Art as Human Practice: An Aesthetics 9781350063143, 9781350063150, 9781350063174, 9781350063136

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Art as Human Practice

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ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BLOOMSBURY Reparative Aesthetics, Susan Best Aesthetics of Ugliness, Karl Rosenkranz Enduring Time, Lisa Baraitser Technic and Magic, Federico Campagna The Re-Enchantment of the World, Bernard Stiegler The Politics of Aesthetics, Jacques Ranciere Surpassing Modernity, Andrew McNamara The Sea, David Farrell-Krell Common, Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval Techne Theory, Henry Staten On Freedom, Peter Trawny

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Art as Human Practice An Aesthetics Georg W. Bertram Translated by Nathan Ross

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BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Germany as Kunst als menschliche Praxis: Eine Ästhetik, Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2014 First published in Great Britain 2019 Copyright to the English translation © Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2019 Translated by Nathan Ross Georg W. Bertram has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Cover design: Irene Martinez-Costa Cover image: Artist Marina Abramovic performs during the ‘Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present’ exhibition opening night party at The Museum of Modern Art on March 9, 2010 in New York City © Andrew H. Walker / Getty Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-6314-3 PB: 978-1-3500-6315-0 ePDF: 978-1-3500-6313-6 eBook: 978-1-3500-6316-7 Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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Contents

Acknowledgments  ix

Introduction  1 1 A critique of the autonomy paradigm  15 2 From Kant to Hegel and beyond  55 3 Autonomy as self-referentiality—the practical reflection of art  97 4 Art as practice of freedom  159 Bibliography  235

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Acknowledgments

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he considerations in this book are the result of years of occupation with questions of art and the aesthetic.1 They

trace their point of departure back to my years as a student and to the time of my dissertation, inspired and guided especially by Odo Marquard and Martin Seel. I  took another important step forward thanks to the environment provided by Hildesheim University with its connection between artistic practice and theory, especially by collaborating with Tilman Bosche. Later, I  profited greatly from the Special Research Project 626  “Aesthetic Experience in the Sign of the Delimitation of the Arts” at the Freie Universität Berlin, an ideally suited work environment generously supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. It has offered me the unique opportunity to expound upon my aesthetic considerations in a highly thoughtprovoking environment. This is especially the case with respect to the present book, a preliminary version of which was intensively

E arly versions of what I develop in a systematic form here may be found in several other texts that I have published since the book Kunst: Eine philosophische Einführung (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2005). This is especially the case for the second and third chapters, which I published in prior versions: Georg W. Bertram, “Kunst und Alltag: Von Kant zu Hegel und darüber hinaus,” Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 54 (2009), 203–217; “Autonomie als Selbstbezüglichkeit:  Zur Reflixivität in den Künsten,” Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 55 (2010), 223–234. 1

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Acknowledgments

discussed in the framework of a workshop in January 2013. My special thanks go to Allesandro Bertinetto, Dorothea von Hantelmann, Gertrud Koch, and Michael Lüthy for their helpful commentary and critique, as well as to the members of the SFB 626 and my research colloquium for a highly productive discussion. I also want to thank Manuel Scheidegger, Hennning Tegtmeyer, and Holm Tetens for their discussions on the manuscript; Daniel Martin Feige and Frank Ruda for their constant critical attention during its emergence; Eva Gilmer for a highly far-reaching series of lectures; and lastly David Blumenthal and Tobias Wieland for their corrections and help with revisions, as well as Juliane Schiffer and Jonathan for the fact that they were there, not just for the work on the book. The readers will have to judge whether I have succeeded in making something out of these inspirations. In any case, I hope that for those people who consider art to be an important element of the human form of life I am delivering something provocative. Berlin, December 2013

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Introduction In his late philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein makes a fundamental attempt to show how our thinking can take a different course. Wittgenstein articulates this by speaking of the need to bring about a change of perspective.1 He makes the penetrating demand:  “Let us see it like this!” This book also demands us to practice changing our customary perspective on philosophy of art. It advocates for calling into question the view of art that has grown familiar and dear, which centers on the thought that art is strictly delimited from other practices in human life. Under this view, art consists of particular aspects that distinguish it from nonart. It takes the distinction between art and other things as central to the concept of art. The following considerations suggest looking at art in a different manner. In what follows, I will develop and defend the view that art stands in an essential continuity with other human practices, since it only gets its distinctive potential by taking up a relation to these other practices. In the past century, many artistic innovations have announced a similar change of perspective, for instance, in the sense that they 1 A very fruitful thesis from Wittgenstein in this respect is the following: “A picture holds us captive. And we could not escape it, for it rested in our language, and our language would mercilessly repeat it.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Inverstigations, trans. Gertrude Elizabeth, Margaret Anscombe (London: Blackwell, 2009), §115, p. 49. For the theory of “change of perspective” compare especially pp. 518–77.

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undermined the difference between art and nonart. Many artworks and aesthetic events in this time frame have made it clear that art is a part of human practice. Now art is not simply one with human practice as a whole, for it certainly demonstrates particularities:  Artworks arise out of specific materials, assume a particular command of these materials, and demand familiarity with certain historical epochs and genres of art, as well as specific perceptive abilities from both producers and recipients. Additionally, they often rest on certain traditions that have developed in Europe since the Renaissance. But can the concept of art be derived from these factors? Some of the more recent currents in the arts, such as documentary art and postdramatic theater, take art as an integral part of human practice, and hence they ask to be recognized as theoretical challenges to the very concept of art, because in these instances art has turned against those very defining features that were formerly taken for granted. As a result of such innovations, a new art has emerged, one which relinquishes all claim to a distinctive status as art. In my view, such developments give us the occasion to relinquish our trust in the specific, separate essence of art. Instead, one has to ask about the position that art has within the context of human practice. Or to put it another way: One should ask what place art has in the mental economy of humans. Is it simply a matter of a practice that can be defined in relation to other practices? Is art a practice like going for a walk, or baking cake, just with the difference that it demonstrates certain peculiarities of its own? My thesis is that this is not the case. Art is a practice for which reference to other practices is essential, and for this reason it cannot be thought of in isolation from these other practices, but rather only in recourse to the way in which these other practices are carried out. What characterizes art is a complex connection between types of practice, which I will characterize in what follows as a form of practice. To put it in the language of philosophical

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aesthetics:  The autonomy of art cannot be grasped independent of other human practices. Positions that make such a claim belong to what I call the autonomy paradigm. In opposition to this paradigm, I  argue for a different understanding of aesthetic autonomy, one that conceives of it as an interrelation between art and other human practices. In other words: We have to grasp aesthetic autonomy as an aspect of the form of practice specific to art, if we are not to interpret it in a mistaken way. My account of a new conception of aesthetic autonomy departs from the assumption that the human form of life is constituted by reflection in a special way. Humans are not what they are simply by nature. We are not determined by our cultural traditions to come out a certain way. Rather, as humans, we always have to define what we are anew. What we become as humans is always the result of taking a stance, indeed, a stance on ourselves, and this “taking a stance” has to be grasped as a practical occurrence. This means that the continual process of redefining what it means to be human involves a component of reflection that is essential to all of our practices. This applies even to art: It is not simply a specific kind of practice, but rather a specific kind of reflective practice, a specific formation of practices by means of which we take a stance towards ourselves in the midst of practicing our culture. There are many different practices of reflection. The most familiar example would be the case of speaking about speech, that is, the constant process of commenting on and explicating what we say and write. But other practices of reflection include religion (e.g., the comprehension of oneself as an image of God), psychological and therapeutic conversations as well as theoretical branches of knowledge, among which philosophy is a prime example:  Philosophy is the reflective discipline par excellence—its essence is wholly exhausted in being reflective. Art also furnishes acts of reflection within human

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practice as a whole. By defining art in this way, I do not simply mean to call into question the paradigm of autonomy. I also mean to work against the common tendency in theories of art to think of it as something anti-subjective. Some advocate the view that art liberates us from our own subjectivity by challenging the extent to which we are able to define ourselves as subjects in a self-contained manner, often drawing from certain understandings of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, among others. According to such views, art demolishes the certainty that we might have of being able to understand and control the overall purpose of our practices. As I  will argue, this approach to art rests on the problematic assumption that self-determining subjectivity is somehow a given, or that subjectivity is a process that realizes itself in a transparent manner. As the account goes, the subject carries out its non-aesthetic practices in a way that is autonomous and self-determined. In my estimation, this assumption cannot be maintained for long, since even in everyday practices, autonomy and self-determination are constantly fallible, as psychoanalysis has taught us. Transparency to self and self-determination are not givens, not self-evident, but are instead to be taken as an evasive goal of human practice. And it is decisive to see that this evasive goal can be viewed in different ways. If we grasp subjectivity as something that is open in this respect, then it enables us to understand art as something that contributes to becoming a subject. Correspondingly, the subject is not liberated from itself in art, but rather given a shape by art, albeit in a different way from that by other practices of reflection. In this context, it is crucial to interpret the concept of reflection in the right way, since it is often taken in a merely cognitive or propositional manner. In the cognitive interpretation, reflection is taken as a theoretical practice; in the propositional one, it is taken as a conceptual practice. We see that neither of these interpretations fits when we consider the role that religious representations play within

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human life. We cannot merely grasp them in a theoretical manner, for they have a fundamentally practical dimension. It is also not clear if we can do justice to them by taking them on a conceptual level. Beyond any doubt, we are dealing here with what Hegel incisively calls representations (Vorstellungen), by means of which humans seek to form a concept of themselves, and hence we are dealing with elements of reflection. If we take the notion of reflection in a way that is too confined to conceptual or cognitive practices, then it becomes especially problematic when we set out to conceive of what art is. The philosophy of art generally ends up reducing the notion of reflection to a dichotomy: While some theories separate art from other forms of practice, other theories make the claim that it is problematic to consider artworks in this way, since they are objects (Gegenstände) much like any other kind, just with particular properties. However, one arrives very quickly at the insight that artworks are not objects in the ordinary sense of “objects,” and then we once again have to place art in a special, separate domain.2 We find ourselves turning in a circle. All of this is a symptom of the fact that we are taking art as something objective, not as a practice of reflection. This is not surprising if we take the world as consisting of many different kinds of objects—rocks, washing machines, automobiles, and so forth—and among these we also find a special kind that we call artworks (at least if we think for now just of works that belong to what we call the plastic arts). This misleads us to think about the specific nature of these objects:  in what does their particular quality consist? Why do they function in a different way from the other objects of practice? Such an ontology of artworks has gained special prominence in recent aesthetics. But even Compare on this point the insight work of Karlheinz Lüdeking on the development of analytic aesthetics: Karlheinz Lüdeking, Analytische Philosophie der Kunst: Eine Einführung (Munich: Fink, 1988). 2

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if important insights can be attained through such a line of thought, it still rests on the problematic assumption that we can grasp the specific nature of artworks on the basis of their objectivity, that is, that artworks belong to the stock of objects in our world. However, artworks cannot simply be grasped as a certain, determinate set of objects in our world. As I argue, they have to be conceived of in the context of the practice in which they stand. This practice differentiates itself from that of going for a walk or baking a cake, in that objects like walking shoes or an umbrella, alternately a whisk or cake pan, play a specific role that derives from the respective practice. We cannot grasp the existence of works of art simply through the process of making art or dealing with it, hence not simply by means of the specific practices of production and interpretation that we develop in dealing with it. They owe their existence to the totality of historical and cultural practices in which they stand. The artwork thus distinguishes itself first and foremost from the whisk in that the practice in which it stands comports itself to other practices in a special way. And this means that the practice in which the artwork stands is a reflective practice. We thus have the need of a concept of reflection that allows us to grasp art as a reflective practice. Articulating this conceptual framework will involve a change of perspective:  It requires not an ontology of the artwork, but an ontology of the practice in which the artworks stand—an ontology of art as a reflective practice. Such an ontology would for the first time allow us to put art in its proper place, namely within human practice, so that we can see what is special about art as a reflective practice, and also how it relates to other practices without being immediately identical to them. If we see it in this way, art accomplishes a certain specific reflection of other human practices, and for this reason we have to consider the process of dealing with works of art from the perspective of the

