kind of petual frustration, with brief respites of boredom. fulfillment. So it could be said that for him the This drastic account of things would seem to whole of art presents the kind of problem that leave no room for any consolation or mitigation, tragedy has traditionally presented for everyone. and our general unwillingness to acknowledge It is no surprise that Schopenhauer puts a very our plight adds a strong element of delusion to high value on tragedy, but not for any of the tra- the already gloomy picture. But there is help at ditional reasons. He finds in it the portrayal of hand, and in a form sufficiently impressive to the nothingness of life, so that it can serve to pre- compromise Schopenhauer’s pessimism con- pare us for our own cessation – indeed, make siderably. For under certain circumstances we that cessation seem something devoutly to are able to suspend, if only temporarily, the be wished for. In other words it preaches, in activity of willing; and those circumstances Nietzsche’s contemptuous term (for this very are, in the first (and, for most of us, the only) theory), “resignationism.” It helps to detach place, when we are having an aesthetic expe- us from life, which we otherwise so absurdly rience. Accepting Kant’s aesthetic theory as cling to, despite its pervasive wretchedness. enthusiastically as he rejects his moral theory, Whatever may be said against this theory, Schopenhauer argues that in the presence of at least it avoids the usual glibness about beauty we can practice “disinterested contem- “tragic affirmation.” On the other hand, given plation,” seeing objects for their own sakes and Schopenhauer’s general metaphysical views, not having, as we always otherwise do, any pal- it is not clear that the enticing prospect of pable designs on them. ceasing to exist is one that we can actually But to this he adds an element that makes his accomplish. Since our usual view of ourselves theory of the visual arts and literature (music as separately existing beings is radically mis- is altogether different, as we shall see) radically taken, my ceasing to exist can come to no different from Kant’s. It is one of the surprises more than my no longer having the illusion that of his philosophy that he announces a belief in I exist in the sense that I normally think I do. Platonic ideas, though they have only the It is as if we are all – to use an image that is ontological, and not the normative, status that Schopenhauerian in spirit though not in letter they possess for Plato. What this amounts to is – pimples on the ocean of cosmic pus that con- that, in the contemplation of a work of art, its stitutes the will, and resignation to my non- content ceases to be particular and assumes existence is acquiescence in rejoining the rest universality. So Schopenhauer combines a of the undifferentiated ocean. What that would Kantian account of aesthetic experience with an come to is, of course, unimaginable, but it would Aristotelian account of its objects. His account hardly be the same as simple nonexistence. of art is thus essentially cognitive, not percep- The paradoxes that lie just beneath the sur- tual, since perception is of particulars, while face of Schopenhauer’s account of the visual and art is concerned with universals. Why this literary arts become much more striking when should make us eager to have aesthetic experi- we consider his account of music, to which he ences remains unclear, however, since the accords a uniquely exalted status. Whereas the Schopenhauerian universe is quintessentially other arts involve representations and con- undesirable. If it is painful to experience any emo- cepts, music dispenses with both of these, with tion, for instance, it is not clear why it should the minor exception of onomatopoeic music be pleasurable to contemplate any emotion in (for instance, the birdcalls at the end of the its universal form. The fact that we are briefly second movement of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” released from wanting to act seems insufficient Symphony). Not being mimetic or expressive in to account for the delight we take in art, any ordinary sense, music is, according to granted what its subject matter is bound to be. Schopenhauer, a direct presentation of the will, It could be claimed that Schopenhauer is in and is therefore to be prized uniquely. He even no worse a position than other theorists of art writes of “music or the world,” and means when they deal with “negative states,” such as what he says. This certainly puts music in a

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schopenhauer, arthur remarkable ontological position, while at the second place, granted that the claim is mean- same time it renders Schopenhauer’s eulogies ingful, he has not succeeded in his task of of it all the more puzzling. In the first place, he explaining the value of music: on the contrary. regards his claim as true of all music (with the If he did have a plausible answer, it would exception mentioned above), so that compara- no doubt be related to his Kantian insistence tive qualitative assessments of different works that in aesthetic experience our own wills are are out of place – which seems strange. But that in abeyance, even if we are contemplating the is a minor point compared with the further single will itself. But this seems to be putting far point that music is esteemed for presenting too great an emphasis on the concept of disin- a reality which, in the rest of his work, terested contemplation – or, rather, getting it to Schopenhauer so comprehensively condemns. do work for which it was not designed. It may The mixture, in his philosophy, of tradi- be that in aesthetic experience “we keep the tional and innovative elements here emerges as sabbath of the penal servitude of willing,” as something very close to contradiction. Since, Schopenhauer put it with characteristic color. with remarkably few exceptions, Western But it does not follow that not willing is in philosophers have taken a view of reality that itself pleasurable or worthwhile, irrespective of has led them to place a positive value upon it, what we contemplate when we are in this con- something that represents it accurately would dition. A fortiori, it does not follow that will- automatically inherit the favorable estimate of lessly contemplating the will is pleasurable, what it depicts. An alternative way in which but that must be Schopenhauer’s view. Perhaps mimetic art may be prized is in that it somehow it would be most plausible if he claimed that, transforms what it imitates, giving value to from that vantage point, life became a farce, something that lacks it – or even, in the case of but he does not; though, were he to, his fer- tragedy, to something that is acutely painful or vent admiration for Rossini would thereby be has an otherwise negative value. But since explained. For in the works by which Rossini Schopenhauer makes it the special glory of is best remembered, especially his Barber of music that imitation or transformation is Seville, we have a kind of parody of the will-to- sidestepped – and so music is, as Nietzsche was live. His characters are puppets, animated by later to put it, “the truly metaphysical activity nothing more than a vague demonic energy; but of mankind” because it gives us the actual the fact that in these works Rossini taps a vein movements of the will – how does it come of malicious humor which is peculiar to him about that he is so ecstatic about it? Music cer- gives the lie to the general claim about music. tainly cannot be accused of misleading us if It has been argued, above all by Erich Heller Schopenhauer is right, but why should we not in his book on Thomas Mann, The Ironic German, want to be misled over such a sordid matter? that it is because, and not in spite, of the To this question, it seems, he has no answer profound confusions and ambiguities in his except the traditional one – which he should cer- metaphysics, and especially in his aesthetics, tainly have queried – that it is better to know that Schopenhauer has had so powerful an the truth. influence: not indeed on philosophers, who It appears that what Schopenhauer did was have for the most part ignored him since he died, to make an attempt, in itself praiseworthy, as they did while he was alive – to his immense to account for the extraordinary power that chagrin. But the list of artists who have been music has over us, or at any rate over many peo- influenced by him, to whom reading him has ple – though in general, it would seem, not come with the force of a revelation, is uniquely over philosophers. But in accounting for this long and impressive. At their head is Richard power he overplays his hand badly, and produces Wagner, who read him first in 1854, and nonsense on at least two levels: in the first incessantly thereafter. place, it is wholly unclear how music can be But Tolstoy, an utterly different artist, also identified with will, whatever interpretation praised him in the most abandoned terms, and we put on that term or concept, which is both began to translate his magnum opus, The World central to Schopenhauer’s metaphysics and as Will and Representation. Turgenev, Zola, extremely vague in the context of it. In the Maupassant, and especially Proust were other

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European novelists on whom he made a lasting 2000. Pareraga and Paralipomena. Rev. edn. 2 vols. impression. And for Thomas Mann he was E. F. J. Payne (trans.). Oxford: Clarendon. part of the constellation whose other members Secondary sources were Wagner and Nietzsche, under whose Gardiner, Patrick. 1967. Schopenhauer. Harmonds- light he wrote his entire output. Among writ- worth: Penguin. ers in English, Hardy and Conrad are the most Hamlyn, D. W. 1980. Schopenhauer. London: notable figures who admired him. Less often Routledge & Kegan Paul. mentioned is his impact on the remarkable Heller, Erich. 1981. The Ironic German. Cambridge: Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis, whose Cambridge University Press, ch. 2. masterpiece Epitaph of a Small Winner is clearly Jacquette, Dale (ed.). 1996. Schopenhauer, Philo- written under his aegis. In all these cases it can sophy, and the Arts. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- be argued that it was Schopenhauer’s elevation versity Press. of art at the expense of existence that had the michael tanner greatest impact. The incongruity of this eleva- tion was something that they overlooked: what may well have excited them was his pes- science and art This entry focuses on dif- simism, refreshing among philosophers, com- ferences between the enterprises and purposes bined with the idea that they were equipped, as that distinguish science and art. artists, with the means of offering consolation, Although science and art are both human or even escape. The more appalling the world, activities, and respond in various ways to the more heroic the achievement of art in human interests, our interests in scientific effecting its transfiguration. activity will be directly and successfully served There are two philosophers on whom only by theories that (approximately) corres- Schopenhauer made an impression, though in pond to the way the world is, at least in their neither case did it last. The first was Nietzsche, observational consequences. Our interests in for whom, as for Wagner, encountering him pursuing scientific activity are not, of course, was a revelation. His first book, The Birth of confined to representing the world. We may Tragedy, was written under their joint spell; he pursue science in order to manipulate the world, soon rejected both of them, though not before build bridges, fly planes, produce energy, and so writing to them panegyrics of a strange kind. on. We may be interested in scientific theories But Schopenhauer’s “Romantic pessimism” was in order economically to summarize a mass of something that Nietzsche soon felt he had to data, or for religious, metaphysical, or ideolo- transcend, though his replacement of the will- gical reasons. Nevertheless, each of these inter- to-live by the will to power shows a residual ests is best served by theories that, at the influence. In the case of Ludwig Wittgenstein, observational level at least, fit the facts, or are the effect of Schopenhauer is most striking in the judged in terms of their successes and failures Notebooks 1914–1916 and in the concluding in this respect. Even the investigator who passages of the Tractatus. But by the 1930s wishes to use science to subserve some grander he had come to feel that “where true depth ideological scheme will come to grief if others begins, Schopenhauer’s runs out,” and that can show that the empirical facts fail to may be taken as a harsh but finally just estimate confirm his scientific theories. of his work. In most scientific theories there are elements that go beyond our powers to verify or check. See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century There will always be an element of construc- continental aesthetics; function of art; kant; tion in the postulation of scientific theories, nietzsche; tolstoy; wagner, wittgenstein. of imaginative leaping beyond the data. But checkable data must always support a theory if bibliography it is to be deemed successful scientifically. The Primary sources reason for the need for an embedding of science [1819/1844] 1969. The World as Will and in fact is clear; science is concerned with Representation. 2 vols. E. F. J. Payne (trans.). New the description, explanation, and manipula- York: Dover. tion of a world that has an objective existence

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science and art apart from anything we might believe or feel the responses, thoughts, and attitudes it evokes about it. or might evoke in those who perceive it. In dealing with the world as it is, science A work of art is an attempt to express some has tended since the seventeenth century to vision or attitude to the world from a con- abstract from the way things appear to us as sciously human perspective, and it will com- human perceivers. The search for causal regu- municate this vision through the way it works larities in the world, central to the scientific on the perceptions or sensibility of its audience. aims of explanation and manipulation of phys- From this fundamental difference between ical phenomena, may well go hand in hand the theories of science and works of art, it obvi- with a downplaying of aspects of phenomena ously follows that artists cannot overlook that are important to us as perceivers and the effects of secondary or response-dependent agents in the world. In its search for an qualities. observer-independent view of the world, sci- As the world of art is first and foremost the ence has demoted the qualities of color, sound, world of human experience, it is arguable that feel, taste, and touch, with which our phenom- artists should not seek the type of beneath- enal world is filled, to the status of “secondary” the-surface simplification and generalization or response-dependent qualities. rightly pursued in scientific inquiry. Human Together with the displacement of the experience and activity, once clothed in cul- perceptual, the scientific drive for an observer- tural forms, develop new complexities and independent account of the world characteris- meanings. Thus, a rude hut is transformed tically tends to reductionism; it will tend to see into a Doric building, with columns and cap- what appear to be many different things in itals, porticoes and plinths. New possibilities of terms of smaller numbers of fundamental enti- balance, proportion, light and shade, surface and ties and processes. Where what we are interested depth are thus opened up (and in this context in is causal explanation and manipulation of the it is notable that in the Parthenon, the most world, successful reductions of this sort will famous of all Doric buildings, the effect of bal- represent considerable intellectual advances, ance and harmony is achieved by deviating in that we will thereby be enabled to ignore those from the mathematical identities and lines that aspects of reality which are important only at a scientific theory might favor in order to give a human or perceptual levels. the observer the impression of harmony and Science, then, attempts to investigate the balance). To the reductionist mind, any build- world as it is in itself. It rescinds from observer- ing is a shelter from the elements. but to relative properties, it seeks theories of far- emphasize the deep way in which all buildings reaching application that abstract from are the same is to overlook the ways in which differences at the phenomenal level, and the they are all different and the way these differ- success of its theories is judged in terms of the ences appear, affect, delight, matter, or give way they are empirically borne out. In all pain to us. these respects there are significant differences As artists operate in the world of human between art and science. meaning and experience, they cannot avoid Artistic activity and expression are charac- the superficial richness, complexity, and diver- teristically directed to stimulating experiences sity of that experience, or the way cultural and reactions of various sorts in perceivers. practices endow our experience with values They work, in the first instance, insofar as they and meanings. There can naturally be forms and succeed in doing this in the manner intended styles of art that ape reductionism and sim- by the artist. Contemplating a Turner canvas, plification, which purport to show the skull let us say, evokes the swell and pull of the sea. beneath the skin and the universal animal A Bach fugue may combine a sense of beauty lurking behind the performances and rituals of of the theme with one of an imposing quasi- civilization. But the decision to take this direc- architectural structure. The exterior of a tion will be an aesthetic one, not something Georgian house conveys a sense of calm sim- forced on us by the nature of the discipline. plicity and order together with an unostentatious And, as with other aesthetic simplifications, grandeur. With art, success is bound up with it is a decision that leaves the artist open to

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science and art criticism for failing to do justice to the complexity of human response. In the light of this central of human experience. aim of science, it is possible to speak of sci- A similar point can be made against theorists entific progress, which will be measured by the of art and of human psychology who claim increasing adequacy of succeeding theories in that a certain building or painting gives us sat- representing, revealing, and predicting parts of isfaction because it is based on some mathe- the physical world. We all know now, simply matical formula, such as the golden section, because science has progressed, that the earth to which our perceptual systems naturally is not the center of the universe and that there respond. Even if it true that this figure is disposed is no such stuff as phlogiston. But it would to induce in the perceiver a sense of order, the not be possible to say that we are better poets mathematical figure itself provides at most than Homer or Shakespeare – or, indeed, that the framework for the full aesthetic experience poetry has made progress since Homer or offered by a particular building or painting. A Shakespeare. Part of the reason for this is that Mexican palace, a Greek temple, the Cancelleria, in poetry, as in the other arts, there is no exter- a sketch by Le Corbusier, and a figure in a nal goal that remains constant over time, in Euclidean textbook may all be examples of the terms of which success can be judged. golden section, but, from the point of view of the It is true, as T. S. Eliot remarked, that there experience of the perceiver, just as important as is a sense in which we know more than the dead what they have in common are the differences writers knew; part of what we know is the between them, and the different feel that each dead writers and their works, and, insofar as we thing will have for a perceiver, which patient see ourselves as operating within a particular attention to surface detail can articulate and tradition, knowledge of authorities within the explain. tradition will be very important to later artists Much the same can be said about attempts and audiences in order to learn the expressive to analyze paintings in geometric terms, as potential of the tradition. Of course, this too is when someone speaking about Piero della a difference between art and science. Contem- Francesca’s Baptism of Christ starts to trace out porary scientists are interested in the truth or geometric lines and shapes over the canvas. the empirical adequacy of theories, and to dis- Even if it were true that Piero was influenced cover this they do not have to know about the by mathematical considerations, to treat and work of their predecessors. By contrast, in the conceive works of art simply in terms of some human world, of which art is a significant hidden mathematical essence is to obliterate part, judgment of works inevitably refers to the their human and aesthetic meaning. In the response they evoke among those schooled in case of the Baptism of Christ, emphasizing for- the tradition to which artists and audience mal relationships at the expense of the rest of alike belong. what is on the canvas will be to downplay or overlook altogether its tenderness, its peace, its See also aesthetic attitude; aesthetic proper- religiousness, its poignancy, and its human ties; cognitive science and art; cognitive and religious meaning generally. Similarly, value of art; evolution, art, and aesthetics; analyzing the Cancelleria as just an example function of art; objectivity and realism in of the golden section will be to leave out of aesthetics; ontological contextualism. account how the beauty of architecture requires the addition of ornament to the harmony of pro- bibliography portion. And, as already remarked in dealing Goodman, Nelson & Elgin, Catherine Z. 1988. with the Parthenon, what counts even in the Reconceptions in Philosophy and Other Arts and harmony of proportion is perceived harmony, Sciences. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. which may actually require deviation from Leavis, F. R. 1972. Nor Shall My Sword. London: strict mathematical or scientific harmony. Chatto & Windus. There is, finally, one further important O’Hear, Anthony. 1988. The Element of Fire: Science, respect in which science differs from art, which Art and the Human World. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. again arises directly from science’s aim of representing a world that exists independently anthony o’hear

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Scruton, Roger (b.1944) As well as being physical object, no doubt analyzable ulti- noted as a political theorist and commentator mately in terms of physics, with how we actu- on political and cultural affairs both in Britain ally see it as a painting and what the painting and the USA, Scruton has written widely on aes- means. Similarly, a work of music consists of thetics and on matters of taste in architecture, separate and discrete sounds, ultimately wave music, and the other arts. patterns in the atmosphere, to be sure, but that In his inaugural lecture as professor of aes- is not how we hear it. We hear it in an “acous- thetics at the University of London, Scruton matic realm” where the sounds have an inner attempted to restore the subject of aesthetics logic of perceived or imagined feeling and to the place of philosophical eminence once movement, a movement in which the music, accorded it by Kant and Schiller, and from without being a self, nevertheless has many which it has been deposed by generations of of the attributes of a living spirit, endowed analytic philosophers. Scruton’s view stems with gesture, rational agency, and freedom from a bifurcation between the world revealed of consciousness. Precisely because music is by scientific inquiry and that in which we nonrepresentational, this human charge is live our daily lives, the Lebenswelt of the phe- stronger than in the other arts. In listening to nomenologists. In the scientific paradigm, the a piece of music, we enter its spirit and that of human subject is, as far as possible, elimin- the community of other listeners, actual and ated: Scruton agrees with many contemporary potential, all of whom will be attentive to how analytic philosophers and philosophers of science the music engages them. in seeing science as aiming at an impersonal In stressing the ways in which works of art and absolute view of the world as it is in itself, have to be experienced in order to communicate, and not necessarily as it is revealed to us in Scruton wishes to distance himself from everyday experience. But unlike, say, Quine, accounts of works of art which locate their Scruton is concerned to stress what is absent significance in some message hidden beneath from the scientific paradigm and its construal or outside the surface of their appearance, of objective knowledge. or which postulate the need for some quasi- What is absent is precisely that “intentional linguistic decoding of the aesthetic. Aesthetic understanding” by which we describe, criticize, experience is, for Scruton, on the level of our and justify the world as it appears. Intentional shared everyday recognition of the fitting, the understanding fills the world with the meanings beautiful, the funny, the tragic, the bizarre, implicit in our aims, actions, and emotions. and so on. In works of art we have some kind The concepts and explanations generated in of disinterested manifestation of the sensibility this understanding have evolved in answer of the everyday; they and the criticism of to the needs of generations, and cannot be works of art can be seen as the refinement of replaced by the deeper-level scientific accounts our understanding of the everyday. Aesthetic of the world, which, in their abstraction from experience, indeed, is for Scruton as for Kant that appearance, can lead to an estrangement of which reveals the sense of the world for us the human subject from the world of appearance as human beings, that sense of which science in which, perforce, he lives his life. As we will cannot speak and from which scientific see, in his later aesthetic writings, Scruton has accounts, while in their own terms presenting been concerned to discover in the aesthetic a a complete account of what is, deliberately pre- remedy for the resulting desacralization and scind. Some readers of Scruton may find at this dehumanization. point a trace of the very scientism from which In his books Art and Imagination, The he would rescue us. For at times he speaks of Aesthetics of Architecture, and The Aesthetics of the aesthetic realm as if it were in some sense Music Scruton has developed an analysis of metaphorical, constructed by the imagination aesthetic judgment, grounding that judgment (visual, musical, or whatever), a realm of “as if,” in the imaginative experience of the perceiver. supervening on the physical. But why “as if”? In an analogy he uses more than once, he Why metaphorical, unless we accord onto- contrasts the pigments and blobs of paint a logical priority to the perspective of science? painting such as the Mona Lisa consists in as a Is the Mona Lisa’s smile not as real as the

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scruton, roger underlying paint, the tragedy of Brahms’s analyzing their actions in abstraction from the Fourth Symphony as real as the sound waves contexts and contents which make them of which it is constituted? meaningful for their agents. In The Aesthetics of Architecture, Scruton is con- It is in a study of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde cerned to demonstrate by means of examples that Scruton has done most to develop his what the sense of particular given buildings is account of the religious dimension of art, and to the perceiver; how, by means of detail (or lack indeed to develop Wagner’s famous claim that of it), a given building may come to appear it is given to art to salvage the kernel of religion serene or balanced or lively or theatrical or by revealing the deep truth concealed in the pompous, and so on. In his writings on music symbols of religion. The assumption of both (and on popular culture), following in the hon- Wagner and Scruton appears to be that as orable tradition of Plato and Nietzsche, he is anx- beliefs, the symbols are not true, not on their lit- ious to show why some music (nearly all pop eral surface. What is true in religion, and what music) is banal and worse, and other music we are also given in Tristan and many great (much classical music) often by contrast deep works of art, including in Wagner’s case his and profoundly moving; he does so by pointing other late operas, is a ritual in which redemp- in detail to elements of the works he is describ- tion is enacted before us, and in which we ing which would be apparent to any attentive participate. These works of art, in being experi- listener (which, in Leavis-like spirit, roots crit- enced, give the lie to the modern temptation icism in an implied community in which these to see ourselves as animals, products of the judgments will be forged and tested). On one natural order merely. They clear a way for us level, then, aesthetics is the systematic study of to regain the psychic space necessary to rein- our experience of works of art, discussing them force our sense of ourselves as sacred, free, and judging them among a community of per- individual, and responsible to an order other ceivers, which is itself developed in having than the Darwinian. In experiencing them, those experiences and testing those judgments. like Parsifal, we redeem and are redeemed. In turning its attention to specific works and In the case of Tristan the redemption occurs scenes in this way, it might be said to reveal the because the lovers value their love to the point sense of the world, and for the reasons of renouncing all else for it, thus showing the adduced first by Plato doing it well will be a work nobility, worthwhileness, and transformative of the utmost importance both to individual power of carnal love. In the experience of the sensibility and to public culture. opera we learn in a unique and practical way But in his subsequent writings, Scruton the inadequacy of treating sex as a purely ani- makes grander claims for aesthetics, linking it mal function, as an entertainment in the service to religion and the decline of religion. Placing of the causality of our genes. For Wagner himself in the tradition of Kant, Arnold, and for Scruton, in contrast to the orthodox Ruskin, and Wagner, Scruton wants aesthetics Christian, it is not that the ritual symbolizes the to reveal the sense of the world in the way doctrine but that the doctrine is an allegory of natural theology tried to do and failed. It is the ritual. Redemption occurs in the sacrifice through aesthetic contemplation that we feel the itself, not (as in Christian orthodoxy) after or as purposiveness and intelligibility, and even the a result of the sacrifice. Wagner (and some personality, of everything that surrounds us; in other artists) resacralize the key elements of it we get those imitations of the transcenden- our lives in a world desecrated by the effects of tal, of the world as somehow grounded, and of science and the loss of religion, by recovering a human life as sacred, which people once found sacred order and meaning within. in religion. It is precisely because they cannot While many readers would accept Scruton’s accommodate this sense that Scruton rejects analysis of aesthetic experience at what might both the imperialistic claims of science to be called the lower level, the quasi-religious explain everything and the tenets of moral sys- role he claims for aesthetics and for works of art tems such as utilitarianism, which would is likely to cause problems. For one thing, it is treat human beings in accordance with some not clear how works of art can restore mean- norm of scientific detachment and objectivity, ing of a sacred sort to the world in the absence

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senses and art, the of any religion or natural theology to frame human endeavor, such as mathematics or nat- them. Just what are the intimations of the ural science, are not. These involve the senses transcendental intimating if, as Scruton says, the as sources of evidence or channels for commun- idea of God is something we can grasp only ication. In the case of art, in contrast, it is negatively? (The fact that similar problems are tempting to give the senses a more fundamen- wrestled with in the poetry of Rilke is, though, tal role. That role might be in defining the very testament to Scruton’s depth, and to his dis- idea of art – for instance, if it is essential to art tinctiveness in the world of analytic philosophy.) of any form that it be the object of possible Moreover, the relationship between the world sense experience. Alternatively, it might be of science and the Lebenswelt of freedom, that particular senses play key roles in indi- responsibility, and beauty is more difficult to vidual art forms – painting, for instance, being understand than Scruton’s simple Kantianism in some important way a visual art, music an suggests. Nonetheless, many will admire his art of hearing. Let us consider these in turn. successive attempts to link the analysis of aes- thetic experience and judgment with the expe- the senses and art in general riences that perceivers of works of art actually Could there be art among the angels? Beings have, and to place aesthetics firmly within the with (let us suppose) intellect but no body, and Lebenswelt. They will also admire his attempt hence no sense experience could, we might to bring thinkers such as Arnold, Ruskin, think, pursue mathematics or even – given Wagner, and Leavis within the scope of con- access to observations made by others – science. temporary philosophy – which normally neg- But what could they know of art? Art, we lects such figures, and even the problems they might think, exists in the sensory. Certainly wrestled with; philosophy’s neglect notwith- that idea runs through the writings of some of standing, the problems that they and Scruton the most important philosophers of art – Plato, address are and remain central to the future of Kant, and Hegel are all committed to it in one our culture. way or another. It also plays a role in our everyday thinking. Consider, for instance, two See also twentieth-century anglo-american central kinds of failure we take to be possible. aesthetics; imagination; religion and art; An artist can fail by producing a work that science and art; wagner. does not embody in sensory form the ideas to which she aspired; and criticism of art can fail bibliography by presenting us with information that, while no doubt true, does not help us to perceive the Primary sources work in novel ways. 1974. Art and Imagination. London: Methuen. 1979. The Aesthetics of Architecture. London: Precisely what link between art and the Methuen. senses do these thoughts motivate? Call artistic 1984. The Aesthetic Understanding. London: Methuen. properties those features of a work the possession 1990. The Philosopher on Dover Beach. Manchester: of which make it art, and give it whatever Carcanet. value it has as art. Then the following possibil- 1997. The Aesthetics of Music. Oxford: Oxford ities open up: University Press. 2004. Death-Devoted Heart: Sex and the Sacred Knowledge: sense experience plays an essential in Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde.” Oxford: Oxford role in our coming to know the artistic prop- University Press. erties of the work. anthony o’hear Appreciation: sense experience plays an essential role in our appreciating (i.e., not merely knowing but enjoying or otherwise engaging seeing-in see picture perception with) the artistic properties of the work. Constitution: sense experience plays an essential role in the work’s having its artistic proper- senses and art, the Art would seem to be ties – and so in its being art, and possessing linked to sense perception as other forms of artistic value, at all.

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Constitution looks better placed than Know- customary to write works down, and to appre- ledge to capture the idea that art is importantly ciate them by reading in silence, this heritage connected to the senses. For it promises to lived on. Even when reading silently to oneself, explain Knowledge. If the senses play a key role one appreciates literature in key part by in objects’ even possessing whatever properties engaging with the sound of the words out of make them works of art, it is easy to see why which it is composed. The same will be true of sense experience is the primary route to know- our soliloquizing poet: he is appreciating ideas ing those properties. In contrast, Knowledge does expressed in sound, for all that he is not liter- not seem well placed to explain Constitution. If ally hearing anything. He does so by using Constitution is not to be brute, its explanation hearing’s nearest neighbor: the auditory ima- will lie not in Knowledge but in Appreciation. gination. To allow such a role for the imagina- There is something very odd about the idea tion is to refine, rather than abandon, the idea of artistic properties that could not be appreci- that art is bound to the senses. The various ated (by anyone, at any time). Artistic prop- sensory modes (sight, hearing, touch, and so erties are essentially appreciable. But then, forth) have their analogues in imagining (visu- if appreciation involves sense experience, as alizing, imagining sounds, imagining the touch Appreciation claims, artistic properties will of things, etc.). If Appreciation and Constitution be essentially experienceable, as Constitution have to be interpreted as describing roles asserts. Now, we could as easily run the expla- played by either sensory experience or sensory nation in the other direction. It is because imagining, they still make substantive claims. artistic properties are effects on sense experience The thought that we might legitimately that appreciation of them is a matter of experi- supplement sense experience with sensory encing the work in the right way. Appreciation imagining also leads naturally to the other and Constitution are thus best seen as two response. This gives a role to the sensory in aspects of a single important fact about art, defining, not the vehicle of literary art, but its with Knowledge as a consequence. content or subject matter. On this proposal, lit- If this is the way to articulate the idea that erature, like all art, is about the sensory. Poetry art is bound to the senses, it faces two serious in any form, drama, short stories, and novels all challenges. The first is that some arts seem concern the world as we experience it through much less intimately related to sense experience our various senses. They are able to do so than others. Perhaps, if there is to be music it because the sensory imagination brings that must be heard; and if there is to be painting it world before us even when our current sensory must be seen. But what of literature? Of course, experience is confined to the sight of words on if literature is to be shared, it must be taken in a page, or – if we silently recite a poem from somehow, and the senses provide that service. memory – less. But why think that their role here is greater than Is it, however, true that art is always about in mathematics? A poet could presumably the sensory? Of course a great deal of literature write and appreciate his own verse using only concerns the world we experience through the thought and memory. Only contingent limita- senses. But that might simply be because that tions on the power of those two faculties pre- is how so much of the world is known to us at vent a novelist from doing the same. Thus all. As soon as we move beyond our own feel- individuals can in principle create and appreci- ings and the most abstract ideas, we are con- ate literary art without using the senses. If the cerned with things our senses make available senses play a major role in our actual engage- to us. If the response is not to exploit unfairly ment with art, that reflects only the fact that we the sheer reach of the senses, it should be more generally choose to share art, and have limited precise. The claim should be that literature means for doing so. necessarily concerns, not merely those things We might offer two responses. The first is that can be experienced by the senses, but the that literature is an art of sound. This was true sensory aspect of things. So refined, however, of its origins – the first literary works were the claim is not obviously true. the spoken paeans, odes, and epic poems of That leaves untouched the first response, the ancient world. But even once it became that sound is the vehicle of literary art. But

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senses and art, the even if this is true of literature, there are other then it is true that a good deal of what we art forms at least as tenuously connected to value in art eludes its grasp. It need not, how- the senses, for which no parallel maneuver is ever, stand alone. We see and hear more when possible. Conceptual art in particular seems we draw on knowledge of what we are per- not to involve the senses in any but banal ceiving than when we do not. Knowledge of ways. Of course, if conceptual art is to be what is before us can inform how we experience shared, others must somehow grasp its nature, it, thereby drawing within the reach of experi- and that inevitably involves sense experience. ence even such properties as breaking with But, sharing aside, it is not clear that a con- tradition. Perhaps some artistic properties ceptual artist need produce anything that might elude the experience of the ignorant. That of the be sensed As with our lone poet, she might well-informed, however, reaches out to all that simply do it all “in her head.” Nor is it at all obvi- is of consequence in art (Wollheim 1987, ous that whatever she does must involve the 1993; see also Davies 2006). sensory imagination, as providing either the Whether either strategy succeeds is open content of the work or its vehicle. Nothing to question. The first threatens to divide the stands to conceptual art as, arguably, sound realm of artistic properties implausibly. As stands to literature. And conceptual art’s topic, just noted, even historical properties, such as we might think, is also without sensory char- breaking with tradition, can be experienced, acter. As the name perhaps suggests, ideas given the right background knowledge. Why, form both its subject matter and its medium. then, privilege the experience of the ignorant in The other serious challenge to Appreciation and drawing the line between those artistic proper- Constitution applies even in the context of ties that are aesthetic and those that are not? those arts for which the senses do play a cen- The second strategy avoids this issue, since it tral role. In every art some of what we appre- does not divide artistic properties at all. But it ciate apparently lies beyond the reach of sense does make claims about the way knowledge experience, and so hardly depends on that extends the reach of the senses that might experience for its existence. We value, for be challenged on empirical grounds (Danto instance, the various ways in which works of 2001). Even if those claims are correct, ques- art develop, challenge, or overturn the artistic tions remain. Molding experience, in the light traditions from which they spring. Their doing of knowledge, to reflect every aspect of a this is a matter of the history of that tradition, work’s artistic nature will be of little use if the of how the work relates to those that came relation between the two remains too tenuous before and after it. Is this the kind of property to count as appreciation. That would certainly we can take in through the senses? Not obvi- be so if the experience reflected the thing’s ously – but if not, not every artistic property fits nature only by accident. Appreciation should the bill Appreciation and Constitution describe. involve more than mere coincidence between Faced with this second challenge, those how the work is and how it seems to the spec- seeking to establish a close tie between art and tator – it requires the latter to count as percep- the senses have generally resorted to one of tion of the former. Now, provided experience has two strategies. Some (Beardsley 1958; Lessing been aligned with the work’s nature by deploy- 1965) seek to limit their claims to a subset of ing knowledge of that nature, the alignment artistic properties. Properties such as beauty, between the two will not be accidental. It does grace, clumsiness, and harmoniousness are not follow, however, that their relation is indeed essentially sensory. Properties such as perceptual. That, we might think, precisely breaking with tradition are not. Given the requires experience to reflect the work under its word’s etymology, it is natural to label the first own steam, and not only with the assistance group of properties aesthetic. of independently acquired knowledge. If appre- Others hope to stick with the idea that all artis- ciation does require perception, expanding tic properties are bound to the senses. They see the reach of sensory experience in this way the second challenge above as turning on an is not enough to save Appreciation (and so impoverished conception of what the senses Constitution) from the original counterexam- provide. If sense experience must stand alone, ples (Hopkins 2006).

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senses and art, the particular senses and particular art forms representing things), analogues of some form Whether or not art in general is bound to sense might be available even in some abstract arts. experience in its various forms, particular arts We might, for instance, explore the idea that may be bound to particular senses in important even absolute music can be appreciated as ways. Certainly this thought has a long history expressing emotion only by those with sense (Herder 2002 [1778] ). It is easy to see why. experience of emotional behaviors. How could we begin to understand painting It may even be that some of these ways of con- without the idea that it is an especially visual necting arts to senses reveal something import- art, or music without the acknowledgment that ant about the senses themselves. For instance, it is an art of sound? Other arts may be harder if what links painting (and the other pictorial to place. There has been vigorous debate over arts) to vision is the way in which each repre- whether sculpture, for instance, is an art of sents space, that might be because that way of touch (Read 1956), of sight (Carpenter 1960), representing space is what defines the category or both. However these debates should be of the visual – a category that has a perceptual settled, it is not hard to feel that the answer manifestation (vision), an imaginative one promises to reveal something important about (visualizing – assuming that it too represents its that art form. objects in this way), and a manifestation in the Those attracted to such ideas again face realm of external representations (picturing) the question of precisely how art and sense (Hopkins 1998: ch.7). experience are related. We might frame art- However that may be, we should beware and sense-specific versions of our key options overconfidence about these connections. earlier: There is a strand of thinking in contemporary cognitive science and philosophy of mind Appreciation: sense experience in modality M that is skeptical about the very idea that per- (e.g., vision) plays an essential role in our ceptual experience neatly divides into different appreciating the artistic properties of works sensory modalities. And even those art forms in art form A (e.g., painting). that seem most securely tied to particular Constitution: sense experience in M plays an forms of sense experience (supposing there are essential role in works in A having their such), turn out to be related to the senses in ways artistic properties, and so in their being art, that are more fluid than we might have and possessing artistic value, at all. thought. Painting, we might think, is deeply Note that the earlier distinction between the visual only because that is true of the pictorial vehicle and content of a work in effect divides arts in general – drawing, etching, and photo- Appreciation in two. In the case of painting, for graphy included. Yet it is possible for people instance, the proposal might be that vision who lack vision, and indeed have done so since plays a role in our appreciating key properties birth, to understand and even to create raised- of the vehicle – the color and distribution of the line drawings that, prima facie, have good paint on the surface; or that it plays such a role claim to count as pictures (Lopes 1997). This in our appreciating key aspects of what is rep- suggests that picturing, and so in principle the resented – the shapes, colors, and other prop- pictorial arts, are at least as tactual as visual – erties of the depicted scene. (Of course, it might if, indeed, it is at all useful to categorize by be that painting is visual in both these ways.) their relations to the traditional five senses. However, these are not the only ways in which Pictures may be visual in the sense that they are we might seek to link art forms to senses. accessible to/appreciable in vision, but they Painting might be visual in the sense that the are not so, it is tempting to conclude, in the sense way in which it represents the space it depicts that that is the only sense through which we has important structural similarities with the may engage with them. way in which vision represents the world (Hopkins 2004). And, while the options just See also literature; music and song; poetry; described naturally apply only to representa- sculpture; abstraction; aesthetic properties; tional art forms (for where there is no rep- conceptual art; depiction; forgery; repre- resentation, there is no content, or way of sentation; tradition; tragedy.

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sentimentality bibliography comes to expect and to dread” (2006: 312). Beardsley, Monroe C. 1958. Aesthetics: Problems in the Tanner suggests that the best way to express his Philosophy of Criticism. New York: Harcourt, reaction to these characters is to acknowledge Brace & World. that they are “intolerably sentimental.” Tanner Carpenter, Rhys. 1960. Greek Sculpture. Chicago: stands in good company with many other University of Chicago Press. philosophers and aestheticians who see senti- Danto, Arthur C. 2001. “Seeing and Showing,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 59, 1–9. mentality as an aesthetic, and possibly also an Davies, David. 2006. “Against Enlightened Empiri- ethical, flaw or fault. cism.” In Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and Things were not always so. A perusal of the the Philosophy of Art. M. Kieran (ed.). Malden: literature shows at least three broad reactions Blackwell, 22–34. to sentiment and sentimentality that emerge Herder, Johan Gottfried. 2002 [1778]. Sculpture. in something like a historical sequence. First, J. Gaiger (trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago philosophers such as Adam Smith and authors Press. of fictions such a Henry Mackenzie’s The Man Hopkins, Robert. 1998. Picture, Image and Experi- of Feeling felt that the sentiments were an ence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. important feature of human psychology and Hopkins, Robert. 2004. “Painting, Sculpture, Sight and Touch,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 44, that works of art that focused on issues con- 149–66. cerning them were good and desirable. Indeed, Hopkins, Robert. 2006. “Painting, History and the education of the sentiments was consid- Experience,” Philosophical Studies, 127, 19–35. ered a positive thing to which the arts gener- Lessing, Alfred. 1965. “What is Wrong with a ally, and the narrative arts in particular, can Forgery?” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, contribute. In due course, however, sentiment 23, 461–72. and sentimentality came under attack as weak Lopes, Dominic M. M. 1997. “Art Media and the and possibly deplorable ways to engage audi- Sense Modalities: Tactile Pictures,” Philosophical ences’ interest in works of art, including works Quarterly, 47, 425–40. of narrative arts. Robert C. Solomon lays the Read, Herbert. 1956. The Art of Sculpture. London: Faber. blame for the move from an ethical theory Wollheim, Richard. 1987. Painting as an Art. interested in cultivating the emotions to an London: Thames & Hudson. ethical theory interested in reason at the Wollheim, Richard. 1993. “Danto’s Gallery of expense of the emotions squarely at the feet of Indiscernibles.” In Danto and His Critics. M. Rollins Immanuel Kant. Recently, the view that senti- (ed.). Oxford: Blackwell, 28–38. mentality is an aesthetic and ethical scourge has been challenged. Solomon, who is very much robert hopkins interested in rehabilitating a pre-Kantian view of the sentiments, has been paramount in coming to the defense of sentimentality. sentimentality Michael Tanner, no doubt There is no particular class of objects that with an eye to Oscar Wilde’s remark that “One characteristically elicits a sentimental response. would have to have a heart of stone to read the Nor, obviously, is there agreement that senti- death of Little Nell without laughing,” tells of mental responses are inevitably objectionable his reaction to Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit. on either aesthetic or ethical grounds. Senti- Whatever the book’s other merits, Tanner mental responses keyed to the so-called tender complains about certain characters who, he emotions (i.e., compassion, fondness, caring, claims, “hijack” its final chapters. These char- and so forth) can take a variety of objects, acters are “examples of impossibly virtuous, ranging from fictional heroes struggling to endlessly put-upon, shockingly exploited figures succeed in a quest to particularly adorable who remain trusting, gentle, only happy in the children. Sentimental responses can be trig- happiness of others, resilient to the point of gered by narrative fictions, musical works, imbecility, and of course unafflicted by the sporting events, public events, and ceremonies desires of the flesh, by jealousy of those they love ranging from the Rose Bowl Parade to wed- but are not loved by – the kind of thing that any dings, infant mammals of nearly all sorts cultivated reader of this very great novelist including babies, and so on. Sentimental

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sentimentality responses are often keyed to objects deemed sentimentality “a deceptive, dangerous vice.” to be poignant, stirring, cute, sweet, darling, Where Savile suggested that sentimentality charming, cuddly, or pretty. It is a question “false-colors” the world, Kupfer argues that just when the sentimental turns into kitsch. the sentimentalist – to adapt Savile’s language Anne Geddes’ charming photographs of children – comes to “false-color” herself. To respond might teeter on the borderline, but arguably sentimentally to life or to art, Kupfer claims, is Thomas Kinkade’s paintings of impossibly to respond in a morally impoverished, apathetic, romantic cottages and idyllic townscapes have yet oddly self-aggrandizing way. The senti- crossed over. However, not everyone agrees mentalist fails ethically as well as aesthetically that sentimentality is primarily a matter of by making herself the focus of a sentimental, or appealing to the tender emotions. Anthony perhaps more accurately, a sentimentalized Savile has argued that sentimentality is not experience, and thus is incapable of treating itself an emotion or even a group of emotions the stimulus situation or object with the but rather a mode of thought and feeling. proper degree of distance and analysis. Sentimentality, Savile would say, distorts I use the feminine pronoun intentionally in particular thoughts and emotions. Thus emo- this example since sentimentality is typically tional responses such as anger or pride, jealousy associated with overly emotional reactions or patriotism, could be distorted and thus by women, a point noted by Solomon (2004: sentimentalized. 6). Historically, this prejudice goes back to When philosophers of art and aestheticians the emergence in the eighteenth century of complain about sentimentality – and of course so-called sentimental literature written by not all do complain – the negative view is usu- women (pot-boilers, melodramas, and such). It ally presented in terms of an excessive appeal is noteworthy that sentimental literature, in its to easy or cheap emotions. The objection is prime, was also written by men and that some that sentimental emotions are easily tapped examples, for instance Flaubert’s L’Education and are thus somehow of lesser value than sentimentale, are still considered canonical. Not emotions that require more challenging or only is sentimentality condemned by its critics compelling circumstances in order to be for reasons that perpetuate tiresome gender elicited. To clarify, opponents of sentimentality stereotypes (the sentimentalist is passive, emo- do not necessarily reject the importance of tional, self-indulgent, in short, womanish). emotional responses to works of art. Savile’s nice The complaint is that, judged in either aes- phrase captures what he finds objectionable thetic or ethical terms, the sentimentalist grav- in sentimentality: he says it causes us to “false- itates toward the easy, the shallow, the color the world.” Some argue that sentimental fantastic, or the irrational. Solomon sees here responses typically inhibit us from taking nec- the workings of a Kantian-inspired rejection of essary real-world action because we remain the emotions at the expense of reason in ethi- basking in the luxury of our own mostly self- cal judgments. regarding sentimental responses. Critics agree It is hard to see how to mount an effective that sentimentality is not just an aesthetic defense of sentimentality even if one finds the fault but an ethical fault as well. Works of art sorts of criticisms typically lobbed at the senti- that prescribe sentimental responses are mentalist and at sentimental art reductive thought to pander, and people who are dis- and predictable. The agenda concerning senti- posed to excessively emotional responses are mentality appears to be very much in the con- thought to be self-regarding, self-deceived, trol of sentimentality’s critics. Apparently, as or worse. Jefferson has remarked, sentimentality just To say that sentimentality in the post-Wilde cannot be a virtue. Hume once told us that period is typically condemned is no overstate- the word “virtue” implies praise. It does not ment. Consider Mark Jefferson: “It is generally seem logically possible, Hume might have con- agreed that there is something unwholesome tinued, to treat “virtue” as a term of criticism about sentimentality: it would certainly be a mis- or condemnation, although Nietzsche goes take to think it a virtue” (1983: 519). Joseph some way to proving Hume wrong. Still, it is Kupfer (1996) goes the extra step and calls hard to envisage “sentimentality” being treated

