Art and Embodiment: From Aesthetics to Self-Consciousness [Reprinted 2003] 0198239963, 9780199244973

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Art and Embodiment: From Aesthetics to SelfConsciousness Paul Crowther

Print publication date: 2001 Print ISBN-13: 9780199244973 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.001.0001

Title Pages (p.i) Art and Embodiment (p.ii) (p.iii) Art and Embodiment

(p.iv) This book has been printed digitally and produced in a standard specification in order to ensure its continuing availability

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by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Paul Crowther 1993 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) Reprinted 2003 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer ISBN 0-19-823996-3

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Introduction: An Ecological Theory of Art

Art and Embodiment: From Aesthetics to SelfConsciousness Paul Crowther

Print publication date: 2001 Print ISBN-13: 9780199244973 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.001.0001

Introduction: An Ecological Theory of Art Paul Crowther

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of ontological reciprocity and the philosophical significance of art. It then sets out the book's central argument, that the essence of art is nothing less than the conservation of human experience itself. The artwork as symbolically significant sensuous manifold is able to express the decisive relation between subject and world (ontological reciprocity) at a level that does not obliterate the concreteness of the relation. Indeed, the necessary unity of whole and parts in such a work echoes the inseparable phenomenological and logical unity of embodiment and experience itself. The artwork, in other words, reflects our mode of embodied inherence in the world, and by clarifying this inherence it brings about a harmony between subject and object of experience — a full realization of the self. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented. Keywords:   art, philosophy, ontological reciprocity, human experience, self-realization

I This work takes as its major premiss the fact of human embodiment. The particular human subject is just one amongst other such sensible beings and things, with whom and which it is engaged in a constant process of reciprocal interaction and modification. The reason why this process is constant is because embodied beings are finite. This means that no matter how thoroughly they engage with the sensible world—with Otherness (in the broad sense of both other beings and things)—they cannot fix it into absolute, unchanging place. Otherness is radically transcendent. We can take some hold on it, but there is

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Introduction: An Ecological Theory of Art always more to be perceived, always more to be done; always more than can be contained in any present moment of perception or sequence of actions. Now, in so far as we are one sensible item in a world of other such items, our most fundamental relation to this world is not that of an inner ‘thinking subject’ gazing out upon an ‘external’ world. Rather, we inhere in the sensible. Our engagement with Otherness is achieved through the body’s sensori-motor capacities operating as a unified field. As we grow, this field becomes more unified and complex through physical and social interactions. In particular, its development into language brings with it both the capacity for rational comprehension and the evolution of a sense of personal identity. In concert, all these facts suggest that our sense of self is not a wholly private thing. Rather, it is a function of the reciprocity between our unique position in the world qua particular embodied subject, and the broader physical and social circumstances in which we both locate ourselves and are located by forces beyond our control. As some readers will have gathered, this provisional account of human being-inthe-world is derived substantially from Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It is further discussed in a later chapter of this (p.2) work. For the moment, however, I want to focus on one key point. I shall call it ontological reciprocity. As noted above, our relation to Otherness is determined fundamentally not simply by ‘mental’ acts of cognitive discrimination, but by our sensori-motor capacities (of which language is the highest function) in operation as a unified field. The unity of this field, and the consciousness of self emergent from it, is both stimulated by, and enables us to organize, the spatio-temporal diversity of Otherness. We give it contour, direction, and meaning; thus constituting it as world. On these terms, the structure of embodied subjectivity and of the world are directly correlated. Each brings forth and defines essential characteristics of the other. Their reciprocity is ontological as well as causal. Now, it is crucial to note that the embodied subject’s position in this reciprocity is informed by data from non-immediate experience. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, the life of consciousness—cognitive life, the life of desire or perpetual life— is subtended by an intentional arc’ which projects round about us our past, our future, our human setting, our physical, ideological, and moral situation, or rather which results in our being situated in all these respects.1 On these terms, our body’s hold upon the world is of enormous complexity. In even the simplest experience, rational, sensory, affective, and socio-historical factors are interwoven in an inseparable unity. This inseparability has both a phenomenological and a logical basis. The phenomenological element is the fact that our body’s primary reciprocity with the world is largely pre-reflective, that is, it is one wherein we do not consciously separate all the different factors (the Page 2 of 11

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Introduction: An Ecological Theory of Art rational, the sensori-motor, the socio-historical, etc.) which are being brought to bear in a particular experience. The logical aspect is that all the elements operative in a moment of experience form a qualitative whole. Remove any one of them and the character of the whole is changed. It becomes a different experience. Given, then, this phenomenological and logical inseparability of the elements in our ontological reciprocity with the world, the question arises as to how we express such reciprocity, that is, how do we arrive at a full and explicit understanding of the experience? (p.3) The problem here is the conflict between ‘full’ and ‘explicit’. For when we adopt a reflective attitude we can analyse the elements which are operative in a particular experience. However, by analysing—by taking the whole apart—we change the structure of the experience. It finds expression as a fragmented whole. The fullness—the qualitative unity—of the reciprocity is lost. The problem here is that of philosophy itself. In this respect, Merleau-Ponty (following Bergson) remarks that I start from unified experience and from there acquire in a secondary way consciousness of a unifying activity, when, taking up an analytical attitude, I break up perception into qualities and sensations, and when in order to recapture on the basis of these the object into which I was in the first place blindly thrown, I am obliged to suppose an act of synthesis, which is merely the counterpart of analysis.2 The point here is that philosophical thought can only articulate ontological reciprocity by projecting its own distinctive operations upon it—that is to say, by interpreting our perception of the world as a kind of ‘mental’ synthesis which brings discrete qualities or sense-data into an ordered relation. This retroactive application to immediate perception of the operations of more reflective thought has been noted by others besides Merleau-Ponty and Bergson. Ryle’s attack upon the ‘paramechanical’ theory in The Concept of Mind follows a similar strategy. Some of the points made above about the relation between our primary reciprocity with the world and reflective thought are, for example, paralleled by Ryle’s discussion of the difference between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’. This distinction hinges on the fact that knowing how to perform an action does not, at the same time, demand that we formulate a theory about the correct way it should be done—a theory which then acts causally on our body, stimulating it into the appropriate motions. Rather, we simply do it. My first key point, then, is that between our most fundamental reciprocity with the world qua embodied subjects, and our attempts to express it explicitly in philosophical or other kinds of theoretical concepts, there is an abyss. Abstract concepts alone cannot fully recapture the concreteness of ontological reciprocity. We can offer an analysis and description of it, but the act of analysis Page 3 of 11

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Introduction: An Ecological Theory of Art and (p.4) description is at best a kind of looking on from above. Schiller puts the problem at issue here in very telling terms: ‘In order to lay hold of the fleeting phenomenon, he [the philosopher] must first bind it in fetters of rule, tear its fair body to pieces by reducing it to concepts, and preserve its living spirit in a sorry skeleton of words.’3 But is there any way round this denuding of the concrete particular? The answer is, of course, yes—through the creation and appreciation of art. Art is the making of symbolically significant form out of, or into, sensuous manifolds. The process of making, here, involves an internal relation between the existence of the specific artist or artistic ensemble, and the resulting artefact. Let me first clarify two of the terms in this complex definition. ‘Sensuous manifolds’ are complex wholes which are present to the senses, or realized in imagination or through emotional identification. The structure of such manifolds can be predominantly physical, for example articulation in stone, paint, or sound; or predominantly linguistic, for example when language is used expressively as opposed to its normal factual usages. The term ‘symbolically significant’ is more complex still. It has three senses, two of them descriptive, and the other honorific. The first is when a work adopts some overtly representational format, that is, a formalized semantic and syntactic code through which it refers to some aspect of the world other than itself. This, of course, is how pictorial and sculptural representation and literature function. The other descriptive sense of symbolic form is less formalized, and founded, rather, on culturally established associations. For example, we often characterize music in terms of moods or emotions, or on the basis of analogies with gesture and action. Similar considerations hold in relation to non-objective painting and sculpture. Now, sometimes these associations will be based on a purely personal reading of a work. Much more frequently, however, they will be drawn from a common cultural stock which we have learned in the processes of growing up and education. Of course, which associations are made with which forms will vary from culture to culture, but the basis of such associations is rarely arbitrary. If called upon, we will be able to offer some explanation of why such and such a colour or shape is associated with such and such a mood or gesture. (p.5) The remaining sense of ‘symbolically significant’ is honorific. It arises when some primarily functional artefact—such as a building, or piece of furniture or ceramics—is so excellent as to make us aware of it as a distinctive way of fulfilling the function for which it was designed. In such artefacts, function is transformed into an analogue of subject-matter in representational art. We are not simply interested in using the artefact: we are interested, rather, in how this particular work presents or fulfils its function. On these terms, then, the ontology of the artwork can be viewed from three directions. In the visual arts of painting and sculpture sensuous manifolds are made into symbolic form; in literature, symbolic form is made—through the Page 4 of 11

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Introduction: An Ecological Theory of Art expressive articulation of language—into a sensuous manifold; and in the applied arts, the sensuous manifold of a functional artefact becomes symbolically significant by exemplifying its particular mode of functionality. Whichever direction we take, we arrive at the same result—a symbolically significant sensuous manifold. In such a work we have a concrete particular which is charged with semantic and conceptual energy. It is this integral fusion of the sensuous and the conceptual which enables art to express something of the depth and richness of body-hold in a way which eludes modes of abstract thought—such as philosophy. As Hegel rightly noted, what makes art unique is that it is a mode of understanding which is half-way between the concrete particularity of material phenomena, and the abstract generality of pure thought. These preliminary arguments suggest that art is of philosophical significance through its capacity to express ontological reciprocity. This, however, is only a first step. For in this work I shall argue that such expression—in its various complex forms—is a need of self-consciousness itself. To see why this is so it is worth addressing the notion of ecology. In the most general terms ecology addresses the interaction between organisms and their environments. It is a biological discipline. However, in the case of human ecology, matters are more complex. Here, since the life-form in question is self-conscious, its interaction with the environment and with other (and, indeed, members of its own) species involves psychological as well as biological issues. A healthy reciprocity between the embodied subject and its world is one wherein such a subject finds its own sense of self defined and realized (as well as its physical needs being (p.6) satisfied). This focuses on such things as the relations between subject and object of experience, the personal and the collective, and the particular and the general. In a fully developed life, the reciprocity between the human subject and the objects of his or her experience will be balanced and harmonious. In particular, we will seek to recognize, and obtain recognition from, other persons at the level of both relationships themselves and at that of self-externalization, that is, at the level of artefacts made, or projects realized, by us. All in all, we need to see our inner life reflected in, and acknowledged by, the realm of Otherness. Now, of course, there are many circumstances—some historical and societal, others bound more specifically to our personal situation—where the relation between self and Otherness is disharmonious or even antagonistic. Indeed (as noted earlier), qua finite embodied beings, our hold on Otherness is not an absolute one. The world—of both things and other persons—cannot be exhausted or ‘finalized’ in our mere perception of it, or through practical projects. Even the most profound love for another person does not enable us to totally intersect with him or her. As Lacan remarks (in a possibly unique moment of lucidity), ‘You do not see me from where I see you.’ This means that the reciprocity Page 5 of 11

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Introduction: An Ecological Theory of Art between subject and object of experience is unstable. It has to be achieved— sometimes from the most adverse circumstances. Art has a decisive role to play in this task. For (as I shall argue at more length further on in this text) the artwork qua symbolically significant sensuous manifold is founded on an internal relation between the creator’s experience and the made artefact. Its integration of symbolic content, sensuous material, and personal experience enables it to reconcile the general subject/object division in a number of ways. For example, in order for the individual to be at home with himself or herself, the needs of the mind and of the senses must both be satisfied. Art is a major satisfaction of this need in so far as it brings rational and sensuous material into an inseparable and mutually enhancing relation. Again, the individual needs to feel at home with the world of material things. Art optimally satisfies this need in so far as it involves the appropriation of nature for human ends, but in a way that facilitates greater awareness of sensuous material itself. More significant still, the individual needs to be at home with other human beings. This involves being able to identify with, and appreciate, others, on the basis of free rather than coercive (p.7) relationships. Ideally, through identifying with and appreciating the Other, we discover truths about our own self and its potential. Again (as I shall show at length in this text), art facilitates this to the optimum degree. We are thus brought to the fundamental contention of this study. The essence of art is nothing less than the conservation of human experience itself. The artwork as symbolically significant sensuous manifold is able to express the decisive relation between subject and world (ontological reciprocity, as I have termed it) at a level which does not obliterate the concreteness of the relation. Indeed, the necessary unity of whole and parts in such a work echoes the inseparable phenomenological and logical unity of embodiment and experience itself. The artwork, in other words, reflects our mode of embodied inherence in the world, and by clarifying this inherence it brings about a harmony between subject and object of experience—a full realization of the self. In the creation and reception of art, we are able to enjoy a free-belonging to the world. An ecological understanding of art on these lines is not new. Its first vague stirrings are in Kant’s theory of art. It is then substantially developed by Schiller, and stated more fully still in Hegel’s Aesthetics. In the twentieth century it has reappeared (albeit with many modifications and new inflections) in the work of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, and Adorno, amongst others. In this work I will effect further modifications to it by critically engaging with the work of some of these thinkers.

II Let me now briefly situate the ecological approach in relation to dominant tendencies in contemporary aesthetics. First, much aesthetic theory (in the English-speaking world and beyond) has been dominated by strands of an ahistorical formalism, most of which stem from, in effect, treating Kant’s Page 6 of 11

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Introduction: An Ecological Theory of Art aesthetic of nature as though it were a theory of art. These varieties of formalism hold that the artwork is a unity of formal qualities which, through disinterested contemplation, gives rise to aesthetic experience. The difficulties with this sort of approach are manifold. For example, they rarely address what scope should be allowed to the terms ‘form’ and ‘aesthetic experience’, and why, indeed, these should be so important (p.8) to human beings. Worse still, such approaches invariably construe the key notion of ‘disinterestedness’ in psychological terms, as a kind of detached ‘attitude’ taken up by the observer. This leaves formalism open to the claim that there simply is no such attitude, or, in more sophisticated versions of the objection, that the notion of a disinterested attitude is inconsistent with the realities of humankind’s concrete historical and ideological settings. Later on in this text I shall engage with these problems by restating some of formalism’s key concepts in logically, phenomenologically, and historically enriched terms. (This, of course, amounts to a transformation.) Now, it has seemed to some commentators that formalist approaches have also been called into question by developments within the art-world itself. The advent, for example, of works which are created by an artist simply designating some item as ‘art’ rather than making it (such as Duchamp’s ready-mades), or where the artist’s ‘idea’ or ‘text’ is the work, are cases in point. For, in the former case, the object of appreciation is not so much the item’s formal qualities as the new ‘artistic’ use to which it is being put. In the latter case, there is simply no object to which disinterested attention can be directed. Developments such as these, of course, have led some philosophers to formulate Institutional definitions of art. These focus on the claim that all that is required for the creation of art is that some accredited member of the art-world designates an item ‘art’ on the basis of some theory. On these terms, what is decisive in the definition of art is not the making of artefacts, but rather the situating of items in a specific social and intellectual context. This view itself has proven controversial. In this study, I will propose the following objection. The making of symbolically significant sensuous manifolds is what the concept ‘art’ has crystallized around in historical terms. If, therefore, it can also be shown that such artefacts have logically distinctive properties which are not shared by works created by designation, then we would be entitled to disqualify the latter from the status ‘art’. In so doing, we would also be refuting the Institutional definitions of art, since these take designated works as their paradigm examples of ‘art’. The main reason why the ecological theory of art has not been more widely recognized is because of its complex links with Marxism. There is much in Marx’s early appropriations of Hegel (notably in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, and Part I (p.9) of The German Ideology) which is highly amenable to the ecological approach. However, the main tradition of Marxist aesthetics has been a reductionist one—owing more to the dogmas of ‘scientific socialism’ than to the modest philosophical anthropology of Marx’s early work. It Page 7 of 11

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Introduction: An Ecological Theory of Art is only in the late twentieth century, most notably in the writings of Adorno and Marcuse, that Marxism has reached a level of theoretical maturity which enables it to approach art in a non-reductionist manner. However, just at the point where this has happened, Marxism itself has been devastated as a potent left-wing force for historical change. By this devastation I do not simply mean the popular revolutions and cult of the market economy, which are currently destroying Marxist states. I mean, rather, the even more radical developments in politics and cultural theory, which are associated with feminism, and certain strands of poststructuralism—notably the work of Foucault. The upshot of these developments has been a return to crude reductionism. What counts as good art, what counts as art itself is seen as, in effect, the institutionalization of the interests and preferences of dominant power-groups (notably the white, male, heterosexual middle classes). On these terms, the proper object of study for aesthetics or cultural theory (if, indeed, such practices are still valid at all) is not art—but rather the societally determined uses of modes of representation and ‘discourse’. Now (as I have already argued in my Critical Aesthetics and Postmodernism), the major problem with these approaches is that they fail to engage with the logical and phenomenological conditions which have enabled various power élites to privilege certain artefacts and group them together under the label ‘art’. They fail, in other words, to engage with art and the aesthetic domain in anything other than historical and sociological terms. Characteristically, art and the aesthetic are summarily dismissed as ‘fetishized’ or ‘reified’ or ‘sexist’ historically specific modes of value or preference which have no validity beyond the narrow and oppressive interests of the power-group(s) responsible for their ‘construction’. What these responses overlook is that, qua embodied subjectivity, human being is structured around constants. Some aspects of ‘being-in-theworld’ are historically specific and subject to change, but the fact of ontological reciprocity itself is the very root condition of human being. The needs to externalize oneself, to achieve recognition from the Other, and self-recognition through the Other, are needs (p.10) intrinsic to embodied subjectivity. If, therefore, it can be shown that certain kinds of artefacts fulfil these needs in a distinctive and positive way, then we would rightly assign to them (whatever ostensible social or utilitarian functions they may happen to serve) a universal significance in the ecology of human experience. In this study, I shall claim this status for art—as symbolically significant sensuous manifold.

III I have offered, then, an overview of the ecological theory of art and its relation to contemporary aesthetics. The time has now come to indicate my strategy of exposition in the main body of this text. Given the basic relation which I have posited between art and philosophy, the question of strategy cannot be straightforward. For how can philosophy systematically articulate the concrete formations of art without doing violence to their particularity? There are various Page 8 of 11

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Introduction: An Ecological Theory of Art answers to this. The most important one is that whilst philosophy deals primarily in generalities, this by no means prevents it from being a vehicle of truth in relation to concrete phenomena. Indeed, if the concrete and contingent were unamenable to conceptualization we would have no self-conscious relation to them whatsoever. What is needed, then, is a mode of exposition which is, in some sense, structurally amenable to its object. Now, it will be recalled that in this Introduction I have given some emphasis to our ontological reciprocity with the world. I shall now pick up on the subjective aspect of this relation. In acting upon the world, our starting-point is always inscribed in and informed by a pre-established stock of knowledge and beliefs. In approaching and engaging with the object on the basis of these, the object’s resistance, and the new aspects of it which are disclosed through our exploration, serve to modify and, sometimes transform, our starting-point. In the specific field of academic enquiry, this movement is described as the ‘hermeneutic circle’. It involves proceeding from some foreknowledge of the object, to a consideration of it in the light of those aspects of tradition which are relevant to its interpretation. On the basis of this, we are able to deepen our original understanding. The truth of the object is not reified in some putative notion of definitively achieved absolute correspondence. (p.11) Rather, it emerges in a gradual unfolding and clarification of its aspects, as the hermeneutic circle constellates around it. Truth is seen as a continuing process of refinement, enrichment, and clarification. It is a dynamic of interpretation. The structure of the present text will involve an interpretative approach of this kind, centring on chronological and conceptual advance. The chapters in the first two-thirds of the book are presented in roughly the order of their original composition, and with little modification. Those in Part One represent my first formulations of the relation between the aesthetic domain and art, and the more general significance of the relation. The chapters in Part Two involve the exploration of themes from my primary formulation in the context of a tradition of Continental philosophy which assigns philosophical significance to art. In Part Three I offer chapters which reappraise the relation between the aesthetic domain and experience, in the light of this tradition. In particular, I am able to formulate an ecological theory of art. These chapters present my current position. Having outlined this overall strategy, I shall now summarize its steps in more detail vis-à-vis individual chapters. Chapter 1 is primarily an exercise in conceptual analysis which seeks to map out the boundaries of the aesthetic domain. It singles out form and disinterestedness as key terms, and defends the latter against some sceptical viewpoints. Chapter 2 is a first attempt to articulate aesthetic experience and art in relation to ontological reciprocity. It begins with a consideration of Gadamer’s worries about aesthetic formalism, and, whilst rejecting these, argues that insights from Gadamer and others can clarify the Page 9 of 11

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Introduction: An Ecological Theory of Art diversity and deeper significance of aesthetic experiences. This significance is a first indication of art’s ecological significance in harmonizing the reciprocity of embodied subject and world. This function is further developed in Chapter 3 as a response to vulgar Marxist scepticism concerning the value of abstract art. Particular significance here is attached to a notion initially broached in Chapter 2, namely that of aesthetic empathy. Chapter 4 marks the point where the themes of aesthetic experience, art, and ontological reciprocity are first viewed in relation to a tradition in Continental philosophy. Specifically, I address Kant’s aesthetics on the basis of ideas from Merleau-Ponty and (notably) Heidegger, so as to articulate the ontological significance of aesthetic experience. In Chapter 5, Heidegger’s aesthetic (p.12) theory is itself expounded and subjected to critical scrutiny and revaluation. In particular, I show how Heidegger fails to recognize the importance of historical mediation in relation to aesthetic experience. Similar strategies figure in my discussion of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of painting in Chapter 6. (This chapter is also of special significance in that it presents in greater depth the overall philosophical position—initially broached towards the start of this Introduction— which informs my book as a whole. It gives particular emphasis to the role played by the body in ontological reciprocity.) In Chapter 7 I again adopt a strategy of exposition, critical response, and revaluation; this time in relation to Hegel’s theory of art, and the role of architecture within it. I argue that Hegel’s position can be existentialized, in a way which enables us to see art’s role in harmonizing the embodied subject’s reciprocity with the world. We are thus brought to the key transitional point. Throughout Chapters 4 to 7 (inclusively) the ontological significance of aesthetic experience and art has been progressively illuminated from the perspective of tradition. In the chapters which follow, I return to my original notion of the aesthetic domain, and interpret it on the basis of insights and strategies drawn informally from all the thinkers with whom I have critically engaged. In Chapter 8 I propose that selfconsciousness has fundamental needs which cannot be reduced to biological determination. I further argue that the aesthetic domain and the aesthetic experience of artifice are the basis of an emergent order of practices whose raison d’être is to answer the needs of self-consciousness. They enable the embodied subject to be at home with the world in the fullest sense by enhancing or reflecting structures essential to self-consciousness itself. Art is the highest form of this. In Chapter 9 I offer a provisional definition of art as symbolically significant sensible manifold, and then explore the distinctive ways in which it reflects self-consciousness. I further suggest that this reflective significance only emerges on the basis of specific sets of historical conditions. These are explained as the basis of artistic creativity and originality in Chapter 10. My discussion of this topic together with the provisional definition (offered in the preceding chapter) enables me to formalize an ecological definition of art. This is then put to use in refuting Institutional-type definitions and contemporary Page 10 of 11

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Introduction: An Ecological Theory of Art scepticism concerning the possibility of artistic originality. Finally, I offer a brief Conclusion to the work as a whole. (p.13) The substance and textures of argument in this book encompass moments spent in St Andrews, Leeds, Oxford, Pittenweem, and elsewhere over the past decade. On the view of philosophy which informs my text overall, such contingencies are not, philosophically speaking, contingent. This claim will loom large in subsequent volumes to this. Notes:

(1) Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith with revisions by Forrest Williams (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1974), 136. (2) Ibid. 238. (3) Friedrich Schiller, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind, ed. and trans. E. Wilkinson and L. Willoughby (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1982), 5.

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The Aesthetic Domain

Art and Embodiment: From Aesthetics to SelfConsciousness Paul Crowther

Print publication date: 2001 Print ISBN-13: 9780199244973 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.001.0001

The Aesthetic Domain A Logical Geography Paul Crowther

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.003.0002

Abstract and Keywords This chapter is primarily an exercise in conceptual analysis that seeks to map out the boundaries of the aesthetic domain. The chapter is organized as follows. Section I clarifies one common strand in aesthetic responses by defining and elaborating the notion of formal qualities. Section II links the appreciation of such qualities to the idea of disinterestedness — understood in a logical sense, rather than its customary psychological one. It then clarifies the scope and diversity of the aesthetic domain. Finally, Section III defends the idea of the aesthetic against objections broached by Marshall Cohen and George Dickie. Keywords:   aesthetics, aesthetic domain, formal qualities, disinterestedness, Marshall Cohen, George Dickie

Introduction In some of the best recent Analytic work on aesthetics, there has been a tendency to construe the grounds of our aesthetic responses fundamentally in terms of our response to art. For example, Anthony Savile suggests1 that the aesthetic response is founded on our understanding of the artwork’s appearance in relation to the artist’s (broadly speaking) stylistic intentions. Again, Roger Scruton assigns a central role to imagination, emotion, and, in particular, the notion of seeing-as.2 Now, what is generally problematic about these approaches is their arbitrariness. We might well agree that our aesthetic responses to art are frequently made on the grounds which Savile and Scruton so eloquently elaborate; but this, in itself, provides no justification for taking these as the Page 1 of 12

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The Aesthetic Domain definitive grounds of all aesthetic responses qua aesthetic. It is telling in this respect that Scruton has almost nothing to say about our aesthetic appreciation of nature; and whilst Savile does indicate3 how it is possible to enjoy nature as if it were art, he does nothing to justify his assumption that this is the pre-eminent ground of our appreciation of natural beauty. The problem which faces us, then, is to do justice to the diversity of aesthetic responses. This means moving from an analysis of what is common to them to one which clarifies the differences between our aesthetic appreciation of nature, and our aesthetic appreciation of artifice. In Section I of this chapter, therefore, I shall clarify one common strand in aesthetic responses by defining and elaborating (p.18) the notion of formal qualities. In Section II, I will link the appreciation of such qualities to the idea of disinterestedness—understood in a logical sense, rather than its customary psychological one. I will then be in a position to clarify the scope and diversity of the aesthetic domain. Finally, in Section III, I will defend the idea of the aesthetic against objections broached by Marshall Cohen, and George Dickie.

I The formal aspects of an object or event are those qualities which constitute its phenomenal structure, that is, the way it presents itself to the senses, or, where appropriate, to the imagination. Formal aspects, in other words, arise from those qualities which pertain to the structure of appearance alone—as opposed to those dispositional qualities which determine the essence, or whatness, of that which is appearing. Now, it is crucial here that we stress the importance of structure. For, whilst we may normally find, say, a certain shade of green, or a particular mountain, or character in a play, in themselves sensuously or emotionally appealing, to regard such particulars solely in relation to their role in a phenomenal or (in the case of the play) an imaginatively intended structure is to change the reason for why we find them appealing. It is to formalize them. By grasping them strictly in terms of their phenomenal interrelations, our normal interest in them is modified, and it is, I would suggest, in picking out this modified interest that the term ‘aesthetic’ has its raison d’être. Much confusion, however, has been caused by a failure to differentiate between two such levels of formal relations. Consider, for example, Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of a painting of a mountain. According to him, the painter’s task is ‘To unveil the means, visible and not otherwise, by which it makes itself a mountain before our eyes. Light, lighting, shadows, reflections, colour, all the objects of his quest are not altogether real objects; like ghosts they have only visual existence…they are not seen by everyone.’4 Now, what Merleau-Ponty is pointing out here are infra-structural (p.19) formal relations. Normally when we see a mountain we do so without noticing the relationships of light, texture, and colour which constitute its visual appearance. However, the painter composes his image in a way which thrusts such qualities to the forefront of our attention. Our Page 2 of 12

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The Aesthetic Domain interest in the ‘mountain’ as such is suspended in favour of appreciating the sheer structure of its appearance. (One presumes also, of course, that a similar suspension could take place in relation to the cognition of a real mountain, as long as its phenomenal fabric was found striking enough.) This notion of infra-structural formal qualities also has application to (amongst others) the realms of language and sound. Normally, for example, in reading or speech we are concerned with the sense of words and sentences, and not with the phenomenal qualities which make this sense possible. However, sometimes in ordinary language, and always in poetry and literature, we remark not just upon what is said, but upon how it is said. We appreciate those qualities of, say, homophony, rhythm, metre, or imagery, which are the phenomenal matrix of a ‘text’s’ sense. Similarly, whilst much of our attention to sound or music is simply a case of being carried along by the beat or rhythm, there are occasions (and this is almost always so with serious music) when we remark upon and enjoy the patterns of tone, timbre, melody, and harmony that constitute a work’s phenomenal fabric of sound. Now, if matters were simply left here, the way would be paved for formalism of the most reductive kind. We would only aesthetically appreciate, say, Cézanne’s Mont St Victoire series if we ignored the mountain and landscape as such, and saw them purely as harmonies of line and colour. To take account of subjectmatter would be to take account of non-aesthetic considerations. Unfortunately, whilst this is indeed the view of Fry and Bell, it has become something of a stereotype for all varieties of aesthetic formalism. However, the aspect theory I am proposing here does not entail such a rigid dichotomy of form and content. Rather, it assigns special significance to a second level of formal qualities, namely the super-structural For example, whilst in a late Cézanne Mont St Victoire one can enjoy the relationship between masses and textures of colour as such, one can also appreciate the relationship of the mountain with the landscape in a formal sense. One might, in this respect, enjoy the way the mountain sits (phenomenally speaking) upon the horizon, or seems to support the clouds. Indeed, (p.20) one can marvel at the very fact that a cloudy day can be made to appear in such vibrant yet monumental terms. In the case of literature and music, such super-structural formal features are even more decisive. For, whilst throughout Hamlet we are alive to the infra-structural felicities of prose, rhyme, and metaphor, we are equally, if not more, alive to the development and resolution of the narrative for its own sake. Our interest in Claudius’s guilt, for example, is not purely moral but rests on how it echoes and increases in proportion to Hamlet’s actions. Within the context of the plot, in other words, Claudius’s moral guilt is formalized, and takes on, thereby, aesthetic significance. In music, again, whilst we are constantly alive to deepseated felicities of timbre, melody, and harmony, our more fundamental interest

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The Aesthetic Domain is in the way these are integrated and developed within the structure of the work as a whole. I am suggesting, then, that the formal aspects which are the objects of aesthetic appreciation have both an infra-structural level,—pertaining to relations between basic units of the phenomenal fabric, and a super-structural level emergent upon these.

II There is a further crucial feature involved in defining the aesthetic. For most twentieth-century theorists (and a good many before that) would hold that, whatever else may be involved, our aesthetic responses must at the very least be disinterested in some sense or other. The question is, in what sense? Most commentators have taken this to be a purely psychological question, and have regarded disinterestedness as an attitude taken up to facilitate the cognition of aesthetic qualities, or as a phenomenological characteristic of a mode of feeling consequent upon such cognition. The notion of disinterestedness has, however, a more crucial and purely logical application, in that, if our appreciation of some phenomenon is founded solely on grounds which do not necessarily presuppose reference to its (in the most general sense) practical significance, then, logically speaking, we would be entitled to characterize our experience of such a phenomenon as disinterested. Now, the domain of aesthetic responses is, I would suggest, constructed from both the logical and psychological senses of disinterestedness. For (p.21) example, let us consider the case where we enjoy balance, harmony, unity in diversity (or whatever) simply in the way some object or phenomenon immediately appears to the senses. In this case, our enjoyment of such formal qualities is distinctive in two closely related respects. First, in so far as it makes perfect sense for us to say on occasion, That’s a balanced and harmonious looking thing, but what is it?’, it is clear that the grounds of our enjoyment of formal qualities alone does not necessarily presuppose any theoretical or instrumental knowledge about what the object is, or what function(s) it could serve. Of course, it might be pointed out that the object must come under some description, such as ‘artefact of unknown function’ or ‘thing looming in the mist’, in order to be an object of cognition at all. However, even allowing for this, it is still not necessary that we should enjoy the balance and harmony in the thing’s appearance in any sense because they accrue to ‘an artefact of unknown function’ or to a ‘thing looming in the mist’. Indeed, to make such grounds a basis of our appreciation might even seem vaguely eccentric—in a Gothick sort of way. This point aside, let me now consider the second reason why our enjoyment of formal qualities counts as disinterested. The basis of this lies in the fact that such qualities are, so to speak, ontologically neutral, that is, the grounds of their appreciation do not logically presuppose any belief in (as Kant might put it) the ‘real existence’ of the object sustaining the appearance. This means, to put it bluntly, that from the viewpoint of strictly formal appreciation a hallucinated or illusory appearance will do just as well as one that Page 4 of 12

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The Aesthetic Domain is real or veraciously cognized. One might say, therefore, that because of its nonpractical and ontologically neutral grounds, the enjoyment of formal qualities as such is, in a logical sense, absolutely disinterested. It entails no reference to that natural attitude which enables us to cope with the practical vicissitudes of living; and it is, indeed, probably just this feature which is responsible for that feeling of ‘timelessness’ or ‘transport to a higher plane’ which is so often reported in the context of formal appreciation. I shall, then, term this ‘pure’ aesthetic experience. Let me now discuss some cases where our appreciation of formal qualities logically presupposes some specific kind of background knowledge or belief. A good starting-point here is the question of originality in art. In the case of a particular work, we can, of course, enjoy the complexity of composition, the balance of forms and so (p.22) forth, as they function in the formal structure of the work’s immediate appearance. However, if our taste is historically informed, we can also appreciate the way in which this formal structure differs from that found in other works. We can appreciate, in other words, the diversity achieved by the particular, within the unity imposed by tradition and the constraints of the medium. Similar considerations apply in respect of novelty in the appearance of natural phenomena. A particular crystal or flower may delight us not only through its formal structure as such, but also because it is unusual to find such, as it were, diversity of appearance amongst things of that kind. For convenience, I shall henceforth call this enjoyment of originality in art, and novelty in nature, the appreciation of the ‘uncommon’. Before considering the more general issues raised by this enjoyment, I want to outline two other ways in which our appreciation of formal structure can be mediated by background knowledge. First, it may happen that when we cognize a formal structure in art or nature we enjoy the fact that the appearance is perfect, or the ideal for things of that genre or kind. Here, a background knowledge of norms of appearance is again necessarily a ground of our enjoyment, although the direction of our appreciation is the logical reverse of that founded on the uncommon. In this case, our pleasure centres upon the formal structure’s exemplification of a unity of appearance that underlies the diverse instances of the phenomenon in question. Somewhat different considerations still apply in the case of art, when, in the most general sense, we empathize with that personal vision of the world, or (as in Scruton and Savile’s approaches, respectively) those feelings or intentions which we take to be embodied in a work’s formal structure. Here, at the very least, the grounds of our appreciation logically presuppose that we believe the work to be what it seems to be, that is, a product of human artifice, and not a fortuitous natural formation, or the product of animal ingenuity. The evidence to support such a belief is, of course, normally provided by the physical appearance of the work

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The Aesthetic Domain itself, though in the case of more avant-garde productions it is sometimes necessary to rely on the work’s institutional setting for such guidance. Given, then, that our appreciation of formal qualities can be mediated by background knowledge or belief as to their uncommon, exemplary, or artistic status, the question which now (p.23) faces us is how we should categorize such modes of enjoyment. Unlike pure aesthetic enjoyment, they not only presuppose a concept of their object but also entail an interest in the real existence of the object sustaining the appearance, or the real existence of a comparative context for the appearance to be related to, or both. For example, the discovery that an ‘artwork’ was created by a monkey would vitiate the grounds of our empathic appreciation. Similarly, our appreciation of the uncommon and exemplary in art and nature would be vitiated if contextual evidence could show that the objects in question were, in fact, commonplace or, comparatively speaking, flawed in appearance. However, there is still some logical scope for disinterestedness, in so far as the background knowledge or belief which mediates our appreciation in these cases is not itself of a necessarily practical nature. For example, whilst we can discuss the originality of an artwork in a scholarly historical work, and whilst we can use the exemplary natural object to educate people as to how things of this kind ought to look’ the possibility of such practical applications is, nevertheless, not presupposed as grounds for our appreciating their original or exemplary nature. In view of this, one might characterize such enjoyment as, logically speaking, relatively disinterested. This term is also appropriate in relation to our experience of empathic qualities in art—though again in a somewhat different way. It is sometimes difficult, for example, not to respond to a work on grounds of purely practical interest, such as approving the moral or political standpoint it embodies, or because works by that artist are the ‘in’ thing at the moment. However, there are occasions when we find the artist’s personal vision as such compelling, and are simply moved by the fact that another person has articulated his or her being in this particular way. Hence we can sympathize with the hero’s predicament in Céline’s North and enjoy the author’s handling of it through plot and prose-style—yet all the while disapproving of, or being indifferent to, the ideological standpoint which informs these features. In so far, then, as our appreciation has empathy as its logical ground, it will count as relatively disinterested. There remains one more step to be taken before my outline of aesthetic responses is complete. A useful starting-point here is provided by our appreciation of dispositional qualities. To admire, for example, the look of wisdom in a philosopher’s countenance (p.24) does not presuppose that we actually believe the philosopher to be wise. Hence, our appreciation will have the absolute disinterestedness of pure aesthetic enjoyment. However, whilst appreciation on such grounds is certainly possible, it is probably relatively uncommon, in so far as dispositional properties are ones which we normally Page 6 of 12

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The Aesthetic Domain appraise in the context of our practical natural attitude, that is, in terms of the object’s real as well as apparent possession of such properties. We admire, for example, sturdiness in oak trees and solidity in buildings because the possession of these properties enables their bearers to cope the better with the vicissitudes of physical existence. Does this mean, therefore, that we would be wrong if we ever regarded such appreciation as having something of the aesthetic about it? I would suggest not, for the following reason. Suppose that we really are gratified by the oak tree’s sturdiness and the building’s solidity, but without having any sense of their relevance to our lives, and without feeling the slightest inclination to put them to the test. This indifference to personal interest and practical verification means that, whilst the grounds of our enjoyment logically presupposes some broadly practical dimension, they are, nevertheless, disinterested in an honorific sense. We are disposed to regard the oak tree’s sturdiness and the building’s solidity in a purely contemplative way, that is, as if they were merely gratifying formal qualities. Similar considerations can apply in relation to our appreciation of the uncommon and exemplary in a putatively practical context. For example, suppose we encounter a chair which exhibits both novelty and exemplariness in its combination of form and function. Now, whilst the ground of our enjoyment presupposes reference to the practical function for which chairs are made, it need not be reducible just to that. We may find that it is the novelty and exemplariness regarded for their own sake, rather than anticipation of the chair’s use, which constitutes the main reason for our pleasure. I shall, therefore, describe these various honorific modes of disinterested appreciation (where the aesthetic domain and practical existence intersect) as ‘quasi-aesthetic’ in character. I have argued, then, that, whilst our aesthetic responses all involve appreciation that is in some sense disinterested, they can be distinguished into varieties, on the basis of the different kinds of knowledge which mediate them, and (following on from this) the different senses in which they are disinterested. (p.25) Before considering some objections to attempts at defining the aesthetic, two qualifications need to be made. First, whilst indicating something of the scope of the aesthetic domain, I have not attempted to map out all its zones and contours. In particular, no mention of the sublime has been made. This is, however, a topic which I have addressed at great length elsewhere.5 The second qualification is that aesthetic responses cannot be understood purely in terms of logical distinctions. Their ultimate raison d’être and significance lies in what human capacities are brought to bear in them, and the way in which this bearing changes our relation to the world. These issues will be dominant themes throughout the rest of this study.

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The Aesthetic Domain III In his influential paper ‘Aesthetic Essence’, Marshall Cohen sets out to show that there are no unique properties or criteria which can serve to define aesthetic experience. I shall now consider his main arguments in so far as they relate to my own position and will criticize them in turn. Cohen’s basic approach is as follows: ‘We do not, and I expect we cannot, possess a theory about the essential nature of aesthetic experience, if this theory is intended…to encompass the experience of all examples and kinds of art.’6 This point especially underlies Cohen’s objection to the supposed essentially ‘contemplative’ nature of aesthetic experience. For example, in relation to the appreciation of architecture, he points out that one’s attitude can hardly be described as contemplative in so far as to fully comprehend the work involves us moving about in active exploration, rather than engaging it in rapt contemplative attention from a single viewpoint. Similarly, the extreme diversity of style and subject-matter we find even within the visual arts seems to argue for a pluralistic rather than fixed ‘contemplative’ aesthetic attitude. The appreciation of Goya’s Disasters of War, for example, must surely require an attitude on the observer’s part that takes full (p.26) cognizance of the overt political and moral dimensions of the work. Hence: If one ought to contemplate a Redon or a Rothko, one ought to scrutinise the Westminster Psalter, survey a Tiepolo ceiling, regard a Watteau, and peer at a scene of Brueghel. If we attend to these distinctions we shall be in a position to deny that we must contemplate these works to have a proper aesthetic experience of them.7 Now, in attacking the supposed ‘contemplative’ nature of aesthetic experience, Cohen is basing his case on the unrecognized conflation of two separate considerations. First, there is the fact that the physical nature of different art media—such as architecture, murals, and illuminated manuscripts—requires different modes of bodily orientation on the observer’s part in order to be perceived. We must, for example, walk through the building, look up at the painted ceiling, and attend at close proximity to the manuscript. However, the different modes of bodily orientation and attention required by different art media do not of themselves preclude the possibility of a psychologically contemplative attitude informing them. Indeed, the undoubted fact that one can sustain such an attitude in spite of, say, having one’s head awkwardly disposed in order to fully ‘take in’ a ceiling mural, may even be a criterion of the intensity of our contemplative engagement. Cohen’s second and more substantial point is that the diversity of style and subject-matter in specific artworks entails that our aesthetic response is, psychologically speaking, far from contemplative. Now this, I take it, is an indirect attempt to refute the claim that aesthetic experience is always Page 8 of 12

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The Aesthetic Domain ‘disinterested’. However, it is open to the formalist to point out that all the artworks which Cohen considers have, necessarily, a formal aspect, in so far as they are phenomenal objects. Arid since the enjoyment of these qua formal qualities does not presuppose that they are of practical significance for us, then, for reasons noted in Section I, it is appropriate to characterize such attention as contemplative or disinterested in logical terms, indeed, no matter how violent or tragic the style or subject-matter, our experience of the work will not be complete unless we can appreciate the way such potentially disruptive nonaesthetic material is integrated in a unified formal (p.27) structure. This is not, of course, to deny that the moral or emotional dimensions of a work are not a crucial part of our experience; it is rather to point out that these are simply aspects of it, and ones which, in themselves, are not logically constitutive of a strictly aesthetic response. These factors again loom large in Cohen’s other main argument, which attempts to refute the ‘logical’ grounding of aesthetic experience, specifically Urmson’s view that aesthetic appraisals can be distinguished from other kinds of appraisal by virtue of their criteria. For Urmson, these differentiating criteria are ‘the way the object in question looks or presents itself to the senses’.8 Now, as Cohen rightly points out, this is insufficient as a criterion—we really do have to ask what exactly it is about the look of, say, a painting which is aesthetically pleasing. Interestingly enough, Cohen then (without realizing its implications for his own arguments) provides us with broadly the right answer by pointing out that ‘criteria for assessing the formal structure of the work of art or, say, its success in exploiting the medium’ are ‘indisputably aesthetic’9(my emphasis). Cohen, however, will not allow such features as necessary and sufficient conditions of the aesthetic, on the grounds that, for example, scientific, moral, and religious content in literature also has an aesthetic character. But why should this be so? Cohen implicitly assumes that the mere fact that a feature is possessed by art artwork is a sufficient condition for calling it aesthetic. However, we would have no logical grounds for such a view unless it could be shown that there is something about the artwork which restructures our normal non-aesthetic response to such, in themselves, non-aesthetic features. Lacking this, we would regard, say, the scientific, moral, and religious content of an artwork as the object of purely scientific, moral, and religious responses. To experience such features aesthetically would be intelligible only on the presupposition that our normal response is modified through seeing them solely in terms of their role within a formal structure. Cohen, unfortunately, is led to view such features as counter-examples to aesthetic formalism through employing (ironically enough) an implicit dichotomy of form and content, (p.28) which overlooks the super-structural formal possibilities of the latter. Let me now consider the objections to the formalist notion of aesthetic experience advanced by Dickie in his book Art and the Aesthetic. His main arguments are designed to refute the notion of disinterested attention as the Page 9 of 12

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The Aesthetic Domain basis of a distinctively aesthetic attitude. Dickie starts with the valid point that disinterested attention is only meaningful in so far as we contrast it with interested attention. He then explores this contrast by way of two examples. First, we are presented with Arthur and Zachary who are looking at a portrait of Zachary’s father. Arthur’s attention is firmly fixed upon the portrait’s formal qualities; whereas Zachary is engrossed by its associations with, and memories of, his father. Now, in this case, Dickie claims that Zachary’s attention to the portrait is not interested’ ‘since he is not now attending to it at all’.10 Rather, he is distracted from it because of the personal associations it holds for him, ‘and being distracted from something is not…a special kind of attention to that thing, it is a kind of inattention’.11 Now, Dickie seems to be saying through this example that the contrast of disinterested and interested whereby the former gets a purchase is not meaningful in so far as interested attention is not attention at all, but a kind of distraction. However, Dickie offers no arguments which establish that this is true in all cases of purported ‘interested’ attention. Indeed, this is not even true of his own example. Surely Zachary’s attention to the image of his father is not a case of his being inattentive to the portrait as such, but rather is a case of his concentrating on one of the portrait’s definitive aspects, namely its status as an image-of-Zachary’s-father. Indeed, the personal associations, which this aspect of the portrait gives rise to and renews, are exactly (though not exhaustively) the kind of response which we would want to characterize as ‘interested’ attention! This unfortunate start is further compounded by Dickie’s second example, which is introduced in order to show that the points supposedly established in this example are not simply due to the fact that the work being attended to is a painting. We are asked to (p.29) imagine the case of Arthur and Marvin listening to a piece of music. Again, Arthur’s attention is concentrated on the music’s formal qualities to the exclusion of all other interests, whereas Marvin is listening to the piece because he is going to be examined upon it the next day. Now, Dickie claims that this example shows that there is no qualitative distinction between Arthur and Marvin’s modes of attention, but only one of motive. As he puts it: ‘The claim that there is a perceptual or attentional power the operation of which determines the nature of aesthetic experience, seems to be only the obvious observation that people attend with different motives.’12 Or, as Dickie points out elsewhere, ‘Different motives may direct attention to different objects, but the activity of attention remains the same’.13 However, this linking of disinterested and interested attention to questions of motive is entirely irrelevant—as I shall now show by effecting slight modifications to Dickie’s two examples. In the first case, let us suppose that Arthur attends to the portrait of Zachary’s father with the intention of appreciating its purely formal qualities, but becomes instead engrossed by constructing an imagined biography for the interesting-looking character who is portrayed. Let us suppose also that Zachary has approached the portrait with a Page 10 of 12

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The Aesthetic Domain view to enjoying nostalgic recollections of his father, but finds instead that it is much more stimulating construed simply as a pleasing formal configuration. Now, in this revised example, we can say that the two modes of attention are logically distinctive by virtue of their different criteria. If we ask Arthur and Zachary what kind of attention they are engaged in, they will properly specify it by reference to the object of attention—‘I am attending to the image aspect of the portrait’ (Arthur); ‘I am attending to the formal aspect of the portrait’ (Zachary). Once these different intentional objects have been specified, then we would be justified (given the nature of images and the nature of formal configurations) in characterizing the modes of attention as non-aesthetic and interested, and aesthetic and disinterested, respectively. We expect an image as such to be full of associations with our broader personal and practical interests in a way that a formal configuration considered (p.30) alone would not be. In other words, if we can logically differentiate modes of attention in terms of their objects, then, given the nature of these objects, we can also characterize their (as it were) psychological content without reference to, or (in the case of my revised example) in spite of, the motives underlying the attention. Dickie’s second example also yields some interesting results if approached in terms of these points. In the first instance it is clear that, as Dickie presents them, both Arthur and Marvin are attending to the music’s purely formal aspects. Now, even if Marvin were swotting frantically for his exam, it is clear that this motive would not in itself preclude him from enjoying the music aesthetically. However, we do expect that circumstances, such as swotting for examinations, are at least likely to impair such a possibility. Let us suppose, therefore, that this is the case with Marvin. How do we then explain the difference of attention between him and Arthur, given the fact that both have the music’s formal aspects as their intentional object? The answer is, of course, quantitative rather than qualitative. We might say that both are making aesthetic-type appraisals, but that only Arthur is having an aesthetic experience, in so far as (presumably) only he will report his appraisal as being pleasurable. I would therefore suggest that there is a useful distinction to be drawn here between aesthetic appraisal (or judgement) and aesthetic experience. The former is a necessary but not sufficient condition of the latter, in that whilst we can appraise an object in terms of its aesthetic aspects, there is no guarantee that these aspects will of themselves be found pleasing or (as in Marvin’s case) that we will be in circumstances which allow us to enjoy them. To put it in somewhat Rylean terms, one might say that aesthetic appraisal embodies performance, whereas aesthetic experience embodies achievement as well. There is, then, one general and decisive flaw in Dickie’s whole approach to the aesthetic. This is the fact that his objections centre entirely on the aesthetic experience’s psychological structure—as a mode of disinterested ‘attention’. However, in Section II, I suggested that the notion of disinterestedness should be framed in logical terms, that is, in terms of the fact that the enjoyment of Page 11 of 12

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The Aesthetic Domain formal structures as formal structures does not presuppose that they are of any practical or instrumental significance for us. It is this which demarcates the aesthetic domain from all other zones of human experience. Notes:

(1) See e.g. his impressive The Test of Time (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1982). (2) See e.g. his Art and Imagination (Methuen, London, 1974). (3) In this respect see esp. ch. 8, sect, vii of The Test of Time. (4) Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception, ed. James Edie (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Ill., 1964), 166. (5) See esp. chs. 6 and 7 of my The Kantian Sublime: From Morality to Art (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989). (6) Marshall Cohen, ‘Aesthetic Essence’, in George Dickie and Richard Sclafani (eds.), Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology (St Martin’s Press, New York, 1977), 489. (7) Ibid. 490–1. (8) J. O. Urmson, ‘What Makes a Situation Aesthetic?’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 31 (1957–8), 91. (9) Cohen, ‘Aesthetic Essence’, 496. (10) George Dickie, Art and the Aesthetic (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1974), 117. (11) Ibid. (12) Ibid. 118. (13) George Dickie, Aesthetics: An Introduction (Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1971), 54.