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human form of life in its entirety. It may be true that artworks are connected with certain kinds of practice that relate to artwork as an aesthetic event. One listens very closely, looks very carefully, and pays close attention to certain details. The process of dealing with works of art can, and often does, become an end in itself. But if we stand back to consider practice in its entirety, and that means within the human form of life, we see that it nevertheless does fulfill an end, which is to say, it has a function: It challenges forth other practices. On the basis of this, I argue that the process of dealing with artworks brings about a special kind of reflection, which we should take as a practical rather than theoretical process. It will be the goal of the following considerations to gain a better understanding of just this form of reflective practice. Perhaps these preliminary thoughts already reveal that I  shall link my treatment of art to the aesthetic theories of Hegel and Kant. This is indeed the case and will play a crucial role in what follows. My attempt to grasp art in a systematically convincing manner will indirectly lead to reactivating arguments that we find in the definition of beauty from Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment and in Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics. Over the course of the book, the need will become evident to modify these arguments a good bit in order to adapt them in a way that is both relevant and plausible. Every artwork is bound up, as I will argue, in a constitutive manner with those controversies that are involved in its interpretation. For this reason, among others, there cannot be simple examples to support the positions that I  will defend. It nevertheless seems worthwhile to offer two preliminary examples in order to make clear what is involved in this new approach to aesthetics. More precisely, I will offer two examples whose ordinary reception makes clear what is at stake in my approach. I speak here of the literature of Marcel Proust and the painting of Paul Cézanne. Proust’s In Search of Lost

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Time counts for many interpreters as a work in which the modern notion of the subject finds its expression.3 His stream of consciousness prose articulates, so the view goes, a new experience:  The subject experiences itself as ruptured and foreign to itself. It is not, as Freud says, master in its own house. Proust does not simply tell of a ruptured and dispossessed subject, but instead develops it in his writing and reflects upon this development. The decisive episodes in the novel—such as the famous madeleine, the sonata of Vinteuil or the departure of Albertine—are bound up with reflection on what we call the modern subject, as well as textual processing (Verarbeitung) of this subject. Proust’s writing is a moment within what Freud would call the practice of “working through” (Durcharbeitung)—indeed even through the impotence of literature. All such interpretations that establish a link between Proust and the modern experience of the subject, as well as between literature and psychoanalysis, have to understand his prose as something that is productive in a specific way: It produces a modern form of subjectivity in all its tensions, and at the same time, it develops a way of processing these tensions. We have to understand Proust’s art in such a way that it contains within itself both the modern subject’s relation to itself and its relation to the world. His works do not simply depict the modern subject in a neutral manner, but rather contribute to the development of this subject. In this line of interpretation, two aspects become noteworthy:  What is characteristic of this literature is that it articulates and develops certain aspects of its historical situation in a definite way. Proust’s text deals with an understanding of subjectivity that developed at a certain time in a certain societal situation (high-bourgeoisie, Compare, for example, Martha Nussbaum “Love’s Knowledge,” in Martha Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge: Essays on the Philosophy of Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 261–285; see also Ursula Link-Heer and Volker Roloff, eds. Marcel Proust und die Philosophie (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1997). 3

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early twentieth-century, Western Europe). It confronts questions of memory, expression, dealing with emotions, and many other matters. However, to articulate all of these themes in the manner specific to Proust (and with this I come to the second aspect) does not simply lead to rehashing all of these things, but contributes more so to the further development of modern subjectivity, and hence it has a productive character. Proust’s prose challenges the reader in terms of his or her very understanding of subjectivity, and thus runs up against a modern relation to self. This means that Proust’s prose contributes to the development of the subject’s relation to self and its relation to the world. We can interpret Cézanne’s painting in a similar manner. Cézanne develops in his works—such as his many paintings of the Mont SainteVictoire—new ways of seeing,4 characterized by a new approach to the color of material reality. His painting thus teaches us new ways of seeing and develops a reflected form of visibility and of making visible. This development has a specifically modern component in that, as Merleau-Ponty formulates it, it is bound up with a doubt that aims at a new basis of seeing.5 For this reason, Cézanne takes up color in an unprecedented manner and develops a way of seeing that centers on combining colored surfaces. The new way of seeing that Cézanne seeks is bound up with the thought that the modern subject has to give a justification of itself. This is why he does not simply represent a subject and its way of seeing, but rather seeks to dissect both of these with painting in a new way.

See especially Günter Figal, Erscheinungsdinge:  Ästhetik als Phänomenologie. (Tübingen:  Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 223–226; Bernhard Waldenfels, Sinne und Künste im Wechselspiel: Modi ästhetischer Erfahrung (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2010), 141–144. 5 Compare Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “The Doubts of Cézanne,” in:  The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader, trans. Michael Smith, ed. Galen Johnson (Evanston:  Northwestern, 1993), 59–75. 4

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I reference these two examples because in interpreting them, we see what is at stake in the following. I will once again formulate the two aspects that I emphasized now in a more general way: First, art stands in a constitutive relation with determinate moments of cultural and historical practices. Second, it is productive of these relations in a specific way. I will argue that it is precisely these two aspects that need clarification in an explication of art. This does not happen in many philosophical theories of art because they differentiate too much between art and other forms of human practice. Additionally, it often remains unclear that art plays a productive role in relation to human practices, because aesthetic autonomy gets emphasized in a onesided manner and the particularity of art gets treated as something “objective” about it. Both of these faults can be overcome by seeing art as the reflective practice that it is. In this way, it is possible to give credence to the connection between art and human practice, as well as to understand aesthetic autonomy as an aspect of reflective practice in general. This does not mean that art is a particular element within human practice, but rather that it is one of its focal points. Human practice is permeated by art. One of the ways that humans give form to what they are is through art. Through their way of dealing with artworks, they develop their understanding of themselves and hence determine what kind of human they are. This connection has consequences not only in relation to the way we conceive the human being and the selfdetermination of the human being but also in relation to the concept of art, which I will establish through two points. First, we have to depart from a proper notion of art, one that takes art as a complex, diverse, and controversial practice. The arts engage with different media, and in different forms. Artworks can consist of a few words or can fill whole evenings. They can pursue a realist poetics or they can dedicate themselves completely to abstraction. This plurality of arts and artworks

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is not simply a neutral coexistence, but is bound up with controversies in the arts and among artworks. Those who engage with these artworks are participants in these controversies. And with this, I come to the second criterion, which consists in grasping art in terms of the practice of art. It has to be explained why we speak of “art” at all, why we do not simply let matters stand with a plurality—a plurality of poems, films, life-sized sculptures, dance recitals, and many other things—and instead insist on bringing this plurality under a single concept, the concept of “art.” The controversies surrounding the arts and artworks center around this concept. This concept, as well as the theoretical concern with art, have to be conceived of as elements of the practice of art itself. Hence, in the following considerations I will deal with the question to what extent art is practice by taking art in its entirety. In this sense, art is exemplary of human practice as a whole. As I have already said, human practice is permeated by the fact that human life takes a stance toward itself. Humans are, as Heidegger puts it, always thrown into practices of taking a stance.6 Nevertheless, they also always face the task of carrying out this feat of taking a stance. Art manages to make a contribution to the fact that the human takes a stance to itself and thus seeks to determine itself. Art is thus a practice that lays claim to playing a role in human freedom. While we might have to relinquish the philosophical dream that art alone can guarantee human freedom and bring to light the truth of the human condition, it is nevertheless more than a playful fancy of human practice. If we can steer a way between the two extremes, then our gaze will be free for the specific contribution that art makes to human practice. Art does enrich human practice in an awe-inspiring manner. What we need to understand is no more than this—but also no less. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stanbaugh (Albany:  SUNY Press, 2010), §31. 6

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The book is made up of four chapters, which I have aimed to keep concise and on program. I will give a brief sketch of the matters that I find decisive to the concept of art, so that I may intentionally leave other details left over for later studies. The first chapter will examine the necessary simplifications that result out of emphasizing only the specificity of art. In this chapter, I will illustrate my point through a critique of two different aesthetic theories, one from the continental tradition—that of Christoph Menke—and one from the analytic tradition—that of Arthur Danto. I would like to show that, as far apart as these positions may be, they pose similar problems. This will open up a more general perspective on what I regard as the main omission that permeates the philosophy of art: the autonomy paradigm. The second chapter will then revisit the positions of Kant and Hegel in order to recover a motif of aesthetic thought that leads beyond the autonomy paradigm in a systematic manner:  the definition of aesthetic practice as a reflective practice. We can only say what a reflective practice is within the framework in which this practice furnishes its reflective act. This leads to considering the human form of life. I will demonstrate to what extent Kant and Hegel always take the human form of life as the point of reference for philosophizing about beauty and art, and I will also point to certain simplifications that nevertheless show up in the positions of Kant and Hegel and will have to be avoided. By this I mean primarily the way in which both Kant and Hegel take the notion of reflection in an overly theoretical manner. I will seek to correct this particular prejudice in order to gain a more plausible foundation for the concept of reflective practice. In the third chapter, I will then define the basic features of such a concept. This will become possible to the extent that we give up trying to grasp what is distinctive about art just with respect to the artwork, and instead look to explain this defining feature of art through the interrelation between works of art and practices that

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recipients carry out in dealing with artworks. Works of art, and hence aesthetic occurrences, are embedded in practices that are self-relational because of the constitution of the object in question. Objects and practices make up a dynamic interrelation. My thesis is that it is precisely through attention to this point that we can develop the notion of aesthetic autonomy without falling into problematic simplifications. But this will only be possible if we take the practices carried out by the recipient within the larger context of other human practices. This will allow us to understand the way in which artworks relate to themselves as autonomous, without however isolating them from the context of human practice. The fourth chapter will then take the decisive final step toward overcoming an object-oriented understanding of art, in that it will clarify to what extent art does not belong to the ordinary inventory of human practice. In this respect, the primary issue becomes the question as to what it could mean to say that art is an unassured (unabgesichert) practice, and why the concept of art is not primarily descriptive, but instead functions primarily in a normative/evaluative manner. The arts continue to develop in an open manner. They are based on constellations of elements that continually get reinvented and adapted in different artworks in such a way that art shows itself to be constituted as an unassured practice. The unassuredness specific to art is, as I argue, bound up with the way artworks constantly have to struggle to be art. This struggle is connected in an integral way with acts of judgment, which are not only central to how recipients react toward artworks and aesthetic occurrences in general, but which also serve to reveal the connection that prevails between art and the rest of human practice. The concept of art serves for us as the reference point for these acts of judgment, since it gives us the notion of a practice that is precious to us in its own particular way.