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sentimentality positively, as for instance something aesthetically is otherwise emotionally distressed at the end meritorious or ethically virtuous. The terms of of Vidor’s Stella Dallas or Curtiz’s Casablanca. the debate seem to be set against the recuper- To fail to appreciate the poignancy of these ation of sentimentality. Excessive emotional films – the thwarted hopes of the protagonists, responses undertaken by the sentimentalist their decisions to put the welfare of others for her own self-indulgence just do seem an before their own, in short their self-sacrifice – ethical weakness, and if the object of those is in an important way to miss their point. responses is a work of art, it is at least possible Only those with a real antipathy to emotional that the weakness is in part aesthetic as well. responses would imagine that there is something Notwithstanding the consensus against the pathological or irrational about responding sentimental, Robert Solomon defends senti- emotionally to such narratives. Whether our mentality against its critics. His view is that examples are genre films such as Stella Dallas and there is “nothing wrong” with sentimentality as Casablanca, or literary works such as Pride and such. Solomon admits that excessively emo- Prejudice and Atonement, we must acknowl- tional responses can be a problem, but the edge that as competent viewers and readers, we problem lies in the excess, not in the senti- are required to respond in emotionally appro- ment. Sentimentality, as Solomon understands priate ways. If it is acceptable to respond in an it, is nothing more nor less than the “appeal to emotionally appropriate way to Oedipus Rex or tender feelings.” Sentimentality has at least Hamlet, why should it not be equally appropri- four distinct senses, which Solomon distin- ate to respond emotionally to other works that guishes as follows. The so-called “minimal involve emotions such as compassion? definition” says that sentimentality should be But of course, sentimentality is thought to understood in terms of the tender emotions. involve an excessive, possibly irrational emo- The “loaded definition” invokes emotional tional response that causes the sentimentalist to weakness or excessive emotional response. misrepresent her world to herself. The question The “diagnostic definition” points to the self- in part becomes, who decides, and on what indulgence of sentimental responses. Finally, basis, what counts as excessive? As Solomon the “epistemological definition” looks to false or notes, the usual complaints about sentimental- fake emotions (2004: 8). It is the minimal ity involve the idea that “sentimentality is dis- definition that Solomon is interested in, since torting, self-indulgent, self-deceptive.” Where plainly the other three are committed to a neg- this is true, it is arguably blameworthy. If ative view of sentimentality. Solomon is right, these extreme sorts of emo- The idea that sentimentality should be tional responses are atypical and signs that the construed as “a matter of moral bad taste” responses in question are unwarranted. While strikes Solomon as wrong-headed. Indeed, it sentimentality, understood in terms of excess and is Solomon’s view that narratives that count distortion, will arguably continue to be a term as sentimental because they draw attention of condemnation, there is clearly both room to emotions such as pity, sympathy, fondness, and reason to consider positively our emo- adoration, compassion, and so forth (2004: 9) tional responses to works of art. contribute to the general education of the emotions. Rather than condemning sentimen- See also kitsch. tal narratives for overstepping their emotional warrant, Solomon insists that engagement bibliography with narratives that foreground emotional Jefferson, Mark. 1983. “What is Wrong with response helps readers and viewers to rethink Sentimentality?” Mind, 92, 519–29. and therefore develop their own emotional Knight, Deborah. 1999. “Why We Enjoy Condemn- capacities. Key to Solomon’s position is that ing Sentimentality: A Meta-Aesthetic Perspec- tive,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 57, from roughly Wilde onward, mere sensitivity – 411–20. which is to say, openness to the tender emotions Kupfer, Joseph. 1996. “The Sentimental Self,” – has been conflated with, and dismissed as, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 20, 543–60. sentimentality. Yet it is hard to see just what Newman, Ira C. 2008. “The Alleged Unwhole- exactly is wrong with the viewer who cries or someness of Sentimentality.” In Arguing About

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Art. 3rd edn. A. Neill & A. Ridley (eds.). London: work was an introduction to a collection of Routledge, 342–53. sermons by Benjamin Whichcote, and he was Savile, Anthony. 1982. The Test of Time: An Essay in familiar with the Cambridge Platonists. The Philosophical Aesthetics. New York: Oxford Univer- internal sense that Shaftesbury introduces into sity Press. his Neoplatonism is not bare sense perception, Solomon, Robert C. 2004. In Defense of Sentimental- and it undoubtedly retains something of earlier, ity. New York: Oxford University Press. Tanner, Michael. 1976. “Sentimentality,” Proceed- Augustinian, connotations. Augustine, also, ings of the Aristotelian Society, 77, 127–47. spoke of an interior sense which “is in some kind Tanner, Michael. 2006. “Review of Solomon’s of way a ruler and judge among the other In Defense of Sentimentality,” British Journal of senses . . . The interior sense judges the bodily Aesthetics, 46, 312–13. senses, approving their integrity and demand- deborah knight ing that they do their duty, just as the bodily senses judge corporeal objects approving of gentleness and reproving the opposite” (1983: Shaftesbury, Lord [Anthony Ashley Cooper, 37; see also Augustine 1993). Augustine sub- third Earl of Shaftesbury] (1671–1713) ordinates the interior sense to reason, how- English moral philosopher and man of letters; ever, and Shaftesbury likewise distrusts mere prevented by ill-health from the political life sense. The difference between them lies in usual in his family. Shaftesbury has some Shaftesbury’s conversion of interior sense into claim to the title of founder of modern aesthet- a moral source, so that virtue is known by the ics. He was brought up in the household of his feelings that it is capable of producing under the grandfather, the first earl, who was actively influence of a moral sense. Thus Hobbes’s total involved in the politics of the Restoration. reliance on egoistic self-interest is countered by His education was placed in the hands of the a natural impulse for the good that is nonego- first earl’s friend and supporter, John Locke, istic, according to Shaftesbury. One has direct though it took a more classical pattern than empirical verification of that good through the Locke’s own model. Shaftesbury acknowledges moral sense. this debt, though he later qualifies its extent: The connection between virtue and beauty From the earliest infancy Mr. Locke governed is close. It begins with a typical Neoplatonic according to his principles ...I was his more equation: “I am ready enough to yield there is peculiar charge, being as eldest son taken by my no real good beside the enjoyment of beauty. And grandfather and bred under his care, Mr. Locke hav- I am as ready, replied Theocles, to yield there ing the absolute direction of my education, and to is no real enjoyment of beauty beside what is whom next my immediate parents, as I must own good” (1964: 141). That identity is explicated the highest obligation, so I have ever preserved the in terms of an immediate sense response, highest gratitude and duty. (1900: 332) which can be taken as an aesthetic sense par- One of the interesting questions about alleling the moral sense: Shaftesbury concerns the way in which his [The mind] feels the soft and harsh, the agreeable classicism is modified by Lockean empiricism, and disagreeable in the affections; and finds a foul even though Shaftesbury himself specifically and fair, a harmonious and a dissonant, as really rejects Locke’s ideas. and truly here as in any musical numbers or in the Shaftesbury was fundamentally a moralist. outward forms or representations of sensible Three factors shaped his moral theory. He was things. Nor can it withhold its admiration and a country Whig who defended both the rights ecstasy, its aversion and scorn, any more in what and the obligations of his class. He was an relates to one than to the other of these subjects. opponent of Hobbes, and attempted to establish So that to deny the common and natural sense of a public interest in place of the self-interested ego- a sublime and beautiful in things will appear an ism that he attributed to Hobbesians. And he was affectation merely, to any only who considers duly of this affair. (1964: 251–2) a sentimentalist who found the basis for moral judgment in a moral sense. Thus Shaftesbury moves from a harmony In practice, Shaftesbury advocated a Neo- between the intelligible and sensible worlds to platonic form of classicism. His first published a harmony within the senses themselves. In so

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sibley, frank noel doing, he shifts aesthetic judgment in the eighteenth-century aesthetics, even as Shaftes- direction of Locke, no matter how much his own bury’s own writings come to seem mannered classicism leads him to distrust Locke’s bourgeois and his patrician classicism is replaced by a reliance on mere sense. Francis Hutcheson more egalitarian aesthetic sense. sees the possibilities implicit in this shift, and develops them into a full theory of aesthetic See also eighteenth-century aesthetics; aes- sensibility. thetic attitude; hutcheson; taste. Shaftesbury is also given credit for introduc- ing “disinterestedness” into modern aesthetics bibliography (Stolnitz 1961). For example, Shaftesbury claims: “In all disinterested cases, [the heart] Primary sources must approve in some measure of what is nat- [1705] 1900. The Life, Unpublished Letters and Philo- ural and honest, and disapprove what is dis- sophical Regime of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, B. Rand (ed.). London: Swan & Sonnenschein. honest and corrupt” (1964: 252). But the case [1711] 1914. Second Characters. B. Rand (ed.). is complex. Shaftesbury is not concerned to Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. eliminate interest, but to guide and correct it so [1711] 1964. Characteristics. J. M. Robertson (ed.). that one’s true interests are discovered. In an Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. essay entitled “Plastics,” that is plastic form, he explains that “the great business in this (as in Secondary sources Augustine. 1983. “On Free Will.” In Philosophy in the our lives, or in the whole of life) is ‘to correct Middle Ages. 2nd edn. A. Hyman & J. J. Walsh our taste’. For whither will not taste lead us?” (eds.). Indianapolis: Hackett, 33–64. (1914: 114). Neither the aesthetic sense nor Augustine. 1993. On Free Choice of the Will. taste can be relied on, in the absence of T. Williams (trans.). Indianapolis: Hackett. reflection. Disinterestedness is a possibility in con- Kivy, Peter. 1976. The Seventh Sense. New York: trast to pure self-interest, but both must be cor- Burt Franklin. rected by a number of practical tests, including Stolnitz, Jerome. 1961. “On the Significance of Lord the approval over time of an educated public and Shaftesbury in Modern Aesthetic Theory,” Philo- correction by discourse and even raillery. sophical Quarterly, 43, 97–113. Shaftesbury’s use of “disinterestedness” does Townsend, Dabney. 1982. “Shaftesbury’s Aesthetic Theory,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 42, not denote a special aesthetic attitude, therefore, 205–13. and it is not opposed to moral and critical Voitle, Robert. 1984. Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury. examination. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Shaftesbury’s place as a founding father of dabney townsend modern aesthetics rests on his practical con- cern with art and the education of taste more than on any single theoretical innovation. His influence on Hutcheson and Hume is clear. He Sibley, Frank Noel (1923–1996) British writes unsystematically, but there is a coherent philosopher of art. Although perhaps cited view of aesthetics as a harmony of the person most often as the author of the seminal paper, with the values of beauty and taste, which is “Aesthetic Concepts” (1959), that work is only often far more persuasive in Shaftesbury’s way one of a lengthy set of essays, some published of approaching problems than it is in his only after Sibley’s death, which fit together to largely traditional Neoplatonic language. give a systematic view of a central set of aesthetic Before Shaftesbury, harmony is the music problems. of the spheres; after Shaftesbury, it is the soul’s The first part of “Aesthetic Concepts” begins sensory response to art and style. Taste in its with instances of aesthetic concepts used in aesthetic mode is naturalized and added to the judgments of taste. These are contrasted with five external senses. Shaftesbury’s overt debt to what are called “non-aesthetic concepts” – Locke is not large, but in subtle ways he relies examples of which would be red, curved, square, as heavily on his own experience and his abil- and in iambic pentameters. Examples of aesthetic ity to use that experience as a basis for judg- concepts are graceful, balanced, and tightly knit. ment as does Locke. That spirit is absorbed into The distinction is offered in the expectation

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sibley, frank noel that the reader will recognize that the ability to and Non-Aesthetic,” too, important conclu- apply aesthetic concepts requires a power to dis- sions are drawn about criticism. Criticism will criminate (“taste”) that goes beyond an ability not be a matter of demonstration but of per- merely to say that something is square, ceptual proof, bringing someone to see some- curved, or possessed of a certain pattern of thing. This goes hand in hand with critical rhymes and stresses. explanation, in which, having seen the aes- The features designated by aesthetic con- thetic qualities of a work, one points to the cepts depend on and emerge from the nonaes- nonaesthetic features that are responsible for the thetic features that a work possesses. Thus the aesthetic features. Thus, knowing that a poem, aesthetic balance in a painting may depend on say, has a certain rhyme pattern will not guar- and emerge from such nonaesthetic features as antee that we will see its aesthetic unity: but once a patch of red in a certain position. Although we have perceived the unity, we may point to anyone possessed of normal eyesight could see the rhyme scheme as the factor on which that the position of this color patch, it takes some- unity depends. thing more to see that it contributes to the It might be asked whether criticism, in the balance in the work. “Aesthetic Concepts” and sense of the activity of pointing to the percep- the related “Aesthetic and Non-Aesthetic” tual aesthetic features of a work, can be object- (1965) explore the relationships between aes- ive. This question is addressed in the two thetic and nonaesthetic concepts. The central, papers “Colours” (1967–8) and “Objectivity and much debated, claim is that the presence and Aesthetics” (1968). The former investi- of aesthetic features is not positively condition- gates the conditions that underpin our propen- governed by that of the nonaesthetic features on sity to say that certain things are, say, red or which they depend and from which they green. The latter argues that a case can analo- emerge. No description of the work in nonaes- gously be made for saying that things are, say, thetic terms (e.g., a description of a painting in graceful or delicate. For our language, which terms of the position of color patches) will imputes colors to objects, depends in the last entail the conclusion that it has an aesthetic fea- resort on an agreement in judgments, and it is ture, such as balance, even though it is the argued that that sort of agreement holds, with position of those color patches that is respons- variations, in the aesthetic case as well. ible for the possession of an aesthetic feature, Criticism is dealt with further in “General such as balance. By contrast, the description Criteria and Reasons in Aesthetics” (1983). “is a closed figure with four sides and four (And see, here, Dickie 1988.) In this paper equal angles” will entail that the figure in Sibley addresses whether reasoning is possible question is a square. Another way of putting in aesthetics. The traditional problem here is that this is that one could see that a painting had a reason, to be a reason, must be general: if color masses in a certain configuration without courage is to be a reason for praising one per- thereby seeing that it had balance. son, it must be a reason for praising anyone who This account has profound implications. shows it. The difficulty in aesthetics is that First, a certain kind of proof will not be possible what seems to be a reason for saying that this in cases of aesthetic dispute. If someone doubts picture is, say, balanced (as when we say that a figure to be a square, a conclusive demonstra- the reason it is balanced is this patch of red tion is possible, for squareness is positively in this position) might be the very thing condition-governed. But no nonaesthetic de- that makes another picture unbalanced. Here scription of a picture (to which the contending Sibley distinguishes between “merit” features, parties are likely to agree) will entail the con- such as grace and balance, and neutral fea- clusion that it is aesthetically balanced. This has tures, such as the possession of a red patch in to be seen. Aesthetic judgment is perceptual. a certain position. Those who focus on the lat- The second part of “Aesthetic Concepts,” ter are right that the presence of such features which has important implications for aesthetic cannot constitute general reasons for saying education, describes how we might bring that the work has merit. But the former are gen- someone to see what we see by way of aes- eral in the sense that they prima facie count thetic qualities in a work of art. In “Aesthetic only for a judgment of merit (although in some

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structuralism and poststructuralism cases, carefully described by Sibley, their pro- Secondary sources judgment force may be neutralized). Brady, E. & Levinson, J. (eds.). 2001. Aesthetic The claims of “Aesthetic Concepts” are cen- Concepts: Essays After Sibley. Oxford: Clarendon. tral to Sibley’s work. And they have been vig- Cohen, Ted. 1973. “Aesthetic and Non-Aesthetic,” orously contested. Thus, Meager (1970) has Theoria, 39, 113–52. maintained that concepts other than aesthetic Dickie, George. 1988. Evaluating Art. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. concepts display the property of being nonpos- Meager, Ruby. 1970. “Aesthetic Concepts,” British itively condition-governed. Provided, however, Journal of Aesthetics, 10, 303–32. that some indubitably aesthetic concepts do display this property, Meager’s claim does not colin lyas undermine the claims that Sibley makes about the nature of aesthetic judgment and its non- demonstrative perceptual nature. What her structuralism and poststructuralism claim does do is raise the question of what makes Structuralism is an aesthetic theory based on the a nonpositively condition-governed concept an following assumptions: all artistic artifacts (or aesthetic one. Others (e.g., Cohen 1973) have “texts”) are exemplifications of an underlying attempted to show that there are positively “deep structure”; texts are organized like a conditioned-governed aesthetic concepts, thus language, with their own specific grammar; striking at the roots of Sibley’s account. Cohen the grammar of a language is a series of signs has further asked whether the initial dis- and conventions which draw a predictable tinction between aesthetic and nonaesthetic response from human beings. The objective of concepts, on which everything in Sibley’s structuralist analysis is to reveal the deep “Aesthetic Concepts” rests, can be drawn with- structures of texts. The roots of structuralism lie out circularity. mainly in structural linguistics, in particular These controversies continue, their exis- the theories of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand tence testifying to the important bearing that de Saussure (1857–1913), whose Course in Sibley’s work is seen to have on questions General Linguistics provides structuralism with about the nature of aesthetic appreciation and its basic methodological model. Other major criticism. sources of structuralist aesthetic theory have been Russian Formalism (a school of literary the- See also twentieth-century anglo-american orists who flourished in postrevolutionary aesthetics; aesthetic education; aesthetic Russia) and structural anthropology (Claude judgment; aesthetic properties; criticism; Lévi-Strauss being a key figure in this area). senses and art, the; taste; testimony in Poststructuralism is a broad-based cultural aesthetics. movement embracing several disciplines, which has self-consciously rejected the techniques bibliography and premises of structuralism, particularly Primary sources the notion that there is an underlying pattern 1959. “Aesthetic Concepts,” Philosophical Review, to events. Nevertheless, it owes a great deal 68, 421–50; repr. in Sibley 2001: 1–23. to the earlier theory, and has been vari- 1965. “Aesthetic and Non-Aesthetic.” Philosophical ously described as “neo-structuralism” and Review, 74, 135–59; repr. in Sibley 2001: 33–51. “superstructuralism.” 1967–8. “Colours.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian For Saussure language is a self-regulating Society, 68, 145–66; repr. in Sibley 2001: 54–70. system, in the sense that a game like chess can 1968. “Objectivity and Aesthetics,” Proceedings of be considered as self-regulating: the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. 42, 31–54; repr. in Sibley 2001: 71–87. In chess, what is external can be separated relatively 1983. “General Criteria and Reasons in Aesthetics.” easily from what is internal. The fact that the In Essays on Aesthetics. J. Fisher (ed.). Philadelphia: game passed from Persia to Europe is external; Temple University Press, 3–20. Repr. in Sibley against that, everything having to do with its sys- 2001: 104–18. tem and rules is internal. If I use ivory chessmen 2001. Approaches to Aesthetics J. Benson, B. Redfern, instead of wooden ones, the change has no effect & J. Roxbee Cox (eds.). Oxford: Clarendon. on the system; but if I decrease or increase the

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number of chessmen, this change has a profound plus its grammar constitutes an example of effect on the “grammar” of the game ...everything synchrony; an actual move of any of the pieces that changes the system in any way is internal. within the game itself is a diachronic event. (1960: 22–3) Diachronic events must always be examined in Chess is a whole system, with its own specific terms of their relationship to the whole system. rules and procedures (“grammar”) that pre- Saussure’s theory of relations involves the scribe what can happen during the game. distinction between syntagmatic and paradig- Language is similarly held to be a self-con- matic. A syntagm is a combination of words tained, self-regulating system with an underly- consisting of two or more consecutive units, ing structure of rules that allow a certain constructed according to the rules of syntax degree of freedom to the individual language- of the relevant language, for example, “God is user; the rules specify general principles and good,” “If the weather is nice we’ll go out” practices that can be varied (or “transformed”) (1960: 123). Each word is linked to the next at the local level by the individual. It is in the word in the sequence, as it unfolds, in linear rela- structure of the language, rather than in the tionship. Paradigmatic – or, as Saussure ori- utterances made within it, that Saussure’s ginally termed them, “associative” – relations interest lies, and he distinguishes sharply are more akin to John Locke’s notion of “asso- between the former (langue) and the latter ciation of ideas,” and fall into no predictable (parole). Jean Piaget has noted that “the notion pattern since they depend on the particular of structure is comprised of three key ideas: the mental processes and experience of the indi- idea of wholeness, the idea of transformation, vidual; in Locke’s words of 1690, “there is and the idea of self-regulation” (1971: 5), and another connexion of ideas wholly owing to these will remain primary considerations for chance or custom. Ideas that in themselves are structuralist theorists and critics in their ana- not at all of kin come to be so united in some lyses of phenomena. men’s minds that it is very hard to separate Saussurean linguistics is based on a series of them; they always keep in company” (1964: critical distinctions that have been taken over 250–1). Deconstruction relies heavily on the by structuralists: in particular, langue/parole, notion of paradigmatic relation, which it inter- signifier/signified, synchronic/diachronic, and prets in a radical fashion in its critical theory syntagmatic/paradigmatic. Signifier/signified and practice. refers to the distinction between a word, spoken Saussure’s theory of value has had important or written, and the mental concept lying implications for the development of structural- behind it. The union of signifier and signified, ism. He equates value with function: units word and concept, in an act of understanding, have value only in that they can be compared, creates what Saussure calls the “sign.” or exchanged, with other units in their own sign The study of language is for Saussure the system. There is no such thing as intrinsic study of signs and how they work. He sub- value in Saussure, and he takes a purely formal, sumes this study within the wider discipline of function-oriented approach to the question of “semiology,” which takes all sign systems as its value. Structuralism is similarly form- and field of inquiry. The connection between function-oriented. signifier and signified is described as being Structuralists have adopted the bulk of the arbitrary, which means that it is subject to terminology and methodology of Saussure’s change over time as long as there is general Course in General Linguistics. The basic con- agreement as to that change within a given lin- cerns of a structuralist critic are to identify the guistic community. “The principle of change boundaries of the system under analysis, to is based on the principle of continuity,” as establish the nature of its syntax and the rela- Saussure (1960: 74) puts it, thus introduc- tions obtaining between its syntactical ele- ing the distinction between synchronic and ments, and then to view her findings in both diachronic. Synchrony deals with the totality of synchronic and diachronic perspective where a phenomenon over time, whereas diachrony transformations of the syntactical elements deals with some aspect of that totality at a can be traced in detail. Russian Formalists like given point in time. In chess terms, the game Vladimir Propp have shown how a range of

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structuralism and poststructuralism folktales could vary subtly from one example of connotations: structuralists are notorious for the genre to another by the transformation claiming the “death of the [individual] subject.” of basic narrative units. The supernatural, for Structure remains a highly problematical example, might appear in every case, but in a concept, and in practice most structuralists different form each time around, to different have tended to analyze individual artworks effect, and at a variety of points in the plot. in terms of an assumed ideal structure, which The study of transformation can lead to suggests an underlying Platonism to the enter- some very sophisticated comparative analysis of prise. Jacques Derrida, among others, has been narratives within and across genres, and that very critical of this aspect of structuralist is one of structuralism’s great strengths. Lévi- methodology (see “Force and Signification” Strauss’s work on primitive myth is a model (1978: 3–30) ). Structuralism is a superbly of how to catalogue transformations within a efficient theory when it comes to describing genre for the purposes of comparative cultural and comparing phenomena in formal terms, analysis. In The Raw and the Cooked, his inves- but arguably seriously deficient when it comes tigations into a range of South American to evaluating them. Indian myths are directed toward proving Evaluation has traditionally been a central that, “in all these instances we are dealing concern of criticism, and structuralism’s weak- with the same myth,” and that “the apparent ness in this respect has been heavily criticized divergences between the versions are to be by, for example, Marxists, who consider the treated as the result of transformations occur- refusal to evaluate to be almost a dereliction ring within a set” (1969: 147). Unity remains of a critic’s duty toward readers. So-called an overriding concern of structuralists. The “structuralist Marxists” have tried to have the major virtue of structuralist analysis for Lévi- best of both worlds by adapting structuralist Strauss is that its “unique and most economi- methodology to Marxist political purposes; but cal coding system” enables the critic to “reduce although Pierre Macherey’s “reading against messages of a most disheartening complexity” the grain” techniques, in which the text is to a determinate order in terms of their deep ransacked for evidence of ideological contra- structures. Roland Barthes is similarly con- dictions and “false” authorial resolutions of cerned with coding in narrative but, as his “real” sociopolitical debates, had a considerable reading of Balzac’s novella Sarrasine in S/Z vogue in the 1970s and 1980s (see particularly suggests, he is committed to demonstrating Macherey 1978; Eagleton 1976), the respective how complex rather than how economical theories are generally felt to be largely incom- such coding can be: “the codes it mobilizes,” patible, given their differences over value. he remarks of the literary text, “extend as far as Structuralism’s implicit determinism has the eye can reach, they are indeterminable” exercised poststructuralist thinkers consider- (1974: 5–6). ably. Many poststructuralists, drawing on As an aesthetic theory, structuralism has developments in recent science, stress the been criticized on a variety of counts, most importance of chance and indeterminacy in notably as being mechanical in operation, human affairs. Whereas structuralists invariably ultra-formalist, committed to determinism and seek to find an underlying unity in texts or idealism, and lacking in evaluative power. It can events, poststructuralists search out instabil- easily decline into a highly predictable form of ity. Derrida has described structuralism as analysis in which codes are checked off, signs being authoritarian and totalitarian in opera- cataloged, and comparisons made on a formal tion, as forcing artworks to conform to level that says little about content or psycho- preestablished schemes. The emphasis in post- logical effect. Since it stays at a formal level, structuralist analyses is on the contingent, the structuralism tends to avoid evaluation, the different, the unsystematic and unsystematizable. critic’s interest lying in the way a text and its Poststructuralism is a wide-ranging move- units are organized rather than with what it ment that encompasses not just Derrida and might be saying. The notion of a deep structure deconstruction, but also Michel Foucault- seems to deny human agency (deep structures inspired “discourse theory” and the postmod- work through individuals), and has deterministic ernism of theorists like Jean-François Lyotard and

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Jean Baudrillard. In general it can be said that suppresses little narrative, and is therefore to poststructuralists reject the certainties of struc- be resisted. turalism and the ideas that structure can be In aesthetic terms this skepticism about pinned down and all textual “messages” ulti- authority has led to a rejection of program- mately reduced to preexisting codes. matic theories like modernism. Postmodernist Discourse theory studies the way that dis- artists are quite happy to rework older styles and courses (e.g., of aesthetics) arise in a society, and forms, feeling no need for a break with tradition how they construct notions of value and make in the manner of their modernist counterparts. claims to power. Foucault rejects the idea of his- Although this has led to postmodernism being tory as a teleological process, and emphasizes criticized as innately conservative, it should be difference and discontinuity instead. In Madness noted that postmodern artists generally use and Civilization (1967) he explores how the dis- older forms in an irreverent and even cynical course of “madness,” as a recognizable phe- way. Irony and pastiche, it has frequently been nomenon with its own set of social practices pointed out, are the staples of the postmod- and institutions, arose in seventeenth-century ernist repertoire. Europe as a method of social control, and how Jean Baudrillard espouses an even more rad- it represented a break with past practices. ical attitude to signs and systems than Lyotard, Foucault can find no pattern or reason to his- completely rejecting the idea that signs com- tory, and resists totalizing theories and analy- municate the deep structure of artifacts or ses (both structuralism and Marxism would be phenomena, or exemplify the workings of so describable). His “archaeological” investiga- preestablished codes. Indeed, signs do not seem tions into history often concentrate on bringing to communicate anything much at all in to the surface hidden or subjugated discourses Baudrillard’s world, where image has taken – as in the case of his studies of sexuality – in over from reality – “the cinema and TV are order to illustrate just how lacking in rational America’s reality,” he remarks at one point pattern or teleological progress history actu- (1988: 104). His work registers as an updated ally is. version of Marshall McLuhan: “the medium is Lyotard’s postmodernism involves a whole- the message” stated in apocalyptic terms. We live sale rejection of large-scale, all-embracing in a “hyperreality” surrounded by simulacra theories of explanation (“grand narratives” or and simulations in Baudrillard’s view, and “metanarratives” in Lyotard’s terminology), there is no longer any point in trying to engage such as Marxism or Hegelianism. Once again, in interpretation of texts or events. He might as in Derrida and Foucault, the reaction is more correctly be dubbed the purveyor of against “authoritarian” theories – that is, the- an anti-aesthetics than an aesthetics, but he ories that assume an underlying pattern to has nevertheless inspired an art movement events. Lyotard regards all theoretical dis- in America (“simulationist” or “neo-geo” art) courses, including philosophy, as forms of nar- which has claimed to provide visual equi- rative and as having no ultimate purchase valents of his theories. Ironically enough, on truth or knowledge. Ordinary narrative is Baudrillard did not like the art that his theories taken to be just a fact of human existence generated, and dissociated himself from the requiring no further justification or license group’s efforts. from any grand narrative: “it certifies itself What all of these poststructuralist thinkers in the pragmatics of its own transmission” share is a distrust of totalizing theory and of (1984: 27). He supports the cause of “little” nar- notions of unity. They bequeath to criticism a rative, which he identifies with the individual, commitment to contingency and discontinu- over that of “grand,” which he identifies with ity, and it is a commitment that has provoked systems and institutions. The world is seen to considerable debate. Given that they have consist of a multiplicity of little narratives, all rejected the notion of authority in general, it is of which have their own particular integrity and hard to see on what grounds poststructuralists sense of importance, but none of which can can claim authority for their own theories – a be considered to take precedence over any of problem that traditionally plagues relativists the others. Grand narrative dominates and and antifoundationalists. Neither is it clear

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style how we are even to understand their theories of the relevant issues. It is by no means a if signs really are as unstable as they are argu- straightforward matter to identify precisely ing. Perhaps poststructuralism is more suc- what qualities should properly be considered cessful in drawing attention to the excesses of stylistic, nor indeed to what sorts of things structuralism than in offering a truly viable such qualities should properly be applied. alternative to traditional ways of going about Generally, style applies to those sorts of artifacts criticism and aesthetic theory. and performances that communicate partly by inviting our conscious recognition that they See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century are to be regarded as artifacts or performances. continental aesthetics; barthes; criticism; Stylistic qualities invite our attention, legiti- deconstruction; derrida; foucault; irony; mately or otherwise, to the maker’s or per- marxism and art; modernism and postmod- former’s activity in producing the object or ernism; narrative; relativism. performance – what in art we think of as a “work.” To ascribe stylistic qualities to a nat- bibliography ural object is at best metaphorical: neither a Barthes, Roland. 1974 [1970]. S/Z. R. Miller volcano nor a potato can have a style (though (trans.). New York: Hill & Wang. a picture of either might). Much the same Baudrillard, Jean. 1988 [1986]. America. C. Turner applies to activities and actions that are not (trans.). London: Verso. performances. To refer to the style of some- Derrida, Jacques. 1978 [1967]. Writing and one’s sweeping a room or running to catch a Difference. A. Bass (trans.). London: Routledge & bus is to imply that somehow they are making Kegan Paul. a performance out of the business, but one Eagleton, Terry. 1976. Criticism and Ideology. London: NLB. might refer with propriety to the style in which Foucault, Michel. 1967 [1961]. Madness and someone greets another or serves a meal. Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Similarly, one might properly talk of the style Reason. R. Howard (trans.). London: Tavistock. of a highly domesticated, artifact-saturated Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1969 [1964]. The Raw and the landscape. Hence to refer to the style (or Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology I. J. & stylishness) of what we normally suppose D. Weightman (trans.). London: Jonathan Cape. should not be a self-conscious performance, Locke, John. 1964 [1690]. Essay concerning Human nor a self-consciously produced artifact, is Understanding. A. D. Woozley (ed.). London: normally pejorative. It is, for example, not Fontana/Collins. normally a compliment to refer to the style Lyotard, Jean-François. 1984 [1979]. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. G. in which someone makes love, or to the style Bennington & B. Massumi (trans.). Manchester: with which a student explains the lateness of an Manchester University Press. essay; to the style of a mechanic’s cleaning Macherey, Pierre. 1978 [1966]. A Theory of Literary rags, or an academic’s rough notepaper. Style Production. G. Wall (trans.). London: Routledge & in the wrong place can be meretricious. Kegan Paul. Yet even this is not straightforward. There is Piaget, Jean. 1971 [1968]. Structuralism. C. a central tradition of aesthetic judgment that Maschler (trans.). London: Routledge & Kegan places the highest value on the forms of use- Paul. ful artifacts following their “unselfconscious” Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1960 [1915]. Course in fitness for their function, as if their very General Linguistics. C. Bally, A. Sechehaye, & A. Reidlinger (eds.). W. Baskin (trans.). London: absence of “style” in this pejorative sense were Peter Owen. itself a style. Similarly, an ability to apologize, or to show affection to another naturally, stuart sim without any sense of “making a performance” out of the business, may be regarded as a style, a natural manner of the highest order – a sign style The concept of style can seem simple of integrity. Evaluative disputes about style enough. We can think of style merely as a way tend inevitably to look toward concepts of of doing things, or a way in which something integrity and honesty (in design, performance, is made. But this captures little of the complexity or in unperformed behavior), and to their polar

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style opposites. Our concepts of stylishness, of the signature alone. The development of an artist’s mannered or the naturally simple (whether in style is essentially linked with the development or outside art), inevitably take us to the brink of the work’s communicative authority. In this of some of our subtlest moral concepts. For sense style is a “direction of salience,” similar they have to do with our sense of how we may, to what Wollheim (1987b) calls “thematisa- or may fail to, see through the ways in which tion”: stylistic devices invite us to attend to cer- something is made or performed to deeper tain features of the work as central, thereby matters of the agent’s thought and intention. responding to the work as the artist demands. To suppose that style can be thought of as a When an artist’s use of style achieves this sort manner, or a characteristic manner, of doing or of authority our responses flow, as it were, in making something that might have been done the direction the work demands, not merely as differently, is to treat matters as if one might “peel our whim as beholder, audience, or reader off” the external manner of production from dictates. an inner kernel that could be given a different This is best illustrated by examples from par- casing. In this sense it can be an intelligible exer- ticular arts. Let us start with painting. A rep- cise to rewrite a poem or a musical piece in the resentational painting presents to us a set of style of another or of another period. This is objects depicted for our imagination such that how we might construe the concept of style as they, and the masses of color and form they “signature.” Individual artists, authors, com- invoke, are arranged in a certain way within the posers, types of people, and identifiable periods depicted space defined by the frame of the pic- and movements have their characteristic ture. It thus presents a pictorial space. Also, given styles. The recognition of such stylistic signa- familiar forms of perspective, we may think of tures, therefore, may be the central skill of a cer- the depicted space as if it had a limit, like the tain kind of connoisseurship, a highly saleable view beyond the plane of a framed window. It skill for antique dealers, a taught skill in many may then invoke this as a picture plane. And English literature courses, an examined skill in all of this will be achieved by an elaborately and “dating” documents; and a rich source not carefully marked, that is handled, pigmented sur- only for the forger’s art but, more importantly, face. Thus a painting may present us with a pic- for a high variety of fictional devices, elegantly torial space, a pictorial plane, and a depicting discussed by Walton (1987). Such identifica- surface (these last two are notoriously easy to tions of style and of stylistic change are, more- confuse if we are inclined to think of a picture over, central to the fact that art inevitably has as like a glass window through which we can a history, the dynamic traces of which are those look, but at an imaginary landscape rather than of stylistic development. For style as signature at a real one some distance beyond the glass). announces, and may thus misannounce, whose Gombrich (1960) has argued that the “illu- mind, thought, intention one is to be properly sion” of the pictorial requires that we cannot receptive to in responding to the work. attend simultaneously to the depicting sur- However, a sharp distinction between a face of a painting or drawing and to what is stylistic skin and an inner kernel is unconvinc- depicted by it. But as Wollheim (1973, 1987b), ing, for much of the content of a work inevit- Podro (1987), and others have insisted, it is ably resides in a celebration of how it is made essential to any proper response to pictures or performed, a content that is essentially that we should attend to each in terms of our stylistic. Goodman (1978) objects that the dis- attention to the other: any understanding of pic- tinction rests on an unintelligible concept of torial style that goes beyond the mere concept synonymy to make sense of different works of “signature” requires this. For the capacity of having the same “content” and different styles. style in painting and drawing to communicate In part his point rests on a general skepticism to us derives from how we may be led, by vari- over the concept of synonymy, but it might ous means, to attend simultaneously to a wide equally rest firmly enough on any reasonably variety of quite different types of topics of aes- applicable idea of aesthetic content. thetic and imaginative interest: to the objects as Such an idea of aesthetic content requires depicted, to the balance and structure of their a concept of style other than that of style as pictorial space, to the picture plane with its

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style magical sense of the celebration of optical An actor or musician may perform with a phenomena; and, in the case of pictures that style that is manifestly, and all too dismally, celebrate their painterly qualities of touch and recognizable as the style of that performer, but graphic vigor, to the depicting surface itself. the stylistic integrity of a performance must The control of pictorial style – what gives an inte- achieve more than that. What is required is a grated, dominant authority to the picture as kind of seriousness that controls the direction a coherent expression of an artist’s visual intel- of our attention to the salient elements in the ligence – requires that the direction of our work, so that each aspect of what we are attentive interest traverse this terrain in ways shown (often at quite different levels of atten- that cohere with the absorbed attention of the tion) can be understood by us in terms of how artist’s own thought in making the work. it is understood by the performer. Integrity of It is central to any idea of stylistic development style makes the concentrated thought of the that, as an artist’s style matures, the demands performer to the work manifest in the perfor- that the works make on our attention and mance. Inevitably, as with style in painting, judgment – their imaginative authority – will this form of understanding must involve a be more firmly insistent. But a meretricious grasp of the complexity of different “levels” in development of style may also occur. For it is all a work (the “formal” structure of the work, its too easy for a certain sort of facility on the part patterns of narrative, of themes, of dramatic of an artist to be engaged in the mere produc- developments and interactions, together with tion and reproduction of style as signature. the “texture” of a performer’s “patterns” of Then it is only too obvious who, or what type expressive stress and emphasis) and at the or “school” of artists, produced the work or the same time integrate them into a whole for our performance; only too easy for an individual attention. artist or performer to engage in facile self-imi- Similarly, in literature, it is notoriously easy tation, or for a teacher to encourage a facile aca- to imitate (as pastiche) the style of another demicism. The difference seems to be that mere writer. Mock Shakespeare, Milton, T. S. Eliot, or signature need pay little attention – and thus Henry James is disturbingly easy to achieve. demand none – to the integrity of a work’s levels It is a dull skill to learn the trick of writing of significance and interest. Under those condi- merely in the manner of such authors. Occa- tions it may be depressingly easy to “disintegrate” sionally they may even do it themselves; few the work, to “peel off” a skin or manner of great writers are ever quite free from the faults “performance” from a kernel of “content.” of self-imitation. But, as the study of rhetoric and Much the same can be said about each of the literary criticism have always insisted, this is not arts. In the design of useful objects (see Dormer stylistic integrity. Integrity of style both celebrates 1990) stylistic excellence can also best be the differences between, say, meter, stress, thought of as being about salience – with how emphasis, and the literal and metaphorical our attention may be controlled by the inter- meanings of the words and phrases, and, at relation of forms, qualities of finish (or the lack the same time, “orchestrates” these distinct of it), patterns of decoration or of noticeable elements into an authoritative unity, so that an plainness, and thus directed to what is more or apparently simple distinction between literary less important. This might be function alone, or form and content ceases to be in place. the celebration of grandeur, of modesty or sim- Concepts of style enter in when we embrace plicity or, perhaps, pride in possession. Here, what can seem to be two paradoxical features therefore, while the concept of style itself is not of art. The first is that art both communicates a moral concept, discussion of style – whether and celebrates the fact of its ways of commun- it be the style of a Shaker chair, a grandiose side- ication, yet must, with stylistic honesty (as with board, a slot machine, or a Coca-Cola bottle other forms of honesty), eschew self-conscious – leads us inevitably toward such concerns posturing. The second is that the responses in terms either of stylistic integrity itself or of that stylistic integrity demands of us involve our the integrity of what the style may be taken distinguishing radically different aspects of a to imply. Mere style as signature is again work and of our attention to a work, while still inadequate to deal with these facts. responding to the work as an ordered unity. Style

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sublime resolves the first apparent paradox in terms of get along quite well without them. The lexicon the second. is born in the classroom. Students and grown- up beginners need guidance: What do you See also genre; gombrich; illusion; perfor- look for? What should you appreciate? What mance; picture perception; wollheim. needs to be analyzed? The key terms offer answers, and when the answers begin to seem bibliography inadequate, the terms become obsolete. Such Dormer, Peter. 1990. The Meanings of Modern terms are characteristically ill-defined; they Design. London: Thames & Hudson. have to be to serve their purpose. Philosophers Gombrich, E. H. 1960. Art and Illusion. London: and grammarians can say pretty clearly what Phaidon. makes a word ambiguous, but what they say will Gombrich, E. H. 1968. “Style.” In International not replace William Empson’s Seven Types of Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. D. L. Sills (ed.). New York: Macmillan, 352–61. Ambiguity, where definition is all by way of Gombrich, E. H. 1975. “Mirror and Map: Theories of example. And then, since it is easier to ape Pictorial Representation.” In Philosophical Trans- your elders and master the lexicon than it is to actions of the Royal Society, 270, 119–49; repr. in come to grips with the examples, the key terms The Image and the Eye. London: Phaidon, 1989. come to carry less and less information: they Goodman, Nelson. 1978. “The Status of Style.” become clichés, and outsiders make fun of the In Ways of Worldmaking. Hassocks: Harvester, critics’ jargon. It is in this company that we find 23–40. “the sublime.” Podro, Michael. 1987. “Depiction and the Golden By the second third of the eighteenth century, Calf.” In Philosophy and the Visual Arts: Seeing and the term was firmly entrenched, both as an Abstracting. A. Harrison (ed.). Dordrecht: Reidel, 3–22. adjective and as noun. Every man of taste Walton, Kendall L. 1987. “Style and the Products and (another stock phrase) had at his fingertips a Processes of Art.” In The Concept of Style. 2nd edn. catalogue of examples – volcanoes, raging seas, B. Lang (ed.). Ithaca: Cornell University Press, towering cliffs, the pyramids, ruined castles, 72–103. blasted heaths, and so forth. That there is an Wollheim, Richard. 1973. On Art and the Mind. interesting and subtle distinction to be drawn London: Allen Lane. between the true and the false sublime was Wollheim, Richard. 1987a. “Pictorial Style: Two taken for granted. Curious intellects pondered Views.” In The Concept of Style. 2nd edn. B. Lang the question of how to make psychological (ed.). Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 183–202. sense of that “agreeable horror” (Addison’s Wollheim, Richard. 1987b. Painting as an Art. London: Thames & Hudson. phrase) that marks an encounter with the sub- lime. By the middle of the nineteenth century, andrew harrison the term “sublime” had largely disappeared from the critical vocabulary, and had begun to sound archaic. sublime Defined by the Concise Oxford The story of the sublime begins with Dictionary as “so distinguished by . . . impressive Longinus, a second-century Greek rhetorician, quality as to inspire awe or wonder, aloof from if it was indeed he who was the author of Peri . . . the ordinary”; but used by Kant and others Hupsos (meaning “on impressiveness of style”; in the special, though closely related, senses it went into Latin as De Sublimitate; from Latin discussed below. to French, and thence to English; Dr. Johnson’s The world of letters has its own dialect, one Dictionary (1755) says of “the sublime” that it that reflects and at the same time serves to fix is “a Gallicism now naturalized”). Longinus the stylistic preferences of a particular place provides a handbook for orators who want and time. The vocabulary of criticism mirrors to develop their speaking skills, but later audi- the history of taste. Fifty years ago someone who ences were not much interested in his helpful wanted to join a discussion of poetry or fiction hints: on such technical matters, they had Cicero would have to have mastered such terms as and Quintilian, not to mention Aristotle, as “objective correlative,” “ambiguity,” “existen- mentors. What captured their attention was tial,” “paradox,” “symbol.” Nowadays you can what Longinus has to say in passing about