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Aesthetic Experience and the Experience of Art

Art and Embodiment: From Aesthetics to SelfConsciousness Paul Crowther

Print publication date: 2001 Print ISBN-13: 9780199244973 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.001.0001

Aesthetic Experience and the Experience of Art Paul Crowther

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.003.0003

Abstract and Keywords This chapter attempts to articulate aesthetic experience and art in relation to ontological reciprocity. Section I elaborates and comments upon Gadamer's critique of formalism, with a view to highlighting its difficulties. It then argues in Section II that, whilst a formalist aesthetic is indeed a valid mode of experiencing art, Gadamer's content-orientated approach can be modified and extended so as to reveal profounder and more significant aspects to such experience. Keywords:   Gadamer, aesthetic experience, art, ontological reciprocity, formalism

Introduction The dominant twentieth-century conception of aesthetic experience is, broadly speaking, a formalist one. It holds characteristically that aesthetic experience arises when, say, we perceive a painting in relation to its qualities of line and colour and their interrelations, rather than in relation to the content which those lines and colours represent. Such perception will be, in essence, ‘disinterested’, that is, pursued for its own sake, rather than for some theoretical or other extrinsic end. This kind of approach to the experience of art first emerged in the eighteenthcentury philosophies of ‘taste’ and finds its earliest systematic statement in Kant’s doctrine of aesthetic judgement. That it should reappear so extensively in the present century is due substantially to the trend towards nonrepresentational art. It is true, of course, that Edmund Bullough proposed a very Page 1 of 15

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Aesthetic Experience and the Experience of Art influential version of formalism in 1907; but it is with Clive Bell and Roger Fry’s attempts to justify avant-garde developments in the visual arts that formalist theory is really injected into modern philosophy of art. Those working in the tradition of existential phenomenology, however, have not appeared to accept the formalist position. Sartre, for example, tells us that Some reds of Matisse…produce a sensuous enjoyment in those who see them. But we must understand that this sensuous enjoyment, if thought of (p.32) in isolation—for instance, if aroused by a colour in nature—has nothing of the aesthetic. It is purely and simply a pleasure of sense.1 We find here a plea for a concept of the aesthetic which ties the notion to the perception of representational content rather than formal qualities. Hans-Georg Gadamer has argued a more subtle and extensive version of the same thesis. He claims that ‘when we judge a work of art on the basis of its aesthetic quality [i.e. formal properties] something that is really much more intimately familiar to us is alienated’.2 In Gadamer’s terms, the ‘something’ from which we are ‘alienated’ is the content made present by the artwork. Accordingly, in Section I of this chapter I shall elaborate and comment upon Gadamer’s critique of formalism, with a view to highlighting its difficulties. I shall then argue in Section II that, whilst a formalist aesthetic is indeed a valid mode of experiencing art, Gadamer’s content-orientated approach can be modified and extended so as to reveal profounder and more significant aspects to such experience.

I A first point to note is that Gadamer’s critique (as advanced in Part One of Truth and Method)3 does not simply seek to expand our concept of the aesthetic, in the way that some theorists claim that non-representational works expand our concept of art; rather, he is seeking to show that authentic ‘aesthetic experience’ is something different from the formalism of, as he terms it, ‘aesthetic consciousness’. To establish this claim Gadamer adopts two specific lines of attack—the logical and the normative. I shall deal with these aspects of his argument in turn, and at length. First, Gadamer claims that ‘aesthetic consciousness’ is ‘self-contradictory’. He criticizes, specifically, the notion that such consciousness is a function of ‘perception in its own right’ or, as Kant for example (p.33) has it, the ‘free play of understanding and imagination’. The reason for Gadamer’s objection is that perception can never fulfil this free ‘disinterested’ role, in that it always ‘tends towards a universal’, that is, it is always taken up with the business of applying or forming concepts. In practical terms Gadamer takes this to mean that considerations pertaining to content can never be eliminated from our perception of an artwork’s formal qualities. He informs us that

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Aesthetic Experience and the Experience of Art ‘aesthetic’ vision is certainly characterised by its not hurrying to relate what it sees to a universal, the known significance, the intended purpose, etc., but by dwelling on it as aesthetic. But that does not stop us from seeing relationships, e.g. recognising that this white phenomenon which we admire aesthetically, is in fact a man.4 Now, most contemporary philosophers agree that the demand that perception presupposes concepts is an essentially logical one. Gadamer, however, seems to take the relation as a contingent psychological fact. Hence the ability of ‘aesthetic vision’ not to ‘hurry towards’ a universal. It is as though we can briefly have conceptless ‘pure’ perception, but that after a few moments it inevitably converges upon a universal. This interpretation not only fails to show that the formalist approach is ‘self-contradictory’, it actually goes some way towards illustrating one of the central tenets of such an approach; namely that the aesthetic experience or attitude is hard to maintain, and constantly threatens to slip into a more practically orientated mode of perception. Even if we tighten up Gadamer’s argument, and insist that the relation between perception and concept is a logical one, it still falls short as a critique of formalism. Gadamer seems to think that the only way concepts get a purchase in art is in the perception of representational content. There is something to be said for this in a limited way, in that we tend initially to see representational works in terms of what they are representations ‘of’. However, this is not always the case, and even when it does occur it does not prevent us from engaging in a more ‘disinterested’ mode of perception. It is crucial, of course, to be clear about the scope of the term ‘disinterested’ perception. Harold Osborne defines it as follows: ‘attention is fixed upon the qualities of the perceived object, not on (p.34) its usefulness or theoretical interest or on the pleasures deriving or expected to derive from it’.5 This simple observation makes the weakness of Gadamer’s position clear. The formalist holds, characteristically, that whilst aesthetic experience is in a sense reductive or highly abstract, this does not mean that it fails to involve concepts at all, but rather that it involves a different and more reflective set of concepts than would be employed if we were simply perceiving an artwork’s content. In other words, we approach it with different intentions. The only formalist theory which Gadamer’s objection might conceivably apply to is that of Kant. Yet even here the point would be open to issue, for whilst Kant seems to say that the aesthetic judgement has no conceptual element, he is logically committed by his general theory of judgement to a contrary view. This, however, involves complex questions of interpretation which I cannot go into here. Let us now consider Gadamer’s normative objections to formalism. We are told that aesthetic consciousness ‘distinguishes the aesthetic quality of a work from

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Aesthetic Experience and the Experience of Art all elements of content which induce us to take up an attitude towards it, moral, or religious, and presents it solely by itself in its aesthetic being’.6 Gadamer’s reservations about the worth of this purely aesthetic attitude hinge upon two different, but related, points. First, aesthetic consciousness ‘abstracts from all conditions of a work’s accessibility’, that is, it ignores those questions of purpose, function, and content which make an artwork a candidate for interpretation as opposed to a mere object of sensuous appreciation. Gadamer’s reasoning here is founded on the presupposition that, through language and related forms of communication, man is engaged essentially in a quest for selfunderstanding. On these terms, the transmitted text (using ‘text’ in the broadest possible sense) gives a historical continuity to the quest. It brings about a ‘fusion of horizons’ between the self-understanding of both author and audience whereby that which is lasting and universal in the text, in other words that which is ‘True’, can emerge and be known afresh. Hence, it is quite understandable why in principle Gadamer should (p.35) see the content of the artwork as its most accessible aspect. It is, as it were, the productive point of contact between artist and audience. This sort of argument, however, raises an enormous number of problems. I shall confine myself to two of them. First, whilst the content of an artwork may be its generally most accessible aspect, there is no reason why it should necessarily be so. What is and what is not accessible in art is a function, surely, of the capacities and intentions of the person seeking access. What Gadamer is really saying, of course, is that content ought to be that to which access is sought, in so far as it is keenly relevant to the task of self-understanding. However, whilst selfunderstanding may be a pre-eminent concern of mankind, another defining characteristic of the species is our capacity to create and appreciate artefacts for their own sake. Gadamer completely overlooks, in other words, the possibility that formalist appreciation may have an important role to play in selfunderstanding conceived in a broader sense. His argument also raises a second important difficulty: namely, if we stress the importance of content in art, it is important to explain how this differs from content, say, in a philosophical or historical text. Now, Gadamer claims that the task of aesthetics is ‘to provide a basis for the fact that artistic experience is a mode of knowledge of a unique kind’,7 but unfortunately he himself does nothing to establish such a basis. We find the claim that art is a unique form of knowledge, but with no criteria to establish what its uniqueness consists in. One superficially promising way of providing such criteria would be to invoke the notion which Gadamer takes as illustrating the ontological structure of artistic representation—namely, ‘play’. Gadamer holds that play is more than the subjective attitude of the players who engage in it. Indeed, in so far as they commit themselves fully to the rules of the game, that which is played achieves ‘self-representation’ through them. Transposing this model to artworks, Page 4 of 15

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Aesthetic Experience and the Experience of Art Gadamer holds that, in effect, the subject-matter of the work achieves autonomous self-representation through the artefact-creating activity of the artist, and the interpretative activity of the audience. Hence, in the ‘play’ of representation, ‘what is, emerges. In it is produced and brought to the light what otherwise is constantly hidden and withdrawn.’8 (p.36) Unfortunately, Gadamer’s introduction of the ‘play’ analogy is entirely gratuitous. No attempt is made to explain why this analogy is particularly appropriate to art, and why it is more appropriate than other models. Even more problematic is the fact that Gadamer equates the disclosure of content, which takes place in the ‘play’ of representation, with that of ‘recognition of essence’. In so far, however, as he holds (in Aristotelian mood) that any claim to knowledge involves a ‘recognition of essence’, this merely returns us to the original problem of establishing how the artistic experience gives knowledge of a unique kind. One senses that Gadamer’s difficulty here arises from his ‘play’ analogy finding its ultimate inspiration in Heidegger’s idea that language is much more than the speakers who embody it. On these terms language is not just a tool which the particular speaker uses to grasp reality—rather, it already embodies in its structure a specific ontological world-view which the speaker inherits. ‘Being’ itself, as it were, speaks through the speaker. Now, whether language is, in fact, so ontologically committed is problematic. In relation to art the issue is even more contentious in that the meaning of what is disclosed by the artistic ‘statement’ is as much, if not more, a function of how the artist handles his ‘vocabulary’, that is, his own style, than some mere aspect of Being which his ‘statement’ serves to disclose. The nearest Gadamer comes to conceding this point is in his observation that ‘When someone makes an imitation, he has to leave out and to heighten. Because he is pointing to something, he has to exaggerate whether he likes it or not.’9 Gadamer, however, fails to follow this up. This is quite understandable in so far as it would involve the assignation of a central (though not exclusive) role to those sensuous and formal properties of which he is so wary. Once more, the influence of Heidegger is at work here—especially the essay on ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’,10 where Heidegger allows little scope for the artist’s style over and above the ontological function of disclosing ‘how’ and ‘what’ things are. We find, then, that the first aspect of Gadamer’s normative (p.37) critique of ‘aesthetic consciousness’ fails. It overlooks the role which formalist appreciation can play in self-understanding; and is unable to specify what differentiates the knowledge yielded by artistic experience from that yielded by our experience of non-artistic texts. Let me now consider the second aspect of his normative critique. Gadamer claims that the meaning which emerges in the experience of a work’s content is something objective and enduring. We perceive, say, a portrait of Charles V, and Page 5 of 15

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Aesthetic Experience and the Experience of Art Charles V just is the object of the experience. The object of ‘aesthetic consciousness’, in contrast, is something much more elusive. It is founded upon each observer who experiences a work performing an act of abstraction or differentiation which leaves the purely aesthetic surface or ‘object’ as a pleasing residue. This disintegration of the represented object into, as it were, a multiplicity of aesthetic appearances means that ‘every encounter with the work has the rank and the justification of a new production’.11 It follows from this that ‘One way of understanding a work of art is then no less legitimate than another. There is no criterion of an appropriate reaction.’12 Gadamer is claiming, then, that the purely ‘aesthetic object’ is fragmented between particular observers, and leaves no room for objectivity in interpretation. These points can be answered by a single argument, as follows. Although the constitution of a purely aesthetic object is a function of the cognitive activity of those who observe an artwork, we are not entitled to say it is just a function of that activity. We are guided, surely, in forming our attitude by the perceptible formal features of the work, and are able in principle to justify and argue the validity of our response by reference to them. This capacity, indeed, gives a rational continuity to aesthetic consciousness. However, whilst Gadamer might be prepared to admit that, in this sense, aesthetic consciousness is rational subjectivism, he could still claim that, in a profounder sense, it is a dangerous subjectivism. For example, he mentions with approval that Kierkegaard’s ‘theory of the aesthetic stage of existence is developed from the standpoint of the moralist who has seen how desperate and untenable is existence in pure immediacy and discontinuity. Hence his criticism of the aesthetic consciousness is of fundamental importance because (p.38) he shows the inner-contradictions of aesthetic existence…’13 Whether Volume One of Either/Or is to be interpreted in this clear-cut manner is, I think, problematic. The tentative nature of Kierkegaard’s chosen title and the fact that he does present two alternative world-views without explicitly committing himself to either one of them suggests, I think, that the important question at issue is not the content of the world-view as such—be it aesthetic or ethical—but the fact that whichever world-view is chosen must be the result of an individual’s own free and authentic decision. This means, of course, that the individual is alone responsible for the consequences of his decision, and that the freely chosen world-view (even and perhaps especially the ethical one) brings with it its own dilemmas and existential contradictions. If we were to grant Gadamer’s point, though, and admit that a purely aesthetic approach to life is inherently alienated, this would still not invalidate ‘aesthetic consciousness’ as such. There would surely be grounds for saying that whilst existence demands serious moral and social decision-making of us, there is also some room for a less practically orientated and more relaxed engagement with Being. Indeed, this aesthetic engagement is vital if we are to have a truly Page 6 of 15

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Aesthetic Experience and the Experience of Art integrated and balanced personality rather than one which risks alienation through the obsessiveness of its own projects. I have argued, then, that Gadamer’s attempt to refute the formalist conception of aesthetic experience is unsound or inadequate. This, however, leaves us with what Kant would have called the ‘deductive’ question of whether we are entitled to equate aesthetic experience with a formalist approach. The answer to this, I think, is simply ‘yes’. The term ‘aesthetic’ has gained its major philosophical and broader cultural currency through being linked to the perception of formal qualities, or to activities pursued for their own sake rather than for practical ends. Indeed, the ‘aesthetic’ is now synonymous with such things. This is a desirable state of affairs in so far as it establishes a term which does enable us to immediately pick out one of the most distinctive features of our experience of art. However, approaching these issues via Gadamer’s work has at least one very salutary effect. We begin to realize that pure ‘aesthetic’ experience as understood above is only one aspect of our (p.39) experience of art, and perhaps a rather limited one at that. It becomes clear that if we can specify why it is limited, and solve Gadamer’s problem about what is unique about the way art presents its content, the road may be open to a more variegated concept of the aesthetic experience of art. It is to this possibility I turn in the following section.

II Clive Bell14 and many others have claimed that in approaching artistic representation we are faced with two alternatives. Either we look upon a work in terms of its ‘genuinely’ artistic, i.e. formal qualities, or else we approach it from the point of view of its content, i.e. as a historical or anecdotal document. This exemplifies what one might call the ‘formalist fallacy’ in aesthetics; that is to say, the dogma that what is uniquely ‘artistic’ about art is simply the possession of ‘significant form’. That this view is a dogma is shown, I think, by the fact that artistic representation really does ‘re-present’. The artist creates a formal configuration not just for its own sake, or for the simple purpose of referring to some subject-matter; but, rather uses the medium to reconstitute subject-matter or creative idea in a sensuous form, that is with something of the immediacy which it has at the level of the artist’s own experience. The poet uses language, for example, not for mere description, but in such a way that his unique style preserves and articulates his or her own perception of the subject-matter. Similarly, the painter, and the novelist, not only handle their respective media in such a way as to present a sensuous image (or images) of their subject, but in their style of handling also articulate what the subject means to them. This is why Merleau-Ponty15 notes that the artist’s style ‘distends’ the content, or throws it slightly ‘out of focus’. On these terms the unique significance of artistic meaning lies in the fact that the meaning of its intersubjectively accessible Page 7 of 15

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Aesthetic Experience and the Experience of Art content is expanded by the individuality of the artist. We can, of course, look at the (p.40) formal features of a work, and its content features, as though they were separate levels, but to do so is to miss out on a unique sensuous meaning that arises from the fusion and self-transcendence of the two, through style. It is ironic that Gadamer should miss out on this point, since another of his crucial sources, Hegel, advances a very similar thesis. For Hegel, the artwork has, in its content, the universality of thought, but particularized in terms of a sensuous image determined ultimately by the artist’s individuality. Hence we demand of the artwork ‘sensuous presence…but liberated from the scaffolding of its material nature. Thereby the sensuous aspect of a work of art, in comparison with the immediate appearance of things in nature, is elevated to a pure appearance; and the work of art stands in the middle between immediate sensuousness and ideal thought.’16 This unique and defining position holds several crucial implications for the experience of art. First, it calls into question the rigid distinction between practical and disinterested approaches. Bell and Gadamer, for example, as mentioned earlier, assume or imply that to be concerned with the content of artistic representation is to be concerned with it in the practical way which characterizes all our contact with texts which aim at theoretical or empirical understanding. However, if we bear in mind that what we are experiencing is a content mediated by the artist’s individuality, this clear-cut approach becomes problematic. Whilst we are concerned with some aspect of the world, this aspect is distended by style, and we are thus invited to withdraw from our practical commitment to the world, and experience it from a reflective or meditative viewpoint. Let me now illustrate this in a little more depth. First, in everyday life we divide the world (and even other persons) into the means and ends of our various projects and interests. Even the traditional forms of knowledge aim at an appropriate contact with the world, which reduces specific phenomena into the laws and properties which determine their species or genus behaviour. It is also true that much of our knowledge is pursued from an anthropocentric viewpoint. We wish to know those aspects of phenomena which will be of use in their appropriation and utilization. Art, in contrast, with its sensuous showing, does give us the possibility of a more (p.41) reflective contact with things and persons, which allows them to emerge as existents with an integrity and significance of their own. This may seem paradoxical, given the primacy I have accorded to the role of the artist’s personal style. However, it is precisely because style does make objects look ‘different’ that our attention is arrested and drawn to them in a way that it might not be if the objects were encountered in reality. By appearing ‘differently’, the object is, as it were, able to exist in a fuller way. This, I think, points to the limitations of the recent ‘Super Realist’ movement in painting. By minimalizing the function of personal style, such works attain only the level of photography, i.e. the recording of documentary Page 8 of 15

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Aesthetic Experience and the Experience of Art fact. The actual sensuous presence of the subject-matter is hypostatized, and reduced to the status of ‘visual data’. It is seen…but not reflectively known. Heidegger has taken artistic representation’s disclosure of ‘how’ and ‘what’ things are to be its most essential feature, and links it to the ancient Greek notion of aletheia—unhiddenness.17 Now, whereas the ‘aesthetic attitude’ would, as Kant puts it, be indifferent to the ‘real existence’ of its objects, an experience founded upon aletheia would not. Nevertheless, we could still claim this experience as relatively ‘disinterested’ and thence aesthetic in so far as it involves the artwork’s subject-matter appearing and being known in its own right, rather than simply as an object for practical appropriation. The current mistake of the formalist tradition is to suppose that our engagement with artworks must be absolutely ‘disinterested’ or absolutely practical, with no distinctive ground between the two. We find, however, that just as the artwork itself lies between the sensuousness of particular phenomena, and the universality of ‘pure thought’, so the experience of art can fall between the total disinterestedness of the aesthetic attitude and the practical appropriativeness of theoretical understanding. I shall, in consequence, talk of the ‘aletheic experience’ of art, that is, a non-instrumental aesthetic awareness of things and persons, which hinges ultimately on a sense of wonder at the unique existence of specific things, and at their potential or hidden aspects which the artist has revealed. Let us define aletheic experience, then, as the wondrous apprehension of thinghood. The philosopher can describe it, but only the artwork reveals it par excellence. (p.42) We can go further, and make a distinction between ‘external’ and ‘internal’ aletheia. The external sense is that noted in relation to Heidegger above, that is, the reflective awareness of a representation’s subject-matter. However, when a representation is particularly successful, it may also make us reflectively aware of its own status as a ‘made thing’. Elements of workmanship, material, meaning, and aesthetic form cohere in a self-disclosive aletheia. We are aware, in other words, of the artwork’s own thinghood, as well as that of its subject-matter. The paradigm case for this aspect of aletheic experience is, of course, the visual artwork. It can, however, also occur in literature, although the grounds for such an assertion may not seem readily apparent. Richard Shusterman, for example, has drawn attention to the fact that the tendency to debar visual features from playing a role in our appreciation of texts is more of an inherited dogma than a well-argued contention.18 Hence, the modern critic should be prepared in certain circumstances to take into account the aesthetic possibilities of such things as peculiarity of line length and spacing; colour of ink; case, size, and shape of characters; and choice of punctuation marks. Shusterman is, I think, using ‘aesthetic’ in a very broad sense here, and this leads us to an immediate and rather fascinating problem. As Shusterman points out, some writers (such as Apollinaire) have, in creating their works, devoted much attention to aspects of the text’s visual appearance. When the visual Page 9 of 15

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Aesthetic Experience and the Experience of Art aspects are emphasized in this way, we are, in Shusterman’s terms, justified in attending to their ‘aesthetic’ possibilities. Now, the strongest objection to this view, according to Shusterman, is from the standpoint of ‘aesthetic purity’—that is to say, the idea that to take visual aspects of a text into account is to disrupt the aesthetic unity of our reading of it. It obtrudes upon the ‘sense’ of the text. Now, although Shusterman demonstrates the inadequacy of this objection, he overlooks what is, I think, a more fundamental problem; namely that in many cases the visual aspects of a text can strike us quite forcefully even when it is clear that the author himself simply wrote the original manuscript and was indifferent to how it would be visually realized in print. The point is, that we would not have a single unified aesthetic object consisting of the sense of the text and its visual (p.43) presentation; we would have, rather, a disunified whole composed of two distinct aesthetic objects—the sense of the text (as exemplified in the author’s original manuscript) and the visual interpretation cum realization of it, made by the printer. This, of course, opens up the rather neglected question of the aesthetics of different editions of texts—a question which I cannot explore here. It strikes me, however, that in some cases an edition of a text will do more than present us with two aesthetic objects, one from the author and one from the printer. Rather, we will find that the visual presentation of a literary work will enhance and make manifest the content in such a way as to present the work in totality to reflective awareness as a unified artefact. In other words, we would find that the work transcends both its joint authorship and its two distinct aesthetic elements to become self-disclosive. We would have aletheic rather than purely aesthetic unity. I have so far been discussing aletheic experience in relation to representational art. It can, however, arise in two other contexts. First, in relation to abstract painting. It is here, of course, that the notion of aesthetic formalism (at least since the apotheosis of Clement Greenberg) seems to have a field day. However, if formal pleasures were the only significant aspect of our experience of such works, then there would be no reason apart from institutional ones (i.e. the whims of the art-world) why we should value them more than mere decoration or non-Warholian wallpaper. However, abstract works are, of course, artefacts whose ‘made’ aspect sometimes strikes us quite strongly. Indeed, whereas something like wallpaper disappears into its decorative function and is taken for granted, the raison d’être of the abstract painting is very much more selfcontained and self-revelatory. We find that many such works are not simply sensuous configurations, but unique sensuous configurations. I do not mean simply that they have the formal unity of an aesthetic object, but rather that form links up with material elements into the overt ontological unity of a madething. This unity, however, will not always show through. A great deal of ‘op’ art and ‘post-painterly abstractionism’ succeeds only as aesthetic object—and sometimes not even that. Similarly, a number of abstract expressionist works lack formal and material unity to such a degree (e.g. Robert Motherwell’s Je Page 10 of 15

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Aesthetic Experience and the Experience of Art Taime ) that we have no reflective awareness of unified thinghood. It’s more a case of ‘here’s some paint, and here’s a canvas that just happen to be stuck (p. 44) together’. In the best work of painters such as Pollock, Rothko, and Morris Louis, in contrast, the ontological unity of form and material stand in clear relief, to yield authentic aletheic experience. Let me now discuss a general context outside art where aletheic experience can occur. When an artefact of any sort fulfils its function in a supremely effective way, a kind of zest can overflow from its use, which I think is aletheic in character. A functional artefact has a certain ‘definiteness of sense’ that is determined by its function in getting specific kinds of jobs done. Now, it may be that a certain piece of equipment is so well made, or fulfils its function so well, that it overflows this narrower meaning and makes us aware of it as a piece of equipment, i.e. as a ‘made-thing’. A piece of faulty equipment may of course draw our attention, but this attention will not be simply a regard for the thinghood of the artefact, it will rather be framed in terms of new projects —‘what’s gone wrong here?’; ‘how can I put it right?’ In other words, our attention will be practical, an involvement with a certain narrow aspect of the world, rather than the non-instrumental awareness and wonder which is the root of the aletheic. I am arguing, then, that in general terms a well-made or efficient artefact can make us reflectively aware of its own ontological integrity. We need, however, to make a qualification here. Richard Shusterman maintains (as noted earlier) that when the visual aspects of a text do strike us forcefully and are ‘visible’, those aspects are candidates for aesthetic appreciation. This, I think, parallels in some respects the distinction which Barthes draws in S/Z19 between the conventional ‘readerly’ text and modernist ‘writerly’ text—where the interrelations of writing, reading, and language itself become manifest and problematic. Now, it might be thought that such ‘visible’ or ‘writerly’ texts invite aletheic experience by their very ‘self-referential’ nature. This, however, would be an unfounded assumption. Some of Mallarmé’s later poems, for example, go far beyond the conventional handling of the medium, by introducing elaborate spacing of individual words, lines, and stanzas. However, these are not merely self-referential literary devices. They serve to reinforce and complement an evocation of the transcendental which is Mallarmé’s fundamental intention, (p.45) and it is only by their function in relation to this that the poem’s own ontological status as a ‘little lyrical object’ becomes manifest. Works in the genre of Concrete Poetry, or the dreary novels of Robbe-Grillet, in contrast, far from being self-disclosive existents, appear as mere obscurantist signs in the service of some vague theory about poetry or fiction itself. Their ontological structure is not integrated, but rather awkwardly distended towards the pole of the universal and theoretical, with their status as particular and unique instances of poetic or fictional artefaas Page 11 of 15

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Aesthetic Experience and the Experience of Art relegated to secondary importance. This is also true, I think, of a great deal of visual art, such as almost all the work of Robert Rauschenberg, and similar attempts to integrate abstract and representational elements in the context of a single work. The moral to be drawn from these points is that when an artist uses a medium in an innovatory way, or in a way which seems to call attention to itself, this will only yield aletheic experience when the innovatory devices serve as a means in the creation of unique and unified artefacts, rather than as ends-in-themselves. It is the vice of the ‘writerly’ text, and its counterpart in painting and sculpture, to try and show what can only be said. Indeed, their ontological status as artworks becomes entirely superfluous in so far as what they attempt to ‘say’ is better expressed in ordinary theoretical discourse, or depends upon such discourse for its intelligibility. Now, whilst aletheic experience is (like pure aesthetic experience) an important aspect of our encounter with artworks, it is not, I think, the most fundamental one. As we have seen, for example, its ‘internal’ mode can occur outside the context of art. There is, however, one aspect of experiencing art which is somewhat more profound than the aletheic, and which occurs only in the context of art. I shall briefly expound it as follows, freely adapting ideas from Gadamer and Merleau-Ponty. First, no embodied consciousness ever has an experience which exists in itself as a self-subsistent state. We look at things and understand them essentially on the foundation of our previous experiences, and our expectations of the future. A specifiable individual experience is, thence, always given in the context of the general continuity of our lives. Now, in creating an artwork, an artist is engaged essentially upon experiencing some subject-matter or creative idea, not just with his or her body and mind but with (p.46) the artistic medium. In creating a work, the handling of the medium is a constitutive part of an artist’s experience of the subject-matter or idea, and is informed by past experience, and anticipations of the final appearance of the work. When it is complete, the knowledge gained by the artist from this specific enterprise is integrated into the continuity of his or her life, ready to inform future creations. But of course, the work itself is left behind. It is now discontinuous with the artist’s actual bodily states, and yet it preserves both his or her style of experiencing the subject or idea, and, implicitly, all the experience which informed the creation of the work. It is experience become concrete, and intersubjectively accessible. It is a microcosm of the artist’s own being. Now, if artistic creation were simply the emanation of unique, indefinable, genius, we might look at the work, say ‘how wonderful’, and leave it at that. However, what the artist has done is, in general terms, far from indefinable—he or she has simply consummated, in a specific instance, what is common to every Page 12 of 15

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Aesthetic Experience and the Experience of Art human being. Each person qua finite embodied consciousness has a distinctive style of relating to and articulating the ‘intentional objects’ of experience, but the artist does so in a way which makes this stylization overt and lasting. We could say, in fact, that through its fusion of style and subject-matter the artwork exemplifies the essence of human experience as such. I use ‘exemplify’ in Nelson Goodman’s sense—of ‘possession plus reference’,20 On these terms, the artwork is a human experience, which transcends the practical continuity of life, and, in so doing, returns us to the very nature of experience itself. Once more, it is worth pointing out that philosophers and others can talk about the structure of the human condition, and, indeed, move us profoundly by their observations. However, to make an intellectual analysis of a subject removes us from the sensuousness of an encounter with it. The work of art, in contrast, embodies and shows in its very structure that which philosophy can only refer to. I am claiming, then, that the experience of an artwork can bring a unique reflective awareness of the nature of the human condition itself. This moving revelation and celebration of the enigma of embodied consciousness is what I shall call empathic experience. In (p.47) a sense it marks the logical extreme of all human self-awareness, in that the only way beyond it is to invoke communion with a transcendental reality, i.e. religious experience. We do well, of course, to take note of Ivor Richard’s warning about ‘ART envisaged as a mystic, ineffable virtue…’.21 However, if we are going to account for the special significance which the artwork holds for us, and are going to do it in any depth, we will ultimately come up against considerations similar to the ones described above. Of course, I do not want to say that every work of art gives us apocalyptic visions of ultimate reality, but simply that by virtue of their peculiar structure of meaning, works of art are well appointed to one certain thing—making us stop for a moment to see and wonder at what we have created, at what surrounds us, and what we, in essence, are. This fundamental awareness is a simple but potentially shattering experience that is the proper root of the aletheic and empathic…. Not exactly the heights of ‘windy mysticism’, one would have thought. I have outlined, then, in a very rough and ready way two profound aesthetic aspects of the experience of art. I do not take these to be an exhaustive taxonomy of such aesthetic experiences; indeed, it may be that both the aletheic and empathic admit of analysis into various subdivisions. There is much work to be done, then, in differentiating our experience of art into new and revealing categories. If we fail to carry through this programme and confine our discussion to the old warhorse of aesthetic experience in a narrow formalist sense then there is, I suggest, a risk of aesthetics becoming once more something of a ‘dreary’ discipline.

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Aesthetic Experience and the Experience of Art Notes:

This is a revised and extended version of a paper of the same title which was originally read at the Annual Conference of the British Society of Aesthetics at College Hall, London, Sept. 1981. I am grateful to participants in that Conference for their comments, and particularly Professor Eva Schaper who chaired the discussion. (1) J.-P. Sartre, The Psychology of Imagination (Methuen, London, 1972), 220–1. (2) H.-G. Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. and ed. David E. Linge (University of California Press, London, 1976), 5. (3) H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. William Glen-Doepel (Sheed and Ward, London, 1975). See esp. the section entitled ‘Critique of the Abstraction of Aesthetic Consciousness’, pp. 80–90. (4) Ibid. 81. (5) Harold Osborne, ‘Aesthetic Perception’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 18 (1978), 313. (6) Gadamer, Truth and Method, 77. (7) Ibid. 87. (8) Ibid. 101. (9) Ibid. 103. (10) Martin Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. and trans. D. F. Krell (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1978), 149–87. (11) Gadamer, Truth and Method, 85. (12) Ibid. (13) Ibid. (14) See e.g. Clive Bell, Art (Chatto & Windus, London, 1914), esp. 3–37. (15) See e.g. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ‘Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence’, in Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Ill., 1964), 39–84. (16) G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1975), 38. (17) Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, 164. Page 14 of 15

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Aesthetic Experience and the Experience of Art (18) Richard Shusterman, ‘Aesthetic Blindness to Textual Visuality’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, xli/1 (1982), 87–96. (19) Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller (Cape, London, 1975). (20) See Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Bobbs-Merrill, New York, 1968), 52–9. (21) Ivor Richards, The Principles of Literary Criticism (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1970), 11.

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Alienation and Disalienation in Abstract Art

Art and Embodiment: From Aesthetics to SelfConsciousness Paul Crowther

Print publication date: 2001 Print ISBN-13: 9780199244973 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.001.0001

Alienation and Disalienation in Abstract Art Paul Crowther

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords To be alienated is to be estranged from something. In the case of abstract art, its critics have held that such works are alienated in the sense of embodying a flight from reality into a vacuous realm of theory, which renders them unintelligible to the majority of people. This chapter argues that the former claim is true only in a restricted sense, and that, if freed from this restriction, the latter claim need not apply. Section I outlines a theory of alienation inspired by Schiller, but derived substantially from Merleau-Ponty and Hegel, with some nods towards Marx and Heidegger. Section II relates this to the theoretical justifications offered by some abstract artists for their work, and suggests that, whilst such theories do indeed involve an element of alienation, this is irrelevant from an aesthetic point of view. Section III argues further that, grounded in terms of a complex notion of aesthetic experience, abstract artworks actually turn out to be disalienating in both ontological and political terms. Keywords:   abstract art, alienation, Merleau-Ponty, Hegel, aesthetic experience

Introduction To be alienated is to be estranged from something. In the case of abstract art, its critics have held that such works are alienated in the sense of embodying a flight from reality into a vacuous realm of theory, which renders them unintelligible to the majority of people. In this chapter I shall argue that the former claim is true only in a restricted sense, and that, if freed from this restriction, the latter claim need not apply. To show this, I shall, in Section I, outline a theory of alienation inspired by Schiller but derived substantially from Merleau-Ponty and Hegel, with some nods towards Marx and Heidegger.1 In Section III will relate this to Page 1 of 12

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Alienation and Disalienation in Abstract Art the theoretical justifications offered by some abstract artists for their work, and will suggest that, whilst such theories do indeed involve an element of alienation, this is irrelevant from an aesthetic point of view. In Section III I will argue further that, grounded in terms of a complex notion of aesthetic experience, abstract artworks actually turn out to be disalienating in both ontological and political terms.

(p.49) I Merleau-Ponty has argued very plausibly that the fundamental condition of human being-in-the-world is embodiment. If we were not mobile and embodied— creaturely things of feeling and sensibility amongst other things in a shared sensuous world—we would not be able to conceptualize reality in the way we do; but, reciprocally, if our bodily activities were not guided by such rational comprehension, we would relapse into the status of mere things, and would be unable to sustain our embodied existence. One might say, then, that, through embodiment, the rational and sensuous aspects of our being are in a state of ontological reciprocity. We only achieve full definition as human if these aspects are integrated in a thoroughgoing unity. Now, there are many occasions in ordinary life when the interests of reason and the interests of sense are played off against one another for practical reasons, for example in the deferring of some immediate sensuous gratification, on the ground that such deferment will lead to greater gratification at a later date. However, under certain sociohistorical conditions, this pragmatic division of the rational and the sensuous is absolutized, and passed off as embodying the true and natural order of things. The human condition is characterized in terms of a disequilibrium wherein our rational being is construed as being fundamentally opposed to, and thence alienated from, our sensible being (or vice versa). This alienation takes two forms. At the level of understanding we have ideology, and at the level of practice, we have alienated labour. Let me briefly outline these in turn. First, ideology. The classical examples of this mode of alienation are religious belief and Idealist philosophy, wherein our rational capacities are seen as attributes of the soul, or of a pure thinking subject. In such systems of belief, the senses—indeed, the sensuous world in general—are seen as sources of sin, or as features which impair our grasp of truth. On these terms, we are fully human only when we negate our particularity and sensuousness, and aspire towards universal truth and rational comprehension. At the other extreme, some philosophies—such as utilitarianism—degrade the universal, and see our rational capacities as significant only in so far as they are a means to the realization of certain sensuous states, such as happiness. Having, then, outlined aspects of ideology, I shall now consider (p.50) the notion of alienated labour. This arises through that division of labour which is required in order to maximize efficiency and profits in the industrial economy. The worker’s rational activity is rewarded with wages with which he or she Page 2 of 12

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Alienation and Disalienation in Abstract Art obtains the means of bodily subsistence. Instead of labour satisfying the whole human being, rational activity becomes a mere means to the survival of our sensuous being. The worker sees the end-product of labour as a mere alien force. Indeed, with unskilled labour, the worker’s very relation to the object produced is, in a sense, contingent, in so far as the individual’s personal skills or interests have no bearing on the process of production, or on the end-product’s function. This amplifies out into the way experience itself is organized generally. The world becomes a network of means and ends, of things to be done, objects to be appropriated—in return for enjoyment and the means of subsistence. Nature is a mere fund of resources. We lose our sense of community. Other persons and institutions (apart from friends and family) are seen stereotypically as features of the total productive system, of significance only in so far as they regulate or inhibit our own function within the system. All in all, the divisions between rational and sensuous being are writ large. Nature and other people do not form a sensuous domain of existents continuous with and akin to ourselves, but an anonymous Other to be appropriated or resisted through rational activity as a means to perpetuating our own sensuous existence.

II How, then, are ideology and alienated labour manifested in abstract art? I shall consider this, first, in relation to the theoretical justification for their work offered by Mondrian and Malevich, respectively. For example, Mondrian observes that We find that in nature all relations are dominated by a single primordial relation, which is defined by the opposition of two extremes. Abstract plasticism represents this primordial relation in a precise manner by means of the two positions which form the right angle. [Hence] Through the exact reconstruction of cosmic relations it is a direct expression of the universal; by its rhythm, by the material reality of its plastic form, it expresses the artist’s individual subjectivity.2 (p.51) Here, then, the justification for Mondrian’s abstraction is that it gives expression to a kind of Platonism of relations—a pure Ideal essence of visual reality beyond sensuous particularity. It is by mediating this essence through the handling of the medium that the artist achieves self-expression. However, the problem here is that the artist is very much the slave of spiritual reality. His or her painting is an attempt to recuperate a wholly external rational truth by (as Mondrian also puts it) ‘a logical and gradual progress toward ever more abstract form and colour’.3 But, if this is the case, whilst the artist must indeed handle and shape sensible material, it is difficult to see how this counts as anything more than a formal condition. The operative imperative is, rather, that in order to express pure plastic relations the artist must actively suppress any individuality of style. The sensible particularity of his or her handling of the medium, in other words, must be recognized as a mere means to spiritual truth Page 3 of 12

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Alienation and Disalienation in Abstract Art —as something to be transcended. This means, in effect, that not only is Mondrian’s theory ideological in its spiritual orientation, but it also entails a dimension of alienated labour. Let me now consider Malevich’s approach. We are told that ‘Everything which determined the objective-ideal structure of life and of “art”—ideas, concepts, and images—all this the artist has cast aside in order to heed pure feeling’.4 And that ‘To the Suprematist the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth’.5 Here we have the opposite extreme to Mondrian, but a similar theoretical mix of ideology and alienated labour. Any sense of rationality or objective structure in the world is significant merely in so far as it gives rise to a specific sensuous state of ‘pure feeling’. The world is simply a meaningless Otherness, significant only as a stimulus to the artist’s feeling. Now, it is interesting that—as the modern epistemological emphasis in theory of the emotions has shown6—there is no pure feeling. Emotions are only characterizable (even in (p.52) terms of such debatable categories as ‘pure’ or ‘plastic’ or whatever) in so far as they can be differentiated from other emotions on the basis of the different cognitive objects they are directed towards. To talk of some ‘pure’ state of feeling apart from a causal-evaluative link to some object of cognition is ridiculous. By focusing on subjectivity and the artist’s particular feeling so exclusively, in other words, Malevich empties it of any meaningful content. Indeed, if pure feeling is a state of absolute and self-validating inspiration, then the artist’s rational artifice is at best a mere translation of this state, or a means for communicating the fact that it exists. In either case, rational being is alienated from reciprocity with the sensuous. Now, whilst the writings of Mondrian and Malevich mark out the two extremes of alienation, we find similar tendencies in the theoretical justifications offered by many other abstract artists for their work. The Surrealists, and some of the Abstract Expressionists (such as Jackson Pollock), for example, degrade rational comprehension and objective knowledge in favour of the unconscious repressed desires of our sensuous being. On the other hand, Duchamp, the Dadaists, certain Pop Artists (such as Jasper Johns), and the Minimalists, degrade or parody the sensuous and expressive features of their media in favour of making statements about the status of art-objects. Thus we are led towards the allimportant notion of conceptual art. In the most extreme forms of this tendency— such as the work of the Art Language Group in the late 1960s and early 1970s— the distinctively visual mode of art is transcended in favour of the universality of the written word. This, however, results in a distortion of both elements. On the one hand, by setting themselves apart from the handling of sensuous media, the ‘artists’ neatly avoid conventional modes of art criticism; on the other hand, by linking their conceptual work to the gallery system and visual art-world, they obviate having their theories evaluated in philosophical terms. Now, it might be Page 4 of 12

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Alienation and Disalienation in Abstract Art argued that this mystifying surge towards conceptual art is demanded in order to sustain artistic creativity. But since its implied imperative is that, in the final analysis, art is whatever the artist designates as embodying an idea about art, this renders creativity into a merely formal, negative notion7—a case of simply producing something different. (p.53) What has really happened here, I would suggest, is that in order for the market to maximize profits and critics to maximize careers, a fundamental division of labour has been brought about. Originality is identified with the theoretical dimension of abstraction, and is split off from the handling of materials (which gives it substance) in order to be exploited more efficiently. That this should ultimately happen was implied at the very outset in the misadventures of Cubism. Instead of regarding Cubism in strictly phenomenological terms, critics and some of the artists themselves (such as Gleizes and Metzinger8) attempted to justify it as a vehicle for obscure theories of Idealist philosophy and worse. It is this aura of theory which ultimately makes the careers of critics and gives abstraction whatever alienating tendencies it has. I shall now summarize my main points of argument, then effect a qualification and make a transition. First, I suggested that alienation is a mode of disequilibrium between the rational and sensuous aspects of the embodied subject, and is brought about by ideology and the division of labour. I further showed how these alienating forces might be said to be at work in the theoretical justifications offered for a great deal of abstract art. Now, this being said, there are clearly some such justifications (notably those of Klee and some Constructivists such as Gabo9) which are much less flawed and which point in the direction of some of the disalienating features which I will outline in Section III. However, this, in a sense, is irrelevant. For so far I have been talking about alienation purely in terms of the theories which (presumably) underlie the causal production of certain forms of abstraction. But if we bring our philosophical perspective to bear on this strictly historical level of understanding, such modes of abstraction keep rather interesting company. The whole classical and neoclassical tradition of visual representation is founded on a broadly Platonist Idealism; the Romantics shift the emphasis to the unique intuitions (p.54) of the pure creative subject; Symbolism celebrates a whole host of spurious transcendentalisms. In short, Ideology abounds. Now’ faced with this point, we are surely led to the conclusion that, whilst the causal forces which underpin the production of such works may be alienated, this is relevant mainly to our historical or broader cultural understanding of them. If such works engage us aesthetically, however, the dimension of alienation is transcended. Can we not, therefore, take such a view ill relation to abstract art. Indeed, is this not the approach of such critics (once called Formalists, nowadays called Modernists) as Fry, Bell, arid Greenberg? The answer to both questions is, of course, yes. The problem is, however, that the notions of aesthetic experience they have operated with have been unworkably narrow, with the emphasis upon its sheer Page 5 of 12

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Alienation and Disalienation in Abstract Art unanalysable intuitive or transporting nature. What has been lacking is the kind of phenomenological investigation hinted at by Marcuse10 amongst others, which would clarify the complex and disalienating aspects of the aesthetic domain. It is the outlining of a theory of this sort which I shall now undertake in Section III.