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1 A critique of the autonomy paradigm Normally, the philosophy of art begins with the problem of what makes art special. This is a plausible place to start since we want to know what makes art what it is. The question ‘What is art?’ seems to call for an answer that isolates it from other objects and other practices. Thus, philosophical treatments of art seek to grasp the defining quality of art by analyzing what is special about aesthetic qualities, aesthetic experiences, aesthetic practices or aesthetic institutions. This way of proceeding hides a danger:  It threatens to make the distinctiveness of art into the decisive feature of how we conceive of it. There is the danger that we take for granted that art can be defined by distinguishing it from other objects, experiences, practices, or institutions. On occasion, philosophers have used the notion of “aesthetic difference as a way of calling our attention to this very assumption.”1 By emphasizing exclusively the particularity of art, philosophy has sought the distinct nature or internal law of art. In short, one thinks of autonomy as the essential feature of art. This issue has been set up for the more recent German language discussion in: Rüdiger Bubner, “Über einige Bedingungen gegenwärtiger Ästhetik,” in:  Ästhetische Erfahrung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), 9–51. 1

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I introduce the notion of the autonomy paradigm to describe those approaches that share these assumptions in the broadest sense. Up to this point, I  have not yet given a very sharp formulation of the assumptions that I have in mind, let alone a full explanation of them. This is why I will first treat this notion of the autonomy paradigm as a search term that I understand in the following way: All positions belong to the autonomy paradigm that seek to understand art by way of its particularity and by isolating it from other things. Such an approach is more pervasive than one might imagine. Many philosophical positions on art do not speak explicitly of aesthetic autonomy, of art’s internal laws, of separating art, and the like. One might thus think that only a small portion of the debates in philosophy of art and art theory center around this notion of autonomy. But that is not the case. There are many more positions indebted to the autonomy paradigm than just the ones that explicitly use the term autonomy or a related one. Many theories of art take it for granted that art is something particular, distinct, and I want to show that it is just this presumption that is problematic. Now I do not propose that we can flatly reject the notion that art is autonomous, since it does contain a kernel of truth. But I claim that this kernel of truth does not get thought out in the proper manner, because one tends to understand autonomy from only one side. In critiquing the autonomy paradigm in the philosophy of art, we cannot simply take leave of the notion of autonomy altogether. Instead, it is a matter of taking leave of a one-sided notion of autonomy in order to be able to articulate the true core of this concept. This implies that art is no longer taken as something special and different because of its autonomy in relation to other things. Such a notion of autonomy must be rejected. Instead, I will demonstrate that we have to define what is distinctive about art in the context of human practice, and indeed, take this specificity as an essential aspect of the contribution

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that it makes to human practice. To put it abstractly: The autonomy of art is constitutively bound up with its heteronomy. This is exactly what I want to reveal through a critique of the autonomy paradigm. Now it will not be possible here to give a comprehensive discussion of all those positions that belong to the autonomy paradigm. It would also have little sense, since such notions come up in so many different theoretical contexts. For this reason, it behooves us to proceed by way of a few exemplary cases. I  will take two examples that are in many respects as far as thinkable from one another. The first position originates from debates about aesthetic education. Over the last thirty years, many, especially in the German-speaking world, have sought to understand the specific nature of art in terms of aesthetic experience, often taking Adorno as an inspiration. In doing so, these thinkers take Adorno’s notion of aesthetic autonomy for granted, and this includes Christoph Menke’s philosophy of art, which I  will deal with as an exemplary case. Menke articulates, in an especially consistent way, the thought that the autonomy of art manifests itself in special kinds of experiences. The second position that I will take as exemplary belongs to the tradition of analytic philosophy of language. Due to failures in both the anti-essentialist2 and the essentialist3 approaches to art, and under the influence of the pragmatic tradition,4 the analytic tradition has continuously sought to define art with recourse to its historic and cultural context. Arthur Danto is a prime example of someone who

A paradigmatic case in analytic philosophy of art that uses Wittgenstein to develop a radical anti-essentialism may be found in: Moritz Weitz, “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15, 1 (1956), 27–25. 3 An example of an approach that opposes all of the anti-essentialist tendencies in philosophy of art is: Harold Osborne, “Definition and Evaluation in Aesthetics,” Philosophical Quarterly 23 (1973), 15–27. 4 In this context, see especially John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Pergigee, 2005). 2

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advocates for such an approach in a particularly well-thought-out manner. He defines art essentially in terms of artworks that represent a particular challenge to the institution, indeed to the very concept of art, such as Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades or Andy Warhol’s popart. Danto has been especially critical toward any notion of art that defines it merely through a theory of the institution, as George Dickie had suggested.5 Danto brings to the fore the aspect of art that has meaning, as opposed to a narrowly pragmatic understanding of art, and explains its societal context in such a way. This requires him to make a distinction between artworks and other kinds of objects (such as signs) that have meaning. And for just this reason, I will argue that even he is an advocate of the autonomy paradigm. Thus, by examining Menke and Danto and illuminating the underlying parallels in their seemingly very different positions, I  will seek to illustrate what I  mean by the autonomy paradigm so as to give an overview of the greater theoretical context from which my own approach will depart. I  especially want to consider certain simplifications that result out of the autonomy paradigm. These simplifications will become apparent if we consider philosophies of art in terms of two determining factors that belong to each of them: that of art’s specificity and that of its value. By determinations of the value of art, I mean those that make art comprehensible as a valuable practice. Because of the way philosophy tends to pose problems, either it defines the value of art through its specificity or it makes the definition of art irrelevant to its value. Neither of these two approaches succeeds in seeing the specific nature of art as an aspect of its value, since they both take the essence of art as independent of its value. This diagnosis should make it possible to find an approach to art that does not oversimplify. See especially George Dickie, Art and the Aesthetic: An Instiutional Analysis (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974). 5

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1.  Art as a different good: Menke If we ask what is specific to art, then one of the things that comes to mind is the special set of experiences that we have in dealing with artworks.6 These experiences seem to distinguish themselves from all other experiences in some respect. They thus seem to offer a good point of entry if we want to figure out what is special about art. Correspondingly, we can say: Art is a practice in which we have certain experiences, and artworks are the objects or events that make these specific experiences possible. If we follow this line of thought, then we can ask what is specific to aesthetic experiences in this sense. The answer might be:  In dealing with artworks, we do not simply have an experience like any other. It is far more the case that the very process of experience comes into the foreground. A plausible reason for this is that something here does not function in such a frictionless manner as in other cases. Our everyday experiences are mostly marked by a frictionless interaction with various types of objects. We have command over many routines and habits that allow us to come to terms with objects. Precisely these habits and routines are what get called into question by art. This calling into question of habitual ways of dealing with things is what would make up the specific nature of aesthetic experience. This argument might seem quite plausible. It is thus no wonder that this argument finds a very developed and convincing advocate in the philosophy of Christoph Menke. Since his monograph The Sovereignty of Art was first published in 1988, Menke has defended a position that understands aesthetic experience as leaving behind In what follows, I speak of artworks in an open sense, in which the concept of the artwork also includes aesthetic events such as performances or happenings, as well as what Umberto Eco calls “open artworks.” Cf. Umberto Eco, The Open Work, trans. Anna Cancogni (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989). 6

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the ordinary and everyday way of dealing with things. With this explanation, he takes up Adorno’s negative dialectics7 and gives it a practical turn. Where Adorno understands artworks as objects that close themselves off to communication (as he articulates under the notion of the “enigmatic quality”—Rätselhaftigkeit—of art),8 Menke understands them as objects that initiate a kind of communication marked by irritation. He describes this irritation in The Sovereignty of Art as one that occurs within the use of signs. The experiences that artworks make possible are, in Menke’s account, experiences of interacting with objects that have a meaning to us. This premise makes sense: We can very well conceive of artworks as objects that have a meaning for us. Menke goes on to say that what characterizes these objects is that we cannot reveal their meaning in a simple, straightforward manner. Artworks confront us with a material whose meaning is not accessible in a straightforward manner.9 The emergence of meaning comes to a standstill in them. Menke develops this notion of standstill through that of reading. In developing a “reading” of an artwork, we come upon aspects of the work that we cannot integrate. This entails that we constantly have to find new approaches. Recipients increasingly have the experience in dealing with artworks that they are dealing with a

In this respect, Menke departs not only from Adorno, but also from Derrida (hence the subtitle of The Sovereignty of Art: Aesthetic Experience According to Adorno and Derrida). The appeal to Derrida is a bit paradoxical, because he subjects the autonomy paradigm to a fundamental critique (see especially Jacques Derrida, “Parergon,” in: Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1987). This makes him a poor representative of the aesthetic autonomy position. I  will not go into more depth on Derrida’s analysis, because they take a different path from the one I consider fruitful, although I am of the view that my thoughts overlap with his on some points. 8 Cf. Thedor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 118–120. 9 See Christoph Menke, The Sovereignty of Art, trans. Neil Solomon (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), 29–45. 7

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material whose meaning they cannot reveal. We are dealing, he argues, with the experience of a sign usage that does not function: Artworks suspend the automatic transition from sign to meaning,10 and in doing so, they leave space for a special experience that Menke calls “de-automatization.”11 As a special kind of sign, artworks interrupt the way in which we automatically interact with signs in our everyday life, and they reveal the conditions under which the use of signs normally stands. In later works, Menke elaborated on this approach from The Sovereignty of Art. In his study Force, he implicitly admits that we cannot fully explain the value of the aesthetic by taking it as a practice that reveals the conditions of how we ordinarily use signs. It is not at all clear what it means for the ordinary sign usage to have such an experience,12 and this means that it is necessary to elaborate on the specific provocation that is entailed by this experience. Menke provides such an elaboration by specifying that the value that accrues to aesthetic practice by suspending ordinary sign usage consists in the fact that it is an expression of force (Kraft). He argues that aesthetic practice is characterized by a particular kind of liveliness, that it is a particularly lively mode of action to attend to artworks and aesthetic events. And for this mode of action, he writes the following: “Human action, as living action, is not the realization of a purpose but the expression of force.”13 Menke understands the force that he has in mind here, with reference to Nietzsche and Herder, as the basis of

10 I will not go into more depth here on the thesis that the ordinary use of signs happens in an automatic way (through routines and signs), but do want to note in passing that there is a problem in Menke’s position: It makes use of a notion of understanding giving too little credit to the openness, adaptability, and reflectivity of everyday understanding. 11 Menke, The Sovereignty of Art, 22. 12 This becomes especially clear in Christoph Menke, “Die Reflexion im Ästhetischen,” Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 46 (2001), 161–174. 13 Christoph Menke, Force: A Fundamental Concept of Aesthetic Anthroplogy, trans. Gerrit Jackson (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 90.