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sublime content rather than about style, and the poetic the comparative merits of the ancients and the examples he gives. Here are some Longinian moderns, Boileau, a champion of the ancients, dicta that were endorsed and elaborated by frequently draws on Longinus. But the other side every subsequent exponent of the sublime. could use him too: it depends on who you think is more sublime. 1 The grand style is suited only to subjects that Longinus’ views were also put into play by are in themselves lofty, magnificent, and both parties to the dispute about French and astonishing. For ordinary topics, everyday English drama. Corneille was sublime in his language is good enough. laconic understatement, Shakespeare was sub- 2 The grand style may, but need not be, lime in his roughness and grandeur. (King Lear ornate: the sublime often calls for extreme was a favorite example of an awe-inspiring simplicity, as in the Mosaic account of cre- though “irregular” work.) On an even broader ation. Sometimes stupendous effects are scale, Longinus was pressed into service both by achieved just by mention and display, neoclassical critics who deferred to Aristotle without any oratory at all. The silence of and believed in the “rules,” and by the avant- Ajax in the eleventh book of the Odyssey is garde who thought that Milton, especially in an example. Samson Agonistes and the descriptions of Satan 3 The grand style has great emotional force: in Paradise Lost, teaches, by precept and by it not only persuades, but “ravishes and example, iconoclasm and the need to tran- transports” the hearer. It is irresistible. scend the rules. The competition was bitter, 4 The speaker who succeeds in presenting an although in retrospect it is hard to see what was exalted subject in a suitably elevated style at issue. The neoclassicists always allowed thereby reveals an inward greatness of soul. space for genius to take liberties, and their 5 The products of a lofty mind (what would opponents, the forerunners of Romanticism, later be called works of genius) are often were willing to grant that where stupendous rough-hewn and imperfect in detail. That is effects were achieved, following the rules was to be excused and not blamed: it is part of all right. (Pope’s Essay on Criticism (1711) pre- their intrinsic grandeur. sents an elegant set of balanced oppositions in 6 Nature as well as art affords instances of the compromise.) sublime: mighty rivers, in contrast to little Once the sublime had taken root, nobody streams; Mount Etna in eruption, the sun, paid attention to Longinus. Not everyone was the stars – all are astonishing. an enthusiast, though. Dr. Johnson, who disliked 7 Since the sublime, wherever it occurs, is the wilder aspects of nature and thought like a force of nature rather than a product enthusiasm for the Scottish highlands was of skill, it is destined to please all people, absurd – almost as bad as approving of the everywhere, and at all times. landscape of Norway or Lapland – had a low Translations of Peri Hupsos appeared in the opinion of poetic evocations of the natural sub- sixteenth century without attracting much lime. Satirists such as Swift and Pope, in the notice. The real inauguration came in 1674, meantime, had a field day at the expense of the when Boileau produced both L’Art poétique enthusiasts. Belief in a kind of experience that (“Poetic Art”) and Traité du sublime ou du ravishes and transports and at the same time merveilleux dans le discours traduit du grec de ennobles and elevates is certainly appealing, Longin (“Treatise on the Sublime or the and many people said silly things and at great Marvelous in the Discourse translated from length. Numerous comedies caricatured pre- the Greek of Longinus”). Neither Boileau nor tentious persons (mostly women) who expati- his audience was much taken by the sublimity ate on the sublime. of natural wonders – that came later with In an influential series of articles in The the English and then with the Germans. His Spectator (1711–12), Joseph Addison studies French readers were more interested in the Milton more carefully than anyone before him, arts and with the idea that great art, especially pointing out the “beauties” and the “blem- tragedy, has power to stir the deepest passions. ishes” and arguing the Longinian point that, In the protracted and tiresome debate about since the poetry is sublime, readers should be

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sublime indulgent toward the blemishes. Addison was and unfocused emotions, negative as well as pos- the first to suggest a distinction, that rapidly itive, have intrinsic value (which means that no caught on, between the beautiful and the sub- explanation is either necessary or possible). lime. He is not consistent: “beauty” is still the Kant’s treatment of the sublime is of great genus, and “sublime” is the word for the great- interest, but difficult to summarize without est preeminent beauties. But he does hold that assuming knowledge of his overall philosoph- there is a difference, not just of degree but in kind. ical project – knowledge not easy to come by. “Beauty,” which properly applies to what is Kant’s initial foray, Observations on the Feeling regular, pleasing, well constructed, is ceded, as of the Beautiful and Sublime, appeared in 1763, it were, to Boileau and his party. The sublime 18 years before his first Critique, and his devel- – Addison’s actual term is “elevated” – is a dif- oped position is presented in the first part of the ferent genre. Beauty and sublimity are two Critique of Judgement in 1790. The Observations varietal species of artistic excellence. Addison was are informal and discursive, rather in the man- also one who encouraged his readers to appre- ner of Hume’s essays. They offer little that is new, ciate the sublime in nature – he favored “a vast and no arguments, but seem rather to be a Desert, a huge Heap of Mountains.” The Alps compendium of currently received opinion. he found a source of “agreeable Horror,” and his Kant writes: oxymoron was echoed and paralleled in many contemporary writings. (Kant, who knew, at Finer feeling ...is...of two kinds: the feeling of the sublime and that of the beautiful. The stirring least at second-hand, the whole literature, says of each is pleasant, but in different ways ...The that our response to the sublime is a “negative description of a raging storm, or Milton’s por- pleasure.”) trayal of the infernal kingdom, arouse enjoyment For those given to reflection on their but with horror; on the other hand, the sight of encounters with the sublime, there were ques- flower-strewn meadows . . . or Homer’s portrayal tions. How are we to explain the fact that we of the girdle of Venus, also occasion a pleasant enjoy what we find frightening and hence sensation but one that is joyous and smiling . . . painful? Why, in confrontation with large and Night is sublime, day is beautiful . . . The sublime menacing things, should we feel elevated and moves, the beautiful charms . . . The sublime must somehow above it all? These are old questions, always be great; the beautiful can also be small. The sublime must be simple; the beautiful can be raised before sublimity was invented. The phe- adorned and ornamented. (1960: 46–9) nomena had been noted by Plato, who observes that we are repelled and yet somehow Two of the four sections of the Observations drawn to look at decaying corpses, that we are devoted to sexual differences – men are enjoy the enactment of horrible and disgusting sublime, women beautiful; and to national deeds on the stage. characters – English, Spanish, and Germans In 1757 Edmund Burke published A have an affinity with the sublime, French and Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas Italians with the beautiful. The Dutch, who of the Sublime and the Beautiful. Burke really care for neither, go in for being neat and mak- liked popular graveyard poetry and Gothic ing money. The effect of this parade of popular fiction with all their stock props – the screech- prejudice and illiberal bias is somewhat mitigated ing owls, the ravenous beasts, the ghosts, the by a point that is original with Kant and anticip- ruined battlements, and the like. He stipulates ates the developed views of the third Critique. a distinction between “positive” or “independent” It is that virtue based on benevolence, though pleasure on the one hand, and on the other, variable and not to be depended on, is beauti- “delight,” which signifies relief from pain and ful and inspires love, while virtue based on danger and is therefore “relative.” Delight is adherence to principle is sublime and com- connected in some way that is not explained mands respect. Previous authors had assumed with the instinct for self-preservation. It is with that only exceptional persons can aspire to delight, not pleasure, that we respond to the sublimity – great works of art argue a lofty sublime. This sounds more like a rephrasing of mind; works of genius transcend the rules. But the question than an answer. One’s general Kant claims that the sublimity that supervenes impression is that Burke thinks that violent on acting from principle is open to every

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sublime human being – even women and savages. (The – is sublime: but that is a plain, though under- Indians of Canada get particularly high marks.) standable, mistake. A storm is only a storm: what Kant’s final word on sublimity comes 27 moves us is the reminder of something in our- years later. In the Critique of Pure Reason he had selves – our unique status as centers of moral argued that, while we cannot know the future authority in the noumenal world. We try, and in detail, there are nonetheless certain things we necessarily fail, to imagine infinity: can know with complete certainty, such as that Still the mere ability even to think the given infinite whatever comes our way will be spatiotem- without contradiction is something that requires poral and describable under causal laws. The the presence in the human mind of a faculty that price to be paid for such certainty is that we is itself supersensible . . . Therefore the feeling of the have to acknowledge that the world of science, sublime in nature is respect for our own vocation the world we live in, is a world of appearance, which we attribute to an Object of nature by a cer- not the really real world. What Kant calls tain subreption (substitution of a respect for the “the noumenal world” has somehow got to be Object in place of one for the idea of humanity in there, but we can know nothing about it. our own self – the Subject); and this feeling ren- Attempts to find out, for instance, whether ders, as it were, intuitable, the supremacy of our God exists, or whether the will is free, are cognitive faculties on the rational side over the greatest faculty of sensibility. (1964: §27) futile: just raising such questions leads to a series of contradictions, symptoms of the An interesting idea, even if not very persua- breakdown of our intellectual apparatus. In sive. To see why Kant was so taken with it, the Critique of Practical Reason Kant argues we need to consider the project of the third that, while we cannot know anything about the Critique as a whole. He thought he had real, noumenal world, we have a foothold in it; finished, but two considerations led him to and so, even though everything we do can be think there was something more to be done. explained scientifically, we are subject to the First, he discovered an anomaly in aesthetic moral law and, as such, endowed with a judgment – what he calls the “judgment of capacity for acting on principle no matter how taste.” To say seriously of some individual that great the temptations to be selfish or greedy it is beautiful is not just to confess that one may be. The categorical imperative, which likes it but to claim that it merits admiration, says that human beings have dignity and must that everyone ought to like it. Kant also saw that be treated with respect, overrides every ignoble such a claim cannot be backed by a general- impulse that would lead us to use and exploit ization, since there are not and cannot be laws other people for our own ends. or principles of taste. In the third Critique Kant again distin- The second consideration that moved him is guishes the beautiful from the sublime, but more difficult to describe: having made a point now he is much more systematic and has of distinguishing the world of nature, what dropped all the chatty bits about national science studies, from the moral realm where free- character and sexual difference. The beautiful dom reigns, he complained (perhaps unreas- is what is found to be a source of pleasure by onably) that there is too little connection someone who is not concerned with satisfying between the two and that a “bridge” is needed. his appetites, or with classification, or with He thought that an explication of the beautiful utility, or with the moral good – in short, and the sublime could provide such a bridge. someone who is disinterested, who responds to What he meant to do and the extent to which the item in question, whether natural phe- his efforts are successful are questions in dispute, nomenon or work of art, not for what it stands but here is a tentative suggestion: Kant was for but for what it is. Beauty is not, on Kant’s committed to rejecting all arguments for the exis- view, a property of objects, but we talk – and not tence of God, since they pretend to say some- incorrectly – as if it were. The sublime is differ- thing about ultimate reality, but he seems to ent. When we confront something so vast, so have been haunted by the so-called “argument powerful and potentially dangerous as to from design,” according to which God is not only defeat our attempts to grasp it, we incline to say all-powerful but intelligent and just. If that that the object – a storm at sea, for instance argument were valid, then life would have

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symbol coherent meaning, morality would comport style and pick sublime topics, and yet write with science, virtue would be rewarded. A something that is no good at all. You can be telling observation of Kant’s is that when we thrilled in a storm by fantasies about your own find some natural object, such as a wild flower, omnipotence, and yet remain a selfish and beautiful, we see it as having a purpose inconsiderate person. The sense of spiritual although we know that it does not: and that elevation is not an indication of actual spiritual when we find a work of art beautiful, we ima- elevation. gine it as having just grown, like a wild flower, aesthetics in antiquity; eighteenth- rather than having been made, as we know it See also century aesthetics; aesthetic pleasure; beauty; to have been, with a purpose. Therefore, if we burke; kant. find beauty in the universe as a whole, we see it as if it were the creation of an artist. There is bibliography no reason to think that the world has been Addison, Joseph. 1966 [1711–14]. The Spectator. planned, but it is cheering and invigorating to 4 vols. G. Smith (ed.). Dutton: Everyman. think that it might have been. Burke, Edmund. 1958 [1757]. A Philosophical What gap is the sublime supposed to bridge? Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime Perhaps it is the division, again one established and the Beautiful. J. T. Boulton (ed.). London: by Kant himself, between the moral realm Routledge & Kegan Paul. where action accords with principle and the Kant, Immanuel. 1960 [1764]. Observations on the aesthetic realm where there is perception and Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. J. T. Goldthwait feeling but no principle. On Kant’s view, an (trans.). Berkeley: University of California Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1964 [1790]. The Critique of action has moral worth only if the agent is Judgement. J. C. Meredith (trans.). Oxford: moved by respect for the moral law rather Clarendon. than by any hope of reward, here or in the Monk, Samuel H. 1960. The Sublime. Ann Arbor: afterlife. The sublime is marked by feelings of awe University of Michigan Press. and respect, but remember that it is also a mary mothersill source of pleasure. Kant’s idea may be that a cor- rect interpretation of my response to moun- tains and storms will provide me with an symbol A semantic construct which substi- incentive to do my duty. Vast and powerful tutes one term or entity for another. At this level forces give me a sense of elation: I think, “They of generality the notion of a symbol can easily can crush me and yet I am still (like Pascal’s be equated with that of a sign, usually a ‘thinking reed’) superior to them.” Then I real- broader category, or that of metaphor, which ize that the storms and mountains represent or is a narrower one. symbolize my strong inclinations to act as I Indeed, one of the difficulties in using the wish without reference to the moral law, and term “symbol” results from lack of agreement that I have the power to triumph over such as to whether all signs are symbols or all sym- temptation. (“My strength is as the strength of bols are signs. If one regards all signs as sym- ten because my heart is pure.”) bols, one usually turns “symbolizing” into a If the foregoing speculations are correct, variety of semantic or rhetorical operations, then Kant’s motive in the third Critique is not most of which involve substitution or “standing to bridge gaps and achieve unity: the distinctions in for.” An example would be using a picture insisted on in the first two Critiques are a priori of parched earth to symbolize a drought. So and necessary, not to be overridden. His wish understood, symbolizing has little specific aes- is, rather, to make the whole system less aus- thetic meaning. But if symbols are understood tere and more congenial. That, one might as a subcategory of signs, matters may stand argue, is a retrograde step: it is not the philo- otherwise. True, it is not enough for symboliz- sopher’s job, any more than it is the scientist’s, ing to be aesthetically significant that it merely to come up with results that are attractive and be an instance of semiosis. But in aesthetics, inspiring. In Longinus the sublime is a matter symbols are often treated as a special or privi- of style and feeling and so, despite Kant’s leged case of the semiotic. Indeed, there are those efforts, it remains. You can master the grand who claim that the symbol is central to works

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symbol of art, and is therefore more than merely a from the symbolic in that what the latter matter of the substitution of one semantic term designates indirectly, the former designates for another or the generation of sign-making pos- directly.” For him, works of allegory “destroy sibility. In this context, the symbol is understood our interest in representation itself” (Todorov as an inherently aesthetic entity or act. 1984: 199); in other words, allegory betrays or For those who make this larger claim, the fails adequately to convey spiritual meaning. In symbol partakes not only of the semiotic realm part, the distinction here is between natural but also of the psychological and even of the and conventional signs; allegory is too reliant ontological. Symbols are, then, not what make on convention, whereas symbol is more up art but rather what make art possible. This expressive of natural forms and truths. larger claim rests on a tradition most import- Also reminiscent, at least in part, of antly developed in the Romantic era, a tradition Augustine’s notion of the world as constituted that culminated in the Symbolist art of the as a symbolic rendering of divine will is the later nineteenth century. But even before this Romantic emphasis on the flux involved in tradition developed its complex genealogy, the the Romantic symbol, as opposed to allegory’s understanding of the concept of sign was static structure. One property of the symbol for influencing the possible meanings of “symbol.” Wilhelm von Humboldt is that “the represen- In Augustine’s hermeneutics, for example, the tation and what is represented [are] in con- ancient distinction between natural and con- stant mutual exchange,” an exchange which ventional signs is extended into an at least can “incite and constrain the mind to linger incipient understanding that the entire created longer and to penetrate more deeply” (Todorov world can be a symbol – or a repository of 1984: 215). This sense of “symbol” is con- usable symbols – since it is the incarnate word nected with a notion of delay, which suggests of God. Though Augustine more often uses the that the symbolic meaning occurs only term “sign” instead of “symbol,” his larger through temporal unfolding. Furthermore, it claims about the symbolic (as opposed to the begins to suggest that symbols have a mystical literal) meaning of sacred scripture make dimension that surpasses their natural semio- most sense if read as the foundation of much sis but builds upon it. These two features of the medieval aesthetics. symbol, its diachronic and its supra-rational But it was at the end of the eighteenth cen- dimensions, are what usually mark it off from tury and the beginning of the nineteenth that signs in the broad or common sense. Allegory, the symbol began to play a crucial role in aes- like conventional signs, usually involves an thetics. In 1801, August Schlegel argued that intentional and one-to-one correspondence “making poetry (in the broadest sense of the that is regulated and codified. Symbolism, like poetic that is at the root of all the arts) is noth- natural signs, takes its force from laws and an ing other than an eternal symbolizing” (quoted understanding that cannot be so easily limited in Todorov 1984: 198). For Schlegel the sym- or contained within definable concepts. bol was the way (the semantic structure, if you The mystical aspects of Romantic aesthetics will) by which the infinite was able to appear were encouraged by writers such as Sweden- in finite expression. Todorov (1984: 198) borg, who said that nature is a system of argues convincingly that this is the corner- correspondences between the heavenly and stone of Romantic aesthetics and that all mod- the human, and that these correspondences ern meanings of symbol flow from it. are manifest through symbols. However, it But part of the Romantic understanding of was more from Swedenborg’s many expositors the symbol is knowing what it is not, what it that the symbol came to be thoroughly aes- is being defined against: allegory. Allegory, theticized. Emerson, reading Swedenborg for Romantic writers such as Goethe, was a in the middle of the nineteenth century, lesser aesthetic form because it represented the lamented his lack of a developed poetics and spiritual world in a way that was too literal went on to supply one for him, in Nature (paradoxically reversing the medieval sense (1836). The Symbolists in France were also of allegory, which meant all that went beyond heavily indebted to Swedenborgian mysticism. the literal). For Goethe, the “allegorical differs Mallarmé’s claim that to name a thing is to

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symbol destroy it, while to suggest it is to give it life, is problematic also involves a cross-fertilization an extension of the idea that symbolic expres- with many writers on myth. For example, sion is necessary to establish and uncover con- Herder’s notions of the relations between lan- nections that are otherwise lost to merely guage and national or ethnic identity add to the rational cognition. sense of languages as containing certain crucial Another major development in the aesthetic prelogical truths that are best expressed in use of the symbolic came about through symbolic form. For such writers, mythological Freud, whose model of the psyche, with its thinking is a special case of symbolizing activ- language of condensation and displacement, ity, where an otherwise ineffable meaning, can be seen as a semiosis which makes con- such as national identity, can be embodied in, siderable use of symbolic substitution. Indeed, or at least expressed through, a collective it is possible to see Freud as offering a thoroughly activity such as the development of a vernacu- secularized view of the correspondence theory lar literature. Here, the symbolic is at once nat- of meaning, as the semiotic processes of pro- ural and conventional. jection and introjection establish connections The conception of the symbol as a special between the realms of objective existence and instance of condensation also shows up in a subjective experience. The landscape of the poet such as Pound, whose theory of imagism, psyche is filled with symbols, usually in the according to which an image is a complex of form of images that are invested with emotion emotional and intellectual truth in an instant and contain the residue of traumatic events. One of time, is related to late Romantic, anti-alle- of Freud’s main expositors, Jacques Lacan, gorical notions. Pound also said that “the nat- goes so far as to use the term “symbolic” to refer ural object is always the adequate symbol,” to the whole realm of language and semantic thus bringing to a peak the bias in favor of nat- meaning, a realm in which the real and ima- ural over conventional signs. In very broad ginary are mediated. Since in the Freudian terms, the symbol is used frequently in post- scheme the unconscious can be imagined as a Romantic thought to convey either a realm or place of immeasurable depth, and as a place a construct of meaning in which more is com- where the “normal” sense of logical identity pressed than can be spelled out. Wherever an does not apply, it can be regarded not only as aesthetician needs to discuss an experience or a locale but as a source of symbolic forms or sym- a meaning in which both the substitution of bolizing energies. terms and the compression of meaning occur, Such psychological adaptations of the com- there is likely to be some reference to the con- plex uses of symbols and symbol-making are cept of the symbol. themselves part of a larger development in what is called “the problematic of language.” See also hermeneutics; ineffability; langer; This very complex set of ideas, interrelated and metaphor; psychoanalysis and art; repre- also contradictory, questions the assumption sentation; schlegel, a. that language is “merely” a transparent medium bibliography through which meaning passes unobstructed. Adams, Hazard. 1983. The Philosophy of the Literary Language, especially its symbolizing proper- Symbolic. Gainesville: University Presses of ties, is more accurately seen as constituting Florida. meaning rather than reflecting it. The prob- Balaikian, Anna. 1973. The Symbolist Movement. lematic developed in the nineteenth century, New York: New York University Press. partly in tandem with Romantic aesthetics, in Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1982. Selected Essays. a sense culminated with Nietzsche, who saw Harmondsworth: Penguin. most concepts or ideas as tropes or metaphors Todorov, Tzvetan. 1984 [1977]. The Theory of that have become calcified by long use; thus all the Symbol. C. Porter (trans.). Ithaca: Cornell ideas are symbolic transformations whose University Press. changes are now hidden from view. But this charles molesworth

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taste The ability to judge the aesthetic and if I am prepared to make certain others. Pleasure artistic aspects of works of art and nature, or and displeasure (whether gustatory or aesthetic) (sometimes) whatever capacity or sensibility and other feelings, in contrast, are not sim- underlies that ability. Since it is obvious that we ilarly rule-bound. Perhaps they must be stable do make aesthetic and artistic judgments, it is across different encounters with a given thing. uncontroversial that there is such a thing as taste If I liked the pie, or the painting, last time, and in the former sense. The idea that that ability if neither it nor I have changed, there is some- is underpinned by some further capacity, espe- thing wrong if this time I feel otherwise. But there cially one with the features described below, is is certainly no requirement for stability across more contentious. As a philosophical idea, different objects. I may like one kind of pie taste’s heyday was the Enlightenment, in the while quite legitimately disliking another; or work of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, Reid, find beautiful one painting in a certain style Kant, and others. However, outside philosophy while feeling entirely indifferent to another the term still has some prominence, and provides from that school. Kant, who first expressed this many people with their strongest intuitive idea clearly, captured it in the claim that there purchase on some key issues in philosophical are no “principles of taste,” general claims aesthetics. from which one could deduce that the object The most obvious feature of the word “taste” before one is beautiful (2000: §34). More is the analogy it invites us to draw with the activ- recently, Frank Sibley (1959) offered an alter- ities of eating and drinking, and our prefer- native expression of the idea in claiming that ences therein. Three aspects to that analogy there are no logically sufficient conditions in non- particularly merit attention. The first is the aesthetic terms for the application of aesthetic idea that our ability to make aesthetic and concepts. For both these philosophers, since artistic judgments is, like that for gustatory grasping the mundane features of what is discriminations, rooted in something affective before one is insufficient for judging its aes- – in pleasure or displeasure. Perhaps that casts thetic or artistic aspect, that ability requires the net too narrowly. Sometimes we base one to exercise some further capacity – “taste” our judgments of art on other responses: for in the more controversial of the two senses instance, shock or boredom, sorrow or nostal- with which we began. gia. But the idea that those judgments are We should distinguish three forms of freedom rooted, not in purely cognitive states, such as from rules. Kant is surely right that we often thinking or perceiving, but at least in part in make aesthetic judgments without being guided feelings, has proved persistent in its appeal. by such principles. To discover whether a piece The second aspect of the analogy is related. of music is beautiful I will merely listen to it care- While cognitive states are rule-governed, feel- fully; I will not usually also ponder general ings are not. My judgment that what is before claims about what beauty in music consists in. me is a chair commits me to thinking that the It is another thing to say that our various judg- object meets certain conditions – that it is an arti- ments cannot be systematized into principles, fact designed for sitting. I cannot comprehens- principles I might then use to justify a judgment ibly make that judgment unless I take those already made, or to guide me in those cases in conditions to be met. The cognitive state is thus which exposure to the work leaves me uncer- subject to a rule – I can make that judgment only tain of its quality. Whether such systematization

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taste is possible is moot. I can usually say what I like answer. But they are not so related, for, it is in one piece of music or another, but I am far claimed, neither the responses nor the judg- from confident that I could produce general ments they ground are rule-governed. Hence principles capturing precisely my likes and dis- aesthetic judgment threatens to be as much a likes, however much time I had to formulate matter of personal preference as one’s likings in them. The liveliness of a Bach partita is pleas- food or wine. Both are, it would seem, “only a ing, but a similar quality grates in some of matter of taste.” Telemann’s work; and parallel counterexamples However, while the threat may be there, it is confront every principle for which I reach. too hasty to assume that it cannot be met. For Does this merely reflect lack of ingenuity on a start, there is the question of the sense in my part, or are such principles unobtainable? which aesthetic judgment is free from rules. At That question has been much debated (Hume first glance, its being bound by explanatory 2004; Kant 2000; Mothersill 1986; Dickie rules would be enough to give it some kind of 2006; Goldman 2006). Finally, there is the objectivity – there would be some pattern in the issue whether aesthetic judgment is subject world which my aesthetic judgments reflect, to explanatory rules. What, we might ask, even if the way those judgments present the explains why I respond to some objects by relevant objects (as, for instance, beautiful) is finding them, for example, beautiful, and oth- rather different from the way we think of them ers by finding them not so? If the explanation in identifying the relevant pattern (as having lies in some feature or features common to the whatever features are responsible for our former and lacking in the latter, even if those finding them beautiful). Of course, aesthetic are features I could never discover by merely judgment may not be bound by explanatory reflecting on my assessments of them, then rules. But even if it is not we can hope to make there is a kind of rule-governedness to aes- sense of its objectivity. The attempt to do this thetic judgment after all. We might think this lies at the heart of Kant’s thinking in aesthet- could hardly fail to be the case. Something must ics. He tries to locate the explanation for our explain my responses, and what else is available? aesthetic responses in features sufficiently However, there is an alternative: that the entrenched and universal to guarantee that response (here, finding something beautiful) we would, given ideal conditions, all respond the emerges only from the way objects and my same way to the same things. It is unclear psychophysiological system interact, so that whether Kant succeeds. This is not the place to objects quite varied in themselves nonetheless examine that question, or those hanging over all have that effect on me. Certainly that may the various other attempts to reconcile the be the way to explain other responses of ours – objectivity of aesthetic judgment with the fea- some have argued that our experience of color tures described above. Suffice to say that what fits this model (Hardin 1993). they are trying to do is not clearly impossible. Together, the role of feeling in aesthetic Indeed, optimism about their prospects is judgment and its failure to be (in at least some encouraged by certain platitudes about taste. senses) governed by rules raise the question For, much as we are inclined to dismiss matters whether aesthetic judgment can be objective. of taste as beyond reasoned dispute, we also Unlike cognitive states such as perceptions and acknowledge that not all tastes are equal. A per- thoughts, feelings do not even purport to rep- son “of taste” has a personal quality that is not resent how things are in the world to which they merely different from ours, but something to are a response. While a visual experience, for which we might intelligibly aspire. And try instance, presents the objects that cause it as looking back on your earlier preferences in art being a certain way, a feeling such as pleasure without considering them inferior to those that does not. What sense, then, can we make of have taken their place. Taste, it would seem, can some of these responses being right, others be educated – that is, made better. wrong (Hume 2004: 495; Kant 2000: 89)? If Nonetheless, even if some tastes are better the responses were themselves systematically than others, I am not obliged to bring my own related to conditions obtaining in the world tastes into line with superior ones in any com- to which we respond, we might be able to prehensive way. Here we encounter the last

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technology and art aspect to the analogy between taste in aesthet- ments based on the exercise of taste provide ics and taste in food and drink – the thought of the true model for the act of judging itself. taste as something personal, and legitimately so. This may seem simply to return us to the idea See also aesthetic education; aesthetic judg- that in matters of taste there is no objectivity; ment; aesthetics of food and drink; beauty; but that is quite wrong. Consider the notion of canon; hume; hutcheson; kant; objectivity personal taste as contrasted with the canon. The and realism in aesthetics; shaftesbury; sibley. latter is a list of the works the greatness of which all ought to acknowledge – something bibliography that would seem to make sense only on the Bell, David. 1987. “The Art of Judgement.” Mind, 96, assumption of some form of objectivity. The 221–44. former, in contrast, is a list of works that par- Dancy, Jonathan. 2004. Ethics without Principles. ticularly appeal to the individual. Perhaps Oxford: Clarendon. one must admire all that is great, but one need Dickie, George. 2006. “Iron, Leather and Critical Principles.” In Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and not like it, or want to spend time with it. the Philosophy of Art. M. Kieran (ed.). Oxford: Conversely, there is leeway (at least up to a Blackwell, 313–26. point) to like, and to want to live with, works Goldman, Alan. 2006. “There are No Aesthetic which are not masterpieces. This aspect to the Principles.” In Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and notion of taste requires the canon, and hence the Philosophy of Art. M. Kieran (ed.). Oxford: objectivity, as the background against which it Blackwell, 299–312. is defined. As Hume noted, what pleases the Hardin, C. L. 1993. Color for Philosophers. Expanded young man may not suit him so well in his edn. Indianopolis: Hackett. middle or later years (2004: 504). As his char- Hume, David. 2004 [1757]. “Of the Standard of acter and situation in life shift, so do those Taste.” In Philosophy: Basic Readings. N. Warburton (ed.). London: Routledge, 493–507. works that he finds most amenable. Although Kant, Immanuel. 2000 [1790]. Critique of the Power Hume does not himself draw this moral, it is of Judgment. P. Guyer & E. Matthews (trans.). tempting to think that, while our likings and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. dislikings, along with other affects, (arguably) McDowell, John. 1979. “Virtue and Reason,” ground all aesthetic judgments, there is non- Monist, 62, 331–50. etheless room to distinguish between those Mothersill, Mary. 1986. Beauty Restored. Oxford: likings that reflect the merits of the work, and Clarendon. those more tailored to the idiosyncrasies of our Sibley, Frank. 1959. “Aesthetic Concepts,” Philoso- own nature. phical Review, 68, 421–50. Although philosophers of art talk about robert hopkins taste rather less than they once did, there is some justification for claiming that the notion has lost none of its importance to philosophy in general. technology and art Technology has always The idea that a form of judgment might be played a central role in the fine arts and has had both objective and, in certain key senses, free a decisive impact on their development histor- from rules has in recent years attracted atten- ically. Changes in the arts have frequently tion beyond aesthetics. Particularists in ethics reflected changes in the technologies available argue that ethical judgment shares these fea- to artists. Examples abound: the development of tures. There too, we base our judgments not on oil paint led to easel painting in the sixteenth general principles, but on how, guided by sen- century; the invention and development of the sibility, we respond to the specifics of the case piano (1700–1860) enabled the development before us (Dancy 2004). Others (McDowell of new genres of classical music such as the 1979; Bell 1987), reacting to Wittgenstein’s piano sonata; and, in more precipitate fashion, profound inquiry into what following a rule the invention of the electric pickup, solid body could amount to, have thought that every form electric guitar, and multitrack recording made of judgment must, in the end, turn on something rock music possible. On top of this, there are art itself not rule-governed. If so, far from being forms that were from the beginning based on a distinctive in combining these features, judg- new technology, those that Noël Carroll calls the

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“self-consciously invented arts of film, video, artworks or their reproductions available to and photography” (1996: 3). almost everyone in a high-tech society. Technologies have affected both the con- This explosion of technology brings with it cat- struction of artworks and the way that they are egorizing questions. First, if technology makes communicated and experienced. Accordingly, possible a novel cultural form with significant there is a distinction between those technologies resemblance to previous art, is it art? Video that create new ways to make or arrange the games are a case in point. Their enormous elements of works (e.g., photography, music popularity and increase in sophistication have synthesizers) and those that create new means made them prime candidates for the status of art. of communication (e.g., TV, the Internet). Smuts (2005) argues that if we evaluate them Then there are technologies that have greatly from the perspective of the various definitions affected the presentation of art without chang- of art currently debated, such as institutional or ing the nature of the art presented, for exam- aesthetic definitions, or even from traditional ple, the use of electric lighting in museums points of view involving expression and re- and European cathedrals – this latter enabling presentation, we should conclude that some viewers to see frescos more accurately and video games merit the status of art and some arguably differently than in earlier times. probably do not (see also Tavinor 2005). The However, presentational technology can also so same question is debated concerning other change the art presented as to lead to a new mass-technology products that have roots in art form. Amplification and recording of music commerce (software projects) or in entertain- is a case in point. Early in its development ment (YouTube mashups) rather than in re- it merely made live musical performances gular artworld contexts such as galleries. accessible to a wider audience. But the devel- Proponents of the usefulness of definitions of art opment of rock music and advancements in could argue that this situation confirms their recording technology since the 1960s, accord- position: the constant growth of technology ing to Theodore Gracyk (1996), have led to arguably makes it more imperative than in the and been constitutive of a new type of auto- past to have some principal way to justify graphic musical work: the rock recording. applying or denying the status of fine art to Thus, a technology for recording an art form pre- new media products. cipitated an evolution from a sonic record of If a technology is applied to traditional arts, live performance to a separate studio-based art such as poems and novels, the question is not form. likely to be “Is it art?” but rather, “Is it the same Although technology has always been inter- art form?” For example, so-called hypertext twined with the arts, when writers worry poetry, often found online, uses visuals and about the impact of technology on the arts links so that the text (and visuals) have no set and on the very notion of fine art they usually order in which to be read, and the text may alter have in mind technologies developed after and be interactive. This invites the question: are the industrial revolution, technologies of mass “hypertext poems” poems, merely a hybrid of production and distribution, as well as the other forms, or a new art form? contemporary explosion of digital media. (For an Hypertext poetry is an application of new extensive review of these worries see Carroll media to an established art form embedded in 1998.) Noël Carroll proposes that we call old media (words printed on a page). Art forms these new technologies “mass technologies” that were originally based on mass techno- (1998: 3). These are technological develop- logy, such as film, are hostage to technological ments beginning with the invention of photo- development from their beginning. As the graphy in the nineteenth century and film in the technology underlying a technologically em- twentieth, recording technologies leading to bedded art form evolves, does it eventually sound and visual media, broadcast media (TV bring about a new art form worthy of its own and radio), and including new digital tech- aesthetic account? For example, is the march nologies, for example, interactive web-based from silent black and white movies, through art, video games, etc. These technologies sound and color, to computer-generated have made both traditional and new sorts of imagery and on to digital movies with CGI

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technology and art merely an expansion of the art of film or is it the artist’s idea “physically manifest for reception” evolution of new art forms? Questions about (Carroll 2008: 35). This notion of medium is the nature of technologically created art forms of the materials (paints) and tools (brushes) have been explored extensively in film theory. needed to create the work and make it available. The notion that film is a specific medium with In contrast, it is also common to refer to the artis- essential features received much favorable tic medium, as in the “film medium” or “the attention by early film theorists; more recently, medium of comics.” In this sense, a medium may such notions have come in for substantial criti- be described in terms that are in reality standard cism in the work of Carroll (1996, 2008). or defining features of the art form, such as What is the relation of technology to media describing the medium of comics as sequential and of media to art forms? Is a medium defined pictures and texts (or speech balloons) intended by the technologies it uses, and does a medium to convey a narrative. It is in this sense that dictate the nature of the art form that is Meskin says, “Comics are among those media embedded in it? One set of answers to such – like film and photography – that can be used question is given by the view called medium to make art, but can also be used non-artisti- essentialism. Medium essentialism is “the doc- cally” (2007: 370). But if the “medium” of an trine that each art form has its own specific art form turns out to be its formal features – line, medium – as painting has paint, and film has space, shape, motion, temporal and narrative film” (Carroll 2008: 36). Medium essentialists structures for film (Carroll 1996: 52) – then no hold that this doctrine has normative implica- particular technology appears necessary or to tions both for how to evaluate works and also imply the art form’s features. what artists can and should strive for. Roughly That said, it seems clear that new digital the view is that the medium dictates distinctive technology, with its shift from physically effects and possibilities that artists working mechanical to computational technologies, within the medium should exploit; hence the has provided potentially radical new possibili- medium can be viewed as determining what the ties for art forms. Binkley claims that there is a art form is about, what makes it a film or a paint- deep inherent difference between analogue ing. (For a historical overview of medium and digital media; he claims that digital media specificity positions from Lessing’s Laocoön to are “vital” because they involve both virtual real- photographic and film theorists, and for criti- ity and interactivity. “If images make their cisms, see Carroll 1996, 2008.) subjects present to us, digital representations But can we pair up art forms and media, as make us present to them” (1997: 108). this view requires? One problem is that there may Although rock records are not essentially be some art forms that do not have distinctive embedded in digital media, one effect of so media, such as poems and novels; poems need embedding them may be to bring about a a medium to encode words, but that could be change in cultural notions of their identity, ink on a page, chiseled grooves in stone, sound and this may turn out to be true of all art forms waves, or digital files. If it is said that the now embedded in digital media, such as digital medium is words, this does not dictate which movies. The general willingness to illegally uses of words constitute a poem. If media are download, to sample and produce mashups, thought of as defined by technological possibil- the multiple mixes and remixes of songs, all ities, then some media underlie multiple art suggest that digital works may already be forms (e.g., digital media or image printing treated as having different or very loose iden- on paper underlie lithographs and comics). tity conditions compared to traditional rock Moreover, it is not obvious how to individuate recordings, movies, or traditionally notated technologies (e.g., image-editing programs or pieces of music. types of photography), nor how to individuate A different impact that technology may material media, much less to figure out how to have on work identity occurs because of how correlate the two. museums and other cultural venues have dig- There is, in addition, a serious ambiguity in italized and multiplied images of traditional writing about media. On the one hand, media artworks. This challenge concerns the way these are treated as providing a way to make the practices encourage a severing of artworks

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technology and art from their original cultural context, whether by audience, it must also be designed and structured appropriating paintings for use on T-shirts or in such a way as to aim for “accessibility with projection on video screens, or the use of music minimum effort, virtually at first contact, for in commercials and movies. The question is the largest number of untutored (or relatively whether such practices are bringing about a untutored) audiences” (1998: 196). He sug- change in our concept of what an artwork is, gests that all mass artworks merit being cat- namely, that artworks are historically indexed egorized as art, although not necessarily as individuals to be most properly appreciated as good art (see Carroll 2004; Fisher 2004). the products of their time and place. Categorizing mass arts as art argues that, con- New technologies have not only expanded trary to the views of many cultural critics, the established art forms, generated new art forms, use of mass technologies in making and dis- and affected the way traditional art forms tributing art forms does not prevent some of are experienced, but perhaps also diluted the them, such as great movies, from being great very status of the fine arts in general. Walter works of art. Benjamin was one of the first to argue that the new mass technologies would in fact under- See also music and song; motion pictures; mine the traditional status of art. In his much definition of “art”; mass art; popular art. cited essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935), he pro- bibliography posed an account of how the development of Benjamin, Walter. 1969 [1935]. “The Work of mass technologies of various sorts – photogra- Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” phy, film, music recordings, and radio – by In Illuminations. H. Zorn (trans.). H. Arendt (ed.). enabling the multiplication and distribution New York: Schocken, 217–51. of artworks and their reproductions, would Binkley, Timothy. 1997. “The Vitality of Digital destroy the traditional “aura” that Benjamin Creation,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism,55, thought attached to artworks before the 107–16. twentieth century. This quasi-religious aura Carroll, Noël. 1996. Theorizing the Moving Image. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. attached to past artworks, such as paintings, Carroll, Noël. 1998. A Philosophy of Mass Art. plays, and classical music, because of their Oxford: Clarendon. scarcity; such art was handmade, unique, and Carroll, Noël. 2004. “Mass Art as Art: A Response available only in museums and concert halls. By to John Fisher,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art contrast, the production and distribution of Criticism, 62, 61–5. multiple copies of artworks made possible by the Carroll, Noël. 2008. The Philosophy of Motion new mass technology allows the masses to Pictures. Malden: Blackwell. experience and even possess artworks, which Fisher, John Andrew. 1998. “Rock ‘n’ Recording: undermines, so Benjamin argued, the auratic The Ontological Complexity of Rock Music.” In character of traditional art: “that which with- Musical Worlds: New Directions in the Philosophy of Music. P. Alperson (ed.). University Park: ers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the Pennsylvania State University Press, 109–23. aura of the work of art . . . By making many Fisher, John Andrew. 2004. “On Carroll’s Enfran- reproductions it substitutes plurality of copies for chisement of Mass Art as Art,” Journal of unique existence” (1969: 221). Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 62, 57–62. Recently, Carroll has developed an account Fisher, John Andrew & Potter, Jason. 1997. of the effects of mass technology on the arts that “Technology, Appreciation, and the Historical draws a different conclusion. He proposes that View of Art,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art such technologies have generated a new sub- Criticism, 55, 169–85. category of art that he calls “mass art.” He Gracyk, Theodore. 1996. Rhythm and Noise: An characterizes a mass artwork as any sort of Aesthetics of Rock. Durham: Duke University Press. artwork – whether involving music, moving Meskin, Aaron. 2007. “Defining Comics?” Journal of images, TV, or whatever – that inherently has Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 65, 369–79. multiple copies and is “produced and dis- Saltz, David. 1997. “The Art of Interaction: Inter- tributed by a mass technology” (1998: 196). activity, Performativity, and Computers,” Journal of Because such art, by definition, aims at a mass Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 55, 117–27.

