May 27: Philosophy of Art
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To do for next class - 1) Read pp. 200-253. 2) Prepare for the mid-term exam. 3) Decide on a topic for your final essay. |
To do for next class - 1) Read pp. 254-303; 2) Be prepared to defend one of the arguments for the existence of God; 3) Is the theory of evolution more scientific than creationism? Why? 4) Try to summarize Kant's refutation of the Ontological argument. |
Introduction
What is art, its purpose, and its value? This is a question which has been posed as far back as people have been writing. In the last two hundred years, most everyone's notion of what art is has been challenged by movements such as the Impressionists and Dadaists. Concepts such as 'found art' and 'process art' have lead many to question whether anything can be art. If so, perhaps the designation is useless. More central to philosophy is the question: What is the purpose of art? Presumably art which performs this purpose is good and that which doesn't is bad. Perhaps this question makes no sense if anything can count as art. However, philosophers have assumed that there is indeed a class of human creations which we can designate as art. This class includes music, poetry, drama, sculpture, painting, and other visual art.
The ancients
Plato
Throughout his philosophic work, Plato plays with the distinction between appearance and reality (of arguments, of knowledge, of goodness). Many other great artists have followed his lead, including Shakespeare (Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, King Lear, A Comedy of Errors). For Plato, this distinction could be seen by the correct application of reason. He argues convincingly and forcefully for this point through his mini-plays, or dialogues. The dialogues themselves are well crafted pieces of rhetoric which would be classed by many as literature and thus art. However, Plato himself thought that art was, in any form, a bad thing. What were the two difficulties, Plato had with art? He felt that artistic creations were mere appearances and that they thus led us astray from reality (Singer parable; cave analogy). He also believed that art stirred up the emotions, which disrupted the inner harmony of the soul and destroyed the desirable rule of reason. What do you think of Wolff's juxtaposition of content and medium?
Aristotle
Aristotle doesn't seem to have been as artistically oriented as Plato. However, we do not have most of his published works, we are only privy to his lecture notes. We do have the lecture notes he used for his discussions of the dramas of his day collected in a work called the Poetics. Some of the analyses Aristotle presents will sound quite familiar, as the terminology he introduced is still in use today (catharsis, plot, protagonist, antagonist, plot structure (denouement, etc.)).
In contrast to Plato, Aristotle felt that art was an important part of a healthy society. Why? Aristotle felt that good art was not merely an appearance (or an appearance of an appearance) but an expression of a form which we might not otherwise get to know in the particular way presented through the art. Thus, rather than a hindrance to our knowledge of the true nature of a form, art was in a unique position to aid that knowledge and make it more complete (Hamlet - it's better to see the play than to have witnessed the actual events its based on). What metaphysical difference does this dispute point to? (Plato - forms transcendent reality; universals independent of particulars versus Aristotle - forms in reality; universals embodied by particular things of the world).
Aristotle also disagreed with Plato that art would arouse the passions and confuse rationality. Rather, Aristotle felt that good art was cathartic. This meant that the audience would sympathize with the (say) actors to such a degree that when the actors expressed rage, or anger the audience would, without having to directly express the emotion themselves, gain the benefits of having 'vented' those feelings. In a sense, art was an outlet for the emotions. People would then be able to better exercise their judgment since emotion was no longer there to cloud it. This debate still rages! Can you think of examples why? (Recent teenage shooting sprees; violent (very violent) video games; relations between violent programming and social violence; Does sadomasochistic pornography stimulate viewers to commit sex crimes or does it divert passions which might otherwise lead to those crimes?
Romanticism
Wordsworth (1807) Ode: Intimations on Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
There was a time when meadow, grove, and streams,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
Wordsworth is often thought of as the founding father of the romantic movement in the late eighteenth century. He is joined by Lord Byron, Yeats, Shelley, William Blake and Coleridge as major figures in the movement. What did they reject? Theirs was a rebellion against the neoclassicist exaltation of order, proportion and reason. They rejected outright the supremacy of reason in art and life (this is almost what the word 'romantic' means nowadays) in its stead they upheld imagination. They also held that subjectivity was the source of true knowledge, not scientific objectivity. Individual, subjective experience could give us our few glimpses of the infinite. Plato said art could not put us near the eternal because it was irrational, the romantics reversed this position completely. They raised the individual experience to a prominence it had not before had. These sorts of ideas are still prevalent in art and elsewhere today. Can you think of examples? (New age mysticism, laissez-faire capitalism, some feminist/social constructivist criticisms of science)
Religious defense
So far, these conceptions of art have something in common. What is it? It is the special place of art and its creators. For the ancients, artists were thought to be touched by the gods, or muses. Similarly, the romantics had a view of artists as tortured geniuses whose gift they shared through their art. In both cases, art had instrumental effects. There have (of course) been opposing views of what art should be and who should create it.