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life itself. When it manages to express itself, life is coming into its own in a special way, with a special vivacity that cannot be subjected to a particular end. For Menke it is thus characteristic of aesthetic practices and of the experiences gained from these practices that the purposiveness of ordinary actions gets suspended. This is how the notion of de-automatization comes into play again, as the rupture of the automatic elements of everyday life. In Force, he designates this as “not being able” (Nichtkönnen). For Menke, it is decisive for breaking out of ordinary automatization that practice not be governed, to use a theme from Adorno to explain Menke. This allows us to define aesthetic practice in yet another way:  as a kind of nongoverned practice, as a practice of not being able. Correspondingly, he writes: “Artists are able to be not able” (können das Nichtkönnen).14 Menke nevertheless claims that art initiates a different mode of practice within the domain of human practical activity. He calls this new mode “aestheticization.”15 By being aestheticized, activities that are otherwise subject to routine and habit come to be carried out in a non-habitual and nonroutine way. This makes it clear that habits and routines give us a false semblance of being able to determine ourselves and determine the world. So aestheticizing rests on nonaesthetic practices, which it nevertheless transforms by bringing the forces to the fore on which these practices rest. Thus, aestheticizing infects everyday practice with another mode, and human practice becomes split within itself. When an act of aestheticizing takes place, then we see a gulf open up between normal human practices on the one hand that are mired in habit and routine, and those on the other hand that reveal those forces in which all habits and routines show themselves to be something different from what they appear Menke, Force, 97. 15 Ibid., 49, and especially 60–61. 14

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to be. The determinateness of everyday life gets confronted with an indeterminate play of forces. This short summary has not nearly exhausted Menke’s position. However, we can recognize its basic trajectory. It represents a very-wellthought-out attempt to define the specificity of aesthetic practice in and through the form of autonomy that realizes itself in this practice. This practice is autonomous as a practice of “not being able,” as a practice of indeterminacy, or to put it structurally, as a practice of rupture (in the sense of a transformation—Menke also speaks constantly of a “regression”16). He interprets this practical rupture as the basis of what makes aesthetic experiences special, and he also uses this to determine the value of art. In Force, he speaks of a special form of the good that gets realized in art: life in its liveliness. This good does not allow itself to be integrated into the goods of purpose-oriented action, but instead is supposed to serve as its basis. Purposiveness in human actions is only possible when human life is not completely determined from without, when there is a certain basic indeterminacy. To put it another way: All human abilities rest on a certain “not being able.” It is just this “not being able” that gets reinvigorated by aesthetic practices, and the aesthetic is thus revealed as a motor for new kinds of practice. On the basis of all of this, we can say that Menke has two theoretical moves: First, he designates the specificity of art in terms of its autonomy. Then he introduces the idea that art has a special value in relation to other human practice. Before I transition to a critical account of this approach, I want to draw out these two basic moves and their underlying theses: Menke’s Specificity Thesis: Art brings about a rupture with everyday practices by initiating a practice of “not being able.” This practice

16 Menke, Force, 52.

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is autonomous, in distinction to those that take place in habits and routines. Menke’s Value Thesis: The practice of “not being able” has the value in the context of human practices of revealing the basis of human actions: art reinvigorates the indeterminacy in which all human practice is grounded. The central problem with this position that starts out so plausibly is that Menke cannot really explain this notion of value as an actual value. What relevance does it have for everyday human practices to be aesthetically interrupted? If the liveliness that is at the basis of practical life is essentially given, then why does this liveliness have to be reinvigorated? If I  understand Menke correctly, his answer is: because this is how the reality of human practice can be properly known and valued. The reality is that the purposiveness of human action is founded on an indeterminate liveliness. A  dilemma arises out of this answer:  either this leads to a form of knowledge that deserves to be called such or it leads to a practice that initiates an indeterminate liveliness. A practice of indeterminate liveliness is not a form of knowledge, since knowledge is always determinate. This dilemma comes to the fore in Menke’s elaborations. He claims that the good of aesthetic practices cannot be integrated into the goods of action that has a purpose. The good is then, as he admits, split in two.17 We can also put this in another way: Knowledge itself is split in two, an everyday knowing and a completely other knowing—a knowing of the reality of human practice. Menke’s solution to this does not work, however. The good (and also knowledge) cannot be split in two, for we cannot speak of a good beyond what Menke calls action that is oriented toward a purpose. He writes: “It is a rift within the good that cannot be rewoven (aufgehoben) into a unity of any kind” (Menke, Force, 97). 17

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We can only find meaning in the concept of the good by relating it to the orientation of human actions. But if we see aesthetic practices as defined by their rupture with other modes of activity, then it is not clear how we can see them as a form of the good. We might be able to see them in this way if we could integrate this rupture into the human practice of routines and habits. But in such a case, it would no longer be a rupture, since we would then have to think of habits and routines as no longer being completely automatic. And with this, the polarity would dissolve between what is automatic and what is de-automatized, between being able and not being able. However, this polarity stands at the very center of Menke’s concept of art. So the only remaining path would be to fully register this dichotomy, which is just what Menke does. We can apply this thought to aesthetic experience more generally. It is characteristic of these theories to want to bring two theses under the same hat: On the one hand, the thesis that aesthetic experiences are different from other experiences, with the main difference being that the former are “autonomous” compared to the latter. On the other hand, these experiences are supposed to have a special value, to actualize a special kind of good. This attributes special value to autonomy within experience. In Menke’s study Force, we find these two theses formulated in such a way that we cannot reconcile them. If aesthetic experiences are essentially autonomous, then we can no longer conceive of them as experiences that realize a special good. For something to realize any good, it has to make a contribution to the rest of human practice. It cannot be taken as autonomous in nature. The notion of autonomy would imply that the good has no place in the realm of the aesthetic. But that would mean that theories of aesthetic experience that are based on the notion of autonomy do not succeed at making clear the contribution that art makes to human practice. To formulate it in Menke’s vocabulary: If artists are able to

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be not able, then it means that they do not make any contribution to human practice. Art would then be nothing but the epitome of not making any contribution. It is crucial to remember that this point does not bring our discussion of the concept of aesthetic experience to a close. Menke makes one thing clear: that aesthetic experiences are special because, within them, subjects are not capable in the same way that they are in everyday practices. And the concept of aesthetic experience articulates this. The process of dealing with artworks takes place in a different manner from the process of dealing with other objects in the world, which we mostly deal with in a more or less controlled way. Works of art do not allow us to “control” them in the same respect. To put it another way: Subjects deal with artworks in a specific way and have special experiences, which we call aesthetic experiences. What characterizes these experiences is that they change the subject. This is an essential aspect of aesthetic experience, which I will later revisit, along with the whole notion of aesthetic experience, in the fourth chapter. Now one might insist that Menke is seeking to explain the relevance of aesthetic experience precisely through his notion of the force that expresses itself in such experiences. According to his account, aesthetic experiences demonstrate that force is at the basis of all goaloriented practices. In and through such experiences, subjects come to realize that as they are pursuing their goals, their practices are nothing other than “a play of obscure forces,” as Menke puts it.18 Subjects that are experienced in an aesthetic manner thus gain a new relation to the practice in which they are involved; they break free from a false understanding of this practice, and thus from a false understanding of their own selves. Is that not relevant enough? Do the problems that Compare Menke, Force, 62. 18

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I diagnosed still persist? They would disappear if the explanation that I  just sketched were comprehensible. But it is not. In my view, we cannot speak here of a new relation to self or of liberation from a false understanding of self. If everything is indeed essentially a “play of forces,”19 then this play cannot simply lead to an alteration in just any kind of relation to self; for within this play, there cannot be talk of any relation to self at all. To translate it into the vocabulary we have used so far: It would be valuable (a good) to attain an insight into the false relation to self, since that would be something rewarding to obtain. But there can only be such a ‘good’ within the relation to self. There can only be things worth obtaining for someone who has a relation to self. If such a self-relation is supposed to be rooted in a “play of obscure forces,” then we would have need of a “different good,” and this leads to a dichotomy within the good, which is incomprehensible. It remains the same: If we understand art as a play of forces, then we cannot fully make sense of what makes it relevant. There are two consequences that follow from this insight that explaining the autonomy of art through concepts of aesthetic experience cannot provide a sufficient account of its relevance, both of which I  would like to articulate in a manner that points beyond Menke. In order to do so, I  will have to make use of elements of the definition of art that I  have not yet mentioned or defended. In formulating the first such consequence, I will appeal to a point that has great significance for understanding art: the multitude of artworks and of different kinds of art. We have to understand art as a multifarious practice, for reasons that I will mention later in the chapter and will intensively defend in the fourth chapter. But this is just what gets lost if we explain the autonomy of art through notions of aesthetic 19 See also ibid., 65. Menke speaks continually in the singular of a “play of force” or “play of obscure force.”

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experience. If artistic activity is an expression of force, then this must apply equally for all artistic practices. A poem would be equivalent to a symphony, which would be equivalent to a “happening.” More pointedly, there would be no difference in the aesthetic meaning of a practice, regardless of whether it is a poem, a symphony, or an impromptu event. But this does not seem very insightful, for, on the contrary, it makes a substantial difference whether we are confronted with a poem, a symphony, or an impromptu event. But this kind of difference gets leveled over by a philosophy of art that takes art as a rupture with other practices. On this point, we feel the insufficiency of a philosophy of art that explains the value of art through its indeterminacy, for it leads to a failure to do justice to the determinacy of aesthetic practices in an adequate manner. To put it bluntly: This is the price paid for an unbalanced emphasis on aesthetic autonomy. This is a high price, which becomes apparent in the fact that we only need a single artwork in order for the play of obscure forces to express itself. More than one artwork, or one type of art, would hardly be needed in order to exhaust the full measure of what art could accomplish. Menke does offer arguments that could put to rest the critique that I  just formulated. He makes clear that the “play of obscure forces” can take various forms. Different forms of “not being able” emerge, depending on which kind of everyday practice gets reflected into its aesthetic form. Each historical epoch and each sociocultural situation demands different methods for bringing the indeterminate basis of all praxis to the fore. On the basis of what Menke writes in The Sovereignty of Art, one can say that artworks bring forth different materials in a variety of ways. In a poem, it is words, connections of words or verbalized sounds; with a symphony, it is tones, connections between tones, thematic arches, and so forth. The suspension of automatic sign usage happens in a variety of ways, depending on the kind of sign being interrupted. This may be true. But is it pertinent in an aesthetic

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sense? On the basis of Menke’s explanations, I do not believe that it is. What is aesthetically pertinent is the fact that there is a suspension of the automatic use of signs at all, that there is an “ability not to be able” at all. The exact makeup of the concrete circumstances that lead to the “obscure play of forces” ends up being impertinent. For this reason, it remains the case that Menke’s position does not allow us to understand the multitude of the arts as a genuine feature of art. A second consequence of this position is also noteworthy, since it shows how insisting on the notion of aesthetic experience ends up repressing an important aspect of our dealings with art:  the interpretation of artworks. When we confront ourselves with a poem, we are not simply tracing various connections between its elements. It does not simply lead to processes of “failed” reading, but we also ask ourselves what the poem is about. We then say things like: “This poem succeeds because of its dark metaphors and its abrupt rhythm.” We interpret the poem, and this interpretation plays an essential role—at least as much of a role as what Menke calls the “processes of reading.” What is interpretation all about? By interpreting something, we seek to lend it a sense. For example, we interpret a poem as aesthetically successful in a certain respect. Or we attribute a certain theme to it. But something can only have a certain sense if we can understand it to realize a goal or purpose, to follow Menke’s terms. We might not usually speak of it in this way, but if we are to move within the horizon created by Menke, then every event that has a “sense” falls on the side of realizing a purpose. An event that has a sense does not belong to the expression of force. But Menke wants us to understand art as just such an expression, and this leads him to not assigning adequate place to interpretations in his explanation of art. They either end up being understood as a behavior that is completely extrinsic to art (which they are not) or they end up being refigured into some aspect of the expression of force: Interpretations then have the sole

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function of aiding in the realization of expression. According to this understanding, interpretations do not lead to attributing any sense to the work, but simply indicate that an aesthetic experience has come to pass. I summarize that Menke’s philosophy of art emphasizes the specificity of art in a manner that is one-sided. For this reason, it cannot do full justice to the value that art has in the context of human actions. This consequence results from the fact that art is abbreviated into a single mode of experience: into a certain, determinate experience that subjects have in dealing with artworks or aesthetic events. This leads to conceiving of aesthetic experience as defined by a suspension of sense, such that aesthetic experiences do not allow themselves to be embedded into the stream of non-aesthetic experiences. This is the manner in which they are taken as autonomous. But the price for explaining the specificity of aesthetic experiences in this way is high:  The concrete variety and the meaningfulness of art remain outside the door. Hence, in this theory, all of the concrete formations, developments, and conflicts that make up the practice of art do not end up playing any role.