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Smuts, Aaron. 2005. “Are Video Games Art?” I should not take your word on the matter. Contemporary Aesthetics, 3. Available at www. But suppose the situation is more favorable. In contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article. the past, I have found your opinions to tally php?articleID=299 closely with my own. You have no interest Swanson, Will. 2006. “Beautiful Noise.” Contem- that might tempt you into an unduly favorable porary Aesthetics, 4. Available at www.contem- judgment (it is not, say, that you are a relative paesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articl eID=464 of the author, or have shares in the publisher). Tavinor, Grant. 2005. “Videogames and Interactive Perhaps you are even a well-respected critic. Fiction,” Philosophy and Literature, 29, 24–40. Even so, many feel, I cannot simply base my Youngblood, Gene. 1989. “Cinema and the Code,” judgment on yours. Maybe your view should Leonardo, supp. issue 2, “Computer Art in Con- carry some weight. But can it justify my form- text,” 27–30. ing the matching belief? That seems more sus- pect. Certainly, your claim does not leave me in john andrew fisher a position to make the same assertion to some- one else. If I now say the book is excellent, without citing you as the source of that opin- testimony in aesthetics In general, there are ion, my audience is liable to feel misled. Yet in various means by which we might legitimately other matters, I can readily assert what I have form belief on a given topic. Perception, rea- come to believe through testimony without soning, and memory are all – at least when the having always to flag the fact that the opinion subject matter is of a suitable kind – central I offer comes from someone else. examples. For most subject matters, the testi- Considerations such as these motivate some mony of others also plays this role. Most of my to deny that testimony is a legitimate source of scientific beliefs, and almost all that I know of belief on aesthetic matters (Hopkins 2000). Let history, geography, and what my acquain- us call them pessimists about aesthetic testi- tances get up to when I am not there is directly mony, and those who take the opposite view opti- dependent on what I have been told about mists. It might seem that the issue between these things. But is testimony a legitimate these two camps is rather elusive. In no area is source of belief on every topic? Some think that it plausible that one can always take another’s aesthetic matters are an exception. word: some informants are too obviously Normally, when we learn from another on a incompetent, or have too strong an interest in topic, testimony mingles with other sources of one’s adopting a certain view, for blanket trust belief. Our informants often offer us reasons to to be rational. It is equally implausible that in believe what they say, as well as baldly assert- aesthetic matters one can never rely on anoth- ing things we are intended to take on trust. If er’s testimony. Surely aesthetic judgment we are to identify the contribution of testi- needs educating, and surely that process will mony to knowledge in general, and thus to involve taking some aesthetic beliefs on trust. examine the claim that it cannot play this role So one might expect the pessimist and the opti- in aesthetic matters, we should concentrate on mist to differ only in quite how often they con- pure cases – those in which our informant sider it acceptable to take aesthetic testimony merely asserts the claim in question, and does – an issue that looks rather intractable. How- not offer us any reasons for believing it. Such ever, we can find a more focused disagreement cases are rather artificial, and perhaps espe- between the two, by appeal to the idea of a dif- cially so in the aesthetic realm, but they help ference in kind. Can I legitimately take anoth- focus the issue before us. er’s word on an aesthetic issue? Pessimists say Suppose you read a neglected novel and tell “no” – aesthetic matters differ in kind, in this me that it is excellent. Is it legitimate for me to respect, from most others. Optimists disagree – adopt this view, simply on your say-so? No one can take aesthetic testimony, and any dif- doubt if there is to be any chance of an affirma- ference here is merely one of degree. tive answer, certain conditions must be met. If The issue of testimony should be distin- I know nothing of you and your tastes, or if I guished from others in aesthetics. One is know that in general your judgment is terrible, whether we can legitimately form aesthetic

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testimony in aesthetics belief by appeal to principles of taste. Such say-so of others. Why is the same not true in aes- principles are generalizations to the effect that thetic matters? anything with a certain nonaesthetic feature has A more sweeping explanation appeals to (or will tend to have) some aesthetic feature. anticognitivism in aesthetics. Testimony is a Knowledge of these principles would allow way of passing on knowledge. It will thus fail if us to construct arguments from nonaesthetic there is no knowledge to pass on. A variety of premises to aesthetic conclusions. The debate positions on the metaphysics and semantics of over principles is thus in effect over whether we aesthetic judgment claim precisely that. We can form aesthetic belief on the basis of a cer- need not enter into the details here, for in any tain kind of reasoning. The question concern- form the proposed explanation faces a serious ing testimony is different. One need not think objection. Those who think testimony is not a that learning from testimony involves any legitimate source of aesthetic belief do not, in form of reasoning, but, even if it does, it will general, think that there is no such source. On not be reasoning from principles of taste. the contrary, they urge us to exercise percep- Moreover, while testimony might play a role in tion and careful thought to make up our own arguments that appeal to such principles, it minds – to study the novel, or film, or natural would be as a source of knowledge of their landscape for ourselves. What is the point of this premises, not of the aesthetic judgment that strenuous activity, if there is no aesthetic forms the conclusion. Similarly, the issue of knowledge for it to yield? Perhaps the anticog- testimony should not be confused with whether nitivist will hope to find something other than forming aesthetic belief requires us to exercise knowledge to make sense of thinking for our- “taste.” Since taste is meant to be a sensitivity selves here. But that just raises the question why that goes beyond our ability to perceive the that is something testimony cannot pass on. nonaesthetic properties of the object judged, A final prominent explanation appeals to the question here is whether ordinary percep- the extent of disagreement in aesthetic mat- tion suffices for aesthetic judgment. Again, the ters. Where informants disagree, some must be question of testimony is distinct. For even if in unreliable. The more disagreement there is in general an exercise of taste lies at the root of our an area, the more unreliable we must in gen- knowledge of the aesthetic properties of par- eral take informants on those matters to be. ticular things, that leaves open the question Aesthetic testimony fails to deliver knowledge whether such knowledge, once acquired, can be because, given the widespread disagreement passed on via testimony. in aesthetic matters, it is too difficult to identify Why does the debate over aesthetic testi- reliable informants (Meskin 2004). The problem mony matter? It does so because, if pessimism for this account is to explain the failure of aes- is true, the failure of testimony may point to thetic testimony without mandating agnosti- deeper features of aesthetic judgment. After all, cism. The more widespread disagreement, the if aesthetic judgments cannot be passed on less reason there is to think that anyone is a good via testimony, when judgments of most other judge in the matter in hand – oneself included. kinds can, it is natural to ask why this should be. Thus it is unclear how this account justifies A simple answer, perhaps to be found in resisting testimony without requiring one to Kant (2000), lies in the claim that the canon- eschew aesthetic belief altogether. ical ground of aesthetic belief lies in experience. The failure of these explanations might lead Experience is our ultimate guide to the aes- us to wonder whether pessimism could be true. thetic character of things. Forming one’s belief Why would testimony fail in aesthetics, if none on any other basis is thus to put oneself in of the obvious accounts of how it does so are a position that is epistemically second-rate. successful? Such defeatism is premature. The Unfortunately, although the key claim here is three explanations above share a common certainly true, it fails to yield the desired expla- form. They all assume that the problem with aes- nation. Experience is the canonical ground thetic testimony will be epistemic. Aesthetic of other judgments, too – color provides one testimony is not a legitimate source of aesthetic obvious example. Yet we can quite unprob- belief because it cannot, for one reason or lematically learn the color of things on the another, meet the epistemic norms governing

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text testimony in general. (For current purposes, counterexamples to her claims, is to articulate we can just treat “knowledge” as the name her position fully, by offering some account of for belief that meets those norms.) However, the norm specific to the aesthetic case. That another form of explanation is possible. It done, she must also turn to the still deeper might be that aesthetic testimony is epistemically question why aesthetic discourse is governed by kosher, but problematic in some other way. such a norm, when our interactions on many In other words, perhaps aesthetic testimony other matters are not. meets all the epistemic norms governing testi- mony in general, but fails to meet some further See also cognitive value of art; objectivity norm specific to the aesthetic case. Aesthetic tes- and realism in aesthetics; sibley; taste. timony makes knowledge available, but that further norm renders it illegitimate to make bibliography use of that resource. Budd, Malcolm. 2003. “The Acquaintance Principle,” What could that further norm be? Although British Journal of Aesthetics, 43, 386–92. various candidates suggest themselves, I will Hopkins, Robert. 2000. “Beauty and Testimony.” In describe just one. Richard Wollheim (1980: Philosophy: The Good, the True and the Beautiful. A. O’Hear (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University 234) suggested that our aesthetic thinking is Press, 209–36. governed by what he called the “Acquaintance Hopkins, Robert. 2001. “Kant, Quasi-Realism and the Principle.” Roughly, this states that having the Autonomy of Aesthetic Judgement,” European right to an aesthetic belief requires one to have Journal of Philosophy, 9, 166–89. experienced for oneself the object it concerns. Kant, Immanuel. 2000 [1790]. Critique of the Power Discussion of Wollheim’s principle has tacitly of Judgement. P. Guyer & E. Matthews (trans.). assumed that it is intended as an epistemic Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. norm, that it governs the conditions under Meskin, Aaron. 2004. “Aesthetic Testimony: What which one’s aesthetic belief might count as Can We Learn from Others about Beauty and knowledge. However, it is clearly possible to Art?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 69, 65–91. treat it instead as a norm governing the use that Pettit, Philip. 1983. “The Possibility of Aesthetic can be made of whatever aesthetic knowledge Realism.” In Pleasure, Preference and Value. E. testimony makes available. Schaper (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Wollheim probably intended the Acquaint- Press, 17–38. ance Principle to prohibit more than aesthetic Scruton, Roger. 1974. Art and Imagination. London: testimony. It certainly also excludes forming Methuen. aesthetic belief by reasoning from principles of Wollheim, Richard. 1980. Art and Its Objects. 2nd edn. taste. Moreover, Wollheim restricted the scope Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. of the principle to pure verdicts, judgments to robert hopkins the effect that a given object has or lacks aes- thetic merit, rather than those ascribing to it more substantive aesthetic properties, such as text The term “text” is very widely and dif- gracefulness or garishness. He may have been ferently used in contemporary aesthetics. Its wise to formulate a position that limits the ban denotation ranges from a specific concrete ver- on aesthetic testimony in this way. The more bal inscription or utterance (existing as a par- an aesthetic belief ascribes a substantive prop- ticular spatiotemporal object or event) to an erty to the object it concerns, the weaker the abstract verbal entity manifested in different intuition tends to be that such belief cannot concrete texts, and beyond that, to any object, legitimately be taken from another. Even in event, or action that is construed or inter- this cautious form, the Acquaintance Principle preted as meaningful. Deconstruction’s textu- has come in for a good deal of critical discus- alism, with its denial of a hors-texte or referent sion. But a pessimist about aesthetic testi- outside of language, can be linked to the latter mony, including one who advocates the sort usage (Derrida 1976: 158). of view I have sketched, need not defend The meaning of “text” is best understood Wollheim’s principle. What she must do, apart in its particular theoretical context through from defending pessimism by tackling apparent its relationship and contrast to the notion

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text of “work” (i.e., literary work, artwork, etc.). It thus became increasingly convincing to Roughly speaking, Anglo-American aesthetics identify the literary work with its text and to view has concentrated on the move from text to the meaning of the work as the meaning of the work, where textual identity was regarded as text. As Beardsley insisted (1973: 32–4), that something clearer, more determinate, and textual meaning is more available than author- more precise through which we could determine ial intention, being determined by public rules the more problematic and vague identity and of linguistic meaning. Finally, identifying the meaning of the work. In contrast, poststruc- work with the text rather than with an author- turalist Continental aesthetics has concen- ial intention allows the meaning of the work trated on the move from work to text, where the to change over time while still maintaining its work instead is regarded as the clear, determin- identity. This, it is argued, is because the very ate, and fixed entity from which we must be same text can change its meaning if its words liberated into text, conceived now much more acquire new meanings over time through lin- broadly and dynamically as the activity of cre- guistic change. atively constituting meaning through reading What then is the identity of a text? First, and interpreting. This is a move away from following a terminology introduces by C. S. reified meanings and fixed and closed objects of Peirce, a distinction must be made between criticism to the flux of textual creation and the different “token” texts and the same “type” text play of language, a move sometimes linked they manifest. The former are concrete spati- (e.g., in Barthes) with a shift of criticism’s goal temporal particulars, the latter an abstract from the truth about the work to the pleasure entity they exemplify. While two copies of The of the text. Understanding the notion of “text” Wasteland and an oral declamation of it consti- requires looking more closely at these two con- tute three different token texts they manifest the trasting moves. same type text, if they present the very same words in the same order. Nelson Goodman, from text to work one of the most rigorous in defining literary Criticism attempts to determine the correct work identity as textual identity, defines textual meaning and value of works of art, but this, it identity more precisely in terms of two fea- is argued, requires determining their identity. We tures: syntactic identity (identity of all the cannot judge the meaning or value of a novel characters of the text including punctuation by a bad translation or a drastically abridged marks) and identity of language (1969: 209). version, which does not represent the work’s Most aestheticians find Goodman’s criterion of crucial features and aesthetic qualities. But textual identity far too strict, since it rejects as how do we determine the work’s identity with- different all sorts of texts that critical practice out already engaging in interpretation and normally accepts as the same. Not only trans- evaluation? One way traditional theory could lations and variant versions are excluded but avoid this problem was to posit the identity even texts that have a single unimportant mis- of the work in the artist’s intention, which print or omit an inconsequential punctuation even if it was practically unavailable provided mark. Moreover, the criterion is obviously a fixed intentional object with which the work inadequate to deal with the important critical could be identified. This option lost its appeal question of the comparative authenticity of once the authority of authorial intention rival texts of a given work (e.g., whether the folio was challenged by New Criticism’s doctrine or second quarto text of Hamlet best conveys of the intentional fallacy (see Beardsley 1973: that work’s identity), since for Goodman differ- 16) and poststructuralism’s doctrine of the ent type texts mean different works. To avoid this death of the author (Barthes 1977). In certain difficulty, some aestheticians (e.g., Stevenson circles of analytic aesthetics, there have been 1957; Margolis 1965) have proposed view- vigorous attempts, since the 1990s, to revive ing the work not as a “type” text but as a varieties of intentionalism and confront the “megatype,” which can embrace different type Beardsleyan, poststructuralist, and other argu- texts having the same general design or mean- ments (e.g., see Iseminger 1992; Livingston ing, and thus can include translations and 2005). even adaptations to different media.

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But with this greater flexibility of textual essence of the text, all we need is agreement on identity, there is greater vagueness. How do a reasonable number of propositions; and as the we determine similarity of design or meaning, particular group of propositions can change and what is the semantic standard from which over time, so can a text’s identity. But the similarity must not depart? At this point, we importance of a permanently fixed identity encounter an intentionalist backlash, which wanes once we are confident that in any situ- argues that work identity and even textual ation we can agree on (or assume) enough identity require an appeal to authorial intention. identifying propositions to agree about which For, as Hirsch (1976) argues, if the same syn- text we are talking about. Rather than trying tactic text can embody different meanings or to insure permanent sameness, “we should dis- designs (hence different semantic texts), we solve . . . texts . . . into nodes within transitory obviously need more than textual identity to webs of relationships” (1985: 12). This vision give us the identity of the work, or indeed to converges with the poststructuralist move establish the identity of the text itself as a from work to text heralded by Barthes. meaningful piece of language. Other intention- alists (Knapp & Michaels 1985) further insist from work to text that, since all meaning is intentional, textual The postructuralist theory of the text, devel- meaning is identical with authorial meaning. oped in France in the late 1960s and early But this has been shown to involve a false 1970s by Barthes, Kristeva, and Derrida, aims identification of all meaning-giving inten- to replace the fixed work with the changing tions with those of the historical author text as the object of literary study and source of (Shusterman 1992: 96–7). aesthetic pleasure. While the work is viewed In contrast to attempts to fix the identity as closed and permanent, a finished product of the text through authorial intention or having certain limits of meaning and bearing through the syntactic standard, some literary the authority of its author, the text is instead con- theorists have preferred more radically to ceived as an open, transgressive process and question the need for defining or securing a an endless field of meaning production. It is a fixed textual identity. We see one form of this practice rather than an object, “a methodolo- strategy in Stanley Fish, who insists that since gical field . . . experienced only in the activity of texts are only constituted through interpreta- production”; and it “cannot stop” its productive tions, different interpretations entail different activity (Barthes 1977: 157). Text is thus lim- texts and since the goal of interpretation or ited neither to literature nor to verbal artifacts explanation is to say something new, there can but involves the entire realm of meaning. “All be “no distinction between explaining a text signifying practices can engender text: the and changing it” (1989: 98). This view con- practice of painting pictures, musical practice, flates the identity of the text with its interpre- filmic practice, etc.” (Barthes 1981: 41). tative meaning and thus does not adequately Rather than a fixed signification, text in- account for the possibility that different inter- volves a perpetual play of “signifiance” (a term preters or interpretative communities can differ introduced by Julia Kristeva), which involves in interpreting the same text. But if interpreta- associative movements, overlappings, and tive debate is to be meaningful, the same text connections of meaning, an idea that can be must be able to sustain different interpreta- associated with Derrida’s theme of the irre- tions. To resolve this problem and avoid the ducible play and generativity of “différance” conflation of textual identity and interpreta- (Derrida 1976: 93). Thus, the text is not con- tion, one can distinguish between a text’s strained by affiliation to the author (as the logical or referential identity, which allows work presumably is). “It is not that the Author us to refer to it, and, its substantive identity, may not come back in the Text, in his text, but the essential nature or full meaning of what then he does so as guest” (Barthes 1977: 160). we have identified in the first sense (see If the work is produced by an author for con- Shusterman 1992: 94). And as Rorty points out, sumption by the reader, the text instead is not to secure the first sort of identification there consumed as an object but creatively produced is no need to posit a fixed textual identity or as an activity of play and practice. While the

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theories of art work directs the reader to uncovering the Fish, Stanley. 1989. Doing What Comes Naturally. truth of its meaning or to consuming the plea- Durham: Duke University Press. sure its author has provided, the text aims nei- Goodman, Nelson. 1969. Languages of Art. Oxford: ther at such truth nor pleasure but rather at a Oxford University Press. more powerful “jouissance,” “a pleasure with- Hirsch, E. D. 1976. The Aims of Interpretation. out separation” (Barthes 1977: 164). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Iseminger, Gary (ed.). 1992. Intention and Inter- Apart from “signifiance,” Barthes’s theory of pretation. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. the text employs three other concepts derived Knapp, S. & Michaels, W. B. 1985. “Against from Kristeva: phenotext, genotext, and inter- Theory.” In Against Theory. W. J. T. Mitchell (ed.). textuality. The phenotext is “the verbal phe- Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 11–30. nomenon as it presents itself in the structure of Kristeva, Julia. 1972. “Sémanalyse: Conditions d’une the concrete statement” (Kristeva 1972: 335), sémiotique scientifique,” Semiotica, 5, 324–49. and thus represents the sense of text that is Livingston, Paisley. 2005. Art and Intention: A closest to the meaning of “text” in Anglo- Philosophical Study. Oxford: Oxford University American thought. The genotext is the struc- Press. turing background for the phenotext and Margolis, Joseph. 1965. The Language of Art and Art Criticism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. includes both verbal dimensions and psycho- Rorty, Richard. 1985. “Texts and Lumps,” New logical drives. More important is the idea of Literary History, 17, 1–16. intertextuality: “that any text is an intertext; Shusterman, Richard. 1992. Pragmatist Aesthetics: other texts are present in it, at varying levels, Living Beauty, Rethinking Art. Oxford: Blackwell. in more or less recognizable forms: the texts Stevenson, Charles. 1957. “On ‘What is a Poem?’ ” of the previous and surrounding culture” Philosophical Review, 66, 329–62. (Barthes 1981: 39). This notion captures the richard shusterman etymological root of “text” as a tissue or woven texture. Finally, the idea of intertextuality is used to assimilate all dimensions and kinds of drama; tragedy. language into the idea of text. Together with the theater see philosophical premise that our reality (or at least its human experience) is always linguisti- cally given, the notion of intertexuality often theories of art Attempts to understand the leads theorists to a general ontological textual- “essence” of art in terms of a single key concept, ism (in some way a linguistic analogue of such as “expression” or “representation.” classical idealism) which views all the world as text. art as representation By “the representational theory” is meant here See also deconstruction; derrida; intention a historically persistent complex of views that and interpretation; “intentional fallacy”; see the chief, or essential, role of the arts as imi- interpretation, aims of; meaning construc- tating, or displaying, or setting forth aspects of tivism; ontology of artworks. reality in the widest sense. A typical representational account sees art as bibliography portraying the visible forms of nature, from a Barthes, Roland. 1977. “The Death of the Author” schematic cave drawing of an animal to the evo- and “From Work to Text.” In Image–Music–Text. cation of an entire landscape in sun or storm. London: Fontana, 142–8, 155–64. The particularity of individual objects, scenes, Barthes, Roland. 1981. “Theory of the Text.” In or persons may be emphasized, or the generic, Untying the Text: A Postructuralist Reader. R. the common, the essential. The scope of repre- Young (ed.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, sentation can involve perspectives, slants on 32–47. Beardsley, Monroe C. 1973. The Possibility of the world, ways of seeing the world. A repre- Criticism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. sentational artist may seek faithfulness to how Derrida, Jacques. 1976. Of Grammatology. G. C. things are. He or she may dwell selectively Spivak (trans.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer- on the ugly and defective, the unfulfilled; or sity Press. on the ideal, the fully realized potential. The

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theories of art artist opens our eyes to the world’s perceptual does not reproduce nature’s order; it has its qualities and configurations, to its beauty, own distinctive order – invented, not discovered.” ugliness, and horrors. At the level of detailed philosophical analysis, art as expression what exactly it is to represent is a problem of So let us start again, this time putting expres- some complexity (Wollheim 1987: 76–100). sion at the center. Music expresses feelings, However we analyze it, it is very doubtful emotions, moods, their conflicts, triumphs, that representation possesses the explanatory defeats. A painted landscape may engage us as power it would need in order to yield a one-con- expressive of peace, melancholy, or menace; so cept theory of art. Clearly, there is art that is not too a lyrical poem, a semi-abstract sculpture, a at all representational: music is seldom directly scene or situation in drama. They may express representational; painting and sculpture can highly particularized modes of feeling, even be abstract as well as figurative. Although in new emotions. In R. G. Collingwood’s account, prose a subject may often be important, in the artist struggles to clarify and articulate his poetry its importance can be much reduced initially unfocused feeling. Coming to grasp it and the poem be appreciated as an artifact in and to express it by way of the fashioning of an its own right rather than as a window on the artwork constitutes a single task. nonart world. The work of representing may It is not only sensations, feelings, moods, seem insufficiently ambitious. As the repre- and emotions that may be expressed, but also senting or imitating of what nature or God has attitudes, evaluations, atmospheric qualities, already created, it can at its best be technically expectation, disappointment, frustration, relief, notable, but must always be derivative and tensings, and relaxings; not only brief bursts of repetitious. The beauties of art are very seldom lyrical feeling evoked by specific, intensely felt transcriptions, into a medium, of preexisting events, but also the inner quality of a whole life- natural beauties. world. Even when art argues a case, its real inter- The representational theory, say its critics, est is always to express the felt experience of must deflect attention from the work of art and arguing; and when it depicts or describes, its con- its distinctive values, to what is always other cern is with the human affective analogues of than itself. Artworks, however, call attention the objects and events of the outside world that upon their own unique forms, lines, colors, make up its ostensible subject matter. Its real sub- images, meanings, patterns of sound. What we ject is always the human subject. encounter in them we have not encountered and But what exactly am I reporting when I say, cannot encounter elsewhere in the world. An “I find this phrase for clarinet poignantly artwork does not become “disposable” once we expressive” or, “The harmonic twist in the have extracted from it a message, a way of final cadence expresses foreboding”? Not neces- looking, a perspective. sarily that I am emotionally excited – I do not Could we not attempt to save the represen- need to be, in order to “read” the emotional qual- tational theory by a shift to the speculative: art ity – nor that I am necessarily directly sharing is always a mimesis of nature, if not of nature’s the artist’s emotions, though I certainly hope visible appearances, then of its fundamental that my experience will be related to the energies and laws and their endless transfor- artist’s intentions, if these are well realized in his mations. We could say this, but at a price. We work. It is the work of art itself that is the pri- may be overextending the concept of represen- mary locus of relevant emotional qualities. tation in a way that unhelpfully conceals what The music is tender; the painting is tranquil. would be better seen as distinct and different aims We seem driven to say that, although we are of art. Even with a clearly representational well aware that there must be metaphor in painting we may say, “The objects are repre- the claim. sented – in such a way as heightens their cru- A critic of the expression theory, however, will cial expressive qualities.” Or again, “The forms argue that there are other factors no less of nature have no more than stimulated the essential to the creating and appreciating artist to create a new world.” Often, too, we of art. Clive Bell, for instance, wrote. “If art shall say, “The formal ordering of the artwork expresses anything, it expresses an emotion

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theories of art felt for pure form” (1914: 132): and form must connections, as do those of a successful work of be our primary concern. The expressive quali- art, we are enabled to synthesize a far greater ties we most value are those which steer clear totality than in any other context. Conscious- of clichéd, stereotyped, or trite forms of feeling ness can often be attenuated, meager, slug- – innovative qualities, perhaps exclusive to a gish: here it is at its most active and zestful. single work of art. But if we say that, we are Again, as finite beings, we are necessarily showing our allegiance to a criterion of creativity always vulnerable to the threat of diminished or originality, and not to expression alone. personal integration, of being fragmented – as we are, finally and literally, in death. We are sel- formalist theories: “organic unity” dom farther from that state than when we are Art, it can be argued, is not a window on the rapt in enjoyment of a well-integrated work world: it is on the artwork itself that apprecia- of fine art. tive attention must primarily be focused, on its The temporal arts, although presenting distinctive structure, its design, unity, form. motifs, brief melodies, rhythms, phrases of “Does the work hang together?” is always a rel- poetry which constantly pass into silence, evant and surely a vital question, a question that effect a partial transcendence of that evanescence shows the primacy of formal unity. Concepts of in time, precisely on account of their formal form and of unity applicable to works of art have structuring whereby early notes (or images) been developed from suggestions first made by are retained, remain active, ingredient in the Plato and Aristotle. total experience, recalled even as a move- We distinguish different kinds of wholes: ment (or poem) comes to its close. Something some, like a pile of stones, are no more than parallel happens in spatial art also, where loose aggregates; others, like a plant or animal, the mutual connectedness and formal contri- are tightly integrated (“organic”) complexes, bution of every represented object overcome where each part exists only to serve the whole. the normal mutual “indifference” of objects A work of art is, characteristically, a complex in space. unity whose elements do not impinge on us as Can formalism, then, constitute a single all- isolated units, but are determined in their per- sufficient theory of art? Are there not many ceived qualities by the context of all the other cases where one may justifiably question elements and their relationships. The character whether a work’s formal structure is so decisively of the whole in turn modifies, controls these com- the essential thing that its other features must ponents as we perceive them. The spectator’s be given subordinate place? The formal struc- “synoptic” grasp of the unity will be quite vital ture of a work of art may be valued for its (Osborne 1968). controlling, its focusing, of the work’s unique In the unities that, on this theory, the arts seek (and treasured) expressive qualities. In other to provide, our efforts toward synoptic percep- cases we may say that the expressive and the tual grasp are neither defeated nor gratified on formal properties are coequally important. the instant. The very intricacy of an artwork’s There are putative works of art the structure of structure can challenge and stimulate our per- which is so remote from traditional instances ceptive powers, making its appreciation both a of “configurational unity,” that the claim that strenuous and a rewarding activity. Within their form is their essential feature, qua art- the various arts, the generic forms themselves work, becomes drastically attenuated. It has are constantly open to creative revision. The uni- also been argued that the theory has most fying principles must be perceivable in the work plausibility with regard to complex works of – audible, visible, or, in literature, discernible in art, but has little power to illuminate in the case the meaning and sustainable interpretations of of simple ones. Or is simplicity always deceptive, the actual text. illusory, in significant works of art? Why should we attach high value to formal Even more elusive is precision in defining unities of this kind? Basically, because of the the “formal unity” that is thought exclusive to quality of consciousness they make possible. works of art. Too loose definitions may extend Where the items of a complex lend themselves over the unity of a living organism, the features to perception because of their thematic inter- of a face or a mathematical formal system;

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theories of art overnarrow definitions will demand, too strin- dence on natural appearances. To purify can be gently, that in a fine work of art, nothing could to attenuate, if it means to cut oneself off from be altered but for the worse (Alberti 1988). any allusion to the world beyond the canvas, for such allusion can add immensely to the wealth art as creation of meanings in a work of art. Representation theorists and expression theorists Nevertheless, even if we reject a theology of do, of course, allow that art can be innovative man as co-creator with God – perhaps particu- – reworking nature’s materials in a “new” larly if we reject it – the creation theme rightly nature, or drastically modifying life experi- spotlights the artist’s distinctive dignity. His ences in the fashioning of expressive art. The imagination intensifies, transforms, perfects formalist or organic unity theory makes the nature’s own doings. It is not merely a fanciful artist’s innovative role more central: the unities metaphor to speak of the artist as bringing of art are nowhere paralleled in nature. But into being what nature has not created, and why not, then, acknowledge creation as the “awaits” creation. leading concept in a theory of art? And it has indeed been made central by a variety of theo- developing traditions rists and artists. To some, “creative imagination” Emphasizing the freestanding character of is that power by which, in a display of freedom works of art as created objects encourages that echoes the divine prerogative of creation ex us to see them as autonomous, independent, nihilo, we summon up to actuality possible and self-explanatory. For countless individual worlds – worlds that have, as it were, been left works of art, however, that statement needs for us to create. correction. We shall not understand or appre- Obvious implications follow for artistic prac- ciate them without at least an outline know- tice and for criticism. The development toward ledge of the tradition in which they stand, the abstraction in the visual arts can be pro- genre to which they belong – and thus some claimed as a “purifying away” of objective ref- understanding of whether they simply con- erence. Originality and individuality become tinue or modify or rebel against these. Indeed, criteria of high merit. it is tempting for an aesthetician, who despairs So, could “creation” yield a complete theory of any of the unified theories of art to fulfill of art? To play this role, it would surely have to their promise, to abandon all such theorizing and mean “new and aesthetically valuable, worth- urge instead that we take those ongoing devel- while, rewarding.” Even for the God of Genesis, oping traditions, genres, and media (and the after the work of creation there remained a complex actual vocabulary of criticism) as the question of evaluating what had been done: a basic data for reflection on the arts in all their question favorably answered – “Behold, it was diversity. very good.” For the human artist, the possibil- ity surely exists that he make something from the institutional theory (nearly) nothing, but . . . behold, it is very bad. One strategy for coping with these last- Novelty is not enough; an object can be origi- mentioned issues is that of the “institutional nal, in the sense of a perceptually distinct, theory of art.” In a strong form it takes the unique addition to the beings already in the unifying factor to be not the possession of com- world, and yet be unrewarding to contemplate. mon perceptual features by artworks, but the Among products of high creativity we must conferral on certain objects, by representatives include some scientific theories, mathematical of the “artworld,” of the status of “candidate for calculi and theorems, philosophical systems. appreciation” as works of art (Dickie 1974: But they are not art. However creative my day- 34). The artworld is thought of, roughly, as dreams, they are not art either: they are not the set of art critics, organizers of exhibitions, worked in a medium, intersubjective, shared. owners of galleries, and the public of art appre- Moreover, not every movement, style, or ciators. The theory may, however, provide me period in art sets a high evaluation on originality. with little illumination, when bewildered We should also be cautious in accepting that before an object like Duchamp’s Fountain (a ideal of “purifying” visual art from all depen- ready-made urinal) or Carl Andre’s Equivalent

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VIII (a rectangle of bricks), when it tells me succession of chords with distinctive harmonic that the artworld representatives have indeed qualities. The timbre of each instrument conferred art status upon it. I cannot prevent contributes uniquely to the overall resultant myself asking on account of what features this sound. status has been conferred. Either we must look for an answer – an answer that will render key concepts and their interrelations needless the artworld’s conferral, since, once we Supposing that none of those germinal con- have “reasons” for their decisions, these may be cepts can generate a complete theory of art, made public and applied by all. Or, if no reasons we are not left with an unrelated plurality of are disclosed, the artworld’s decisions cannot be notions. We can remain sensitive to aesthetically defended from arbitrariness (Wollheim 1987: important creative and appreciative tensions ch. 1). Being deemed a work of art, given space between them. in a gallery, publication, or performance imply A theory must do justice to the fact that cer- judgments that the work will reward the atten- tain media and materials lend themselves to tion solicited for it. But, again, we have a legit- our doing several significantly different things imate interest in knowing the features of the simultaneously in and through them. We can work that have led to its promotion. at once represent and express and construct A later version of the institutional theory new configurational unities in and through drops the notion of conferral, and claims that a the skilled handling of paints, inks, or crayons, work of art is to be understood as an artifact carved wood or chiseled stone. Some of our made for presentation to an “artworld public” appraisals of artworks draw explicitly on these (Dickie 1984). The artworld becomes the total- multiple possibilities, tensions, and challenges. ity of “frameworks for the presentation of a For instance, we marvel at a composer’s success work of art by an artist to an art-world public,” in managing a demanding and potentially a public prepared to understand such objects. cramping form, while yet attaining a high But what this leaves altogether unclarified is the degree of expressiveness and inventiveness point and value of these activities. within it, or at a novelist who represents a wide range of human activity and experience inexhaustibility and density of meaning and whose work thoroughly assimilates it with “The heresy of paraphrase” is a familiar phrase unimpaired unity. expressing the fact that a significant work of Some writers have seen the history of theo- literary art cannot be reduced to a summary of rizing about the arts as a gradual realization that its plot. No more can a painting be reduced works of art are to be properly appreciated as to an inventory of the objects it represents. “objects in their own right”; while other con- Inexhaustibility of interpretation is a mark of cerns – with truth to human nature and expe- authentic art. The coexistence of multiple lev- rience outside art, with moral or political or els of meaning gives a sense of richness and religious impact – are to be relegated to the “depth.” There is also a kind of “aesthetic tran- inessential. If, however, representational art scendence” where the expressive quality, say, fashions an image of human life, it cannot be of a passage of operatic music, far surpasses of indifference whether in particular cases it is in gravity or poignancy the unconvincing an adequate, defensible image or a grotesquely human situation to which it ostensibly refers, reduced parody. This question can obviously be or where a deceptively commonplace still-life has raised only where a work, or an oeuvre, does a resonance beyond the reach of analysis. set out to characterize human experience as In each of the arts there occurs the fullest pos- such, the human life-world rather than a sible assimilation of its materials. In poetry the selected fragment. Major works of art do typic- sound and the rhythm matter as well as the ally attempt something close to this. We can- sense; in a painting the picture plane and the not properly rule out a moral scrutiny and traces of brush strokes, as well as the represented appraisal as irrelevant to such works, even depth. Simultaneously sounding notes of music though we should be equally misguided to are each heard as continuing a “horizontal” judge any works of art solely by their moral line, parts, and melodies, as well as a “vertical” quality.

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Furthermore, in its exploration of the widest Collingwood, R. G. 1938. The Principles of Art. range of human experience, art cannot fail to Oxford: Clarendon. be concerned with the boundaries of experi- Dickie, George. 1974. Art and the Aesthetic. Ithaca: ence, where the expressible begins to yield to the Cornell University Press. inexpressible. This is not to demand of art that Dickie, George. 1984. The Art Circle: A Theory of Art. it labor in defense of particular metaphysical or New York: Haven. Dufrenne, Mikel. 1973 [1953]. The Phenomenology of religious beliefs, but only that, where some Aesthetic Experience. E. S. Casey, A. A. Anderson, approach to a comprehensive image of the life- W. Domingo, & L. Jacobson (trans.). Evanston: world is attempted, neither the seeming bounds Northwestern University Press. of that world, nor the peculiar ability of the arts Gaut, Berys & Lopes, Dom McIver (eds.). 2005. The to bring them to vivid awareness in a trans- Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. 2nd edn. New cending movement of the mind, be ignored. York: Routledge. Goldman, Alan H. 1995. Aesthetic Value. Boulder: the status of theories of art Westview. The multifariousness of the arts, their tradi- Levinson, Jerrold (ed.). 2003. The Oxford Handbook of tions, developing genres, idioms, and media, Aesthetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Osborne, Harold. 1968. Aesthetics and Art Theory. their self-transcending nisus, make a one-con- London: Longman. cept theory an unrealistic, even undesirable, Schiller, F. 1982 [1794–5]. On the Aesthetic goal. To seek it obstinately results in oversim- Education of Man. E. M. Wilkinson & L. A. plification and distortion. But to lurch too far in Willoughby (eds. & trans.). Oxford: Clarendon. the opposite direction is to overstress complex- Sharpe, R. A. 1983. Contemporary Aesthetics. ity and difference, and prematurely give up any Brighton: Harvester. attempt to see an intelligible structure of rela- Tilghman, B. R. 1984. But Is It Art? Oxford: tionships among the phenomena of the arts. Blackwell. The aspiration to produce a unitary theory, Wollheim, Richard. 1980. Art and Its Objects. 2nd edn. even if it fails to result in one, remains legitimate Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wollheim, Richard. 1987. Painting as an Art. and often fruitful. We may enhance our under- London: Thames & Hudson. standing of art by seeing how much work a given key concept can do for us, and finding where it ronald w. hepburn ceases to be as illuminating as some alternative concept. The interrelations and tensions within and among the key concepts may illuminate the Tolstoy, Leo [Lev Nikolayevich] (1828–1910) inner dynamics of creation. Russian novelist, educator, and social reformer; one of the great moral influences See also “artworld”; bell; collingwood; in his own time and subsequently. Nearly all creativity; definition of “art”; depiction; Tolstoy’s writings on art appeared during dickie; emotion; expression; formalism; the last, “messianic,” phase of his life. These imagination; interpretation; ontological include a number of short articles on indi- contextualism; originality; realism; repre- vidual artists, his philosophical essay On Art sentation; tradition; truth in art. (c.1895–7), his notorious attack on Shake- speare in Shakespeare and the Drama (1906), bibliography and his only major work on aesthetics, What Alberti, L. B. 1988 [1486]. De re aedificatoria. J. is Art? (1898). Rykwert, N. Leach, & R. Taverner (trans.). Shortly after completing Anna Karenina in Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1877, Tolstoy underwent a spiritual crisis, and Beardsley, Monroe C. 1958. Aesthetics: Problems in the became preoccupied with moral and religious Philosophy of Criticism. New York: Harcourt, questions. This is evident not only in his Brace & World. Bell, Clive. 1914. Art. London: Chatto & Windus. overtly didactic writings, including those on Bell, Clive. 1934. Enjoying Pictures. London: Chatto art, but in all his later fiction. It has been more & Windus. common in Russia than elsewhere for the writ- Charlton, William. 1970. Aesthetics. London: ing of fiction to be seen as a high moral calling. Hutchinson. The novelist as moralist, religious or political

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tolstoy, leo teacher, and even prophet has been a recurr- Relatively few works since the Renaissance, ing phenomenon in Russian literature, from when artists reverted to the hedonistic values Gogol through Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy to of Greece and Rome for their inspiration, man- Solzhenitsyn. Whatever the historical or cultural age, in Tolstoy’s estimation, to survive this reasons for this attitude, its justification requires test, although he sees some improvement in some sort of theoretical underpinning, and this his own day. His list of failures includes is what Tolstoy’s theory of art provides. Shakespeare’s King Lear, Michelangelo’s Last He assumes, without argument, that if art is Judgment, Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungs – and to be an activity worthy of the very highest even his own two masterpieces, War and Peace respect then it must be possible to justify it and Anna Karenina. Many commentators have on moral grounds, since moral values have seen the apparent absurdity of this conclusion supremacy over all others. He is therefore as sufficient grounds for rejecting the theory. opposed, on principle, to the idea that art is However, any theory that proceeds rationalis- self-justifying or that its value is in any way self- tically from first principles, as Tolstoy’s does, evident. His approach to all human activities and cannot be overturned simply on account of the institutions is similarly moralistic and practical. unwelcome nature of its conclusions. He is just as opposed to the doctrine of science Unlike most writers on aesthetics, Tolstoy for science’s sake, for example, as he is to that does not assume that somehow we already of art for art’s sake. This was the principal rea- know what is good or bad in art, but sets out son for his hostility to the eighteenth-century to discover the principles by which we should view of art as the creation of beauty. Beauty, he judge. Moreover, disagreements about first insists, has no objective worth and should principles are notoriously difficult to resolve never be placed above the demands of moral- without resorting to ad hominem arguments. ity. There is, in any case, no common standard There can be no common ground between of beauty as there is of morality. Tolstoy and his opponents unless the latter are In Tolstoy’s view, to justify art in terms of at least prepared to concede overall supremacy beauty is to treat mere enjoyment as the ulti- to moral values, but to do that is to give the mate criterion of aesthetic merit. The enor- moralist approach to art a firm foothold. mous sacrifices in men, money, and materials Terry Diffey has argued that while Tolstoy’s made in the name of art over the centuries attempt to justify art as a human activity or insti- could be justified only if art were more than just tution in terms of religious perceptions is per- entertainment and served some high moral or haps defensible, he is clearly mistaken in using religious purpose, as it was intended to do in the this as a criterion for evaluating individual Middle Ages. That purpose, he insists, must be works of art, since “the reasons why some- looked for in the meaning and purpose of life thing in general is valuable may not be the itself. This, for Tolstoy, was what religion, reasons why an individual thing of that kind is stripped of its supernatural and superstitious good” (1985: 134). One might, for instance, accretions, is ultimately about. “Religions,” he value cricket as an activity on the grounds says “are the exponents of the highest compre- that it promotes physical fitness and is charac- hension of life accessible to the best and foremost ter-building, but it would be absurd to claim that men at a given time in a given society; a one particular game of cricket was better than comprehension towards which all the rest of another because it produced more fitness or that society must inevitably and irresistibly nobler characters. advance” (1930: 127). On this view, the value This is clearly an important distinction, and of individual works of art will depend, as far as one that Tolstoy patently ignores, but it is not their content is concerned, on the extent to entirely clear-cut. For there has to be some which they are in conformity with the highest connection between the overall justification of religious perceptions of the age. For Tolstoy, an activity and particular evaluations made this is the Christian ideal of the union and within it. For instance, one could not consistently brotherhood of man. Conversely, art that is place a high value on the character-building socially divisive or elitist is failing in its true func- potential of cricket and rate highly a particular tion and so is bad or counterfeit art. game that was dogged by bad sportsmanship.