Leo Tolstoy is Wolff's choice of the spokesperson for this view. Many others have practiced and propounded the virtues of naive and folk art. However, Tolstoy goes further and in fact, his view is a synthesis of what are often considered two separate views. The first is shared with naive art. this is the view that art is to be judged on its ability to cause sympathetic emotions in the audience. It should not be judged on the basis of style or execution or elaborateness. It should be the sincerity with which the art is presented that gives it value. The purpose of art is to unite people through this shared feeling (thus 'great' works are often overvalued according to this theory; e.g. Beethoven). The second, independent aspect of art for Tolstoy is the religious dimension. He felt that religion guided the development of humanity. Thus art which transmitted the feelings which were in line with the current religious perception was better than that which did not. Thus Tolstoy thought Christian art which encouraged feelings of closeness and relationships with God and Christian art which demonstrated the feelings of common life were the best art.
Negative art
Marcuse felt that great art, the best art, is negative, destructive and irrational and therefore a valuable element in our society. Marcuse's argument for the importance of the portrayal of negative powers in art is quite elaborate. What is it? In essence he combines Freudian psychology with a Marxian critique of the capitalist society. We have encountered both of these before. Freud's psychology places a heavy emphasis on the role of (sexual) repression. The reality principle replaces the pleasure principle in young children. This is the basis of civilized society, and nothing can satisfy these unconscious desires of adults. The self which represses and is disgusted by what is repressed is the adult, social self while the self which delights in the repressed is the childish, anti-social self. This repression is exemplified by folk characters such as Peter Pan.
Marcuse modifies Freud's analysis by making a distinction between necessary and surplus repression. Necessary repression is necessary because it helps the individual to survive. However, surplus repression is not demanded by reality, but by other people (such as rulers). Progress is an elimination of surplus and a lessening of necessary repression. However, Marcuse feels that surplus repression is being increased by the privileged sectors of society to ensure their dominance. How does this relate to Marx?
Marcuse is interested in the question: Why do the most powerful and outrageous claims get so quickly integrated into our society? Given surplus repression, and the theory of the unconscious we can sketch Marcuse's answer. He thinks that the outrage people express at social transgression is overstated because it is a product of their inner conflict, between repression and our defenses against it. We recoil from it because we are drawn to the breach of the rules. Now, if it was necessary repression which was being challenged, we would have a duty (to preserve civilization) to constrain such outbursts. However, there is surplus repression. And, in order to conquer the surplus repression we must tap our infantile desire for release from all repression. Thus art serves a revolutionary role, it promises what can never be in order to obtain what should be. Again, quite Marxist. Is this a universal theory of art even if it's correct? What happens to art if there is only necessary repression left?
Pornography and art
What is the purpose of art? Is it valuable in itself or does its value derive from its effects on people? Is it freedom of expression? Should it be publicly funded? What do you think of the Ulysses case? What about the Mapplethorpe version of the same question? What kinds of theories of art is Wolff partial to (see his comment on p. 244)? Is censorship ever permissible? What did you think of Berns' case for the importance of shame? Would shamelessness lead to anarchy and chaos? Can we divorce questions about art and state? How do morals and aesthetics relate? What is the position of conservatives, feminists, liberals on pornography? What is it on the role of government in other areas? Is this incoherent or can we explain it?
Art for art's sake
This aphorism summarizes the position of Oscar Wilde (and others) quite well. Rather than art being instrument, that is being of value insofar as it effects us in a good or bad way, art is seen as a justification in itself. Art should be valued, cherished and encouraged for its mere existence. We can see that a distinction similar to Kant's is at work here. Kant noted that things were of value insofar as they led to something desirable or, like people, there were ends-in-themselves. Similarly, we see a distinction here between instrumental and intrinsic value. Can you think of examples of each? (a pen; your grandma's wedding ring; a car; an autographed baseball). Can something be valuable if nothing else in the world existed? Does something have to have intrinsic value if something else has instrumental value (infinite regress problem)? Oscar Wilde went so far as to claim that life has value because it contributes to art. Is this a necessary consequence if art has intrinsic value? What other examples of intrinsic value have we encountered? (Bentham, Kant, Aristotle's unmoved mover).
Evaluation of art
What would Plato, Aristotle, Marcuse, Tolstoy, Wordsworth and Wilde think of this (Toreador by Salvador Dali)?
Before we leave, read Wolff's summary of the main points of chapter 4 on pp. 238-9. Why did he order the points in this way?
1) Read pp. 254-303; 2) Be prepared to defend one of the arguments for the existence of God; 3) Is the theory of evolution more scientific than creationism? Why? 4) Try to summarize Kant's refutation of the Ontological argument.