2.  Works of art as meaningful objects: Danto In order to answer the question as to what art specifically is, we might also take up the set of practical contexts in which art stands. These practical contexts are made up of a variety of things like museums, concert halls, artists, art critics, and other things. The answer to this question might then be:  Art is everything that arises out of these practical contexts and is thus defined as art. This may seem like an exaggeration, since one could raise the question: Does referring to the

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practical context suffice in order to define what art is? We begin from the premise that aesthetic objects and events do not get their aesthetic value simply from their context, but that we attribute this value to them. It is far more the case that they confront us with this value. It is thus necessary to modify our explanation of the practical context of art. The specificity of art depends not so much on the evaluations of critics, curators, and art administrators. Instead, we have to understand it in relation to the objects and the demands that are raised by them. This leads us to the following definition of art: Art is everything that defines itself to be art. In a somewhat existential turn of phrase, we could say: Art is everything that struggles to understand itself as art. Artworks are objects that do not simply have a certain function as art, but that want to be understood as art. The specificity of art as an institution would have to be explained through recourse to all of those objects that want to be understood as art. Beyond any doubt, all of these objects stand in what we call practical contexts. But they are not simply explained by such situations, independently of the qualities that they possess. Instead, these practical contexts are constituted in such a way that the objects that belong to them or emerge from them bring forth and defend their own self-conception of what it means to be art. This approach is also not lacking in a certain plausibility, and it leads to a family of theories that we could characterize as theories of interpretation. These theories have something in common with approaches to aesthetic autonomy, such as Menke’s, in that they take artworks as objects that have a meaning in a certain way. But the difference with these theories of interpretation is that they do not understand art’s meaningfulness to be indeterminate, as Menke does, but instead they take it as determinate and definite. And these determinate meanings envisaged by the theory of interpretation are not simply inscribed in the artworks in such a way that they can

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immediately be grasped. We can only speak of what an artwork means by examining the processes that unfold this meaning. It is through interpretation that we unfold these meanings. Arthur Danto develops such a theory on the interpretation of art in an especially insightful and influential way, and accomplishes this through a critical confrontation with the so-called institutional theory of George Dickey.20 Dickey emphasizes the objective features that make something art without paying any attention to the moment of reception, and this is what leads Danto to an approach that is essentially hermeneutical, one that takes art as inseparably bound with its interpretation. Danto also seeks to give us an understanding of the practical context in which the artworks come into being (even if this is not his primary concern), but he thinks of this context not in relation to institutions, but rather in relation to interpretations, and indeed in such a way that results in an understanding of art as art that is based on this set of practices. This approach involves giving up the way in which the institutional theory takes art as sufficient unto itself, a self-sufficiency that manifests itself in the fact that for this institutional theory the definition of artworks as art is always already taken for granted as ensured:  Art is simply whatever is defined as art by the respective institution. Danto takes leave of these aesthetically autonomous features of the institutional theory by posing the questions:  How does one identify works of art as works of art? In response to this question, he presents an argument that we could characterize as the argument of undifferentiability, and develops the thesis that works of art cannot be identified as such on the basis of their material properties. The specificity of art could only be defined on the basis of its material properties if artworks could be differentiated from non-artworks See especially George Dickey, Art and the Aesthetic:  An Institutional Analysis (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974). 20

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on the basis of certain properties that distinguish them. But there are things that count as artworks despite the fact that we cannot distinguish them from other objects, as demonstrated by Marcel Duchamp’s “ready-mades.” In order to get a handle on these difficulties, Danto makes a suggestion:  Artworks are things that thematize something. In contrast to many other objects, they are always about something, deal with something. And their meaning would consist precisely in this. Danto characterizes this meaning as “aboutness,” and he attributes to artworks the property of being about something or dealing with something. For example, there are artworks about unrequited love or about human frailty. They thematize various aspects of the historical-cultural practice in which humans stand, as Danto puts it in a Hegelian manner. The meaning of an artwork can only be understood against the background of such a practice of thematization. But in Danto’s view, this kind of meaning is not apparent in a completely unobstructed manner (with Menke we might say: in the manner of everyday signs), but instead has to be drawn out through interpretations.21 Interpretations would serve to reveal what is relevant about artworks for their meaning, and in doing so, they make use of the set of elements found in the work:  the title, the given motifs, structures, and much more. As Danto emphasizes, the difference between what is a part of the artwork and the context in which it stands already belongs to the act of interpretation. Does the room in which an artwork is placed belong to it? Questions like this one present themselves out of 21 “What these considerations show is that there is an internal connection between the status of the artwork and language with which the artworks are identified as such, in as much as nothing is an artwork without an interpretation that constitutes it as such.” Arthur C. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 1983), 135.

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necessity when we begin to think about what an artwork is about.22 Danto thus takes the “reading” of artworks, that is, the process of placing together the elements that are offered, in a different way from that of Menke: The process of occupying oneself intensively with the work of art leads to drawing out its meaning in a series of phases, which reveal what it is “about.” By focusing on the meaning of artworks and the relevance of interpretation, Danto creates a clear interconnection between art and other practices. What artworks are about, or what they deal with, is clearly an element in their historical and cultural practice. As artworks are essentially always about something, it is also true that artworks are constitutively bound up with a historical and cultural practice. This might sound like an antithesis to what I  called the autonomy paradigm, but this impression only proves to be true for one aspect of Danto’s position. There is however another aspect that we can approach with the question:  Why do we have to occupy ourselves with artworks in order to gain access to their meaning? Why does it not suffice to articulate this meaning with some set of signs? It is one thing to say that artworks are always bound up with a meaning that has to be drawn out through interpretations. However, it is another thing to consider why this meaning needs to be presented in and through art (and not for example in a newspaper, or in the form of discursive advice). These considerations lead to the other aspect of Danto’s position. He claims that artworks present meanings in a specific, distinctive way. They thematize themselves by having a definite meaning. This thematization can have a wide variety of aspects:  Artworks can Danto already advocated the thesis in his pioneering essay from 1964 “The Art World” that the interpretation of something as art is essential to art. He says in this: “The role of art theory has always been to make the world of art and art possible.” Danto, “The Art World,” Journal of Philosophy 61, 19 (1964), 571–584. 22

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thematize themselves through a title, through various recurring motifs, through repetition, and in many other ways. Artworks are not just about something, but also always relate to themselves as they present their meaning. They are not only objects that have a meaning, but also objects that offer a way of seeing, and Danto explains what he means by such a way of seeing through the notion of style. Artworks always present that which they thematize through a definite style.23 The way of seeing presented by artworks is not just any way of seeing. It is a matter of an aesthetic way of seeing, which is characterized by the fact that it develops its own definite selfcomprehension. It seems suitable here to speak of the selfinterpretation of art. Through title, through an explicit poetics or commentary, artworks interpret themselves in relation to how they realize art. These self-interpretations are, as demonstrated, a requisite element for all interpretations of art. If we take them in this way, then artworks are objects that are directed toward an understanding of what art is. Whatever else they may deal with, artworks are always also occupied with their own status as art. According to Danto, this element especially comes to the fore in modern art, which to a heightened degree approximates “the knowledge of what art is.”24 Modern art is thus an expression of a tendency that has always been definitive of art: the tendency of artworks to ensure their status as art through the fact that they understand themselves and thus relate to their definition as art. As I  did with Menke’s theory, I  will summarize Danto’s position with two theses:

Compare Arthur C. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), Ch. 7. 24 Arthur C. Danto, “The End of Art,” History and Theory 37, 4 (1998), 127–143. 23

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Danto’s Value Thesis: The value of artworks within human practice consists in the fact they are about something in human practice. Danto’s Specificity Thesis: The specificity of artworks consists in the fact that they confront us with a definite artistic way of seeing. The value thesis determines the relevance of art within human practice. It is precisely through his critique of the institutional theory that he calls to mind this relevance. He makes clear that the definition of art has to be founded on this relevance. For this reason, the value thesis comes first. But since the fact that it is about something does not yet fully distinguish art from other things that are about something, Danto has to go on to define what is specific about art. This is accomplished by the second thesis, which states that artworks present a definite artistic self-comprehension. We can understand the combination of both theses in the following manner:  the value thesis creates a constitutive relation between art and other human practice, but in such a narrow way that art simply threatens to blend into other practices. Then artworks would simply be signs like any other. This is counterintuitive, and it leads to the second thesis, which seeks to guard the distinctive status of art by establishing art’s element of autonomy. What is autonomous in art is the presentation of artistic ways of seeing, and of the way that art selfcomprehends itself as art. To put it more sharply: what is autonomous about art is its self-relational struggle to be art. This means that Danto understands the specificity of art in terms of an aesthetics of autonomy. This leads to the consequence that this specificity thesis does not add anything to understanding the value of art for human practice. The specific status of art is like a quality that gets tacked on to its value. Works of art are objects that are about something, that

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have a meaning, and this is what makes them valuable. But in order to be about something, they do not necessarily need a distinctively artistic way of seeing. To have an artistic way of seeing is thus not bound up with Danto’s explication of art’s value. Thus, in Danto’s account, a problem returns that we have already seen: In an aesthetics of autonomy, we do not recognize the value of art as art. In Menke’s case, the problem results from the way that he understands aesthetic experience as defined by a rupture with other practices. This is clearly not what Danto thinks. The problem in his case is rather that he gives us to understand value as the value of meaningful objects in general, and not as the value of objects that have the status of art. This comes from the fact that he does not take the specificity of art as an aspect of its value. At this point, if not sooner, the following objection makes its presence felt:  Aren’t both of these aspects that I  have distinguished in Danto’s theory bound up with each other? Does he not say that artworks are about something in an artistic way, and that it is precisely through this that they make a contribution to human practice? Is not the thesis that artworks embody certain historical and cultural meanings decisive in this respect?25 It is beyond any doubt true that Danto claims there is a connection between artistic practice and the rest of human practice with his conceptions of “being about something” and of embodied meaning. We can explain this connection by saying that artworks are always historically embedded in the specific way that they come about and appear in the world. They present meanings that are historically and culturally determined in a specific way. But

In later works, Danto added in the notion of “embodied meanings” to explain his understanding of art, but did not give it especially clear contours. Compare Danto, “Embodied Meanings, Isotypes and Aesthetic Ideas,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65 (2007), 121–129. 25

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he does not integrate his thesis on the specificity of art into this relationship. He does not answer the question as to what contribution the embodiment of meaning makes to any historical and cultural practice, but only what the presentation of meaning accomplishes. This approach does succeed at making artworks comprehensible as historical documents,26 but it obscures the way in which artworks, in terms of their very nature as such, relate in a vital way to the rest of human practice. It is true that Danto refers in this respect to his analysis of art as a self-relational occurrence, but this does not serve to explain the questionable point, but only to what degree art is in its self-relationality an autonomous occurrence.27 And so his position oscillates between the two aspects that I  distinguished:  If we are concerned about the relation of art with human practices, then the status of artworks as art remains unclear. Artworks show themselves in this respect to be documents of historical and cultural practice. On the other hand, if it is a matter of defining the status of art as art, then the connection with human practice falls out of view. On this side, artworks show themselves to be embodiments of definite artistic ways of seeing. We could summarize this oscillation in the following manner: The special, self-relational way in which art takes place remains external to the human practice that Danto has in mind. Artworks are defined as art regardless of how they are connected with human practice (as we see especially in the already mentioned works of modern art). It is in this sense that Danto’s position belongs to the autonomy paradigm. As with Menke, the limitations that this paradigm entails for Danto become clear in the way that he does not manage to comprehend the