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Similarly, if the most exalted function of art is necessarily counterfeit. Other works will be to unite mankind in common bonds of feeling, limited in their capacity to infect others, espe- then socially divisive works cannot be rated as cially where the feelings involved are accessible masterpieces. It has to be admitted, however, only to people of a certain class, creed, or cul- that Tolstoy’s moralistic approach fails to yield ture; for instance, art which appeals to patriotic, the sort of criteria that an art critic might find aristocratic, or sectarian feelings. Such art is useful. This is partly due to the fact that “exclusive,” and is morally bad rather than Tolstoy, the theorist, has very little interest in counterfeit. The best art must be accessible to what are normally regarded as the formal or aes- all and must therefore appeal to feelings that are thetic properties of a work of art – or, indeed, common to all. in the work of art itself apart from its effect on This criterion of universal accessibility the audience. Critics, by contrast, tend to inter- devalues all art that makes any real demand on est themselves chiefly in the internal properties the audience’s intelligence, learning, or powers of a work. of concentration. Any work that needs to be Tolstoy is of course untroubled by this explained is a failure, for “to say that a work of because for him the aesthetic properties have art is good but incomprehensible to most men, value only as a means to an end, the immedi- is the same as saying of some kind of food that ate artistic end being the transmission of it is very good but most people can’t eat it” feelings from artist to audience, and the ultim- (1930: 176). Thus arises Tolstoy’s preference ate moral end being the transmission of feel- for simple folk art over sophisticated metro- ings that unite us. Thus, if a work fails in its politan art. proper effect then it is worthless, and nothing According to Tolstoy (1930: 228), the infec- the critics can say in its defense will alter the tiousness of a work depends on three condi- fact. tions: first, the degree of sincerity of the artist As Tolstoy’s moralistic approach rides – that is, the artist should be impelled by an on the back of an expression theory of art, it is inner need to express his feelings; second, the indirectly vulnerable to attacks on his ver- degree of individuality of the feelings trans- sion of that theory, which he summarizes as mitted; and third, the beauty (that is, lucidity) follows: of their expression. The first condition, to which Tolstoy attaches particular importance, con- To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experi- enced and having evoked it in oneself then by tradicts the view that the genesis of a work is means of movements, lines, colours, sounds or irrelevant to its evaluation. The second makes forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feel- it improbable that exactly the same effects ing that others experience the same feeling – this could be produced in some other way – some- is the activity of art. thing that instrumentalist theories are often Art is a human activity consisting in this, that accused of making possible. The third condition one man consciously by means of external signs, draws our attention to the work’s internal hands on to others feelings he has lived through, organization, but it is a characteristic weak- and that others are infected by these feelings and ness of Tolstoy’s theory of art that he has noth- also experience them. (1930: 123) ing of interest to say about that. Aesthetic experience for Tolstoy is the experience of being united with the artist, and others See also nineteenth- and twentieth-century affected by the work, in a common bond of continental aesthetics; twentieth-century feeling. When in this state, the recipient feels as anglo-american aesthetics; expression; if the work is her own and that what it function of art; morality and art; religion expresses is what she has longed to express. and art. This quality of infectiousness is what distin- guishes true art from its counterfeit, and “the bibliography stronger the infection the better is the art, as art” (1930: 228). Primary sources Works that fail in expressiveness, as do [1898] 1930. “What is Art?” and Essays on Art. A. “brain-spun or invented works” (1930: 196), are Maude (trans.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Secondary sources Our aesthetic responses, like our moral prac- Diffey, Terry. 1985. Tolstoy’s “What is Art?” London: tices, are certainly rooted in our existence as bio- Croom Helm. logical beings, and constrained by our physical Fenner, David. 2005. “Production Theories and nature. Sounds we cannot hear can never Artistic Value,” Contemporary Aesthetics, 3, 1–15. form part of a musical tradition, nor could Garrod, H. W. 1935. Tolstoy’s Theory of Art. such a tradition be based on intervals too close Taylorian Lecture. Oxford: Clarendon. Gifford, H. 1982. Tolstoy. Oxford: Oxford University for us to distinguish. Our taste for certain types Press. of harmony, say, or color contrasts may also Redpath, T. T. 1960. Tolstoy. London: Bowes & have roots in biology. Nevertheless, it is also clear Bowes. that a great deal of our aesthetic knowledge and david whewell perception is learned, and learned in traditions of practice and experience. Westerners find the rhythms of Tchai- tradition In considering the relevance to kovsky’s ballet scores so obvious as to appear aesthetics of tradition, we can begin by looking entirely natural, but students in the Chinese at aesthetic reactions in terms of practical school of ballet have to be taught what the knowledge. Practical knowledge is knowledge rhythms are before they can pick them up. No of how to act and, by extension, of how to feel. doubt the response of Westerners to the “nat- It is the sort of knowledge that underlies moral ural” elements of Chinese music would stand in activity and aesthetic appreciation. analogous need of instruction. Studies of the psy- Someone who responds to circumstances or chology of perception and their application to to objects on impulse or at random manifests lack art by Gombrich and others have shown the of such knowledge. There would be no room here extent to which the perception of what appear for the application of any notion of appropri- to us to be realistic images also depends on ateness between stimulus and response, but upbringing in the relevant traditions and cul- only a causal connection between the two, tures. Judgments of the worth and success of with no room for any normativity. As human particular works of art thus presuppose in the beings we have impulses and animal needs, to critic or perceiver some understanding of the tra- be sure, but we are also endowed with self-con- dition from which they stem, for only then are sciousness. We cannot avoid reflecting on the we in a position to understand just what is rightness or wrongness, the appropriateness or communicated, and what aimed at, by the inappropriateness, of what we do, what we works in question. feel, and what we perceive. Separating our- It is important to appreciate the extent to selves in this way from the immediacy of our which the knowledge embodied in an artistic impulses, we live in a realm of intelligibilia, or moral tradition is tacit, the unarticulated where things, feelings, and actions have mean- context for action and judgment. But it is ing, and can be judged as appropriate or inap- this untheoretical readiness of an audience to propriate, reasonable or unreasonable. respond in specific ways to what they are pre- Practical knowledge, then, is knowledge of sented with that forms the basis on which what action or feeling would be appropriate to artists can plan their work. a given situation. It is not merely theoretical, There have nevertheless been periods in the since it is knowledge of how to respond. But history of art in which artists have been bent this raises the question of how one acquires on dispensing with tradition and starting this knowledge. In the aesthetic case, this is afresh. The most notable example of this trend the question how perceivers form aesthetic re- is artistic modernism in the twentieth century, sponses; and how artists are able, as the pre- and along with the composer Schoenberg the condition for intelligent activity on their part, most notable theorist and proponent of mod- to judge in advance, as they work, the likely ernism is Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier explicitly reactions of perceivers to what is produced. advocated an architecture based on engineer- Shared practical knowledge on the part of ing and mathematics. In Towards a New artist and perceiver alike, then, forms the basis Architecture, he advocates the elimination of all of communication in the aesthetic realm. “dead” concepts with regard to the house. In

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tradition their place we are to build from a “critical and process resembling biological natural selection, objective” point of view, so as to arrive at the shaped invisibly by its actual, but often geometric and mathematical purity of the unseen, responsiveness to some need or taste. “house machine.” Despite the pretension and the The concept of a tradition as a spontan- rhetoric, Le Corbusier was not dispensing with eously developing order, much of the value of traditional knowledge altogether. His architec- which is implicit rather than explicit, can cer- ture, though devoid of ornament, is still based tainly be applied with profit in many fields, on geometric forms which humans have, including the aesthetic. And it is not hard to through the centuries, found pleasing to the eye find examples of the unforeseen costs, even in – as Le Corbusier implicitly admitted in his the aesthetic field, of going against traditional efforts to show that his buildings were based on practices. An obvious example is the way the forms underlying classical architecture. many supposedly functional modern buildings But Le Corbusier was dispensing with much have proved less well adapted to the functions of the architectural knowledge embodied in they serve than their Victorian or Edwardian more recent traditions of architecture, which he counterparts, particularly if function is taken in and his followers regarded as moribund. It was a wide sense to include the contentment or because of this that his architecture aroused, and otherwise of the buildings’ users. A less obvious, continues to arouse, such strong passions, as did but no less pertinent, example would be the the work of Schoenberg in the case of music and way a strongly developed tradition in the arts Herbert Read and others in the case of the may allow for nuances of expression, and even visual arts. Even here, though, the modernists for shock and inventiveness, in a way which the initially achieved much of their effect precisely abrogation of that tradition will destroy. As the by the contrast with what had gone before, Canadian pianist Glenn Gould has pointed out, and through producing works that were para- the straitlaced Mendelssohn can surprise the lis- sitic on it. In the twenty-first century, some tener by the gentlest movement, whereas the 80 or more years after the first stirrings of technically crude Mussorgsky has to hit the artistic modernism, and when in some fields listener over the head with a forte–piano con- the initially revolutionary view has become trast or a quasi-modal moment to make an the established policy, we are in a good position effect felt. to evaluate what was being proposed by the However, even accepting that in various antitraditionalists. ways individual expression in the arts depends In the case of architecture, for example, and on the prior existence of traditions of expression, in the face of the continuing widespread it does not follow that the only viable or possi- unpopularity of modernist architecture, the ble response of an artist is blindly to follow traditionalist will emphasize the cost of wiping what has gone before. away too much of a tradition at any one time. Again, to take an obvious example, Palladio, Echoing Burke and Hayek in politics, the tradi- Hawksmoor, and Schinkel were all great tionalist will point to the way a traditional architects, and great classical architects. But style encompasses a vast pool of implicit none of them simply copied classical models, and knowledge, of styles, designs, and solutions, none built in the same way. Simply to repeat which have survived because they have what has gone before can seem insipid, or turned out to respond to human needs and worse. But once one allows that individual cre- desires. In doing this, and in becoming estab- ativity and originality are important artistic lished, they have then in turn become consti- values, it becomes impossible to say in advance tutive of the needs and desires of succeeding just which departures from tradition should be generations. Until one disturbs a traditional sanctioned at any given moment. On the other order, one may not know just what the role of hand, recognizing the importance of tradi- any particular element in it may be. This is tional styles and orders, and the way in which because much of what is in any tradition will true originality depends on their existence, not have been explicitly planned, or even argues strongly in favor of teaching newcom- retained, with any precise knowledge of its ers to a field of art the tradition relevant to significance. It will have endured through a them and their field.

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See also architecture; art history; canon; are all subject to forces larger and more pow- gombrich; modernism and postmodernism; erful than ourselves, many of which we do not ontological contextualism; originality. even contemplate as possibilities. Ultimately, we are all subject to luck, good and bad, and bibliography Aristotle takes the problem of how to act in the Bantock, Geoffrey.1967. Education, Culture and the face of such uncertainty as a fundamental Emotions. London: Faber. question that defines “the human condition” Hayek, Friedrich von. 1988. The Fatal Conceit. (Nussbaum 2001). London: Routledge. In order for a tragedy to speak to the ordin- Oakeshott, Michael. 1962. Rationalism in Politics. ary person, the tragic figures that appear in London: Methuen. ancient tragedies are, perhaps paradoxically, O’Hear, Anthony. 1988. The Element of Fire. London: Routledge. not ordinary people in their everyday lives but people who figure in well-known myths, in anthony o’hear particular, men in important political pos- itions. Such persons make decisions with implications that affect not merely their own tragedy held a special status as an important personal lives but those of the people they gov- genre of dramatic art in the fifth and sixth ern – at a minimum, we are all subject to the centuries bce, and the names of Sophocles, effects of the actions of our leaders; in addition, Euripides, and Aeschylus still resonate as we pay the price of the actions committed by among the most important authors of tragedy members of our own family. Because ancient in the West. Plato criticized performances of tragedies use well-known myths, audiences tragedies as being morally and cognitively knew a great deal of the “backstory” for the harmful, and it remained for Aristotle, in his events that take place during the play. We Poetics, to develop the most systematic theory know that Oedipus is intelligent, industrious, of tragedy that has come down to us from the and generally gifted, even if a bit headstrong ancient world. In describing its nature and and plagued by, as we might say, some anger- justifying its special status, Aristotle takes control problems. Such qualities are likely to be the story of Oedipus as its paradigm case. In the shared by leaders independently of where and nineteenth century, Nietzsche developed an when they rule, even though the particulars of account of the genre that drew on his own Oedipus’ own backstory may not seem plausi- training as a classicist, and Hegel also pro- ble to an audience two and a half millennia later: posed a strikingly different analysis of the his father, King Laius, angered the gods for genre that takes Sophocles’ Antigone as its ignoring their prophesy that if he had a son he paradigm. would kill his father and marry his mother, Even though the social context and the way so they took their revenge on Oedipus, his son, tragedies were presented to audiences in the who left home in an effort to avoid making the ancient world were strikingly different from prophesy come true, and as a consequence, those of the twentieth and twenty-first cen- albeit unknowingly, killed his father and mar- turies, Aristotle’s account contains a great deal ried his mother. Nevertheless, there are alter- that transcends the specific cultural environment natives to “prophecy from the gods” that in which it was developed. He attempted to have the status of modern myths, such as the explain how tragedy addresses what are, then possibility of brainwashing, which is employed and now, some of the most profound and in the film The Manchurian Candidate ( John important issues in human life. In particular, on Frankenheimer, 1962). Tragedy is courted his view, tragedy dramatizes how a good but ultimately averted in Woody Allen’s though far from perfect person who tries to do Mighty Aphrodite (1995), which semi-seriously the right thing may nevertheless perform explores the forbidden search to discover the actions that, unknowingly, produce irre- parentage of an adopted child along with a versible harm. Indeed, one’s effort to do “the right clever rendering of how the chorus may have thing” may be precisely what produces a functioned in Greek tragedy as dispensers of catastrophe. Tragedies demonstrate how we conventional wisdom. (In Allen’s work as well

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tragedy as in many theories, comedy and tragedy have the right types of emotions to the right types of often been seen as bearing a special relation to objects, and as features of the plot in the form each other.) of pitiable and fearful events. Aristotle’s Poetics contains a great deal As the social and political structures of about what makes for the most compelling and Western civilization changed, so did the dramatic effective tragedies, given their aim or function. arts. The tragedies of Shakespeare, for example, Let us suppose, then, that tragedies dramatize played to a different audience. They were writ- how basically good people are subject to forces ten as popular entertainments and contain beyond their control so that actions they think scenes of comic relief (written in prose, not will bring about something good may never- verse) that humanize the characters and provide theless produce irreparable harm. Such per- a break in the intensity of the tragic action, sons, according to Aristotle, are suitable for a strategy for holding the interest of the producing pity in the audience precisely to the audience that Aristotle explicitly condemned extent that their suffering is undeserved, and fear as inappropriate to the genre. Shakespeare’s when audience members perceive themselves to tragedies also concerned themselves not so be vulnerable in the same way as the charac- much with figures of noble birth whose tragic ters. In ancient times, various aspects of a per- destiny descends through the family line, but formance drew attention to the ideas of the with how catastrophe is precipitated through the play and their perennial (and possibly univer- weaknesses and extremes of individual person- sal) importance, rather than to the realism of alities, including some who are deeply evil. the acting or the psychological peculiarities of The tragedy is thus not prompted by the forces the characters (which was one of the hall- of fate or a lack of knowledge per se, though the marks of Shakespearean tragedy). For example, tragic figure’s character may well blind him to actors wore masks and elevated shoes, making the significance of what a more rational or sta- them literally “larger than life.” Tragedies ble person would notice and take into account. were also written in verse and were hence a form Thus, Othello is ultimately destroyed by his of poetry, not prose, and Aristotle advises that jealousy, Hamlet by his chronic indecisiveness, the tone of the language should be suitably Timon of Athens by his profligacy, Macbeth by “elevated.” (Mighty Aphrodite deliciously exploits his lust for power, and so on. One can apply this the comic potential of formal verse that lapses perspective to ancient tragedy as well, for into the colloquial.) Yet all of this is ancillary to example, by seeing Oedipus as destroyed by his the plot, according to Aristotle, which is the most arrogance and irascibility and Creon by his important part of the play, and which should stubbornness and fear of being perceived as take place over a relatively circumscribed weak (because of being forced to back down by period of time or else it becomes unwieldy and a woman), an interpretation that is unhappily loses its emotional impact. (The seventeenth- abetted by a misunderstanding of Aristotle’s century French neoclassic theatrical tradi- use of the term hamartia as referring to a char- tion, epitomized most notably in the work acter flaw when it actually refers to an error or of Corneille and Racine, rigidified Aristotle’s mistake. guidelines for how to write tragedies that Friedrich Nietzsche’s analysis of tragedy effectively evoke pity and fear by turning his was developed in his groundbreaking work astute psychological observations into “ration- The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. ally” required rules.) Nietzsche sees the essence of tragedy as lying in The part of Aristotle’s theory that has prob- the enduring struggle between the love of rea- ably garnered the most attention, perhaps son and the beauty of dreams or illusions, sym- because his extant work says so little about it, bolized by the god Apollo and associated with is the idea that tragedy is supposed to produce the plastic arts, and the giving up of oneself to some type of catharsis. It is a domain ripe for the joys of rapture and intoxication, symbolized speculation, and various interpreters have by the god Dionysus and associated with explicated it as a cleansing of one’s psyche, a music. Aristotle takes the dramatic action or purification of the emotions of pity and fear, a plot of tragedy to be central and hence situates source of pleasure as one learns to experience its origins in the way successive playwrights

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tragedy made members of the chorus into characters, ultimately be reconciled (Bradley 1909). Even that is, agents in the unfolding of the drama. in Antigone, Creon’s recognition that he should Nietzsche instead emphasizes tragedy’s origins have mercy on Antigone comes too late to in music, specifically, in a particular type of avoid catastrophe. song, the dithyramb, which was sung during Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, in his notion of the ecstatic, orgiastic Dionysian revels. During domestic tragedy, and later Henrick Ibsen, these rituals it was thought that one sees opened up greater scope for the genre in through the illusion that there can be either eschewing the presumption that the tragic knowledge or beauty or goodness in the world figure must be a person of great power and sta- to the absurdity of human existence. According tus. The intersection of various demands on to Nietzsche, no individual person can set the the individual from politics, family, and reli- world right; rather, through song and dance, gion have historically provided a nexus for one expresses oneself as a member of a higher tragic action for literally millennia in the history community, establishing a kind of Apollonian of the Western world. At its foundation, rapprochement between competing spirits. tragedy seems to depend at some level on rec- Through tragedy we subjugate our fear of the ognizing that what individuals do matters, even absurd and through comedy we are relieved of if making a difference in the world for good or its tedium. for ill also involves a bit of luck. If we are only In the early nineteenth century, G. W. F. pawns of forces beyond our control – whether Hegel identified the origins of tragedy in the whims of mythical gods, inevitable forces of conflict of a radically different sort: when a history, unknowable political conspiracies, person must choose between two ethical hidden psychological forces within ourselves, goods, knowing that the choice of one entails the or predestination – the human condition destruction of the other. Antigone thus became would seem to be more pathetic or absurd than his paradigm case of tragedy. In this play, tragic. In admitting the role of such forces, Creon, king of Thebes, must choose between however, the genre links with general meta- enforcing his edict that anyone who buries the physical views about the nature of the world and body of Polyneices (who led an attack against presses on the very human feeling of responsi- the city of Thebes) would be put to death, and bility for our actions and their consequences. having mercy on Antigone, who is engaged to be married to his own son, and who coura- See also aesthetics in antiquity; aristotle; geously defied Creon’s edict out of loyalty to her catharsis; comedy; emotion; hegel; horror; fallen brother. It may be argued that Creon’s humor; lessing; nietzsche; schopenhauer. behavior has significant unforeseen conse- quences, however, since he did not consider bibliography that Antigone’s death would inaugurate a chain of suicides including those of his own Belfiore, Elizabeth. 1992. Tragic Pleasures: Aristotle on Plot and Emotion. Princeton: Princeton University son and his own wife. (The plot of The Press. Manchurian Candidate also centrally involves a Bradley, Andrew C. 1909. Oxford Lectures on Poetry. significant unforeseen consequence, though of London: Macmillan, 69–98. malicious behavior that reveals the character’s Bushnell, Rebecca (ed.). 2005. Blackwell Companion essential hypocrisy rather than an effort to do to Tragedy. Oxford: Blackwell. good.) An additional complicating circum- Else, Gerald. 1986. Plato and Aristotle on Poetry. stance, often neglected by commentators, is Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. that Polyneices launched his attack against Feagin, Susan L. 1983. “The Pleasures of Tragedy,” Thebes because his brother, Eteocles, refused to American Philosophical Quarterly, 20, 95–104. give up power after a year, as per their agree- Halliwell, Stephen. 1986. Aristotle’s Poetics. London: Duckworth. ment. (How much catastrophe in our own Hegel, G. W. F. 1975 [1835–8]. Aesthetics: Lectures time is generated by the refusal to give up on Fine Art. 2 vols. T. M. Knox (trans.). Oxford: power, even when the law demands it?) The Clarendon. most controversial aspect of Hegel’s theory is Hume, David. 1970 [1757]. “Of Tragedy.” In Four its claim that conflicting ethical goods may Dissertations. New York: Garland, 3–24.

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Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. 1962. Hamburg The description of the object referred to may Dramaturgy. V. Lange (trans.). New York: Dover. be explicit, implicit, or metaphorical. What Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2000. Basic Writings of Hamlet tells us is mostly not stated by any pro- Nietzsche. W. Kaufmann (trans.). New York: tagonist; it is implied by the total drama – that Modern Library. is, by the nature of Hamlet’s target worlds. Nussbaum, Martha C. 2001. The Fragility of Hamlet does not say that fatalists tend to be Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Rev. edn. Cambridge: Cambridge cruel; we learn that by observing him in those University Press. target worlds. In much of literature descrip- Poole, Adrian. 2005. Tragedy: A Very Short tions are metaphorical. Literally construed, Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. such works can have no target worlds, for they Ridley, Aaron. 2003. “Tragedy.” In The Oxford entail logical impossibilities; yet we can under- Handbook of Aesthetics. J. Levinson (ed.). Oxford: stand what worlds comply with the metaphor- Oxford University Press, 408–20. ical description. Of course, metaphors cannot Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg (ed.). 1992. Essays on be reduced to literal descriptions, but this is Aristotle’s Poetics. Princeton: Princeton University not extraordinary. Many other features of an art- Press. work cannot be reflected in its target worlds: Schopenhauer, Arthur. 1966 [1819/44]. The World as Will and Representation. E. J. F. Payne (trans.). its style, the order of narration, and so on. No 2 vols. New York: Dover. artwork is exhausted by the target worlds Wallace, Jennifer. 2007. The Cambridge Introduction it specifies, just as not all its merit comes from to Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. its truth. In abstract art, metaphorical descrip- tion is the main way for a work to express susan l. feagin true statements: architecture and music, while literally nonrepresentational, can portray a world metaphorically: its atmosphere, dynamic truth in art Question 1: Are there true structure, and general “feel.” A painting can be statements in works of art? Question 2: Does both literally and metaphorically true of its truth matter to the aesthetic value of a work of target worlds. art? To answer these questions let us focus We now have a positive answer of sorts to on literature, where true statements are more question 1: we have seen that artworks do likely to be found, then briefly note how other express true statements; but that is not a very arts may express truths. A true statement is interesting kind of truth. We wish to know expressed by a sentence whose terms (a) refer whether artworks express statements that are to something and (b) describe it rightly. So do true, not of some possible world WI, but of the artworks include terms that refer to something? real world (WR). Does Hamlet say something The target world of “Cigarette smoking true about reality? The above discussion has causes cancer” is the real world; therefore answered that question too. If there is something, that statement is true, for in reality cigarette- a, that occurs in world WI as well as in reality, smoking does cause cancer. Were its target then if we know that it is F in WI, we know that world one in which tobacco does not cause in reality it could be F, for possible worlds cancer, the statement would be false. Now, are the various possibilities of the real world. statements about Hamlet have a set of target To let art instruct us about the real world we worlds. A statement about Hamlet is true should therefore seek those entities that occur when satisfied in all the worlds of that set, both in the world depicted in an artwork and false if satisfied in none, and truth-valueless if in reality. satisfied in some of them only. All of Hamlet’s Are there such entities? So far we have dis- target worlds satisfy “Hamlet is a Dane”; none cussed only things that do not occur in reality, satisfies “Hamlet married Ophelia”; and some such as Hamlet. What about names like (but not all) satisfy “Hamlet is tall.” There is a “Rome” that occur in works of art? Do they world where Hamlet is a husband (for Hamlet denote the real things known by these names, might have married Ophelia), but that world or not? Ingarden (1973) has denied that in does not belong to the set of target worlds Sienkiewicz’s novel Quo Vadis the word “Rome” defined by Hamlet as Shakespeare wrote it. refers to the real city, Rome. Reference, some say,

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truth in art is an intentional act, and in writing a novel one Now the world at which a thing is examined does not intend to refer to anything real, or say may be a possible one: that is the procedure anything about it. But that cannot be right. If known as thought experiment, whereby we gain the terms “Rome,” “Caesar,” “the Christians,” insight into the nature of some thing by imag- and so on in the said novel do not refer to what inatively envisaging how certain actions and ini- we refer to by these names, then the novel is tial conditions will influence that thing. That incomprehensible. The novel does not explicitly method is used by historians, generals, and say that Caesar was a man and not a machine, social planners, but its best example is in that the laws of nature in Rome are those that works of fiction that deal with human nature. prevail in the real Rome. We can assume all So by examining the quest for truth that these facts, without which nothing in the occurs in WI, we may reach the conclusion novel makes sense, only on the basis of our that the catastrophe that this quest leads to in acquaintance with the real Rome and the real WI is not an accidental but an essential feature Caesar. Indeed, Rome as depicted in the novel of it. If so, if it is necessary to that quest that it is different from the real Rome; for instance, it leads to calamity, then that quest will end in a is the home of some people that did not exist. I bloodbath in every possible world (including conclude that in the novel the term “Rome” the real one) that has the relevant features. refers to Rome, the city we know, but not as it Such a truth that we learn by reading Hamlet is in reality; the Rome that the novel describes is extremely important to us, for it tells us what is an occurrence of Rome in another possible the quest for truth, so typical to our culture, will world. It retains all the properties of the real lead us to. Thus, important truths can be Rome except those that the novel explicitly gleaned from works of art. modifies, and those that these imply. Things Question 2 asked whether there is a connec- occur in the real as well as in other possible tion between the truthfulness of an artwork worlds, fiction describes them as they are in and its aesthetic value. Classicists considered that those worlds, and thus we learn how they connection self-evident, while formalists held it could be in reality. to be impossible, for the excellence criteria in art These truths about reality may still sound triv- are alien to those pertaining to information- ial, but that depends on what things a work can gathering and science. Romantic thinkers were be about. Works can be about properties as divided: under the influence of Kant’s distinc- well as individuals such as Rome and Caesar. tion between phenomena (objects known to If that is so, then Hamlet is about Hamlet, and science) and noumena (things in themselves), about Denmark, but also about love, melan- some thought that art can gain us access to the choly, and the quest for truth. The latter are latter (Schopenhauer 1961; Heidegger 2002) or things that occur not only in Hamlet’s target to pure uncategorized-by-reason intuitions worlds but, as we know, in reality too. We (Croce 1970). Others rejected all claims of know that the quest for truth of Hamlet caused art to knowledge, stressing the freedom of art (in Hamlet’s target worlds) the death of all from didactic strictures of morality and fact those who loved him, and delivered his coun- (Beardsley 1958; Valéry 1958). The latter view try into the hands of a bloodthirsty tyrant seems well supported, for the work of some (Fortinbras); therefore, we also know what great artists is permeated by heinous moral that quest can cause in reality. views (Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Griffith, Pound) or A truth about a possible world is a possible radical factual errors (Homer, Dante). truth about the real world, and as such it is Moreover, factual and moral excellence do not highly interesting to us: Hamlet teaches us not guarantee aesthetic merit – Robert Nozik has only what happens in WI, but also what can versified Newton’s laws, to show that great happen here. Furthermore, we can discover science can be atrocious poetry! Yet some the essence of a thing by examining an occur- philosophers (including Hospers 1960) rightly rence of it in one world; for example, by exam- protest that the said divorce of excellence cri- ining the occurrence of water in the real world teria flies in the face of common practice: we we find that its essence, a property it has in all praise great art for providing insight into real- possible worlds, is H2O. ity, mainly into human nature, and we censure

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truth in art a work for lack of deeper knowledge of social discovered truth about WR often makes WI and personal phenomena. How can that be beautifully structured, violating a basic truth explained? about WR may make WI either so inchoate, or We said that much of a work’s target world else so meager (since many beliefs must be overlaps the real world. No writer, fantasy excised to keep it consistent), that its aesthetic writers included, can forgo borrowing from value becomes nugatory. reality. An artist’s target world may differ from reality in detail, but not in basic features: the kind See also literature; aesthetic judgment; cog- of beings in it, their beliefs and desires, what nitive value of art; fiction, nature of; fiction, motivates them, the emotions they have, and truth in; fictional entities; imaginative most laws of nature, cannot but be those that resistance; metaphor; representation. occur in the actual world. Now if a work has bibliography considerable aesthetic value, its world (say, WI) is well organized; it is unified yet varieg- Beardsley, Monroe C. 1958. Aesthetics: Problems in the Theory of Criticism. New York: Harcourt, Brace & ated, revealing a new, exciting kind of unity World. in a multifarious world. Since WI is mostly our Croce, Benedetto. 1970 [1902]. Aesthetics.D. world, the significance and unity that emerge Ainslee (trans.). London: Macmillan. in WI are relevant to us. An author is a world- Graham, Gordon. 1995. “Learning from Art,” sculptor, who mostly works on borrowed British Journal of Aesthetics, 35, 26–37. material. We, who are that material, are keenly Heidegger, Martin. 2002 [1950]. “The Origin of the interested in what is done with it, for the fea- Work of Art.” In Off the Beaten Track. J. Young tures salient in the target world may fashion our & K. Haynes (trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge own life. Of course, the aesthetic achievement University Press, 1–56. may be due to those elements in WI that are not Hospers, John. 1960. “Implied Truths in Literature,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 29, 36–46. taken from the actual world. In that case our Ingarden, Roman. 1973 [1931]. The Literary Work aesthetic admiration is not due to the work’s of Art. G. G. Grabowicz (trans.). Evanston: North- truth. Such works, however, must be rare. western University Press. Here is why. Suppose that a novel is based on John, Eileen. 1998. “Reading Fiction and Conceptual a shallow view of some people and presents Knowledge,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, them falsely. In principle, this is no problem; we 56, 331–48. just assume that in WI these people are not as Kripke, Saul. 1980. Naming and Necessity. Oxford: they are in WR. But, then, what else is differ- Blackwell. ent in WI? If the trait is deep and pervasive, we Lamarque, Peter & Olsen, Stein Haugom. 1994. cannot isolate it from its conceptual environment Truth, Fiction and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. in WR: that is inconsistent. Reading a racist Nussbaum, Martha. 1990. Love’s Knowledge. Oxford: novel, we cannot simply assume that the Jews Oxford University Press. in WI are malevolent, and go on aesthetically Schopenhauer, Arthur. 1961 [1819/1844]. The to appreciate the work. If we cannot import World as Will and Idea. R. B. Haldane (trans.). our beliefs about Jews into WI, some other Garden City: Doubleday. changes must be made in it to keep it consistent. Valéry, Paul. 1958. The Art of Poetry. New York: Those concepts that take on a novel signific- Random House. ance are connected to other beliefs we have, Young, James O. 2001. Art and Knowledge. London: which now we realize are all false in WI. Routledge. Withholding our real beliefs from WI may Zemach, Eddy. 1982. “A Plea for a New Nominalism,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 12, 527–37. spread like cancer, so in the end WI collapses: it is not cohesive enough. Thus, just as a eddy m. zemach

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universals in art Traditionally, universals about ethnocentrism, but he thinks that all are held to be those properties or relations that societies create objects and events that are hold for multiple particulars. An instance of a powerful, have personalities of their own, and universal would be the property of having are evocative of affect, often beyond their cul- three angles; this property holds for all triangles. tures of origin. The problem of universals is the question of The universality of art or art-like practices is whether or not properties, relations, or prin- sometimes explained by reference to our bio- ciples hold universally, across time and place logical nature. Charles Darwin proposed that in for particulars of the same kind, and how we many species males with aesthetically appeal- could know this. Central themes in philosophy ing traits, whether visual or auditory, are more of art that raise questions about universals attractive to females and thus have a greater include the apparent ubiquity of art, the stand- chance at successful mating than others who ard of taste, and aesthetic values. are not so endowed. If the principle of sexual selection on the basis of aesthetic preference the universality of art extends to humans, it might suggest that those Art is commonly said to be a human universal. who enhance the appearance of themselves or Although the manifestations of the artistic their environments might be at an evolution- impulse differ, societies across the world com- ary advantage over the less gifted. monly produce artifacts and performances Ellen Dissanayake defends the evolutionary that are appreciated aesthetically. Some have value of art by arguing that it confers survival argued that art-making is essential to human advantage to individuals as members of a nature, suggesting that every human individ- social group. She contends that art (which she ual has a tendency toward artistic expression, generically characterizes in terms of behaviors despite divergences in talent. that make things “special” or “elaborate”) pro- According to many anthropologists and a motes cooperation and social solidarity and growing number of philosophers, however, emphasizes values important to the group. Art the universality of art should not be taken for benefits the individual’s chances of survival by granted. They argue that such terms as “art,” improving the cohesiveness of the society to “aesthetics,” and “beauty” are laden with eth- which the individual belongs. nocentric connotations derived from the West, Others who see grounds for art’s univer- such as the notions that art is in contrast with sality in evolutionary psychology do not share utility and that art’s form should be appreciated Dissanayake’s conviction that art is directly for its own sake. One response is that cross-cul- adaptive. Some take art to be a spandrel, that tural employment of these terms merely needs is, an agreeable by-product of traits selected for to be tempered with the recognition that different their centrality to species preservation. The societies may have different attitudes and beliefs convincingness of this ploy, however, depends about their cultural productions. Another is on showing that the allegedly selected trait is that art should be discussed in terms of its cul- more fundamental than artistic behavior. This ture of origin. Still another is to propose an may be difficult to demonstrate. The common alternative terminology, such as Robert Plant allegation that music-making, for instance, is a Armstrong’s notion of “affecting presence.” spandrel while language was selected ignores the Armstrong takes seriously the complaint fact that the two capacities are built on many

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universals in art common components, some of which seem condition of harmony between them in human to have been selected, others of which may experience that Kant terms our capacity for have been spandrels. However this dispute is aesthetic pleasure to be based on a “common resolved, those who focus on evolutionary psy- sense.” chology do tend to accept the universality of While Kant’s analysis of beauty depends artistic activity. on universally available operations of standard human faculties, his paradigm for beauty is the universality of taste the beautiful object within nature. Where art The eighteenth-century debate about the foun- (which he takes to be representational) is dation for taste also resulted in concern with involved, he contends that we necessarily artistic universals. The issue concerned the judge with concepts in mind, for we are con- common but paradoxical acceptance of the cerned with whether or not the artwork presents idea that taste is radically subjective but that an object in a manner that accords with our some people’s tastes are better than others. notion of it. Societies may have different relev- David Hume attempted to explain this perplex- ant concepts, as they do, for example, in the ity, contending that despite the subjectivity of case of human beauty. Nevertheless, Kant is taste, taste could be subjected to a standard. The a formalist, and he considers the focus of atten- standard by which a judgment of taste could tion in genuine aesthetic experience to be the be evaluated was the consensus of ideal judges, formal structure of an artwork. Presumably those who are optimally characterized by a formal structure is recognizable through stand- sound state of mind and body, delicacy of ard perceptual abilities, and we should expect imagination, freedom from prejudice, and con- a fair amount of convergence in what art siderable experience with the type of art in members of various societies will find beautiful, question. Lacking access to a clear consensus of particularly in the case of art that emphasizes ideal judges in most instances, the most reliable geometric form as opposed to culturally specific guidance we can typically get is provided by the content. standard of durable admiration, a standard We should be cautious, however, when which Hume articulates in universal terms. drawing conclusions about universality on “The same Homer, who pleased at Athens and the basis of our perceptual capacities. While Rome two thousand years ago, is still admired typical human beings share the same perceptual at Paris and at London” (1995: 259). Hume apparatus, some of our perceptual abilities also accepts the idea of general principles of mature through the acquisition of mental approval or disapproval that influence all of templates for categorizing stimuli. We develop our mental operations, and he contends that templates for musical pitch, for example, “some particular forms or qualities, from the which we use to determine whether a particu- original structure of the internal fabric, are lar tone is in tune or a plausible musical tone calculated to please, and others to displease” within its context. Once one has absorbed (1963: 259). one’s native musical style and learned the tem- Kant takes the capacity to please universally plate for pitch relations that it allows, one will without conceptual mediation to be among the listen with the expectation of tones fitting the criteria of beauty, and thus of beautiful art. internalized pattern. Fortunately, we tend to According to Kant, the beautiful pleases all assimilate closely proximate tones to pitches individuals because it involves a heightened allowed by familiar scales. As a result, we are engagement of the basic faculties of cognition, not disturbed, for instance, by small flaws in into- imagination, and understanding in a state of nation. But if the distance is sufficiently large, “free play.” Aesthetic experience is universally which is often the case in foreign music that available because the faculties it involves are the is tuned in an unfamiliar manner, we have the very faculties employed in everyday cognition impression of the music being out of tune. What and the use of language. The accordance of this suggests is that the learning involved these cognitive powers in relation to an object in gaining mastery of a universal perceptual admit of universal communicability, according apparatus results not only in different preferences to Kant. So basic are these faculties and the but a sense of wrongness in the foreign style.

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universals in art universal values in art (2000: 274), that is, the qualities the culture Evolutionary psychology proposes grounds considers worth pursuing. The same sociocul- for believing that at least some aesthetic pref- tural ideals can be artistically expressed in many erences are universal. One study, for example, different ways. On the other hand, superficially found that young children in a variety of soci- similar presentations in artworks from different eties preferred pictures of landscapes showing cultures might nevertheless reflect contrasting characteristics of savannahs, even when the societal reasons for valuing them. While soci- children had never seen such a landscape. The eties may share some ideas about qualities explanation from evolutionary psychology is worth pursuing, forms that consolidate a vari- that aesthetic preferences developed during ety of sociocultural ideals are likely to be par- the late Pleistocene era, when the ancestors ticularly meaningful for the members of the of contemporary humanity prospered in the society that holds them in a way that will not savannahs of Africa. Another alternative, be fully accessible to nonmembers. however, is to contend that our common bio- What this suggests is that what we super- logical nature and the experiences that come ficially observe in the art of different cultures with it, along with the commonalities within may not do justice to what is similar and what environments that can sustain human beings, is different. Perhaps the most important con- are sufficient to result in universal preference for sequence of considering universals in art is the certain artistic contents, regardless of how new motive they produce for attending more human beings initially acquired them. closely to artworks, their contexts of production, Even if some preferences are common, artis- and the range of reasons people have for tic styles vary considerably across the world. finding them meaningful. Wilfried Van Damme points out, however, that even when societies’ artworks exhibit con- See also art of the paleolithic; cognitive sci- trasting superficial characteristics, they may ence and art; evolution, art, and aesthetics; nevertheless be organized in accordance with hume; kant; objectivity and realism in aes- common principles. He distinguishes two types thetics; relativism. of universals, “transcultural universals,” or the “stimulus properties which as such would bibliography seem to appeal to all human beings, regardless Armstrong, Robert Plant. 1971. The Affecting of cultural background,” “pancultural universals,” Presence: An Essay in Humanistic Anthropology. or “principles that are found to be operative Urbana: University of Illinois Press. in evaluating stimuli in all (pan) cultures,” Dissanayake, Ellen. 2000. Art and Intimacy: How whether or not these are evident on the the Arts Began. Seattle: University of Washington surface (2000: 258). Most people who refer Press. to universals in art, he suggests, have in mind Dutton, Denis. 2001. “Aesthetic Universals.” In such transcultural universals as brightness, The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. B. Gaut & D. McIver Lopes (eds.). New York: Routledge, smoothness, clarity, balance, symmetry, and 203–14. novelty. Higgins, Kathleen Marie. 2006. “The Cognitive and However, differences in the stimulus prop- Appreciative Import of Musical Universals,” Revue erties that cultures favor in their art may Internationale de Philosophie, 60/238, 487–503. themselves reflect an underlying universal. Hume, David. 1995 [1757]. “Of the Standard of Van Damme cites the example of what is per- Taste.” In The Philosophy of Art: Readings Ancient and ceived to be ideal body weight. Cultures might Modern. A. Neill & A. Ridley (eds.). New York: disagree in their ideals but nonetheless agree in McGraw-Hill, 254–68. holding that the ideal should reflect health and Kant, Immanuel. 1987 [1790]. Critique of Judgment. physical wellbeing. Despite a transcultural dis- W. Pluhar (trans.). Indianapolis: Hackett. Orians, Gordon H. & Heerwagen, Judith H. 1992. agreement, Van Damme contends that a pan- “Evolved Responses to Landscapes.” In The cultural universal is at work, the fact that Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the “people in a particular culture find attractive Generation of Culture. J. H. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & those visual stimuli which in terms of that J. Tooby (eds.). New York: Oxford University culture aptly signify its sociocultural ideals” Press, 555–79.

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Shiner, Larry. 2001. The Invention of Art: A Cultural Being Humans: Anthropological Universality and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Particularity in Transdisciplinary Perspectives. Van Damme, Wilfried. 1996. Beauty in Context: N. Roughly (ed.). Berlin: de Gruyter, 258–83. Towards an Anthropological Approach to Aesthetics. Leiden: Brill. kathleen marie higgins Van Damme, Wilfried. 2000. “Universality and Cultural Particularity in Visual Aesthetics.” In

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value of art see aesthetic pleasure; cre- aesthetics; originality; relativism; theories ativity; cognitive value of art; interpre- of art; truth in art; universals in art. tation, aims of; objectivity and realism in

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Wagner, Richard (1813–1883) German Beethoven was always his greatest idol. By the composer (most famously of the four operas time he was in his late twenties, and living in in the Ring cycle), poet, revolutionary, and Paris, he was beginning to have ambitions to author of books on art, religion, and politics. bring closer together the achievement of the Wagner is unique among the greatest artists for Austrian symphonists and the possibilities of having theorized a great deal, his topics rang- operatic composition, contemporary examples ing from vivisection and vegetarianism to the of which he viewed with increasing distaste. nature of art and its relations to religion and Because he was living in acute poverty, he to revolution. This speculative work took the turned to journalism, and it was at this time that form of substantial books and essays, short he produced his first substantial body of prose, fiction, and a copious correspondence (12,000 consisting of short stories strongly influenced by letters survive, some as long as 50 pages). E. T. A. Hoffmann, and reports on the Parisian Although not much of what Wagner wrote musical scene. Most of these pieces make lively comes under the heading of aesthetics as such, and enjoyable reading, unlike his later prose he was not averse to philosophizing about it. He works, and in them there are the first signs of composed his prose mainly under the stress of what became his lifelong obsession with the needing to work out his position on the funda- development of opera as a leading art form. In mental issues involved in composing operas, the story “A Pilgrimage to Beethoven,” he pre- or, as he increasingly preferred to call them, sents the great composer on his deathbed giv- “music dramas.” ing expression to proto-Wagnerian ideas on After composing his first three operas – Die the relationship between music and words, Feen (“The Fairies”), Das Liebesverbot (“Forbidden and on the kind of opera he would like to write: Love”) and Rienzi – which are highly competent It “would contain no arias, duets, trios, and all and in some ways original works broadly in the the other things with which an opera is German, Italian, and French traditions respec- patched together these days.” tively, he began to realize that contemporary Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was always a operatic forms and fashions, as well as operatic talismanic work for Wagner, and his returns, life and standards of performance, were unac- throughout his life, to writing about it might be ceptable to him. For an artist destined to be said to reflect his developing thoughts on his more revolutionary than any other in his cen- deepest aesthetic concerns. In the explanatory tury, his awareness of his mission came to him program he wrote when he gave the work slowly; he was not a precocious composer and what was probably its first exemplary perfor- the main thing in common between these mance in Dresden in 1846, he claimed that three early works and his subsequent ones is that the celebrated introduction to the last movement he wrote his own libretti from the outset – – in which the themes of the previous three something that had rarely been done by his movements are tried out and found wanting predecessors. by the lower strings in passages of powerful Like Verdi, his exact contemporary, Wagner and expressive recitative – was Beethoven’s never felt inclined to write substantial nonop- embodiment of the idea that purely instrumen- eratic works, but, unlike Verdi, he was heir tal music was not enough. So Beethoven intro- to an immensely impressive tradition of sym- duced voices singing Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” in phonic and instrumental composition, and order to complete a work that had, up to that

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wagner, richard point, been the greatest of all examples of subordinate, he declared, to make more pow- a purely instrumental art form. Meanwhile, erfully expressive what was being enacted in the Wagner was himself producing operas in drama – which consisted, of course, not only of which the music and the drama were on ever the text but also of the action. A great deal of more intimate terms, though he did not yet feel what Wagner wrote in his historical recon- the necessity for working out the relationship struction of the history of the various art forms between them at any great length. The three is to be taken with a pinch of salt. What mat- works of this decade, Der fliegende Holländer ters is that, without indulging in extensive spe- (“The Flying Dutchman”), Tannhäuser, and cial pleading – in which he borrowed heavily Lohengrin, are characterized by growing mastery from Feuerbach, among many other, mostly in musical-dramatic presentation, but there German, thinkers – he would not have been able was nothing here to alarm the operatic world to return finally to his creative work, the com- of the time. position of the Ring. He came to see that as In 1848–9, Europe was shaken by a series he had originally conceived it, as a single of revolutions and Wagner participated, to music drama called Siegfried’s Tod (“Siegfried’s an undetermined extent, in that of May 1849 Death”), it was not sufficiently a drama in Dresden. The result was that he narrowly because of the amount of narrative and expla- escaped arrest and imprisonment and was nation of former events that it contained. He exiled from Germany for the next 12 years. He therefore set about filling out the action, and the had already begun to think about various result was four dramas – or poems, as he called mythological subjects for a new work, but them – which he would not finish composing came to realize that he would not be able to until 1874. The first, whose function was accomplish anything without drastic specula- largely to clear the ground, is Das Rheingold, and tions on the whole nature of his work as an in it he stuck very closely to the prescriptions artist, and as a member of a society which he he had set out in Opera and Drama. Because it had come to regard as fundamentally corrupt. is primarily an expository work, the theory The first fruits of this were his major theoret- translates remarkably smoothly into practice. ical works, Art and Revolution (1849), The Art- But it is in the second of the dramas, Die Work of the Future (1850), and Opera and Walküre (“The Valkyrie”), that his prodigious Drama (1851). This last is the most important musical gifts begin to reassert themselves. treatise in the history of operatic aesthetics. It so happened that at this time (1854) he His basic premise in these works is that art has was introduced by a friend to the works of to reclaim the social function that it fulfilled in Schopenhauer, and the effect of reading him, the classical Greek polis, and decisively reject its especially his magnum opus, The World as Will function as entertainment, which it has lapsed and Representation, was immediate and lasting. into in the decadent modern world. To achieve It also involved what amounted to a volte-face its proper aim, it must deal with the “purely on the relationship of music to the other arts, human,” that which is common to people of all but this was something that Wagner never times and places. Its subjects must therefore be explicitly acknowledged. It was left to Nietzsche, mythological, not historical. And it must rep- in Towards a Genealogy of Morals (1887), to point resent a new synthesis of the arts, which it out with typical firmness. For Schopenhauer, Wagner characterized as the Gesamtkunstwerk, music was by far the most important of the perhaps best translated as “the total work of art.” arts, because unlike the others, which have an The focus of this kind of art was to be drama, oblique relationship to the will – which is the to which the other arts, which had developed sole reality, all else being appearance – music autonomously to their disadvantage, must is the direct presentation of the will. all contribute. Wagner’s conversion to this view was a In particular, the role of music in this new col- smooth affair, as was his general acceptance of lective art must be reversed from that which Schopenhauer’s pessimistic evaluation of exis- Wagner alleged it had played in traditional tence. Wagner’s disillusionment with political opera, where it had been the end, the so-called events during the mid-century and his para- drama having been the means. Music had to be doxical combination of exuberant vitality with

