1 Philosophy and Art—18 and 19 Centuries DAVID HUME David Hume (1711-1776), the Eminent Scottish Philosopher, Is Best Known As
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
1 Philosophy and Art—18th and 19th Centuries DAVID HUME David Hume (1711-1776), the eminent Scottish philosopher, is best known as an empiricist and a skeptic. In regard to art, Hume is less concerned with finding a definition of art than with exploring the question of whether there are objective standards for assessing the goodness of works of art. Hume presents us with an antinomy—a pair of ideas, each with a claim on truth but seemingly mutually irreconcilable. On the one hand, most people believe it is possible to make critical judgments about the quality of works of art. When we think about comparing a great work of art, say the Mona Lisa, with a work that is merely pleasing, say a Norman Rockwell illustration, there is general agreement that the da Vinci painting is objectively better than the Rockwell. Consideration of such cases—Hume's examples are comparisons of the writers Ogilby and Milton, as well as Bunyan and Addison—forces one to acknowledge objective standards for critical judgments about art. The other pole of Hume's antinomy results from a consideration of what grounds such judgments. He asserts it can be nothing but taste, that is, whether a work of art actually affects the "sentiments," to use his terminology. Relying on the idea of a "natural equality of taste"—that one's tastes are simply one's own and not subject to correction by others—Hume reasons that a critical judgment can be nothing more than the expression of an idiosyncratic reaction to a work. It follows, then, that there can be no objective standards of judgment, a view that contradicts the earlier conclusion that there must be such. To resolve this dilemma, Hume asserts that, as a matter of brute empirical fact, our nature is so constituted that certain features of works of art just hap-pen to please all human beings. Our universal susceptibility to certain qualities ensures that there will be universal agreement that some works of art are more beautiful than others, and therefore objectively better. Despite his efforts to ground aesthetic judgments about the value of works of art in a uniform human nature, Hume acknowledges that there will inevitably be some aesthetic disagreement. But how can he account for them? Here, Hume is forced to invoke factors either in the psychological makeup of individuals, or in shared cultural preferences, that interfere with a person's otherwise natural ability to appreciate the beauty of a meritorious work of art. Only those with "strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice" are capable of discerning those qualities in the work that make it truly good. Thus, unable to locate objectivity in artworks themselves, Hume judges that only certain people are so well qualified that their responses really count. IMMANUEL KANT The theory of art Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) set out in his Critique of Judgment—the third of his famous three Critiques—has been enormously influential. Indeed, general acceptance of the term aesthetics as applied to the philosophy of art stems from Kant's discussion of art under what he takes to be the wider rubric of aesthetic judgment. Many of the more specific themes of Kant's philosophy of art—art's autonomy from specific interest, form as the object of aesthetic judgment, genius as the faculty of artistic creation—continue to be widely discussed as well. Kant's theory of art is quite complex, for it attempts to solve a variety of puzzles. Foremost among these is Hume's antinomy: In what sense can judgments of artistic merit, which appear to 2 be about our subjective feelings, be considered objective or factual? Because Kant bases his theory of art on his understanding of aesthetic judgment, which he takes to apply to nature in the first instance, one must begin there. An aesthetic judgment concerning nature—that this sunset is beautiful, for example—is a peculiar sort of judgment for Kant. (He uses the term "judgment" to refer to all acts of mental cognition. Thus, whenever we are thinking, we are making judgments.) To conclude that something is beautiful does not in any way enhance our understanding of it, as does a mere empirical judgment—for example, that the setting sun has reddened the clouds; instead, we seem to be saying something about how our perception of it affects us. When I call the sunset beautiful, I refer to feelings the sunset produces in me, even though I ex-press this in a judgment that attributes an apparently objective propertybeauty—to it. The question for Kant, as for Hume, is how a judgment about our feelings can have objective validity—for, when I say that the sunset is beautiful, I seem to be saying more than that it appeals to me, claiming also in effect that the sunset's beauty is there for all to see. Kant's solution to this problem improves on Hume's. Recall that the latter based the objectivity of judgments of taste on the presumed empirical truth that certain qualities of objects tend to produce pleasure in all human beings. Kant sees this will not justify our belief that attributions of beauty to objects have normative force: When I say something is beautiful, I not only believe you will agree, but I think that, in some sense, you should. Kant justifies the objective validity of aesthetic judgments by claiming that the feeling of pleasure conceptualized in such judgments is of a very specific sort. Unlike the feeling of pleasure produced by consuming an ice cream cone, the feeling of pleasure incident on the perception of a beautiful object does not arise from the satisfaction of a particular interest or desire. Rather, it is a disinterested pleasure derived from the mere contemplation of the object that induces it. The source of this pleasure, according to Kant, is in those features of the object uniquely suited to my perception. In Kantian terms, the form of a beautiful object causes the imagination (the mental faculty that allows me to apprehend any object) and the understanding (the faculty of conceptualization) to coincide in a special sort of harmony: It is as if the object were produced in order for it to be perceived by me. This free play of the faculties produces a pleasurable feeling of the sort that gives rise to the judgment that the object is beautiful. For this reason, we see beautiful objects as purposive, but without their fulfilling any actual purpose. This account solves the problem of the objective validity of aesthetic judgments by claiming that the pleasure produced by beautiful things is such that any being equipped with the perceptual and cognitive faculties human beings possess would experience this pleasure. The attribution of beauty to an object is objectively valid in that it posits a subjective state that all human beings are capable of experiencing. Unlike Hume's solution, the universality of our susceptibility to aesthetic pleasure does not depend on an empirical generalization that admits of many exceptions; rather, it depends only on the most general structure of the human mind. Nonetheless, aesthetic judgments do not meet the rigorous standards for empirical knowledge Kant sets forth in his Critique of Pure Reason. Many details of Kant's theory of natural beauty deserve further discussion. For example, the distinction between the beautiful and the sublime is important for his understanding of our aesthetic response to nature. But we need to remember that this account functions only as the first step in his theory of art. In moving to a consideration of art proper, Kant distinguishes it from various other branches of human activity—stressing, as he goes, that "art" always refers to 3 human activity freely undertaken—but the relevant term he uses to characterize what we now call "art" is fine art. Fine art is a species of aesthetic art that attempts to produce pleasure through the form of its objects. So Kant defines "art" by reference to his theory of aesthetic judgment: Art objects are those created to produce aesthetic pleasure by virtue of their form. In the following selection from the Critique of Judgment, Kant develops a number of different aspects of his theory of fine art. First, he argues that fine art must seem to us like a natural product. This is an important claim, for it grounds a naturalistic standard for judging works of art. Thus, according to Kant, noticing that a work of fine art was consciously produced to give us plea-sure detracts from the work's ability to produce that pleasure. Only art objects that both reveal and yet conceal their nature as artifacts will produce in us a genuine aesthetic response. This aspect of Kant's philosophy exhibits an interesting tension with his claim that art can express ideas, a claim that Schopenhauer will develop more fully in the next chapter. What Kant calls "ideas" are concepts that cannot be fully encountered in experience. Although there are perfectly valid examples of empirical concepts, such as "chair," within our experience, ideas such as beauty can never, according to Kant, be adequately instanced in the course of our daily lives. It is only art, with its ability to go beyond the quotidian, that provides us with sensory analogues of ideas. Kant also develops a theory of genius to account for the production of art. The problem addressed by this account stems from the fact that, according to Kant, fine art has no rules: If it did, it would be knowledge.