On this point, compare Daniel M. Feige, Kunst als Selbstverständigung (Münster: Mentis, 2012), 130–133. 27 See Danto, “The Art World,” Journal of Philosophy 61, 19 (1964), 571–584. 26

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multitude of different arts as a genuine aspect of the nature of art. Danto’s effort in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace to analyze the visual arts is indicative of this.28 He would only undertake such an elaboration outside of his original theory if it were the case that the multitude of different arts is not already inherently an aspect of the very concept of art. It is clear that the concept of art can be explained independently of this multitude, but as soon as this has happened, it just remains to be shown that this theory of art can apply to all arts equally.29 This does at least allow us to understand that a developed notion of art is compatible with a multitude of arts, but it is not itself a multitude. The context of practice in which artworks are constituted could be limited to a single art.30 It is certainly the case that Danto can elegantly employ his notion of a context of practice for art in a general way so as to explain the differences between the arts. Of course, he can still claim that artworks always offer a specific reflection of art. They do not simply understand themselves to be art in general, but to be a specific realization of art. The interpretive context in which Danto sees art confined explains its varying realizations as lyrical poetry, sculpture, music, and the like. From this it does not necessarily follow, however, that he makes the multitude of arts comprehensible as a multitude that is essential to art. Indeed, he does not. So as a result of his tendencies toward an aesthetics of autonomy, he does not really give enough credit to the multitude of the arts. I would also briefly like to suggest a second consequence that emerges from Danto’s position. The way he conceives of art as an autonomous practice also becomes apparent in another way that 28 See especially Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, Ch. 6. 29 Danto gives us room to doubt whether his considerations can do a good job defining music, but these doubts are not decisive at this point. 30 In contrast to Menke, Danto can at least rule out that his notion be exhausted in a single artwork, because he argues that artworks have different meanings.

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he fails to grasp the concreteness of art. The following scenario is a point of departure for his analysis:  We see two objects that are exactly the same in a physical sense, and yet we manage to say that in one case we are dealing with an artwork and in another we are not. According to Danto, this is something that needs to be explained. He gives this explanation by conceiving of interpretation as something that is not directly rooted in the physicality of the artwork (even though he does not deny that interpretation can constantly reference the materiality of the artwork). An interpretation is something that occurs extrinsically to the physical object that is called an artwork. As he puts it:  “Interpretation consists in determining the relation between an artwork and its material counterpart.”31 He writes here that interpretation places the material counterpart of an artwork into a definite relationship with that which the artwork really is. In other words, interpretation determines how we understand the material object as art, and it bases itself on the way the artwork gives itself a theme through its manner of presentation. But this means that the sensible materiality of artworks, to the extent that it is relevant to a specific artwork, does not function directly as the basis of interpretation. The concept of embodied meaning does not help us advance further, since Danto does not explain how embodiment guides interpretation. Hence, it seems that Danto’s argument on indiscernibility puts him in a position where he cannot fully explain the relevance of embodiment to art. In summary, Danto’s theory tends toward an aesthetics of autonomy because his explanation of the meaning of artworks functions in such a way that it does not comprehend the specificity of art. Then in a second step, he proceeds to clarify the specificity of art through the self-referential quality of art. But this move confines art as art solely 31 Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, 113.

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to this quality. As Danto understands it, the way we understand or theorize art does not have any contact with other elements of human practice. And this separation leads to the simplifications that I noted.

3.  The autonomy paradigm and its simplifications After discussing these two exemplary aesthetic theories, the first of which defines art as a kind of suspension and the second as interpretation, it will be worth considering to what extent a common paradigm crystalizes out of them. We can say that both positions consider the specific nature of art in a manner that isolates it. And this isolation has a definite sense in each case:  The nature of art gets defined in isolation from its value. Through these two cases we can infer that this separation can happen in at least two different ways: either we define the isolated status of art in order to derive its value from this isolation (as Menke does) or we indicate the status of art in an isolating way because we have already determined its value in a way that does not give it any specific definition (as Danto does). But the guiding idea behind this is: artworks, aesthetic experiences, aesthetic practices, or whatever is meant to have an aesthetic status are different from objects, experiences, or practices in general that do not have this quality. Artworks, experiences, and practices are whatever allow themselves to be distinguished from other things. Danto articulates this when he says that artworks always allow an aesthetic way of seeing. This means that artworks exclude themselves from other things, are different from other things, in that they obey a demand that other objects do not. This is the fundamental tendency of the autonomy paradigm. At some point, positions that belong to this paradigm deliver a

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definition of art that differentiates it from other things, and in doing so, it is not decisive to the structure of their argument whether we speak of art in terms of objects, experiences, practices, signs, practices, or something else. Some of Heidegger’s considerations will allow us to analyze this structure more precisely.32 At the start of his essay “The Origin of the Work of Art”, Heidegger sets out on a remarkable path. He bases his account on the fact that it is almost impossible to avoid the question of what is artistic about art. Heidegger himself does not ask this question, but instead thinks about its implications. It implies that the “artistic” is what defines art. Or, the artistic is thought as that which distinguishes art from other things. But Heidegger goes on to show that this way of thinking is based on the model of the “object with properties”: One seeks after a property that distinguishes a certain type of object from other types of objects.33 Heidegger asks here how the concept of object that is central to this model is to be understood. He develops at length three interpretations from the history of Western thought, before finally getting to the thesis that in the makeup of the world, it is not the objects that are primary, but the connections that exist between objects.34 This leads Heidegger to formulate his notion of the artwork as being not primarily an object; however, treating his notion further would lead us far afield from the goal that I aimed at through my reference to Heidegger. This goal is to bring into I consider Heidegger to be the first philosopher of art to attempt to grasp the structure of the autonomy paradigm and subject it to a critique. See Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in: Basic Writings, trans. David Ferrell Krell (New York: Harper, 2008), 139–212. 33 Heidegger formulates the corresponding hypothesis in the following way:  “It almost seems as if the thingliness of the artwork is like the substrate over which something else, its actual nature, is built.” Heidegger, “Origin of the Work of Art,” Basic Writings, 150. 34 Heidegger’s notion that the object is constituted by its context falls under the rubric of “tool being.” See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stanbaugh (Albany: SUNY Press, 2010), §15 and 18. 32

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play the thesis that the autonomy paradigm depends on an objectoriented notion of art, from which we have to take leave.35 We can distill Heidegger’s approach to the following:  It is about critiquing the problematic assumption that is often at work in a tacit way in the definition of art, critiquing the already mentioned idea that art can be defined in terms of its objectivity. Art gets conceived of in terms of its objectivity whenever one tries to define it by examining specific differences between art and other entities of the same category. This implies that the key difference resides in the entity in question. This difference from other things gets understood as something that the entity possesses in its own right. It belongs among art’s properties to distinguish itself from other things. The conception of art in objective terms is bound up with another assumption: It assumes a series of practices in which the distinction of something as something can be undertaken. An example of such a practice would be that of selecting furniture for residential spaces. We distinguish pieces of furniture as objects that are suitable for certain functions. A table is suitable for having a plate placed on it, or a piece of paper placed on it for writing. In both of these respects, it differs from a chair. We come upon both of these distinctions in the framework of a practice in which distinguishable objects stand in continual relation to each other. All of the objects that stand in the framework of a continuous practice find themselves to some extent on the same plane. For this reason, the differences between them are not qualitative by nature. They are simply structural, like the difference between a table and a chair. The objects take a different place within the continuum of 35 The critique of an object-oriented notion of art can also find support in Michael Fried’s work on modern and postmodern plastic arts, as well as Lydia Goehrs work on Western cart music: see Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood,” Artforum 5 (1967), 12–23; Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

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practice based on their structures. This assumption obviously applies in the case of furniture. Heidegger means to show, however, that this assumption can also come into play when we are not talking about objects at all. This is true in a variety of cases, including philosophical explanations of art. We see this clearly in the two positions that I earlier took to be exemplary of philosophy of art. Let us consider once again Christoph Menke’s conception of art, in which the concept of object (unlike in Danto) hardly makes a prominent appearance. In The Sovereignty of Art, for example, Menke defines art with reference to the kinds of experience that users of signs have. According to his schema, we have experiences that are either automatic or de-automatic in the way that we make use of signs. He takes experiences in a quasi-objective way as the basis for distinguishing what art is. The first assumption to be noted here is that we can speak of experience in a continuous way; and the second is that differences within this continuum are what constitute the particular quality of these respective experiences. Danto also ends up thinking in a way that allows us to distinguish the artwork from other objects, namely, artworks are objects that are about something or deal with something. He claims that some objects understand themselves as art, that is, make the claim to be art, while others do not. In the broadest sense, we can think of this as the difference between signs that demonstrate an artistic way of seeing and signs that do not entail any such way of seeing. Both positions under consideration hold on in different ways to the belief that art can be defined on the basis of distinctions that it manifests within the context of a continuous practice. This leads to the fact that art’s distinctive nature gets grasped through its own internal lawfulness. To put it as a paradox: In the context of a continuum of practices, art shows itself to be something that stands within this continuum and yet also falls outside of it. Art shows itself to be something that is completely other within the continuum in

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which it is defined. It shows itself to be a “not being able” among being able or to be bound up with an understanding of itself as art within the context of many other objects that do not understand themselves in this way. What is proper to art gets defined by isolating it against the background of a continuum. In this respect, positions that belong to the autonomy paradigm do not give primary importance to the contribution that art makes within human practice. Instead, they ask primarily for distinguishing criteria. We can avoid the oversimplifications that result out of this paradigm, which we have discussed at length, if we follow Heidegger in leaving behind the notion that art is part of a continuous practice. In his conception, it is not. Art makes a specific kind of contribution to a practice, to which it belongs as a result of this contribution. For Heidegger what is decisive is not to ask about the distinguishing aspects that belong to art, but instead about the specific contribution that it makes. Such a functional definition of art first allows us to grasp what art is. This approach offers another possibility to define what art is, and hopefully to make art comprehensible as the concrete occurrence that it is. We are dealing here with an occurrence in which a variety of arts, disparate realizations of sense, and definite material realizations that are more or less sensible converge.