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walton, kendall l(ewis) a yearning for death found what he took to be Skelton, Geoffrey. 1991. Wagner in Thought and their ideal working out in Schopenhauer’s phi- Practice. London: Lime Tree. losophy. After writing two acts of the upbeat Tanner, Michael. 1996. Wagner. London: Harper Siegfried, he broke off work on the Ring for 12 Collins. years, during which he wrote Tristan und Isolde, michael tanner which he conceived in the spirit of Schopen- hauer, whose influence is manifest in its text. But the philosopher would have been horrified Walton, Kendall L(ewis) (b.1939 ) Charles by the lovers’ achievement of “nothingness” L. Stevenson Collegiate Professor of Philosophy by taking erotic love to a previously unimagined at the University of Michigan, where he has extreme. Wagner’s next work, the ostensibly taught since 1965. Past President of the cheerful Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (“The American Society for Aesthetics (2003–5) and Mastersingers of Nuremberg”), is in fact far Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and more imbued with pessimism. And by the time Sciences, he received his doctorate in philo- Wagner returned to the Ring, Schopenhauer’s sophy from Cornell University in 1967. He has influence is pervasive, if elusive – it is more made major contributions to a wide array of a matter of the overall tone of the work issues relevant to aesthetics and the philosophy than of its conclusion, which is notoriously of art, including: art interpretation, representa- ambiguous. tion in the arts, fictional discourse, emotional During his later years Wagner continued responses to fiction, metaphor, the aesthetics to write prose works, though short ones. To of music, and aesthetic value. He is best known celebrate the centenary of Beethoven’s birth, for his theory of make-believe, which he pre- in 1870 he produced a monograph on the sented systematically in the seminal Mimesis as composer in which his view of music is most Make-Believe. explicitly Schopenhauerian. After the first per- Walton’s first publication in aesthetics formance of the Ring in 1876, he devoted him- (1970) has become a classic of analytic philo- self to Parsifal, his “stage consecration festival sophy of art. Walton claims that knowing facts drama,” in which he put into practice the for- about the history of a work of art is relevant mulation at the opening of his essay “Religion to the correct understanding and appreci- and Art” (1880): ation of it; in particular, it is relevant to the identification and experience of the work’s aes- It could be said that at the point where religion thetic properties broadly conceived. The mere becomes artificial, it is reserved to art to salvage the kernel of religion, inasmuch as the mythical perception of an artwork will not disclose its aes- images which religion would wish to be believed thetic properties – whether, say, the work is as true are apprehended in art for their symbolic serene, balanced, coherent, etc. – for the per- value, and through ideal representation of those ception of such properties depends on which symbols art reveals the concealed truth within artistic categories the work is perceived in; that them. is, it depends on the work being perceived as a The clumsy expression, combined with depth of work of a certain kind, produced in a given insight, in this piece of Wagnerian prose is typ- medium, belonging to a certain genre, and so ical of his mature thought on aesthetic matters. on. In agreement with Frank Sibley, Walton thinks that an artwork’s aesthetic properties See also nietzsche; opera; schopenhauer. “emerge” from its nonaesthetic properties: a painting, for instance, is balanced in virtue bibliography of the color and shape configuration of its sur- face. Yet, an artwork never has its aesthetic Primary sources properties just in virtue of its nonaesthetic [1851]. Opera and Drama. E. Evans (trans.). London: properties, for the same nonaesthetic property Wm. Reeves. may be or fail to be aesthetically relevant, or may Secondary sources be relevant in different ways, according to the Borchmeyer, Dieter. 1991. Richard Wagner: Theory and category under which the work is perceived. Theatre. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hence, the same physical object, such as a

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walton, kendall l(ewis) canvas with a marked surface, may lack real- prescribed imaginings also depend on the rules ism when perceived as an Impressionist paint- of the game (the “principles of generation”), ing, but have realism when perceived as a some explicit but many implicit. Children may Cubist painting (or may have neither property, agree, for instance, that globs of mud placed when considered under an altogether different under a box are, fictionally, pies in the oven. category, say, as an installation piece rather than Other rules apply even if not asserted, for a painting). That aesthetic judgments are cat- instance, that larger, thicker globs correspond egory-relative does not mean that all judg- to larger, thicker pies. The interpretation of a rep- ments are admissible. Quite the contrary. For resentational artwork, then, largely has to do Walton, a number of factors contribute to with identifying the principles of generation determine which categories a work belongs to that apply to it. What is true in a game is inde- and, relatedly, the sort of investigations that pendent of what individual players actually an art critic ought to engage in. Such factors imagine; hence there may be disputes: children include facts about the work’s origin, such as may argue, say, on whether there is a pie in the intentions of its maker and the historical con- the oven, art critics on whether La Grande Jatte text of production of the work. represents tension between social classes. Mimesis as Make-Believe (1990) presents a Which principles of generation apply to a rep- theory of what representations (such things resentation, in fact even whether something is as paintings, sculptures, novels, plays, films, a representation or not, may but need not depend etc.) are and how they affect their perceivers. on the maker’s intention. Representationality Walton considers all representations to be is a function and whether something has such fictions, in the sense that they function, within a function depends only on the existence of the appropriate set of rules and for the appro- “a social (or at least human) context or setting,” priate perceivers, as prompters of imaginings not necessarily on someone’s intentions (1990: (hence, for example, a documentary on real 88–9). Hence, there may be naturally occurring events is a fiction in this sense). Extending to art representations: star constellations and faces what is true of the games of make-believe that in the clouds can be considered pictures and, in children play – say, when they pretend that principle, the trace left by an ant in the sand globs of mud are pies – Walton claims that could be a story. all representations are “props” in “games of The various kinds of representations are make-believe.” A prop in a game of make- distinguished from each other by the sorts of believe makes certain propositions fictional games of make-believe that they authorize. (e.g., that there is a pie, that it is round, or that When we read a narrative, for instance, we are it was overbaked); it prescribes imaginings – invited to imagine that some narrator speaks prescribes, that is, that the relevant proposi- or writes the words of, say, the novel. Pictorial tions be imagined. Likewise, representational representations are, instead, such that they works of art make propositions fictional: that a authorize games of make-believe that are dis- man named Robinson Crusoe was shipwrecked tinctively visual. When looking at La Grande or that, as in Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Jatte, it is not just fictionally true that there are Island of La Grande Jatte, people are strolling in people strolling in a park, but also that our act a park. Hence, Walton can speak of fictions of looking at the painting is an act of looking at without adding any fictional entities to our such people (compare to what may be fiction- ontology. Rather, discourse about Robinson ally true in a child’s game of hobbyhorse riding: Crusoe, Willy Loman, or the strollers in La not just that his broom is a horse, but also that Grande Jatte is translated into talk regarding the child’s act of touching the broom, in the props (a novel, a play, a piece of canvas with col- game, amounts to touching a horse). The dis- ored marks on it). Which imaginings are pre- tinctively visual nature of the make-believe scribed in a given game depends on features of games that we play with pictures also explains the prop: the Grand Jatte represents what it the sense in which resemblance plays a role in does in virtue of the color and line configura- depiction. Rather than a resemblance between tion of its surface, as a glob of mud represents the picture and what it depicts, what is dis- a round pie in virtue of its size and shape. The tinctive of pictures is the similarity between

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walton, kendall l(ewis) the two perceptual acts – that of looking at the we play a game of make-believe with the very picture and that of looking at whatever it sensations that naturally arise within us – sen- depicts. sations that Walton dubs “quasi-emotions” (in Among representations, photographs are the case of fear, “quasi-fear”). Sometimes, this a special case (1984). Since they essentially view is misleadingly characterized by Walton’s depend on the mechanism that produces them, commentators as the claim that people do not photographs are in a special causal relation experience real emotions in appreciating with what they portray. Accordingly, they are works of fiction, or as the claim that responses “transparent”: not so different from such to fictional characters are quasi-emotions. In fact, things as mirrors, microscopes, telescopes, etc., the view is about the status of our responses they are “aids to vision”: they put us in contact to fictional characters and events, which – by with – literally, they allow us to see, if indi- being fictional – produce the interesting puzzle; rectly – what they portray. it is not about responses to works, which cer- That the propositions that are made fictional tainly can be the objects of emotions. Further, by representations include propositions about the quasi-emotions are neither distinctive of re- perceiver himself or herself goes together with sponses to fictions nor unreal. By definition, an important distinction Walton introduces bona fide emotions have quasi-emotions as – that between the work world and the game an essential component and, of course, quasi- world. In the case of La Grande Jatte, the world emotions are as genuine as sensations are. Quite of the work includes people strolling in a park. simply, however, much as the real broomstick The world of the game, while it typically refers in a child’s game of hobbyhorse-riding is, to much of what constitutes the world of the fictionally, a horse in the game, so is the really work, also refers to the perceiver. The distinc- felt quasi-fear of the moviegoer, fictionally, an tion between work and game world makes it pos- instance of fear of the monster. sible to explain, for instance, how when I look The theory of make-believe, especially when at La Grande Jatte, it is fictional (in my game applied to our affective responses to represen- world) that I am looking at people strolling in tations, rather naturally combines with simu- a park, although it is not fictional (in the work lation theories of the mind, and Walton has world) that they are being looked at by me. been investigating this link (forthcoming). That we are participants in games of make- Imagining in the way we do when we play believe is crucial to the investigation of our games of make-believe involves running men- responses to fiction. Most notably, Walton tal simulations and our responses to fictions (1990) explains in terms of make-believe what can be seen as outputs of such simulations. has become to be known as the puzzle, or para- It remains to note Walton’s conviction that dox, of fictional emotions. The puzzle arises appeal to games of make-believe can illumin- from the fact that, though we are often emo- ate as well both the nature of metaphor and the tionally engaged, sometimes quite vividly, nature of response to music, and not simply that with fictional characters and events – we fear of representation. the monster in a horror film for example – our Fictional worlds may deviate from the real responses seem to lack the belief component world, either because of ignorance on the part necessary to an emotion (at least necessary to of the author (e.g., making it fictional that the fear): normally, we know that there is no mon- earth ends at the horizon, in a fiction produced ster, hence that we are under no real danger. at a time when the earth was believed to be flat) Walton solves the puzzle by maintaining that or intentionally so (making it fictional, say, our emotional responses to fictional characters that time travel is possible). Yet, when the and events have themselves fictional status, deviation from reality surrounds ethical matters, that is, are fictional emotions. Specifically, authors’ powers to prescribe whichever imag- when imagining the monster, it is fictional inings they like seems to break down. Partly by (i.e., fictionally true) of the physiological-psy- reference to David Hume’s essay “Of the Stand- chological state we find ourselves in that such ard of Taste,” Walton has made a series of sug- a state is fear of the monster. Whether we are gestions that have contributed to the arising of aware of that or not, as consumers of fictions an ongoing debate on the so-called “puzzle of

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wilde, oscar imaginative resistance” (1990: 154–5; 1994a; Representational?” Journal of Aesthetics and Art 2008). Walton’s emphasis is mostly on the Criticism, 52, 47–62. existence of a tangle of different issues here, 2008. Marvelous Images: Values and the Arts. New York: ones that do not necessarily regard only moral Oxford University Press. deviance. Regarding one such issue, which Forthcoming. In Other Shoes: Music, Metaphor, he dubs “the fictionality puzzle,” he brings to Empathy, Existence. New York: Oxford University Press. light our resistance to accept as true certain propositions, ones involving values, even just Secondary sources fictionally, for example, that “female infanti- 1991. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 51, cide is right and proper, or that nutmeg is the 383–431. A symposium on Mimesis as Make- summum bonum, or that a dumb knock-knock joke Believe, with articles by Kendall L. Walton, Noël is actually hilarious” (2008: 51). The imposs- Carroll, Patrick Maynard, George Wilson, Richard ibility of making it fictional that, say, genocide Wollheim, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Lamarque, Peter. 1991. “Critical Notice of Walton’s is good may have to do with the impossibility Mimesis as Make-Believe,” Journal of Aesthetics and of imagining that certain dependence, or Art Criticism, 49, 161–6. supervenience, relations between such things as Levinson, Jerrold. 1993. “Making Believe,” Canadian genocide, slavery, and evil, are different from Philosophical Review, 32, 359–74. what they actually are. The issue can also be alessandro giovannelli linked to the admittedly different question of the aesthetic value of immoral works. A work that celebrates genocide might lack in aesthetic value, the aesthetic value it has may be inac- Wilde, Oscar [Fingall O’Flahertie Wills] cessible because of the work’s immorality, if (1854–1900) Irish playwright, poet, and the aesthetic value of an artwork does not man of letters; a luminary of late nineteenth- just have to do with its capacity to produce a century cultural life, his career was cut short certain kind of pleasure but also with whether by imprisonment during the 1890s and con- taking pleasure in such an object is proper, sequent ill-health. “reasonable,” or “apt” to do (1994a: 30; Various factors have stood in the way of 2008: 14, 50). appreciating Wilde’s significance as a theorist of art – personal notoriety, a primary reputation See also twentieth-century anglo-american for sparkling comedies of manners, and a pen- aesthetics; depiction; fiction, nature of; chant for paradox and irony. (The Cambridge fiction, the paradox of responding to; hume; Companion to Oscar Wilde (1997) has only imagination; imaginative resistance; moral- one chapter devoted to Wilde as a theorist.) It ity and art; ontological contextualism; is possible, however, to discern a coherent and picture perception; representation; sibley. challenging aesthetic informing the themes treated by his three main essays, “The Decay of bibliography Lying,” “The Critic as Artist,” and “The Soul of Primary sources Man under Socialism” (all published during 1970. “Categories of Art,” Philosophical Review, 79, 1889–90): the themes of art’s imitation by life 334–67. and nature, of the role of criticism, and of the 1984. “Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of relation between art, politics, and morality. Photographic Realism,” Critical Inquiry, 11, Sounding a note that was to become dogma 246–77. in the following century, Wilde proclaims that 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of “art never expresses anything but itself,” and so the Representational Arts. Cambridge, MA: is “not to be judged by any external standard Harvard University Press. of resemblance” (1983: 987, 982). This is not 1993. “Metaphor and Prop Oriented Make-Believe,” European Journal of Philosophy, 1, 39–57. intended to criticize representational art and 1994a. “Morals in Fiction and Fictional Morality,” plead for abstraction, but to point out that Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. even the most “realistic” art acts only as a 68, 27–50. “veil, rather than a mirror.” And insofar as 1994b. “Listening with Imagination: Is Music imitation takes place at all, it is life and nature

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wilde, oscar that imitate art, not vice versa. Part of Wilde’s in its utterance.” The advantage critics enjoy meaning here is, of course, that people’s is that they “gain their impressions almost behavior is influenced by painting and literature. entirely from what art has [already] touched” “The nineteenth century . . . is largely an inven- and given form to (1983: 1034). tion of Balzac” (1983: 983). He is indicating, Wilde was a great admirer of Plato, but in as well, the idea later developed by Ernst these claims we can discern his divergence Gombrich that an artist’s perception of nature from, as well as his debt to, Plato. Wilde’s con- is partly a function of the artistic tradition to templative critic, like Plato’s philosopher, is which he or she belongs. It is Turner and the superior to the artist, and for a similar reason Impressionists, he suggests, who are respons- – an acquaintance with forms. But whereas for ible for London looking so foggy. Plato artists are simply poor imitators of reality But Wilde is also making a more philosoph- – the forms – for Wilde they create forms, ical point. Nature, he writes, “is our creation. which then provide the cool, contemplative It is in our brain that she quickens to life. critic with the materials for a more self-conscious Things are because we see them” (1983: 986). and refined intellectual creation. Life and nature are in themselves a chaos, This elevation of the critical thinker above the lacking in form and structure until humans artist should give one pause before classifying impose these. And they impose them, not Wilde, in the usual manner, as a fully fledged least, through the self-consciously form-giving member of the “art for art’s sake” school. After activity of the arts. Art cannot, therefore, be all, if art is to provide material for the thinker, answerable to an “external standard of resem- it would seem to have a “sake” beyond itself. blance”; for, prior to the constructive contribu- Many of Wilde’s aphorisms, to be sure, ape the tion of art, there exists nothing determinate pronouncements of Théophile Gautier, Walter for works of art to resemble. For Wilde, as later Pater, and other disciples of aestheticism – “All for Nelson Goodman, art is “a way of world- art is quite useless,” “Art is the only serious thing making” and not a mirror of something in the world,” “All art is immoral,” and so on. already in place. But these need to be taken in context, and This theme is continued through Wilde’s allowance has to be made for Wildean irony and contention, in “The Critic as Artist,” that not a desire to épater les bourgeois. Moreover, it is easy only do critics have a vital role to play but that to find “one-liners” that suggest a different their calling is actually a higher one than that attitude – for example, “The arts are made for of the artists whose works they criticize. life and not life for the arts,” and “All beautiful (Needless to say, the “true” critics Wilde has in things are made by those who strive to make mind are not the writers of hack columns in something useful” (quoted in Ellmann 1987: newspapers.) This would be an absurd con- 256, 246). tention, of course, if the critic’s job were simply “Art for art’s sake” is, anyway, a slogan that to describe works of art or to fathom the can be taken in various ways. Minimally, it artist’s intentions. But, for Wilde, the job is not proclaims that the only criteria that should at all to be a “fair, sincere and rational” com- govern the production of, or judgment upon, mentator. On what has now become a familiar a particular work are aesthetic ones. Wilde view, he holds that “criticism is itself an art,” seems generally to have subscribed to this. He no more to be judged by fidelity to the works would also accept the dictum read as a way of discussed than these works are by any “exter- berating those artists whose works are motivated nal standard of resemblance” (1983: 1026). by commitment to social reforms. Not only Criticism should “treat the work of art simply does this tend to result in bad art or literature, as a starting-point for a new creation” (1983: as with Zola, but most social remedies for 1029), as a peg on which the critic hangs humanity’s ills “do not cure the disease; they some reflections. Such criticism, indeed, is merely prolong it” (1983: 1079). However, he “more creative than the [artist’s] creation,” explicitly rejects “art for art’s sake” if inter- primarily because the critic goes to work on preted as a pronouncement on “the final cause superior materials. Artists are confronted by of art” – or, rather, its lack of such a “cause” life, which is “deficient in form” and “incoherent (see Ellmann 1987: 249). And despite the

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“immoralist” ring to some of his remarks, it is chaos; and individuals are distinguished from clear that the mature Wilde had a deep con- one another by the particular styles with cern for the moral condition of humanity and which this capacity is exercised. And it is in this believed that art had a vital role to play in capacity that the possibilities for true freedom improving it. As already implied, care must and self-realization reside. “We are never less be taken with these remarks. Thus, having free than when we try to act”: the free man or written that “the virtues of the poor ...are woman, rather, is one who “creates the age” by much to be regretted” (1983: 1081), he then forging an individual perspective, by the artis- explains that these alleged virtues – obedience, tic and contemplative construction of “a world say, and gratitude for charity – are nothing more real than reality itself” (1983: 1040, of the sort, but the symptoms, rather, of a 1021, 1049). degraded and crushed personality. More gen- It would be quite wrong, argues Wilde, to erally, his jibes at “the ethical” are attacks regard this aesthetic individualism as a philo- on what passes for morality in a society he sophy of selfishness. It is, in fact, the only effec- despises. tive antidote to egotism, for the person whose “The Soul of Man under Socialism” is, in “primary aim is self-development” is content fact, a thoroughly moral manifesto for Wilde’s “letting other people’s lives alone,” in contrast ideals of freedom, individualism, and self- with the egotist who manipulates their lives realization. Like Kierkegaard and Marx, he for self-advantage (1983: 1101). There is perceives the lives of people in his century something here of the optimism of Socrates as becoming increasingly mechanistic and that the person whose soul is just will simply anonymous. In part, the cure will be through have no inclination to wrong others. As Wilde radical economic and political change: the puts it, truly free and realized individuals will abolition of private property, for example, and not sin, “not because they make the renunci- guarantees against the tyranny of both gov- ations of the ascetic, but because they can do ernment and public opinion. (This is a long everything they wish without hurt to the soul” way from Gautier’s readiness to welcome the (1983: 1058). return of a tyrant, provided “he brings me back a hamper of Tokay” (1981: 39).) But See also aesthetic attitude; aestheticism; the main vehicle of these ideals is art. “Art is the criticism; function of art; morality and art. most intense mode of individualism,” since it embodies a person’s “unique temperament,” bibliography thereby offering an escape from “tyranny of Primary sources habit, and the reduction of man to the level of 1983. Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Vyvyan a machine” (Wilde 1983: 1090–1). Not only is Holland (ed.). London: Collins. artistic endeavor a particularly valuable route 1991. Aristotle at Afternoon Tea: The Rare Oscar toward self-realization but it provides a model Wilde. Wyse Jackson (ed.). London: Fourth Estate. for every person’s proper relationship to self. For, Secondary sources like Nietzsche, Wilde urges us to view our own Ellmann, Richard. 1987. Oscar Wilde. Harmonds- lives as works of art to be constructed. Society worth: Penguin. is tending to “make men themselves machines Gautier, Théophile. 1981. Mademoiselle de Maupin. . . . whereas we want them to be artists, that is J. Richardson (trans.). Harmondsworth: Penguin. to say men.” Indeed, “to become a work of art Gide, André. 1938. Oscar Wilde. Paris: Gallimard. is the object of living” (quoted in Ellmann Raby, Peter (ed.). 1997. The Cambridge Companion 1987: 184–5, 292). to Oscar Wilde. Cambridge: Cambridge University Fully to appreciate Wilde’s position here, we Press. must recall once again his persistent contrast- david e. cooper ing of the incoherent chaos of life and nature with the structured order of the artist’s and critic’s “worlds.” Humans are distinguished Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889–1951) from other beings by their capacity, which Youngest child of Karl Wittgenstein, the iron and largely owes to language, for imposing form on steel magnate and patron of the arts, Ludwig

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Wittgenstein wrote two philosophical master- recorded remark on Michelangelo being banal. pieces, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) When, after World War I, he gave away the for- and the posthumously published Philosophical tune inherited from his father, part of it was dis- Investigations (1953). Neither has much to say tributed to impecunious Austrian artists. about art, which did not lie at the center of his In his early philosophy are to be found a philosophical concerns. few gnomic utterances about art: “Ethics and But Wittgenstein had a deep and abiding aesthetics are one,” “The work of art is the interest in certain of the arts, and, though only object seen sub specie aeternitatis.” These show briefly, practiced two of them, architecture and the influence of Schopenhauer, for whom the sculpture. In 1925 he assumed control of the aesthetic attitude was one of pure will-less project assigned to his friend Paul Engelmann, contemplation in which the subject’s entire a pupil of Adolf Loos (whom Wittgenstein at one consciousness is filled by a single perceptual time admired), to design a house in Vienna image, so that the object he contemplates for Wittgenstein’s sister Gretl, applying himself becomes for the duration of his contempla- to the task with characteristic fanatical zeal. tion his whole world. But they do not invite The house still stands, at 19 Kundmanngasse, prolonged thought, especially in the light of although its interior, to which Wittgenstein Wittgenstein’s view at the time that what is of gave special attention, has been greatly altered. value in art must elude the net of language The house is a stark monument to his functional, and therefore can never be spoken about. antidecorative architectural ideal, which is The situation is not so bleak, however, if we perhaps most appealingly realized in the doors, turn to his later thoughts about art. Even here, radiators, and windows that enliven the other- though, the lack of an extended treatment of wise drab appearance, and which he insisted aesthetics in his writings means that an inter- were constructed to the precise millimeter. He pretation of the way in which he would have also modeled a bust, which Gretl, who sat for applied his new method of thinking to the it, displayed in the Kundmanngasse house. But philosophy of art must be largely speculative. Wittgenstein believed that he possessed only But the lecture notes taken by students who artistic taste, understanding, and good manners, attended his classes at Cambridge confirm that rather than creative ability, and thought of his he had strong opinions about aesthetics; and architectural work as merely the rendering of these notes, and remarks in various writings, an old style into a language appropriate to the make it possible to identify a number of themes modern world. These were, therefore, isolated in his treatment of art, although the diversity forays into artistic practice. of his thoughts precludes a comprehensive Perhaps his two favorite art forms were account, and many of these were not considered music and literature. He had a fairly extensive, and carefully articulated opinions but sponta- although unsystematic and idiosyncratic, know- neous remarks. ledge of literature, made more accessible by his The least surprising feature is the application mastery of German, English, Norwegian, and of one of the leading ideas of his later thought Russian, and he immersed himself so intensely to the concepts of art and beauty. What do in his favorite works that he knew them the arts have in common, in virtue of which almost by heart. He had a very good musical they are all forms of art? What do all beautiful memory and an acute ear, and frequently things have in common, in virtue of which played music in his head; he played the clarinet they are beautiful? In both cases Wittgenstein and was unusually adept at whistling music, rejects the supposition that the reason the sometimes performing complete works. He items concerned fall within the concept is thought of music as having come to a full because they share a property common to and stop with Brahms. He confessed that it was distinctive of them; but the alternative account impossible for him to say in Philosophical that he offers appears to be different in the two Investigations one word about all that music cases. The reason the various art forms are had meant in his life, so that it would be all forms of art is not because they possess a difficult for him to be understood. He seems to distinctive common property, but because have had little interest in painting, his one of the crisscrossing and overlapping of many

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wittgenstein, ludwig resemblances: the arts form a “family.” But the consist in its performing a function that reason why the beauty of one kind of thing (a another work could perform just as well. (As face, say) is very different from the beauty of Wittgenstein pointed out, there is a similarity another kind (e.g., a chair) is because “beauti- between, on the one hand, the doctrine that the ful,” like “good,” is an attributive, rather than value of a work of art is a function of an experi- a predicative, adjective, so that it needs to be ence produced by the experience of the work taken together with the substantive it qualifies, and, on the other hand, the idea – one of the the nature of the judgment of beauty being principal targets of Philosophical Investigations – determined by the kind of thing being judged. that the sense of a sentence is a process that Two of the most prominent themes concern accompanies the utterance or perception of it.) the effects that the arts have on us. The first The second salient theme concerning the emphasizes the autonomy of artistic value effects of works of art is opposition to the against theories that deny works of art any alleged relevance of psychological experiments distinctive value. There is a temptation, in to the solution of certain kinds of aesthetic puz- reflection on the nature of art – one to which zlement. When we are puzzled by our reaction Tolstoy succumbed – to conceive of the appre- to a work of art, our puzzlement, Wittgenstein ciation of any work that we value as consisting insists, cannot be removed by a psychological in the work’s inducing in us a rewarding experi- investigation aimed at determining the cause of ence, and, then, to conceive of this experi- our reaction. For our reaction is “directed” or ence in abstraction from the work that gives rise intentional, taking some aspect of the work as to it. The result is that the value of a work of its object; the puzzlement will be removed only art is thought of as residing in its effects, and by identifying the reason why we react in this these effects are thought of as possessing a way to the work, rather than by identifying nature independent of the work that causes the cause of our reaction; and the criterion for them. So the value of a work of art stands to the a successful resolution of the puzzle is that we work in much the same relation that the value should accept or agree with the offered explana- of a medicine stands to the medicine: just as the tion – a clear mark that what is sought is a rea- valuable results of the medicine can be fully char- son, not a cause. acterized without mentioning the nature of the This position is more difficult to evaluate, medicine that causes them, so the value of a since there are different kinds of aesthetic work of art is located in an independently puzzlement and Wittgenstein’s examples are specifiable effect. something of a medley. Moreover, it appears But, as Wittgenstein insisted, this is cer- to rest on the contentious doctrine that the tainly a misrepresentation of artistic value. For intentionality of an aesthetic impression is if this conception were correct, the appreciation not susceptible of a causal analysis. The prin- of a work of art would consist of two experiences cipal forms of aesthetic puzzlement that – the experience of the work and another expe- Wittgenstein seems to have had in mind con- rience to which this gives rise; and the value of cern what it is about a work of art that makes the work would be determined by the nature of it so impressive, or impressive in a particular the second, not the first, experience. But the way; or what is wrong with a certain work or experience of a work of art does not play a a performance of it; or why a work has just the merely instrumental role in artistic appreciation. distribution of features that it does. In such On the contrary, the value of the work is deter- cases, what is needed to remove the puzzle- mined by the nature of the experience of the ment is, Wittgenstein claims, a certain kind of work itself, rather than any other experience description of the art object. Such a description it happens to generate. The only way of appre- draws attention to the features that give the ciating a work of art is to experience it with work the character in question, but does so in understanding – to read, listen to, imagine, such a manner that we can now perceive these look at, perform the work itself. When we features in the work, with the result that our per- admire a work, it is not replaceable for us ception of it is modified. by another that creates the same effect, for One way in which this can be achieved is by we admire the work itself; its value does not placing side by side with the work other items

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wollheim, richard that possess or lack these characteristics, or by and aesthetic appreciation; and any descrip- indicating an analogy between the work and tion of a culture that illuminates the nature of something else. So – to take one of Wittgenstein’s aesthetic judgments within that culture will be favorite examples – one way of removing puzzle- a description of a complicated set of activities ment about the particular pattern of variation from which the words used to express those in loudness and tempo in a musical theme judgments draw their life. would be to draw a comparison by pointing out that, at this point in the theme, it is as if a See also twentieth-century anglo-american conclusion were being drawn; or that this part aesthetics; expression; ineffability; schopen- is, as it were, in parenthesis; or that it is as if hauer. this part were a reply to what came before. The explanation is persuasive, rather than diag- bibliography nostic, effecting a clarification or change in Primary sources the perception of the work; it differs from the [1921] 1922. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. causal diagnosis of a headache, where the C. K. Ogden (trans.). London: Routledge & Kegan sufferer’s acceptance of the diagnosis is unnec- Paul. essary and leaves his headache unchanged. [1921] 1961. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. This example makes it clear that the prin- D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness (trans.). London: cipal focus of Wittgenstein’s interest in aesthetic Routledge & Kegan Paul. puzzlement is the enhancement of artistic 1953. Philosophische Untersuchungen / Philosophical appreciation: the kind of explanation that dis- Investigations. G. E. M. Anscombe (trans.). Oxford: solves the puzzlement must further the under- Blackwell. 1966. Wittgenstein: Lectures and Conversations on standing and appreciation of the work of art. Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief. C. This explains his emphasis on comparisons; Barrett (ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. the requirement that, if the proposed solution 1979. Notebooks 1914–1916. E. Anscombe (trans.). is to remove the puzzlement, the puzzled sub- 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell. ject should agree with a proposed solution to his 1979. Wittgenstein’s Lectures, Cambridge 1932– problem; and the resultant transformation of the 1935. A. Ambrose (ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. subject’s experience. But unless Wittgenstein’s [1994] 1998. Culture and Value. G. H. von Wright (ed.), opposition to the relevance of psychological with H. Nyman & P. Winch (trans.). 2nd edn. experiments to the solution of aesthetic puzzle- Oxford: Blackwell. ment is narrowly restricted in this way, it is open Secondary sources to obvious counterexamples (Cioffi 1976). Budd, Malcolm. forthcoming. “Wittgenstein on This second theme is linked with another Aesthetics.” In Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein. observation that Wittgenstein makes. Psycho- M. McGinn (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. logical experiments designed to determine Cioffi, Frank. 1976. “Aesthetic Explanation and which musical or pictorial arrangement pro- Aesthetic Perplexity,” Acta Philosophica Fennica, duces the more pleasing effect on a particular 28, 417–49. Elliott, R. K. 1993. “Wittgenstein’s Speculative person or set of people are irrelevant to aesthetics. Aesthetics in its Ethical Context.” In Beyond For aesthetic appreciation is concerned, not Liberal Education: Essays in Honour of Paul H. Hirst. with liking or disliking a work of art, but with R. Barrow & P. White (eds.). London: Routledge, understanding it and experiencing its features 150–68. as right or wrong, better or worse, close to or Moore, George E. 1959. “Wittgenstein’s Lectures in distant from an ideal. This normative element 1930–33.” In Philosophical Papers. London: Allen in the appreciation of a work of art is misrep- & Unwin, 312–15. resented if artistic appreciation is thought of as Tanner, Michael. 1966. “Wittgenstein and merely a matter of what gives pleasure to the Aesthetics,” Oxford Review, 3, 14–24. listener or spectator. In fact, artistic appreci- malcolm budd ation can be made sense of only by locating it in the cultural context to which it belongs and from which it derives its distinctive shape; different Wollheim, Richard (1923–2003) British cultures determine different forms of artistic philosopher. Although his interests were

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wollheim, richard exceptionally wide, Richard Wollheim’s writ- form of life (in Wittgenstein’s sense), artistic ings focused on two principal subjects: art creativity and aesthetic understanding being and human psychology. His profound concern possible only within a complex ramified struc- with human nature – to which he brought his ture of aesthetic practices, enterprises, and unrivaled knowledge of psychoanalytic theory institutions, none of these being identifiable and his commitment to that development of it independently of the other elements in the effected by Melanie Klein – combined with his structure – a claim that is elucidated by pursu- passion for and knowledge of art, especially ing the analogy between art and language. He painting, architecture, and literature, endowed never deviated from this conception of art. The his philosophy of art with a rich, distinctive other is the suggestion of a recursive proced- character. His originality, learning, sure feeling ure for identifying which objects are works for what really matters and a highly personal of art, art being an essentially historical phe- style markedly free from technical jargon nomenon, the changes to which it is inevitably make his writings always fascinating, even subject affecting the conceptual structure that where they do not command assent. He was the surrounds it. finest aesthetician of his generation, making His account of the ontology of art consists of outstanding contributions both to general aes- two main claims. The first is that the funda- thetics, beginning with his justly admired Art mental distinction within works of art is and Its Objects, and to substantive aesthetics, between individuals and types, some works of above all to the philosophy of painting, which art being individuals, the rest types, every culminated in his masterly Painting as an Art. work of art belonging to the same art belong- A defining feature of Wollheim’s thought is ing to the same category, type, or individual as his assigning conceptual priority to the philo- the case may be. The second is that, for all sophy of art over the aesthetics of nature, rep- works of art, the identity of a work of art is deter- resenting the aesthetic attitude to nature as mined by the history of its production. This last that of regarding nature as if it were art. So for claim was of crucial importance for Wollheim, him the central problem of general aesthetics is for it plays a vital role in his account of artistic the elucidation of the concept of art. The philo- meaning (and so of artistic understanding), an sophy of art expounded in Art and Its Objects account that he worked out exclusively for – one of the rare accounts that does justice painting but which he believed could be gen- both to the points of view of the artist and the eralized over the other arts. The psychological spectator – is based on and shaped by the orientation of his aesthetics is writ large in this thought that both in the making and the account, as it is in his accounts of the nature appreciation of the objects of art the concept of of pictorial representation, artistic expression, art is operative. Although primarily concerned individual artistic style, and artistic value: with exploring the nature of art and the onto- each concept is elucidated in psychological logical status of its objects, Wollheim’s unique terms. approach to the subject insured that he Wollheim conceived of artistic meaning in the touched on nearly everything of interest and following way. It is the aim of artists to endow enabled him to deal en route with a number the work they create with a meaning deter- of the most important topics. Some of these he mined by the intentions that guide their activ- dealt with in detail – pictorial representation ity, such an intention being understood as and artistic expression, for example, topics he more or less any psychological factor that returned to repeatedly in later work, develop- motivates the artist to paint as he does. If they ing, modifying, and defending his views; others succeed in fulfilling their intentions, the work – pictorial style, artistic meaning, and under- has a meaning – its own, one and only, mean- standing – in a more sketchy fashion, the out- ing. They succeed only if an adequately sensi- lines of which he later refined, elaborated, and tive and informed spectator who engages with filled in. The outcome of his investigation of the work grasps that meaning, retrieves those the concept of art is not an analytic definition intentions, through undergoing the experi- of a traditional kind. Instead, there are two ences the artist intended it to provide. It is the principal issues. One is the claim that art is a distinctive function of the spectator to do this.

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And, as indicated, the work that possesses phenomenon as complex projection and the this meaning is identified in part by its history character of the unconscious fantasy it con- of production. sists of, it is fair to say that Wollheim’s account Wollheim thought to capture the nature of suffers from at least two defects. The first is pictorial representation and artistic expression that it introduces but fails to make clear the by exploiting two species of perception that he idea of a “correspondence” between inner and attempted to articulate. His conception of pic- outer. The second is the obscurity of the idea of torial representation has attracted a great deal intimation in the third condition: what is this of attention. The most important part of it can supposed to consist in? be put like this: when you look at a picture and Wollheim distinguishes between two different see it as depicting something, a row of trees, say, conceptions of style: general and individual, you undergo a visual experience of a specific the first merely taxonomic, the second genera- kind, one to which Wollheim gave the name tive. Whereas a general style is a set of charac- “seeing-in.” An experience of this kind pos- teristics that are distinctive of paintings in that sesses two aspects, each a visual awareness style, the constitution of this set varying as of something, the so-called “configurational” what is considered distinctive of these paintings aspect being a visual awareness of the surface changes, an individual style is not the set of char- of the picture, the “recognitional” aspect being acteristics associated with it but what in the a visual awareness that involves the third artist’s mind causes the set to be constituted as dimension, an awareness of something being it is, this constitution being, not fluctuating, in front of or behind something else, a visual but fixed. Wollheim’s claim is that each awareness of a row of trees, for example. This painter who is an artist has one and only one conception of pictorial perception presented a individual style, a style which will have been seemingly insoluble problem for Wollheim. For formed and which gives to his (stylistic) works without a specification of the nature of the their distinctive character. Not all a painter’s recognitional visual awareness – something works will derive from his individual style: he did not provide and was unhappy to concede there will be prestylistic works created before the the necessity or even the possibility of – the formation of his style, and there may be post- account is incomplete, and yet he rejected stylistic, when the artist’s style has collapsed, or what appear to exhaust the possibilities: the extrastylistic, when the artist attempts something (illusory) experience as of seeing a row of trees, his style cannot encompass. Wollheim allows the experience of in some way visually imagin- that an artist’s style can undergo change while ing a row of trees, the experience of seeing remaining the same style, but only in exceptional some kind of resemblance to a row of trees. cases of massive psychological disturbance can His account of artistic expression – which, an artist change from having one individual style although focused on the art of painting, he to having a different one, and he appears to dis- again thought could be adapted to apply allow the possibility of a painter possessing across the arts – assumed many forms, which more than one style at a given time. This is a cannot easily be reconciled with one another, plausible position and certainly there are few before eventually crystallizing around a hitherto artists to whom one would want to attribute unrecognized, or at least unnamed, form of the more than one style. But the last mentioned pos- psychoanalytic notion of projection. In its final sibility is not ruled out by any considerations version “expressive perception,” the perception Wollheim advances and it fits easily with the of expression, is a perceptual experience that con- analogy he exploits between two competences: sists of three aspects: a representation of the having a style and knowing a language. Just as world as “corresponding” to an affective psy- a speaker can have a competence in a number chological condition, an affect of the same kind of languages, why shouldn’t an artist possess a as that of the corresponding condition, and a rev- number of individual styles, as it might seem elation or intimation of the origin in so-called Picasso did, not, or not just, in the diachronic “complex” projection, either of the experience sense that Wollheim animadverts against, itself or of the kind to which it belongs. Leaving but at the same time, being able to work in aside the question whether there is such a one or another as he chooses? If works in an

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wollheim, richard individual style are individuated, as Wollheim likeness will depend on which idea of projection takes them to be, by reference to the common subjectivism incorporates and the manner in psychological or psychomotor processes that which it does so. underlie them, the singularity of Picasso’s style, its supposed constancy through the See also twentieth-century anglo-american extraordinarily different manners of painting aesthetics; drawing, painting, and printmak- he practiced so close together in time, turns on ing; criticism; depiction; expression; onto- the identification of the underlying processes – logy of artworks; psychoanalysis and art; at present a distant goal. picture perception; representation; style. As far as the evaluation of art is concerned, although Wollheim does not offer an analysis bibliography of a judgment of aesthetic value, he does, with- Primary sources out explicitly embracing any of them, outline the 1980. Art and Its Objects: An Introduction to only views – there are four of them – of the sta- Aesthetics. 2nd edn (with 6 supplementary tus of aesthetic value which he considers to essays). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. have any plausibility. It is, I believe, clear that 1973. On Art and the Mind: Essays and Lectures. he favors one of them: the view he calls “sub- London: Allen Lane. jectivism,” understanding this term in an 1987. Painting as an Art: The Andrew W. Mellon idiosyncratic sense to indicate a position that Lectures in the Fine Arts. London: Thames & is resistant to easy summary. What can be Hudson. 1993. The Mind and Its Depths. Cambridge, MA: said briefly is that subjectivism, like so-called Harvard University Press. “objectivism,” represents aesthetic value as 2001. “On Formalism and Pictorial Organization,” depending on the character of the experience Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 59, 127–37. of a work of art, by one who understands the 2003. “What Makes Representational Painting work, a character that would justify the attri- Truly Visual?” Proceedings of the Aristotelian bution of aesthetic value to it, such an experi- Society, supp. vol. 77, 131–47. ence being one that gives rise to certain Secondary sources directed thoughts. But subjectivism departs Gerwen R. van (ed.). 2001. Richard Wollheim on the from objectivism in two ways by, first, requir- Art of Painting: Art as Representation and Expression. ing that the thoughts to which the experience Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. gives rise should be complex enough to resist Hopkins, J. & Savile, A. (eds.). 1992. Psychoanalysis, their being correctly characterized as being all Mind and Art: Perspectives on Richard Wollheim. or just about the character of the work, and, sec- Oxford: Blackwell. ond, insisting that the causal pathway from Hopkins, Robert. 2003. “What makes Representa- the work to the experience is not a purely per- tional Painting Truly Visual?” Proceedings of the ceptual one but at some point essentially Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. 77, 149–67. involves a projective mechanism. And it is malcolm budd because subjectivism incorporates the idea of pro- jection that Wollheim likens the status of aes- thetic value accorded by subjectivism to that of work of art see artifact, art as; defnition an expressive quality. Given Wollheim’s con- of “art”; ontological contextualism; ontol- ception of an expressive quality, the degree of ogy of artworks.

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Index

Artists, writers, and philosophers form a separate sub-entry at the beginning of each relevant main entry, preceded by creative works if relevant, and followed by subject sub-entries. Bold text indicates the main article on a subject.