III There are three11 salient ways in which abstract art can give rise to what might broadly be termed aesthetic experiences. Let me outline these in turn. First, following Kant, I would claim that the experience of form is a source of the aesthetic. Normally we take a pleasure in judging that some object possesses quality x, because x is of some practical or theoretical significance to us. However, to take a pleasure in an object possessing formal unity in its phenomenal structure presupposes no such practical or theoretical context. Rather, formal unity is enjoyed for its own sake. But why is this so? Why should we find it more exhilarating and worthwhile than other non-instrumental activities—such as playing patience? Kant’s indirect answer to such questions is that in the apprehension of formal qualities the two elements in our faculty of cognition (p.55) (namely imagination and understanding) are in a playful and harmonious relation that issues in, and is recognized through, a feeling of pleasure. However, if we strip away the Transcendental Idealist notion of distinct cognitive faculties, a somewhat more fundamental significance to this explanation emerges. For, whilst in the apprehension of formal configurations our capacity for conceptualizing is engaged in a complex and heightened way, it does not denude or dismiss the sensuous particularity of the object—in the way that judging it in terms of some practical or scientific interest might require. Rather, the zestful intensity of our conceptualizing is made possible by, and indeed involves, a recognition of the phenomenal richness and diversity of the sensuous world. Freed by formal qualities from the vicissitudes of everyday life and its interests, in other words, our rational being and the sensuous world are in a state of harmonious, disalienating reciprocity. It is this, I would suggest, which is the ground of our aesthetic pleasure in form. Let me now consider a second aspect of aesthetic experience which abstract works can embody, namely expression. In this respect, it frequently happens that we further characterize formal structures and their parts metaphorically in terms of emotional qualities.12 We say that such and such a work looks joyous, serene, sad, tragic, or whatever. Now, why should our metaphorical encounter with such emotions be any different from our experience of them in real life? Sometimes, of course, it won’t be. We may simply say, ‘That’s a miserable looking thing’, or ‘This painting makes me feel sad’, and leave it at that. However, there are occasions when our experience of some emotion metaphorically expressed has a different effect from the one we would expect— when, say, a joyful configuration is experienced with a feeling of serenity, or tragic-looking forms with a feeling of awe and elation. It is on these occasions Page 6 of 12

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Alienation and Disalienation in Abstract Art that our experience of emotion metaphorically expressed takes on an aesthetic, and ultimately disalienating, character. I would explain the complex factors involved here, as follows. First, to experience emotion metaphorically expressed is to encounter that emotion at a distance. There are two aspects to this. (p.56) First, because the emotion is expressed in a sensuous medium, it is a property of a thing, not a person. Second, since this sensuous mode of embodiment means that the metaphorically expressed emotion is detached (or in principle detachable) from the causal circumstances that governed its production, we do not know whether its creator did or did not experience an emotion of the type expressed (unless, of course, there is strong accompanying documentary evidence). Given these two features, one might say that metaphorical expression distances emotion from the particular stresses and involvements of everyday life. There is no pressure to identify directly with the emotion expressed; no guilt in turning away from it; and no need to control it. We recognize, rather, a possibility of feeling which facilitates a more reflective attitude on our part. We understand that the emotion is more than our own or the artist’s experience of it; that it is, in fact, universal— a permanent possibility of experience for any human being. Now, if this distancing of emotion from our ordinary experience of it were just a distancing, there would be no reason why we should value it any more than a statement such as There is sadness’. To understand the full significance of distancing in metaphorical expression, we must link it to another feature. In this respect it is useful to consider our rather stereotyped understanding of emotion in everyday life. It is all too easy, for example, to identify emotion with some simple feeling-state in the subject, or to construe it on the stimulus-response reflex model. The truth, of course, is more difficult. Even the simplest emotion involves a complex not only of physiological and behavioural aspects but of cognitive appraisal—wherein the emotive situation is assessed against a background of the individual’s other beliefs, attitudes, and values. Hence, to recognize an emotion in ourselves or others is to recognize only the salient contours of a complex network of relations. Its roots remain submerged. Now, in the case of metaphorical expression we do not simply ‘read off’ the emotion. Rather, we characterize it as such and such an emotion on the basis of our scrutiny of the complex interplay of formal relationships in the work as a whole. It becomes visible from this background. We are thus led to a contrast. On the one hand, in ordinary life, we read the surfaces of expressed emotions and have only a precarious sense of the complex relations which subtend them and made them possible. On the other hand, with emotion expressed metaphorically, (p. 57) the emotion emerges from a visible complex of relations. The conditions of its possibility are themselves made manifest. In the case of the latter, therefore, we have an analogue which expresses the nature of emotion more lucidly than the real thing. It is this in combination with distancing, I would suggest, which accounts for the fact that the experience of an emotion expressed metaphorically Page 7 of 12

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Alienation and Disalienation in Abstract Art can differ profoundly from that of a similar emotion in ordinary life. Through the sensuous complexity of the formal configuration, our rational comprehension of the emotion expressed is both deepened and transformed. We experience a disalienating reciprocity. Now, these two disalienating modes of aesthetic experience which I have just described are both disinterested, in so far as our pleasure in them presupposes neither a practical or theoretical context of application (a point made earlier in relation to form) nor an interest in the ‘real existence’ of the object. By this latter point I mean that our aesthetic appreciation of form and emotion does not have as its ground any reference to what kind of thing the object which sustains the qualities is; or any reference to those dispositional properties or the absence thereof which would establish it as real or illusory respectively. We are dealing with the pleasures of phenomenal surfaces and their emergent qualities alone. However, there is a third mode of aesthetic experience which, whilst counting as disinterested in the first sense, is not so in relation to the question of ‘real existence’. It is that mode of experience which arises when our appreciation of form or emotion is modified by the knowledge that the object which sustains these qualities is the product of human artifice. I refer, of course, to the notion of empathy. To establish its aesthetic basis, I shall follow a line of argument that broadly parallels the one adopted in relation to metaphorical expression.13 First, we know that, as embodied beings, no matter how common a language or culture we share, we each retain a unique perspective on the world. To others this uniqueness is manifest primarily in our personal style—our way of speaking, gesturing, the choices we make, the company we keep, etc. It is this particular perspective (p.58) which we seek to empathize with. Now, in the course of ordinary life, there are three sorts of restriction placed upon our empathy with a particular person’s style. First, the physical presence of the person who sustains it may inhibit us from, as it were, ‘going over’, that is, the fact that we encounter the style in the person of its bearer stamps it too manifestly as theirs. Second, the person concerned may be so close and dear to us that we are totally engaged by the particularity of their existence. Their human proximity to, and significance for us, demands so intense an involvement that we do not identify with the other as an equal, but are, rather, obsessively absorbed into their concerns. Third (and finally), as with emotion, a personal style is something of great complexity—a web of behavioural traits, personal beliefs, attitudes, and values. In the situations of everyday life, however, we tend to read style as a surface feature, that is, in terms of its most salient aspects and contours. Now, if an artwork is original enough to manifest a style, then a crucial dimension of distancing and lucidity is introduced. The work itself is not a person, but neither is it simply a mundane description of style. Rather, through the articulation of form, the choice and juxtaposition of colours, the selection of materials, etc., it exemplifies the artist’s aesthetic style—his or her way of reacting to, and forming, the sensuous world. This, I would suggest, has a further crucial Page 8 of 12

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Alienation and Disalienation in Abstract Art symbolic significance as an analogue of the artist’s personal perspective on the world, as such. The reason for this is that style in an artwork is not read off in terms of any one, or group of salient features, but from the total interplay of the different visual elements and relations. Whereas in life the roots which make style are hidden, in the artwork, in contrast, they are made lucidly visible. Given this dimension of distance and lucidity, therefore, our experience of empathy through artistic style will be phenomenologically different from empathy ordinarily experienced. There is more scope for free imaginative identity with the artist—for taking the work’s stylistic clues and attempting, say, to share the cool, refining values of Mondrian, or the stark tragedy of Rothko’s condition. Indeed, one can learn, through the artist’s style, truths about oneself. For example, the tension between spontaneity and ‘finish’ in a Jackson Pollock drippainting may make us aware of a similar tension between the yearning for spontaneity and the yearning for order in our own lives. Here our identification with the artist is not an imaginative (p.59) ‘attempt’, it is a recognition of both problems and solutions shared. All in all, one might say, then, that when stylized sensuous form is at a premium, we achieve a deepened comprehension of the artist’s uniqueness and of our shared humanity with him or her. Again, we have a disalienating reciprocity. I shall conclude with an observation, and a more lengthy discussion of a putative objection to the approach taken in this paper. The observation is simply this. The aesthetic effects I have ascribed to abstract art have by no means a special relationship to it. Aesthetic pleasure in form and emotion can arise from nature, and both these modes of experience and that of aesthetic empathy can arise from representational art. The tendency to abstraction, in other words, is nothing special or esoteric. It only looks that way when viewed through the mist of alienating theories which have informed the production and critical reception of certain works. If abstract art is set free from such mystifications, and the emphasis placed on it as an embodiment of pleasurable formal configurations, then it becomes correspondingly more intelligible to the non-specialist audience. However, by construing abstraction’s fundamental significance in terms of aesthetic experience, I lay myself open to the following objection. To ground abstraction on aesthetic experience is politically alienating. Aesthetic experience is a category of pleasure that reflects the interests of a privileged ruling élite in a Western culture. It is a fetishized form of value, that is historically specific, and therefore liable to be transcended through a revolutionary transformation of society. There are several responses one might make to this. First, it is true that the forms of aesthetic experience I have outlined have only been theoretically articulated by a specific class, at a specific stage in world history, that is, by the cultural middle-class intelligentsia in Europe, since about 1710. However, the fact that these experiences have been theorized in this historically specific way does not entail that the complex experiences themselves are merely historically specific. Indeed, if my characterization of them is correct, they are in principle Page 9 of 12

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Alienation and Disalienation in Abstract Art available to all persons at all times, in so far as they involve the harmonious interaction of our embodied being’s two definitive aspects—rationality and sensuousness. Embodiment, of course, cannot be transcended. A second response to the objection would be that (again) if my analysis is correct, aesthetic experiences arising from whatever (p.60) source are not mysterious, ineffable, or other-worldly, i.e. fetishized—rather, the opposite is true. They reconcile the ontological disequilibria wrought upon our being by high industrial society, and the division of labour. Indeed, in so far as through the creation and reception of aesthetic objects the artist and his or her audience respectively achieve self-recognition, such artefacts are to be regarded as paradigms of unalienated labour and culture. It might, nevertheless, still be objected that the time is not yet ripe for pure aesthetic objects and experiences, in that they distract us from the struggle for a liberated society (a view held, in effect, by Lenin14). However, to this it can be retorted that aesthetic experience and the art-forms founded upon it have both an internal and an external dynamic which points in the direction of political change. The internal dynamic does not only consist in the fact that the aesthetic domain anticipates a society of unalienated labour—rather, the demand for change is actually built into it. We do not take aesthetic pleasure in a formal configuration if it simply reproduces existing categories of form. We demand originality, and this entails both an acute awareness of the medium’s history and an openness to revolutionary transformation. Our sensibility is thus directly prepared for cultural politics, and indirectly for political activity. A similar moral can be drawn from the external dynamic of aesthetic experience. Despite his strategic doubts, even Lenin allowed that aesthetic experience in itself is exhilarating and desirable. However, we know that there is inequality of access to such experiences. We know that aesthetic sensibility is stifled by the ideology and rubbish of mass culture. The need for revolutionary social change, in other words, is acutely implied by aesthetic experience’s relation to the broader context. I would claim finally, then, that if (as it should be) abstract art is grounded in aesthetic experience, and if, also, we understand aesthetic experience correctly, then the tendency to abstraction can be seen to be disalienating in both ontological and political senses. Notes:

(1) Specifically, I would cite the following texts: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith, with revisions by Forrest Williams (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1974), esp. Part 2, sect. 3; G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1979), esp. Part B, subsect. B entitled ‘Freedom of Self-Consciousness’; Karl Marx, Early Texts, trans, and ed. David McLellan (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1972), esp.the extracts from the ‘Economical and Philosophical Manuscripts’, notably Page 10 of 12

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Alienation and Disalienation in Abstract Art the sect. entitled ‘Alienated Labour’. Finally, I would mention Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1967): see esp. ‘chapters’ 15 and 16 (included in Part 1). Of crucial significance for the methodology of this paper as a whole are Merleau-Ponty’s essay ‘Eye and Mind’, in The Primacy of Perception, ed. James Edie (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Ill., 1964), and G. W. F. Hegel’s Aesthetics, trans. T. M. Knox (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1975), esp. the Introduction. (2) Piet Mondrian, ‘Natural Reality and Abstract Reality’, in Herschel Chipp (ed.), Theories of Modern Art (University of California Press, London, 1968), 321–3. This ref., p. 323. (3) Mondrian, in ibid. 322. (4) Kasimir Malevich, ‘Suprematism’, in ibid. 341–6. This ref., p. 342. (5) Malevich, in ibid. 341. (6) See e.g. William Lyons’s thorough study, Emotion (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1980), esp. ch. 3. (7) For a critical discussion of Dickie’s attempt to justify this through the ‘Institutional’ definition of art, see Part One of my ‘Art and Autonomy’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 21 (Winter 1981). It should be noted that I have modified the views on abstraction presented in Part Two of that paper. (8) See e.g. Gleizes and Metzinger’s ‘On Cubism’, in Robert L. Herbert (ed.), Modern Artists on Art (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1964), 1–18. (9) For a particularly sensible, though far from unambiguous, statement on abstraction, see Naum Gabo, ‘Sculpture: Carving and Construction in Space’ (1937), in Chipp (ed.), Theories of Modern Art, 330–7. (10) In e.g. his The Aesthetic Dimension (Macmillan, London, 1979). (11) There are several more. For a discussion of one of these—‘aletheic experience’ — see Sect. II of the preceding chapter of this study. For a discussion of the relation between colour field abstraction and the aesthetics of the sublime, see my ‘Barnett Newman and the Sublime’, Oxford Art Journal, 7/2 (1985); 52–9. (12) For a rather different treatment of metaphor and expression, see Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Hackett, Indianapolis, 1976), esp. Part 2, sect. 9. (13) Different and highly illuminating approaches to the problems of empathy and emotion in art generally are to be found in R. K. Elliot, ‘Aesthetic Theory and Page 11 of 12

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Alienation and Disalienation in Abstract Art the Experience of Art’, in Harold Osborne (ed.), Aesthetics (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1972), 145–57; and in R. W. Hepburn, Wonder: And Other Essays (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1984), chs. 4 and 5. (14) As recorded in Gorky’s anecdote quoted at the start of Frederic Jameson’s essay, ‘Pleasure: A Political Issue’, in Formations of Pleasure (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1983), 1–14.

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Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty

Art and Embodiment: From Aesthetics to SelfConsciousness Paul Crowther

Print publication date: 2001 Print ISBN-13: 9780199244973 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.001.0001

Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty An Approach to Kant’s Aesthetics Paul Crowther

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.003.0005

Abstract and Keywords This chapter seeks to bring about a ‘fusion of horizons’ between the path from fundamental ontology to art and the aesthetics of Kant, to see if it can lead us to a better understanding of both. Section I considers Heidegger's attempt to link fundamental ontology with Kant's doctrines of ‘transcendental imagination’ and ‘free beauty’, and argues that it is unsuccessful. Section II considers the relation between ‘dependent beauty’ and fine art, and Kant's theory that leads to a notion of ‘transcendent beauty’ founded not upon a mere harmony of the faculties of cognition, but rather upon a delight at the ontological integrity and uniqueness of particular objects. This species of beauty finds its fullest embodiment in the harmonious reciprocity of artist and subject-matter, achieved through the structure of the artwork. Section III argues that this notion of ‘transcendent beauty’ is significantly anticipated in an aspect of Kant's aesthetics that Heidegger overlooks — namely the doctrine of ‘aesthetic ideas’. Keywords:   Kant, Heidegger, art, aesthetics, fundamental ontology, transcendental imagination, transcendent beauty, aesthetic ideas

Introduction The task of a fundamental ontology has been variously conceived. In MerleauPonty’s work, for example, it is seen essentially as a recovery of that primordial intertwining of human subject and world which precedes analytic and scientific

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Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty thought. In the work of Heidegger it is conceived as man’s attempt to articulate the problem of Being from the standpoint of finitude. At first sight, it may seem that these two approaches are incompatible. Whereas, for example, Merleau-Ponty stresses the role of the body in man’s comprehension of Being, Heidegger stresses the role of time. These, however, are only superficial differences, in so far as both philosophers take the ‘lived world’ as the starting-point for ontological understanding. On these terms, the nature of both human existence and existents as such is disclosed fundamentally through man’s practical engagement with the world. For example, we first learn basic spatial concepts such as distance or direction (or, indeed, the ‘thingly’ nature of objects themselves) not by acts of intellectual abstraction but by particular concrete interactions with, and physical manipulations of, the environment. At this level of existence, the dynamic sensuousness of the world and the self-creativity of the human subject interact in a harmonious way. One might say that the integrity of both parties is founded upon the implicit recognition of their ontological reciprocity. That is to say, that without the human subject, the sensuous world would not have precisely the character it does, nor would it be raised to the level of self-comprehension. Yet without such a world the human subject would not experience that resistance (p.64) to, and affirmation of, its projects whereby the comprehension of both self and Being in general is made possible. Unfortunately, the demands of practical life are such as to require ever more efficient techniques for the control and utilization of the environment. Scientific and technological progress meet this need, and, whilst grounded ultimately in our practical contact with the world, are pursued to such an extent and with such success as to obscure their origins as the methodology of control and utilization. They appear instead as the standards against which any ‘objective’ understanding of the world must be measured. Now, historically speaking, modern philosophy (i.e. from Descartes onwards) has tended to be determined by models derived from the realm of scientific and technological thought. This has led to a twofold distortion. On the one hand, the world and its existents are reduced to intellectual constructions from mere data presented to consciousness, that is, appropriated on the basis of categories that reify the dynamic sensuousness of the world itself. At the same time (and somewhat ironically), our understanding of the human subject is also distorted, in so far as it is reduced, in effect, to a disembodied consciousness that constructs or infers a problematic ‘external’ world, from the sense-data presented to it. The task of a fundamental ontology, therefore, is to both recuperate and give adequate voice to that pre-reflective contact between man and the world wherein the ontological integrity and reciprocity of both are disclosed. There is, Page 2 of 19

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Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty however, something intrinsically paradoxical about this task, in so far as philosophy necessarily interprets its subject-matter at a level of reifying generality. Both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty became aware of this problem, and developed a common methodological response to it. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, ‘Philosophical expression assumes the same ambiguities as literary expression, if the world is such that it cannot be expressed except in “stories” and, as it were, pointed at.’1 Hence we find that the elusive primordial contact between man and world leads both Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger into a special concern for art, and an increasingly poetic style of philosophical expression. There are, I think, two particular reasons for this. First, as Merleau-Ponty suggests above, poetic method is less semantically (p.65) direct than prose and appeals to feeling as much as, if not more than, to intellect. This enables the writer to give a more sensuous evocation that touches the world at its own distinctive level of being. Second, in a poetic style of philosophizing, the style and individuality of the writer are an essential part of the work’s meaning. The work of traditional philosophy, in contrast, aims ideally at an impersonal mode of ontological understanding. The world is construed as an autonomous structure somewhere ‘out there’, which the human subject gazes upon from somewhere ‘in here’. In such a work, the style and individuality of the author are significant only to the degree that they facilitate access to the outer realm. Now, of these two philosophical methods it is the poetic which best expresses ontological reciprocity. We find that the dynamic sensuousness of the world affirms and is itself uniquely evoked through the style and individual being of the author. On these terms, the artificial cleavage of human subject and ‘external’ world is reconciled. Poetic meaning ‘models’ the true ontological relationship of man and Being from, as it were, the ‘inside’. It exemplifies that root from which science and traditional philosophy grow, but obscure with their own luxuriance. One might say, therefore, that in the early work of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty the idea of fundamental ontology is articulated; whilst in their later work it is given a more direct embodiment. Taken to such an extreme, this approach commits us to the view that it is art and aesthetic experience alone which give fullest expression to that fundamental encounter between human subject and the world wherein the ontological reciprocity of both is affirmed. Now, in this chapter I do not want to consider directly the many questions raised by these claims. Rather, I want to bring about a ‘fusion of horizons’ between the path from fundamental ontology to art (in the sense outlined above) and the aesthetics of Kant, to see if it can lead us to a better understanding of both. Kant’s work has by no means been chosen arbitrarily for this hermeneutical venture. Indeed, Heidegger sees in it an important anticipation of fundamental ontology. Accordingly, in Section I I shall consider Heidegger’s attempt to link fundamental ontology with Kant’s doctrines of ‘transcendental imagination’ and Page 3 of 19

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Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty ‘free beauty’, and will argue that it is unsuccessful. However, in Section II I shall consider the relation between ‘dependent beauty’ and fine art, and, (p.66) following a clue from Schiller, will claim that there is a gap in Kant’s theory which can lead us to a notion of ‘transcendent beauty’ founded not upon a mere harmony of the faculties of cognition, but rather upon a delight at the ontological integrity and uniqueness of particular objects. I shall further suggest that this species of beauty finds its fullest embodiment in the harmonious reciprocity of artist and subject-matter, achieved through the structure of the artwork. In Section III I will argue that this notion of ‘transcendent beauty’ is significantly anticipated in an aspect of Kant’s aesthetics which Heidegger overlooks—namely the doctrine of ‘aesthetic ideas’. I shall then proceed to a conclusion.

I In his Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics2 Heidegger assigns a central role to Kant’s notion of the synthesis of ‘transcendental imagination’.3 According to this doctrine, a manifold of sensible particulars is ‘run through and held together’, and thereby acquires a temporal cohesion which enables the understanding to apply concepts. Through this application of concepts the manifold comes to be known explicitly as a specific thing, or complex of things. Now, why should Heidegger attach such importance to this (as he puts it) ‘precursory apprehension’ of a thing’s Being? The answer lies in his interpretation of Kant’s notion of transcendental imagination as the ‘primordial ground of human subjectivity’.4 Let us briefly investigate the reasons for such an ascription. We must start from the fact that human beings are finite. This means that (unlike a divine intellect) the human subject encounters external particulars in cognition rather than creating them ex nihilo by an effort of will. Now, in so far as the transcendental imagination confers a temporal cohesion upon some manifold of sensible particulars, it enables that manifold to appear as a unity, and, in so doing, orientates the human subject towards it. To put it another way, the (p.67) temporal unification achieved by the transcendental imagination is both a manifestation—a making present—of the unity of the manifold, and a preliminary characterization of it, from the human subject’s viewpoint. It is, thereby, the very foundation of that encounter between external particulars and consciousness which is the hallmark of finitude. It is easy, therefore, to understand Heidegger’s interest in Kant’s transcendental imagination. He sees it as indicative of the possibility of a primordial contact between human subject and world—a contact which is presupposed by the ‘ontic’ knowledge of scientific thought. He sees, in other words, the possibility of a fundamental ontology. This answers Eva Schaper’s puzzle5 about why Heidegger finds the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason so much more valuable than the second. In the second edition, the transcendental imagination Page 4 of 19

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Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty is subsumed into the broader structure of the Understanding and is thereby denied its ‘primordial’ role. Kant, as Heidegger puts it, ‘recoiled’ from the transcendental imagination’s ‘strangeness’. But is this to be the end of the story? Rather tantalizingly, Heidegger observes that ‘We cannot discuss here the sense in which the pure imagination reappears in the Critique of Judgement or whether, in particular, it reappears in specific relation to the laying of the foundation of metaphysics’.6 These problems are, however, considered implicitly by Heidegger in the chapter on ‘Kant’s Doctrine of Beauty’ included in his Nietzsche study.7 The substance of Heidegger’s analysis here is as follows. Since Schopenhauer, there has been a widespread tendency to misinterpret Kant’s aesthetic theory. There are two aspects to this. First, whilst it is true that Kant holds aesthetic delight to be ‘disinterested’ (i.e. not an outcome of practical or theoretical interests in an object), he is only using ‘disinterested’ in ‘a preparatory and path-breaking way’. Some commentators, however, talk as though this is the only dimension to Kant’s aesthetic theory. This leads directly to the second ground of misinterpretation, namely a tendency to overlook the ‘positive content’ which remains in aesthetic behaviour, after ‘disinterestedness’ has played its methodological (p.68) role. This content embodies the most essential relation of human subject to perceived object. As Heidegger puts it, ‘for the first time the object comes to the fore as pure object, and…such coming forward into appearance is the beautiful. [Hence] …in order to find something beautiful, we must let what encounters us, purely as it is in itself, come before us in its own stature and worth.’8 It is interesting to note that this approach to Kant is not simply a continuation of the earlier ideas concerning transcendental imagination. It exemplifies that ‘turn’ in Heidegger’s own philosophy whereby his interest shifts from the structure of human subjectivity in its relation to Being to that disclosure and radiance of Being which takes place in subjectivity. This shift of emphasis, however, does not mark a radical change in Heidegger’s approach to Kant. He is still looking for a fundamental ontology, and, in so far as Kant’s doctrine of beauty hinges on a disclosure of objects that precedes the distorting effects of scientific knowledge, it seems that a fundamental ontology is just what he has found. Now, if Heidegger’s interpretation is correct, it would appear that whilst Kant ‘recoiled’ from fundamental ontology in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, he found his way through to it intuitively in the Critique of Judgement. If it could be established, therefore, that Kant’s aesthetics are indeed grounded in fundamental ontology, then Heidegger’s interpretation of the first Critique as groping towards such a goal would, at the same time, be given a remarkable vindication.

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Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty A second interesting consequence would also arise. We would find that not only is there a dimension of fundamental ontology in Kant’s thought, but that it implicitly follows the path taken by fundamental ontology in the twentieth century—namely from the ‘precursory comprehension’ of Being to Being disclosed through aesthetic experience. We must now ask, therefore, whether Kant’s aesthetics does indeed lead us to such remarkable results. One initial point that seems to favour Heidegger’s approach is Kant’s frequent assertion that the pure aesthetic judgement is one ‘without concepts’. This possibility of de-conceptual perception would, perhaps, provide the conditions whereby an object could enjoy a ‘pure appearance’—in just the way that Heidegger requires. (p.69) Now, whilst Kant may favour such a possibility, modern philosophy cannot, and Heidegger is no exception to this rule. His conception of aesthetic beauty seems to imply that the pure appearance is known ‘as’ a thing, albeit on the thing’s own terms, as it were. Indeed, the importance of a conceptual element in the disclosure of Being comes very much to the fore in Heidegger’s own later philosophy, with its increased emphasis on language. This leads to the conclusion, then, that Kant’s notion of pure aesthetic beauty, far from being an equivalent to Heidegger’s ‘pure appearance’ of the object, is actually in conflict with it. On this issue, Kant is emphatic: ‘aesthetic judgement is quite unique, and affords no, absolutely no (not even a confused) knowledge of the object, but only the final form in the determination of the powers of representation engaged upon it’.9 The second part of this passage also points to another area of difference between Kant and Heidegger. What Kant takes to be the real source of delight in the beautiful is not the object ‘coming forward into appearance’ but the formal harmony of imagination and understanding achieved through, or by means of, the object. It is this felt harmony of the subject’s faculties of cognition, rather than an acknowledgement of the object’s ontological integrity, which for Kant is the definitive ground of pure aesthetic beauty. In effect, the judgement of taste is the ultimate narcissicism of subjectivity.10 This points directly to the most fundamental weakness in Heidegger’s interpretation. In the same way that English-speaking philosophers somewhat misleadingly interpret Kant’s ‘transcendentalism’ as a demand for the logical pre-conditions of experience, Heidegger interprets it as a yearning for existential conditions. On these terms temporality is a horizon whereby the human subject encounters Being primordially. But, of course, Kant himself constantly affirms not just the transcendental nature of time (and space) as such but their Transcendental Ideality.11 On these terms, space and time are part and parcel of the human subject’s cognitive apparatus (p.70) and have no verifiable application beyond that apparatus. Hence, the object that appears to cognition—

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Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty even at the most ‘primordial’ level—is already formed and adapted to subjectivity’s demand and is not known ‘in itself’. We find, then, that the encounter between object and human subject in Kant’s theory of beauty is by no means grounded on a fundamental ontology. We find that, instead of an openness to objects (founded on respect for their ontological integrity), the human subject demands that they undergo a twofold distention before enjoying the status of objects of aesthetic delight. Reading Heidegger’s Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, one is perhaps too carried away by the intrinsic pleasures of the text to notice Heidegger’s burial of Transcendental Ideality. The difficulties of Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant’s aesthetics, however, are so great as to resurrect Ideality’s spirit and break the spell of the earlier work. We realize that, whilst the transcendental imagination may indeed be a ‘precursory comprehension’ of Being, it is one which not only lays out a welcome mat for objects but also rigidly determines who and in what order shall cross the threshold of cognition. One is led, therefore, to the conclusion that the strands of thought which Heidegger follows in Kant do not establish the possibility, let alone the foundations, of a fundamental ontology. Indeed, it is clear that there is an unbridgeable gap between such an ontology and any philosophy founded upon Transcendental Idealism. This, however, leaves one possibility. Perhaps Kant’s aesthetics can lead us to a fundamental ontology if we approach it from a direction where the element of transcendental idealism seems to be contingent. The concept of ‘dependent beauty’ seems promising in this respect, in that not only does it not specifically presuppose Kant’s philosophical ‘system’, but actually stands in some conflict with it. It is to the notion of dependent beauty, then, that I now turn.

II At first sight, it is astonishing that Heidegger should have made no reference to the ‘dependent’ species of beauty in his discussion of Kant’s doctrine. The astonishment diminishes somewhat when we (p.71) realize that to have done so would have revealed a basic tension in his position. On the one hand, he wishes to affirm Kant’s notion of the pure aesthetic judgement, and to tie it to the disclosure of an object’s Being. On the other hand, in his own aesthetic writings he wishes to attribute the same disclosive functions in a heightened form to the artwork.12 Kant, however, explicitly (if rather waveringly) disassociates the artwork from ‘free’ beauty apprehended in the pure aesthetic judgement. Instead (since it embodies some element of reference to a concept or purpose) he relegates it to the status of ‘dependent’ beauty. If Heidegger wishes to by-pass this tension, he has two options: either to admit that natural and ornamental beauty (‘free’ in Kant’s sense) is the highest form of disclosure, or else to analyse ‘dependent beauty’ in the hope of uncovering a Page 7 of 19

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Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty more fundamental form of disclosure. By taking this second path on Heidegger’s behalf we shall in fact arrive at the idea of a fundamental ontology. The prospects at first, however, do not seem too promising, in so far as Kant differentiates free and dependent beauty (respectively) as follows: ‘The first presupposes no concept of what the object should be; the second does presuppose such a concept and, with it, an answering perfection of the object.’13 On these terms, if an object is dependently beautiful, it is so to the degree that it approximates to the standard of formal perfection embodied in its concept. This involves us in a situation where the beauty of an object is determined entirely by its conformity to standards set by the human intellect, rather than in accordance with its own ontological integrity. However, Kant manifests a fundamental unease about the scope of dependent beauty, especially as it relates to the artwork. To perceive Kant’s underlying unease and his implicit response to it, we must begin by considering his attitude to decorative artefacts. In relation to this topic, Kant tells us that ‘designs à la grecque, foliage for framework or on wallpapers etc., have no intrinsic meaning; they represent nothing—no Object under a definite concept—and are free beauties’.14 But, strictly speaking, this is not true. Such decorations have not only ‘internal finality’ (i.e. (p.72) recognizable form—‘as’ foliage, or designs à la grecque, or whatever) but also ‘external finality’, in so far as they are made with the ‘end’ of decoration in view. Kant needs, therefore, some justification for classifying them as ‘free beauties’. This can be provided by invoking Kant’s phenomenological provision that free beauty can be apprehended in an object with a definite ‘end’, by ‘abstracting’ away from it, that is, by mentally blocking out the end. Now, in the case of decorative artefacts we could argue that their end is actually conducive to such blocking out, in that they involve essentially a repetition of form designed to blend harmoniously into an environment, rather than stand out from it. They seek, in other words, an anonymous aesthetic presence which conceals its artefactual and singular foundations. In classifying decoration as free beauty, then, Kant is committed to an argument along the lines suggested above. This line of thought, however, is no ad hoc affair, but goes on to constitute the central structure of his theory of art. Now it is clear that, for Kant, the artwork is a source of great potential embarrassment. In so far as it is an artefact of a specifiable sort, it must be measured in relation to its end or purpose, and is thereby dependently beautiful. However, it is also clear that the artwork can be beautiful in a somewhat stronger sense than most artefacts. What Kant has to do, therefore, Is to parallel his implicit argument concerning decoration, and show that there is something about the internal finality of artworks which is conducive to free beauty. His procedure is as follows. Some representational artefacts are created with the end of arousing delight. These are works of ‘aesthetic art’, and, in so far as they do presuppose such an end, are clearly instances of dependent beauty. However, within this Page 8 of 19

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Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty category, Kant introduces the crucial subdivision of ‘fine art’—which aspires not simply to provoke delight, but to do so through ‘having the appearance of being nature’.15 Now, it is important to realize that this appearance of being nature— let us call it ‘naturalness’—is not simply a notion of verisimilitude but, rather, verisimilitude effortlessly achieved. To achieve a likeness does indeed involve some rule of taking a means to an end, but Kant’s point is that the end product must be a likeness that appears ‘without a trace…of the artist having always (p. 73) had the rule present to him’.16 This is why Kant goes on to talk about genius. A work which has ‘naturalness’ in the sense outlined above has it in so far as the artist’s talent transcends the basic rules of the medium to achieve an unforced and original style. This worthwhile criterion of artistic merit, will not, unfortunately, do the work Kant assigns to it. He demands that fine art should have the ‘purposiveness without purpose’ of free beauty, yet, at the same time, insists that it should be ‘recognized as art’. No explicit attempt, however, is made to explain how contents of this dual nature can be coextensive in the same judgement. Kant’s rather inadequate way of dealing with the problem, is, I suggest, to continue the implicit argument noted earlier in relation to decoration. On these terms, in so far as fine art has the naturalness born of ‘genius’, its internal finality will have the ‘free’ appearance or ‘purposiveness without purpose’ of nature itself—and will lend itself to the required abstraction away from its artefactual properties. There are, unfortunately, two phenomenological objections to this. First, Kant tends to construe the relationship between genius and naturalness as though the former were simply significant as the determining ground of the latter. On these terms, our real interest in the artwork consists not in an awareness of its overtly stylistic properties (the artist’s genius in handling the medium and so forth) but rather in the mere enjoyment of those freely beautiful forms which are the endproduct of stylistic genius. However, one might claim that the real significance of the artwork lies in exactly the converse of this. If an artwork really does have uncontrived naturalness, then we surely find that it is precisely this quality which draws our attention to the artist’s genius and the fact that the artwork is an artefact of a high order of excellence. Ironically, by seeming to be ‘natural’ rather than artefactual, the artwork will tend to make us even more aware of its status as a superb ‘made’ thing, i.e. a dependent beauty of an exemplary sort. This suggests, then, that the ‘naturalness’ of art not only does not lend itself to the act of abstraction which would enable us to read it as a free beauty akin to nature, but, indeed, phenomenologically, pushes in exactly the opposite direction. These points lead us to some remarkable conclusions. Bad art is clearly artefactual and thereby ill-suited to the apprehension of free (p.74) beauty. Good or fine art, in its naturalness, is, as we have just seen, also ill-suited to such apprehension. It is, therefore, only the characterless work of insipid art Page 9 of 19

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Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty which is really a suitable candidate for cognition as a free beauty akin to nature. We need not, however, stop here. If good art makes us aware of itself as dependently beautiful, must not good decoration or perfect natural objects also incline us so? On these terms, we find that the only objects which have an internal finality appropriately fitted for apprehension as free beauties are those which are neither good nor bad instances of their kind but simply the insipid or commonplace. These considerations cast considerable doubt on the worth of Kant’s entire notion of the freely beautiful. There is, however, yet another problem which calls even the link between insipid art and free beauty into question. This lies in the fact that Kant does not appreciate a distinctive phenomenological aspect of most works of art. Whereas, for example, most decoration manifests itself to aesthetic consciousness by concealing its artefactual nature and merging, as it were, with the surroundings, even insipid works of art reveal themselves fundamentally by their self-contained standing out from the background. A poem, painting, sculpture, or piece of architecture manifests itself to consciousness in a concrete presence, that is, as a tangible, ‘made’ specific kind of thing. Indeed, even where a work is created for a specific context or occasion, we generally find that it transcends this context, and makes us aware of it on its own account. This is why it is difficult, if not impossible, to appreciate any such works as free beauties, in Kant’s sense. Indeed, even abstract art (which is often justified in Kantian terms) has no privileged access to free beauty, in so far as it is exemplified in self-contained pre-eminently artefactual artefacts! I am saying, then, that our encounter with the artwork is conducted from the premiss of its fundamental ontological status as an exemplary made-thing. This exemplary ‘made’ quality will strongly incline us towards an apprehension of the work in terms other than that of free beauty. Indeed, to link art and free beauty at all seems both hopelessly incongruous and something of an insult to the distinctive features that define worthwhile art. However, the very fact that Kant should try to do this is of great significance. He is clearly looking for a higher form of dependent beauty, and tries to achieve it by the only means available— that is, by fusing (p.75) dependent and free beauty. That this fusion fails is, I think, symptomatic of the fact that what Kant really needs here is a notion of beauty which incorporates the other two, and thereby transcends them. How are we to discover this missing term? Heidegger himself provides a clue to the route we must follow, in his unelaborated claim that ‘Schiller alone’ grasped some of the ‘essentials’ of Kant’s aesthetic theory. Let us commence from a brief critique of the dichotomy between free and dependent beauty, which Schiller makes in a letter to Körner.

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Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty I concede that his [Kant’s] remarks may have the greatest merit of separating the logical from the aesthetic, yet they seem after all to miss the concept of beauty entirely. For beauty manifests itself in its supreme glory when it conquers the logical nature of its object, and how could it conquer where there is no resistance?17 Now, the substance of Schiller’s points here arise from Kant’s remark that any concept involved in relation to beauty ‘is an encumbrance which would only restrict the imagination that is, as it were, at play in contemplation of the outward form’.18 Schiller, however, sees the ‘encumbrance’ as having in some circumstances a positive significance. This gives us the possibility of a new concept of beauty. Unfortunately, he does not explicate this possibility except in a rather nebulous way. I shall, however, proceed to illustrate some possibilities of its concrete application. Let us consider first an example which Kant gives of ‘free’ natural beauty. ‘A flower…is regarded as beautiful, because we meet with a certain finality in its perception, which, in our estimate of it, is not referred to any end whatever.’19 Now, on Kant’s terms, if our judgement actually embodies a concept and takes the form, say, of ‘This is a beautiful tulip’, then we are evaluating it in relation to some notion of what counts as the perfect tulip. Suppose, however, that the radiant appearance of the flower leads us to say things like ‘This particular tulip has a beauty unique to itself’ or ‘How much more than a mere tulip this one is’. In such cases, whilst there is indeed some reference to a concept, what strikes us as the flower’s real source of beauty is precisely the fact that its particularity actively resists an assimilation to the concept. Its beauty lies, as it (p.76) were, in our delight at its radiant deviation from the concept. Similarly, one can imagine a hunter who knows his weapon primarily through use. However, the weapon proves so extraordinarily successful that he becomes aware of it not only as a means to the end of hunting but as an exemplary artefact. He perhaps spends much labour on decorating the weapon, thus acknowledging and revering the object’s own ontological integrity. We could say that in this case the weapon transcends its function to become self-disclosive—it reveals itself as a unique instantiation of the concept ‘weapon’. Let us consider, as a final example, the work of what Kant calls ‘fine art’. If we address ourselves to its representational content, we find that some object or event ‘appears’ in the work—but not as it appears in actual life. The artist’s style (as Merleau-Ponty and Victor Shklovsky put it, respectively) throws the world ‘out of focus’ or makes it ‘strange’. Our usual appropriative stance towards objects is thereby thrown into disarray; we sit up and take notice of them as unique sensuous existents with an ontological integrity of their own. On these terms, artistic representation distends the appearance of objects, in order to return us to them. Indeed, in so far as the artist does have his own distinctive style, the distention of the object is, at the same time, the imprint and Page 11 of 19

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Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty manifestation of his own individuality. It preserves and makes tangible his own unique way of perceiving the world. Now, in some individual works and styles, we may feel that there is a tendency to affirm the artist at the expense of the subject-matter; or vice versa. However, there are many works where an equal balance is achieved; where the artist and his subject-matter complement one another perfectly. In such cases the work itself is disclosed as an exemplary artefact. We find, then, that the meritorious artwork is characterized by a threefold transcendence. It involves both the subject-matter and the artist’s perception of it going beyond themselves into harmonious self-disclosure; and, by virtue of this reciprocity, the artwork itself is revealed as a unique existent. These considerations place before us a notion of beauty whereby some object is known as a specific thing (i.e. is brought under a concept) but actively resists such categorization, and thereby delights us with its own individuality. Now, whilst Kant implies that ‘free beauty’ is the highest aesthetic value, he provides a (p.77) definition of it which is basically negative. This is quite obvious in relation to the first two, and fourth ‘moments’ of the pure judgement of taste, but is also true of the third moment, the ‘purposiveness, without purpose’ aspect —in so far as this ‘subjective finality’ is apprehended by imagination and understanding actively suspending their usual cognitive relationship. In the concept of beauty derived from Schiller’s points, however, we find a negation of negation—a beauty which transforms the limiting power of the concept into a free radiance of the object’s uniqueness. Let us call this ‘transcendent beauty’. We note it, of course, in the context of both nature and ostensible mundane artefacts, but, clearly, it finds its richest and most complete articulation in the artwork. This is why it is a travesty to reduce the artwork to beauty in either of Kant’s two senses. The worthwhile work of fine art is a concrete instantiation of fundamental ontology, by virtue of its threefold transcendent beauty. Through it, we delight in a unique instance of that ultimate encounter of things and human subject in reciprocity, which is the essence of our finite nature. We have arrived, then, at this goal through an extended analysis of Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant, and Kant’s own notion of beauty. It now remains for us to confront Kant’s aesthetics with the fruits of this analysis, in order to see whether there are any strands in his thought which count as genuine anticipations of fine art as fundamental ontology.