4.  On the way to an unabbreviated concept of art: Art in the context of the human form of life What is to be done now? How do we arrive at a concept of art that does not fall back into the autonomy paradigm? And how can we answer Heidegger’s question about the contribution of art to the

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rest of human practice? There are two lessons to be drawn out of the discussion henceforth: (a) It is not the question about the specificity of art, but the question of what interconnection exists between art and other human practices that has to stand at the start of all aesthetic considerations. (b) We need to define in a concrete way the practices that recipients carry out in dealing with artworks. On the basis of these practices, it will become clear what the contribution of art to other human practices must be. As for point (a), we have seen that both Menke and Danto do raise the demand to define the relation between art and other human practices. Menke writes of “another good” that is realized in art. In doing so, he puts art into a context that is, broadly speaking, metaphysical, not unlike Adorno: It is about a special being (in this case, the being of the living), about an indeterminacy that lies at the basis of all human practice. We come to experience this being through art. Danto on the other hand treats artworks as embodiments of ways of seeing something meaningful in the framework of a form of life, and thus puts art, much like Hegel, into a historical and cultural context. I have shown how both positions can only succeed in an abstract sense at revealing the interconnection of art with other human practices. In Menke’s position, this leads him to posit this relationship between art and other practices incorrectly in such a way that art is beyond all human practice, into a metaphysics of life:  He attributes to art the ability to make metaphysical experience possible.36 Danto on the other In this, Menke stands in the tradition of Benjamin and Adorno, but also appeals to philosophical Romanticism and Nietzsche. For Benjamin’s concept of metaphysical experience, see: Walter Benjamin, “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy,” in: Selected Writings, Vol. 1, ed. Marcus Bulock and Michael Jennings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 100–110. “Über das Programm der kommenden Philsophie,” in:  Gesammelte Schriften II/1, Frankfurt am Main, 1980, 157–171; and for that of Adorno:  Theodor W. Adorno, “Meditations on Metaphysics,” in: Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (London: Continuum, 2004), 361–408. 36

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hand explains artworks in their relationship to human practice to be historical and cultural artifacts. The specific status of artworks as art thus gets lost in the very moment at which the connection to human practice is emphasized. But we will avoid these oversimplifications and abstractions if we can succeed at connecting the value of art and the specificity of art with each other, and if we can explain the interconnection of art and other human practice in such a way that we also simultaneously conceptualize the contribution of art within the framework of human practice. It has already become apparent how this can work. First it seems crucial to develop a feel for the one-sidedness of certain aspects of aesthetic theory. For example, there is a certain one-sidedness that resides in the notion of a self-relational practice, that is, a practice of interpretative occupation with the way certain objects understand themselves as art. A less one-sided and hence more adequate approach might go as follows: Art is a practice of interpretive occupation with the way certain objects understand themselves to be art, in which this self-understanding concerns the relation of these objects to other practices. A somewhat similar one-sidedness may be found in Menke’s position. According to him, art brings about an interruption among other practices. He insists on this in a striking manner with his formula of “being able not to be able.” Here too, a less one-sided, and hence more adequate version would easily be possible: Art manages to interrupt other practices, but within the framework of these other practices. Art is an ability not to be able that relates to other abilities. Now one might object that this is just what Menke claims. His concept of aestheticization is meant to establish a connection between the aesthetic “not being able” and everyday “being able.” But Menke to some degree maintains two different levels in his model, in that the aesthetic “not being able” remains on one side, and accomplishes the act of aestheticization from that side. The connection with everyday

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“being able” does not make its way into his treatment of aesthetic “not being able.” But this is exactly what would need to be accomplished. It is certainly the case that these formulations of mine are far too schematic here, and yet they make clear that it would be possible to make corrections that could serve to establish a connection between art and the rest of human practice. As for (b), this second lesson can be justified in the following way: It has become clear that the autonomy paradigm, in its various guises, can only embrace the concrete variety of artistic media, methods of production, and practice as a contingent fact, not as an essential aspect of art. Time and again, the emphasis on the difference between art and other human practices implicitly leads to explaining the multitude of arts and artworks as a meaningless fact. We can avoid this omission in a direct way if we intentionally take up the variety of practices with which recipients confront the arts as an object in forming our aesthetic theory, and keep these practices of reception in mind from the start. Keeping this variety in mind will allow us also to recover the variety of media and methods of production that make up the arts. At this point, a serious objection emerges. Why should we claim that the variety of arts and artworks is of special relevance? Even if it is not plausible for there to be only one artwork, there could be just one art. What would be false about this? The answer is:  We could surely imagine a practice in which there is only one art. But this is not practice as we know it. Our practice is permeated by the way in which we use the concept of art to encompass a variety of artistic practices, a variety of arts. We say that we are dealing with art in the case of a dance show, just as much as in that of a poem. This is precisely what is entailed by our concept of art. In another practice, on another planet, there may only be one concept of art. But this is not our concept of art. We cannot understand what it would mean for there to be art that is

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realized in only one art form. Correspondingly, we cannot make sense of such a scenario even as a thought experiment. With this objection, something comes into play that requires an elaboration. What is this “we” that bears the comprehensibility to which I have appealed? Are we dealing here with “we Germans,” “we Europeans,” or “we humans”? This question cannot be answered, because I cannot be in the position to make general statements about the comprehension of all of these designated people. I can explain this “we” better by way of saying that it represents “we who operate with a certain view of art.” I am thus not in the position of an observer when I bring this “we” into play, but in the position of a participant. This point needs explanation as well. It is only when we know what the position of a participant means that we know what it means to refer to take recourse to the “we” and what this recourse means. I will come back to this point in the fourth chapter. There is a connection between these two lessons and reactions: If we are looking to understand the practices of recipients, then we are examining something that happens within a complex interrelation between practices. The practices of seeing, hearing, interpretive discussion, and so forth, that recipients carry out stand within the context of other practices of dealing with the world. In order to get to a concept of art that is not oversimplified, we have to examine the interrelation between practices. I introduce the notion of a form of practice for the sake of understanding this interrelation of practices. I  can formulate the point I  am looking for in another way:  It is necessary to explain art’s form of practice. Art’s form of practice is made up of the concrete practices for dealing with artworks as well as the contexts that these practices have within the human form of life.37

Trans.: We have to understand Bertram’s conception of a “form of life” not in the biological sense, but in the sense meant by Wittgenstein’s notion of a “form of life” as a practical context. See Note 66. 37

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I am now introducing a concept that is central to my thoughts and to which I want to give clear form. In the title, I speak of human practice (menschlicher Praxis), and now of a human form of life. What is meant? A human practice is one that is essentially bound to tradition. Languages, dining practices, and practices of arranging dwelling spaces for ordinary life and for special events—all of these stand within the contexts of practice that we can call tradition.38 This is also true for art. This being bound up with tradition is not to be understood as traditionalism (of the kind one often imputes to Gadamer),39 but in a structural sense. We can understand this structure very well with reference to an element from Christoph Menke:  Human practical life is indeterminate from the ground up. The human being does not have a life form that is arranged “by nature” to be a certain way. What characterizes this form of life is that we always have to determine our practices anew. The indeterminacy that characterizes human life does not however make up the basis of all of our practices—our habits and routines—rather it permeates them. There are always revisions and renegotiations involved in our practices. They are thus never defined once and for all. We have to understand this indeterminacy as the horizon of human practices. Alluding to Heidegger’s Being and Time, we can explain this in a temporal sense:  Human practices always stand in relation to an open future.40 Because of this relation, human life is constitutively irresolvable. The indeterminacy that characterizes the human form of life results out of this inherent irresolvability.

Compare Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weisenheimer (London: Continuum, 2004), 275–280; John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 1996), 126. 39 The classic version of this critique occurs in: Jürgen Habermas, “Der Universalitätsanpruch der Hermeneutik,” in: Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1982), 331–366. 40 Heidegger, Being and Time, especially §§ 41, 46. 38

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From this it follows that practices and traditions are not determinable in a final way. Instead, what we do stand within various traditions because this is the only way to realize our relation to an open future. Being open to the future requires being grounded in a practice that is passed down. This does not close off what we might do in the future, but gives us a background against which we can relate to an open future. Being embedded in tradition is a necessary counterpart to the indeterminacy of practical life. Traditions are unresolved. We are to think of them as the site at which human practice can constantly be negotiated in a new way. For this reason, we cannot separate what is determinate from what is indeterminate within the practical sphere. In practical life, there are neither practices that are fully determined in a final way nor practices that linger completely in a state of indeterminacy. The human form of life is from the ground up permeated by elements of indeterminacy. Of course, this cannot mean that humans do not do anything determinate. But we are talking here about a final determinacy. There are always certain statements and ways of acting that can be revised, can change the way that they are understood, and so forth. It is precisely in this sense that determinacy is always connected with indeterminacy in the human form of life.41 I can articulate this thesis yet again in derivative terminology: Human practice is an essentially self-determining practice. A practice is selfdetermining if it is shaped from within by moments of indeterminacy. To be human means to determine one’s own relation to such moments. This is an aspect of what it means to be self-determining. Or to put it another way, it is an aspect of human rationality. Human practice is essentially a rational practice. Rationality is not simply an invariant On this point, see Georg W. Bertram, “Anthropologie der zweiten Natur,” Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie 30 (2005), 119–137. 41

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marker of the human form of life,42 rather it is the process of constantly redetermining the coordinates of this form of life. A  practice is rational in that determinacy is brought to bear on indeterminacy. A  practice is rational that does not take any determination as the final determination, in which every determination is subject to possible revision. I  can also remove the suspicion of a problematic hermeneutical traditionalism by saying: Human practices are rational precisely to the extent that they relate to tradition; they are constituted by tradition to be open to revision and criticism. This is what makes up the human form of life. If we conceive of the human form of life as the background for defining art, then we can once again understand what gets oversimplified in the theories of Danto and Menke. The problem with both of these theories is that they take human practice as a practice that is subject to determinacy in a one-sided way. Menke introduces such a notion in order to place art in opposition to it as a practice of indeterminacy. Danto, on the other hand, understands art itself on the basis of such a concept as a practice of determinacy. Both positions make a problematic assumption in explaining the background against which they define art. Both think of human practice as essentially determinate. It is however simultaneously determinate and indeterminate. And this has to be the basis for any explanation of art. We have to understand art as a practice in which various determinations of human practice get renegotiated (I elaborate on this thesis in the fourth chapter). Art is a practice in which determinacy is constitutively bound up with indeterminacy. We can only conceptualize art in this way if we place it within the framework of the human form of life. We have to conceive of art as a Compare a corresponding naturalization of reason:  Michael Thompson, Life and Action:  Elementary Structures of Practice and Practical Thought (Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 2012). 42

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human practice, more precisely, as a specific form of practice within the framework of human practice. By a form of practice, I mean an interconnection of kinds of practice, by which one kind encompasses many different kinds that are functionally similar in a certain way, even though they might be quite different in other respects. Practices of interpretation, which are inherent to how we deal with artworks, make up one such kind of practice. We have to elucidate art’s form of practice through these various kinds of practice, for it includes those everyday practices by which people deal with artworks in the framework of human practice as a whole. To be critical of the autonomy paradigm does bring about a change of perspective, but it does not mean that we completely give up speaking of the autonomy of art in any sense. There is another challenge entailed in the task of explaining art’s form of practice that presents itself: How to speak of the autonomy of art in a way that does not oversimplify it. How can we grasp art as autonomous, without defining its specific nature in such a way as to isolate it from the rest of human practice? How can we grasp it as autonomous without thinking of it as simply different from the rest of human practices? This change of perspective in philosophy of art that I advocate here should make the practical relevance of art comprehensible. This practical relevance has often been explained through notions of critique or politics. It is in fact true that art is a critical practice. It is political. These are aspects of how it is relevant within the framework of the human form of life. How can we think of art as autonomous while keeping in mind its critical and political dimension, more generally, without losing sight of its practical relevance? It is also within the scope of my project to take up these questions. The change of perspective then means that we cannot start with the autonomy of art, but instead have to place its practical relevance at the start. We will see to which understanding of autonomy this leads.