Abbate, Carolyn 96–7 Beardsley 164; Foucault 294; Hume 117, Abell, Catharine 506 332–3; Kant 51–2, 65, 118–22, 124, 164, Abhinavagupta 359, 493 388–9, 445, 483; Lewis 408; Schiller 518; abjection 330, 397–8, 490 Scruton 528; Shaftesbury 538; Sibley 65–6, Abstract Expressionism 108, 150–1, 426, 498 539–40; Walton 589; Wittgenstein 120, abstraction 107–9, 148, 361 596 see also drawing; music; painting; picture objectivity and realism 117–22, 444–7, 495–8 perception; printmaking; representation see also aesthetic pleasure; beauty; relativism accessibility of art 417–18, 465, 559 aesthetic pleasure 8–9, 34, 38, 40–2, 44, 81, 115, Gadamer 303; Tolstoy 572 121–4, 132, 139, 166, 203, 268, 343, Acconci, Vito 463 476–7, 564, 582 Following Piece 202, 204, 464 Aristotle 148; Beardsley 121–2, 164; Goodman Ackroyd, Peter, Hawksmoor 427 123; Hume 333; Kant 51–2, 65, 118–22, acquaintance principle see testimony in 124, 164, 388–9, 483; Schopenhauer 121; aesthetics Sibley 123 Addison, Joseph 35–7, 216, 304, 547–8 see also aesthetic attitude; aesthetic judgment; Burke 177 aesthetic properties; beauty; function of art; Adorno, Theodor W. 58, 91, 109–11, 156, 236, value of art 412 aesthetic properties 44, 65, 67–8, 94, 111, 115, Benjamin 59, 174, 176; Schelling 514 124–8, 128–9, 136, 138, 157, 204, 290–3, popular art 476–8 432, 445–9, 452, 561–2 Aertsen, Jan 25 Beardsley 125, 164; Danto 226; Deleuze 234; Aeschylus 14, 413, 438, 467, 575 Sibley 65–6, 125–7; Tolstoy 572; Walton aesthetic attitude 64, 67–8, 111–14, 121, 129, 588; Wittgenstein 67 137, 196, 363, 385, 429 see also aesthetic judgment; aesthetic pleasure; Bell 173; Dickie 114, 173, 247, 429; Gadamer beauty; senses and art, the; taste 303; Goodman 312; Kant 33, 37, 111–13, aestheticism 16, 92, 128–30, 158, 196, 481, 137, 363, 389–90, 478; Lewis 407; Schiller 502 518–19; Schopenhauer 64, 111; Shaftesbury Aristotle 148; Hegel 316; Kant 128–9; 538; Wittgenstein 594; Wollheim 597 Kierkegaard 130; Wilde 128–30, 428, 502, see also aesthetic pleasure; aesthetic properties 592 aesthetic education 34, 114–17, 118, 189, 194, see also aesthetic attitude; formalism; function of 218, 253, 301, 534–6 art; morality and art; value of art Aristotle 114–15, 338; Dewey 115–16, 245; aesthetics in Antiquity see Antiquity, aesthetics in Hume 46, 115, 499; Hutcheson 44; Kant 49, aesthetics of the environment 71, 76, 115, 117, 115–16; Plato 47, 114, 194; Schiller 36, 134–6, 137, 269, 304 47–9, 52–4, 517–19; Sibley 539 see also aesthetic properties; aesthetics of the see also function of art; morality and art; value everyday; aesthetics of nature; artifact, art as; of art evolution, art, and aesthetics; gardens aesthetic judgment 11, 14, 47, 65–6, 115, aesthetics of the everyday 77, 92, 116–17, 117–21, 127, 272, 292, 299, 351, 413, 136–9, 407 501, 544, 550, 554–6, 560–1 Dewey 136–8, 245–6; Shusterman 136–8

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see also aesthetic attitude; aesthetic properties; Japanese aesthetics 385 aesthetics of food and drink; aesthetics of the see also aesthetics of the environment; environment; aesthetics of nature; evolution, function of art; gardens; modernism and art, and aesthetics postmodernism; technology and art aesthetics of food and drink 131–4, 384–6, 552 Arendt, Hannah 174, 398 Hegel 131; Hume 131; Sibley 132–3 Aristophanes, Frogs 12, 14 see also aesthetic properties; aesthetics of the Aristotle 10–17, 19, 23, 29–30, 77, 91, 147–9, everyday 155, 182, 207, 217, 235, 254, 297–8, 321, aesthetics of nature 112–13, 123–4, 304–6, 384, 328, 336, 383, 390, 423, 547–8, 567 548–50 Aquinas 146; Corneille 30–1; Plato 10–16, Aurelius 17; Dewey 65, 137, 245–6, Hutcheson 472 35; Kant 48, 169, 501; Shaftesbury 34; Wilde aesthetic education 114–15, 338 591–2; Wollheim 597 beauty 15, 148, 169, 321 see aesthetics of the environment; sublime, the catharsis 29, 182–3, 252 African aesthetics 78, 150–1, 139–42, 150–1, tragedy 15, 30–1, 147–8, 252, 328, 349, 404, 206–7, 222, 513 417, 439, 575–6 Agatharcus of Samos 467 Armstrong, Robert Plant 581 Al-Fârâbî 27, 383 Arnheim, Rudolf 85, 298 Al-Haytham, Ibn 24 Arnold, Dana 310 Alain, Emile Chartier 249 Arnold, Matthew 502–3, 529 Albert the Great 23–4, 146 art as artifact see artifact, art as Alberti, Leon Battista 29, 465, 469, 568 “art for art’s sake” see aestheticism Aldrich, Virgil C. 66 art and experience see senses and art, the d’Alembert, Jean le Rond 34, 47 art history 2, 149–52, 205, 268, 270, 273, 291, Alexander of Hales 22 432, 459, 495 Alexander, Thomas M. 247 Benjamin 174; Danto 227; Gombrich 149, 308; Alison, Archibald 37, 48 Hegel 150–1 allegory 21, 169, 175, 294, 496, 529, 552 ontological contextualism 450–1 Allen, Richard 344 art of the Paleolithic see Paleolithic, art of the Allen, Woody, Mighty Aphrodite 575 Artaud, Antonin 296, 397, 463 Allhoff, Fritz 132 artifact, art as 5, 7, 22, 25–8, 58–9, 70, 84, 89, Allison, Henry E. 47, 50 99–100, 125, 151, 152–4, 159, 170, allusion 76, 85, 162, 188–9, 230, 312, 370, 404, 203–4, 213, 287, 325, 373, 384, 393, 415, 449, 473, 478, 568 482, 490, 506, 540, 544, 554, 566, 581 Alperson, Philip 92 Aristotle 147; Baumgarten 40; Bell 249; Althusser, Louis 251 Benjamin 59, 176, 559; Collingwood 198, Amerindian aesthetics 142–5, 159 203; Croce 221; Dickie 69, 248, 569; Anandavardhana 358–9 Foucault 60, 294; Hegel 316–17; Heidegger Anderson, Elizabeth 272–3 56; Kant 206; Langer 401; Levinson 154; Anderson, James C. 232 Lewis 406; Weitz 152–3; Wittgenstein 152–3; Anderson, Laurie 463 Wolff 40 Andre, Carl, Equivalent VIII 568–9 conservation and restoration 205–7 anthropology 85, 238, 250, 270, 379, 396, 400, definition of “art” see definition of “art” 436, 540 see also conceptual art; expression theory; mass Antiquity, aesthetics in 10–22 art; technology and art Antony, Louise 272–3 “artworld” 2, 83, 153, 155–6, 203, 211–14, 226, Apel, K.-O. 499 268–9, 304, 491, 509, 512, 557 Aquinas, Thomas 23–5, 27, 145–7, 167 Danto 68, 155–6, 214, 226–8, 232; Dewey Aristotle 146 245, 482; Dickie 68–9, 155–6, 226, 232, architecture 11, 22, 25, 28–9, 71, 74–6, 83, 105, 248, 568–9; Dufrenne 250; Margolis 412 170, 208, 270, 291, 348, 426–7, 432–3, Ashfield, Andrew 36, 48 442, 454, 463, 478, 527, 573–4, 578 Ashworth, E. Jennifer 27 Foucault 295; Goethe 46; Goodman 75; Hegel Asmis, E. 16 319; Kant 75; Plato 473; Ruskin 508–9; Assunto, Rosario 22 Schlegel, F. 520; Scruton 528–9; Wittgenstein Ast, Friedrich 324, 326 76, 594; Wolff 40, 42; Wollheim 597 attitude, aesthetic see aesthetic attitude African aesthetics 140 Auden, W. H., Funeral Blues 101

601

index audience 2, 11, 14, 16, 31, 38, 46, 53, 58–9, Batteux, Charles 13 61–3, 68, 71, 77, 81, 84, 88, 95–6, 113, Baudelaire, Charles 128, 175–6, 495, 513 116, 129, 153, 157–8, 264, 277, 283, 286, Baudrillard, Jean 543 299, 345, 362, 377, 394, 415, 421, 430, Baumgarten, Alexander G. 10, 32, 36–7, 40–1, 443, 450, 452, 482, 492–4, 504, 526–7, 115, 162–3, 171 534, 545, 547–8, 557, 559–60, 573 Kant 162–3; Nietzsche 163 Aristotle 148; Collingwood 198–9; Dickie 248; Bazin, G. 432–3 Gadamer 303; Hegel 316–17; Hume 332–3; Beardsley, Aubrey 128, 257 Kierkegaard 393; Lessing 402–3, 405; Plato Beardsley, Monroe C. 62, 66, 72, 77–8, 163–5, 473; Ruskin 508; Sartre 513; Tolstoy 572 209, 353, 355, 373, 374, 408, 424, 429, African aesthetics 140 482, 532, 579 Chinese aesthetics 188, 190 Dewey 163 expression theory 264 aesthetic pleasure 121–2, 164 fiction, the paradox of responding to 279–80 aesthetic properties 125, 164 horror 329–31 definition of “art” 69, 164–5, 232 intention and interpretation 230, 368–9, 378–9 “intentional fallacy” 66, 164, 355, 366, Islamic aesthetics 382 369–70, 563 mass art 415–18 Beardsmore, R. W. 300 performance 461–2 Beatles, the 451 performance art 463–5 “Revolution Nine” 93; “Something” 94 popular art 476–8 Beattie, James 45, 48 psychoanalysis 484–8 beauty 2–3, 9, 11, 13–17, 19–29, 31, 40, 60, 71, tragedy 575–6 74, 100–1, 122, 128–9, 131, 156, 166–71, Augustine of Hippo, St. 21–6, 27, 537, 552 204, 209, 216, 232, 331, 339–42, 356, 395, Austen, Jane 205, 210 429, 481, 485, 496, 501–3, 526–7, 532, Pride and Prejudice 194–5, 354, 418, 536 566, 580–2 authenticity and art 92, 97, 132, 156–9, Adorno 110; Aquinas 24, 146–7, 167; Aristotle 179–80, 461, 482, 563 148, 169, 321; Baumgarten 10, 41, 163; Benjamin 174; Deleuze 236; Herder 46 Burke 36–8, 42, 177–8; Dewey 167, 171; see also conservation and restoration; cultural Dickie 247; Diderot 34; Foucault 294; appropriation; forgery; ontology of artworks; Goodman 311; Hanslick 314; Hegel 53, originality 170–1, 316–18, 320; Heidegger 163, author, implied see implied author 321; Hume 42–3, 45, 47, 167–9, 331–3; Averroes 27, 29 Hutcheson 34–5, 38, 42–4, 47, 126, Avicenna 27 338–40; Kant 24, 36–7, 43–4, 47–8, 51–2, Ayer, A. J. 444–5 54, 147, 166–9, 171, 292, 388–91, 503, 582; Lessing 403–5; Lukács 410; Meier 41; Bach, J. S. 158, 171, 245, 452, 526, 555 Nietzsche 438, 440; Plato 16, 21, 28, 52, Bach, Kent 132 167–9, 171, 472–4; Plotinus 21, 474–5; Bacharach, Sondra 450 Ruskin 509; Santayana 167, 511–12; Sartre Bachelard, Gaston 251 513; Schiller 36, 48–9, 52, 54, 517–19; Baeumker, Clemens 24 Schlegel, A. 520; Schopenhauer 523; Scruton Bahn, Paul 4 528, 530; Shaftesbury 34–5, 537–8; Tolstoy Bakhtin, Mikhail 56, 396 571–2; Wilde 592; Wittgenstein 594–5; Balanchine 77, 461 Wolff 42 Balzac 160, 415, 496, 542, 592 aesthetic attitude 111–12 Banes, Sally 78 aesthetic judgment 117–19 Barry, Robert, All the things I know but of which aesthetic properties 125–7 I am not at the moment thinking – 1:36 pm, African aesthetics 139–40 June 15, 1969 154, 203 Amerindian aesthetics 142–5 Barth, John 426–7 evolution, art, and aesthetics 6, 259–60 Barthes, Roland 59–60, 160–2, 249, 376, 378, feminist aesthetics 268–9, 273–4 380, 426, 563–5 formalism 290–2 Dufrenne 249; Kristeva 397 Indian aesthetics 359–60 structuralism 366, 374, 542 Islamic aesthetics 381–3 Bataille, Georges 296, 397 Japanese aesthetics 385 Battersby, Christine 267 objectivity 445–9

602

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relativism 498–9 Breton, André 55, 175, 488 sublime, the 548–51 Breuil, Abbé Henri 4 taste 554–5 Brock, Stuart 286 tragedy 576–7 Brook, Isis 306 Beckett, Samuel 184, 381, 415 Brooks, Cleanth 103, 215–17, 219, 375 Beethoven, Ludwig van 53, 61, 157–8, 250, 271, Brown, Lee B. 92, 462 361, 417, 442, 456, 461, 513, 523, 586, Browning, Robert, My Last Duchess 354 588 Brunelleschi, Filippo 465–6 Hammerklavier sonata 452 Bruyne, Edgar de 22 Beiser, Frederick C. 520, 522 Budd, Malcolm 103, 124, 128, 136, 241, 256, Bell, Clive 111, 172–4, 245, 247, 293, 401, 502, 263, 304, 315, 402, 449, 562, 596 566 Buddhism, and Japanese aesthetics 305, 384 Kant 63; Dickie 249 Bullough, Edward 64, 67, 111, 121, 299 formalism 62–3, 121, 164, 237, 290–1 Bungay, Stephen 320 Bell, David 556 Burke, Edmund 177–8, 318, 489, 574 Belsey, C. 217–18 Addison 177; Hume 177; Kant 177; Lessing 177 Bender, John 132, 448 beauty 36–8, 42, 177–8 Benjamin, Walter 174–7 sublime, the 19–20, 36–7, 177–8, 549 Adorno 59, 174, 176; Goethe 174, 176 art’s technological reproduction 59, 176, 559 Cage, John 463 Bergson, Henri 202, 336 canon 71, 79, 179–82, 215, 284, 307, 324, 327, Berkeley, George 42, 167, 371 432, 468 Berleant, Arnold 113, 116, 136–7 Burke 178; Deleuze 236; Gombrich 308; Hume Bernasconi, Robert 324 45 Bernays, Jacob 183 feminist criticism 270–1, 273–4 Betti, Emilio 325–6 interpretation 374–5 Bhabha, Homi K. 489–91 taste 47, 556 Bharata 357, 492–4 see also feminist aesthetics and criticism; race Bicknell, Jeanette 94, 159 and aesthetics; tradition Binkley, Timothy 204, 558 capitalism 110, 413, 433, 481, 490 Bizet, Georges, Carmen 271 Capote, Truman 86 Black, Deborah L. 27, 383 In Cold Blood 278 Black, Max 424 Carlson, Allen 136 Blackburn, Simon 446 Carnap, Rudolf 362, 400 Bloch, Ernst 412 Carney, James D. 69, 232 Bloom, Harold 181, 229, 374 Carpenter, John, The Thing 329 Boden, Margaret 193, 208, 210 Carrier, David 151, 205, 207 Boethius 24–5 Carroll, Joseph 260 Boileau, Nicolas 36, 216, 548–9 Carroll, Lewis 307, 367 de Bolla, Peter 36, 48 Jabberwocky 335 Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, St. 27 Carroll, Noël 45, 69, 77, 91, 194, 201, 229, 233, Booth, Wayne C. 354–6, 381, 429 279, 329–30, 368, 418, 425, 429–30, Bordwell, David 356 463–4, 476, 478, 556–9 Borges, Jorge Luis 86, 295 Cassirer, Ernst 163, 465–6 Bouguereau, William-Adolphe 57 Castelvetro, Lodovico 29 Boulnois, Olivier 25–7 catharsis 182–3, 252, 576 Bourdieu, Pierre 273, 433–4, 478 Aristotle 29, 182–3; Corneille 30–1; Lessing Bowie, Andrew 361–2, 514 183; Nietzsche 183 Bradbury, Malcolm 215 see also fiction, the paradox of responding to; Bradley, Andrew C. 130, 577 tragedy Brady, Emily 132, 136–7, 306 Caudwell, Christopher 412, 415 Brahms, Johannes 456, 529, 594 Cavell, Stanley 68, 97, 183–5, 247, 362, 478 Brakhage, Stan, Scenes from under Childhood 416 censorship 71, 185–8, 342–3, 484 Brand, Peg Zeglin 171, 267, 269, 275 Plato 47, 473 Braque, Georges 62 see also erotic art and obscenity; morality and Brecht, Bertolt 97, 175–6, 412, 415 art; pornography Bredin, Hugh 147 Cézanne, Paul 57, 62, 108, 150, 172, 422

603

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Charlton, William 280, 570 conservation and restoration 156, 205–7, 450 Chaucer, Geoffrey, Canterbury Tales 497 see also art history; museums; ontology of Chinese aesthetics 96, 100, 150–1, 188–91, 207, artworks 305, 397, 573 Constable, John 260, 298 Chow, Rey 489–91 Wivenhoe Park 309, 311 Chrysippus 17 contextualism see ontological contextualism Chuang-Tzu 361 convention 59–60, 67–70, 86, 102, 109–10, Cicero 17, 22, 547 226–7, 238–9, 282–3, 309, 441, 443, cinema see motion pictures 552–3 Cioffi, Frank 370, 596 Cooper, David E. 305, 363, 379, 425 Cixous, Hélène 270 Cooper, James Fenimore, The Last of the Mohicans classicism 109, 151, 413, 496, 537–8 127 Cleanthes 17–18 Corneille, Pierre 30–1, 221, 548, 576 Cleiton 12 Cosmides, L. 260 Cleland, John, Fanny Hill 479 Costelloe, Timothy 45 Clover, Carol 330–1 Courbet, Gustave 56, 496 cognitive science and art 71, 102, 191–4, 210, Cousin, Victor 129 328, 533 Cox, Renée 271 see also evolution, art, and aesthetics; science Craig-Martin, Michael, An Oak Tree 202 and art Crawford, Donald W. 47, 392 cognitive value of art 115, 194–7, 429–30 creativity 13, 20, 66, 71, 90, 153, 159, 193, see also function of art; literature; morality and 207–10, 224, 259–60, 267–8, 288, 305, art; Plato; truth in art; value of art 346–8, 428, 458, 461, 477, 567–8, 574 Cohen, Marshall 68 Beardsley 209; Collingwood 198–9, 207, 209; Cohen, Selma Jeanne 78 Deleuze 236; Dickie 248; Dufrenne 150–1; Cohen, Ted 202, 425, 540 Foucault 294–5; Freud 208, 484–5; Herder Coleman, Elizabeth Burns 159, 225 46; Kant 207–9; Kierkegaard 58; Langer 402; Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 21, 216, 279, 349, 495, Levinson 210; Lyotard 61; Nietzsche 207; 502, 508–9, 520 Plato 207–9, 472, 474; Sibley 209; Collingwood, R. G. 26, 61–2, 197–9, 207, 209, Wittgenstein 597 363, 455, 500, 502–3, 508 African aesthetics 139, 141 Croce 199, 222; Dewey 246 Indian aesthetics 359 artifact, art as 198, 203 Japanese aesthetics 385 audience 198–9 see also imagination; originality; value of art creativity 198–9, 207, 209 critical monism and pluralism 26, 211–14, emotion 62, 197 376–7 expression 197–8 see also canon; criticism; deconstruction; expression theory 198–9, 203, 264–6, 355, feminist aesthetics and criticism; implied 566–7 author; intention; “intentional fallacy”; ontology of artworks 265–6, 455 interpretation; literature; poetry; meaning work of art 62, 198–9, 266 constructivism; text comedy 7, 199–202, 216, 282, 308, 334–8, 477 criticism 16–17, 33, 77–8, 80–1, 83, 101–2, 118, Cavell 184; Hegel 317, 319; Kierkegaard 171, 215–19, 229–31, 350, 355–6, 366, 337–8, 392–3; Lessing 405 372–5, 379, 412, 428, 435–7, 462, 491, tragedy 576–7 495, 498, 500, 530, 542–4, 546–8, 563, comics 558 568 communication 53, 61, 76–7, 82, 98, 102, 183, Adorno 109; Baumgarten 163; Beardsley 62, 245–6, 300, 362, 379, 487, 506, 530, 546, 66, 163, 165; Bell 173; Benjamin 174–5; 557, 573 Cavell 183–4; Croce 221; Deleuze 234; composition, musical 134, 137, 217, 222 Derrida 60; Dufrenne 251; Foucault 293; see also ontology of artworks; work of art Hegel 318; Heidegger 323; Hume 331; composition, rules of 117–18, 385 Kames 37–9, 46; Kristeva 396–7; Lukács conceptual art 2, 53, 154, 202–5, 298, 308, 464, 409; Margolis 411; Santayana 512; Sartre 532 513; Schlegel, F. 521; Scruton 528–9; Sibley see also artifact, art as; definition of “art”; 539–40; Wilde 591–2 modernism and postmodernism; ontology canon 179–81 of artworks; performance art feminism 71–2, 267, 269–70

604

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see also critical monism and pluralism; De Sanctis, Francesco 219 deconstruction; feminist aesthetics and De Staël, Mme 519–20 criticism; implied author; intention; Dean, Jeffrey 173 “intentional fallacy”; interpretation; literature; death of art see “end of art” meaning constructivism; New Criticism; DeBellis, Mark 92 poetry; text deconstruction 217–18, 229–31, 304, 380, 498, Croce, Arlene 78 541–2, 562 Croce, Benedetto 26, 197, 219–22, 355, 411, Barthes 160; Derrida 229–31, 242–3, 562 453, 500, 579 see also critical monism and pluralism; criticism; Collingwood 199, 222; Dewey 244; Hegel 219; deconstruction; implied author; intention; Margolis 411 interpretation; meaning constructivism; expression theory 61–2, 264, 355, 518 structuralism and poststructuralism; text Cross, Ian 260 definition of “art” 2, 203, 231–4, 482, 507, Crowther, Paul 181, 459 565–8 Cubism 150–1, 426 Beardsley 69, 164–5, 232; Bell 63; Carroll 69, Culler, Jonathan 162, 381 233; Davies 203, 231–3; Dickie 69, 164, cultural appropriation 222–5 232–3, 568; Hume 332; Kennick 66, 152; see also Amerindian aesthetics; authenticity and Levinson 69, 203, 232; Margolis 411; Weitz art; forgery; museums 66, 152–3, 203, 233, 248; Wittgenstein 66, Curran, Angela 91 249; Wollheim 233, 597 Currie, Gregory 9, 91, 192, 277–8, 283, 286, see also artifact, art as; “artworld”; conceptual 353, 356, 368, 452, 456 art; Dickie, George; formalism; function of art Curtiz, Michael, Casablanca 356, 416 Degas, Edgar 257 Girl Drying Herself 495 Dadaism 55, 308, 463–4, 488, 498 Deleuze, Gilles 60, 234–8 dance 11, 71, 76–8, 87, 92, 192–3, 203, 270, Demetz, Peter 412 300, 362, 442, 453–4, 492, 577 Democritus 13 Aristotle 147; Goodman 311; Kant 391; Dennis, John 216 Margolis 411; Plato 472, 474 depiction 4–5, 7–8, 12, 21, 83, 92, 107, 216, African aesthetics 77, 141 224, 238–41, 280, 330, 347, 361, 465, Amerindian aesthetics 142–3 468, 496, 504 Chinese aesthetics 188 Aristotle 148, Beardsley 66; Du Bos 39; Islamic aesthetics 77 Gombrich 84, 240, 310, 344, 469, 573; see also definition of “art”; expression; feminist Goodman 67, 238–9, 312, 466, 469; Hume aesthetics and criticism; music; performance 332; Kames 39–40; Langer 64; Lessing 405; Dandin 358–9 Nietzsche 439; Walton 589; Wollheim 67, Dante, Alighieri 25, 27, 29, 217, 245, 519–20, 598 579 photography 98–9 Danto, Arthur C. 68–70, 123, 203, 226–9, 232, see also abstraction; drawing; painting; 249, 292, 308, 449–50, 458, 507, 532 perspective; picture perception; printmaking; Hegel 70, 227–8; Kant 227 realism; representation art history 227 Derrida, Jacques 60, 241–4, 251, 380, 425, 499 “artworld” 68, 155–6, 214, 226–8, 232 Hegel 241–2, 316; Heidegger 242–3; Kant interpretation 70 242–3; Nietzsche 242; Plato 241–2 ontological contextualism 449–50 deconstruction 229–31, 242–3, 562 Darbel, A. 433 poststructuralism 366–7, 541–3, 564 Darwin, Charles 51, 210, 581 Descartes, René 28, 162, 167, 184, 235, 241, Davey, Nicholas 163 296–7, 422 Davidson, Donald 213, 424, 446, 506 Devereaux, Mary 429 Davies, David 204, 283, 377, 452, 462, 465, 532 Dewey, John 64–6, 77, 133, 163, 167, 171, Davies, Stephen 69, 92–4, 96, 154, 157–8, 165, 221–2, 244–7, 324, 361, 407, 431, 482 203, 231–3, 263, 265, 301, 315, 369, 377, Croce 244; Collingwood 246; Kant 64; 402, 443, 451–2, 462 Shusterman 65, 116 Davis, Angela Y. 489, 491 aesthetic education 115–16, 245 Davis, Whitney 8 aesthetics of the everyday 136–8 De Clercq, Rafael 128 aesthetics of nature 65, 137, 245–6 De Mechel, Chrétien 432 pragmatist aesthetics 481–2

605

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Dickens, Charles Eagleton, Terry 33, 61, 85, 174, 415, 542 Martin Chuzzlewit 534; Our Mutual Friend 354 Eaton, A. W. 273, 480 Dickie, George 37, 72, 77, 203, 247–9, 539, Eaton, Marcia 115 555 Ecker, Gisella 267–8 Bell 249; Weitz 248 Eco, Umberto 22, 24 aesthetic attitude 114, 173, 247, 429 The Name of the Rose 427 “artworld” 68–9, 155–6, 226, 232, 248, education, aesthetic see aesthetic education 568–9 eighteenth-century aesthetics 32–51 institutional definition of “art” 69, 164, 232–3, Eldridge, Richard 185 568 Eliot, George 503 Diderot, Denis 34, 40, 316 Middlemarch 275 Diffey, Terry 69, 571 Eliot, T. S. 210–11, 366, 504, 527, 546 Dilthey, Wilhelm 303, 324–6, 371 The Wasteland 563 Dilworth, John 276 Elliott, R. K. 173, 596 Diogenes Laertius, Lives 16 Ellmann, Richard 592 Dipert, Randall R. 154, 462 Elster, Jon 209–10 Dissanayake, Ellen 260, 581 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 21, 184, 481–2, Dodd, Julian 96, 154 552 Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich 379, 398, 410, emotion 91, 182, 191–3, 252–6, 349, 355, 579 566 Douglas, Mary 397 Aristotle 252–4; Bell 63, 172–3; Burke 37; drama 13–16, 29, 31, 47, 71, 78–82, 84, 89, Collingwood 62, 197; Du Bos 39; Hanslick 95–7, 102, 134, 169, 217, 261, 267, 270–1, 314–15; Hume 252, 333; Plato 148; 275, 300, 348, 393, 415, 442, 460–4, 477, Walton 590 482, 531, 535, 546, 548, 566, 578 expression 262–4 Benjamin 174–5; Cavell 183–4; Du Bos 39; expression theory 264–6 Hegel 317–18, 320; Hume 332; Kierkegaard fiction, the paradox of responding to 252, 392–3; Lessing 402–5; Nietzsche 438–41, 278–81 576; Plato 47, 473; Schlegel, A. 520; rasa 492–4 Tolstoy 570 sentimentality 534–6 Indian 115, 492–4 see also aesthetic education; aesthetic pleasure; Japanese 384 catharsis; kitsch; tragedy ontology of artworks 453–4, 457 Empedocles 29 rasa 492–4 “end of art” 53, 70, 227–8, 318–19, 322 tragedy 216, 329, 575–8 Engels, Friedrich 408, 410, 412–15 see also literature; Shakespeare, William; Enton, Harry, Frank Reade his Steam Man of the Wagner, Richard Plains 415 drawing 7–8, 82–5, 108, 191, 258, 274, 442, environmental aesthetics see aesthetics of the 455, 469, 496, 533, 545, 565 environment Gombrich 84, 240, 310, 344, 469, 573; Epicurus 16 Goodman 67, 238–9, 312, 466, 469; Eriugena, John Scottus 27 Kant 37, 84 erotic art and obscenity 11, 14, 187, 256–8, 336, Chinese 100, 189 485 Islamic 383 Burke 178; Kierkegaard 392; Levinson 257–8; Japanese 385 Plato 472–3; Wagner 588 Dryden, John 217 feminist aesthetics and criticism 271–4 Du Bos, Jean-Baptiste, Abbé 38–9, 45, 49, 338 pornography 479–80 Duchamp, Marcel 204, 319, 450 rasa 492–4 Fountain 69, 153, 165, 202–3, 568 see also censorship; feminist aesthetics and ready-mades 2, 59, 227 criticism; morality and art; pornography; Dufrenne, Mikel 56, 113, 249–51, 361, 365 value of art Barthes 249; Heidegger 250–1; Ingarden d’Errico, F. 3, 5 249–50; Kant 250; Merleau-Ponty 250; Euripides 14, 575 Sartre 250 Iphigenia 374 Dunbar, Robin 6, 8 evaluation of art see value of art Duncan, Carol 274, 432–3 evolution, art, and aesthetics 1–3, 7, 71, 92, Dutton, Denis 159, 261, 290, 583 259–61, 448

606

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universals in art 581–3 fiction, truth in 281–4 see also cognitive science and art; objectivity; Currie 281; Lewis, D. K. 281–2; Walton 282 Paleolithic, art of the see also cognitive value of art; fiction, nature of; existentialism 58, 294, 321, 392, 438, 512 fictional entities; implied author; intention; expression 11–12, 17, 19, 26, 48, 75, 77–8, “intentional fallacy”; interpretation; meaning 82–3, 88, 90, 93–4, 100, 102–3, 122, 129, constructivism; literature; text; truth in art 133, 150, 156–7, 191–3, 215, 252, 261–4, fictional entities 71, 284–7, 354 355, 362–3, 424, 445, 458, 507, 546, 566, Meinong, 284–5; Russell 284–5; Walton 574 589–90 Adorno 109; Beardsley 66; Cavell 183–4; see also emotion; fiction, the paradox of Collingwood 197–8; Croce 220–1; Deleuze responding to; fiction, truth in; imagination; 235; Dewey 246; Freud 55, 484–5; Goodman implied author 67, 311–12; Hanslick 91; Hegel 53, 318; Fielding, Henry Kant 168, 388; Kristeva 487; Langer 64, Amelia 354; Joseph Andrews 354; Tom Jones 354 400–2; Nietzsche 55; Santayana 511–12; film see motion pictures Walton 71, 262–3; Wollheim 67, 263, 597–8 Fish, Stanley 483, 564 in African aesthetics 139–40 Fisher, John Andrew 91, 559 in Amerindian aesthetics 142–4 Fisher, P. 433 censorship 185–6 Flaubert, Gustave 128, 380, 495–6, 513–14, 535 in Chinese aesthetics 189–90 folk art 53, 157, 572 feminist aesthetics and criticism 270–2 forgery 156, 287–90 in Japanese aesthetics 386 Goodman 288–9; Wollheim 288 see also emotion; expression theory see also conservation and restoration; expression theory 61–2, 264–6, 458, 566 expression theory; function of art; ontology Collingwood 198–9, 203, 264–6, 355, 566–7; of artworks; originality; senses and art, the; Croce 61–2, 264, 355, 518; Tolstoy 62, 264, value of art 299, 572 form and content 148, 360, 461, 476, 502, 520, see also artifact, art as; expression; ontology of 546 artworks; work of art form, significant 63, 121, 172–3, 237, 243, Expressionism, Abstract see Abstract 359–60, 401–2, 440 Expressionism see also Bell, Clive; formalism; Fry, Roger formalism 62–3, 77, 83–4, 111–12, 115, 150, fake see forgery 207, 290–3, 429, 540, 567 Fanon, Frantz 489 Baumgarten 41; Bell 62–3, 121, 164, 237, fantasy 257, 307, 349–50, 478, 480, 485, 487, 290–3; Danto 292; Fry 290, 293; Gombrich 490, 496, 502–3, 598 291–2; Hanslick 291–3; Hegel 291; Schiller Feagin, Susan 376–7, 577 517; Walton 292; Wollheim 290 feeling see emotion Forster, E. M. 129 Felski, Rita 267 Foucault, Michel 59–60, 86, 293–7, 325 feminist aesthetics and criticism 71–2, 267–75, Heidegger 297; Nietzsche 296; Sartre 296 396 interpretation 374, 376 see also canon; criticism; pornography; poststructuralism 160, 542–3 psychoanalysis and art; race and aesthetics Fraleigh, Sandra 77 Ferry, Luc 33 Francesca, Piero della 465 Fichte, J. G. 392, 514–15, 518, 521–2 Baptism of Christ 527 Ficino, Marsilio 28–30 Frankenheimer, John, The Manchurian Candidate fiction, nature of 86, 275–8, 307, 348, 352, 575, 577 435 Freedberg, David 343 Currie 277–8; Walton 277 Freeland, Cynthia 91, 331 see also cognitive value of art; fiction, truth in; Frege, Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob 166, 291, 348 fictional entities; imagination; literature; Frere, John 1, 3, 6 narrative; poetry Freud, Sigmund 51, 55, 60, 183–4, 208, 242, fiction, the paradox of responding to 71, 192–3, 298–9, 328, 350, 397 252, 278–81, 352 humor 336–7 Radford 279; Walton 280, 590 psychoanalysis 420, 484–8, 515, 553 see also emotion; fictional entities; horror; Frith, William Powell, Paddington Station 172 imaginative resistance; tragedy Frueh, Joanna 270

607

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Fry, Roger 62–3, 164, 172, 290, 293, 502 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 21, 46, 57, 316, function of art 150–1, 158, 206, 232, 290, 413, 432, 552 297–301 Wilhelm Meister 522 Aristotle 297–8; Croce 220; Danto 227–8; Benjamin 174, 176; Lukács 410; Schiller 518; Freud 298–9; Hegel 318–20; Langer 298; Schlegel, F. 521 Marx 298; Plato 297–8; Tolstoy 53, 56, Gogol, Nikolai 571, 579 61–2, 298–9, 572; Wittgenstein 67 Inspector General 202 African aesthetics 140–1 Goldberg, RoseLee 463–4 Amerindian aesthetics 144 Goldie, Peter 205 Chinese aesthetics 188–90 Goldman, Alan H. 124, 128, 376–7, 448, 458–9, Indian aesthetics 492–4 555, 570 Japanese aesthetics 384–6 Goldmann, Lucien 396, 412 see also aestheticism; aesthetic pleasure; Gombrich, Ernst 149, 197, 291–2, 308–11, definition of “art”; evolution, art, and 592 aesthetics; Marxism and art; psychoanalysis illusion 84, 240, 308, 345, 466, 469, 545 and art; realism pictorial representation 84, 240, 308–10, 344, 469, 573 Gabo, Naum 104 Gooding-Williams, Robert 490–1 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 58, 162–3, 236, 302–4, Goodman, Nelson 65, 67, 70, 75, 77, 123, 247, 499, 514, 519 311–13, 443, 461, 592 Dilthey 303; Heidegger 302, 323; Hegel 303; depiction 67, 238–9, 312, 466, 469 Kant 58, 302; Plato 303; Schiller 302 forgery 288–9 hermeneutics 302–3, 324–7, 372–3 ontology of artworks 67, 377, 456 Gans, Herbert 476 pragmatist aesthetics 482–3 gardens 46, 304–6, 384 Gorgias 13–14 Hegel 304–5; Schopenhauer 305–6 Gould, Carroll 173 see also aesthetics of the environment; Gould, Glenn 574 aesthetics of the everyday; aesthetics of Gould, Timothy 185 nature Goya y Lucientes, Francisco de 112 Gardiner, Patrick 519, 525 Disasters of War 192 Gass, William 429 Gracyk, Theodore 92–4, 225, 452, 557 Gaut, Berys 69, 91, 194, 196, 207–9, 231, 233, Greenberg, Clement 62, 108, 150–1, 394, 426, 355–6, 425, 429–30 463 Gautier, Théophile 592–3 Grice, H. Paul 379, 506–7 Mademoiselle de Maupin 128 Grosseteste, Robert 22–3 Gay, Peter 426 Guerilla Girls 274 Gendler, Tamar Szabó 351–3 Guyer, Paul 38, 44–5, 47–8, 112, 392, 459 Genet, Jean 293, 513 gynesis 269–70 Genette, Gérard 437 gynocriticism 269–70 genre 68, 79–80, 166, 213, 282–3, 306–8, 327 Habermas, Jürgen 214, 325, 499 Beardsley 165; Cavell 184; Lessing 403–5; Hagberg, Garry 402 Walton 588–9 Halliwell, Stephen 12, 18, 149, 182, 474, 577 see also fictional entities; narrative; ontological Hals, Frans 209, 288 contextualism; style Halverson, J. 9 Gentile, Giovanni 220 Hamilton, Andy 92 Gentileschi, Artemisia, Susanna and the Elders Hamilton, James R. 82, 462, 464 274 Hampshire, Stuart 65, 299 Geoffrey of Vinsauf 25 Hanslick, Eduard 17, 91, 291–3, 314–15 George, Stefan 323 Hardin, C. L. 555 Gerard, Alexander 38, 45, 49 Hardy, Thomas 525 Ghiberti, Lorenzo 465 Jude the Obscure 281–3 Giacometti, Alberto 105, 513 Hartman, Geoffrey 229–30 Gilbert, W. S., Patience 128 Hartmann, Nicolai 365 Giotto 149, 172, 309, 497 Hauck, Guido 465 Godlovitch, Stan 92, 158, 462 Haydn, Franz Joseph 158, 205, 450, 452–3 Goehr, Lydia 96 Hayek, Friedrich von 574

608

index

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 52–3, 72, 77, 131, Horkheimer, Max 109, 476–7 150–1, 219, 235, 241–2, 291, 303–5, 308, horror 193, 252, 278, 280, 286, 328–31 315–20, 324, 349, 379, 396, 411, 413, 453, Burke 177; Carroll, N. 329; Kristeva 397–8; 490, 500–2, 508, 530, 543 Lessing 405; Walton 590 Danto 70, 227–8; Heidegger 321–3; Kant 53, and the sublime 547, 549 315–18; Kierkegaard 315, 392–3; Lukács see also catharsis; feminist aesthetics and 409–10; Marx 315; Schelling 316, 514–16; criticism; Kristeva, Julia; tragedy Schiller 518 Hospers, John 209, 579 the absolute 316, 322, 501–2 Hugh of St. Victor 26 beauty 53, 170–1, 316–18, 320 Hülsen, August Ludwig 521 tragedy 316–17, 575, 577 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 518, 552 Heidegger, Martin 56, 60, 156, 184, 234–6, Hume, David 31, 38, 99, 117, 131, 183, 234, 242–3, 246, 250–1, 297, 321–4, 363, 365, 252, 331–4, 345, 349, 351–2, 489, 499, 372, 579 535, 549, 582, 590 Aristotle 321; Baumgarten 163, 321; Gadamer Burke 177; Kant 43–4, 47; Shaftesbury 538 302, 323; Hegel 321–3; Husserland 321; aesthetic education 46, 115, 499 Nietzsche 321–2; Plato 321; Schelling 514, aesthetic judgment 117, 332–3 516 beauty 42–3, 45, 47, 167–9, 331–3 hermeneutics 58, 321, 324–5 objectivity and realism 445, 447–8 Heinz, John 282 taste 44–7, 332–4, 554–6 Heller, Erich 441, 524 tragedy 44, 49, 332–4 Hemacandra 359 humor 199–202, 259, 334–8 Hepburn, Ronald W. 256 Bergson 336; Freud 336–7; Kant 335; Hegel Heraclitus 12 317, 319; Hobbes 336; Kierkegaard 337–8, Herbart, J. F. 219 379–80, 392–3; Plato 334, 336; Schlegel, F. Herder, Johann Gottfried 46–7, 49, 163, 518, 522; Wilde 130 533, 553 see also comedy; irony; tragedy hermeneutics 56–8, 324–8, 372–3, 552 Humphrey, Nicholas 8–9 Gadamer 302–3, 324–7, 372–3; Hegel 324; Husserl, Edmund 56, 60, 241–2, 244, 250, 321, Heidegger 58, 321, 324–5; Kant 324, Marx 364–5 325; Nietzsche 325 Hutcheson, Francis 33–6, 38, 338–40, 554 see also interpretation; semiotics; symbol; text beauty 34–5, 38, 42–4, 47, 126, 338–40 Hesiod 11–13 Hyman, John 241, 471, 497 Theogony 11 Hyppolite, Jean 241–2 Hewison, Robert 508 Higgins, Kathleen Marie 396, 441, 583 Ibsen, Henrik 577 Higgins, Paula 271 iconoclasm 341–3, 548 Hirsch, E. D., Jr. 325–7, 372–4, 564 see also censorship; pornography; religion and Hirstein, William 261 art; symbol history of art see art history idolatry see iconoclasm Hitchcock, Alfred, Psycho 328 illusion 343–6 Hobbema, Meindert, The Water Mill with the Great Carroll 279; Du Bos 39; Gombrich 84, 240, 308, Red Roof 471 345, 466, 469, 545; Hume 345; Langer 345, Hobbes, Thomas 85, 336, 537 401; Lessing 345; Nietzsche 438, 440; Hoffmann, E. T. A. 361, 363, 586 Wollheim 471 Holbein, Hans 398 see also imagination; picture perception; Ambassadors 196 representation; trompe l’oeil effects Hölderlin, Johann Christian Friedrich 302, 316, images, mental see imagination 321, 323, 514 imagination 113, 193–4, 208–9, 345, 346–51, 531 Holmes, Oliver Wendell Jr. 186 Addison 36; Freud 350; Hegel 349; Hume 349; Home, Henry see Kames, Lord Kant 37–8, 349–50, 388; Plato 18–19; Sartre Homer 11–13, 15, 18, 21, 30, 181, 320, 374, 513–14; Scruton 528–9; Walton 67, 70–1, 403, 438, 496, 527, 549, 579, 582 286, 470–1, 589–90; Wittgenstein 347 Iliad 413; Odyssey 11, 473, 548; Thersites 405 see also creativity; fiction, truth in; fictional Hopkins, Robert 104, 239–40, 289, 446, 470, entities; fiction, the paradox of responding to; 532–3, 560, 599 illusion; imaginative resistance; metaphor; Horace 11, 13, 170, 403 picture perception

609

index imaginative resistance 351–4 intention 366–74, 376, 378–9, 462 Currie 353; Hume 351–2; Walton 351–3, 591 “intentional fallacy” 369–71 see also cognitive science and art; fiction, the meaning constructivism 418–21 paradox of responding to; fiction, truth in; performance 80–1, 461–2 imagination; morality and art relativism 498–500 implied author 354–6, 368, 429 see also criticism; deconstruction; intention; Beardsley 353; Collingwood 355; Croce 355; metaphor; New Criticism; poetry; text Currie 356; Gaut 355–6; Levinson 355; Irigaray, Luce 270 Nehamas 354; Robinson 355; Walton 356 irony 378–81, 338 see also intention; “intentional fallacy”; Barthes 378, 380; Beardsley 164; Derrida 380; interpretation; meaning constructivism; style; Hegel 379; Kierkegaard 337–8, 379–80, text 392–3; Plato 378; Searle 424; Schlegel, F. Indian aesthetics 115, 150–1, 318, 356–60, 379–81, 522 489 see also deconstruction; humor; “intentional rasa 492–4, 500 fallacy”; metaphor; modernism and ineffability 360–4, 507, 553 postmodernism; structuralism and Heidegger 363; Langer 362; Plato 361; poststructuralism; tragedy Wittgenstein 362–3, 483; Schopenhauer 361 Irvin, Sherri 137–8 see also expression; metaphor; testimony in Iseminger, Gary 368, 563 aesthetics Islamic aesthetics 78, 151, 207, 224, 381–3 Ingarden, Roman 56, 70, 249–50, 364–6, 578 see also religion and art Heidegger 365; Langer 365; Plato 365; Sartre 365 Jacobi, F. H. 515 ontology of artworks 91, 365, 453, 457 Jacobson, Daniel 429–30 Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique 57 Jacquette, Dale 132, 525 Napoleon the Emperor 194; The Valpincon Bather Jagannatha 357–9 495–6 Jakobson, Roman 86, 495, 497 institutional theory of art 69, 164, 232–3, 568 James, Henry 546 intention 67–8, 101, 199–200, 205, 230, 263, James, William 115, 244, 481 282–3, 287, 209–11, 355, 371–5, 563–4 Jameson, Frederic 412 Beardsley 164, 355, 366, 369–70, 563; Walton Janaway, Chris 474 589–90; Wollheim 597 Japanese aesthetics 111, 150–1, 223, 384–7 authenticity and art 156, 158–9 Jefferson, Mark 535 fiction, nature of 276–8 John, Eileen 580 interpretation 366–74, 376, 378–9, 462 Johnson, Barbara 218 irony 379–8 Johnson, Mark 424 photography 99–100 Johnson, Paul 498 representation 506–7 Johnson, Samuel 216, 279–80, 547, 548 see also criticism; deconstruction; implied author; Jones Le Roi (Amiri Baraka) 224 “intentional fallacy”; literature; poetry Joyce, James 362, 426 “intentional fallacy” 66, 355, 366, 369–71, 372, Ulysses 156, 187, 312 563 judgment, aesthetic see aesthetic judgment Beardsley 66, 164, 355, 366, 369–70, 563; Jung, Carl G. 401, 486–8 Wimsatt 66, 164, 355, 366, 369–70 see also critical monism and pluralism; criticism; Kafka, Franz 176, 367, 415 deconstruction; intention; interpretation; Kames, Lord (Henry Home) 37–40, 46, 49 literature; meaning constructivism; New Kandinsky, Vassily 56, 107, 295, 426 Criticism; poetry; text Kania, Andrew 92–4 interpretation 94, 97, 215, 217–18, 229, 324–7, Kant, Immanuel 19, 58, 63–4, 75, 84, 184–5, 354–5, 371–5, 441–3, 482–3, 491, 563–4 242–3, 273, 304, 324, 335, 388–92, Augustine 27; Beardsley 372–4; Cavell 184; 409–10, 465, 528–30, 534–5, 561, 579 Danto 226–7; Davies 371; Foucault 374, Aquinas 147; Baumgarten 162–3; Burke 177; 376; Freud 60, 184, 484–5; Gadamer 302–3; Hegel 53, 315–18; Hume 43–4, 47; Schelling Gombrich 309; Goodman 312; Kant 371–2; 514–16; Schiller 517–18; Schlegel, F. 521; Levinson 368, 370, 462; Margolis 411–12; Schopenhauer 439, 522–4 Sartre 366; Wittgenstein 374; Wollheim 375 aesthetic judgment 51–2, 65, 115, 118–22, aims of 375–8 124, 164, 388–91, 445, 483, 554–5