III One of the more original, but puzzling, aspects of Kant’s aesthetics is the doctrine of ‘aesthetic ideas’. Kant first introduces this in a peripheral way in the form of the ‘aesthetic normal idea’. This is a notion ‘intermediate between all singular intuitions of individuals, with their manifold variations—a floating image for the whole genus, which nature has set as an archetype underlying Page 12 of 19

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Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty those of her products that belong to the same species, but which in no single case she seems to have attained’.20 On these terms, the aesthetic normal idea is not simply a ‘rational idea’, but rather a sensuous ‘intuition’ (or ‘representation of the imagination’) that seeks to (p.78) exemplify those general features which define membership of a specific class of natural objects. Its ‘aesthetic’ character arises from the fact that nature gives us only concrete instances of concepts— and not concrete archetypes of them. Hence, a sensuous intuition of the archetype of a concept is one which could only have its determining ground in the imagination of the ‘judging subject’. We must not, however, construe the aesthetic normal idea as a purely mental image. As Kant says, ‘it is, with all its proportions an aesthetic idea, and as such, capable of being presented in concreto in a model image’.21 Now, this remark raises both a puzzle and a possibility. The puzzle consists in the fact that Kant seems to imply that the ‘aesthetic idea’ is a generic term of which the aesthetic normal idea is one inflection. But what would the aesthetic idea ‘as such’ consist in? Presumably an intuition that relates in some sense or other to the ‘idea of a maximum’. On these terms, the ‘normal’ idea is an intuition that seeks to exemplify the perfect form of some concept. This, however, leaves open the possibility of another species of ‘aesthetic idea’ (let us call it the ‘transcendent’ variety) where an intuition might embody a concept in such a unique way that the richness of the manifold suggests a perfection of individuality. With these points in mind, we can now consider Kant’s main exposition of aesthetic ideas—which occurs much further on in the context of his discussion of fine art. That Kant does reintroduce the notion at just this point, and without any warning, suggests, I think, that he was uneasy about the grounding of fine art in ‘naturalness’, and was searching for some supportive notion more appropriate to the distinctive qualities of art. But how can the aesthetic idea fulfil this function? The answer lies, I think, in the fact that Kant now uses the aesthetic idea in that ‘transcendent’ sense whose possibility I have just noted. Consider, for example, the following definition. The aesthetic idea is ‘that representation of the imagination which induces much thought, yet without the possibility of any definite thought whatever i.e. concept, being thought adequate to it, and which language, consequently, can never get on level terms with or render completely intelligible’.22 Now, this tortuous passage introduces a new possibility. By ‘representation of the imagination’ Kant means a unified manifold (p.79) which is recognized ‘as’ an object of a specific sort and, therefore, an instance (or ‘presentation’) of the concept of that object. However, the crucial point is that the particular representation is so rich (in an unspecified respect) as to make the concept seem inadequate to it. We find that it induces ‘solely on its own account such a wealth of thought as would never admit of comprehension in a definite concept’.23 Page 13 of 19

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Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty Hence the particular representation gives an ‘unbounded’ aesthetic expansion to its own concept. Now, it might seem that in this distinction between representations of the imagination to which a concept is adequate, and aesthetic ideas, Kant is simply anticipating the modern distinction between denotative and connotative images, that is, between those which are significant as simple indicators of that which they are images ‘of’, and those which, whilst ostensibly indicative, interest us by virtue of their capacity to provoke flights of associative thought. This dichotomy is entailed in Kant’s distinction, but, unlike many modern commentators, he is not naïve enough to suppose that this of itself can provide us with a line of demarcation between images as such, and artistic images. Rather, he establishes this demarcation by going on to clarify the ontological significance of the aesthetic idea. The basic argument is as follows. Kant holds that our ordinary associational use of imagination (i.e. the relating of images on the basis of the same principles as that which they are images ‘of’ are related in direct perceptual experience) can be put to a creative use. We can ‘remodel experience’ by taking such images and working them into a new order —a transcendent reality—which nature and ordinary experience cannot attain. This, of course, is the realm of poetic and artistic meaning. As an example of the poet’s remodelling of experience, Kant tells us that he ‘essays the task of interpreting to sense the rational ideas of invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed, hell, eternity, creation, etc.’.24 A prose writer can, of course, treat of such rational ideas, but Kant’s point is that the poet interprets them to ‘sense’, that is, he gives us a sensuous as well as an intellectual apprehension of them. The stage is now set for Kant’s decisive claim. Or, again, as to things of which examples occur in experience, e.g. death, envy, and all the vices, as also love, fame, and the like, transgressing the (p.80) limits of experience he attempts with the aid of an imagination which emulates the display of reason in its attainment of a maximum, to body them forth to sense with a completeness of which nature affords no parallel…25 Kant does not, unfortunately, really tell us how the aesthetic idea is able to transcend nature in this way. He does, however, present two important clues (the artist’s ‘remodelling’ of experience, and imagination attaining ‘a maximum’) from which we can construct an explanation without doing violence to Kant’s overall position. Let us proceed as follows. First, the artist takes his subjectmatter from phenomena encountered in nature, that is, from concrete presentations of the concepts of particular objects. However, the artist’s individual genius, as embodied in the powers of his creative imagination (and, although Kant does not emphasize it, his handling of the medium), means that the subject-matter is mediated and stamped with the artist’s personal style of being. Hence, when the subject-matter reappears in the form of the concrete artwork, its manifold now owes its unity at least as much to the individuality of the artist’s imagination as to the particular concept of which it is an instance. Page 14 of 19

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Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty Now, of course, any particular natural object or phenomenon is unique in a mundane sense. However, in the artwork the uniqueness of the subject-matter is actually made manifest, in so far as the artist expresses his own creative individuality through it. On the one hand he presents the subject-matter with all the sensuousness of a natural appearance; yet, at the same time, his style has omitted and emphasized some of the subject-matter’s properties in a way that discloses its relevance to our interests both as individuals and as a species. It is this harmonious reciprocity of natural and spiritual being, in other words, which enables the subject-matter to be ‘bodied forth to sense’ with a completeness that ‘transcends’ nature. Now, interpreted in this fashion, the aesthetic idea strongly suggests itself as the foundation upon which Hegel subsequently built his theory of art. Consider, for example, the following remarks from Hegel’s Aesthetics. Art liberates the true content of phenomena from the pure appearance and deception of this bad, transitory world, and gives them a higher actuality (p.81) born of the spirit. Thus, far from being mere pure appearance, a higher reality and truer existence is to be ascribed to the phenomena of art in comparison with [those of] ordinary reality.26 However, the very fact that this link with Hegel is so striking may suggest to some readers that the foregoing interpretation of the aesthetic idea is somewhat too Hegelian—and does not place enough emphasis on the distinctively ‘Kantian’ aspects of Kant’s exposition. For example, he frequently talks of the aesthetic idea embodying the ‘free employment of imagination’, and giving rise to ‘a wealth of undeveloped material for the understanding’. Given such features, we might be tempted to adopt the position of Michael Podro, who suggests that the aesthetic idea has a close affinity with the pure aesthetic judgement, by virtue of its manifold being ambiguous, that is, one which engages the faculties of cognition in a general and playful way, rather than in the restricted sense of requiring a definite concept. Hence, The harmony of the faculties in the pure judgement of taste concentrates on the unifiability of the manifold…The discussion of ‘aesthetic ideas’ simply concentrates on the exercise of that process of unification, taxed to an extreme, under the demands of a certain kind of art.27 This would mean that in the aesthetic idea, imagination attains a maximum in the simple negative sense of no one concept being adequate to it. However, this raises a number of problems which only my previous interpretation can solve. First, we must ask why the understanding’s unification of the ambiguous manifold should be a harmonious one involving an element of free play, rather than a mere frustrated searching for the ‘right’ interpretation. Second, we must explain what it is about the manifold that makes it so elusive to the Page 15 of 19

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Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty understanding. To answer these questions we must bear in mind Kant’s point that whilst the aesthetic idea must not be reducible to a concept, it must at least involve one mediately. This means that the multiplicity of representations which the aesthetic idea gives rise to will be ‘germane’ to the original concept, or ‘restricted’ to its bounds. For example, Kant tells us that (p.82) a certain poet says in his description of a beautiful morning: ‘The sun arose, as out of virtue rises peace’. The consciousness of virtue, even where we put ourselves only in thought in the position of a virtuous man, diffuses in the mind a multitude of sublime and tranquillizing feelings, and gives a boundless outlook into a happy future, such as no expression within the compass of a definite concept completely attains.28 On these terms, the artist’s imaginative presentation of the concept enables us to relate it to the totality of our being—to the values, aspirations, and possibilities of our own life, and that of humanity in general. This is no mere formal harmony of imagination and understanding: rather, the imaginative manifold and its mediating concept open out, and, as it were, reopen our understanding of numerous related possibilities of experience and selfknowledge. This is why Kant talks of the aesthetic idea giving ‘aesthetically an unbounded expansion’ to the concept of its subject-matter. Through it, the concept is taken from the realm of mere abstraction and grounded in the fullness of concrete human experience. The fact that Kant puts so much stress on the free and harmonious nature of our response to the aesthetic idea is, of course, an outcome of his wanting to relate it in some formal way to the pure aesthetic judgement. However, if we followed this relation through seriously, we would surely find that the aesthetic idea is free only in the negative sense of giving rise to random and arbitrary associations, with the concept of the subjectmatter a mere first term in the series. This, of course, is inconsistent with the way Kant actually discusses the aesthetic idea in concreto. In the example of the poet (given above), we find that the concept of the subject-matter plays a positive mediatory role. It provides, as it were, an intentional core around which limitless possibilities of experience are able to cluster in harmonious selfdisclosure. If, in turn, we ask how this is possible, then we are returned to Kant’s clues about the artist’s ‘remodelling’ of experience through creative imagination —which, as I noted earlier, implies the affirmation of the subject-matter, through its sensuous grounding in human interests. I am arguing, then, that whichever approach we take, it leads back to Kant’s grounding of the aesthetic idea in fundamental ontological reciprocity. (p.83) Now, in view of these points, it may seem surprising that Kant should go on to say that ‘Beauty (whether it be of nature or art) may in general be termed the expression of aesthetic ideas’.29 Given the important links pointed out above between the aesthetic idea and human interests, we might feel that Kant is

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Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty completely inconsistent in construing the disinterested beauties of nature as the expression of aesthetic ideas. His justification is as follows. The beautiful forms displayed in the organic world all plead eloquently on the side of the realism of the aesthetic finality of nature in support of the plausible assumption that beneath the production of the beautiful there must lie a preconceived idea in the producing cause—that is to say an end acting in the interest of our imagination.30 However, any awareness of this ‘preconceived idea’ must surely involve us applying the concept of ‘an end acting in the interest of our imagination’. Yet, when Kant attempts to link free beauty with the aesthetic idea, he says, ‘with the beauty of nature the bare reflection upon a given intuition apart from any concept…is sufficient for awakening and communicating the idea of which that object is regarded as the expression’.31 This conflict is further compounded by the fact that Kant talks as though each particular free beauty is the expression of some particular aesthetic idea. But, surely, the ‘end acting in the interest of our imagination’ is a general notion which will be common to all instances of free beauty. On these terms, Kant should see nature as expressing not aesthetic ideas as such, but rather one vast aesthetic idea. The awkwardness of this belated move is, I think, again indicative of Kant’s tendency to make the pure aesthetic judgement the nodal point of his entire aesthetics. We find that, having already obscured the grounding of artistic beauty in the aesthetic idea by stressing some misleading points of affinity with the pure aesthetic judgement, Kant now makes a similar move on, as it were, the grand scale. The reasons for this are clear. Rather than following where the notion of an aesthetic idea leads, Kant wishes to impose two broader claims of his philosophy on it—namely that our highest values are rooted in freedom, and that freedom itself is attained through the faculties of cognition and the will following their own internal logic, rather than through their reciprocal (p.84) interaction with the sensuous world. In a sense, Heidegger’s remarks about Kant’s ‘recoil’ from fundamental ontology do prove unexpectedly prophetic here.

Conclusion I have argued, then, that the gap in Kant’s understanding of beauty was intuitively filled by him through the notion of ‘aesthetic ideas’. It is at this point, therefore, that transcendent beauty and thence fundamental ontology are prefigured in his thought. There are, however, two points which Kant deals with rather unsatisfactorily. First, he implies rather than explains in any depth how the artwork is able to embody an aesthetic idea; and, second, whilst he sees the aesthetic idea as founded on particular objects transcending their concepts, he does not quite realize the importance of the object’s active resistance to categorization, i.e. the radiance of its uniqueness.

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Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty This leads us to a final summary. Heidegger’s attempts to locate the idea of a fundamental ontology in Kant’s notions of transcendental imagination and free beauty are completely unsuccessful. They fail because of Heidegger’s reluctance to countenance the sincerity of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism and because, indeed, he looks to the wrong parts of Kant’s aesthetics. We do find, however, that Kant’s notion of dependent beauty reveals, under analysis, a gap which can be filled by a notion of transcendent beauty grounded in fundamental ontology. This leads in turn to the discovery that Kant himself had anticipated transcendent beauty in the context of the ‘aesthetic idea’. In a sense, he establishes its possibility. It is Schiller who provides the clue for its deduction. Notes:

(1) Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense, trans. Hubert and Patricia Dreyfus (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Ill., 1964), 28. (2) Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. James Churchill (Indiana University Press, Bloomington and London, 1962). (3) See esp. sects. A96–A107 in the Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. Kemp Smith (Macmillan, London, 1973). (4) Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, 178. (5) Eva Schaper, Studies in Kant’s Aesthetics (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1979), 13. (6) Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, 167. (7) Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche: Volume One, The Will to Power, trans. D. F. Krell (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1981). (8) Ibid. 110 and 109, respectively. (9) Kant, Critique of Judgement, trans. J. C. Meredith (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1973), § 15, p. 71. (10) This trend is even more emphatic in Kant’s conception of the sublime, in so far as it is not nature itself which is sublime, but the human subject’s rational capacities. (11) See Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, B44/A28 and B52/A36 (pp. 72 and 78). (12) For example, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. and trans. D. F. Krell (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1978). (13) Kant’s Critique of Judgement, § 16, p. 72.

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Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty (14) Ibid. (15) Ibid. § 45, p. 166. (16) Ibid. p. 167. (17) Quoted in Schaper, Studies in Kant’s Aesthetics, 104. (18) Kant’s Critique of Judgement, § 16, pp. 72–3. (19) Ibid. § 17, p. 80. (20) Ibid. p. 79. (21) Ibid. p. 77. (22) Ibid. § 49, pp. 175–6. (23) Ibid. p. 177. (24) Ibid. p. 176. (25) Ibid. pp. 176–7. (26) G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics, trans. T. M. Knox (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1975), 9. (27) Michael Podro, The Manifold in Perception (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1972), 31. (28) Kant, Critique of Judgement, § 49, pp. 178–9. (29) Ibid. § 51, p. 183. (30) Ibid. § 58, pp. 216–17. (31) Ibid. § 51, p. 184.

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Heidegger and the Question of Aesthetics

Art and Embodiment: From Aesthetics to SelfConsciousness Paul Crowther

Print publication date: 2001 Print ISBN-13: 9780199244973 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.001.0001

Heidegger and the Question of Aesthetics Paul Crowther

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.003.0006

Abstract and Keywords This chapter explores Heidegger's aesthetic theory. Heidegger's response to the question of aesthetics is to be found mainly in Volume One of his Nietzsche study, and the well-known essay ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’. Section I begins by expounding and elaborating Heidegger's position in the Nietzsche study, and picking out some areas of difficulty. Section II discusses the salient aspects of Heidegger's theory in ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ and, after considering its merits, relates it back to the most important issue in the areas of difficulty noted in Section I. Keywords:   Heidegger, aesthetics, Nietzsche, The Origin of the Work of Art

Introduction Heidegger’s response to the question of aesthetics is to be found mainly in Volume One of his Nietzsche study, and the well-known essay ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ (both dating from 1936). In Section I of this discussion I shall expound and elaborate Heidegger’s position in the Nietzsche study (with background reference to his 1930 paper ‘On the Essence of Truth’), and will pick out some areas of difficulty. I will then, in Section II, expound the salient aspects of Heidegger’s theory in ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, and, after considering its merits, will relate it back to the most important issue in the areas of difficulty noted in Section I.

I Heidegger suggests that ‘aesthetics is consideration of man’s state of feeling in relation to the beautiful’.1 Indeed, ‘aesthetics is that kind of meditation on art in Page 1 of 15

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Heidegger and the Question of Aesthetics which man’s affinity to the beautiful represented in art sets the standards for all definitions and explanations, man’s state of feeling remaining the point of departure and goal of meditation’.2 So, for Heidegger, then, the key concept of aesthetics is that of ‘feeling’. How far is this claim accurate? A great deal depends here on how one understands the term ‘aesthetic’. Generally speaking, it is now used to designate any theoretical (p.86) approach to the arts. However, the rise of aesthetics as a discipline since the late eighteenth century has been characterized by its focusing on the nature of the feeling which constitutes our response to art, and on the artwork’s status as a vehicle of expression.3 In linking the term ‘aesthetics’ to the exploration of feeling, then, Heidegger is picking out a feature which represents a dominant historical tendency in the practice of aesthetics, rather than what is definitive of it as a philosophical discipline. I shall hereafter call this historical tendency the ‘aesthetic attitude’. Now, for Heidegger the aesthetic attitude marks an alienation from the essence of art. To understand why this is so, we must first consider his theory concerning the nature of truth. The customary approach to this problem is to construe truth in terms of the correspondence between a judgement and its object. However, for Heidegger, before such correspondence is even possible, the object must have been disclosed to us at a more fundamental level. It must have already come forth in a way so as to be accessible to judgement. How, then, are we to characterize this ‘coming forth’ ? Well, we always encounter things as standing out in the open against a background ‘which is not first created by the presenting, but rather is only entered into and taken over as a domain of relatedness’.4 The ground of this relatedness consists in our willingness to be bound by things as they are—to allow them to emerge freely rather than simply on the basis of their practical or theoretical utility to us. This encounter itself presupposes a general openness to being as a whole. We must create a space in which beings can emerge, and be recognized as what they are. This openness or clearing is constituted through the fact that we possess a language. Indeed, language, as Heidegger puts it, is the ‘House of Being’.5 Now, whilst language thus projects us into the midst of beings as a whole, something crucial remains concealed. As Heidegger puts it, ‘Precisely because letting-be always lets beings be in a particular comportment which relates to them and thus discloses them, it conceals beings as whole. Letting-be is intrinsically at the same time (p.87) a concealing.’6 Heidegger’s pointy then, is that the Clearing of Openness which generally projects us amongst beings, that is, that relatedness to the Being of beings as a whole which is embodied in our language, is something overlooked through our preoccupation with particular disclosures of truth. It has the character of a mystery. We can, of course, make this mystery thematic by asking the question ‘What are beings?’, but even here there are problems. The reason for this is that, in Heidegger’s terms, truth has an essential foundation in untruth. Page 2 of 15

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Heidegger and the Question of Aesthetics There are two aspects to this. First, we tend to interpret beings in terms of ‘what is readily available and always accessible’.7 Hence this means in practice that when we question the Being of beings as a whole, we frame our answer in terms of models derived ultimately from technology. These easily accessible models, however, distort our understanding of such Being. They reduce it to that which is measurable and manipulable and far removed from the immediate concrete experience of things. Heidegger terms this mode of un-truth ‘dissembling’ in so far as, so to speak, one being or kind of being gets in front of another, and passes itself off as that other. The second and more fundamental dimension of un-truth on which the disclosure of truth is founded, Heidegger terms ‘refusal’. The Being of beings as a whole is hard to think. If we let beings simply be—let them come forth and be encountered on their own terms, in a sense all that we can say of them is that they are.8 The Being of beings as a whole is sheer dynamic presence—impenetrable, irreducible, and mysterious—simply ‘there’. Hence, to disclose or unconceal such Being is to unconceal it as that which is self-concealing, and which refuses to be absolutely displayed through the abstract technoscientific or practical concepts we customarily bring to bear on it. However, in so far as thought which unconceals the self-concealment of the Being of beings as a whole is hard to sustain, the tendency is to fall into dissembling. This brings us to Heidegger’s perspective on history. For him, history is not a mere sequence of events but a people’s mode of relatedness to the Being of beings as a whole. Indeed, we are told (p.88) that ‘the ek-sistence of historical man begins at that moment when the first thinker takes a questioning stand with regard to the unconcealment of beings by asking “what are beings”’.9 Hence, in classical antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the modern period, for example, the different answers which thinkers give to this question are crucial factors in the formation of the world-views of these respective epochs. The answer to the question manifests itself not only in philosophy, but also in morals, various modes of socio-political organization, and, of course, in art. As Heidegger remarks in his Nietzsche study, ‘Great art and its works are great in their historical emergence and being because in man’s historical existence they accomplish a decisive task, they make manifest, in the way appropriate to works, what beings as a whole are, preserving such manifestation in the work.’10 We now have the crucial connecting point with Heidegger’s critique of the aesthetic attitude. He asserts that at the period of the Greeks’ great art, their ‘luminous state of knowing’11 meant that they had ‘no need’ of an aesthetics. Aesthetics, indeed, begins only when great Greek art ‘goes into decline’. Why does it go into decline? Heidegger does not answer this question explicitly, but the direction of his thinking is clear. Greek culture (certainly at the time of the pre-Socratics) dwelt in a close and authentic proximity to Being, and brought it to unconcealment in an appropriate way. However, the rise of Platonic and Page 3 of 15

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Heidegger and the Question of Aesthetics Aristotelian philosophy introduced more dissembled modes of thinking which came to pervade other aspects of culture and to turn them away from the authentic unconcealment of Being. Art, therefore, now comes to be understood fundamentally as a means to the production of feeling, that is, in terms of its effect on the human subject. Again, in the modern period, we find that the rise of the aesthetic attitude once more coincides with the decline of great art. Under the impact of Cartesian philosophy, man continues his dissembling of Being and understands himself fundamentally from the viewpoint of his own subjectivity. Art accordingly reorientates itself towards the more personal dimension of expression and feeling. It is this tendency which the aesthetic attitude attempts to legitimize. On these terms, then, Heidegger’s critique of aesthetics focuses (p.89) in effect on the fact that aesthetics serves to ratify and conceal the decline of great art. It is an attitude which arises when art loses its status as a domain wherein the Being of beings as a whole is appropriately disclosed. Is Heidegger right? Well, there are at least two areas here which are problematic. First, we must ask exactly how the manifestation of the Being of beings as a whole relates to great art; and, second, we must ask how this relation is involved in the decline of great art. In respect of the first of these we are told that Art and its works are necessary only as an itinerary and sojourn for man in which the truth of beings as a whole i.e. the unconditional, the absolute opens itself up to him. What makes art great is not only and not in the first place the high quality of what is created. Rather art is great because it is an ‘absolute need’.12 The question we must ask, however, is whether our absolute need for art is—as Heidegger asserts—a need for the absolute, that is, a need to manifest the Being of beings as a whole. The obvious worry about this view is that it seems to construe the fundamental impulse to art as a kind of quasi-philosophical yearning for absolute truth. Now, of course, it may be that art has this dimension, but, if so, it is a point that needs more elaboration than is found in Heidegger’s Nietzsche study, and, in particular, its relation to the demands of the artist’s personal creative needs must be clarified. This, indeed, highlights the fundamental point at issue. Professor Gadamer has suggested ‘That truth is experienced through a work of art that we cannot attain in any other way constitutes the philosophic importance of art’.13 Might one not, therefore, in the light of this, say that the effect of individualistic tendencies in modern art and aesthetics as a discipline is to preserve and identify that which is distinctive and unique to art? It may be, in other words, that the essence of artistic truth is something more than the disclosure of the Being of beings as such.

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Heidegger and the Question of Aesthetics Let me now address the second area of difficulty arising from Heidegger’s account of aesthetics in his Nietzsche study. This arises from his claims about the decline of great art. He implicitly links (p.90) this decline—at least in Greek and modern times—with the coming to the fore of a dissembled—let us call it ‘inauthentic’ notion of Being. This means, in effect, that art’s turning away from Being reflects and informs the Age’s inauthentic relatedness to the Being of beings as a whole. However, one of the great epochs of Western art (in both the visual and other modes) is that which stretches from the Renaissance to the rise of Romanticism. Indeed, Heidegger himself tacitly acknowledges the greatness of this epoch in his claim that the rise of aesthetics as a discipline (i.e. from the late eighteenth century onwards) accompanies a decline in art from its greatness. Now, even if we ignore the contentious claim that in the modern period great art is in decline, Heidegger must still explain why it is that Renaissance art and the tradition of classicism (founded as they are on a Platonist—and thence inauthentic—notion of the Ideal) can achieve much manifest greatness. Can it be that great art actually transcends the inauthenticity of its age and conditions of production? If Heidegger is prepared to admit this, then his generalizations about art’s periods of decline, and his linking of aesthetics to these, lose a great deal of their force. I have, then, offered an overview of Heidegger’s attitude to aesthetics and some provisional considerations of its areas of weakness. To see whether these critical points are insurmountable or not, we must now turn to Heidegger’s key paper, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’.

II Heidegger’s paper has an extraordinary structure which, in its twists and turns, attempts to penetrate to a deeper level than conventional philosophical investigations of the artwork. For the sake of brevity, however, I shall confine myself to the salient points of Heidegger’s theory of art, and will broadly follow his order of exposition. First, for Heidegger, the artwork has a twofold aspect. It is a thing, yet, at the same time, one which is worked up into a symbolic relation with something else. How are we to understand this relation? After a lengthy deliberation upon the nature of the thing, Heidegger takes his crucial clue from the concept of equipment (p.91) which occupies ‘a peculiar intermediate position’14 between the notions of ‘thingliness’ and ‘workliness’. Given this mediate placing, Heidegger suggests that an investigation of the essence of equipment might be expected to cast light on both aspects of the artwork. He then proceeds by way of a specific example of equipment, namely a pair of peasant shoes. Indeed, in order to facilitate the reader’s ‘visual realisation’ of this, he invokes (with deceptive casualness) a painting of the subject by Vincent Van Gogh. The painting is discussed in the following terms:

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Heidegger and the Question of Aesthetics From the dark opening of the worn insides of the shoes the toilsome tread of the worker stares forth…In the shoes vibrates the silent call of the earth, its quiet gift of the ripening grain and its unexplained self-refusal in the fallow desolation of the wintry field. This equipment is pervaded by uncomplaining anxiety as to the certainty of bread, the wordless joy at having once more withstood want, the trembling before the impending childbed and the shivering menace of death. This equipment belongs to the earth, and it is protected in the world of the peasant woman.15 Heidegger’s crucial point here is that it is only in the picture that equipment is disclosed in this profound way. Normally our awareness of equipment only extends as far as the immediate use to which we put it. Here, however, the essence of equipment is bodied forth. It is more than the mere usefulness manifest in our everyday employment. Such usefulness, as Heidegger goes on to say, itself rests in the abundance of an essential being of the equipment. We call it reliability. By virtue of this reliability the peasant woman is made privy to the silent call of the earth; by virtue of the reliability of the equipment she is sure of her world.16 On these terms then, the essence of equipment is ‘reliability’, a capacity to respond to, and cope with, our thrownness into nature. Through such ‘reliability’ we are able to erect the world of culture and institutions, on an earth which is at once providing and resistant. Heidegger now draws his first major conclusion. The Van Gogh painting—despite being introduced in a deceptively casual way— has manifested the essence of equipment to us. In Heidegger’s words, ‘Van Gogh’s painting is the disclosure of what the equipment, the pair of peasant shoes, is in truth. This entity emerges into (p.92) the unconcealedness of its being.’17 Now, this not a reversion to the discredited notion of art as imitation. For the painting is not a copy of some general essence but rather instantiates truth in a more concrete and dynamic sense. Again in Heidegger’s words, ‘Art is truth setting itself to work.’18 In the next section of his essay, Heidegger elaborates this claim and its relation to ‘world’ and ‘earth’ by addressing himself to the workly aspect of the artwork. His first basic point here is the claim that To gain access to the work, it would be necessary to remove it from all relations to something other than itself, in order to let it stand on its own for itself alone. But the artist’s most peculiar intention already aims in this direction. The work is to be released by him to its pure self-subsistence. It is precisely in great art—and only such art is under consideration here— that the artist remains inconsequential as compared with the work…19

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Heidegger and the Question of Aesthetics Of course, in most cases (no matter how thorough our scholarly reconstructions) the original context—both individual and more generally historical—of an artwork’s production is for the most part lost to us. However, Heidegger’s point is that the great work in any case actively transcends these empirical circumstances of its production. It has a dimension of ‘self-subsistence’ which engages us in a most fundamental way. To show how this is so, Heidegger considers the example of a Greek temple. This work, we are told, ‘in its standing there first gives to things their look and to men their outlook on themselves’.20 Such revelation is possible because the temple serves to set forth ‘world’ and ‘earth’. Heidegger now elaborates the first of these notions in the following terms: ‘Wherever those decisions of our history that relate to our very being are made, are taken up and abandoned by us, go unrecognised and are rediscovered by us, there the world worlds.’21 I would suggest, then, that what Heidegger has in mind through his notion of ‘world’ is the complex interplay of human beliefs, interests, institutions, and actions. A great artwork, such as the temple, bodies forth a particular configuration of this interplay, which directly relates it to the needs and dilemmas of our finite being. But what is such a world bodied forth from? The obvious (p.93) answer, of course, is material of one sort or another—stone, wood, metal, colour, language, tone, and the like. Now, whereas in equipment our preoccupation with use leads us to pay no regard to this material base, a great artwork has, for Heidegger, a rather different effect. Again in relation to the example of the temple, Heidegger observes that ‘the temple-work, in settingup a world, does not cause the material to disappear, but rather causes it to come forth for the very first time and to come into the Open of the work’s world’.22 Hence, it is only in the artwork that we fully recognize material as an aspect of that earth which inexhaustibly sustains but never totally yields itself up to our projects and judgements. We encounter it in the kind of immediacy and concrete fullness which scientific and theoretical judgements do violence rather than justice to. This means, in effect, that through letting ‘colour shine’, ‘the word speak’, and ‘metal ring’, or whatever, we are disclosing the Being of such beings on their terms. They stand before us in their earthiness as beings which are fundamentally there—and which refuse to be defined exhaustively by the arid categories we bring to bear on them. Hence (to use the terms employed in Section I), the great artwork brings about an unconcealment of beings in their character as ‘self-concealing’. The world and earth are brought into a necessary strife that sets both elements into relief. As Heidegger puts it, The earth cannot dispense with the Open of the world if it itself is to appear as earth in the liberated surge of its self-seclusion. The world,

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Heidegger and the Question of Aesthetics again, cannot soar out of the earth’s sight if, as the governing breadth and path of all essential destiny, it is to ground itself on a resolute foundation.23 Now, it is crucial to note that for Heidegger the disclosure achieved through the strife of world and earth in a particular work is—although the point is asserted rather than argued—of more general significance. We do not encounter just the truth of a particular disclosure but rather the unconcealment of the Being of beings as a whole. Great art is a mode of our fundamental historicity. In its setting forth of a concealed earth through the opening up of a decisive world, we are brought into an authentic relationship to Being. (p.94) Now, one could have been forgiven (on the basis of the account offered so far) for wondering where the artist figures in all this. Heidegger, fortunately, clarifies this to some degree in his next section, entitled Truth and Art’. Here we are told that ‘The workly character of the work consists in its having being created by the artist’. By ‘created’ here, Heidegger does not mean craftsmanship (although this is involved in the creative process), rather, ‘in contrast to all other modes of production the [art] work is distinguished by being created so that its createdness is part of the created work’.24 Indeed, ‘createdness is expressly created into the created being, so that it stands out from it, from the being thus brought forth, in an expressly particular way’.25 This does not mean simply that we become aware of the work as a production of just this great artist—rather, we are engaged by the fact that this particular disclosure of truth is an original and unique occurrence (‘the bringing forth of such a being as never was and never will be again’). Indeed, we are moved at the very fact that the work exists at all. We perhaps say to ourselves, ‘How could a mere individual human have brought forth something such as this?’ Now, it will be noticed that by this stage of his argument Heidegger has moved into the domain of the reception of art. He gives further elaboration to this point as follows. The more solitary the work, fixed in the figure, stands on its own and the more cleanly it seems to cut all ties to human beings, the more simply does the thrust come into the Open that such a work is, and the more essentially is the extraordinary thrust to the surface and the long familiar thrust down.26 Hence, ‘To submit to this displacement means: to transform our accustomed ties to world and earth and henceforth to restrain all usual doing and prizing, knowing and looking, in order to stay within the truth that is happening in the work.’27 This clearly cognitive relation to the work Heidegger describes as ‘preserving’. In such a relation the uniqueness and extraordinariness of the work draws us out of our customary practical preoccupations and interests, to a more contemplative, indeed awestruck, level of engagement. This is, however, not a Page 8 of 15

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Heidegger and the Question of Aesthetics merely private (p.95) experience, or an aestheticizing connoisseurship of the work’s formal aspects: rather, our attention is fixed in a particular interplay of world and earth that sets forth our relatedness to the Being of beings as a whole. As Heidegger puts it, the artwork is ‘the opening up or disclosing that into which human being as historical is already cast’.28 On these terms, then, great art’s ultimate significance lies in the fact that it can transcend the empirical circumstances of its production, in the direction of that which constitutes our fundamental historicity, namely our relatedness to the Being of beings as a whole.

III I shall now offer some interpretative clarification of the scope and merits of Heidegger’s theory, before reviewing his position more critically. First, it is, I think, important to reiterate that Heidegger is always talking about great art. But what, then, of ‘ordinary’ art—that of the Sunday painters, the adolescent poet, the practitioners of pop music? Does this in any way relate to the Being of beings as a whole? Heidegger does not address this question in any detail, but the direction which his answer must take is fairly clear. Such things as the products of Sunday painters, adolescent poets, and the entertainment industry of popular culture are the ordinary and commonplace. Indeed, even within ‘high art’ a great deal of work is fundamentally derivative and of note only in so far as it serves as a good example of some school, genre, or tendency, or has personal associations for us. Now, in this dimension of ‘ordinary’ art one might say that the ‘world’ which is opened up is, in a sense, all-consuming. In watching the television soap opera, we escape purely into the world it holds out for us. In considering Frith’s painting ‘Paddington Station’, we can admire it as an early example of the use of modern urban subject-matter in Victorian painting, or—in the way that Clive Bell has ironically described29—amuse (p.96) ourselves by imagining individual biographies for persons in the crowd. The point is that in cases such as these we are carried by the world opened by the work, but only in a way that is continuous with our everydayness and its interests. The earth dimension withdraws into total concealedness. A second clarification of the scope of Heidegger’s theory will lead us directly towards its merits. Heidegger notes that ‘the preservers of a work belong to its createdness with an essentiality equal to that of the creators’.30 This does not mean, however, that the door is thereby opened for an abject relativism of critical excess—such as that found in recent poststructuralist approaches. Rather, the creator and receiver of the work are only, in their distinctive characters, made possible by the truth that occurs within the self-subsistence of the work. But what does this really mean? Well, it has recently become fashionable to assert that, whilst a work may not simply reflect the social conditions and power-relations which informed the context of its production, these are nevertheless intrinsically bound up with our understanding of it. Page 9 of 15

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Heidegger and the Question of Aesthetics However, we will recall Heidegger’s claim that the truth distinctive to art only emerges if we leave such features out of our deliberations. Is this possible? Does it not point to a conception of art that is fundamentally ahistorical? In this respect, it must be said that both the production of art and the reception of it will be strongly influenced by prevailing social conditions and power-relations. However, these features need not be wholly determined by such relations. Suppose, for example, that we consider what looks to us a wholly abstract painting on an animal skin—produced by a tribe whose ways and empirical history remain unknown. We are arrested by the placement of colours, and the complex linear patterns of the work. Now, it may be that our attention is fixed solely on the sensuous pleasure involved in sheer looking. But equally we may be struck by the fact that this formal complexity has been brought forth by human artifice. Even if the work served some practical function, it is clear that the creator has gone beyond a mere coping with the vicissitudes of survival. The crucial phrase here is ‘gone beyond’. We see the signs of culture—of a standing out and opening up of a world—a surge which is fixed in, and at the same time is disclosive of its foundation in earthy material. (p.97) Again, suppose we consider a Botticelli, knowing nothing of his Neoplatonist imagery, perhaps, indeed, not even knowing whether the subject is biblical or mythological. Does it matter? No. What counts is that we recognize other human beings in a lifecontext (in Panofsky’s terms, at a ‘pre-iconographic’ level). This means that we recognize them as manifesting those features of the human condition which are essential—or at least ubiquitous. One might cite in this respect such things as tragedy, joy, suffering, death; the need to revere Deities; to acknowledge the dignity and authority of certain power-relations and institutions; or to recognize them as tyrannous. We may, of course, find that a particular presentation of some such world-configuration strikes us as alien or distant; but equally we may recognize it in terms of problems, values, and pleasures shared. On such occasions we may be wholly preocuppied by this opened world; on others, however, we may through the very manner of this opening become aware of the richness and substantiality of its sustaining material. I am suggesting, in other words, that the strife of world and earth can be embodied in a work at a level of universal significance. Irrespective of the creator or audience’s empirical historical circumstances, they are joined at a more basic level of truth. Now, it might be objected that whilst Heidegger may be justified in asserting that the great artwork embodies a particular disclosure of truth, he has done nothing to show that the great artwork involves a disclosure of the Being of beings as a whole. This is true, but it is possible to develop Heidegger’s account of ‘earth’ in a way that will fill this gap. I shall proceed by first reiterating the point that a human world is brought forth from and limited by the earth on whose foundations it finds security. In time, however, whatever worlds our species creates will pass away, and only the mute self-concealing earth will remain. But, given this, how often is our vision of these ultimate facts clearly and Page 10 of 15

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Heidegger and the Question of Aesthetics overtly focused? I would suggest very rarely, and only then in scattered moments of metaphysical insight. In the great artwork, however, these insights are fixed, focused, and heightened. If the work is great, the fact that the world bodied forth in it is circumscribed by and dependant upon this particular physical configuration of material serves to model and make accessible the fact that the world as such is similarly circumscribed and dependent. Indeed, our knowledge that this particular work has outlasted or will physically outlast its (p.98) creator likewise discloses that earth will remain when all worlds opened up from it have gone. On these terms, then, the great work can indeed accomplish the symbolic disclosure of our fundamental historicity—our relatedness to the Being of beings as a whole. I have, then, attempted to bring out the strengths of Heidegger’s account of the truth of great art as grounded on the strife of ‘world’ and ‘earth’. Of course, it may seem to some that the world/earth relation is simply a more sophisticated rendition of the form/matter distinction in traditional aesthetics. Its significance, however, extends beyond this. One of the most important functions of the form/ matter distinction in modern aesthetic theory has been to emphasize it as a distinction. The tendency has been to locate what is distinctively artistic and aesthetic solely in the dimension of form, with the work’s material aspect relegated to the status of purely technical interest. This, of course, brings a corresponding emphasis on sheer feeling and sensuous enjoyment in our aesthetic reception of the work. Now, the great merit of Heidegger’s approach is twofold. First, he shows that an experience distinctive to art can be founded on a deep complementarity between formal and material elements. Second, he offers an explanation which by-passes a difficulty often found with aesthetic attitude theorists. To illustrate this one might mention Wittgenstein’s point in the Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics and Religious Belief that one simply calls certain types of door in architecture ‘correct’, but when it comes to a Beethoven symphony one wants to talk of ‘tremendousness’. Here, the ‘entire game is different’.31 Now, aesthetic attitude theorists can easily account for the ‘correct’, ‘the balanced’, ‘the graceful’, etc., but what they find more difficult to explain is how the experience of mere form can be tremendous and aweinspiring.32 Fortunately, Heidegger’s grounding of great art on first and last things, that is, on its disclosure of our most fundamental historicity through the strife of world and earth, goes, I think, some way towards establishing how these intense responses are possible. He offers us a way of overcoming a spell which has prevailed (despite the rise of abstract art) since the time of Aristotle— namely (p.99) that artistic representation owes most of its fascination and power to its sheer mimetic function. Humans simply like to see reflections of themselves or their inner states. What Heidegger, in contrast, shows is that artistic representation achieves truth rather than reflects it. He offers us, in other words, the way to a fundamental ontology of artistic representation.

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Heidegger and the Question of Aesthetics Despite this, however, there is a crucial area of weakness in Heidegger’s theory. For, whilst the disclosure of the Being of beings may be a fundamental aspect to our experience of great art, there are, I think, other features which are more fundamental still. Indeed, these very features are presupposed by the viability of his own theory. We will remember, for example, that what draws our attention to the strife of world and earth is the fact that createdness is created into the work so as to stand out from it. It must strike us as unique and extraordinary, and be a source of awe through the very fact of its existence. What this essentially means —though, of course, Heidegger does not highlight it—is that we respond to evidence of the artist’s original creative vision. He has related himself to Being through his medium, and has caused world and earth to emerge in a new light. We see that a fellow human being has pierced through in authenticity to discover things anew. We may not know the circumstances in which the work was produced, or how the artist felt in creating it—but these absences are positive features. They allow us to imaginatively identify with the artist’s struggle at the level of empathy, or to appropriate the work as another way in which it is possible for us to view Being. Indeed, most artists desire recognition in just these terms. I would claim, therefore, that the need for self-recognition and for identity with our fellow beings is the more absolute of the needs from which great art springs. We may, with Heidegger, view Van Gogh’s painting of the peasant boots as a disclosure of the Truth of Being, but equally we must view it —as Malraux says of another painting by this artist—as ‘a brutal ideogram of the name Van Gogh’.33 It is this dimension of original personal vision which the aesthetic attitude to some degree does come to terms with, with its emphasis on the concept of expression. The problem is, however, that those (p.100) who do stress this aesthetic concept rarely pay full attention to the historical dimension involved. We could not call a work unique or original (i.e. createdness would not stand out from it) unless we had a horizon of norms and expectations against which the extraordinariness of the work could define itself. A similar horizon, indeed, is even presupposed by our aesthetic experience of formal qualities in art and nature. If we did not find these striking and unusual on the basis of norms derived from our past experience and cultural stock, they would simply decay into the background of our everyday engagements with life. It is the suppression of this historical dimension in aesthetic attitude theory which, I would suggest, is one of the reasons why Heidegger felt the need to distance himself so entirely from it. Let me now bring my discussion to a conclusion. First, as I have shown, Heidegger’s theory marks a crucial advance in our understanding of art. However, it by no means wholly dispels the difficulties manifest in the overview of his attitude to aesthetics which is found in the Nietzsche study. In particular, I have argued that the very features—namely originality and uniqueness—which, for Heidegger, make it possible to disclose the Being of beings as a whole are essentially bound up with a concept from the domain of traditional aesthetics— Page 12 of 15

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Heidegger and the Question of Aesthetics namely personal expression, This means, at the very least, that far from simply ratifying the decline of great art, the aesthetic attitude provides at least one key insight into the nature of artistic truth. However, this does not mean that it is the aesthetic attitude which alone holds the ultimate key to the understanding of art. Rather, we should see Heidegger’s notion of aletheia—the disclosure of Being—and personal expression as the two absolute needs which lead to the creation of art. I would suggest, therefore, that, if thought through, Heidegger achieves not a radical critique of aesthetics, but an illuminating move in the direction of a completion of it. We begin to understand that the aesthetic domain is not simply one kind of experience, but a family that extends beyond the feeling one enjoys simply in relation to formal qualities. But, it might be asked, why use the single term ‘aesthetic’ for such differing experiences? Well, the answer is hinted at in two of my preceding points. The first is the fact that, in the experience of aletheia, empathy, or the pleasure of formal qualities in art, what energizes our response to the sensuous particularity of the work is its sheer standing out against a (p.101) background of historical norms and expectations. It is this dimension of the extraordinary which sets forth the work, as truth, or expression, or beauty. The second feature which is common to these experiences is that they are all, in varying degrees, disinterested—that is, to be enjoyed for their own sake rather than as a means to satisfy some everyday or physiological need. For example, in great art we are not plunged directly into the life-world, by its universally significant interplay of world and earth; rather, we are engaged by the particular way in which these two elements bring themselves forth. Being is here disclosed in a more focused and heightened way. Notes:

This chapter was originally presented at the International Heidegger Symposium held at the Goethe-Institut, London, Apr. 1986. (1) Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche: Volume One, The Will to Power, trans. D. F. Krell (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1981), 78. (2) Ibid. (3) One might cite here such theorists as Clive Bell, Roger Fry, Monroe Beardsley, Harold Osborne, and Robin Collingwood. (4) Martin Heidegger, ‘On the Essence of Truth’, in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, trans, and ed. D. F. Krell (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1978), 117–41. This ref., p. 123. (5) Heidegger, ‘Letter on Humanism’, in ibid. 193–242. This ref., p. 239. (6) ‘On the Essence of Truth’, ibid. 132. (7) Ibid. 135. Page 13 of 15

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Heidegger and the Question of Aesthetics (8) For an extended discussion of this, see Heidegger’s essay on ‘The Thing’ in Poetry, Language, Thought, ed. and trans. Albert Hofstadter (Harper & Row, New York, 1971), 165–86. (9) ‘On the Essence of Truth’, 128. (10) Heidegger, Nietzsche, 83–4. (11) Ibid. 80. (12) Ibid. 84. (13) Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. W. Doepel (Sheed & Ward, London, 1978), p. xii. (14) Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in Poetry, Language, Thought, 32. (15) Ibid. 33–4. (16) Ibid. 34–5. (17) Ibid. 36. (18) Ibid. 39. (19) Ibid. 40. (20) Ibid. 43. (21) Ibid. 43–5. (22) Ibid. 46. (23) Ibid. 49. (24) Ibid. 64. (25) Ibid. 65. (26) Ibid. 66. (27) Ibid. (28) Ibid. 75. (29) In his ‘The Aesthetic Hypothesis’, in Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology, ed. George Dickie and Richard Sclafani (St Martin’s Press, New York, 1977), 36–48. This ref., p. 41.

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Heidegger and the Question of Aesthetics (30) ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, 71. (31) Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, ed. Cyril Barrett (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1970), 8. (32) Bell, indeed, regards the transporting character of aesthetic feeling as akin to religious ecstasy—but without explaining how this is possible. See e.g. ‘The Aesthetic Hypothesis’, 47. (33) Quoted in ‘Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence’, in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Ill., 1964), 39–83. This ref., p. 53.

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Merleau-Ponty

Art and Embodiment: From Aesthetics to SelfConsciousness Paul Crowther

Print publication date: 2001 Print ISBN-13: 9780199244973 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.001.0001

Merleau-Ponty Vision and Painting Paul Crowther

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.003.0007

Abstract and Keywords This chapter discusses Merleau-Ponty's theory of painting, outlined in his final published paper, ‘Eye and Mind’ (1961). The theory embodies some of the crucial changes which had taken place in his overall philosophical position since The Phenomenology of Perception (1945). Section I traces the development of Merleau-Ponty's overall philosophical position, and Section II relates it to the development of his theory of painting as exemplified in the essays ‘Cezanne's Doubt’ (1945), ‘Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence’ (1952), and ‘Eye and Mind’. Section III evaluates Merleau-Ponty's theory of painting, and argues that whilst ‘Eye and Mind’ offers acute insights into the links between vision and painting, it needs to be supplemented by a development of some of the points made in his earlier work. Keywords:   Merleau-Ponty, theory of painting, Cezanne's Doubt, Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence, Eye and Mind, vision

Introduction In his final published paper, ‘Eye and Mind’ (1961), Merleau-Ponty outlines a systematic, if somewhat difficult, theory of painting. It embodies some of the crucial changes which had taken place in his overall philosophical position since The Phenomenology of Perception (1945). In Section I of this chapter, therefore, I shall trace the development of Merleau-Ponty’s overall philosophical position, and in Section II will relate it to the development of his theory of painting as exemplified in the essays ‘Cézanne’s Doubt’ (1945), ‘Indirect Language and the Page 1 of 15

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Merleau-Ponty Voices of Silence’ (1952), and ‘Eye and Mind’. In Section III I will evaluate Merleau-Ponty’s theory of painting, and will argue that whilst ‘Eye and Mind’ offers acute insights into the links between vision and painting, it needs to be supplemented by a development of some of the points made in his earlier work.