610

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aesthetic attitude 33, 37, 111–13, 137, 363, Kurosawa, Akira 389–90, 478 Ran 223; Throne of Blood 223 aesthetic pleasure 51–2, 65, 115, 120–4, 164, 388–9, 445, 483 Labriola, Antonio 219 beauty 36–7, 43–4, 47–8, 51–2, 54, 147, Lacan, Jacques 251, 328, 396–7, 488, 553 167–9, 171, 292, 388–91, 501, 503, 582 Lakis, Asja 175 and Chinese aesthetics 190 Lakoff, George 424 on creativity 37–8, 207–9 Lamarque, Peter 82, 87, 102, 196, 279, 283, 421, formalism 63, 115, 129, 292, 391 430, 437, 580, 591 imagination 37–8, 47, 349–50, 388 Landow, G. P. 509 Kaprow, Alan 463, 482 Langer, Susanne 63–4, 77, 91, 104, 247, 298, morality and art 38–9, 47–9, 52, 54, 388–9, 345, 362, 400–2 391, 501 Ingarden 365; Schiller 401; Wittgenstein 400 and race 489–90 Lask, Emil 409 the sublime 37, 54–5, 137, 388, 547, 549–51 Lawrence, D. H., Lady Chatterley’s Lover 187, taste 44, 47, 131, 388–91, 554–5 367 Kemal, Salim 27, 383, 392 Layton, Robert 142 Kennick, William E. 66, 152–3, 361 Le Corbusier (Charles Edouard Jeaneret) 527, Kermode, Frank 215 573–4 Kieran, Matthew 194–6, 257–8, 429–30 Leaman, Oliver 383 Kierkegaard, Søren 56–8, 130, 315, 392–3 Leavis, F. R. 307, 502–3, 529–30 Hegel 315, 392–3; Lukács 410; Schelling 516; Leddy, Thomas 138 Wilde 593 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von 28, 40, 162, 167, ironic humor 337–8, 379–80, 392–3 234, 521 Kindt, Tom 354 Lenin, V. I. 410, 414–15 Kingsley, Charles 509 Leonardo da Vinci 28–9, 298 kitsch 393–6, 417, 535 Mona Lisa 191–2, 528 Kivy, Peter 92–3, 97, 154, 157–8, 462 Lessing, Alfred 288, 532 Hume 45, 333–4; Hutcheson 35 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 11, 19, 49, 183, 345, Kiyonobu I, Torii, Erotic Contest of Flowers: Scenes of 402–5, 558, 577 Lovemaking 258 Lévi–Strauss, Claude 251, 396, 436, 540, 542 Klein, Melanie 398, 597 Levin, David Michael 77 Klein, R. G. 1 Levin, Samuel R. 424–5 Knapp, S. 564 Levinson, Jerrold 91–3, 96, 124, 128, 154, 210, Knight, Deborah 536 256–8, 262, 280, 334, 355, 443, 457, 459, Knights, L. C. 307 472, 591 Koed, Erik 105 definition of “art” 69–70, 202–3, 232 Kohn, Marak 6 intention and interpretation 368, 370, 462 Koons, Jeff, Made in Heaven 257 ontological contextualism 451–2 Korsmeyer, Carolyn 45, 131, 133, 137, 267–8, Lewis, C. I. 405–8 272–3 Lewis, David K. 281–2, 285 Kosuth, Joseph, One and Three Chairs 202–3 Lewis-Williams, David 3, 8 Kraus, Karl, The Last Days of Mankind 80 Lintott, Sheila 133, 136 Krausz, Michael 421 Lippard, Lucy 202–3 Kraut, Robert 214 Lippitt, John 338 Krell, David Farrell 243 literature 20, 22, 27–30, 37–41, 76, 78–81, Kris, Ernst 149, 487 85–8, 101, 103, 109, 151, 184, 194–5, Kristeller, Paul Oskar 25, 28, 49, 338 242, 260–1, 267–71, 306, 345, 354, Kristeva, Julia 328, 330, 396–9, 487–8, 564–5 414–15, 425–9, 454, 482, 495–6, 531–2, Kubrick, Stanley 535, 542–3, 546, 563–5, 578 Dr. Strangelove 201; The Shining 328 Barthes 160–1, 426; Croce 220–1; Foucault Kuehn, Glenn 133 293–5; Hegel 316–19; Hume 332; Ingarden Kulka, Thomas 394 364–5; Kristeva 396–8; Sartre 513–14; Kulvicki, John 241 Schlegel, A. 519–20; Schlegel, F. 521–2; Kundera, Milan, The Unbearable Lightness of Being Schopenhauer 523; Tolstoy 298, 571; Wilde 395–6 592, 594 Kupfer, Joseph H. 137–8, 535 canon 179–81

611

index literature (cont.): Mason, Michelle 333 criticism and interpretation 215–19, 366–81, mass art 94, 415–18, 476, 559 435–7, 485 see also kitsch; motion pictures; photography; irony 378–80 popular art; technology and art Islamic aesthetics 381–2 materialism 174, 176, 190, 414, 439, 517 Japanese aesthetics 385 Matisse, Henri 273, 422, 513 see also deconstruction; feminist aesthetics and The Red Studio 122 criticism; poetry Matravers, Derek 265, 353 Livingston, Paisley 207–9, 283, 368, 408, 563 Matthews, Patricia M. 340 Livingstone, Margaret 191–2 Matthews, Robert 375–6 Locke, Alain 481–2 Mattick, Paul 110, 432 Locke, John 28, 34, 339–40, 537–8, 541 Maurer, Armand 146 Lomazzo, Gian Paolo 29 Mayer, Hans 412 Longinus, Cassius 19–20, 36, 41, 547–8, 551 Maynard, Patrick 85, 101 Lopes, Dominic McIver 82, 195, 239–40, 263, Meager, Ruby 173, 540 278, 470–1, 533 meaning constructivism 418–21 Lorusso, A. M. 27 see also critical monism and pluralism; criticism; Lucretius, De rerum natura 16, 29 deconstruction; implied author; intention; Lukács, Georg 175, 380, 408–10, 412, 415 interpretation; relativism; structuralism Goethe 410; Hegel 409–10; Kant 409–10; and poststructuralism; text Kierkegaard 410; Marx 408 medieval and renaissance aesthetics 22–32 Lyas, Colin 266, 366 Meier, Georg Friedrich 40–1, 163 Lyotard, Jean-François 60, 251, 426, 542–3 Meiland, Jack 458 Meinong, Alexius 284–5 Macdonald, Dwight 476 Mendelssohn, Moses 37, 39–42, 49, 163, 177, MacDonald, Margaret 283 521, 574 Macherey, Pierre 542 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 57, 77, 235, 367, 412, Mackenzie, Henry, The Man of Feeling 534 421–3 Mackie, John L. 121, 445 Dufrenne 250; Sartre 421 MacKinnon, Catherine A. 256, 480 Meskin, Aaron 82, 279, 353, 558, 561 McClary, Susan 271 metanarrative 320, 426, 543 McCloskey, Mary 392 metaphor 27, 102, 350, 363, 423–5, 506, 578 McDowell, John 121, 447, 556 Aristotle 423; Beardsley 424; Danto 70; McFee, Graham 77, 421, 450 Derrida 425; Goodman 311–12; Nietzsche McLuhan, Marshall 543 553 make-believe see imagination see also irony Malevich, Kasimir 213 Michaels, W. B. 564 Mallarmé, Stéphane 296, 359–60, 396, 552 Michelangelo Buonarrotti 83, 149, 151, 341, 520, Malraux, André 129 594 Mammata 358–9 Last Judgment 571; Moses 484; Pietà 196 Man, Paul de 229, 243 Mill, John Stuart 186, 503 Manet, Édouard 496 Miller, Geoffrey 259–60 Mann, Thomas 122, 380–1, 524–5 Miller, J. Hillis 229 Death in Venice 122; Doktor Faustus 380 Miller, Mara 304–5 Mansfield, William Murray, earl of 186 Milton, John 44, 85, 168, 546 Marcus Aurelius 17–18 Paradise Lost 246, 306, 333, 369, 497, 548–9 Marcuse, Herbert 415 mimesis 11–12, 15, 17–21, 61, 70, 174, 302, Margolis, Joseph 68, 77, 411–12, 456, 483, 563 384, 468, 566 Croce 411; Hegel 411; Ingarden 365 Aristotle 12, 15, 19, 147–8; Lessing 402; Maritain, Jacques 146 Lukács 410; Plato 12, 15, 20–1, 473; Marra, Michael 386–7 Plotinus 20–1; Walton 588–9 Marx, Karl 51, 53–4, 219, 235, 298, 325, 408, see also depiction; representation 593 Mithen, Steven 6, 8–9, 260 Hegel 315, 413; Kant 53; Lukács 408–9, 412, modernism and postmodernism 59–62, 83, 110, 415; Schiller 413 161, 251, 321, 425–8, 438, 482, 498, and art 175, 412–15, 543 540–4, 573–4 Marxism 412–14 Barthes 426; Eco 427; Lyotard 426

612

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Mondrian, Piet 107, 311 opera 95–6, 157–8, 271, 392–3, 439, 460–1, Monet, Claude 150, 308–9 504, 529, 586–7 Sunset and Fog at Eragny 451 performance 157–8, 222–3, 460–2, 546 Monk, Samuel H. 36, 178, 551 popular 137, 157, 223, 308, 415–16, 428, Monro, D. H. 202, 335 476–8, 482–3, 529, 556–7 Monroe, Dave 132 Montaigne, Michel de 241, 498 narrative 6, 79, 151, 191–3, 199, 201–2, 276–7, Montero, Barbara 192–3 307–8, 426–7, 435–8, 534, 536, 542–3 Moore, George E. 172, 444 Lessing 403, 405; Plato 473 morality and art 130, 216, 298, 428–31, 579 Nathan, Daniel O. 368, 370 Carroll 429–30; Gaut 429–30; Kant 48, 52, 54, naturalism 9, 149, 274, 412, 481 388–9; Nietzsche 55; Plato 428, 430; Ruskin nature, aesthetics of see aesthetics of nature 508; Schiller 49, 52, 518–19; Sidney 29–30; Nehamas, Alexander 211, 355, 418, 441 Wilde 591–3 Neill, Alex 101, 280, 334 African aesthetics 141 New Criticism 17, 62, 163, 215, 217, 230, 372, Chinese aesthetics 188–90 563 see also censorship; erotic art and obscenity; Newman, Barnett 107, 211 imaginative resistance; pornography; value Newman, Ira 536 of art Nichols, Shaun 286, 353 Moran, Richard 351 Nietzsche, Friedrich (Wilhelm) 55, 57, 72, 183, Morreall, John 200, 338 207, 234–7, 242, 296, 325, 330, 438–41, Morris, William 509 486, 498–9, 504, 529, 535, 553, 593 Mothersill, Mary 171, 333, 445, 555 Baumgarten 163; Heidegger 321–2; Kant 53, motion pictures 88–91, 183–4, 328–31, 415–16, 55, 439; Plato 438; Schelling 516; 479 Schopenhauer 55, 438–9, 522–5; Wagner see also photography; ontology of artworks; 438–9, 587 technology and art tragedy 14, 55, 438–40, 575–7 Mozart, W. A. 157, 235, 268, 375, 461 Nifo, Agostino 28 Don Giovanni 392 nihilism 322, 392, 498, 515 Mulhall, Stephen 363 nineteenth- and twentieth-century Continental Müller, Hans-Harald 354 aesthetics 51–61 Mulvey, Laura 273 Nochlin, Linda 61, 268, 274, 498 museums 84, 205–7, 222–4, 431–4 non-Western art Dewey 245, 431, 482; Goethe 432 African see African aesthetics see also art history Amerindian see Amerindian aesthetics music 5, 11–17, 24–8, 34, 37, 63–4, 75–8, Chinese see Chinese aesthetics 91–5, 126–7, 184, 192–4, 198, 203, 222–3, Indian see Indian aesthetics 234, 252, 260–6, 275, 292, 312, 345, 350, Islamic see Islamic aesthetics 355, 360–3, 391, 426, 554–9, 566, 569, Japanese see Japanese aesthetics 573, 582 Norris, Christopher 230 Adorno 109–10; Aristotle 148–9, 182; notations 77–8, 287, 441–3, 452, 460 Hanslick 291, 314–15; Hegel 319; Hume Goodman 67, 443; Ingarden 365 332–3; Kant 501; Kierkegaard 392–3; Langer see also dance; drama; music; authenticity and 401–2; Nietzsche 576–7; Plato 169, 472–5; art; ontology of artworks; performance Schopenhauer 361, 523–4; Wagner 438–9, Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) 516, 519, 521 504, 529, 586–7; Wittgenstein 594, 596 Novitz, David 137, 208–9, 299, 418 absolute or “pure” 92, 107–8, 293, 311, 360, Nowell, A. 2, 5 375, 533 Nozik, Robert 579 African aesthetics 140 Nussbaum, Martha C. 21, 149, 184, 194, 429, Amerindian aesthetics 142–5 575, 580 Chinese aesthetics 96, 188–9 feminism 268, 270–2 Oakeshott, Michael 500, 502 Indian aesthetics 492–3 objectivity 65, 71, 117–19, 327, 371–2, 374, Islamic aesthetics 383 382, 444–9, 495–8, 539, 555–6, 560–1 notation 287, 441–3 Hume 445, 447–8; Kant 51–2, 65, 118–22, ontology of musical works 153–4, 157–8, 365, 124, 164, 388–91, 445, 483; Scruton 446; 450–7, 461–3, 528 Sibley 65–6; Wollheim 445

613

index objectivity (cont.): Plato 14–15, 19, 472–4; Ruskin 309, 471, see also aesthetic judgment; aesthetic properties; 508–10; Sibley 539; Vasari 29, 149–51; cognitive science and art; evolution, art, Walton 588–9; Wollheim 263, 290, 597–9 and aesthetics; realism; relativism; taste; Abstract Expressionism see Abstract universals in art Expressionism Odin, Steve 111 African aesthetics 141 Ofili, Chris, Holy Virgin Mary 224 Amerindian aesthetics 144, 159 Ogilby, John 44, 168 Chinese aesthetics 189–90 O’Hear, Anthony 527, 575 and cognitive science 191–2 Olsen, Stein Haugom 82, 87, 102, 181, 210, 580 Cubism see Cubism ontological contextualism 67, 71, 127, 377, 408, expression in 263–4, 566 413, 429–30, 449–53, 462 and feminism 273–4 Currie 452; Danto 449–50; Davies 451–2; ontology 449–53, 455–7 Levinson 451–2; Walton 450 Paleolithic cave paintings 1–9 ontology of artworks 70–1, 77, 83, 89, 91, 94–7, Pop Art see Pop Art 103, 134, 137, 153–4, 157, 203–7, 217, portrait see portrait 222, 232–3, 442–3, 453–7, 461, 568–9 style 545–6, 598 Collingwood 265–6, 455; Croce 453; Goodman Surrealism 55 67, 377, 456; Hegel 453; Ingarden 91, 365, see also abstraction; conservation and 453, 457; Margolis 411–12, 456; Tolstoy restoration; depiction; drawing; forgery; 571; Wollheim 70, 597 illusion; mimesis; perspective; picture ontological contextualism see ontological perception; realism; representation; seeing-in contextualism Paleolithic, art of the 1–10, 260, 583 see also authenticity and art; artifact, art as; Panaetius 17 definition of “art”; formalism; type-token Panofsky, Erwin 22, 24–5, 151, 465–6, 468 distinction; work of art Papineau, D. 2 opera 93, 95–8, 157–8, 271, 392, 439, 460–1 Parrhasius 12 Wagner 529, 586–7 Passmore, John 66 Chinese aesthetics 96 pastiche 427, 543, 546 see also music; ontology of artworks; Pater, Walter 128, 130, 502, 592 performance Peacocke, Christopher 241, 350, 467–8 oriental aesthetics Peirce, Charles S. 244, 400, 454, 481, 563 Chinese see Chinese aesthetics performance 77, 80–1, 91–7, 157–8, 403–4, Indian see Indian aesthetics 441, 450–5, 457, 460–2, 544, 546 Japanese see Japanese aesthetics see also drama; music; opera; performance art originality 60, 122, 125, 156, 207–10, 289, 426, performance art 77, 156, 375, 454, 462–5 457–9, 568, 574 see also conceptual art; performance Danto 458; Sparshott 459 perspective 24, 83, 436, 465–9 see also creativity; tradition Danto 227; Goodman 239, 466, 469; Panofsky Orsini, Gian N. G. 220 465–9; Peacocke 457–8 Ortega y Gasset, José 298 Chinese aesthetics 189 Orwell, George see also drawing; depiction; painting; perspective; 1984 495; Homage to Catalonia 194 picture perception; printmaking; realism; Osborne, Harold 128, 130, 171, 392, 567 representation Oshima, Nagisa, Band of Ninja 89 Pettit, Philip 447, 562 Osipovich, David 462 phenomenology 56, 60, 77, 241–2, 249, 294, 324, 364–5, 421–3 Paddison, Max 111 Philodemus 16–17 painting 12–15, 25, 28–9, 56–7, 66–7, 75, 82–5, Philostratus 12 92, 104–5, 227, 361–3, 527, 533, 558 photography 57, 176, 98–101, 469, 557, 590 Aristotle 13, 19, 148–9; Bell 62–3, 111, 172–3, motion pictures 88–91 290; Collingwood 198–9, 455; Deleuze see also representation 236–7; Du Bos 38–9; Foucault 294–5, 374; Piaget, Jean 541 Gombrich 84, 240, 308–10, 344, 469, 573; Picasso, Pablo 2, 62, 108, 171, 222, 226, 319, Greenberg 108, 151, 394, 426; Hegel 319; 418, 426, 598–9 Heidegger 323; Kant 84, 391; Langer 401; Les Demoiselles D’Avignon 288–9; Guernica 165 Lessing 402–5; Merleau-Ponty 421–2; Pickering, John, Horestes 218

614

index picture perception 469–72 pornography 187, 256–8, 478–80 Gombrich 309–10, 469; Hopkins 470; Walton Collingwood 502–3 470–1, 589–90; Wollheim 470–1, 506, 598 see also censorship; erotic art and obscenity; see also drawing; depiction; illusion; painting; feminist aesthetics and criticism; morality perspective; realism; representation; senses and art and art, the; style Porphyry 474 Pindar 13, 15 portrait 108, 189–90, 194, 238, 270, 276, Pinkard, Terry 520, 522 288 Pinker, Steven 259–60 Posner, Richard 429 Pirenne, M. H. 466 postmodernism see modernism and postmodernism Pissarro, Camille 451 poststructuralism see structuralism and Plato 10–21, 47, 66, 70, 77, 111, 131, 147–8, poststructuralism 155, 226, 230, 235, 238, 241–2, 257, Pouillon, Henri 22 297–8, 303, 334, 321, 336, 361, 378, Pound, Ezra 426, 553, 579 397, 427–30, 438, 468, 472–4, 478, pragmatist aesthetics 77, 407, 480–3 523, 529–30, 542, 549, 567, 575, 592 Dewey 481–2; Beardsley 482; Goodman 482–3 Aristotle 10–16; Plotinus 474; Socrates 12–15, see also aesthetics of the environment; aesthetics 168–9, 298, 347, 378–80, 472–3, 593 of the everyday; museums aesthetic education 47, 114, 194 printmaking 82–5 beauty 16, 21, 28, 52, 167–9, 171, 472–4 see also drawing; painting creativity 207–9, 472, 474 Proclus 20–1 poetry 21, 29–30, 217, 279, 472–3 properties, aesthetic see aesthetic properties pleasure, aesthetic see aesthetic pleasure Propp, Vladimir 436, 541 Plekhanov, Georgi Valentinovich 414 Proudfoot, Diane 286 Pliny 149–50, 306 Proust, Marcel 176, 347, 398, 524 Plotinus 20–1, 30, 474–6 Pseudo-Dionysius 22–3 pluralism 94, 186, 211–13, 312, 377, 499 psychoanalysis and art 183–4, 208, 298–9, 420, Plutarch 11, 13, 16 484–8, 515, 553 Podro, Michael 85, 151, 545 Cavell 184; Freud 55, 60, 242, 328, 336–7, poetry 11–18, 21, 25–31, 79, 86–7, 101–4, 148, 350, 397, 484–8; Jung 486–7; Kristeva 182, 215–17, 279, 557 396–7, 487–8; Nietzsche 486; Rank 485–6 Aristotle 147–9; Baumgarten 36–7, 40; Burke Pullman, Philip, His Dark Materials 196 37; Croce 220–1; Gadamer 302–3; Hegel 316, purpose of art see function of art 318–20; Heidegger 321–2; Hume 332–4; Pyrrho of Elis 498 Kierkegaard 392–3; Lessing 402–5; Plato 21, Pythagoreanism 382 29–30, 217, 279, 472–3; Sartre 359–60; Schlegel, A. 519–20; Schlegel, F. 521–2 Quatremère de Quincy, A.-C. 431 Amerindian aesthetics 144 Quine, W. V. O. 213, 291, 528 Chinese aesthetics 188–90 Indian aesthetics 357–60 race and aesthetics 24, 482, 489–92 Islamic aesthetics 381–3 Hegel 490; Hume 490; Kant 489–90; Schiller Japanese aesthetics 384–5 490; Shaftesbury 489 see also canon; criticism; drama; intention; feminist aesthetics and criticism 267–8, 272 “intentional fallacy”; interpretation; literature; Radford, Colin 279, 289 text Raffman, Diana 192, 362 Pöggeler, Otto 320, 324 Railton, Peter 447 Polanski, Roman Ramachandran, Vilayanur 261 Repulsion 328; Rosemary’s Baby 328 Rank, Otto 485–6 Pollock, Jackson 463, 482 Ranke, Leopold von 324 Pop Art 70, 228, 295, 308 Rankin, Ian 430 Pope, Alexander 216, 548 Ransome, John Crowe 215 Popper, Sir Karl 197, 309 Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio) 151, 378, 520 Popper, Leo 409 Rapin, René 216 popular art 94, 137, 308, 416, 476–8, 482–3 rasa 492–4, 500 Adorno 476–8; Carroll 476–8; Shusterman Rawls, John 184 476–8 Read, Herbert 104–5, 309, 466, 533, 574 see also mass art Réage, Pauline, The Story of O 478

615

index realism 2, 4, 98, 117–22, 444–9, 495–8 Ricoeur, Paul 324–5, 363 Ingarden 365–6; Merleau–Ponty 422; Ridley, Aaron 92, 265, 441, 578 Ruskin 495; Walton 589; Wilde 495 Riegl, Aloïs 151, 206 Marxism and art 414–15 Rilke, Rainer Maria von 303, 323, 530 see also drawing; depiction; illusion; painting; Rittershausen, Josef Sebastian von 432 perspective; picture perception; representation; Robinson, Hilary 269 trompe l’oeil effects; truth in art Robinson, Jenefer M. 115, 193, 256, 279, 355 Reid, L. A. 554 Robortelli, Francesco 29 relativism 119–20, 211–14, 218–19, 376–6, Rodin, Auguste 105, 258 498–500 Roelofs, Monique 489, 491 Gadamer 373–4, 499; Herder 46; Hume 44–5, Rogers, L. R. 105 333–4, 499; Margolis 411–12; Nietzsche Rogerson, Kenneth F. 47 498–9; Witelo 24 Rohrbaugh, Guy 451 see also canon; feminist aesthetics and criticism; Rollins, Mark 193, 229 objectivity; taste; truth in art; universals in art Romanticism 128, 174, 178, 184, 208, 215–16, religion and art 9, 260, 300–1, 500–4 271, 318–19, 328, 355, 361, 380, 392, 413, Bell 172; Collingwood 197, 502–3; Hegel 53, 516, 519–22, 548, 552–3, 579 316–18, 501–2; Kant 500–1; Nietzsche 439, Rorty, Richard 483, 564 504; Schiller 500–3; Scruton 529–30; Ross, Stephanie 304–5 Tolstoy 264, 503, 571; Wagner 504, 586–8 Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio, The Barber of Seville Islamic aesthetics 381–3 524 see also aestheticism; catharsis; iconoclasm; Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 47–9, 242 medieval and renaissance aesthetics; Rowe, Mark R. 231 Paleolithic, art in the; sublime, the Rubens, Peter Paul 150–1 Rembrandt van Ryn 150, 260, 268, 341, 516 Rudinow, Joel 92, 157 renaissance aesthetics see medieval and rules, aesthetic 118–20, 236 renaissance aesthetics see also aesthetic judgment; convention representation 7, 11–12, 26, 38–42, 62–3, 70–1, Ruskin, John 309, 471, 495, 508–10, 529–30 83–4, 88–90, 96, 98–101, 238–41, 270, Russell, Bertrand 166, 284–5, 257 394, 444–5, 469–72, 504–8, 533, 565–6 Aristotle 147–8; Bell 172–3; Danto 226–7; Sade, Donatien Alphonse François, Comte de 293, Deleuze 235–7; Foucault 294–5; Gombrich 430 84, 240, 308–10, 344, 469, 573; Goodman The 120 Days of Sodom 478; Justine 478 67, 238–9, 312, 466, 469; Hanslick 314–15; Saenredam, Pieter 205 Langer 401; Lessing 403–4; Plato 472–3; Said, Edward W. 224 Schelling 514–15; Walton 588–90; Wollheim Saisselin, R. G. 432 597–8 Saito, Yuriko 116, 132, 137–8, 387 abstraction 107–9 Salinger, J. D., The Catcher in the Rye 354 accuracy in 172, 227, 315, 496, 505–7 Saltz, David Z. 81, 462, 559 aesthetic properties 125–7 Santayana, George 167, 500, 502, 511–12 Chinese aesthetics 189–90 Santoro-Brienza, Liberato 147 cognitive science and art 191–3 Sappho 11 emotion 252–5 Sartre, Jean-Paul 58, 241, 250, 296, 359–60, erotic art and obscenity 256–7 366, 512–14 fiction, nature of 275–6 The Condemned of Altona 513; The Devil and the formalism 111–12, 290–3 Good Lord 513; The Flies 512; Nausea 58, 512; horror 330–1 No Exit 512 Islamic aesthetics 383 Ingarden 365; Merleau-Ponty 421 “intentional fallacy” 370–1 imagination 513–14 motion pictures 88–90 Sartwell, Crispin 137–8 realism 495–6 Saussure, Ferdinand de 59, 160, 242, 435, 540–1 see also drawing; illusion; metaphor; painting; Savile, Anthony 48, 123, 405, 519, 535, 599 symbol Scaliger, Julius 30 response, affective 129, 280, 590 Schachtel, Ernest 487 restoration see conservation and restoration Schaper, Eva 22, 392, 519 Ribeiro, Anna Christina 101 Scheler, Max 250 Richards, I. A. 423, 503 Schellekens, Elisabeth 205

616

index

Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von 54–5, 57, senses and art, the 38, 305, 343, 530–4 514–17 Hutcheson 43; Schiller 517–18; Shaftesbury Hegel 316, 514–16; Heidegger 514, 516; 34–5, 537–8 Kant 514–16; Kierkegaard 516; Nietzsche aesthetics of food and drink 131–2 516; Schiller 516; Schopenhauer 516; aesthetics of the environment 133, 134–6 Schlegel, A. 519; Schlegel, F. 521 see also aesthetic properties; cognitive science and Schier, Flint 241 art; conceptual art; illusion; representation Schiller, Friedrich von 36, 55, 57, 302, 401, 413, sentimentality 41–4, 47–8, 534–7 490, 500–3, 517–19, 528 Burke 177; Hume 333–4, 535; Kant 534–5; Beethoven 586; Goethe 518; Hegel 518; Kant Lessing 404–5; Tanner 534–5; Wilde 534–5 517–18; Schelling 516; Schlegel, F. 521 see also emotion; kitsch aesthetic education 36, 47–9, 52–4, 517–19; Serrano, Andres, Piss Christ 224 beauty 36, 48–9, 52, 54, 517–19 Seurat, Georges Pierre 57 Schlegel, August Wilhelm von 519–20, 552 A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte brother of Friedrich 519 589–90 as critic 519 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd earl Schlegel, Friedrich von 520–2 33–5, 42, 304, 389, 489, 537–8, 554 Lucinde 521 Shakespeare, William 61, 85, 102, 179, 216, 223, Goethe 521; Kant 521; Schelling 516 268, 276, 284–6, 307, 354, 413, 417, 429, brother of Auguste 520–1 448, 461, 477, 497, 527, 546, 548, 576 criticism 521 Hamlet 55, 89, 201, 218, 246, 284–5, 420, irony 379–81, 522 462, 536, 563, 578; Julius Caesar 505; Romanticism 519–20, 521–2 King Lear 166, 548, 571; Macbeth 306; Schleiermacher, Friedrich D. E. 324–6, 362, 521 A Midsummer Night’s Dream 201; Schoenberg, Arnold 109, 234, 426, 573–4 Richard III 405 Moses and Aaron 417 Cavell 184; Croce 221; Freud 55, 420, 535; Scholem, Gershom 174 Goodman 311; Hegel 318, 320; Herder 46; Schopenhauer, Arthur 54–6, 61, 64, 72, 91, 111, Schlegel, A. 519–20; Tolstoy 570–1 121, 207, 305–6, 335, 361, 439, 522–5, Shapiro, Gary 320 579, 594 Sharpe, R. A. 570 Kant 439, 522–4, Nietzsche 55, 438–9, 522–5; Shelley, James 340 Plato 523; Schelling 516; Tolstoy 524; Shelley, Percy Bysshe 208, 423, 425 Wagner 524–5, 587–8 The Cenci 80 science and art 1–3, 102, 115, 191–3, 328, Shepard, Roger 343 371–3, 481–3, 525–7 Shiner, Larry 157, 159, 301, 584 Baumgarten 162–3; Foucault 296; Gombrich Shiner, Roger A. 334 310; Goodman 65; Hegel 53, 316; Hume 332; Showalter, Elaine 269–70 Langer 400; Nietzsche 438, 440; Schelling Shusterman, Richard 65, 77, 116, 137–8, 476–8, 514–16 483, 564 see also evolution, art, and aesthetics; objectivity Sibley, Frank Noel 123, 132–3, 204, 209, Scott, Ridley, Alien 328 538–40, 554, 588 Scruton, Roger 66–7, 91–2, 113, 122, 129, 256, and aesthetic judgment 65–6, 539–40 446, 528–30 and aesthetic properties 65–7, 125–7 Kant 528–30; Nietzsche 529; Ruskin 529–30 Sidney, Sir Philip 29–30, 502 sculpture 5, 28, 90, 104–6, 150–1, 345, 495, Signac, Paul 57 566 significant form see form, significant Hegel 317–19; Gombrich 308; Herder 49; Silvers, Anita 156 Langer 104; Lessing 402, 405 Simonides 11 ontology of artworks 454–7 Smith, Adam 534 see also architecture; drawing, depiction; Smith, Barry C. 132 painting; printmaking; tradition Smith, Ralph 114 Searle, John R. 276, 424 Smith, William 36 seeing-in see picture perception Smuts, Aaron 557 Sei Shônagon, Makura no Sôshi (Pillow Book) 385 Socrates 12–15, 168–9, 298, 347, 378–80, semiotics 162, 396, 481 472–3, 593 see also hermeneutics; symbol Solger, Karl 380 Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus) 17–18 Solomon, Robert C. 396, 534–6

617

index song see music Sulzer, Johann Georg 40 Sophocles 46, 250, 321, 438, 467 Surrealism 174–5, 463, 488 Antigone 320–1, 393, 575, 577; Oedipus Rex Swedenborg, Emanuel 552 536 Sweeney, Kevin 132 Souriau, Etienne 249 Swift, Jonathan 370–1, 378, 548 Sparkes, John 335 A Modest Proposal 367, 370–1, 379 Sparshott, Francis 77, 125, 300, 408, 459 symbol 3, 5–7, 9, 82–5, 91, 419, 487, 551–3 Spector, Jack J. 485, 487 Augustine 552; Freud 484–8, 553; Goodman Speer, Andreas 25 67, 238–9, 311–12; Hegel 318–19; Kristeva Spencer, Herbert 336 397; Lacan 553; Langer 63–4, 400–2; Spender, Stephen 357–8, 360 Schlegel, A. 552; Scruton 529 Spielberg, Steven iconoclasm and idolatry 341–2 Jaws 328; Back to the Future 201 representation 505–7 Spinoza, Baruch 28, 162, 167, 234, 347, 515, see also hermeneutics; ineffability; metaphor; 521 psychoanalysis Spivak, Gayatri 229–30 symmetry 6, 23, 36, 259, 261, 448–9, 475, 583 Stecker, Robert 69, 86, 104, 123, 128, 203, Symons, A. J., The Quest for Corvo 128 214, 233, 249, 283, 355, 368, 376–7, 421, 451 Tagore, Rabindranath 356, 359 Steele, Richard 35–6 Tarantino, Quentin, Death Proof 328 Steiger, Emil 365 taste 44–7, 118, 125, 168, 554–6, 582 Sterne, Laurence, Tristram Shandy 426 Hume 44–7, 332–4, 554–6; Hutcheson 554; Stewart, Dugald 33, 46 Kant 44, 47, 131, 388–91, 554–5; Stevenson, Charles 563, 588 Shaftesbury 538, 554; Sibley 538–9, 554, Stock, Kathleen 232–3, 353 560–1 Stokes, Dustin 353 aesthetics of food and drink 131–3, 552 Stolnitz, Jerome 111, 113, 121, 194, 247, 408, feminist standpoint aesthetics 272–5 538 see also aesthetic education; canon; objectivity Strabo 18 Tatarkiewicz, Wladyslaw 22, 147 Stravinsky, Igor 110, 222, 323 Tate, Allen 215 Firebird Suite 211; Rite of Spring 127, 451 Tavinor, Grant 557 Strawson, Peter 65 Tchaikovsky, Peter I. 271–2, 573 structuralism and poststructuralism 59–60, 160, technology and art 92–3, 344, 556–60 217, 242, 291, 324, 367, 425–8, 436, 514, Benjamin 59, 176, 559; Carroll 556–9; 540–4, 563–4 Heidegger 322; Lessing 558 Barthes 366, 374, 542; Derrida 366–7, 541–3, mass art 415–17 564; Foucault 160, 542–3 ontology of artworks 456–7 see also deconstruction; irony; formalism popular art 476–7 style 86, 100, 222–4, 229–30, 232, 306, 355–6, see also motion pictures; definition of “art” 425–7, 495, 497, 544–7, 574 Telfer, Elizabeth 133 Danto 228; Foucault 294–5; Gombrich 310; testimony in aesthetics 167, 347, 533, 560–2 Goodman 545; Walton 545; Wollheim 545, Kant 561; Wollheim 562 597–9 see also cognitive value of art; objectivity; taste in Amerindian aesthetics 142 text 80–1, 86–8, 103, 462, 464, 562–5 in Chinese aesthetics 189 Barthes 59, 564–5; Beardsley 563; Goodman in Islamic aesthetics 383 563; Kristeva 564–5 in Japanese aesthetics 385–6 canon 179–80 sublime, the 38, 60, 137, 501, 547–51 deconstruction 218, 229–31 Addison 36, 549; Burke 19–20, 36–7, 177–8, fiction, truth in 282–3 549; Hegel 318; Kant 54, 388, 547, 549–51; hermeneutics 325–7 Longinus 19–20; Nietzsche 55, 439–40; interpretation 372–4, 376–7 Plato 549; Schiller 501; Schopenhauer irony 380–1 439 music and song 92–4 see also aesthetic pleasure; aesthetics of nature; see also critical monism and pluralism; beauty; horror hermeneutics; interpretation; meaning Suger, Abbot of St-Denis 24–6 constructivism; ontology of artworks; Sullivan, Sir Arthur, Patience 128 work of art

618

index theater 78–82 Adorno 110; Benjamin 175; Croce 579; see also drama Dufrenne 250; Gadamer 302; Hegel 318; Theophilus 24 Heidegger 56, 321, 323, 579; Ingarden 364, theories of art 565–70 578; Plato 21, 472–3; Schelling 514; see also creativity; definition of “art”; depiction; Schopenhauer 55, 579; Tolstoy 298 expression; formalism; interpretation; beauty 166–9 ontological contextualism; originality; objectivity 445–7 realism; representation; tradition; truth relativism 498–500 in art representation 505–7 Thom, Paul 96, 421, 462 see also literature; cognitive value of art; fiction, Thomasson, Amie 154, 453 nature of; fiction, truth in; fictional entities; Thoreau, Henry David 184 imaginative resistance; metaphor; realism Thucydides 13 Turner, J. M. W. 236, 309, 508–9, 526, 592 Tieck, Ludwig 519, 521 Twardowski, Kazimierz 364 Tilghman, B. R. 570 twentieth-century Anglo-American aesthetics Tintoretto, Jacopo 508, 513 61–73 Titian (Tiziano Vecelli) 273, 513 type-token distinction 89–90, 96, 415–17, 454–7, Madonna with Saints 300 563 Todorov, Tzvetan 436, 552 see also ontology of art Tolhurst, William 283, 368 Tolstoy, Leo 53, 264, 299–300, 311, 474, 503, Uccello, Paolo 438, 467 570–3, 595 Ulrich of Strasbourg 23–5 Anna Karenina 571; War and Peace 195, 571 universals in art 206, 486, 501, 555, 581–4 Schopenhauer 524 Aristotle 15, 148; Burke 177; Croce 221; expression theory 62, 264, 299, 572 Dissanayake 581–2; Hume 332, 582; Kant function of art 53, 56, 61–2, 298–9, 572 37, 47, 52, 131, 389–91, 582; Schopenhauer religion and art 264, 503, 571 523 Tomasello, Michael 1 aesthetic judgment 118–20 Tooby, J. 260 relativism 498–500 Tormey, Alan 265 see also cognitive science and art; evolution, Townsend, Dabney 45, 334, 340, 458–9, 538 art, and aesthetics; objectivity; Paleolithic, tradition 58, 101–3, 105, 125, 426, 451, 459, art of the 463, 532, 568, 573–5 Urmson, J. O. 121 Deleuze 236; Gombrich 309–10 Ussher, James 48 Amerindian aesthetics 144–5 Chinese aesthetics 190, 573 Valéry, Paul Ambroise 359–60, 423, 579 Indian aesthetics 115, 494 Valla, Giorgio 29 Japanese aesthetics 384–6 value of art 9, 66, 121–5, 127, 194–7, 204, 209, see also art history; canon; creativity; originality 264, 266, 288, 352, 429–30, 507–8, 581 tragedy 216, 329, 575–8 aesthetic education 114–17, 534–6 Aristotle 15, 30, 147–8, 252, 349, 404, 417, see also aestheticism; cognitive value of art; 439, 575–6; Corneille 30–1; Gorgias 14; criticism; evolution and art; formalism; Hegel 316–17, 320, 575, 577; Hume 44, 49, objectivity; taste; theories of art; truth in art 332–4; Kames 39; Kierkegaard 393; Lessing value, moral 17, 47–8, 52, 57, 130, 389, 429, 404–5, 577; Nietzsche 14, 55, 438–40, 571 575–7; Plato 575; Schopenhauer 523–4 Vamana 358–60 catharsis 182–3, 252, 576 Van Damme, Wilfried 583 dramatic see under drama Van Gogh, Theo, Submission 224 see also comedy; emotion; horror; irony; humor Van Gogh, Vincent 84, 113, 250, 310, 323, 363, Trakl, Georg 323 455 Trollope, Anthony 503 Van Meegeren, Hans 287–9 trompe l’oeil effects 105, 239–40, 287, 344, 469, Vance, Robert D. 104–5 471, 502 Vasari, G. 29, 149–51 see also illusion Velázquez, Diego 495 Trotsky, Leon 415 Las Meninas 295, 374 truth in art 11–15, 102–3, 117, 195–6, 212, Verdi, Giuseppe 586 215–17, 418, 578–80 Vermazen, Bruce 209, 459

619

index

Vermeer, Jan 150, 277, 287–8 Williams, Bernard 480 Girl with a Pearl Earring 452–3; A Woman Wilson, Deirdre 102, 379 Weighing Gold 275–6 Wilson, Edmund 412 Vico, Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) 197, 219 Wilson, Robert 463 Vidor, King, Stella Dallas 536 Wimsatt, William K. 66, 164, 355, 366, 369–70 Vienna Circle 361, 371 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim 49, 57, 150, 317, Virgil 306, 520 413 Aeneid 305 Wind, Edgar 206 Vivas, Eliseo 121 Winters, Edward 75 von Hardenberg, Friedrich see Novalis Wiseman, Mary Bittner 162 Witelo 24 Wagner, Richard 61, 97, 109, 234, 504, 586–8 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 63, 66–7, 76, 120, 152–3, Die Feen 586; Der fliegende Holländer 587; Das 235, 248–9, 347, 362–3, 374, 483, 556, Liebesverbot 586; Die Meistersinger von 593–6, 597 Nürnberg 588; Lohengrin 587; Parsifal 504, Cavell 183–4; Danto 226; Langer 400; 588, Rienzi 586; Ring of the Nibelung 349, Schopenhauer 522, 525, 594 571; Tannhäuser 587; Tristan und Isolde 529, Wolff, Christian 40–2, 162 588 Wölfflin, Heinrich 68, 150–1, 308 Nietzsche 438–9, 587; Schopenhauer 524–5, Wollheim, Richard 7, 70, 107–8, 123, 233, 240, 587–8; Scruton 529–30 288, 290, 365, 375, 408, 445, 452, 532, Wallach, A. 432–3 545, 562, 566, 569, 596–9 Walton, Kendall L. 67–8, 105, 107–8, 241, expression 67, 263, 597–8 280, 282, 292, 308, 356, 450, 508, 545, picture perception 67, 263, 470–1, 506, 588–91 597–9 expression 262–3 style 545, 597–9 fiction, nature of 276–8 Wolterstorff, Nicholas 70, 91, 283, 457 imagination 67, 70–1, 286, 350, 470–1, Woodfield, Richard 310 589–90 Woolf, Virginia 426, 496 imaginative resistance 351–3, 591 Wordsworth, William 164, 216, 363, 375 Wang Huaiqing, Bole, a Wise Old Man who Knows work of art 74, 77, 86–7, 90–2, 96, 99, 103, 125, How to Choose Horses 190 130, 134, 137, 203, 217, 222, 526, 567–9 Ward, Andrew 121 Bell 63, 172; Benjamin 59, 176; Collingwood Warhol, Andy 295, 450 62, 198–9, 266; Danto 226–7; Dewey 116, Brillo Boxes 68, 203; Empire 416 246, 482; Dickie 248; Duchamp 59; Dufrenne Warnock, Mary 350, 392 56, 249–50; Foucault 60; Goodman 312; Warren, Robert Penn 215 Heidegger 56, 321–3; Ingarden 56, 364–5; Wartenberg, Thomas E. 91 Kant 37–8; Lukács 409–10; Merleau-Ponty Watson, George 217 422; Sartre 513; Schelling 54, 516; Tolstoy Weatherson, Brian 351 299–300; Wollheim 597–9 Weber, Max 109 artifact, art as 152–3 Webster, Anthony K. 144 ontology of artworks 449–57 Weinberg, Bernard 29 see also conceptual art; definition of “art”; Weinberg, Jonathan 279, 353 expression theory; ontological contextualism Weitz, Morris 66, 152–3, 203, 233, 248 Wreen, Michael 165 Wellek, René 504, 520, 522 Wright, Crispin 446–7 Wenban–Smith, F. 6 Wright, Frank Lloyd 208, 454 Wheeler, Michael 510 Whistler, James Abbott McNeill 128, 502 Xenophanes 12, 16, 472 White, Hayden 213 Xenophon 12 White, M. 6 Whitehead, A. N. 400, 402 Yanal, Robert 249 Wicks, Robert 3 92 Young, James O. 92, 159, 225, 580 Wiggins, D. 206–7 Young, Julian 441 Wilde, Oscar 495, 534–5, 591–3 aestheticism 128–30, 428, 502, 592 Zalta, Edward 285 William of Auvergne 22 Zammito, John 47 William of Conches 27 Zangwill, Nick 69, 115, 171, 292, 446, 452

620

index

Zeki, Semir 115, 192, 261 Zeno of Citium 17 Zelle, Carsten 36 Ziff, Paul 66, 152 Zemach, Eddy 276, 580 Zilhão, João 5 Zen Buddhism 384 Zola, Émile 379, 524, 592

621