I Merleau-Ponty’s fundamental philosophical premiss is that our basic contact with the world is pre-reflective. We operate in and upon the world without making any explicitly conscious differentiation between ourselves as the subject of experience, and the world as the object of it. The basis of this pre-reflective contact consists (p.103) in the fact that our fundamental cognition of the world is not purely ‘mental’, a wholly intellectual operation—it is rather a function of all our sensory, motor, and affective capacities operating as a unified field. This involves a primordial awareness of our body’s positioning and its unity—an awareness which articulates the world into an intelligible schema. There are two fundamental aspects to this ontological reciprocity. First, in so far as the body locates us in a definite position, the various elements in the perceptual field are organized into a foreground and background according to their proximity and accessibility in relation to the body. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, The distance from me to the object is not a size which increases or decreases, but a tension which fluctuates around a norm. An oblique position of the object in relation to me is not measured by the angle which it forms with the plane of my face, but [rather] felt as a lack of balance, as an unequal distribution of its influences on me.1 The second crucial feature of our body’s relation to the world arises from its role in differentiating and articulating specific objects from the multiplicity of their sensible aspects. In this respect, Merleau-Ponty observes that the perceived object is ‘a totality open to an horizon of an indefinite number of perspectival views which blend with one another according to a given style, which defines the object in question’.2 But what is the nature of this ‘blending’? Traditionally, the unity of the object has been ascribed to our intellectual grasp of some underlying essence in which its properties or appearances inhere. Merleau-Ponty, however, suggests that, in our pre-reflective perception, ‘The unity of a thing beyond all its fixed properties is not a substratum…an inherent subject, but that unique accent which is to be found in each one of them, that unique manner of existing of which they are a second order expression’.3 This unique ‘accent’ or ‘style’ which defines the thing, therefore, arises as a kind of synaesthetic cohesion. As Merleau-Ponty also remarks, (p.104) the brittleness, hardness, transparency, and crystal ring of a glass all translate a single manner of being…We understand the thing as we understand a new kind of behaviour, not, that is, through any intellectual Page 2 of 15

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Merleau-Ponty operation of subsumption, but by taking up on our own account the mode of existence adumbrated before us.4 One might say, then, that in Merleau-Ponty’s terms things define themselves as ‘styles’ of being. We learn them and differentiate them from other such styles on the basis of the varying combinations of sensory and motor capacities which they engage in the course of our body’s inspection or appropriation of them. There is one point of importance to be noted in Merleau-Ponty’s earlier philosophical position. We have just seen that, for him, objects are primordially encountered and defined through our body’s style of engagement with them. However, whilst the body thus organizes and gives structure to the phenomenal field, it is also the case (as Merleau-Ponty points out) that ‘the places in which I find myself are never completely given to me: the things which I see are things for me only under the condition that they recede beyond their immediately given aspects’.5 This, in effect, means that human perception is itself creative and expressive. This is not only because the body organizes and gives structure to the phenomenal field through its positioning, but also because the world recedes beyond and transcends our body’s immediate grasp of it. Our perception is thus a constant and ever-renewing process of structuration. The world’s transcendence—its refusal to be absolutely fixed by our body’s contact with it— obliges the embodied subject to be itself transcendent: to constantly change its perceptual positioning in relation to the world. This perceptual positioning can take two forms. What Merleau-Ponty calls ‘secondary expression’ arises when we articulate the world in terms of perceptions or concepts which are routine and familiar to us. ‘Primary expression’, in contrast, arises when we take up an unorthodox or innovatory position in relation to the world—when we organize it in a new way, as, for example, the poet does in his or her transformation of language. It is, accordingly, in primary expression that one must seek the origins of art. Before considering the question of art, however, I shall first (p.105) outline the important change that takes place in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy in the latter half of his career. The early position which I have just sketched out can clearly be termed ‘phenomenological’ in so far as it seeks to describe the correlation of body and world that exists in pre-reflective perception. His later work does not constitute a break with this. Rather, it seeks to deepen our understanding of this correlation in the direction of an ontology. This more concentrated scope of Merleau-Ponty’s investigations is manifest in the fact that he now focuses his attention specifically on the phenomenon of visibility. For example, in the essay ‘Eye and Mind’ we are told that the body is a thing, ‘But because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle around itself. Things are an annex or prolongation of itself; they are incrusted into its flesh, they are part of its full definition.’6 But why are ‘things’ a part of the embodied subject’s ‘full definition’ ? Well, the answer to this is already hinted at in Merleau-Ponty’s Page 3 of 15

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Merleau-Ponty claim that things are fundamentally defined as ‘accents’ or ‘styles’ of being, that is, by the nature of the different holds which the body takes upon the world. In his later work Merleau-Ponty develops this point further and suggests that things have an ‘equivalent’ in us—we carry ‘carnal formulae’ of their presence. To elucidate this, we might consider the example of seeing a red dress. MerleauPonty suggests that this red is what it is only by connecting up from its place with other reds about it, with which it forms a constellation, or with other colours it dominates or which dominate it, that it attracts or that attract it, that it repels or that repel it. In short, it is a certain node in the woof of the simultaneous and successive. It is a concretion of visibility. It is not an atom.7 We must also note that our seeing of the red dress is informed by its similarities and contrasts with other reds which we have experienced in imagination or in the past. The visibility of the object, therefore, is not that of a passively registered sense-datum. It is defined and takes on texture against what MerleauPonty terms an ‘invisible’ background constituted by its relation to other items in the phenomenal field, by its hidden aspects, and by the wealth (p.106) of our past encounters with visible things. The visible thing at any moment, in other words, is a function of features which we are not immediately aware of—namely details of our body’s present orientation to the world, aspects of its possible orientations, and, indeed, of its past orientations. On the basis of these considerations Merleau-Ponty draws one further important conclusion. We would not be able to see things in just the way human beings do if we were not at least indirectly aware that, even as we see, we too are visible. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, The visible can…fill and occupy me only because I who see it do not see it from the midst of nothingness, but from the midst of itself; I the seer am also visible. What makes the weight, the thickness, the flesh of each colour, of each sound, of each tactile texture, of the present, and of the world, is the fact that he who grasps them feels himself emerge from them by a sort of coiling up or redoubling, fundamentally homogeneous with them, he feels that he is the sensible itself coming to itself.8 These points enable me to complete my outline of Merleau-Ponty’s later philosophy. As we have seen, for him our seeing of a visible object presupposes a dimension of ‘invisibility’ constituted by relevant details of our body’s present, possible, and past orientations towards the phenomenal field—orientations of which we are not immediately aware. These orientations are themselves only made possible in so far as we know that we—as beings who see—are ourselves visible. Our pre-reflective awareness of this fact, in other words, provides a kind Page 4 of 15

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Merleau-Ponty of ontological reference point—a knowledge of what in essence we are—on the basis of which the body is able to orientate itself appropriately towards the world. In this ontological reciprocity we are the ‘sensible…coming to itself’. We are a ‘dehiscence’ or opening up of Being. For Merleau-Ponty we become aware of such reciprocity in those privileged moments when we see ourselves in the act of seeing, or touch ourselves in the act of touching. Such awareness also arises in the creation of painting. It is, therefore, to the development of MerleauPonty’s theory of painting that I now turn.

(p.107) II In The Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty’s remarks on painting are few and scattered and relate chiefly to Cézanne. Indeed, it is the subsequent essay ‘Cézanne’s Doubt’ in which Merleau-Ponty first deals with the topic of painting at any length. To understand his approach in this essay we must remember that for Merleau-Ponty our fundamental contact with the world is prereflective and involves our sensory, motor, and affective capacities, operating as a unified field. In it we make no distinction between seeing and knowing or between visual and tactile perception. Now, in the case of Cézanne, MerleauPonty suggests that the significance of his work consists in the fact that it returns us to this level of primordial perception. For example, whereas conventional painting with its rigorous use of perspective gives us a mathematicized vision of reality, Cézanne’s perspectival inconsistencies evoke the way things take on form through our body’s orientation towards the world. Indeed, his harmonizing of line and colour evokes the inseparability of the visual and tactile in pre-reflective perception. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, Cézanne ‘makes visible how the world touches us’.9 Now, whether or not this interpretation of Cézanne is a viable one is not an issue I intend to follow up here. What must be noted, however, is the fact that Merleau-Ponty here sees the possibility of painting having a phenomenological significance—of its disclosing the mode of our insertion into the world. This provides us with an important point of transition. For, whilst in ‘Cézanne’s Doubt’ Merleau-Ponty links this philosophical revelation to the work of one particular painter, he subsequently goes beyond this position and argues that painting as such is of philosophical significance. To show this, I will now consider aspects of the essay ‘Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence’. This work takes the form of an extended response to Malraux’s book The Voices of Silence. In particular, it seeks to challenge Malraux’s characterization of, on the one hand, traditional, perspectiveorientated work as ‘objective’ and, on the other hand, modernist and abstract painting as (p.108) ‘subjective’. To some degree Merleau-Ponty’s objections to this characterization follow on directly from his position in ‘Cézanne’s Doubt’. Not only is perspective simply one convention of pictorial representation amongst others, it is one which reduces the visual world to a static monocular presentation—a presentation which belies the binocular and dynamic character Page 5 of 15

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Merleau-Ponty of our immediate visual contact with things. This misplaced faith in the objectivity of perspective leads Malraux to overlook a more fundamental unity which binds together all modes of painting. To illustrate this unity, we might consider a distinction which Merleau-Ponty draws between the two ‘historicities’ of painting. The first of these he describes as the ‘historicity of death’. It consists of viewing painting as the history of an empirical order of events—for example, in terms of the artist’s own life and problems, or as the chronological succession of different schools and movements, or as the formulation and solution of problems of technique and function. However, there is a more fundamental ‘historicity of life’ which is constituted by the very impulse to create paintings. In relation to this Merleau-Ponty informs us that ‘What is peculiar to the painter is that he transforms the natural stylisation of indigenous perception into a professed, figurative created symbol…’.10 There are two aspects to this (though Merleau-Ponty does not always clearly separate them). First, as we have seen, things define themselves as styles brought about by our body’s modes of orientation towards the world. Our perceptual contact with the world is expressive, in so far as the body is constantly taking up new positions and launching itself into new projects. This means that the stylizing and expressive foundation of perception is of general validity. Each human has the same broad range of bodily capacities and will, therefore, tend to see and do much the same things (i.e. share the same styles of perception) as other human beings. However, it is also true that as individual embodied beings we each retain our own particular view of the world. Two people may both see the same red dress on a woman, but its visual impact and associations may be strikingly different for each. There is also, in other words, a personal and original dimension to style. One might (p.109) say, therefore, that when Merleau-Ponty talks of the ‘natural stylisation of indigenous perception’ he means that our expressive organization of the world into meaning is founded on an interplay between the general and particular dimensions of our embodied existence. It is this expressive dimension which both informs and is made thematic in the creation of painting. The painter transforms the world into visible things which are generally significant as new meanings or signs, but which are delineated in his or her own particular style. Painting is thus poetic. In Merleau-Ponty’s words, it serves to ‘awaken and recall our sheer power of expressing beyond things already said or seen’.11 Of course, in the act of creation the painter may only be aware of ‘making a painting’. However, when the end-product of this labour is before us, MerleauPonty claims that we see that the painter has concentrated the ‘still scattered meaning [i.e. stylizing dimension] of his perception’12 and has made it exist ‘expressly’. On these terms, then, painting is a case of ‘universal expression’. It continues and calls attention to that stylizing and ever-transforming interplay of the general and particular dimensions of embodiment which characterizes perception itself. This is the feature which gives unity to all painting irrespective Page 6 of 15

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Merleau-Ponty of the historical, cultural, or personal circumstances of its production; or of its genre as abstract, representational, or whatever. If there is a distinction to be drawn between conventional and modernist painting, then Merleau-Ponty suggests that it is because Today’s painting denies the past too deliberately to be able to really free itself from it…The ransom of its novelty is that in making what came before it seem to be an unsuccessful effort, it foreshadows a different painting tomorrow which will make it seem in turn to be another unsuccessful effort.13 Merleau-Ponty’s point, therefore, is that whilst all painting strives to express the world in a new way, modernist works foreground this so intensely as to prepare us in advance for paintings that will go beyond them. This (as I interpret Merleau-Ponty) does not indicate any qualitative distinction to be drawn between modernist and other painting. Rather, the modernist work simply calls attention more dramatically to the fact (inherent in its significance (p.110) as universal expression) that painting as an enterprise is inexhaustible. As MerleauPonty later puts it in the essay ‘Eye and Mind’, The idea of a universal painting, of a totalization of painting, of a fully and definitively achieved painting, is an idea bereft of sense.’14 This brings us conveniently to the question of the changes that take plaice in Merleau-Ponty’s theory of painting in the final part of his career. Again, I think the changes which do take place are best characterized as a switching and narrowing of emphases—changes, in fact, that are intimately linked with those in his overall philosophical position. In this respect we will remember that in Merleau-Ponty’s later work he concentrates on the phenomenon of visibility. Specifically, he argues that this phenomenon shows par excellence the common ‘flesh’ which bonds us with things. What we see is given form and texture by our body’s mode of orientation towards the world, and, in particular, by a layer of ‘invisibility’, that is, details of present, possible, and past bodily orientations which inform our vision but which we are not immediately aware of. The fact that this invisible dimension can structure perception is intimately bound up with the fact that we know ourselves as belonging to the sensible world, that is, we know that we who see and are sentient can ourselves be seen and sensed. With these points in mind we can now consider Merleau-Ponty’s claims about painting in the essay ‘Eye and Mind’. A useful starting-point is his remark that Things have an internal equivalent in me; they arouse in me a carnal formula of their presence. Why shouldn’t these [correspondences] in their turn give rise to some [external] visible shape in which anyone else would recognize those motifs which support his own inspection of the world. Thus

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Merleau-Ponty there appears a Visible’ of the second order [i.e. a painting], a carnal essence or icon of the first.15 Here we have Merleau-Ponty’s summary of the relation between visible things and painting. The latter provides a ‘carnal essence’ of the first, that is, it extends and makes manifest the stylizing which is inherent in our very perception of the visible. Where Merleau-Ponty moves on to new ground is in his elucidation of the nature of this relation. Consider, for example, his discussion of Rembrandt’s Night Watch. (p.111) We see that the hand pointing to us in The Night Watch is truly there only when we see that its shadow on the captain’s body presents it simultaneously in profile…Everyone with eyes has at some time or other witnessed this play of shadows, or something like it, and has been made by it to see a space and the things included therein. But it works in us without us; it hides itself in making the object visible…The visible in the profane [i.e. everyday] sense forgets its premises, it rests upon a total visibility which is to be re-created and which liberates the phantoms captive in it.16 It is, of course, the painter who undertakes this task of liberation. He or she makes a subject-matter visible to us by composing it from and thereby making manifest those features (such as relations of light and colour) which are inherent in our seeing of it and which therefore constitute the ‘premisses’ of vision, but which under normal circumstances we are not explicitly aware of. The painter, in other words, reaches beyond what is immediately given in vision to that generally unnoticed visual texture which sustains it. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, painting ‘gives visible existence to what profane vision believes to be invisible’.17 The question now arises as to whether this method of analysis can also encompass abstract painting. Merleau-Ponty’s answer is ‘yes’—though his justification for such a view is a little elusive. At the heart of Merleau-Ponty’s thinking in this area, there is, I think, a single crucial point. We are told that ‘Ultimately the painting relates to nothing at all among experienced things unless it is first of all “autofigurative”. It is a spectacle of something only by being a “spectacle of nothing”, by breaking the “skin of things” to show how the things become things, how the world becomes world.’18 As I interpret this characteristically cryptic passage, Merleau-Ponty is here suggesting that what a painting makes visible first and foremost are the conditions of its own visibility. It may (as was shown above) also be significant in disclosing the visual pulp and flesh of some represented subject-matter, but this is a secondary function of its own self-disclosure. Painting as such—be it representational or abstract—is, in other words, the production of a thing which breaks its own visual ‘skin’. It calls attention to the means—such as line, mass, and colour—whereby it and things generally become visible. Hence Merleau-Ponty’s almost triumphal claim that ‘In whatever civilisation it is born, from whatever beliefs, (p.112) motives, or Page 8 of 15

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Merleau-Ponty thoughts, no matter what ceremonies surround it—and even when it appears devoted to something else—from Lascaux to our time, pure or impure, figurative or not, painting celebrates no other enigma but that of visibility’.19 There is one final point we need to gather up in order to make the transition to a critical review of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of painting. First, we will remember that his early philosophical position is phenomenological. It seeks to describe the structure of the embodied subject’s primordial contact with the world. One might, therefore, say that Merleau-Ponty’s approach to painting in the ‘Indirect Language’ essay parallels this. Painting is a ‘mute’ expression of that body/world relationship which philosophy articulates in more direct terms. Now in MerleauPonty’s later work we find this phenomenological position extended in the direction of an ontology. It turns out that our perceptual engagement with the world discloses a deeper truth. Human being is the sensible world returned to itself. We are Being’s achievement of self-awareness or self-congruence. Painting is an aspect of this. We must view it as part of a teleology of Being in so far as it expresses a ‘total visibility’, that is, as it brings us to see both the thing and the ‘invisible’ flesh or visual scaffolding which enable it to be seen. These relations entail, in other words, that, through painting, we who are visible in effect see ourselves seeing the visible. The sensible, thereby, is returned to itself.

III I shall now offer a critical review of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of painting. First, whether or not we accept all the claims embodied in his early phenomenology or late ideological ontology, Merleau-Ponty is, I think, right to ascribe philosophical significance to painting. It is, for example, now widely held that perception does not simply involve the passive registering of atoms of sensation, or raw sensedata. The least perception involves a bringing to bear of concepts informed by our practical interests, our general cultural stock, and, of course, our personal beliefs and associations. Given, therefore, that our perception is informed by such creative (p.113) complexity, it is perhaps generally apt to say that we perceive ‘styles of being’ rather than objects pure and simple. Now, in our everyday engagement with the world, we are for the most part too involved to notice this creative dimension to perception. We are lulled into believing that our senses merely passively register what is ‘there’. However, in the case of painting, matters are somewhat different. In seeing a painting, we have a portion of the visible world which is manifestly self-contained and, as it were, bracketed off in a way that invites contemplative scrutiny. The painting is, however, not simply a reproduction of some other portion of visual reality. Indeed, no matter how realistic or exact it strives to be, it always at some point displays its status as an artefact. This means that we are able to see it as a visible thing that has been made to represent some generally significant subjectmatter (if only that of its own form), but which at the same time displays the individual style of a particular artist or cultural ensemble. Hence one might say that painting does indeed embody and display that creative interplay of the Page 9 of 15

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Merleau-Ponty general and the particular which is inherent in perception itself. Now, given this approach, the substance of Merleau-Ponty’s analysis in ‘Eye and Mind’ seems equally viable. Our everyday engagement with the world usually immerses us in things which are, visually speaking, simply ‘there’. We have no time or inclination to attend to that rich visual texture of light, colour, shape, and so forth, which is inherent in things and the visual background. Yet it is precisely this texture which enables the visible to be seen. Hence, in so far as the painting is a self-contained portion of the world which invites us to contemplate its sensuous particularity, both it and the texture which enables it to be seen are given full manifestation. Indeed, one can even say that here we see what it is to see. Vision becomes visible to itself. One may not want to give this fact the broader ideological significance which Merleau-Ponty assigns to it in his ontology, but it does nevertheless remain a fact. I am arguing, then, that Merleau-Ponty is not only right to assign philosophical significance to painting, he is also broadly correct about what this significance consists in. Painting illuminates the structure of our perceptual relation to the world. However, whilst Merleau-Ponty’s approach does embody crucial insights about painting, it also gives rise to a number of difficulties. I shall consider three. First, in ‘Eye and Mind’ Merleau-Ponty suggests that from the writer we want advice, whereas (p.114) the painter is entitled to look at everything without being obliged to appraise what he sees…With no other technique than what his eyes and hands discover in seeing and painting, he persists in drawing from the world, with its din of history’s glories and scandals, canvases which will hardly add to the angers or hopes of man—and no one complains.20 This view seems to defy many attested facts. Painting has often been directly produced in the context of history’s scandals and glories, and is, for example, frequently informed by religious beliefs or utopian ideals of liberation. Indeed, many critics—especially Marxists—complain if painting does not give evidence of some progressive political commitment. Now, of course, Merleau-Ponty may say in reply to this that if painting did not have its philosophically significant structure, it would not be able to fulfil the broader social functions sometimes assigned to it. However, if this is the case, we need a clarification of the general relation between structure and function in painting. We must ask, in other words, under what circumstances painting’s significance as painting shows through in a way that overrides the other meanings which it may act as a vehicle for. This leads us directly to a second and closely related difficulty. Merleau-Ponty himself admits that whilst painting has philosophical significance as a mode of Page 10 of 15

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Merleau-Ponty universal expression, it remains, nevertheless, ‘mute’. It is philosophy and literature which express our relation to the world in more explicit terms. At the same time, however, Merleau-Ponty also indicates that painting’s muteness is, in fact, a positive virtue, in so far as it is able to return us to our primordial historicity with a ‘full innocence’ that writing—with its proffering of ideas, opinions, and advice—cannot provide. We would perhaps best express MerleauPonty’s position here by saying that painting sensuously shows what philosophy tries to say. It ‘exemplifies’—in Nelson Goodman’s sense of ‘possession plus reference’—the nature of our visual relation to the world. However, whilst painting may possess such a philosophically significant structure, how does it come about that we are able to read it as showing or referring to this structure? What semantic convention is operative here? I would suggest that if we are to read painting in these terms, it is presupposed that we come to it with a (p.115) fundamentally philosophical interest. This means that painting’s alleged ‘innocence’ is tainted. It only displays our visual relation to the world in so far as we view it, as it were, through philosophical spectacles. Is there any way, then, that we can rescue painting from being merely a kind of vivid exclamation mark to be placed somewhere after philosophy? I would suggest that there is, if we first consider a third problem inherent in MerlauPonty’s theory of painting. This difficulty consists, in fact, of an omission. In this respect, it is striking that whilst all the examples of painting which MerleauPonty considers are what one might call ‘high’ art, he does not fully clarify the aesthetic criteria whereby one might distinguish between painting as such and painting that is worthy of the term ‘art’. Indeed, to my knowledge, there is only one passing reference to the term ‘aesthetic’ in the whole of Merleau-Ponty’s œuvre.21 Now, the obvious way of filling this gap would be to invoke the standard formalist approach. On these terms, we would only count a painting as art in so far as the relation between parts and whole in its phenomenal structure was of a highly unified sort. The more precise specification of what such unity involves is, of course, a matter of philosophical controversy, and I do not propose to investigate it here. Indeed, I would suggest that whilst a high degree of formal unity may be a necessary condition of our regarding a painting as a work of art, it is, nevertheless, not a sufficient one. There is a further, perhaps even more crucial, dimension to be considered. Interestingly, some of the distinctions which Merleau-Ponty draws in his earlier work can be critically developed in a way which takes us to the very heart of the missing dimension. Consider, for example, the way that his distinction between secondary and primary expression might apply to painting. The vast majority of such artefacts are routine and commonplace and used simply for purposes of communication—such as propaganda or advertising, or for entertainment—as in kitsch or purely escapist work. Such paintings, of course, may have a high degree of formal unity, but this unity serves only as a means to conveying the picture’s ‘message’ more strikingly or efficiently. Painting of this sort, in other Page 11 of 15

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Merleau-Ponty words, acts as a mere vehicle for pre-ordained, already (p.116) established meanings, and thus counts in Merleau-Ponty’s terms as ‘secondary expression’. However, in the ‘Indirect Language’ essay, Merleau-Ponty informs us that there is another kind of painting which ‘throws out of focus and regroups’22 our perception of the world. It is, of course, painting of this sort which counts as ‘primary expression’. However, what Merleau-Ponty does not clarify is how the ‘throwing out of focus’ inherent in such expression is itself made possible. His failure to clarify it is due, I think, to his overemphasis of the distinction between the two historicities of painting which we noted earlier. In this respect we will remember that painting’s universal expressive significance hinges on the way it displays the stylizing and ever-transforming interplay of what is particular and what is general in our perception of the world. This, however, must be distinguished from painting’s empirical historicity as a succession of schools, styles, technical problems and the like. Unfortunately, what Merleau-Ponty does not emphasize is the logical relation which holds between these two historicities. For surely that which constitutes the stylizing and transformative interplay of the particular and general in a painter’s work is his or her relation to the history and tradition of the medium. This painter has a distinctive style which is achieved and recognized on the basis of both traditions and values accepted or rejected, and particular technical problems solved or by-passed. We may be able to differentiate between painting’s universal significance and its empirical history at the level of philosophical analysis, but in the practice and appreciation of painting we cannot. If the work is to throw the world out of focus—to present a new way of seeing things; if it is to be a formal unity that stands out as highly accomplished; then the work must be recognized as not simply repeating what has gone before. It must be seen to be in some sense original, innovatory, or exemplary, and this means that it must be judged with reference to the empirical history of the medium—no matter how crude our knowledge of that history might be. I am arguing, then, that if painting throws the world out of focus and thus counts as ‘primary expression’ in Merleau-Ponty’s terms, it is because it is original, innovatory, and exemplary. This standing out from the background of empirical history is, I would suggest, that missing dimension of aesthetic experience which I alluded to (p.117) earlier. We call a painting ‘art’ not simply because it possesses formal unity, but because it creates new traditions, or elevates established ones to new heights of excellence. This is how it creates the world anew. Let us suppose, then, that a painting does count as primary expression in this sense. In such a case we find that what strikes us primarily about the work is its own original or exemplary sensuous particularity rather than any ‘message’ it might convey. The painting’s status as this particular painting by this particular artist will engross us, and we will only take account of its narrative content in so far as it contributes to our appreciation of the sensuous particularity of the Page 12 of 15

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Merleau-Ponty work. If, on the other hand, the painting counts as secondary expression, then we will, of course, read it primarily in terms of its narrative message, as propaganda or entertainment, or whatever. This means, in effect, that the work’s status as a painting is concealed and subverted. On the one hand, we will read the message without taking account of the network of invisibilia which makes its emergence possible and which constitute, as it were, the flesh of the painting. On the other hand, the painting will in a sense render itself contingent in that its status as this particular painting by this particular artist is entirely subordinate —indeed inessential—to the message conveyed. On these terms, then, I am arguing that painting only overrides its narrative function and is appreciated as painting in those circumstances when it has formal unity and originality or exemplariness, that is, when it is appreciated as art. With these considerations in mind, we also have an adequate response to the other difficulty inherent in Merleau-Ponty’s theory—namely the question of under what circumstances we are able to appreciate the philosophical significance which can be attributed to painting. In this respect one might say that it is only because of painting’s aesthetic significance that we are led to take any philosophical interest in it in the first place. This is not just because we wish to know what kind of a thing painting is—that is, what it is about it that enables it to give rise to such exhilarating pleasure. Rather, our aesthetic appreciation itself points us in the direction of painting’s philosophical significance. For here our appreciation is focused upon the work’s sensuous particularity, that is to say, the relation between parts and whole, and indeed all those relations which constitute the flesh of the painting as a visible thing. This (p.118) means that if we have learned to engage with the work aesthetically, we have also learned those features which serve to illustrate the mode of our visual insertion into the world. I am suggesting, in other words, that our apprehension of paintings as works of ‘vision’ in the evaluative sense of that term (i.e. as new and creative ways of presenting the world) then leads us to take a more reflective attitude wherein we see them as works which illuminate thfe nature of vision in its literal sense. This is not, of course, to say that aesthetic and philosophical awareness have the same logical grounds. Rather, it is to hold that in concrete human experience different forms of awareness and knowledge will sometimes overlap in specific respects, and be relevant to one another. Perhaps the ultimate virtue of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of painting is, therefore, that it provides material which—if critically developed—shows the relevance of aesthetic consideration to broader philosophical insight. We sense that however distinctive aesthetic criteria might be, they do not exist in a vacuum. Notes:

This paper was presented in a modified form to an International Conference on Aesthetics held near Warsaw in Aug. 1986. I extend my thanks to the

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Merleau-Ponty Department of Aesthetics at Warsaw University for providing the opportunity to deliver this piece. (1) Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith with revisions by Forrest Williams (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1974), 302. (2) Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception, trans. James Edie (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Ill., 1964), 16. (3) Phenomenology of Perception, 319. (4) Ibid. (5) Primacy of Perception, 16. (6) Included in Aesthetics, ed. Harold Osborne (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1970), 55–85. This ref., p. 59. (7) Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Ill., 1968), 132. (8) Ibid. 113–14. (9) Merleau-Ponty, ‘Cézanne’s Doubt’, in Sense and Non-Sense, trans. Hubert and Patricia Dreyfus (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Ill., 1964), 19– 25. This ref., p. 19. (10) Merleau-Ponty, ‘Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence’, in Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Ill., 1964), 39–83. This ref., p. 57. (11) Ibid. 52. (12) Ibid. 55. (13) Ibid. 79. (14) ‘Eye and Mind’, ibid. 84. (15) Ibid. 60. (16) Ibid. 62–3. (17) Ibid. 62. (18) Ibid. 77. (19) Ibid. 61. (20) Ibid. 57. Page 14 of 15

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Merleau-Ponty (21) In The Phenomenology of Perception, 287. (22) Signs, 55.

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness

Art and Embodiment: From Aesthetics to SelfConsciousness Paul Crowther

Print publication date: 2001 Print ISBN-13: 9780199244973 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.001.0001

Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness An Exploration of Hegel’s Aesthetics Paul Crowther

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.003.0008

Abstract and Keywords This chapter aims to provide both an entree into Hegel's aesthetic theory, and a critical development of it with special reference to architecture's significance as an art-form. Section I outlines the basic features of Hegel's overall philosophical position, and Section II traces the way in which this shapes his theory of art. Section III continues this tracing in more detail in relation to the specific example of architecture. Finally, Section IV offers a lengthy critical reinterpretation of Hegel's theory of art in general, and then applies it in detail to architecture. In the course of this latter discussion, some attention will be paid to Hegel's worries about the semantic restrictedness of architecture, and how this might be invoked in criticism of certain modernist and postmodernist tendencies. Keywords:   Hegel, theory of art, architecture, aesthetic theory

Introduction Hegel’s magnificent aesthetics has exercised a powerful influence on Continental philosophy, but has received much scanter attention in the Englishspeaking world. This situation needs to be rectified, if only to break out of the narrow formalist approach which has dominated much Anglo-Saxon thinking about the relation between art and aesthetic experience. In this chapter, therefore, I will hope to provide both an entree into Hegel’s aesthetic theory, and a critical development of it—with special reference to Page 1 of 24

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness architecture’s significance as an art-form. In Section I, accordingly, I will outline the basic features of Hegel’s overall philosophical position, and in Section III will trace the way in which this shapes his theory of art. Section III will continue this tracing in more detail in relation to the specific example of architecture. Finally, in Section IV, I will offer a lengthy critical reinterpretation of Hegel’s theory of art in general, and will then apply it in detail to architecture. In the course of this latter discussion, some attention will be paid to Hegel’s worries about the semantic restrictedness of architecture, and how this might be invoked in cricticism of certain modernist and postmodernist tendencies.

I The key term in Hegel’s philosophy is spirit. This does not simply mean ‘mind’ or ‘thinking subject’; rather, it involves a relation (p.120) between such a subject and something other than it. Through opposing or negating the other, or (if the Other is another thinking subject) through being recognized and acknowledged by it, the subject attains consciousness of itself. There are grades of such selfconsciousness. The more closely an individual can identify with his or her society and world, and the more lucidly this relation can be understood by the individual, then the ‘higher’ such a person’s self-consciousness becomes. On these terms, in other words, spirit is self-consciousness progressively articulated and unified through concrete interaction with that which is ostensibly Other than it. This notion of spirit must now be linked to Hegel’s account of Truth. In the (socalled) ‘lesser’ Logic we are told that ‘In common life truth means the agreement of an object with our conception of it. We thus presuppose an object to which our conception must conform. In the philosophical sense of the world, on the other hand, truth may be described in general abstract terms as the agreement of a thought-content with itself.’1 This remark focuses on two closely related tenets of Hegel’s philosophy. The first is that the truth of any judgement demands at least implicit reference to a subject who makes the judgement. This is because the objects of thought are actively shaped and determined by the process of thought itself. The second tenet is an extension of this. For Hegel holds that, in the final analysis, thought not only shapes its objects but is, indeed, constitutive of them. The reasons for this view are, of course, profoundly complex. But one might crudely indicate the trajectory of Hegel’s reasoning as follows. In experience we encounter an ‘external’ world of ostensibly self-sufficient and determinate things, and we think about these in terms of ostensibly selfsufficient and determinate concepts. However, things and concepts only have such a character in so far as they can be discriminated in opposition to, or as negations of, other things and concepts. This means (in the most general terms) that any finite item’s ostensible claim to self-sufficiency and determinacy is in fact false, or at best ‘one-sided’. This is because an item’s having such qualities is dependent upon, or determined by, its relation to other items. Nothing finite, in other words, can be absolutely self-sufficient. The world is only real and selfPage 2 of 24

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness sufficient to the degree that it can be thought through in terms of the dialectical interdependence of all (p.121) of its finite elements. This means that the only judgements with a philosophically adequate truth-content are ones which are ‘concrete’. Such judgements show how some familiar assertion of fact is actually ‘one-sided’ and incomplete and necessarily leads to its contradiction. The tracing of this relation, in turn, leads to a third term which preserves elements of truth from the original assertion and its contradictory, but which says something new. This term itself is then shown to be one-sided, and its contradictory is generated and superseded by a third term, and so on… Now, according to Hegel, if this task of dialectical or ‘speculative’ thinking is carried through on a massive scale to its logical conclusion, the world will stand revealed as a single self-sufficient system of dialectical relations. This does not simply mean that the world can only be thought of in terms of dialectical interdependence. It means that the world just is a self-sufficient system of such relations. If all the facts and contradictions of the finite world are thought through philosophically, then we would find that such a world can only be explained as the embodiment of something infinite—an Absolute Spirit. The infinity of the Absolute is not, however, spatio-temporal. Rather, it consists in the fact that it is self-determining, that is, in contrast with the finite terms which are its embodiment, it is not dependent for its existence on relations with anything other than itself. It is the organizational principle which is immanent to, and which shapes and sustains, the finite world. Put in the most general terms, the Absolute is spirit on a cosmic scale striving for complete self-consciousness. It generates nature as its Other, and from nature generates finite spirits such as we. We in turn interact with nature, and with fellow finite spirits, and it is in, and through, these interactions through the passage of history that the Absolute Spirit gradually comprehends itself. With the formulation of Hegel’s philosophy this cosmic process of thought is completed. His system is, as it were, the ‘feed out’ point where the Absolute attains self-knowledge. This takes the form of the world being revealed in its Truth as a self-sufficient system of items and relations, each necessarily related to all the others, and each of whose sole raison d’être is to be an element in this passage to Absolute Spirit’s selfcomprehension. With Hegel’s philosophy, in other words, we find a truth-content which is in absolute ‘agreement’ with itself. The contradictions of the finite world are resolved by being shown to be necessary elements in the (p.122) self-comprehension of Absolute Spirit. Hegel’s philosophy just is the Absolute contemplating and fully comprehending itself. It is Absolute Knowledge. Given this crude outline of Hegel’s general philosophical position, we must now briefly focus on one of its details, namely the point that it is through the activities of the finite human spirits which it generates from nature that the Absolute finally achieves self-consciousness. Now, whilst this striving for Absolute knowledge is manifest in all aspects of human life, it shows through most manifestly in the historical development of those spheres where humans Page 3 of 24

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness attempt to articulate what is fundamental about their relationship to the world. For Hegel these activities are (in reverse order of lucidity) art, religion, and philosophy. Within each of these enterprises various conceptions of the individual or humanity’s place in the cosmic scheme of things are manifest. These world-views are, in effect, attempts to articulate the Absolute. However, they are (until Hegel’s philosophy) inadequate, and are necessarily superseded by other modes of expression within the enterprise. With each historical transition from one dominant world-view to another, the Absolute is comprehended with that bit more lucidity. Let us now investigate this in more detail in relation to the specific example of art.

II Art has many functions in human existence, but for Hegel, its definitive trait is to answer a ‘need of spirit’ by giving expression to Beauty. But what is Beauty, and why does it answer a need of spirit? To deal with this issue we must recall that for Hegel spirit is self-consciousness achieved and articulated through interaction with the Other. Nature, of course, is an aspect of Otherness, and, in order for self-consciousness to be fully attained through it on the road to Absolute knowledge, the human spirit must both oppose nature and achieve reconciliation with it. This process of opposition and reconciliation is the province of Beauty and Art. As Hegel puts it, ‘The universal need for art…is man’s rational need to uplift the inner and outer world into his spiritual consciousness as an object in which he recognizes again his own self’.2 Indeed, ‘This (p.123) aim he achieves by altering external things whereon he impresses the seal of his inner being and in which he now finds again his own characteristics. Man does this in order, as a free subject, to strip the external world of its inflexible foreignness and to enjoy in the shape of things only an external realization of himself.’3 To some degree, any process of human labour will effect this self-recognition, but only in a crude and inexplicit way. Art, however, goes beyond this. In particular, it raises two expectations. Hegel spells these out as follows: on the one hand, the work of art, present to sense, should give lodgement to an inner-content, while on the other hand, it should so present this content as to make us realize that this content itself, as well as its outward shape, is not merely something real in the actual and immediately present world but a product of imagination and its artistic activity.4 On these terms, then, art involves the forming of sensuous natural material in a way that semantically energizes it. That is to say, it both sets forth some idea or conception, and makes us aware that this meaning has been invested in the work through the rational artifice of a creative agent. This setting forth of spiritual content from nature is Beauty. In the experience of it, we encounter Truth in a sensuous form. Spirit and nature are thus reconciled.

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness Given this overall trajectory of Hegel’s approach to art, we must now investigate more closely the relation of spirit and nature in the creation and reception of art. Consider, first, the following remarks. In the ordinary external world essentiality does not appear…but in the form of a chaos of accidents, afflicted by the immediacy [i.e. spurious claim to self-sufficiency] of the sensuous and by the capriciousness of situations, events, characters, etc. Art liberates the true content of phenomena from the pure appearance and deception of this bad, transitory world, and gives them a higher actuality, born of the spirit.5 Now, as we saw in Section I, our common-sense view of nature as a concatenation of self-sufficient and determinate items is in fact ‘one-sided’ and generates contradictions. This finite world—be it of ‘external nature’ or our own subjective experiences—can only be fully understood if articulated by dialectical thinking. Then such a world appears in its Truth, as the necessary embodiment of a (p.124) self-contained Absolute Spirit striving for self-comprehension. In the above remarks, Hegel is suggesting that in art this Truth begins to be brought into focus. There are a number of reasons for this. First, in an artwork we are made emphatically aware of the necessary interrelation of parts and whole. The artwork as a manifestly self-contained totality prefigures the Truth of Absolute Spirit. At the same time, we know that this set of relations has not just been found or given. The creator’s rational and imaginative artifice has taken some idea or content, and, by re-presenting it in a sensuous medium, has changed it for the better. He or she has deepened our understanding of it by expressing it according to rules and techniques of the medium in publicly accessible sensuous terms. Indeed, whatever particular content an artwork may have, for example as a story about such and such a character, or as a picture or sculpture of such and such a subject, the artist’s presentation of this evinces a broader world-view—content in the fullest sense. He or she does not create ex nihilo. Rather, the way the subject is treated and the choice of medium will be informed by the artist’s position within the particular framework of ideas about humanity’s place in the ultimate scheme of things which is dominant to his or her culture or epoch. For Hegel, this framework of ideas always hinges ultimately on the culture or epoch’s conception of the Divine. And, in our conceptions of what is Divine, we are, in effect, bringing the Truth of Absolute Spirit into focus. What all this amounts to is that, for Hegel, the artwork is not just one material thing amongst others. In its semantic richness it advances our self-consciousness in the direction of ultimate Truth. It is, in a sense, more real than the ordinary reality of the finite world. At this point, however, we must enter a caveat. In contrasting the essentiality of the artwork with the ‘pure appearance’ of the chaotic and contradictory finite world, Hegel is slightly misleading in his choice of terminology. For, in his parlance, ‘pure appearance’ is generally used as a Page 5 of 24

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness term of approbation in relation to art. Used in this positive way, Hegel is able to stress that what is fundamental to art is the fact that it is sensuous material semantically energized. As well as being a real material object in space or time, it also opens up a virtual space or time, that is, we see or read or hear it as an image—as referring to some imaginary event or situations. Art’s capacity to create illusion—to creatively duplicate and thence improve our understanding of the world—is, as we have seen, why (p.125) it is of such crucial spiritual significance. However, the way in which the dimension of illusionism operates is not uniform. Indeed, its diversity is the very key to the way in which Hegel understands both the different art media and the different major stylistic tendencies in art. It is also the source of most of the central problems in his aesthetic theory. I shall now address this dimension in more detail. First, for Hegel the crudest form of art is what he terms symbolic. In it the abstract Idea has its shape outside itself in the natural sensuous material from which the process of shaping starts and with which, in its appearance, this process is linked. Perceived natural objects are, on the one hand, primarily left as they are, yet at the same time the substantial Idea is imposed on them as their meaning so that they now acquire a vocabulary to express it and so are to be interpreted as if the Idea itself were in it,6 In order to understand this passage it must be borne in mind that the ‘Idea’ in question is that of the Truth of Absolute Spirit on the way to self-knowledge. In cultures which produce symbolic art, the Absolute (conceived of as the Divine) is known characteristically only in abstract terms. God is conceived of as, say, some all-powerful abstract force sustaining nature, or as a personification of powers or creatures found in nature. He is not yet understood as spirit—in the Hegelian sense of articulated and concretely unified self-consciousness. This means that art produced in such a culture is a very inadequate expression of Truth. For, if the Absolute is conceived of in terms derived from nature or natural power, the art which expresses it will simply adopt a crude mode of naturalistic illusion, using, say, animal shapes or hybrids of animal and human form; or else it will use brute natural material organized on mechanical rather than imaginative principles—as is the case with architecture. In either case the relation of sensuous form to spiritual content is an ‘external’ one. The sensuous material will not embody the Truth of spirit but will, rather, point towards it in an arbitrary and ambiguous way. Suppose, for example, a rampaging lion is used to symbolize the wrath of God. Before being a symbol of this, it is simply a representation of a rampaging lion; and rampaging lions can symbolize many other things besides wrathful Deities. Indeed, in terms of the reference to God, the Deity has many other (p.126) attributes besides that of wrath. In symbolic art, then, the relation between the symbol and the content which it symbolizes is

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness an abstract and indeterminate one. It is shot through with ambiguity. However, it does contain some element of Truth. Consider the following passage. the abstractedness of this relation brings home to consciousness even so the foreignness of the Idea to natural phenomena…So now the Idea exaggerates natural shapes and the phenomena of reality itself into indefiniteness and extravagance; it staggers round in them…distorts and stretches them unnaturally, and tries to elevate their phenomenal appearance to the Idea by the diffuseness, immensity, and splendour of the formations employed.7 Hegel’s point here is that the Truth of Absolute Spirit will strive to express itself, even though a culture has misidentified it with some abstraction from the natural world. It will lead the creators of symbolic art to grotesque exaggerations or stylization of their content, to the use of repetitive motifs, or simply to the creation of works of a colossal size. In other words, symbolic art raises consciousness by making the inadequacy of its content and vocabulary explicit in the extravagance of its distortions or monumentalism. Hegel identifies symbolic art largely with the artefacts of non-Christian Eastern cultures, and pre-Christian Western ones. However, it is also manifest in the Christian world in the form of architecture. Indeed, Hegel sees architecture as the pre-eminent symbolic art-form. His reasons for this are complex and problematic, and I shall deal with them at length in Section III. Before that, and bearing in mind that the Absolute is constantly striving to comprehend itself, let us consider the stylistic tendency where spirit and nature are brought into a temporarily adequate relation through art. It is in the classical art-form. In the culture of classical Greece, the Divine is conceived in terms of the humanoid Olympian Gods. In relation to this, Hegel remarks that ‘Of course personification and anthropomorphism have often been maligned as a degradation of the spiritual, but in so far as art’s task is to bring the spiritual before our eyes in a sensuous manner, it must get involved in this anthropomorphism, since spirit appears sensuously in a satisfying way only in its body’.8 The (p.127) Greeks’ conception of the Absolute as embodied humanoid spirit is one which is perfectly amenable to representation in a sensuous medium. Indeed, it is most amenable of all to representation in sculpture—a medium which Hegel sees as the very essence of the classical art-form. In the idealized images of classical statuary the human body is presented as a perfect embodiment of spirit, ‘exempt from all the deficiency of the purely sensuous and from the contingent finitude of the phenomenal world’.9 Indeed, ‘we must claim for sculpture that in it the inward and the spiritual come into appearance for the first time in their eternal peace and self-sufficiency’.10 Bringing these two points together, Hegel’s claim is that Greek statuary presents the Absolute in terms of idealized form occupying three dimensions. In its detailed purity and freePage 7 of 24

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness standing format, in other words, Greek sculpture offers us sensuous images which correspond to the Absolute’s status as self-contained spirit. The sensuous means of art, and its spiritual content, find an exemplary congruence. It is for this reason that Hegel regards classical art as the highest art-form—as the very Ideal of Beauty. However, there is a problem. For, whilst the Greeks’ conception of the Absolute as embodied spirit is highly amenable to sensuous expression, it is not a philosophically adequate conception. It remains ‘one-sided’ in that it ties the Absolute too closely to the finitude and particularity of the human body. This, however, highlights not only a deficiency of the Greek world-view but also (and for the purposes of this study, more significantly) the restrictedness of art itself as a vehicle for expressing the Absolute. In relation to these points Hegel informs us that This restrictedness lies in the fact that art in general takes as its subjectmatter the spirit (i.e. the universal, infinite and concrete in its nature) in a sensuously concrete form, and classical art presents the complete unification of spiritual and sensuous existence as the correspondence of the two. But in this blending of the two, spirit is not in fact represented in its true nature. For spirit is the infinite subjectivity of the Idea…11 Hegel’s worry here is that whilst spirit is embodied, its embodiment is hugely complex and cannot be tied to one specific form—however appropriate that form might be. Indeed, we are dealing with an infinite subject. This means that for spirit to be understood (p.128) in its fullest truth it must be expressed as spirituality—a notion which is central to the Christian religion and the cultures founded upon it. Here the Absolute is conceived of as a deeply personal relation to the Divine mediated through God’s earthly incarnation—Christ. However, the ‘inwardness’ of this mode of self-consciousness is not one which is deeply amenable to expression in an external sensous form. Hence, with the passing of classical art and the advent of the Christian world-view, art ceases to be the highest embodiment of our knowledge of spirit. It is superseded by religion, as, in due course, religion itself is superseded by philosophical knowledge and Hegel’s system. Now, whilst art is thence denuded in terms of its spiritual significance, it does not remain static. Rather, it engenders a new tendency which strives to express the full depth of inwardness. This is the romantic artform. For Hegel, the ‘romantic’ means more than is conventionally understood by the term. Specifically it means art wherein qualities of illusionism—the projection of virtual space and time—are expanded, whilst the material basis of the medium is diminished in terms of its physical dimensions. Consider the example of painting.

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness Whatever can find room in the human breast as feeling, idea, and purpose. Whatever it is capable of shaping into act, all this multiplex material can constitute the variegated content of painting. The whole realm of particularity from the highest ingredients of spirit right down to the most isolated natural objects finds its place here.12 Yet this richness of meaning is engendered from a relatively limited physical base. As Hegel puts it, ‘the visibility and making visible which belong to painting…free art from the complete sensuous spatiality of material things by being restricted to the dimensions of a plane surface’.13 Now, because the spiritual richness of romantic art serves to diminish the physical dimensions of the medium of representation, Hegel sees poetry as the most characteristic romantic art-form. As he puts it, Poetry is the universal art of the spirit which has now become free in itself and which is not tied down for its realization to external sensuous material; instead, it launches out exclusively in the inner-space and the inner-time of ideas and feelings. Yet, precisely at this highest stage, art now transcends itself, in that it forsakes the element of a reconciled embodiment of the (p. 129) spirit in sensous form and passes over from the poetry of imagination to the prose of thought.14 In this passage Hegel makes a key transition. The Absolute’s drive for selfcomprehension requires for its full expression a medium which is wholly abstract yet at the same time wholly concrete. The Christian religion to some degree satisfies this, but it is only with Hegelian philosophy that the Absolute attains full self-consciousnes. Thought is here left with the necessary stages of its own embodiment and becoming as its definitive object. In romantic art, this surge towards the expression of inwardness and thought is manifest in the way that the semantic richness of the romantic art media—painting, music, and poetry—serves to overwhelm their physical basis. One might say that, in the symbolic mode, art struggles both to articulate the Absolute in its content and to find an appropriate sensuous vocabulary to express it; in the classical mode art articulates the Absolute and finds an adequate means of expression; and finally, in the romantic mode, the on-going need to articulate the Absolute with ever more clarity leads to semantic overload wherein the sensuous means of art are compressed and diminished. It is this overload and shrinkage which marks the limits of art. This completes my very broad outline of Hegel’s theory of art. Before considering architecture’s place within it in more detail, several qualifications need to be made. First, whilst Hegel sees art’s spiritual significance as diminished, he does not necessarily imply that no more art will be produced. One would have thought that art, like the world, goes on—albeit as a perpetual

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness variation of the romantic mode. This, however, is a controversial issue in the field of Hegel interpretation. The second qualification concerns Hegel’s chronological perspective and its relation to his understanding of the different art media. It is true that in the most general terms he does see symbolic, classical, and romantic art as successive in chronological terms. It is also true that he sees each of these phases as dominated by one or other of the particular art media. There are many problems in the way he thus links chronology and media, but there is at least some flexibility in his position. For example, on philosophical (p.130) grounds sculpture is to be seen as the dominant medium in the classical epoch. But this does not imply that there is, say, no classical poetry, painting, or architecture. Of course there are—and Hegel offers impressive analyses of some of these. Similar considerations hold in relation to other epochs and media. Architecture, for example, is a symbolic art-form, but it has classical and romantic varieties as well. This being said, however, it must be admitted that Hegel’s treatment of architecture is probably the most problematic area of his entire aesthetics. It is to this issue I now turn.

III For Hegel, architecture is, in essence, a duality. On the one hand, it must serve an ‘external’ need—characteristically that of enclosing space in order to provide shelter; but, on the other hand, if it is to be a mode of fine art, it must also give expression to spirit—to our relation to the Absolute. Hegel remarks that Its task consists in so manipulating external inorganic nature that, as an external world comfortable to art, it becomes cognate to spirit. Its material is matter itself in its immediate externality as a mechanical heavy mass, and its forms remain the forms of inorganic nature, set in order according to…relations of symmetry.15 However, the relation between architecture and spirit is external and abstract. For architecture’s materials and methods are much more dependent on the medium’s brute physical properties and the mechanical ordering of these than are the other art media. In particular, architecture does not, without adjuncts, create illusionistic space. It can represent no other space but that of its own physical presence. This means that reference to any specific spiritual content which it makes will be arbitrary and indirect. That is to say, we will not be able to discern it with any ease. It is this external relation to spirit which makes architecture into a symbolic art-form. This indeterminacy of the medium is matched by an indeterminacy in the spiritual content which architecture strives to address. To show some of the complexities of this issue, let us address what (p.131) Hegel takes to be the three main varieties of architecture. The first of these he terms the independent or purely symbolic variety. Architecture of this sort is peculiar because it does Page 10 of 24

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness not serve some external physical need such as providing shelter, but exists rather to express a need of spirit—specifically that of relating an individual to his or her society or religion. It serves, as it were, to focus and declare sociocultural identity. An example of this is the Tower of Bel in Babylon (mentioned in Herodotus), in relation to which Hegel suggests that the symbolic content is entirely abstract. It consists in the eight storeys of the building symbolizing the seven planets with the one on the top symbolizing the nightly visit of the god. Now, in most works of independent architecture, content is striven after in a comparatively less abstract way than this through the building being embellished with forms drawn from nature. Hegel sees this as an advance. As he puts it, ‘the symbolic content of their meanings is determined in more detail and therefore permits their forms to be more clearly distinguished from one another, as, for example, in the case of lingam pillars, obelisks, etc.’.16 In this tendency architecture begins to make use of sculptural elements based on animal and human form, ‘though whether it uses them in isolation or assembles them into great buildings, it does not employ them in a sculptural way but in an architectural one’.17 This means that the sculptural elements are used on a massive or colossal scale, often in repetitive sequences, so that we simply do not view tham as sculptures. We see them, rather, as edifices, or as integral parts of an edifice. Now, this hybrid form of independent architecture is identified by Hegel with enormously diverse cultures—ranging from the Near and Middle-Eastern to the Indian and Oriental. In the architecture of all these cultures we find an extraordinary profusion of different kinds of symbols drawn from forms encountered in the natural, animal, and human world. This very profusion and diversity is, for Hegel, extremely telling. In his words, ‘the meanings taken as content here, as in symbolic art generally, are as it were vague and general ideas, elemental, variously confused and sundered abstractions of the life of nature, intermingled with thoughts of the actual life of spirit, without being ideally collected together as factors in a single consciousness’.18 Hegel’s major point here is that (p.132) whilst non-Christian cultures have conceptions of what is Divine (and thence of the Absolute), their conceptions are confused and abstract. They do not—as the Greeks do in their sculptural idealizations of the human body—grasp the Absolute as embodied and unified spirit. Lacking this insight, they search through natural form to find appropriate symbols for making what is ultimate intelligible to them, but individualized natural or human forms, or hybrids of them, can at best express only limited aspects of the Absolute, and then only in an ambiguous way. This leads symbolic architects to compensate for the inarticulateness of content by creations of fantastic complexity, frequently on a colossal scale. Architecture, indeed (as we have seen), begins to adopt sculptural elements for its own ends, and it is in this pointing towards sculpture

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness that we find the transition to the next major variety of architecture—the classical. Classical architecture, as Hegel understands it, is somewhat paradoxical. This paradox gravitates around the question of what counts as the essence of architecture. In the most literal sense, architectural productions ‘are subservient to an end and a meaning not immanent in itself. It becomes an inorganic surrounding structure, a whole built and ordered according to the laws of gravity.’19 However, the essence of architecture as a fine art is to answer a need of the spirit, that is, to advance our self-consciousness in relation to the Absolute. Now, for Hegel, the key feature of classical architecture is that (most notably in the form of the Greek temple) it satisfies the condition for being a fine art by superlatively exemplifying architecture’s more literal essence. Consider the following crucial passage. The beauty of classical architecture consists precisely in [its]… appropriateness to purpose which is freed from immediate confusion with the organic, the spiritual, and the symbolic; although it subserves a purpose, it comprises a perfect totality in itself which makes its one purpose shine clearly through all its forms, and in the music of its proportions reshapes the purely useful into beauty.20 In these complex remarks, Hegel is making three points—each somewhat complex in itself. The first is that classical architecture nominally moves away from the realm of fine art in so far as instead (p.133) of trying to answer the needs of the spirit by using abstract indeterminate symbols, it reverts to nonartistic functionalism. It is, thence, primarily a discourse of proportion and ratio rather than one of organic imagery on a colossal scale. However, Hegel’s second point is that this retreat into materials and techniques, put at the services of some function nominally external to art, of itself answers the need of the spirit, by, as it were, the back door. For (in the Greek temple at least) the function of the building is to provide a housing or frame for a statue of the god. This means that architecture’s external and indeterminate relation to spirit is here made explicit by the fact that the building and a pre-given spiritual content (the statue) are physically distinct items. On these terms classical architecture gives expression to spirit, by thematizing its own spiritual limitations qua architecture. It exemplifies both the gap between brute natural material and spiritual content which characterizes all symbolic art, and also the fact that architecture must make way for an art-form which is more spiritually concrete—namely sculpture. Now, Hegel is too astute to leave matters here, if only for the immediate problem of explaining the beauty of classical architecture other than temples. This brings us to his third and most complex point in the passage above. It is the one asserting that architecture ‘in the music of its proportions reshapes the purely useful into beauty’. This concession to a more familiar architectural aesthetic itself conflates a number of rather different questions. First, Hegel has in mind Page 12 of 24

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness an austere aesthetic of mathematical relations. In this respect, it is telling that in relation to architecture and music he later suggests that ‘the two arts rest on a harmony of relations which can be reduced to numbers and for this reason can be easily grasped in their fundamental characters’.21 However, Hegel also concedes that ‘what these relations are cannot be reduced to settlement by numerical proportions with perfect precision’.22 This concession is crucial; for we must ask why architecture and music cannot be reduced to the mere following of mathematical rules. (I shall deal with this important issue at length in Section IV.) The other approach which Hegel conflates with his ‘music of its proportions’ thesis is a kind of functionalist aesthetic. The classical building ‘comprises a totality in itself which makes its one purpose shine clearly through all its forms’. Again, however, this is surely (p.134) problematic. For, whilst a perfect congruence between sensuous form and practical function may be a sufficient condition for a building’s being an exemplary building, this does not (without detailed further argument) allow us to say—be it in Hegel’s or any other terms— that it is therefore a beautiful building. The issue of beauty’s relation to the following of rules is, of course, involved here, and, as noted earlier, I shall return to it at length in Section IV. Interestingly, it is this functionalist approach which Hegel makes central to the variety of architecture which succeeds the classical—namely the romantic. By ‘romantic’ Hegel means specifically the Romanesque, medieval Gothic, and some aspects of Moorish architecture. His major characterization of this tendency is as follows. It has and displays a definite purpose; but in its grandeur and sublime peace it is lifted above anything purely utilitarian into an infinity in itself. This elevation above the finite, and this simple solidity, is its one characteristic aspect. In its other it is precisely where particularization, diversity, and variety gain the fullest scope, but without letting the whole fall apart into mere trifles and accidental details. On the contrary, here the majesty of art brings back into simple unity everything thus divided up and partitioned.23 Hegel’s claim here is that the impact of romantic architecture is grounded on the harmony between an immense profusion of particular details and the functional form of the building. This suggests a concrete or contained infinity, that is, a finite world with an infinite and immanent logic which binds it into a unified system. The work of romantic architecture, in other words, symbolizes the Absolute as a self-contained but infinite whole. In its unified sensuous diversity it points towards this ultimate, as it were, overload of spiritual meaning, but can, qua symbolic art-form, only indicate it indeterminately: that is to say, given the appropriate orientation, we can see the romantic building as a Page 13 of 24

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness symbol of Absolute Spirit, but this meaning cannot be read out of it with unambiguous clarity. Let me now summarize Hegel’s position on architecture. For him it is a fine art to the degree that it involves the shaping of sensuous material so as to give it spiritual content. Its central limitation, however, is its lack of illusionism. It is not a thoroughly spiritualized (p.135) medium because the shaping of its material is fundamentally determined by mechanical and mathematical principles. This ‘external’ art-form has three main varieties-cum-stages: the independent (in its pure and hybrid modes), the classical, and the romantic. The chronological emergence of each of these from its immediate predecessor is determined by the Absolute’s striving for ever more lucid self-articulation. That is to say, the pure and hybrid independent architecture of eastern cultures had to be negated by the classical mode, so as to make the purely external and opposed relation of architecture to spirit explicit. This, in turn, had to be negated by the romantic mode, so as to bring about some reconciliation of this opposition. A few qualifications must now be made. First, architecture of an ‘independent’ kind clearly continues to be produced even after the advent of classicism, and, of course, even after the emergence of the romantic mode, neo-classicism continues to flourish even down to the present day. What does Hegel make of these facts? Well, he would hold that independent and neo-classical architecture do indeed continue to be produced, but they have lost their spiritual vitality. The conceptions of humankind’s relation to the Deity (and thence the Absolute) which informed the original epochs of independent architecture and classicism have now been superseded by more advanced spiritual awareness in the form of the Christian religion and Hegel’s system of philosophy. To produce works of independent or classical architecture now, therefore, will be to offer up edifices with a spiritual content that is inert or fossilized. Even if such works are produced in the name of new sets of ideas or ideologies, matters are actually little improved. For we must remember that in Hegel’s terms art in general has had its day and been superseded. It can still play some role in life, but only as a perpetual variation of the romantic mode.

IV First, a few boring points. Hegel’s treatment of the whole sphere of art is an outgrowth of his overall philosophical position. But even if one broadly accepts that position there are still many problems—most notably in the way that Hegel makes art’s dialectical development into the determinant of its chronological (p. 136) unfolding. If one does not accept Hegel’s overall philosophical position the problems are infinitely worse. It might seem that the diversity and nuances of art and the aesthetic experience are being flattened out by a blunt metaphysical instrument. At best, it might be said that in the midst of Hegel’s abstruse and implausible speculations, there is a wealth of rich concrete analysis of specific

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness artworks. (This dimension of Hegel’s thought, it should be noted, is one which I have done scant justice to in this chapter.) However, these are boring points. A much more profitable way of engaging with Hegel is to tease out and critically develop plausible general insights and lines of argument. It is this task which I will now undertake at length, beginning with his notion of spirit. The great merit of this notion is that it existentializes selfconsciousness and makes it something concrete. That is to say, instead of reconstructing human experience on the basis of some abstract and passive correlation between a thinking subject and given objects of experience, it focuses rather on the growth of human experience through its interaction with specific historical contents. Human experience becomes, through its increasing striving to overcome or assimilate or be reconciled with that which is Other than it—be this nature, other people, or social institutions in the most general sense. This general schema of ontological reciprocity is right. What is unacceptable in Hegel is the way he sees this as following a necessary course, determined by Absolute Spirit’s striving for self-consciousness. Indeed, the very notion of the world as Absolute Spirit is itself hugely problematic in contemporary philosophical terms. However, it is possible to give this notion an existential intepretation. On these terms, what is absolute or ultimate in human experience is ‘being-in-the-world’; that is to say, the way in which finite thinking, feeling, embodied sensuous beings inhere in the natural and social world. To inhere in the fullest, most positive sense is to achieve free belonging. This means to attain a mode of self-consciousness wherein—through the recognition of shared problems and characteristics with nature and our fellow humans—we recognize the worth and possibilities of our own individuality. Such self-consciousness embodies, in other words, a profound complementarity of what is particular and what is general in our ontological reciprocity with the world. More specifically, it integrates the two fundamental (and sometimes opposed) dimensions of such being, namely our sensuous existence as (p.137) individual embodied creatures, and our existence as rational, acting beings. Now, to existentialize Hegel’s notions of spirit and the Absolute leads the way to an existential reinterpretation of his theory of art. Indeed, it assigns a significance to art far in excess of that which Hegel himself allows. To show this, I will now expand and develop his two key insights about art, and will give particular attention to their relevance for architecture. The first key insight is that art’s central achievement is to bring about a reconciliation between spirit and nature. I shall start, however, with a critical point. We will recall that, for Hegel, artistic beauty consists of the shaping of natural sensuous material so that a spiritual content is explicitly set forth. This experience of beauty as a setting-forth is achieved through the artwork’s illusionistic qualities and it is these which differentiate art from merely functional artifice. There are, however, at least two problems with this. The first Page 15 of 24

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness is that whilst art may be illusionistic in some sense, not all illusionistic artefacts are necessarily beautiful. We may read some paintings, for example, purely in terms of the visual subject-matter which they represent; and may pay no attention to the fact that this subject-matter has been set forth for us by human artifice. The second point is that, as the example of architecture shows, beauty is to be found in functional artefacts that may have little or only highly ambiguous illusionistic qualities. Hegel’s own analysis of classical architecture, indeed, suggests that beauty should be linked, rather, to the notion of a ‘self-contained totality’; that is to say, one where all the parts are thoroughly permeated by the organizational principle or function of the whole. Hegel’s difficulties here arise from the fact that he wishes tò tie beauty to art’s setting forth of a content; but, as my objections show, beauty must surely be something wider than this. Hegel’s point about classical architecture points us in the right direction. At its most basic level (and there are other levels besides), the experience of beauty is a function of our discrimination of harmonious relations between the parts in a phenomenal whole and the organizational principle which governs their distribution. Relations of this sort, of course, can be enjoyed in relation to nature, and the domain of artifice—be it functional or illusionistic. More specifically, what we are looking for here is not just a fit or cohesion between parts and whole, but one which invites and facilitates perceptual exploration of it. Hegel’s analysis (p.138) of romantic architecture is instructive here. A Gothic cathedral, say, is a building with a specific function, but one whose formal organizational principle encompasses an astonishingly diverse variety of parts and elements. Hegel, unfortunately, does not see the scope of this example. The diversity involved in the beautiful object need not simply be one of particularity and difference; it could also hinge upon multiplicity. The Egyptian pyramids, for example, involve a multiplicity of uniform units, but their juxtaposition in the organizational logic of the pyramidal structure energizes the multiplicity into relations of perceptually engrossing symmetry. Now, to experience beauty in these terms is not just to inhere in the world. It is to enjoy a felt and free belonging to it. There are many reasons for this. First, if the relation between some phenomenal configuration’s parts and the organizational principle of the whole is one that stimulates perceptual exploration and discrimination of the relation, then we can describe such a relation as free. The organizational principle unifies and directs but does not suppress our awareness of the parts. Indeed, it enriches our awareness of their individual identity and collective interplay. This is a kind of image of full and positive belonging—of ‘being-in-the-world’ in its highest sense. It is the echo of our aspirations to live a life with overall direction and organization, but which harmonizes with the needs and interests of the present—with, as it were, the texture of the immediate. It also echoes the fact that in our relation to human society we need to be part of a whole, but one that respects the integrity of the individual member. One might even say that this experience of beauty is an Page 16 of 24

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness image of freedom in a rather more direct sense. For in it we exercise our cognitive capacities for an end—perceptual exploration—which is not necessarily tied to the immediate gratification of some practical or physiological need. We find in the beautiful object, in other words, a sensuous configuration which reflects the fact that whilst we are part of nature, and subject to natural needs and drives, our cognitive capacities also make us independent of this deterministic causal framework. Reason may indeed be the slave of the passions and instinct, but it also to some degree frees us from them. I am suggesting, then, that in the experience of beauty, spirit finds its own aspirations and characteristics reflected in the sensuous forms of natural material. It thus achieves consciousness of its free belonging to the world. (p.139) Now, despite its phenomenological complexity, the enjoyment of beauty —whether in nature or artefacts—is only a crude form of aesthetic experience. The more subtle and far-reaching varieties pertain primarily to the domain of art. I shall now explore some aspects of this issue by drawing on another of Hegel’s key insights. This concerns the centrality of illusionism to art. Putting it broadly, for Hegel artworks are modes of representation which qua representation refer to some specific subject-matter or range of subject-matter. Reference is achieved by virtue of the medium being organized on the basis of some culturally conventionalized semantic and syntactic code, or combination of codes. The artist’s particular mode of handling or articulating the codified medium serves (to use a crude but effective metaphor) to ‘chew over’ his or her subject-matter, so that it is presented in a new light, and in a way that manifests a conception of the Absolute. Art is thus a form of knowledge which is midway between the generality of ordinary or theoretical uses of language and the concrete sensuous particularity of real material things. In broad outline, Hegel is right—if we continue the strategy of interpreting his insights in existential terms. One might proceed as follows. First, artworks do indeed refer to a specifiable subject-matter or range of subject-matter, by virtue of their articulation of codified media. Painting and sculptural representation work on the basis of visual resemblance projected from two or three dimensions. Poetry and storytelling imaginatively invoke their subject-matter by means of characteristic linguistic devices such as metre, rhyme, metaphor, and narrative. Music operates with a tonal system of major and minor keys whose thematic and harmonic expositions are commonly regarded as structurally analogous to specific patterns of feeling, mood, and emotion. Now, this grounding in a culturally accepted and rule-governed code enables the audience to grasp what kind of subject or character the work is ‘about’. However, the artist’s particular choice of medium and particular way of handling is governed by further sets of rules. Some of these are strictly technical; others —such as particular sorts of brushstroke or colours, or metrical schemes and Page 17 of 24

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness metaphors—may be features which, in the terms of our shared cultural stock, carry quite specific symbolic connotations. (This, of course, is of especial significance for abstract art.) The following of rules also extends to questions of formal cohesion, (p.140) and the adaption of, or reaction against, idioms and models established in the tradition of the medium. What all this means is that when the subject-matter appears in the finished artwork, it has been thoroughly mediated by complex processes of socially intelligible signification—as well as by the personal and idiosyncratic stylistic traits of the artist. The subject-matter is, therefore, re-presented in a context of symbolic clarification and articulation which does not surround it in everyday life. Through this complex process, the artist is able to set forth his or her personal vision of those elements which make that subject-matter significant, but on a codified basis which can be grasped by the audience. This sharing of the artist’s vision can take many forms. The audience might, for example, find a revelation of possibilities and truths which they had not thought of in relation to that kind of subject-matter before. Or they might find that the artist’s treatment of it clarified aspects of their own existential problems. Again, they might simply marvel at the fact that the transience and complexities of some human experiences have been brought into the open, and welded into a lucid aesthetic object. Now, what makes all this into more than simply a case of shared understanding is the fact that these dimensions of truth are embodied in sensuous media. Truth is a function of our cognitive faculties forming and applying concepts, but in existential terms this is not a purely ‘mental’ operation. It is a function of all the senses functioning in co-ordination as a unified field. Knowledge is emergent from this sensuous base. Since, therefore, in the artwork truth is encountered as a function of some organized sensuous configuration, we find in the work an image or echo of what we ultimately are—embodied spirit. But there is more to this than a sense of mere belonging. Qua sensuous object, the artwork has a closeness to our immediate experience of the world which the ordinary uses of language do not. Indeed, because of the formats and the intelligible codes that the work embodies, we recognize that it is a sensuous configuration which has been created by a fellow human, and which sets forth a view of some aspect of our shared world. However, the artist is not literally present in the work. The work becomes physically discontinuous from him or her as soon as it is completed. This means that we can take the work very much on our own terms. Through its shareable vision, we recognize (p.141) aspects of our own situation in the world, or the possibilites of new ones, reflected in the Other. But since the Other is here a sensuous embodiment of truth rather than a face-to-face engagement with another person or simply a report of truth, the inhibitions arising from direct confrontation, and the alienating distance arising from merely abstract communication, are removed. We are not bullied or pressurized Page 18 of 24

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness by the artist’s physical presence into sharing the vision on exactly his or her terms, but neither are we being offered something second-hand or remote from the immediacy of direct experience. In the experience of art, we recognize ourselves in and through the Other, with a degree of freedom that is foreign to all other modes of discourse. This is the supreme significance of Hegel’s insight concerning art’s midway position between pure thought and sensuous material things. Now, in the foregoing account, I have been following up some Hegelian themes that focus on the artwork’s capacity to be ‘about’ some specifiable subjectmatter or range of subject-matter. But where does this leave architecture? The immediate answer might seem to be ‘in very much the place occupied by abstract painting and sculpture and non-tonal music’. This, however, is not strictly true. For these abstract tendencies rely substantially (for their cultural reception and survival) on being read in terms of the codes governing representational art. Abstract painting, for example, frequently uses organic imagery, or, in the way paint is applied or colours rendered and/or juxtaposed, exploits familiar symbolic associations. Such works become representational by allusion and suggestion. This, indeed, is what makes them, at times, so powerfully affecting. Similar considerations apply in relation to non-tonal music. Even if, say, we can follow the structural development of a piece of serialist music, it has emotional overtones beyond the dry logic of its formal progression. On the basis of our common cultural stock, the audience will appropriate it as an image of fragmentation and chaos, or as an image of painfully achieved reconciliation with such phenomena. Now, to some limited degree a similar approach can be taken with architecture. Hegel himself hints as much when he talks about the ‘music’ of architectural proportions. However, I would claim that the cultural stock of common symbolism or association which gives subjectmatter to ostensibly abstract art styles cannot be applied with the same felicity to architecture. One reason for this is that, as already noted, (p.142) abstract tendencies in the other art-forms remain firmly embedded in traditions of reception determined by dominant representational tendencies. Architecture, of course, has no such representational matrix. Indeed, given the centrality of function in architecture, it might seem at best churlish and, at worst, lunatic, not to make this central to its significance as an art-form. What I propose, then, is that we look to function as an analogue of subjectmatter, so as to integrate architecture into the neo-Hegelian theory of art expounded earlier. Before this can be done, however, we must take full account of Hegel’s points about the restricted referential possibilities of architecture. He holds, we will recall, that architecture has a fundamentally ‘external’ relation to spirit, because of the representational indeterminacy or ambiguity of its sensuous material and techniques of shaping, and because of the indeterminacy of its content. Let me deal with these two points in turn. First, the ambiguity of material and shaping. A great deal of modern and postmodern architecture feels Page 19 of 24

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness it has a great deal to ‘say’ about architecture, the universe, and everything. One of the most ambitious tendencies in this respect is the deconstructionist work (or plans) of architects such as Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi. Now, the problem with this, as with theory-inflated modernist and postmodernist architecture in general, is that the audience does not have any culturally established code to decipher the works. They simply look in the catch-all sense ‘modern’. Of course, buildings often embody piecemeal references to other works, but ad hoc references are not sufficient to constitute a code. Hegel is right. The more an art-form’s embodiment is tied to real physical material ordered in terms of mechanical relations, the less scope it has for being unambiguously ‘about’ something. Now if the architect provides a text whereby his or her work can be decoded, this might seem to solve the problem. But again Hegel has a viable worry about this. It consists in the fact that if an artwork is dependent on some external element such as a text in order for its content to be recognized, then this is a kind of sell-out of art’s essential sensuousness. Here, embodiment in a sensuous medium would not ‘chew over’ a subject-matter so that it is known in a new way. Rather, it would simply exist in order to illustrate something already known. Let me now address the issue of indeterminacy of content, that is to say architecture’s inability to articulate the Absolute in an adequate way. Reinterpreted in existential terms this might read as follows. (p.143) Many buildings are informed by, and meant to manifest, some more total vision of architecture, and, even, society. The rise of modernism, for example, is permeated by a tendency to link the individual building or project with some vision of a Utopian society and environment. Here the problems of indeterminacy looms large. For what the architect is operating with is not a concrete projection, but rather—and literally—a picture of the future. Art, of course, involves picturing and images, but only on the understanding that these just are pictures and images. In the architect’s case, however, the image functions as an exemplar of the real—in the sense of realizable possibility. It might genuinely have something of this character, but only if part of a more total project formulated with the participation of town-planners, economists, statisticians, sociologists, politicians, community councils, and one or two others. But (for the most part) architects are orientated fundamentally to how they imagine the future will look, or, more commonly, how they imagine it ought to look. In its very visuality, such a vision is indeterminate. The fruits of this indeterminacy are, of course, often concretely manifest nowadays in the form of concrete being demolished…(Hegel would doubtless point out to us here that that which is one-sided necessarily engenders its own negation). This problem of indeterminacy is especially pronounced in relation to the current fad for deconstruction. The discourse of deconstruction hinges on such things as the problematics of determinacy of presence, the incongruence of Page 20 of 24

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness signifier and signified, the false rigidity of oppositions such as inner and outer, etc., etc. Now, the fact that architecture here draws its text from philosophy should make us wary at the outset. The suspicion should grow when we realize that ‘indeterminacy of presence’ is here meant to be declared in a medium which involves the creation of determinate material presence, determined by absolutely determinate mechanical laws. Charitably speaking, this might appear to present a challenge; realistically speaking, it is what it seems at first sight—a contradiction. Indeed, it points towards the general untenability of différance and the deconstructive position. This position is an indeterminate abstraction— something arrived at through signifying practices being viewed outside the context of their concrete use. In theoretical terms the possibility of meaning and presence is determined by an item’s location within an inexhaustible network of relations to other items. But in our direct experience this abstract structure is (p.144) focused and fixed by our body’s hold upon the world. Presence is paramount—despite its theoretical indeterminacy. The problem is that deconstruction does not simply posit a theory about indeterminacy, it does so in terms which are themselves abstract and indeterminate through their failure to deal adequately with the dimension of embodiment. This means that any attempt to instantiate the theory in terms of concrete material artefacts will be arbitrary —the creator will simply invent his or her own ad hoc code to tie object to theory. In the case of architecture, indeed, which is so pre-eminently bound to the reality and definiteness of material presence, the concreteness of the signifier will tend to contradict the indeterminacy of the signified. Given, then, the clear restrictions upon architecture’s capacity to refer, let us now return to the question of whether its functions can serve as an analogue to subject-matter in the other art-forms. Now, Hegel himself is, in effect, driven to this position—at least in relation to classical and romantic architecture. But his reticence to make more of the analogy is understandable given his broader philosophical position. Those needs, such as the provision of shelter and enclosure, which define architecture in its most general sense are not direct needs of the spirit. They are, rather, needs of the body, and are thence external to art. However, by reinterperting Hegel in existential terms, the significance of this point is transformed. For I have suggestd that what is ultimate in experience is being-in-the-world, that is to say, consciousness of self formed through reciprocal interaction, qua embodied spirit, with nature and the human world. Given this ultimacy, the provision of enclosure and/or the emblematic setting forth of physical space—let us call these the physical articulation of site—answer a primal need. Finite spirits must create such sites for their physical existence and social intercourse, not simply in order to survive but also in order to become —to develop a fuller consciousness of what they and their fellows are, and their place in the scheme of things. This primal need for site gives the functionality of architecture a much more central role in the achievement of self-consciousness than can be assigned to other functional practices. For, even though a specific Page 21 of 24

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness building is normally addressed to a quite specific function, it is always one which calls forth and co-ordinates a host of human practices or activities in relation to that function. Think of the enormity implied in simple descriptions such as ‘A house is a place (p.145) to live in’, or That building is where people work’, or That one is where people worship’. Architecture, as the physical articulation of site, in other words, answers complex needs of spirit even when addressed to ostensibly simple functions. Indeed, there is one other quite specific need of spirit which it answers. It consists in a kind of obverse to Hegel’s whole position on architecture. We will recall that in existential terms cognition—knowledge— arises through the Other being probed and modified by all the senses acting as a unified field. Now, precisely because of the greater physicality of its presence, we might reasonably expect the work of architecture to engage sight, sound, and touch in complex networks of judgement that are more total and more immediate than our engagement with the illusionism of the other art-forms— where the physicality of the medium is less all-embracing. In engaging us primarily in terms of its real sensuous presence, the work of architecture opens up possibilities of direct perceptual exploration that more than compensate for its semantic restrictedness. It is an image of our total sensory immersion in the world. I am suggesting, then, that in architecture function acts as an analogue to subject-matter in the other art-forms, and has a complex spiritual significance of its own. On these terms, the particular way in which a building embodies its function serves to ‘chew’ that function over so that it is known in a new way. The embodiment of function (and more generally of site) provides a code whereby the work can be recognized and appraised. It may surprise us, say, that a church can be ‘done’ on the basis of this relation between its parts and the organizational principle which governs the phenomenal structure as a whole. We may find that this way of physically articulating a site using these materials creates a space in which we feel at ease. Its balance, say, of heavy, stable-looking elements with the play of light from the windows seems to achieve an adventurous equilibrium—the kind of thing we yearn for in our own existence. Again, we may vicariously identify with the architect’s achievement as such. But throughout all this, of course, the architect is not present in person. There is no pressure to identify with his or her articulation of site. The achievement of sensuous belonging, here, is free. One final general point of substance needs to be made. In Section III I noted that Hegel was rather uneasy about the role of rule-following in relation to beauty and the creation of art; and I asked (p.146) why it is that beauty cannot be achieved simply by following rules. One answer is that since beauty and art are, by definition, bound up with sensuous configurations, their embodiment is always particular. Hence, even if we hold that the beautiful object or artwork must satisfy certain rules—such as having a perceptually interesting relation between its formal organizational principle and its parts—we can only decide if Page 22 of 24

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness this rule has been applied successfully by judging each case individually: that is to say, by having direct perceptual acquaintance with it. Now, this dimension of particularity has a further complex twist to it. This is because the question of what things count as perceptually interesting is not a simple intuitive issue. It is historically and ideologically variable. Whether or not a sensuous configuration engages our attention in formal terms, and whether or not it is to be regarded as meritorious, always demands a comparative context of judgement. The key criterion operative in this context is that of originality—in the sense of either refining some familiar kind of configuration to an exemplary degree, or else in innovating and breaking with what we are accustomed to experiencing. The configuration, in other words, must be creatively different from what has gone before. There is a subjective and an objective dimension to this. The former consists in us responding to and learning from a configuration the likes of which we personally have not encountered before. The objective sense is when, say, in the case of art, our judgement is informed by a detailed comparative knowledge of the medium as a historically developing structure. Here we learn from the achievements of the particular work, through its qualities being defined and appraised in relation to a continuing tradition of creative endeavour. Now, generally in our culture we know the worth of the individual in abstract terms. Original art, however, elucidates this in the most direct and concrete terms. It exemplifies its own individuality and the significance of the individual through creatively differing from tradition; but, in so doing, it at the same time affirms the worth and universal validity of the enterprise of which it is an instance. To experience art on these terms, in other words, involves a free and harmonious reciprocity between elements of particularity and universality in experience; and since it is the relation between embodied particularity and the universality of rational projects which defines self-consciousness we can conclude that art embodies it in the most positive way. Notes:

(1) G. W. F. Hegel, Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1978), 41. (2) G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics, trans. T. M. Knox (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1975), i. 31. (3) Ibid. (4) Ibid. ii. 635. (5) Ibid. i. 8–9. (6) Ibid. 16. (7) Ibid. 76. (8) Ibid. 78. Page 23 of 24

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Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness (9) ibid. (10) Ibid. 85. (11) Ibid. 79. (12) Ibid. 87. (13) Ibid. (14) Ibid. 89. (15) Ibid. 83–4. (16) Ibid. ii. 637. (17) Ibid. 640. (18) Ibid. 637. (19) Ibid. 660. (20) Ibid. (21) Ibid. 662. (22) Ibid. 663. (23) Ibid. 685.

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The Needs of Self-Consciousness

Art and Embodiment: From Aesthetics to SelfConsciousness Paul Crowther

Print publication date: 2001 Print ISBN-13: 9780199244973 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.001.0001

The Needs of Self-Consciousness From Aesthetic Experience to Unalienated Artifice Paul Crowther

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.003.0009

Abstract and Keywords This chapter addresses the relation between self-consciousness, aesthetic experience, and artifice in general. Section I defines the needs of selfconsciousness; Section II reiterates the scope of the aesthetic domain; and Sections III and IV, respectively, consider how aesthetic experience (especially in relation to artifice) enhances and reflects the interaction of necessary factors in self-consciousness. Keywords:   self-consciousness, aesthetic experience, artifice, aesthetic domain

Introduction We now reach the key point of transition in this work. In Part One I offered three chapters which made a preliminary outline of the logical scope and structures of the aesthetic domain, and of the ontological significance of art, vis-à-vis embodied subjectivity. Particular emphasis was given to art and the aesthetic’s role in ontological reciprocity—the dynamic action of embodied subject and phenomenal world upon one another. The chapters in Part Two brought about a fusion of horizons between these ideas and a tradition in philosophy—reaching from Kant to Merleau-Ponty—which has (explicitly or implicitly) assigned philosophical significance to art. Having, then, critically interpreted tradition, the time has come to reappraise the aesthetic domain on the basis of this interpretation. The closing of this hermeneutic circle will not take the form of some grand synthesis of the ideas Page 1 of 17

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The Needs of Self-Consciousness and strategies encountered in relation to Kant, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Hegel. Rather, I will draw on them in a more piecemeal and liberal way so as to supplement and deepen the insights of Part One. However, this being said, there are several themes in particular which will preponderate. The first is my general philosophical position. This will draw primarily on ideas from Merleau-Ponty broached in the Introduction to this work, and, in more detail, in Chapter 6. In relation to the question of aesthetic experience and art I will develop a key insight that is found—albeit with very different inflections—in both Kant and Hegel. This insight consists of the recognition that aesthetic experience has a necessary connection to (p.150) the needs of self-consciousness. In Kant this view is tied to the fact that such experiences enhance cognitive competences which are the very foundation of self-consciousness. In Hegel, the aesthetic’s link to self-consciousness is based on the fact that art, in its historical transformations, reflects and, thereby, refines our conception of self. By drawing on and reworking elements of both these approaches on the basis of my general philosophical position I will establish an ecological theory of art. My immediate strategy, then, is as follows. In the remainder of this chapter I will address the relation between self-consciousness, aesthetic experience, and artifice in general. Section I will define the needs of self-consciousness; Section II will reiterate the scope of the aesthetic domain; and Sections III and IV respectively will consider how aesthetic experience (especially in relation to artifice) enhances and reflects the interaction of necessary factors in selfconsciousness. Chapter 9 will then investigate these issues in specific relation to art, and will formulate the provisional basis of an ecological definition of art. This basis will be finally secured in Chapter 10 when I consider the function of historical mediation in determining the conditions of artistic creativity and originality. I will then offer a Conclusion to the work as a whole.

I To be self-conscious is to be able to ascribe experiences to oneself. It is to be a person. But what, logically speaking, are the necessary presuppositions of this? What are the minimum conditions for being a person? The philosophical literature on this topic is, of course, vast. However, whatever else may be involved, it is possible to specify three basic capacities, and three specific ways of using them, without which there could be no self-consciousness. The first of these I shall call attention. By this I mean our capacity to be receptive to sensory stimuli. It is a basic orientation or directedness bound up with our body’s position in relation to that world of sensible items and events with which it is causally continuous. The second necessary capacity is that of comprehension. A self-conscious being is one who must be able to organize the stimuli received in perception by discriminating sameness and difference Page 2 of 17

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The Needs of Self-Consciousness amongst them. This capacity is powerfully enhanced by (p.151) the third necessary (and complex) feature, which I shall call projection. A being can only be self-conscious if it can posit situations other than those presented by the immediate perceptual field. The chief projective powers are memory and imagination; the former enables us to posit situations in which we have previously been, and the latter enables us to posit alternative possibilities of experience to those which are immediately accessible to us in perceptual terms. The projective powers, of course, are the very flesh of any sense of having a personal history. Now, whilst these capacities for attention, comprehension, and projection are basic to self-consciousness, they are presumably common—albeit in much cruder forms—to animal life in general. What secures consciousness of self, as opposed to mere animal consciousness, are three particular employments of the capacities. The first might be called reversibility. By this term I mean the fact that no subject of perception can be fully conscious of itself as a subject unless it is also aware that it functions as an object of perception for other sentient beings, that is, that it is an agent which occupies one part of a spatio-temporal continuum in which it is linked causally to other such agents, and other sensible items. This capacity to see oneself as part of the broader phenomenal field is bound up with a further necessary feature of self-consciousness which I shall call species-identity. To be conscious of self is to recognize oneself as a member of a species which inhabits and negotiates a shared phenomenal world on the same basic set of physical conditions as oneself. Within this shared existential space, personal identity is secured and defined on the basis of comparison and contrast in a context of social interchange. This involves recognizing what others are and receiving recognition from them. Any notion of meaning and value in relation to personality presupposes this social context of mutual recognition. Again, this ties in to the final basic condition of self-consciousness. All selfconscious beings have the capacity, in principle, to inaugurate action on the basis of their own choices and decisions. (And even rigid determinists have to behave as if this were the case.) This awareness of personal freedom brings with it notions of responsibility, culpability, and achievement—key factors, of course, in the processes of mutual recognition mentioned above. I am claiming then, that to be a self-conscious being the three basic cognitive capacities for attention, comprehension, and (p.152) projection must function so as to articulate reversibility, species-identity, and the fact of personal freedom. Having described these as necessary conditions of self-consciousness, I am prepared to go an important step further. They are needs of selfconsciousness as well. The reason for this is bound up with the fact that human beings are embodied. Throughout this work I have stressed the importance of ontological reciprocity, that is, the fact that the human subject is in a constant state of reciprocity with the world in which it inheres. This reciprocity is a total Page 3 of 17

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The Needs of Self-Consciousness one. In our most basic pre-reflective engagement with the world, all our sensorimotor and cognitive capacities operate inseparably as a unified field (relations which I have spelt out more fully in the Introduction to this book, and in the discussion of Merleau-Ponty in Chapter 6). This unity, however, does not simply happen. It is a process of growth involving bodily co-ordination and the acquisition of language on the basis of complex and continuing social interchange. Those necessary features of self-consciousness described above are inextricably bound up with one another and the process of growth as a whole. We become persons gradually. Now, the interesting thing is that this process does not stop. True, there may be some specific stage in a human being’s development where the necessary factors are co-ordinated to such a degree that we have no reservation in describing him or her as fully self-conscious. But human beings continue to grow beyond this, as it were, ground level. Why should this be? The answer is doubtless bound up with the phylogenetic origins of self-consciousness itself. Its evolution is a function of the organism’s need to cope effectively with stimuli and the circumstances of encounter. The necessary capacities and states of awareness consequent upon their employment enable human beings to engage with their environment and interact socially in a way which maximizes opportunities for procuring the basic means of subsistence. Hence, selfconsciousness evolves in both personal and historical terms, so as to enable individuals and social ensembles to cope with changes in their material conditions and environment. This means that the continuing development of the necessary factors in self-consciousness answers a basic biological need—that of physical survival. However, this cannot be the whole story. For humans are particularly efficient at procuring their basic means of subsistence. To put it bluntly, they have time on their hands when their basic (p.153) biological drives have been satisfied. This time is the focus of culture. Personal interests and social interchange involve a deepening of self-consciousness, through rite, ritual, discussion, and artefactmaking. Obviously, much of this activity is a consolidation of the drive to survival in so far as it facilitates social cohesion and techniques for comprehending and manipulating the environment. The growth of self-consciousness, however, outruns these originating circumstances. For, if an organism is to survive it must adapt to changing circumstances, not least of which are changes in its own physical constitution. The evolution of self-consciousness in human beings is one such change. It is a capacity which not only facilitates the realization of basic survival needs, but also redefines the scope of those needs. In a self-conscious being, survival indeed involves procuring the means of subsistence, shelter, and security, and satisfying physiological needs; but it also involves a psychological dimension of belonging and interchange which is emergent from, but not reducible to, the basic level. This dimension gravitates around the cultivation of those factors which I specified earlier as being necessary conditions of selfPage 4 of 17

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The Needs of Self-Consciousness consciousness. If we are to survive in psychological terms, their reciprocal interactions must be stimulated and enhanced by appropriate modes of behaviour and experience. (Hence the aptness of my description of them as needs of self-consciousness as well as its logical presuppositions.) In this way we find an emergent order in human existence: one which is orientated towards answering the needs of self-consciousness rather than those of physical survival alone. I use the term ‘emergent order’ advisedly, and for several reasons. First, the term ‘culture’ (which would be the obvious alternative) is rather too broad since it properly encompasses all the activity and institutions of a specific social ensemble. It is also (oddly enough) somewhat too narrow in that it has a colloquial sense which signifies a domain of activities and institutions wholly apart from the practicalities of mundane existence. However, whilst the emergent order can generate its own distinctive practices and institutions and evolve relatively autonomously, it nevertheless draws constantly on events and changes in broader social and material circumstances. Indeed (as I shall show in Section IV of this chapter), practices—such as artefact-making in general—have, over and above their functional significance, a role to play in answering the needs of self-consciousness. The question arises, then, as to what the emergent order consists (p.154) in. In the most general terms this can be answered simply. It consists of practices which draw on that aesthetic domain whose logical structure I outlined in Chapter 1. This domain involves different ways of experiencing sensible manifolds which—made, arranged, or naturally given—are found pleasurable for their own sake. This means that our enjoyment of them is grounded on their engaging the necessary factors in self-consciousness, rather than on fulfilling practical functions. Such engagement takes two major forms. The first is enhancement. By this, I mean that in the aesthetic experience the reciprocal interaction of the necessary factors in self-consciousness is stimulated to an unusual degree. The second aspect is much more complex. Following the Hegelian tradition (very loosely), I shall call it reflection. In this, the relation between the necessary factors in self-consciousness is made into a concrete and sensible object of experience, that is, rather than being articulated in experientially private or intellectual analytical terms alone, it is encountered as an object in symbolic form at the level of perception itself. This means that self-consciousness is able to articulate and comprehend itself in a way that draws on both the senses and cognitive powers functioning as a unified field. It comprehends itself, in other words, at the level which is most fundamental to us—that of our reciprocal interaction with the world as embodied subjects.

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The Needs of Self-Consciousness The importance of this vis-à-vis the survival and strengthening of selfconsciousness is as follows. Since the world is mutable and transcendent (i.e. cannot be definitively fixed in place through action or perception), selfconsciousness’s ability to see itself reflected in this realm of Otherness diminishes the immediately threatening and alien quality of Otherness. This appropriation is of a deeper ontological significance. Self-consciousness is (like the Otherness in relation to which it defines itself) transcendent. That is to say, it has to adapt and change its relation to the world, as the world itself changes. Now, in terms of the particular activities and projects we engage in, these can be brought to completion. We find rest. Not so with self-consciousness per se. Its transcendence towards the world is constant. It involves ceaseless becoming. Now, in traditions of philosophy throughout the world, it has been supposed that contemplation of universals—the ‘timeless’ core of the phenomenal world—offers some release from the bondage of becoming. This may, in some limited sense, be true. (p.155) However, it has something of bad faith about it, since no embodied subject can transcend the limitations of phenomenal experience. The only authentic contemplative experience is that which acknowledges and affirms the fact that self-consciousness is finite—a function of the relation between embodiment and the world. This means that it must affirm the ceaselessness of self-consciousness’s becoming. Now, when such consciousness contemplates its own reflection exemplified in a phenomenal configuration, it can be psychologically lifted out of the practical concerns of the immediate present. It perceives its own essence—not, however, in some elusive and dubious sphere of pure thought, but in the mutable configuration of the present moment; at the level of perception itself. This is not a release into timelessness; rather, it is a confluence of two different orders of becoming which I shall term the aeonic and the experiential respectively. The former is the scale of growth and decay which characterizes universals. It is the thousands and millions of years in which natural kinds (such as the human species itself) evolve and decay. Experiential becoming is that which is determined and marked out in relation to the sense of our own projects and human life-span. Now, in self-consciousness’s contemplation of its own reflection, our awareness of essence injects a sense of aeonic becoming into the experiential present. What makes this so significant vis-à-vis self-consciousness is that in it we have a simultaneous sense of being both finite and (as it were) trans-finite. We experience self-consciousness in terms of both its ontological components—species-identity (essence) and personal identity (the present moment of perception and the particular percipient). To reiterate, this is not some elevation to a realm of timelessness, rather it is to experience the truth of self-consciousness in the fullest sense of its becoming. Embodied subjectivity possesses itself. Let me now summarize the arguments of this section. First I specified three necessary conditions of self-consciousness—the capacities for attention, comprehension, and projection. I then claimed that for self-consciousness (as Page 6 of 17

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The Needs of Self-Consciousness opposed to mere animal consciousness) to be established these capacities had to be employed so as to make us aware of reversibility, species-identity, and freedom. Of course, both the interaction of these capacities, and their employments, are not functions which are given ready-made at birth. Rather, they have to grow and be developed in the context (p.156) of language acquisition and social interchange. They are thus needs of self-consciousness as well as its logical pre-conditions. This need-character is further testified to by the fact that self-consciousness has, phylogenetically speaking, outrun its grounding in the drive to survival. Indeed, the satisfaction of its needs now figures in what it means to survive. For humans are not content just to procure their means of subsistence, and satiate other basic physiological needs. In addition, we find an emergent order of practices which, whatever their ostensible function, seek to satisfy the needs of self-consciousness. These are orientated towards the aesthetic domain. This consists of experiences which answer the needs of self-consciousness by enhancing or reflecting the reciprocal interactions of its necessary components. Before I address in more detail the relation of aesthetic experience to this enhancement and reflection, I shall first reiterate some of the ideas concerning the aesthetic domain which were broached in the first three chapters of this book.

II All aesthetic responses arise from our perception of the relation between parts and whole in some manifold present to the senses. The most simple and widespread variety of such a response is that which arises from (in the most general sense) beauty, that is, the balance between unity and diversity in the way a particular manifold is structured. This pleasure can be logically characterized as absolutely disinterested, in so far as simply to enjoy the way a configuration appears to the senses does not presuppose any belief as to the configuration’s practical utility; or knowledge about what kind of thing it is; or even whether it is real or merely appearance. Characteristically we will know such facts about the configuration, but we do not have to know them in order to take pleasure in its appearance. Now, our enjoyment of beauty is the simplest and purest form of aesthetic experience. It marks out the logical boundary of the aesthetic domain. However, there are many other, more complex, varieties of aesthetic response. In Chapters 1 and 2, for example, I discussed (amongst others) the experiences of perfection and aletheia. The former consists of the pleasure we take in the way a particular (p.157) item exemplifies the natural kind or general class of which it is a member. The latter consists in the way a particular item enthrals us by virtue of its own immediate physical presence. Now, in both these cases our pleasure clearly presupposes definite knowledge about the nature of the object which we are perceiving. However, it is not reducible to such knowledge. It is possible to Page 7 of 17

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The Needs of Self-Consciousness take pleasure in an item’s perfection or presence for their own sake. We can characterize such pleasure as relatively disinterested, in so far as it does not presuppose any belief as to the practical utility of such qualities. It may be, of course, that an item’s perfection or presence are of potential practical significance to us, but we do not require knowledge of the fact in order to enjoy them. The boundary case of such pleasure is that case where we admire an artefact as perfect in relation to the function which defines artefacts of that kind. Sometimes our pleasure will be purely practical—based on our anticipation of how the artefact will actually perform. However, even here, such concrete anticipation is not a strictly necessary presupposition of our enjoyment. If the artefact is in, say, a museum, or located in some context which rules out it ever actually being used for the purpose originally intended, this does not negate our pleasure. We are satisfied at the artefact simply having the look or ambience of functional perfection about it. Here we enjoy such a quality for its own sake. What I am describing, then, are some of the boundary zones of the aesthetic domain. The pleasurable responses described are different in respect of their intentional objects, but have at least two key characteristics in common: first, they are immediate in the sense of being directed towards manifolds which are present to the senses; and, second, they are disinterested in the ways just described. At one extreme we have the pleasure of beautiful appearance, and, at the other, the point where it becomes difficult to separate aesthetic pleasure from that which is bound up with purely practical considerations. Now, the key point to gather from this is that aesthetic experiences are contemplative. This does not involve the contemplator huffing and puffing and inflating himself or herself into some state of psychological detachment or transport, in order to perceive aesthetic qualities. Rather, whatever pleasurable or elevated states aesthetic responses involve are founded on cognitive exploration of sensory manifolds. The question which now arises is how this range of experiences (p.158) enhances and reflects self-consciousness. What makes this so difficult to answer is not only that different kinds of aesthetic experiences engage the necessary factors in self-consciousness in different ways, but also the fact that some of them both enhance and reflect it. In order to find a path through this maze I shall adopt the following strategy. In the next section I will focus on some aesthetic experiences which primarily enhance the interaction of specific factors in self-consciousness. In the following section I will address the way in which varieties of aesthetic experience—and, in particular, those linked to artifice— reflect self-consciousness. Then, in Chapter 9, I shall go on to consider art’s complex modes of reflection.

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The Needs of Self-Consciousness III First, it will be recalled that in Section I of this chapter I identified the capacities for attention, comprehension, and projection as necessary conditions of selfconsciousness. They also count as its needs in so far as such capacities have to be brought into alignment and continuously cultivated if self-consciousness is to maximize its cognitive hold on the world. Now, of course, whilst such capacities can be separated in a philosophical analysis such as this, in practice they cannot be—they are inseparable elements in that unified field which is the basis of our body’s ontological reciprocity with the world. However, within this field of cognitive relations, differing situations will demand different patterns of response. This means that our perceptual orientation will sometimes require the emphasis of some cognitive capacities rather than others. For example, in the most, as it were, routine perception, the relation between attention and comprehension will be to the fore, so that stimuli can be defined and dealt with. The enhancing of this interaction is the fulcrum of all the different varieties of aesthetic experience. Our pleasure in the perfect specimen of a natural kind, for example, is founded on a felt harmony between our concept of the object and the sensible manifold which instantiates it. There is a sense of fit or cohesion between our capacity to attend to the thing’s sensory particularity, and our capacity to comprehend it in more general conceptual terms. The fit between the concept and the manifold which instantiates it embodies qualitative completeness—a totality of (p.159) articulation—which cognition in general aspires towards. This exemplary function stimulates both sustained cognitive exploration of the object itself, and the general interaction of our capacities to attend and comprehend. In our enjoyment of beauty (i.e. the balance of unity and diversity in a manifold), slightly different considerations come into play. The diversity of the manifold opens up different avenues of exploration within the terms of some overarching principle of perceptual unity. Sustained attention is generated through the fact that our capacity for conceptual exploration is engaged to a heightened degree. Different considerations again come into operation in relation to the sublime. Such experiences are founded on encounters with manifolds which are overwhelming vis-à-vis their size or power in relation to our bodily frame. In such cases, the overwhelming phenomena exceed our capacity for immediate attention, but are rendered amenable to it by what might be called a comprehensive principle of containment. Faced with a mountain range receding into the distance, for example, whilst we are struck by its overwhelming aspects we also pick up various perceptual cues (such as its recession towards the horizon) which enables us to comprehend the excess. We know that the range forms a limited phenomenal whole. In the sublime, therefore, the interaction of

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The Needs of Self-Consciousness attention and comprehension is stimulated and made vivid by successfully coping with the challenge of phenomenal excess. Now, the three examples of aesthetic experience just described represent possibilities of pleasure inherent in the realization of self-consciousness itself. They embody the enhanced interaction of attention and comprehension. There is another dimension to be considered as well. In Section I of this chapter I claimed that we are only fully self-conscious in so far as the basic cognitive capacities make us aware of reversibility, species-identity, and freedom. All these factors can be enhanced in aesthetic experience. For the present let me focus on the notion of freedom. Embodied subjects are both animal and rational. At the interface of animality and rationality is our capacity to exercise free will. A free agent is one who can address sensory stimuli on the basis of conscious choices made between different courses of action. But whilst freedom is fundamental to us, under what circumstances do we experience it subjectively as a felt sense of freedom? The most general answer is under adverse circumstances—such as when one (p. 160) is troubled by problems of obligation and responsibility. One can also experience it when some course of action, difficult in the choosing, issues in success. Now, of course, at the objective level any positive notion of freedom presupposes that it is exercised within a context of constraint—social, institutional, or otherwise. But this raises a tension at the level of livedexperience. For, subjectively speaking, such contexts of constraint strike one in primarily negative terms—as at best a qualification of freedom, and at worst an inhibition of it. Now, in aesthetic experiences we engage with that fabric of the sensible world in which, as embodied subjects, we inhere. However, because our cognitive exploration and the pleasure consequent upon it is not necessarily tied to basic instinctual drives, and does not presuppose reference to the means/ end nexus of practical existence, it is experienced as a release. Although we are present to the immediate perceptual field of which the object is a part—indeed, are bonded to it—this bonding is not a bondage. Rather, the contents of the present are opened up as a zone of pure explorative possibility in perceptual terms. We are active, we have an enhanced sense of life precisely because the conditions and burdens objectively placed on the exercise of freedom are here lifted. We experience freedom in an enhanced form. I am arguing, then, that aesthetic pleasure is a function of the relation between a sensible manifold, and the enhanced interaction of factors intrinsic to selfconsciousness which it brings about. In such a relation, self-consciousness’s hold on the world is strengthened in purely cognitive terms. The significance of this enhancement is both complex and fecund. For its enjoyment serves as a motive— or, better, impulse—towards the further soliciting and management of complex cognitive situations. Now, it may well be that if human beings did not have a capacity for aesthetic responses, they would still be able to develop their Page 10 of 17

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The Needs of Self-Consciousness capacities for attention and discrimination, and attain rudimentary levels of selfconsciousness. However, this development would be a very ad hoc ‘hit and miss’ affair, cumbersomely tied to the vicissitudes of practical existence. The human evolutionary story would, thereby, be very different from the one we know. It is the existence of an aesthetic impulse to perceptual exploration for its own sake which (through the distinctive pleasure which drives it) stimulates forms of life orientated around such exploration (i.e. the emergent order which I (p.161) referred to in Section I of this chapter). This order cultivates self-consciousness in a way that feeds into and enhances the general deployment of our cognitive capacities. It facilitates the pursuit of knowledge and experience for its own sake, thus massively expanding the general intellectual resources available to a culture in its struggle for survival. Given this analysis, I shall now relate it to some of the recent scepticism surrounding the very possibility and/or scope of aesthetic experience. The first approach is associated particularly with rigid forms of Marxism. It holds that whatever aesthetic pleasure is, it—like all dimensions of subjectivity—is encoded and thence determined by the specific historical conditions in which it occurs. It is shaped and structured by ideology. On this view there can be no detached ‘disinterested’ appreciation. In the final analysis, aesthetic responses can be reduced to the interests which reflect one’s ideological position within a society. There is a related sceptical viewpoint found in certain strains of poststructuralist and feminist thought. It holds that aesthetic responses are sets of preferences which reflect the interests of dominant power-groups (generally white, male, and middle-class) and whose elevation into the basis of ‘high’ culture serves to consolidate such domination. Let me deal first with the point concerning disinterestedness. I have shown how the varieties of aesthetic experience are intrinsic to self-consciousness. Their occurrence does not presuppose any belief that the experience (or the object which provokes it) has any specific practical utility. Rather, such experience is pleasurable in so far as it brings our capacities for attention and comprehension —basic needs of self-consciousness—into enhanced reciprocity. Without such experience, self-consciousness would not have evolved into the complex historical forms which it has. Disinterestedness, then, is not some opaque ahistorical psychological absolute. It signifies the logical character of aesthetic experience, and the fact that it engages a set of interests—bound up with perception itself—which are embedded in, but not reducible to, those which operate in the everyday struggle to procure the means of subsistence. The only grounds on which this could be denied are those of a particularly vulgar materialism. According to this view, the explanation just offered would be a mystification of the fact that, in the final analysis, all human action can be reduced to motives determined by animal desires or social elaborations of them —such as (p.162) the desire to dominate. The mistake of this approach, Page 11 of 17

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The Needs of Self-Consciousness however, is that it is an ideological reduction of the human condition itself. For, on this view, to be human is to be an animal which has developed reason and self-consciousness as a tool for realizing its needs. Now whilst (as I have admitted at various points) the origins of self-consciousness are bound up with the drive to survival, such consciousness is not static. It grows and develops needs and a life of its own which form an emergent order alongside our more basic animal ones. This emergent order is not a pleasing ‘extra’. To be human is not just to procure the means of subsistence in a rather clever way as compared to other animals. Our relation to the world is a total reciprocity wherein all aspects of a body and self-consciousness operate as a unified field. Within this, what were once basically animal needs and drives are modified and transformed. What count as the means of subsistence, or indeed our senses of ‘subsistence’ and ‘survival’ themselves, acquire complex psychological dimensions of meaning which cannot be articulated in terms of crude causal models. The vulgar materialist view, however, offers just such a distorting, undialectical model. It sees the relation between reason on the one hand, and animal need on the other, as though the former were a means to realizing the latter. The human condition itself is thereby understood on the model of technology—as a kind of artefact produced by animal essence. What makes this view so ironic is that Marxism itself denies it—or at least to the degree that it assigns significance to the notion of unalienated labour. Labour of this sort is activity in which and through whose products the producer recognizes himself or herself. I shall consider the nature of this recognition in the next section. The points made above also go some way towards answering poststructuralist and feminist scepticism concerning the aesthetic. For it is clear that the varieties of aesthetic experience are not just sets of subjective preferences which have been encultured so as to reflect and consolidate certain forms of domination. The question which such sceptics should be asking is what is it that enables the aesthetic to sustain all the elevated meanings which logocentric patriarchy has invested in it? The answer is, of course, the fact that it answers the most basic needs of self-consciousness. However, all this being said, the sceptical viewpoints which I have been discussing have one key and common merit. They at least demand that the theorist of the aesthetic must acknowledge and (p.163) find a role for the fact that aesthetic experiences are historically mediated, vis-à-vis their modes, objects, and interrelations. I have addressed some aspects of this mediation at great length in my Critical Aesthetics and Postmodernism, and to a lesser extent in The Kantian Sublime. However, it is worth concluding this section by a brief survey of the nature of this mediation. It has three broad aspects. First, which modes of aesthetic experience are developed is a function of the relation between individual sensibility and specific historical circumstances. Where such circumstances are adverse, the individual is correspondingly Page 12 of 17

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The Needs of Self-Consciousness impaired. It may be that a person has no inclination to develop their sensibility in a certain direction; or pursues only a narrow range of experience so as to be sure of realizing its full potential. However, the possibility should at least be there for the individual to ‘see what’s on offer’ and to choose accordingly. Similar considerations hold at a general cultural level. Communities subject to extreme privation or limited resources will be unlikely to develop aesthetic experience other than in the context of rite or functional artifice. But, of course, circumstances can change in a way that allows latent capacities to be cultivated. (The most dramatic illustration of this is the massive diversification of European sensibility in the eighteenth century.) Now, just as the development of the various cognitive capacities are historically variable, so too are the range of objects or phenomena which provoke aesthetic experiences. The experience of sublimity, for example, was for centuries linked to the elevating effects of literature. In the eighteenth century, however, it becomes an experience enjoyed and theorized primarily in the context of nature. More recently still, in the twentieth century (and most notably in the postmodern epoch) it has been substantially displaced on to urban experience and the complex worlds of techno-science. The point is, then, that the objects of aesthetic experience change. This is why Marxist and feminist critiques of the aesthetic are so misplaced. As a pleasure bound up with self-consciousness it is a permanent and liberating possibility of experience. However, under specific historical circumstances it can be focused on items whose function in a society links up with complex patterns of domination. What this calls for is not a critique of the aesthetic as a category, but rather the nature of its objects and distribution. A critical appraisal of contexts of occurrence, in other words, can enable its reappropriation in positive terms. (p.164) The final type of historical mediation which aesthetic experiences undergo hinges on the reciprocity of stability and change. I will deal with this at length in Chapter 10.

IV Having considered ways in which aesthetic experience answers the needs of selfconsciousness through enhancement, I now want to consider how it also answers these needs through reflection. It will be recalled from earlier arguments that reflection occurs when sensible material is invested with form in a way that exemplifies the interaction between necessary factors in consciousness of self. This enables us to articulate these structures in a way that draws on all our cognitive and perceptual capacities operating as a unified field —rather than on intellectual capacities alone. Such articulation also situates us at a point of confluence between aeonic becoming—that of the species as a whole—and the experiential becoming of the human life-span. We thus possess ourselves in the fullest sense.

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The Needs of Self-Consciousness The starting-point for reflection is enhancement. For it is when some item engages us aesthetically in terms of attention and comprehension that its deeper resonances are unlocked. To see why this is so, we must consider the first principle of human embodiment. This consists in the fact that, qua embodied subject, human being is a unity whose function cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts. Likewise the perceptual field itself. This is organized round the body’s present, past, and possible positionings and interests, as a system rather than as a mere aggregate of objects and events. Even individual objects of perception are subject to this principle of organization. For such an object is not some discrete atom of perception. Rather, it is a style of being: a systematic unity which is a function of the different perspectives which our perception and actions can take upon it. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, things are not simply there: they are ‘encrusted’ into our flesh as a kind of prolongation of the body. The principle of embodiment is also internal to self-consciousness. For our sense of self is not an aggregate of all the moments it has experienced. Rather, its past and future possibilities are systematically organized around the interests of the present. Our present constantly reconfigures the (p.165) past and projects the future in new ways, on the basis of its shifting orientations. All in all, then, the principle of embodiment determines the spatio-temporal structures of both the objective and subjective dimensions of experience. Now, in the various modes of aesthetic experience the principle of embodiment is both enhanced and reflected back at us in a way that manifests necessary factors in self-consciousness. The enjoyment of the balance of parts and whole in a manifold (the experience of beauty) is a telling example of this. The unity of the whole invites us to enjoy the interrelation of the parts, but it cannot be grasped simply as the sum of its parts. In exploring this cohesion we at the same time both enhance and reflect our cohesion and continuity with the world, that is, we exemplify reversibility—the fact that as embodied beings we are both ‘of’ the world, and bonded to it. Even in the case of the sublime similar considerations hold. What is immediately overwhelming vis-à-vis attention is rendered amenable to it through some perceptual cue which enables us to comprehend the phenomenon as a totality. We find a perspective which locks even the most phenomenally overwhelming item into the overall system or logic of our perceptual field. Since all aesthetic experiences focus on the relation between parts and whole in a sensible manifold, the enhancement of self-consciousness which they bring about is always capable of leading to the reflection of reversibility just described. However, aesthetic experiences arising from artefacts can reflect selfconsciousness in a further sense. By artefact here, I mean any sensible manifold which has been worked or arranged so as to make it—in the broadest sense— functionally significant. Now, one of the merits of Marxism is the significance which it assigns to unalienated labour. In the products of such artifice, the worker ‘finds’ or ‘recognizes’ himself or herself. Self-consciousness is fully Page 14 of 17

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The Needs of Self-Consciousness realized. But what do such sentiments really amount to? In Chapter 3 I showed how art might be seen as the product of unalienated labour, and I shall return to this in the next chapter. However, the notion of unalienated labour clearly has a much broader application than in relation to art alone; and it is this broader application I now wish to consider. Why, then, does the product of unalienated artifice satisfy the needs of selfconsciousness over and above its immediate functional significance? To put it in my terms, in what sense does it reflect (p.166) self-consciousness? Provisionally, one might answer, ‘intuitively’ This, however, is simply a way of saying that, psychologically speaking, such reflection is so complex as to defy being put into straightforward definitions. One reason for this is that artefacts can engage us aesthetically through enhancement, and also reflect selfconsciousness in different ways—emphasizing different aspects. (The experience of reversibility is one such aspect.) However, within this complexity, there is a mode of reflection which has a privileged tie to artifice. It is bound up with the emphasizing of that need of selfconsciousness which (in Section I of this chapter) I termed ‘projection’, that is, our capacity to posit situations other than those presented by the immediate perceptual field. The artefact is not simply present as an object of perception; rather, qua artefact, we know that it has been brought into existence as part of a system of interests and events which is other than that of natural mechanistic causality. It has, in other words, a history—in the proper sense of the term. And in its ostensible function or utility—the things which can be done with it—it declares possible routes into the future. Here, in other words, our present attention to, and comprehension of, the artefact declares that flesh of the past, and of future possibilities, which is always projected around self-consciousness’s immediate moments of awareness. Indeed, by exemplifying these in a concrete sensible manifold, it enables this basic factor in self-consciousness to be grasped in a more total way. For, on the one hand, it presents the projective relation in an enduring and objective form, thus lifting it from that zone of transient and distracting everyday preoccupations which cloud our subjective experience of it. On the other hand, the fact that it is embodied in a sensible manifold gives it a kinship with lived subjective experience that is substantially lost in a purely intellectual articulation. Now, this dimension of reflection links up with reversibility and two other dimensions besides. Consider first the sense of freedom. Our capacity to act on the basis of our own volition and exercise of choice is given powerful objective realization by the things we make. Indeed, once made, the artefact becomes ontologically independent of its creator. This is testified to by the fact that others besides ourselves can use the artefact. There is thus a twofold reflection. The artefact in its independence means that the expression of our freedom is made enduringly available for recognition (p.167) from others. And this recognition Page 15 of 17

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The Needs of Self-Consciousness involves them using the artefact. Here, in other words, the reciprocity of our sense of freedom and our species-identity is reflected. The particular importance of this lies in the way it interacts with the other dimensions of reflection. All phenomenal items have a present and past, and (usually) some sort of future; and all phenomenal items are part of an overall field of sensible items with which we are continuous. But it is artifice which reflects these most effectively as structures of self-consciousness (i.e. as projection and reversibility, respectively) because we know that the artefact has been brought forth by free human volition and is of social significance. The fact that we know these facts gives the configuration a reflective resonance which will tend to exceed that which is accessible through natural form. The artefact is more immediately cognate and familiar to us than nature. Given all these points, the following conclusion can be drawn. Aesthetic experiences all involve the enhanced interaction of attention and comprehension, and, indeed, our sense of freedom. They can also have reflective significance. Aesthetic experiences of nature, for example, are able to reflect our continuity with and inherence in the sensible world (‘reversibility’, as I have called it). However, it is in the domain of artifice where the reflective dimension is given most complete expression. Our initial engagement with it in terms of enhanced attention and comprehension leads to deeper levels of aesthetic insight wherein the artefact reflects an interaction of all the other necessary factors in self-consciousness—namely projection, reversibility, freedom, and species-identity. It is thus an image of our total reciprocity with the world in so far as all the factors cohere in an ontologically independent—as it were, freestanding—sensible particular. Our recognition of this is substantially intuitive. We respond to a structure which is not only logically complex but which draws on the totality of our being for its recognition, rather than on some simple cognitive act of ‘reading’. Indeed, this unavailability of reflection to simple deciphering or paraphrase is further compounded by what (in Section I of this chapter) I described as the ultimate significance of reflection—namely its fusion of aeonic becoming and that experiential mode which we mark out in terms of the human life-span and its projects. The essence or generality of human experience, and the particularity of its embodiment, are here reconciled. This is why aesthetic experiences have sometimes been felt to be transporting or of religious (p.168) significance. They have the capacity to lift us out of everydayness and make us feel part of a much greater whole. What I am proposing in this analysis is an essentially secular reading of such facts. Now, in discussing artifice so far I have not been talking specifically about art. Art qua artifice can function in the ways described, but it can also inflect reflection with valuable insights of its own distinctive kind. I shall consider these in the next chapter. Before that, however, some further remarks about the scope and significance of artifice in general need to be made.

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The Needs of Self-Consciousness First, the conditions under which the reflective significance of artifice emerges are historically mediated in both subjective and objective senses. If an individual is compelled to produce or use artefacts under conditions of privation or monotony, then the reflective resonance of such artefacts is hardly likely to be energized. Likewise at a more general cultural level. Privation and oppression in the social context of production and reception diminishes artifice’s reflective resonance for all but the few who enjoy favourable material circumstances. However, whilst conditions of privation and oppression occur to some degree in all cultures, we find, nevertheless, elements of an emergent order in most of them. In those social ensembles most restricted by their material conditions, this will extend little further than the production of artefacts for functional and ritual purposes alone. Even here, however, a pleasure in the well-made tool or felicitously realized ceremony for its own sake shows the beginnings of such an emergent order organized around satisfying the needs of self-consciousness. As societies grow in size and expand the scope of their activities geographically, the availability of talent, resources, and favourable conditions of subsistence enables this order to flourish accordingly. It is in the growth of such an order in Western culture that we find the origins of a practice which eventually issues in a mode of artifice whose primary function is to serve the needs of self-consciousness. This practice is, of course, art. To see in what senses it answers such needs, we must articulate art’s distinctive ways of embodying reflection. It is to this task I now turn.

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Art and the Needs of Self-Consciousness

Art and Embodiment: From Aesthetics to SelfConsciousness Paul Crowther

Print publication date: 2001 Print ISBN-13: 9780199244973 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.001.0001

Art and the Needs of Self-Consciousness Paul Crowther

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.003.0010

Abstract and Keywords This chapter offers a provisional definition of art as symbolically significant sensible manifold, and then explores the distinctive ways in which it reflects selfconsciousness. It further suggests that this reflective significance only emerges on the basis of specific sets of historical conditions. Keywords:   art, self-consciousness, sensible manifold

Introduction Let me begin by reiterating some points about the origins of art. These are to be found in artefacts which are able to address the senses in terms other than that of use-value alone. In all cultures the character of well-madeness (in terms of form and/or embellishment) elicits admiration. This can, of course, be tied to anticipations of greater functional efficacy, but it cannot be exhaustively analysed in such terms. In many cultures, functional artefacts are configured with an intricacy which far exceeds what is required for optimum performance. They draw, in particular, on our capacity to respond aesthetically to the perfect or exemplary instance, or the beautiful configuration. Given this susceptibility, we must now link it to developments within one specific mode of artifice—namely the symbolic formation. The most familiar instance of this is language itself. Now, of course, the linguistic utterance is not itself an artefact. Neither are cognate acts such as communication by gesture. However, they begin to take on a quasi-artefactual character when both the act of utterance or gesture and its symbolic content become highly formalized. This means such things as intoning or carrying out the act in a specific way, and Page 1 of 10

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Art and the Needs of Self-Consciousness conveying the facts communicated in a specific order, or in terms of a particular narrative convention, such as storytelling. The more fixed the mode of exposition and semantic content becomes, the more the formation becomes an artefact. This status is finally established when the formation is encoded in some physically enduring medium of transmission such as writing. The symbolic formation is more directly realized as an artefact in those cases where sensible material is invested with symbolic content through being articulated on the basis of some semantic convention, (p.170) such as shaping a piece of clay so that it resembles some other kind of thing in terms of shape, mass, and proportion. The convention involved can be tightly organized around resemblance, or it can be looser—drawing on a cultural stock of analogies or associations between sensible configurations and states of mind or qualities of bodily gesture (for example, in music or abstract visual art-forms). Symbolic formations, then, present a semantic content (with varying degrees of specificity). This is their function. Now, sometimes our reading of such semantic content is substantially mediated by the particular way it is embodied, that is, its specific way of being a poem or story or painting or whatever. Rather than being, as it were, consumed in the articulation of its ostensible semantic meaning, the particularity of articulation engages our attention. In such a case, the meaning of the symbolic formation is that of the artefact as a whole. Now, of course, this appreciation of more total meaning can, in principle, be a purely intellectual affair. However, there are also those significant cases where it involves an interplay of symbolic factors and specifically sensible particularity. The most obvious examples of this are symbolic formations constructed from sensible manifolds, such as painting, sculpture, and (more ambiguously) music. There are also cases where this dynamic is reversed. That is to say, a symbolic formation is made into an artefact which evokes elements of sensibility. The most familiar example of this is literature—where language is used expressively to engage the emotions and imagination. Now, in so far as a symbolic formation is sensibly embodied in either of the directions just noted, it can be an object of aesthetic appreciation. However, it is so in an enormously complex way. For a sensibly embodied symbolic formation is an image of human experience itself. Like the embodied subject’s every moment of consciousness, it involves a positing of meaning which is inseparable from sensible presence. (I shall clarify what is involved in this, as this chapter progresses.) We now have the requisite materials for understanding the origins and nature of art. As I argued earlier, even the most crude and functional forms of artifice can qua aesthetic object answer the needs of self-consciousness. Hence the origins of art can be found in such things as the exemplary utensil or ritual performance. The advent of the sensuously embodied symbolic formation, however, (p.171) plays a decisive role, because of its more intimate link to Page 2 of 10

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Art and the Needs of Self-Consciousness human experience. It admits of such refinement as to answer the needs of selfconsciousness in deeper and more complex ways than artifice per se. Indeed, this ontological significance can supplant any other ostensible function an artefact might have. Once this supplanting has become culturally widespread and established, we have, in effect, artefacts whose raison d’être just is to serve the needs of self-consciousness. It is, of course, to pick out this distinctive ontological function (and the emergent order which it consolidates) that a special term has been evolved. The term is…art. Its two components—fine and applied art—follow the distinction which I have made in this introduction between artefacts whose functions have historically converged upon serving the needs of self-consciousness (i.e. fine art) and those which achieve this incidentally through their exemplary realization of more practical functions, or their beautiful appearance (i.e. applied arts). Given these points, one arrives at the following definition: the work of art is a symbolically significant sensible or imaginatively intended manifold. This definition is as yet provisional. Before it can be established, two further points need to be clarified. The first concerns the specific ways in which art reflects self-consciousness; and the second is the way this reflection is mediated by historical relations. The second point will be addressed in the following chapter. The first one I will deal with now.

I As we saw in the previous chapter, artifice in general can reflect that capacity for projection which is a basic need for self-consciousness. Art, however, reflects this capacity in a particularly complex way. Our relation to the present is not direct in any raw sense. Rather, it is structured on the basis of both information about the past, and alternative possibilities of experience. These subtend and shape it. They are not, however, simple facts. For the data of memory and projected alternatives to the present always have reference to the interests of our present. The relation between past, present, future, and possibility is, for the embodied subject, reciprocal in the most complex way. Each element modifies and is modified by that whole (p.172) of experience of which the present is the immediate surface. This means that all our projections have the quality of interpretation. There are no raw facts vis-à-vis perception, memory, and imagination. Rather, these are given a distinctive character by virtue of the unique personal history of the subject who experiences or projects them. In a word, experience is stylized. This dimension is central to the artwork. For, in the artist’s handling of the medium, and articulation of semantic content, he or she must select and emphasize those aspects which engage their interest. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, the artist ‘carves out relief’ in things. Hence, just as the experiential present stylizes and appropriates its objects, so in art the artist’s experiential present is made into stylized object. The dimension of style around which perception and projection constellate is made accessible at an objective Page 3 of 10

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Art and the Needs of Self-Consciousness level. We can encounter the very flesh of self-consciousness, as an item for selfconsciousness. This is a total experience: for whilst one can articulate the basis of self-consciousness in abstract terms at a theoretical level, the artwork reflects this in a way that engages us in the fullest sense, namely at a level wherein sensibility and reason are inseparably bonded. Art also has a crucial role to play in relation to the reflection of reversibility. In particular, it has the capacity to reflect our relations to nature. For the embodied subject, nature is experienced as both site and resource, that is, it is the domain where our projects take place, and it furnishes the material both for them and for our physical replenishment. However, with the establishment of urban lifepatterns, the relation between these elements can become antagonistic. Our sense of the former becomes displaced by our sense of the latter. Nature is seen fundamentally as a resource for human purposes, or as a large-scale leisure amenity. Now, in the artwork, nature is transformed into raw material (such as canvas and paint, or paper and ink) and then transformed again by the artist’s working of it. However, these transformations preserve nature in at least symbolic terms. For, whereas in normal functional artifice the material fabric of the thing is, as it were, consumed in the function, in art the material declares its presence. Colour, shape, sound, mass, and weight are not just the means to the meaning generated. They are an essential dimension in its full definition. Semantic content—and, by extension, consciousness itself—appears in its true ontological guise, as something emergent (p.173) from a more fundamental ground or site. At the same time, however, this site does not appear in mystified form—as some raw ‘unspoilt’ nature, untouched by human presence. Rather, the interaction of human artifice and material in art declare the reciprocity of the relation. Nature is ‘nature’ for us by virtue of its practical and biological usevalue, but it cannot be reduced to this, no matter how extensively we appropriate it. Nature and the embodied subject inhabit one another. Now, as one might expect, this symbolic significance of the artwork’s phenomenal fabric is very much the province of those art media where the physicality of the medium is paramount—notably sculpture and architecture. However, it can also occur in more unexpected contexts. In this respect, we might recall the discussion of aletheic experience in Chapter 2. There I suggested that such things as quality of typeface, or the spacing of words on a page, can serve to disclose the literary artwork in its sensible particularity. Dissonance in modernist music can also have this function. In both these cases the emergence of meaning from the overt physicality of words on a page, or of sound, has a potentially greater impact than in the visual arts, precisely because of its unexpectedness. I shall now consider the artwork’s relation to our species-identity and sense of freedom. As we have already seen, the artwork presents sensuous material and semantic content in a stylized reciprocity: that is to say, one wherein objective Page 4 of 10

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Art and the Needs of Self-Consciousness features of experience are represented on the basis of individual interests. Now, whilst this aspect reflects the artist’s personal vision, the fact that it is articulated in terms of a publicly accessible medium gives it a more general significance. For, as we saw in Chapters 2 and 3, it enables us to identify shared needs, interests, and responses, in a way that places us in a relation of aesthetic empathy to the creator’s view of things. In such an experience, we are not simply told how a fellow being views and experiences the world. Rather (qua symbolically significant sensible manifold), the artwork reflects this at the level of perception itself. However, because the work becomes physically independent of its creator once its production is complete, we are free to appropriate his or her version on our terms. What is common in the work to both artist’s and recipient’s experience can serve as the basis for imaginative development by the latter. This can be in the direction of purely private association, or else it can refine a sense of shared identity—of interests (p.174) articulated by the artist which have relevance to our own situation. In either case we clarify our own being through intercourse with the self-comprehension of another. In this way the artwork reflects the possibility of a harmonious exchange of freedom between individuals. I shall return to the question of aesthetic empathy in the next chapter. Before that I shall consider one further link between art, species-identity, and freedom. It hinges on the fact that no artwork is created or received ex nihilo. To invest symbolic content in a sensuous manifold involves learning the vicissitudes of a specific physical medium and (in the case of works which are representational or which work by symbolic association) its relation to a semantic code. Likewise, to ‘read’ such works involves relating the particular piece to its governing code, and (by implication at least) other instances of the code. These complex interactions mean that the artwork fuses particularity and generality to an optimum degree. The individual work can only attain individuality in so far as it is an inscription within some more general practice which furnishes means and models, but reciprocally this general practice only develops and becomes a tradition through what is achieved in its particular articulations. This is true also in respect of the more global relation between the individual and the collective. To become self-conscious involves giving particular inflection to language and pre-established social structures such as the family and the state. But these in turn are gradually transformed under the weight of demands arising from individuals who deviate from the norm. The freedom of the individual and the healthy development of the collective, in other words, are defined and given character by the reciprocity of their relation. In the artwork this reciprocity is reflected at the level of perception itself, by the way the individual work is able to draw from tradition and deviate from it. Almost all our intercourse with art is energized by this relation. By this I do not simply mean that it becomes significant as an object of academical historical study. For, as I argued in Chapter 8, self-consciousness involves a dialectic of stability and change in the Page 5 of 10

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Art and the Needs of Self-Consciousness circumstances of life. In art this is to the forefront of attention. Aesthetic form is only energized if it adds in some way to our general experience of such forms. Again, I have discussed this at great length in my Critical Aesthetics and Postmodernism, and will return to it in the next chapter. (p.175) Let me now briefly summarize the contents of this section. I have argued that art facilitates self-consciousness’s needs to develop its capacities for cognition, projection, reversibility, and species-identity. It does all this in its own distinctive way by reflecting the interaction of these factors at the level of perception itself. Qua symbolically significant sensuous manifold, art shows that reciprocity of sensibility and reason, and the individual and the collective, which are fundamental to embodied subjectivity. The importance of this is not only that it facilitates the growth and enrichment of self-consciousness, but that it does this in a balanced and non-coercive way. As noted earlier, under certain personal or historical circumstances the embodied subject’s relation with the world can involve some antagonism between its elements. Art is an overcoming of this. It offers a glimpse of redemption. Of course, in order to do this art must be creative and original (on lines to be outlined in the next chapter). What I am, in effect, describing here are art’s highest possibilities. All cultures produce artefacts which exemplify the reciprocity of sensibility and reason. Often they are produced to serve highly functional or ritual ends. However, it is because of all the considerations outlined above that they are able to do this so effectively. Sometimes function will outweigh the work’s ontological significance, but, given the right historical circumstances, this significance will flourish and come into the open. It is for this reason that we need the concept ‘art’. I want to end this chapter by addressing art’s relation to one other aspect of selfconsciousness. It is the most elusive and—some would say—most contentious of all. For it concerns the notion of the end or goal of self-consciousness itself. As I have noted, self-consciousness is doubtless triggered by survival needs, but once it begins to grow it does not stop. Rather, it acquires an impetus of its own, and sustains an emergent order of practices (focusing on aesthetic experience and art) alongside (and bonded to) that which is bound up with procuring the means of subsistence. Now, if we are to see self-consciousness as having some kind of goal—other than posited in the myths of religion—it could only be on the basis of an overcoming of its essential finitude. This overcoming, however, is not some escape into timelessness; rather, it is a modal overcoming that is immanent in art’s reciprocity with the world. It is metaphysical in a good sense. I shall now delineate its structure.

(p.176) II First, I have argued in previous chapters (notably Chapter 2) that the artist takes as subject-matter some encounter with Otherness, be this perceptual or a case of looser, more imaginative and emotional responses to it. It might also, of course, involve elements of all these. At this stage the relationship between the Page 6 of 10

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Art and the Needs of Self-Consciousness artist and subject-matter is essentially contingent. He or she did not have to choose just this subject or range of subject-matter to work with, and it is still an open decision as to whether the project will be undertaken or not. Once the work is in progress, however, the situation begins to change radically. Subjectmatter cannot be completely appropriated. It has to be adapted to the demands of the medium and the artist’s continued understanding, and these elements have at the same time themselves to be adapted to the demands of the subjectmatter. Given these facts, as the work develops, it begins to take on a life of its own that cannot simply be reduced to the quantitative sum of artist plus medium plus subject-matter. We find, as a result, that the artwork embodies a threefold transcendence. Through distending the subject-matter, we become aware of both it and the artist’s own style of being. These at the same time make us aware of the work itself as a discrete entity with an integrity of its own. The three original contingently related elements of artist, medium, and subject-matter now stand in a necessary, mutually implicatory relation. If just this artist had not handled just this subject-matter in just this way, a different art-object would have resulted. However, we have just this unique object before us. Its identity entails, indeed accomplishes, experience’s highest possibility—which is to be finite and transfinite in the same moment. As finite beings, we dread death. We long for our individual way of experiencing the world to be indefinitely prolonged. Needless to say, as finite beings we generally do not think through what this actually involves. Immortality can be interpreted in two ways. The first sense (which is intelligible to most people) is that of translation, that is, we imagine that a purified version of ourselves will be reborn and recast into a more enduring form. This means, in effect, that things continue to happen to us, but everlastingly. However, our criteria of value, meaning, and significance in experience are determined by finitude. To remove ourselves from the finite realm (p.177) is to render existence into a mere continuum. Like the Wandering Jew and the Flying Dutchman, we would crave death. This is the ‘bad’ (in Hegel’s sense of that term) notion of immortality. The ‘good’ sense is even worse. For in order to be intelligible to us it must involve things happening. However, if it is to be the form of genuine immortality, it must involve things ‘happening’ non-temporally. This is a contradiction in terms. The nearest one could approximate to it would be through the notion of pure nothingness. However, to be redeemed by pure nothingness would entail never having been born. Which means, of course, that the question of redemption could not apply. And this leads us back to art. The artwork is one material item amongst others. It was brought into existence, and could, at some moment, cease to exist. There is, however, no inevitability to this latter point. All human beings die; but works of art need not. They preserve and declare ways of experiencing the world. This is not just a case of experience being translated into a more enduring form. Rather, it is, at the same time, an overcoming of contingency by finite means. Page 7 of 10

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Art and the Needs of Self-Consciousness Each brushstroke, each stone, each word, each note (together with the symbolic content which they bear) has its necessary place in the symbolic and sensuous whole of the work of art. Those moments in the creative process which are individually contingent stand in a necessary relation vis-à-vis the finished product of artistic labour. They are gathered up and redeemed. The individual artwork entails the existence of its unique creator, with his or her unique personal history. More than this, it presents that experience in a form which is directly accessible to other human beings. The artist’s audience inhabits the work. It finds there the echo of its own existential problems, and ways of elucidating—and thence dealing with—these. By engaging with the artwork, the audience is lifted—imaginatively and emotionally—out of the immediate continuum of personal existence into one informed by a more universal dimension of aeonic becoming. This is far enough from everydayness to be release, but near enough to be real. It is our secular immortality, and redemption. Now, it might be thought that these considerations apply to the meaning of any artefact or individual human experience as such. However, the particularity of the creator, and of the perceptible features of an artefact of utility, are contingent elements in relation to function. We negate them in favour of consumption. Similarly (p.178) with individual human experiences. We are generally too immersed in them to notice their origins, or what exactly is special about the experience or situation experienced. A more meditative attitude, of course, goes some way towards recuperating the sense of an experience’s uniqueness, but in so far as such attitudes are physically continuous with the flux of more mundane experience, they are inevitably lost sight of. The artwork, in contrast, preserves, heightens, and discloses its significance, precisely through its transposition of experience and situation or subject-matter experienced into a unique, enduring object. This, over and above the circumstances of commission etc., is its true raison d’être. These considerations suggest that Hegel was right to hold that Art liberates the true content of phenomena from the pure appearance and deception of this bad, transitory world, and gives them a higher actuality, born of spirit. Thus, far from being mere pure appearance, a higher reality and truer existence is to be ascribed to the phenomena of art in comparison with [those of] ordinary reality.1 Marcuse has interpreted these sentiments in the following sense. As fictitious world, as illusion…it [the artwork] contains more truth than does everyday reality. For the latter is mystified in its institutions and relationships, which make necessity into choice, and alienation, into selfrealisation.2 Page 8 of 10

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Art and the Needs of Self-Consciousness However, this is unnecessarily parsimonious. The artwork is also more ‘real’ than reality by virtue of lifting the artist’s and subject-matter’s being above the flux of experiential becoming, without disturbing the fundamental ontological reciprocity of embodied subject and world. One might say, indeed, that the artwork is autonomous being, in the sense that through it the universe or Being itself attains a point of self-congruence. Hegel’s mistake was to suppose that the Absolute (i.e. life, the universe, and everything) could only achieve consciousness of itself through ‘pure thought’—thought that takes itself as its object. But this takes too exalted a view of the human role. Through it, the realm of inanimate contingent matter is rendered into mere ‘stuff’ for human beings (p.179) to act upon and achieve self-realization. The claim of the inanimate to an ontological integrity of its own is denied. In the artwork, however, the rights of all parties are respected. We find a microcosm of the Absolute, the nodal points of the highest realization, where finite consciousness and the infinite realm of inanimate contingent matter are reconciled in self-disclosure. In this sense, the artwork and artistic creation are the modes of being whereby humankind is most at home in the cosmos. This is achieved not by flattening our self-awareness into the ineffability of pseudo-mystical experience, but by clarifying individuality and transposing it into an enduring form. On these terms, we have a good basis for claiming art as one of the highest values of all. Even the greatest moral deeds are tied to some spatio-temporally localized context of occurrence. We may, of course, marvel at accounts of such behaviour and may say that ‘the deeds of the great live forever’, but, in their living essence, these acts are lost as they pass into history. The artwork, in contrast, by dint of the temporal durability of its medium, is indifferent to historical change. Walter Benjamin once spoke approvingly of the ‘aura’ possessed by a visual artwork that remained close to the physical context of its production. The loss of this, however, produces no real debilitation of meaning, in so far as the artwork speaks with a universal voice. In the cosmic scheme of things, individual lives, joys, and sufferings are unutterably lost. For the future person they are mere past events. Only art preserves these in an immediate and positive sense. The artwork has a species and metaphysical significance rather than a specifically historical one. This being said, however, art does not realize its complex reflective functions without historical mediation. Having, therefore, clarified the ontological significance of art, I shall now, in Chapter 10, consider this significance in the light of historical mediation. Notes:

(1) G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics, trans. T. M. Knox (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1975), 9.

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Art and the Needs of Self-Consciousness (2) H. Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension, trans. Herbert Marcuse and Erica Sherover (Macmillan, London, 1978), 54.

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Defining Art

Art and Embodiment: From Aesthetics to SelfConsciousness Paul Crowther

Print publication date: 2001 Print ISBN-13: 9780199244973 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.001.0001

Defining Art Questions of Creativity and Originality Paul Crowther

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.003.0011

Abstract and Keywords The historical conditions considered in Chapter 9 are the very heart of questions as to what is distinctive about artistic creativity and originality, and thence the definition of art itself. To answer these questions, this chapter picks up some themes broached in earlier chapters, notably that of aesthetic empathy. Section I briefly reiterates art's relation to the aesthetic domain, and then proposes an account of creativity and originality in relation to artifice in general. It goes on to explain art's distinctive mode of creativity and originality qua aesthetic object. Section II formally defines the ecological theory of art, and considers its scope and the related question of artistic quality. Section III uses this theory to refute Institutional-type definitions of art. Finally, Section IV refutes recent scepticism concerning artistic creativity and originality, and concludes with an affirmation of the positive significance of judgements concerning artistic originality. Keywords:   art, self-consciousness, aesthetics, artifice, creativity, originality, aesthetic domain

Introduction In the previous chapter I considered how, through its complex reflective functions, art answers the needs of self-consciousness. I also suggested that, in order for these functions to be energized, the particular artwork needs to be historically mediated. This means that it must be produced and received on the basis of a specific set of conditions concerning both tradition and the identity of the producer or productive ensemble. These conditions are the very heart of

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Defining Art questions as to what is distinctive about artistic creativity and originality, and thence the definition of art itself. To answer these questions, I will pick up some themes broached in earlier chapters, notably that of aesthetic empathy. More specifically, the argument will proceed as follows. In Section I, I shall briefly reiterate art’s relation to the aesthetic domain, and will then propose an account of creativity and originality in relation to artifice in general. On the basis of these steps I will go on to explain art’s distinctive mode of creativity and originality qua aesthetic object. This will also enable me, in Section II, to formally define the ecological theory of art, and to consider its scope and the related question of artistic quality. In Section III, I shall use this theory to refute Institutional-type definitions of art. Finally, in Section IV, I will also refute (on similar grounds) recent scepticism concerning artistic creativity and originality, and will conclude with an affirmation of the positive significance of judgements concerning artistic originality. As a short appendix to this chapter, I offer a critique of an influential alternative approach to creativity in the arts.

(p.181) I As I have argued in previous chapters, the aesthetic domain is defined by two common factors. The first of these is immediacy. That is to say, aesthetic-type experiences are all founded on the relation between parts and whole, in a particular sensuous configuration. This means that we can only enjoy and pass judgement on them as aesthetic objects in so far as we have had direct perceptual experience of them. The other feature which defines the aesthetic domain is that all its members are, in one or more senses, logically characterizable as disinterested. For example, the most logically pure form of aesthetic experience is that of the beautiful. In such an experience we enjoy the balance of unity and diversity in a sensible configuration, that is, the relation between the configuration’s formal qualities. Enjoyment of this sort is disinterested in three senses. First, its occurrence does not logically presuppose any belief that the configuration will be of specific utility in relation to the means/ends logic of everyday practical experience. Second, it does not logically presuppose that we know in more general terms what kind of thing the configuration in fact is. And third, it is not logically presupposed that we even know whether the configuration is real or not. Now, sometimes, of course, a formal configuration will be of practical utility to us; and on most occasions we will know what kind of thing it is, and will believe it to be real. However, the decisive point is that to simply enjoy structure in the way an object is present to the senses does not logically presuppose such beliefs or knowledge. It is this absolute disinterestedness which defines beauty as the most logically ‘pure’ variety of aesthetic experience.

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Defining Art Art’s position in the aesthetic domain is logically much more complex than this. Of course, one could enjoy an artwork as an object of beauty in the terms just described, but to regard it as a purely aesthetic surface would do no justice to its status as a product of artifice. To enjoy the work aesthetically as art requires that our immediate perceptual or imaginative acquaintance with the work is mediated by the belief that it is a real product of artifice. However, whilst this entails that the various aesthetic experiences of art cannot be absolutely disinterested, they can still, nevertheless, be characterized as relatively disinterested. This is because their enjoyment does not logically presuppose any belief that the work (p.182) will be of some specific practical utility to us. It engages, rather, a more global sense of life (to be described later), which is validated in terms other than the means/ends logic of utility which is the nexus of everyday practical existence. Indeed, our aesthetic enjoyment of art qua art is disinterested in its own special way, in so far as whilst it is presupposed that we believe the artwork to be the product of artifice, it is not logically presupposed that we know the identity of the creator, nor, indeed, that we know anything about the causal circumstances of its production. Again, characteristically we will have such knowledge, but its application is not presupposed as a condition of aesthetic enjoyment. As I will describe later, this facilitates a crucial aesthetic mode of empathy between observer and creator. I am arguing, then, that our aesthetic enjoyment of art is immediate—in the sense of being directed towards formal qualities in a sensuous (or, as in the case of literature, imaginatively intended) configuration; and is also disinterested in a complex sense. The importance of this aesthetic dimension will become apparent a little further on. I shall now proceed to the next major stage of my argument. It consists of first considering the general conditions of creativity in artifice, and then seeing how these apply in the particular case of art qua complex aesthetic object. As a starting-point, it is reasonable to asssume that general issues of creativity converge on the relation between a particular artefact and the rules which govern the production and function of artefacts of that kind. More specifically, we would use the term ‘creative’ when an artefact not only fulfils its definite function successfully but does so in. an out-of-the-ordinary fashion. The key term here is originality. It applies to artefacts in two different ways. The first is when an artefact embodies new features which enable it to fulfil its function more efficiently than other such artefacts, or which extends its functional scope—but without, at the same time, radically transforming the way in which artefacts of that sort are henceforth made. It counts rather as a refinement of existing rules or traditions of production. Now, of course, refinements of this sort can sometimes be achieved simply by following existing research procedures. But sometimes they are due to chance ideas, quirks, lateral thinking, or just the inspired thinking of a gifted individual. It is on these occasions—when an Page 3 of 21

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Defining Art artefact refines the rules which (p.183) govern production, on the basis of subjective creative insights—that we can talk of originality. The other dimension of originality focuses on innovation, that is, when an artefact’s success is due to its breaking with existing rules of production for artefacts of that kind in a way that makes new sets of rules possible. Again, one can sometimes arrive at such pathbreaking artefacts simply by patiently following established research procedures to exhaustive conclusions. But often the break is due to a few inspired moments, or an idiosyncratic working out of ideas by a gifted individual. My major point, then, is this. The link between creativity and artifice in general terms is through the creation of artefacts whose originality—in the sense of refinement or innovation—cannot be reduced to the following of established rules or procedures. Originality, in other words, is refinement or innovation, which is subjectively determined, that is, the creative factor in a highly successful artefact which cannot be arrived at merely by the logical extension of existing ideas. Let us see now how this applies in the particular case of art. That art is, in fact, a special case is shown at the outset by the difficulties which accrue to assigning art a definitive function. But, irrespective of one’s position on this issue, it is undoubtedly true that, within the many different art media, styles and formal devices establish themselves historically as exemplars of the way things should be done. Traditions, and canons of excellence, are formed. The original work, therefore, is one which, in its particular configuration, goes beyond customary levels of accomplishment. This can take either of the directions noted earlier. J. S. Bach and Jane Austen, for example, might be seen as artists who take existing compositional formats and refine them to an exemplary level of accomplishment. Similar considerations might apply to Ingres. In the cases of Liszt and Manet, in contrast, we have artists who move far beyond existing formats. Some figures and works are, of course, acutely ambiguous. The late works of Michelangelo and Beethoven, for example, refine certain conventional forms to such a point of consummation as to appear innovatory. The sense in which a work is original, then, is determined by the complex interrelations of three elements: (i) the particular created formal configuration, (ii) its function within the artist’s œuvre, and (iii) the relation of the two preceding elements to the traditions of the medium. Given these points, we must now establish what is logically (p.184) distinctive about artistic creativity and originality. Let us proceed by way of a contrast. I have already argued that what is fundamental to the notion of original artifice in general is that it is subjectively determined, that is, its success is due to the embodiment of creative inspiration rather than to simply following existing rules and techniques of production. Now, it might be said that ‘only’ a Watt could have invented the steam-engine; ‘only’ a Fleming could have discovered penicillin; or ‘only’ a Derrida could have formulated différance. In saying such things, however, we would only be making rhetorical points about being the right Page 4 of 21

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Defining Art person in the right place at the right time. For every invention or discovery in the fields of science or technology, or new set of reasoning or concepts in any branch of knowledge, to count as original refinements or innovations, we do indeed need a gifted individual or ensemble placed in the right historical circumstances. But—and this is the decisive point—we do not, in logical terms, need just that unique embodied creator or creative ensemble, or just those historical circumstances, which were in fact responsible for the discovery, invention, or theoretical formulation in question. Even if those persons or circumstances had never existed, it is quite conceivable that, in due course, some other gifted creator or ensemble would have lived under conditions which would allow the very same discoveries, inventions, or theoretical formulations to be made. Original artifice, in the province of science, technology, and the general branches of knowledge, in other words, presupposes creative subjectivity, but not the existence of any specific creative subject or ensemble. In the case of art, however, matters are rather different. In this respect, it will be recalled that at the start of this section I linked art to the aesthetic domain. The most relevant concept here for present purposes is that of immediacy. To enjoy art qua art, the starting-point for appreciation or enjoyment must be direct perceptual acquaintance with a particular artwork. This is because qua aesthetic object we are concerned with the formal relation between parts and whole in the object’s entire phenomenal fabric. Hence, if we are to enjoy the work’s status as a formal configuration produced by artifice, we must focus on how the creator’s sense of form structures its phenomenal totality. This rootedness in the concrete sensuous particular has several crucial consequences. (p.185) First, original artifice in any domain other than art can be adequately comprehended by, let us call it, symbolic paraphrase. That is to say, given linguistic and/or (where appropriate) statistical data about an artefact’s construction, research background, and performance in relation to similar artefacts, we can comprehend decisively why it is original. We do not need, as a logical requirement, to have direct acquaintance with, or experience of using, the artefact itself. In the case of art, however, we are judging the originality of the way in which an artefact coheres as a sensible or imaginatively intended particular at the level of immediate perception. This means that if we have not ourselves had direct experience of it, but have only encountered paraphrases or photomechanical reproductions of it, we are not, logically speaking, in a position to evaluate it conclusively. Of course, by relying on second-hand descriptions or trusted critical appraisals, we may feel we can form some conception of what is original in the work, but what this ultimately amounts to can only be ‘cashed out’ by seeing, listening to, or reading the work ourselves. Until we have directly encountered the work in its phenomenal entirety, any appreciation of its

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Defining Art originality is, logically speaking, provisional. Artistic originality, in other words, demands direct perceptual contact as a condition of its appraisal. The second dimension of artistic originality’s rootedness in the concrete particular is perhaps more fundamental still. For, in ascribing originality to a work, we are not simply in effect saying (as in the case of artifice in general) that it is the product of a creative individual who goes beyond existing rules of production. We are saying that it is, necessarily, the product of just the unique creative artist or ensemble who did in fact produce the work. No one else could have done it. Originality in art is a function in part of the formal relation between all the elements in a sensible or imaginatively intended particular. And the choices which inform the creation of such an order—even the smallest decision—are the expression of an entire unique personal history. To change the smallest detail of that history is to change the resulting work. If Shakespeare, Cézanne, or Schoenberg had never existed, there might have been artists who achieved some similar refinements or innovations; there might even have been artists of similar titanic range; but there would have been no artist who, in a single work—let alone an entire œuvre—would have produced artefacts that (p. 186) were in all respects identical to ones created by Shakespeare, Cézanne, and Schoenberg. The counterfactual artists and the actual artists who I have mentioned would have produced different works. Even the slightest stylistic contrast between them would give different inflections to the originality of their achievements. My second point, then, is that artistic originality is distinguished from all other domains of artifice by virtue of the fact that its achievement logically presupposes the existence of just that unique individual or ensemble who is in fact responsible for its achievement. We need not just a creative individual or ensemble, but that one. There is also a third and final feature which in conjunction with the second point separates artistic originality from that of other modes of artifice. For art, as I am presenting it, is founded on the making of symbolically significant formal configurations whose originality engages and adds to our global sense of life. By ‘global sense’ here I mean our total immersion in the world as embodied subjects—that is, as beings whose rational, sensible, social, and historical existence is experienced fundamentally as an internally related and unified field. Art’s entreé into this global sense of life is grounded in its aesthetic aspect, and in particular in the possibilities of a unique aesthetic mode of empathy which arises from original works. In this respect we must first note that even though the originality of a particular work presupposes the existence of a specific creator, the enjoyment of such originality does not presuppose that we know the identity of the creator or anything of the particular conditions which governed its production. Characteristically we will have knowledge of this sort and it may, indeed, enhance our enjoyment, but it is not a condition of it. This is because a Page 6 of 21

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Defining Art work can stand out as an original way of presenting form—and thus claim our interest and attention—purely by virtue of its contrasting relation to other works which we have experienced. The fact that our enjoyment of artistic originality is in this sense disinterested gives the artwork a unique role in human experience. For it overcomes the division between the creative artist and other persons. We can identify with the specific artist’s originality of vision, but without having to assimilate the minutiae of his or her life beyond the artwork. In art, the particular creator and the audience meet on common ground in an aesthetic mode of empathy which engages rational, sensible, social, and historical factors in an (p.187) inseparable unity. Of course, other persons can tell us what interests them, what they value; and how they would imprint their presence on the fabric of things. But the sensuous particularity of art shows this with a directness which eludes the expressions of ordinary descriptive language. When aesthetic form is energized by originality of articulation, it enables us to see something of the other from where he or she sees us—but on our own terms as well. Indeed, through the achievement of original art the other is able to define and comprehend his or her own uniqueness, at a level—the sensuous and imaginative—which is directly accessible to fellow human beings. Original art, therefore, enables us to achieve a distinctive aesthetic mode of empathy with the other, by virtue of the fact that its enjoyment is disinterested.

II Given the foregoing analysis, we are now in a position to formally define the ecological theory of art. I shall then consider some complex questions as to the scope of art, and artistic quality. First, the definition. The work of art is an original symbolically significant sensible manifold, whose meaning can only be gathered through direct acquaintance, and whose originality is internally related to the existence of its specific creator or creative ensemble. What makes this an ecological theory of art is the fact that manifolds of this sort enhance and reflect the interaction of factors necessary to self-consciousness at the level of perception itself. They optimize the harmonious reciprocity of self and Otherness by drawing on our global sense of life. Aesthetic empathy is of particular significance in this respect, since it is unique to the experience of art, and focuses on the most crucial aspect of Otherness—namely our relation to other people. Given this definition, it is clear that not all symbolically significant sensible manifolds count as art, even though they may have an artistic format. Such pseudo-art comes in two main categories. The first is the didactic. This comprises works which are so constituted as to present a mere affirmation or rejection of some political or social standpoint. Rather than embody a disclosure of the subject-matter through the style of the artist, they seek, as it were, to Page 7 of 21

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Defining Art appropriate both in the service of some abstract didactic (p.188) end. We find that the artist’s personal style is not so much a qualitative part of the meaning of the work as a mere means to making the statement of an idea more effective. On these terms the relation of subject-matter to both medium and artist is an external one, in that the gist of the ‘message’ could be conveyed in the form of a mere command or description whose authorship would be a matter of indifference to us. Indeed, the relationship of the work to its audience is not one of reciprocity but of one-sidedness. The ‘message’ is given, and we must obey its dictates. The second major category of pseudo-art is that of the functional By this term I understand those symbolic formations whose fundamental significance is of a radically practical kind—for example, pornographic works which exist to provide or satiate sexual arousal. The most naked form of functional work, however, is in advertising, where art media (and even authentic artworks) are exploited for informative or economically manipulative purposes. Perhaps the most fundamental feature of such ‘works’ is that they attempt to work by illusion—by presenting some situation involving a product or message as though it were a real situation. The artwork, in contrst, whilst sometimes having the status of a materially embodied image or illusion, does not seek to conceal this status. We are, rather, aware of the creator’s style and the meaning of the subject-matter, precisely because we take the work to be a made reality. (Even artworks that embody deliberate trompe-l’œil usually have other reference points that make the trickery clear—if they did not, we would entirely miss the point.) Advertisements, in contrast, disappear into the illusion that they instantiate. To think of them as having authorship at all involves a considerable effort of will. Indeed, the more such a work invited us to consider its authorship, the less successful it would actually be in fulfilling its raison d’être as an advertisement. The other most important kind of functional ‘art’ is that which is geared primarily towards entertainment. The best examples of this, of course, are the realm of the pop song, and popular fiction in film, television, and radio. Again we are invited into a world of pure illusion, albeit of two distinct types. On the one hand we have that mode of fiction which seeks to absorb us into a reality which is physically distinct from our own but culturally and existentially identical. The best example of this are ‘soap operas’ of the Coronation Street or Archers kind. At the other extreme, we find (p.189) soap operas which seek to involve us in a world whose emotions are commonplace with our own, but whose material trappings are beyond our aspirations. Particularly fecund in this respect are the doings of the upper strata (or lower strata—depending on one’s moral viewpoint) of the American bourgeoisie as instantiated in such epics as Dallas or Dynasty or Flamingo Road. Whichever variety of soap opera one chooses, the significance is the same—the work is successful to the degree that it deceitfully absorbs the viewer into its presentation of reality.

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Defining Art The categories of pseudo-art which I have been considering should not, of course, be taken as absolutely invalidating. Works of this kind can transcend their format to produce authentic artistic revelation. The pop music of Roxy Music, The Police, and the Stranglers, for example, frequently transcends the superficial heroism of the pop world, to reveal something of the violence and alienation of modern urban experience. Another symptom of this transcendence is the increasing awareness of the cinema public of directorial authorship in film. Indeed, in certain circumstances we can even allow for, and welcome, a didactic element in artworks. Sartre’s Nausea, for example, presents philosophical themes—but by amplifying them out of the life of a fictional character. Similarly, in Mayakovsky posters, or Turner’s paintings illustrating Goethe’s colour theories, we find didactic themes, but grounded in the artist’s experience in such a way that we look for meaning not in the ‘message’ as such, but in the way it is mediated by the artist’s style. This is the ultimate criterion for the demarcation of art from pseudo- and quasi-artistic symbolic formations. We ask, how important is it that this particular subject was treated in this particular way, by this particular creator? If these questions force themselves upon us in the course of our acquaintance with an artefact, it is reasonable to suppose that we are dealing with a work of art. There are other aspects to the question of the boundaries of art. In this respect, a familiar strategy of analytic philosophers is to provide counter-examples to a given definition. Now the internal relation which I have posited between the artist’s originality and the art-object might seem vulnerable to such counterexamples. These might be provided from two directions. The first is the problem of minimality. A work such as Robert Smithson’s Slab, for example, is simply what its title suggests—a slab of uniformly (p.190) painted stainless steel. It was designed by the artist, and ‘cast by a foundry according to his specifications. In principle, someone else could have had the same idea independently, with exactly the same kind of object being the end-product. Both artefacts could have the same kind of aesthetic and reflective significance described in previous chapters, but neither would be internally related to the creator’s experience. Similarly, one could imagine minimal poems or pieces of music produced by people independently of one another but which qua object were identical with one another. These minimal objects must be viewed in a proper historical context. They are (whatever their creator’s intentions) items situated at art’s periphery, and are playing a high-risk game. The risk consists in the way they hover between an austere aesthetic object, and being a mere physical thing. Now, if the critical verdict upon them inclines towards the former view, we are entitled to regard them as works of marginal proto-art—in so far as they are successful aesthetic objects. If, however, they are judged to be merely objects (serving the ends of theory alone) then we are entitled to regard them as just that. The point is that any definition of art (unless it is a very strange definition indeed) must have criteria which are nodal, that is, they define and Page 9 of 21

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Defining Art articulate an unambiguous core set of artefacts, that gradually tails off into a periphery of clearly ambiguous cases. Whether a work figures in this periphery or falls outside the domain of art can only be decided by a detailed consideration of the particular case. The second aspect of the artistic periphery is rather more complex. It consists of forgeries and (what I shall call) imaginary indiscernibles. To forge the work of an artist is simply to copy his or her style. This may result in works which are aesthetically satisfying, but these are not, vis-à-vis their originality, internally related to the artist’s experience. They simply are forgeries. It may be, however, that a forger creates a work which does, in some way, extend the style which it is appropriating, in an unexpected and imaginative way. There would be grounds for assigning the status of ‘art’ to such a work, but, again, cases such as this can only be judged individually. Rather different considerations arise in relation to imaginary indiscernibles. One might posit, for example, the discovery of a fifteenth-century painter of landscapes a number of whose works are perceptually indistinguishable from specific paintings by (p.191) Constable. This example (so the argument would go) shows that it is logically possible for two artists to achieve identical original works entirely independently of one another. Hence artistic originality is not internally related to the experience of its specific creator, even in those obvious core cases which are the node of the artistic domain. Against this, however, it should be pointed out that the most which can be said of such indiscernibles is that they are imaginary. The question of their logical possibility is another matter entirely. In imagining a possibility we necessarily disregard many of those roots and bonds which make it causally cohesive with, and thence continuous with, reality. To posit a state of affairs as logically possible, in contrast, is (implicitly at least) to affirm its causal cohesiveness and continuity with the real. Now, given the nature of painting, and the nature of experience, and the nature of historical existence, imaginary indiscernibles of the sort described are not just unlikely, they are impossible. We can imagine them, but cannot fit them into that dense causal framework which furnishes our criteria of possibility, without doing violence to it. The reason for this is bound up with that stylization of experience noted in Chapters 6, 8, and 9. As embodied subjects we necessarily each see the world from a different position, and thence on the basis of a different life-history. No matter how much we share with others, our perception of things is stylized. Each moment of existence is inflected with the mark of our own individuality. Art is a direct extension of this. For once the process of creation has entered the stage of making (i.e. gone beyond basic ideas and conceptions) it extends and articulates individual experiential style. If a work is original, each brushstroke or phrase, in its on-going relation to all the others, both accomplishes such a style and is simultaneously mediated by it. This unique history of the artwork qua Page 10 of 21

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Defining Art sensible particular is, in essence, unrepeatable. There are constants in experience, but the particular moments which embody these do not and cannot recur. Since it is this fund of particularity which is the very flesh of the artwork, it follows that such a work cannot happen twice, except in the superficial form of a deliberate copy. To suppose otherwise is to hold, in effect, that the experiential style of an individual human being can, as it were, transmigrate into the body of another. This is a regression—not into the realm of logical possibility, but rather into the crudest form of the imaginary, i.e. the magical. (p.192) There is one final point about the scope of the ecological definition of art which must be clarified. For, whilst a work cannot count as art unless it is in some sense original in relation to the traditions of the medium, this is not, in itself, a guarantee of artistic merit. For a work can be original in a merely empty sense if its refinements of innovations do not open up any new way of seeing the world. Indeed, it is possible, as Kant points out, to create ‘original nonsense’ (a fact attested to by a great deal of ‘ready-made’ or conceptual ‘art’). This means that originality is not a sufficient condition of artistic excellence in the broadest sense. To merit the term ‘excellence’ we would expect the work to be original in a way which deepened and clarified experience along the empathie lines noted above. Of course, what counts as original, and our appreciation of its aesthetic depth, will not always be immediately accessible. We may need to view the work over a period of time, in relation to both tradition as an on-going process and our own changing experience as persons. Indeed, we must also be careful to distinguish between the subjective and objective senses of originality. For example, it may be that a work stands out and engages us positively because it is something the likes of which we have not personally experienced before. This, however, is no guarantee that it is excellent. We could only put a case for this if our judgement was demonstrably informed by an extensive knowledge of the history and techniques of the medium; and if we could give some explanation— based on the phenomenal properties of the work—as to why this original way of articulating form was worthwhile.

III Let me first reiterate the ecological definition of art. It holds that the artwork is an original symbolically significant manifold, whose meaning can only be gathered through direct perceptual or imaginative acquaintance, and whose originality is internally related to the identity of its creator or creative ensemble. The implications of this view for both ready-mades and conceptual ‘art’ (‘designated works’, as I shall call them) and Institutional-type definitions of art are very serious. For at the heart of real artistic practice is one phenomenon —the creative making of sensuous or imaginatively (p.193) intended material into symbolic form (or vice versa). Artefacts of this sort bring the rational, sensible, and historical aspects of experience into an internal relation. We cannot separate these elements out—as we can when we analyse them in ordinary language or abstract thought. Rather, in art, they cohere at the same Page 11 of 21

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Defining Art inseparable level as they do in life itself—that of physical embodiment. One might say, then, that art’s supreme significance is to be the most complete expression of our rational and social embodied inherence in the world. This is not, however, true of designated works. Such objects have been ratified as art only in so far as they refer the audience to some idea or theory about art. The materiality of such works disappears in this referential function. It is used— in the literal and colloquial senses of the term—in the service of theory. This not only narrows the scope of art into empty self-referentiality; it also conflicts with the criteria of artistic originality outlined earlier. This is because in the designated work the relation between creator and object or idea is a contingent and external one. The points made by ready-mades or conceptual ‘art’ do not require direct perceptual acquaintance for their discrimination. For, in so far as their ultimate significance is to make theoretical statements about art, these can be sufficiently comprehended on the basis of paraphrase or second-hand reports. Such works, indeed, are possible without the existence of the person who did in fact create them. It is conceivable, for example, that someone other than Duchamp could have placed a urinal in an art gallery and called it Fountain; or that someone other than Terry Atkinson could have designated a one-mile-high column in air ‘somewhere’ over London as a work of art. It is not, however, conceivable that someone else could have created exactly those works which we know as Waiting for Godot or Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. And, again, whilst the originality of symbolic form sufficiently emerges through the relation between the particular configuration and our experience of the medium, the same does not hold for designated works. For, in order to decide whether the point is original, we have first to determine what that point is. This means that the symbolic content of the work will only emerge if referred to an accompanying text, or to the causal context of the work’s production. If the work itself takes the form of a purely theoretical text or proposition, the creator’s relation to us is not that of artist but of critical theorist. In either case, we are moved (p.194) decisively away from the zone of aesthetic empathy to that of mere admiration or humour at the creator’s wit or wisdom (or lack of it). Given this analysis, it is clear that, when original, designated works are not so in the same sense as (let us at last term it) art-proper. Institutional-type definitions, however, attempt to expand the definition of art so as to encompass such artefacts. The paradigm artwork becomes the ready-made. Now, given the crucial differences I have outlined, this strategy is false, and obscures the nature of art-proper. The only other line of argument which could be marshalled in defence of Institutional theories is to claim that if art is to continue to be creative, no restrictions can be set on what counts as art. On these terms, Institutional definitions are ultimate guarantors of artistic freedom. The glaring difficulty with this view, however, is that it reduces artistic creativity and freedom to pure negativity—a case of the artist simply being able to do what he or she wants. In this study, however, I have shown that artistic creativity is Page 12 of 21

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Defining Art linked to originality—and that this is a positive notion, rather than the mere absence of constraint. Specifically, it involves taking up tradition and going beyond it in the direction of refinement and innovation. (I shall return to this issue in the next section of this chapter.) We are thus led to a final striking point. The ultimate significance of designated works is to make points about the nature of art. This in itself suggests that such works are broadly parasitic on art-proper. But the link is deeper still. For, in fact, designated works are never judged in purely theoretical terms. The very fact that they are conjoined with some physical object and/or displayed in some artcontext suggests that they are meant to be regarded as more than just statements. But in what does this ‘more’ consist? What are its origins? The answer, of course, is that there is something extremely special about symbolic content generated in the context of sensible material or contexts of presentation. This means that the ratification of designated works as ‘art’ is only intelligible on the basis of treating them as if they were made symbolic forms or were somehow aspiring to that state. The Institutional stratagem, in other words, presupposes the view of art which it is supposed to be calling into question. Clearly, then, in their ratification of designated works, the various Institutional definitions of art are, in effect, trying to wag a real dog with a false tail. (p.195) Some further difficulties accruing to Institutional approaches to art are considered in the Appendix to this chapter.

IV In assessing a work’s status vis-à-vis creativity and originality, a consideration of critical writing on the work is often helpful. However, recent critical work has evinced considerable hostility to such notions. I shall now consider three of these sceptical approaches. The first is poststructuralist. Roland Barthes, for example, claims that the text is not a line of words releasing a single theological’ (the message of the Author-God) but a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture…. His [the author’s] only power is to mix writings, to counter the ones with the others, in such a way as never to rest on any one of them.1 Whilst Barthes’s remarks here are addressed to literature, they clearly have prima-facie relevance to the other art media. In general terms this view holds that the particular work cannot be original. By virtue of its necessary situatedness within a culture, it is simply a particular point where already established idioms and devices mix.

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Defining Art A rather different sceptical approach to artistic originality is taken by Arthur Danto. His view is narrower and addressed specifically to the contemporary situation of visual arts. Put simply, his point is that there are limits to what can be done with a brush and canvas. And these limits have now been reached. The art-market demands originality, but all it can have is a kind of pastiche—a rehash and re-mix of what has gone before. His justification of this view in relation to the visual arts is based on a complex philosophical argument (which I have dealt with elsewhere)2 but a more general version of his view—i.e. that all the arts have (p.196) exhausted the creative possibilities of their respective media —is one that has widespread currency in contemporary criticism. The final sceptical viewpoint (which I have already touched on in Chapter 8) is found most commonly amongst feminists, Marxists, and the manifold combinations of the two. I shall call it ‘social creationism’. Broadly speaking, it holds that human values, institutions, and personality itself are ‘socially constructed’. This in practice means that societies, and individuals within those societies, have identities which are substantially defined by dominant powergroups. These groups are themselves defined on the basis of gender, class, and race. Now, from the social-creationist viewpoint what counts as creative, original, and excellent is sufficiently explained by the interests of dominant power-groupings, and is, in effect, a reflection of their preferences, and/or a consolidation of their domination. To regard creativity, originality, and excellence as having objective validity would, on this view, be to ‘mystify’, ‘reify’, or ‘fetishize’ such notions. Now, these sceptical viewpoints are by no means mutually exclusive. Indeed, a heady combination of the three has become something of an orthodoxy amongst younger and/or fashionable critics and historians of the arts. I shall deal with them on the basis of one central line of argument. First, the assumption at the heart of Barthes’ and Danto’s sceptical viewpoints is that what is meant by creativity and originality is some kind of absolute difference, that is, the bringing forth of creations which are utterly unlike anything which has ever been seen before. Now, a view of this sort may characterize some far-fetched Romantic theories, but it is at odds with the theory of creativity and originality which I have proposed. Originality is not created ex nihilo. Rather, it is a function of the relation between the particular work and, in the broadest sense, tradition. The debt to other works of those pieces which are original in the sense of refinement is obvious. But it is even true of the great innovatory works. Picasso’s and Braque’s radical breaks with Renaissance perspective between 1907 and 1914, for example, were not achieved at a stroke. Rather, they involve an exploration of familiar genres such as still-life, and an assimilation of imagery from non-European art. Again, Schoenberg’s movement towards dodecaphony does not happen in some moment of absolute innovation. The Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11 (1909), for Page 14 of 21

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Defining Art example, is a key atonal transitional (p.197) work, much indebted to the, as it were, floating tonalities of certain late pieces by Liszt and Scriabin. On these terms, in other words, artistic originality is not an absolute. It is relative to, and embodies, specifiable traces of that from which it develops, or against which it reacts. The fact of ‘intertextuality’ then, does not, of itself, count as an argument against artistic originality. Indeed, it plays a key role within it. We must now link this to a further key point. It is this. No matter how saturated the individual is by collective life and cultural influences, each of us qua embodied subject necessarily sees the world from a particular existential viewpoint which cannot be occupied by another person. This means that all the influences which impinge on us are not passively registered in a quantitative ‘mix’ like so many discrete elements in a container. Rather they are mediated by our own personal history. ‘Mediate’ here means such things as queried, puzzled-over, taken-apart, put back together again, qualified, compared, accepted, rejected, or thoroughly transformed. Now, if the influences are brought to bear on an artist, they are not only subject to interpretative processes of the kind just mentioned; they are also subject to further mediation through the actual process of making the artwork. What all these facts mean, of course, is that, through mediation by a personal history and creative artifice, influences admit, either individually or in concert, of qualitative transformation. The slightest inflection or nuance at the level of style can substantially change the meaning and significance of an influence. It is useful here to consider a couple of major postmodern artworks. Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso No. 1 (1977) is a good example. This work adopts a characteristically Baroque format, and much of its thematic material is of similar origin. However, the complex way this material is developed in relation to other themes and harmonic structures of a more modern idiom serves to completely alter its significance. Its well-ordered tonal cohesion is, as it were, erased near both centre and periphery even as it unfolds. Through this desperate movement, the listener’s formal expectations are set up, thwarted, and then restated in the form of acute uncertainty. He or she experiences the work as a succession of masks. But Schnittke’s complex piece does not simply jumble up idioms. Rather, they gravitate around a recurrent strident wavering of the strings, which invests the whole with a (p.198) logic of instability that is textural rather than thematic. A similar approach in visual art can be found in Malcolm Morley’s painting School of Athens (1972). In thematic and compositional terms this is a reprise of Raphael’s celebrated work of the same name. However, there are two decisive textural variations. First, the subject-matter is treated in a loosely handled expressionistic idiom. This disruption is experienced as disruption because it plays off against the familiarity and hallowed status of Raphael’s original. The vision of art as immutable effusion, direct from the depths of genius, is radically subverted. This subversion is further emphasized by Morley’s leaving intact a horizontal sequence of squares that are asynchronous with the Page 15 of 21

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Defining Art rest of the composition. This ‘mistake’ in the basic ‘squaring up’ process (whereby Morley ‘transcribed’ his painting from a photograph of Raphael’s original) underscores both its own and the original’s origin in artifice. The viewer’s enjoyment is, thereby, one of critical awareness as well as aesthetic transport. There are two points to gather from these examples, one general, the other specific. The general point is that whilstsoever there are particular embodied subjects, and whilstsoever there is sensuous material for them to organize, there exists the possibility of creative, original art. The more specific point, however, is that under current historical conditions originality is both harder to achieve for the artist, and imposes more complex cognitive and aesthetic demands on the audience and critic. The data of tradition, and the wealth of historical and theoretical perspectives upon it, have been dramatically increased by the advent of sophisticated media for the transmission of information. But (contra Danto and others) this does not mean the ‘end of art’. As the examples of Schnittke and Morley show, the best of the postmodern eclectics grapple with pre-established idioms in a way which radically changes their individual and collective significance. From the audience this demands a sensibility orientated towards the disruptions of the sublime rather than the felicities of the beautiful. From the critic it demands an expanded, specialist knowledge, and greater attentiveness to the nuances of the particular. Now, it might seem that the explosive plurality of current historical and theoretical perspectives on the arts means at least the end of objectivity in relation to appraisals of originality and excellence. The field is thus left open for social creationism—the (p.199) reduction of art’s reception to group preferences. But this is not the case. The question of plurality simply embodies an imperative to greater and more critical discussion. This in itself is of positive significance. For appraisals of artistic originality and excellence enable aesthetic enjoyment to be energized by historical existence (in the broadest sense). They engage not only our receptiveness to sensory and imaginative stimuli, but also our comprehension of both tradition and broader existential issues. Appraisals of artistic originality and excellence, in other words, explicitly engage and develop that elusive rational element which is involved in even the simplest aesthetic pleasure. Of course, in carrying out an appraisal of this sort, the critic might simply be proffering a disguised expression of personal or group preferences. (This, in effect, is how social creationism treats all critical verdicts.) However, the very fact that the expression takes the form of an appraisal means that it explicitly offers itself to rational debate, in a way that mere reports of preference do not. Such appraisals embody an imperative to communication, and the possibility of consensus. They invite us to vindicate or query them by comparing and contrasting objective relations between part and whole in the particular work with those that characterize other works. They invite us to see aspects which we may not have noticed before, or to exchange theoretical concepts in Page 16 of 21

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Defining Art relation to the work, which may illuminate hitherto unnoticed perspicacity and poignancy in its vision of the world. I am suggesting, then, that the multiplicity of viewpoints arising in relation to the sensuous particularity of the work offers the chance to cultivate human interchange at a rational level. The multiplicity of viewpoints, indeed, becomes a sign of health—especially when some element of consensus begins to define itself within them. Consensus engendered from a plurality of critical and theoretical perspectives has much greater claim to general objectivity than that which derives from the appraisals of a small group or an individual. It is the cultural echo of a just social order. This ethical and social significance to criticism, is, ironically enough, exactly the dimension which social creationism suppresses. It reduces the domain of art to a state of nature, consisting of warring preferences and interests defined by the Holy Trinity of race, class, and gender. In so doing, it fails to engage with the possibility of there being a rational and objective continuity to cultural production and exchange that ranges far beyond the hegemony of dominant (p.200) power-groups. We can, however, reappropriate (or ‘colonize’, as the social creationist would doubtless have it) such a view. Treating it as a hermeneutic of suspicion, we can draw on its methods as a means to sharpening ascriptions of originality and excellence. Such methods would lead us to question more closely what is objective and what is disguised preference in critical verdicts. They would lead us to question the historical basis of ascriptions of originality in order to establish whether some highly regarded work might not owe its privileged status more to the reflection and consolidation of power interests than to its own merits. Now, it would be foolishly Utopian to suppose that these or any other methods would lead to absolute and final consensus in criticism. But the issue of artistic originality and excellence opens up a space for rational exchange, wherein the search for consensus can function as an Ideal—in both methodological and ethical terms. In this chapter, then, I have explored the complex question of creativity and originality, and through it have been able to finalize the ecological definition of art. In particular, I have argued that the making of original sensible or imaginatively intended artefacts is the key element in the whole set of relations. It is the element wherein creativity is made real through embodiment, and where, despite seemingly adverse contemporary conditions, the rational and ethical dimensions of aesthetic engagement can, in principle, flourish. In his paper ‘Creativity in the Arts’, Jack Glickman claims that we must draw a clear distinction between ‘making’ and ‘creating’. As he puts it, ‘The use of "create" or "make”—one word rather than the other—does not indicate a different sort of process, but a different sort of product (individual or type).’1 For example, a chef can create a new kind of soup by simply devising a new recipe:

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Defining Art he does not actually have to make the first bowl—this can be done by someone else. Consider also, in this respect, the example of a potter who makes a pot which instantiates a new design. On Glickman’s terms, what is fundamental here is not the potter’s making of this particular pot but the fact that he has created a new type of design. This type can then be instantiated in an infinite number of other pots, and it does not really matter whether these are ‘thrown’ by himself, or someone using his design. Glickman’s basic point, then, is that particular things are made, but types are created. Hence, ‘What is of primary importance in talk of creativity is not the fabrication of some particular object but rather the idea or conception it embodies’.2 Glickman then applies the fruits of this analysis of creativity to the definition of art. To start with, he claims that (1) artefactuality is a necessary condition of art, but, (2) artworks are not necessarily ‘made’ (in the sense outlined above), and that, indeed, (3) an artist may create a work of art that no one has made. To establish these claims, Glickman bases his notion of artefactuality on cultural acceptance rather than madeness. For example, a pile of rocks used as a marker counts as an artefact because it has been assigned a specific role in a cultural context. Similarly, a stick which is believed by some tribe to have magical properties counts as an artefact of that culture just because it is so regarded. These points, of course, are also relevant in an art context. As Glickman says, ‘any object accepted as a work of art in our culture would thereby automatically (p.202) qualify as an artifact of our culture…it follows that being an artifact is a necessary condition of something’s being a work of art’.3 This, in conjunction with his arguments about creativity, enables Glickman to establish his threefold claim. By designating, say, a bottle-rack or driftwood as an artwork, these objects become artistic artefacts even though the artist himself has not in fact made them. Rather, he has created an artwork ‘type’, whose instances are made by someone else, or, in the case of the driftwood, made by no one at all. This means that, by construing the act of art-designation as the creation of an artefact, rather than an act of designation pure and simple, Glickman is affirming the primacy of creativity in art, at the expense of making. Glickman’s affirmation here is something he shares with the many proponents of Institutional definitions of art. Such approaches claim that the act of designation counts in some sense as the creation of an artefact. In relation to creativity, in other words, idea and conception, rather than making, are what is fundamental. What separates Glickman from most Institutional definitions, however, is his further stipulation that creativity pertains to types rather than particulars. This view, however, can be criticized both in itself and in a way which calls into

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Defining Art question the more general position on creativity that Glickman shares with other Institutional-type definitions of art. I shall undertake this critique as follows. In the first part of his paper Glickman cogently suggests that ‘creativity’ is an achievement verb. As he puts it, ‘we apply the verb create [and the adjective ‘creative’] only when the results are new and valuable, since creating means producing what is valuably new’.4 Hence this concept of creativity is an evaluative one, which applies to both the ‘new and valuable’ product and to the new and valuable directions in which the producer’s own talents are developed. However, in the second part of his paper, suddenly and without justification, Glickman makes the claim that particulars are made but types are created. This transposes creativity from an evaluative notion into a property of a distinctive ontological class—namely types. Glickman unfortunately leaves us unclear about the scope of this transposition. Are all artefactual types created, or only those which are ‘new and valuable’? Leaving this ambiguity aside, it is clear that Glickman does hold that a particular object is ‘created’ only if it instantiates a type. However, a significant proportion of the visual arts provide a clear counterexample to this claim. Consider, for example, the Mona Lisa. Here we have a particular artefact which we take to have been created, which we describe as creative, and which we take as evidence of Leonardo’s creativity. But does the work instantiate a type? If the Mona Lisa were a print or bronze casting or the like, we would be entitled to say ‘yes’. The (p.203) particular prints or castings would be instances of the type ‘Mona Lisa-artwork’, However, in the case of drawings or paintings (be they abstract or representational) we have no parallels to this. Photographs of, or imitations of, the work by other artists would simply be instances of the type ‘Mona Lisa-copy’ and not of the artwork itself. Of course, it is logically possible that a particular painting and some copy of it could be perceptually indistinguishable from one another. However, even here it is not appropriate to take the copy as an instance of some ‘Mona Lisa-artwork type’. Copying is an activity with its own criteria of creativity and excellence, and to take it simply as evidence of Leonardo’s creativity would be to conflate the notion of ‘Mona Lisa-artwork type’ with the logically distant ‘Mona Lisa-copy (type) artwork’. Now, it might be objected that these two notions are not distinct because the copy is parasitic upon Leonardo’s creativity and does not bring anything ‘new and valuable’ into existence. Hence it cannot be ‘created’. This, of course, conveniently overlooks a degree of context-dependence in our use of the term ‘creativity’. A superlative full-size upside-down copy of a Jackson Pollock painting, for example, would be an extraordinary feat in both conception and execution, if it could be brought off. It may even evidence creativity in terms of the artist’s own development if hitherto his endeavours had been confined to the copying of, say, small-scale Watteaus. These points place Glickman’s claims about creativity in a proper light. Painting and drawing constitute clear counter-examples to the thesis that particulars are made, but types are created. Indeed, even in those visual art-forms—such as Page 19 of 21

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Defining Art prints or castings—which involve artwork ‘types’, the business of creativity is transacted fundamentally at the level of that made particular which forms the prototype for the tokens ‘taken’ from it. There is a second difficulty which arises from Glickman’s paper, which also raises problems for other—perhaps any—Institutional-type definitions of art. He claims that what is fundamental in talk of creativity is not the making of particular artefacts, but rather the ‘ideas or conceptions’ which they embody. Indeed, Glickman goes so far as to say, ‘It is easy to make something wrong. But one cannot create something wrong; either one creates or one does not.’5 Let us suppose, however, that a potter has an idea for an intricate design to be made in a certain kind of enamel on a certain kind of porcelain. His primary sketch tells us that this is a remarkably original design and indeed a wholly new direction for the potter himself. However, although the enamel is subsequently applied to the porcelain and fired in the appropriate manner, it turns out to be a failure. The workmanship is fine, but the design fails to work with this kind of enamel and porcelain. Now, in this case, (p.204) we have an example of an idea or conception which is creative in theory but which turns out to be unsuccessful in practice. It is surely reasonable, therefore, to describe this as an object which fails at the level of creativity rather than that of making. Similarly, one could easily imagine a case where some hackneyed idea or conception turns out to produce remarkably creative results because of accomplishment in the making of it—rather than in its conception. These two cases find extensive application in all the arts. Painters, for example, frequently start from ideas which turn out (through no fault of the artist’s technique) to yield disappointing results. Again, however, we also find that some well-worn conception—say, a simple still-life with fruit—can lead to remarkable depths of achievement simply by virtue of that which cannot be reduced to ideas or conceptions—namely the artist’s creative fluency in the handling of paint. Indeed, as I suggested earlier, and as Glickman himself admits, it is absolutely crucial that the artist’s working in a medium adds significantly to, and indeed transcends, the ideas he started out with. There is even a case for saying that a work of art cannot be a work of art until it is embodied in some publicly accessible form that is not dependent on states-of-persons. Collingwood’s favourite example of the ‘poem in the head’, for example, is simply a mental or verbal state of the poet. It is hence too ontologically precarious to be accurately described as a ‘work’ at all. Indeed, given the fact that the writing out of a poem frequently brings about changes and revisions of the original conception, we would be entirely justified in taking the ‘poem in the head’ to be incomplete, until it is written down. We would feel that the poet has not yet developed all the possibilities of his artistic idea, until he had made an artefact of it.

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Defining Art Now, proponents of Institutional-type designation theories of creativity (other than Glickman) could claim that there is nothing in my analysis to conflict with their position. For to designate an object as art by situating it in an appropriate context is, in a sense, to make a new artefact—consisting of object, context, and the creative idea which this conjunction presupposes, and thence embodies. This sense of ‘making’, however, is very different from that which accrues to the vast majority of artworks. ‘Making’ in its customary artistic sense involves taking raw material and working it into symbolically significant form. This process of making, indeed, can radically alter the idea or conception which originally gave rise to it. To construe ‘make’ in the global sense of Institutional-type theories is to simply empty the term of any significant content. This, of course, is what such theories also do to the very concept of art itself. Notes:

(1) Roland Barthes, Image—Music—Text (Fontana, London, 1982), 46. (1) Jack Glickman, ‘Creativity in the Arts’, in Joseph Margolis (ed.), Philosophy Looks at the Arts (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1978), 145–61. This ref., p. 155. (2) In an essay entitled ‘Postmodernism in the Visual Arts—A Question of Ends’. This is included in my Critical Aesthetics and Postmodernism (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993); and in Postmodernism and Society, ed. Roy Boyne and Ali Rattansi (Macmillan, London, 1990). 237–59. (2) Ibid. 155–6. (3) Ibid. 157. (4) Ibid. 153. (5) Ibid. 151.

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Conclusion

Art and Embodiment: From Aesthetics to SelfConsciousness Paul Crowther

Print publication date: 2001 Print ISBN-13: 9780199244973 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.001.0001

Conclusion Paul Crowther

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.003.0012

Abstract and Keywords This concluding chapter summarizes the discussions in the preceding chapters. It argues the ecological definition of art squares with some common-sense notions about art, namely that it involves making things which involve an address to the senses, and which are expressive in a special way. Attempts to define art in terms of mimesis, or formal qualities, or as expression, are all onesided attempts to articulate this notion. The ecological definition is able to encompass and focus what is of worth in these strategies, without being burdened by their shortcomings. Oddly enough, it also finds a place for the one insight of any worth in the Institutional-type definitions, namely that historical mediation plays a necessary role in defining art. Keywords:   art, self-consciousness, ecological definition of art, historical mediation

Let me first summarize the trajectory of this work. In Part One I offered chapters defining the scope of the aesthetic domain, and indicating something of its ontological structure. I also suggested that aesthetic experiences—notably of art —play an important role in harmonizing the basic ontological reciprocity between embodied subject and world. In the chapters in Part Two I explored various aspects of these topics in relation to Kant, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Hegel. By critically responding to, and revaluating, their ideas, I sought to illuminate our understanding of aesthetic experience and its relation to the many different aspects of ontological reciprocity. The chapters in Part Three sought to reappraise my starting-point so as to formulate a general theory of art’s ecological function. They did so by drawing on material and problems in all the theories addressed in Part Two. This enabled me to show how the aesthetic Page 1 of 3

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Conclusion domain, and art in particular, answers the needs of self-consciousness by enhancing or reflecting the necessary factors in self-consciousness. By so doing it enables the embodied subject to engage with his or her essence at the level of perception. In this way self-consciousness intersects with itself in the fullest sense. Its ontological reciprocity with the world is complete but not rigid. It is a free-belonging. Now, the artwork is able to accomplish this through being an original symbolically significant sensible manifold with an internal relation to the identity of its creator. This, in dry logical terms, is the ecological definition of art. However, what makes it into an ecological definition are the things (just described) which art accomplishes. It is the possibility of this accomplishment which brings the growth of an emergent order of practices, of which the artworld is the most substantial manifestation. The ecological definition of art is significant in terms over and above those already mentioned. For one thing, it squares with some common-sense notions about art, namely that it involves making things which involve an address to the senses, and which are expressive in a special way. Attempts to define art in terms of (p.206) mimesis, or formal qualities, or as expression, are all onesided attempts to articulate this notion. The ecological definition is able to encompass and focus what is of worth in these strategies, without being burdened by their shortcomings. Oddly enough, it also finds a place for the one insight of any worth in the Institutional-type definitions, namely that historical mediation plays a necessary role in defining art. The upshot of this encompassing is that the ecological theory can find a place for items as diverse as Joyce’s Ulysses, Bernard Leach pots, and, at its periphery, the music of John Cage, and some minimal sculpture. There is one further point which must be mentioned. Recent times have seen a trivialization of the emergent order of aesthetic practices. This has been the result of some very different kinds of pressure. On the one hand, there have been the more outré imbecilities of the art-world itself, and the sceptical reductionism of feminism and poststructuralism; on the other hand (and much more seriously) there have been the philistine depredations of particularly odious right-wing governments. These latter forces have helped create the conditions of a passive consumer sensibility, whose ideology sees art and the aesthetic as just one set of pleasures amongst others. The ecological definition of art rehumanizes these pleasures by showing them to have an intrinsic connection with the needs of self-consciousness. They are capable of being educated and deepened, and through them, accordingly, we educate and deepen ourselves. Our inherence in the aesthetic domain is part of our full definition as human beings.

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Conclusion As noted in the Preface, the philosophy of art and the aesthetic propounded in this book is part of a multi-volume project whose overall task is to clarify the philosophical significance of the aesthetic domain. The next step in this project will focus on the complex interrelations between philosophy and twentiethcentury theory and practice in the visual arts.

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