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2 From Kant to Hegel and beyond How do we find the right approach to defining a concept of art that does not have the shortcomings mentioned in the prior chapter? Does it make sense simply to consider aesthetic practices and then to define art in a new way on their basis? To proceed in this way, we would have to operate with concepts like “art,” “artwork,” and many others that are bound up with complex meanings that cannot simply be stripped away. We could not make use of these concepts at all if we simply wanted to define them in a new way. For this reason, a new approach to considering aesthetic practices does not seem promising. What might we do instead? There are two paths that offer themselves to us. The first would consist in asking ourselves about the logical makeup of concepts in their linguistic usage; how do we use terms like “art,” “artwork,” and the like? The second path would consist in grabbing hold of concepts in the places where they have gotten coined in a way that has special meaning for how we use them: How did concepts like that of art or artwork get coined? I can summarily describe the first approach as that of analytic philosophy of language and the second as a hermeneutical one, even if such labels might be misleading, for the reason, among others, that philosophical

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projects like analytic philosophy of language or hermeneutics can be put into practice in a variety of ways. A key assumption is often made about the path of analyzing the logical grammar of our language: that in our usage there are concepts that have a constant dimension that we can subject to observation. But this assumption, I  will say here without further argumentation, is problematic. For this reason (and because of reasons that have to do with the notion of reflection that I will develop later in this chapter), I am choosing the second path. Here is a more precise version of the question I will follow: Which permutations of these concepts will give us a hint as to how or where to find a concept of art that is not oversimplified? With this question, we stand before the history of the concept of art. It is a received view with respect to this history that during the eighteenth century, a special permutation took place. This permutation is bound up with a shift in the practice of the arts that can be described as emancipation: while the arts in the ancient and medieval worlds stood predominantly within relations of authority, in the Renaissance and even more in the eighteenth century, they began to emancipate themselves from such relations. Since the beginning of the modern era, the arts have belonged to a general process of societal differentiation that other social systems have also undergone. In its entirety, this process leads to the fact that practices in general, and the arts in particular, increasingly understand themselves in terms of autonomy.1 It is important to be somewhat cautious in relishing such stories. They all too often lead to blanket interpretations that are not faithful to decisive details of positions. It is true that during the modern epoch a noteworthy shift in our understanding of art took place Compare Niklas Luhmann, Art as a Social System (Stanford:  Stanford University Press, 2000). 1

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that is normally dated to the middle of the eighteenth century, when Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten founded the philosophical discipline known as aesthetics with his conception of a form of knowledge that is specifically sensuous.2 With this, he also became founder of the modern philosophy of art, which is distinguished by the fact that it understands art as one among several practices that are selfrelational. Ancient philosophers of art took it primarily as a craft, or as a politically relevant practice. They placed it in a perspective that we could, in the spirit of Jacques Rancière, call representational or ethical: They explain art either by its relation to a social order, or as a certain technical, cognitively oriented practice. On the other hand, in the eighteenth century, a new way of considering art emerges that we could, once again with Rancière, call aesthetic.3 It is characteristic of this perspective that it focuses decisively on art as art. With this, an important element of the modern practice of art comes into play: the independent orientation toward the concept of art. This element is essential for any understanding of art, and it thus offers a proper point of departure in our search after a concept of art that is not oversimplified. Where was this element coined? Who was the key figure to do so? Was it primarily Baumgarten, or someone else from this period? Perhaps David Hume or Johann Gottfried Herder? I believe it would be right to start with Immanuel Kant, for in modern thought his work represents a revolution that overcame the one-sided focus on human rationality (rationalism) or sensibility (empiricism) in terms of the way in which the subject knows the world. This revolution is also central to the understanding of art. It allows Kant to grant art a special Gottlieb Alexander Baumgarten, Ästhetik (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2007). 3 For Rancière’s distinction of and ethical, representational and aesthetic regime of art, see Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics, trans. Gabriel Rockhill (London: Continuum, 2006). 2

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place within human practice. He positions art neither on the side of how we sensibly encounter the world nor on the side of subjective conceptual thought or subjective construction. Kant understands art as essentially outside of such categories. He argues that art realizes a contribution to a form of human practice in which the different elements that are essential to this practice relate to each other. The constant relation of art to itself is crucial to this contribution. In the following, I want to show that Kant grants art a potential that is crucial for conceiving of art in a way that is not oversimplified. Hegel then pays special tribute to the way in which Kant enriches the concept of art. For this reason, this chapter will illuminate not only Kant’s position, but also the transition to Hegel, in order to understand in which respects Hegel concurs with Kant and in which he does not. The aesthetics of Kant and Hegel usually get treated as alternative positions. We have become accustomed to seeing the Kantian position as more formalistic and as one that places the concept of experience at the center, whereas the Hegelian position emphasizes the content of the artwork and grounds it in a historical and cultural context. Thus, Kant has become an exemplar of the aesthetics of autonomy, while Hegel becomes a prime advocate for a philosophical and social definition of the meaning of art. With such dichotomies, however, one misses the positions of both Kant and Hegel. In this chapter, it is thus not only my goal to find a usable point of departure for the concept of art, but in doing so, I also mean to demonstrate that Kant and Hegel are in accord on their fundamental concept of art. I want to show that we need a reinterpretation of the aesthetic theories of Kant and Hegel and their relation, in order to grasp the systematic impulse that is to be derived from their definition of art. We can also understand these considerations on Kant and Hegel very well in relation to positions discussed in the first chapter. The aesthetics of Kant and Hegel show the way for both Menke and Danto,

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and I believe that the shortcomings in their theories owe to the fact that they do not grasp key aspects of the aesthetics of Kant and Hegel with sufficient clarity, among other reasons. It is my goal to win back these aspects for how we conceptualize art.

1.  Art as reflection of the capacity for knowledge: Kant With respect to the special position of art, or more precisely the beautiful, Kant arrived at an insight that continues to set the standard. This insight can be articulated in a sentence: The beautiful (or art) is a medium of reflection for the specifically human position in the world.4 Kant himself formulates this point in a different way:  He claims in his analysis of the judgment of taste that it is subjectively universal.5 It expresses something about the way a finite subject of cognition (a subject who senses and understands) relates to the world. Kant comes to this insight by defining what is peculiar to the judgment of taste. A  judgment of taste is a judgment of the type “X is beautiful.” As Kant understands it, such a judgment of taste is neither objective nor subjective. In dealing with the beautiful, it is not a matter of finding suitable concepts and knowing something in the world. Judgments of taste are not like judgments of knowledge that bring objects of the world under determinate concepts. They also do not articulate the qualities of the subject in dealing with the world. Judgments of taste are also not subjectively aesthetic judgments that articulate subjective preferences.

Compare on this interpretation of Kantian aesthetics Brigitte Scheer, Einführung in die philosophische Ästhetik (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 2002), 87–92. 5 Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), §22. 4

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Kant’s positive definition of the judgment of taste that he opposes to these negative ones goes as follows:  A judgment of the form “X is beautiful” is a subjective, universal judgment. Even if it articulates nothing about the makeup of an object, it expresses something that is valid in a universal way. Thus, bound up with judgments of taste there is a kind of claim to knowledge that transcends the particular subject. Of course, this is not a knowledge claim in the strictest sense, since it does not offer any knowledge in relation to an object of possible experience (and according to Kant’s terminology, we can only speak of knowledge in this narrow sense). Kant does justice to these conditions by relating the aesthetic judgment’s claim to validity back to the structure of knowledge in the subject. In the experience of the beautiful that expresses itself in the judgment of taste, the subject becomes sure of its very capacity for knowledge. Kant articulates this by his writing of “knowledge in general”:6 the judgment of taste does not articulate a knowledge claim, but instead an experience of the capacity for knowledge, and in this sense it brings knowledge itself to expression. But how can we conceive of an encounter with a beautiful object as an experience of the capacity for knowledge, without being an actual act of knowledge? Kant gives a properly speculative answer to this question. He speaks of a “free play of the powers of knowledge,”7 which gets unleashed by the encounter with a beautiful object. The form of the beautiful object occasions a free interplay between the understanding and the power of imagination. Intuitable representations and concepts come into a free interaction, in which neither a definite representation nor a certain concept gains command. In our encounter with a beautiful object we have the experience that Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, B 28. At another place, he speaks of “indirect knowledge” (see B 198). 7 Ibid., B 28. 6

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an interplay between intuitive representation and thoughts takes place. And in Kant’s explanation, this means nothing other than that finite beings come to experience their capacity for knowledge. The capacity for knowledge as such is something subjectively universal. It is valid for all subjects that are constituted in the same way that we are. It is part of our nature that we can only come to knowledge through the sensible encounter with objects. We are, in the terminology of Kant, subjectively receptive beings. We have to arrive at our representations through sensible means in order to have knowledge. Our power of imagination (i.e., our ability to grasp determinate sensible representations) has to come into interplay with our understanding (i.e., our ability to use concepts in judgments). This interplay is the condition for knowledge to come about. It is precisely such an interplay that is occasioned by beautiful objects, however in a special way. A beautiful object does not trigger a representation that is judged by one or more concepts. Instead, it leads to an interaction that is indeterminate. Representations and concepts come into a free interplay. Thus, when we encounter and deal with a beautiful object, we have an experience that is exemplary for our power of knowledge:  the experience that imagination and judgment manage to come into interaction with one another. This encounter thus demonstrates that the human being can come to have knowledge in the world, or as Kant puts it in another place: It shows that “the human being fits in the world.”8 It demonstrates this fit through allowing us to experience the interplay of imagination and understanding that humans require to know the world.9 This is how the judgment of taste brings “knowledge itself ” to expression. 8 Immanuel Kant, Refl. 1820a, Akademieausgabe, Band XVI, Berlin 1969, 127. 9 Kant demonstrates the need for this in the Critique of Pure Reason with the famous dictum:  “Thoughts without content” are empty, while “intuitions without concept” are “blind.” Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), B 75.

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It is within the medium of experience that knowledge comes into being. We do not get to grasp “knowledge in itself ” on a purely conceptual level. It does not come to pass that a subject having aesthetic experience can say:  “Ah, I  can know!” Instead, this knowledge makes itself apparent through a certain feeling of pleasure. Kant speaks of a “very remarkable pleasure”—a pleasure that one can call aesthetic pleasure. This pleasure is an expression of the fact that the interaction between the powers of knowledge works. This free play is not simply pleasurable as a free play. It is pleasurable as a practice in which we experience that the interaction of the powers of knowledge functions. Aesthetic pleasure takes a prominent place in Kant’s conception because he considers it to be the medium of universal knowledge, which comes into being when we deal with beautiful objects. This pleasure, or feeling of wellbeing, gets triggered by the beautiful object. It is what manifests the free play.10 Kant thus takes recourse to the experience of aesthetic pleasure in order to defend a kind of knowledge that would not otherwise count as knowledge under the definition provided by his transcendental philosophy. The main result of Kant’s critical philosophy, as I  have already mentioned, is that humans can only have knowledge of objects of possible experience. Strictly speaking, this excludes the possibility of knowing the very capacity There is little agreement in the secondary literature on how Kant understands the connection between aesthetic pleasure, aesthetic judgment, and the free play of powers of knowledge. Henry Allison demonstrates convincingly that Paul Guyer (see Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979], 110–119, 151–160) and Hannah Ginsbourg (Ginsbourg, “Reflective Judgment and Taste,” in: Nous 24 [1990], 63–78) mischaracterize Kant’s position because they take aesthetic pleasure as primary and thus misunderstand that in Kant’s conception what is at stake is a pleasure of experienced universality (see Henry Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001], 112 ff.). But even Allison does not do justice to the reflective quality of the free play that Kant claims derives from “knowledge itself,” and thus tends toward a formalistic interpretation of the Kantian position. 10

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for knowledge. To this extent, we can say that aesthetic pleasure expresses a knowledge that is not such at all. With respect to Kant’s definition of the beautiful, we can summarize what we have said as follows: The beautiful is a medium of reflection insofar as beautiful objects trigger an experience that reflects the capacity of knowledge that is specific to human beings. Our occupation with beautiful objects thus relates to very particular practices, namely practices of knowing, or more precisely, practices of knowledge in their entirety. The entirety of our practices of knowledge is reflected back to us in our encounter with beautiful objects. The notion of “knowledge itself ” thus demonstrates itself to be the notion of an indeterminate and in this sense a universally reflective relation. For Kant, this indeterminate relation of reflection has a special value that I  will seek to explain through the notion of infusing life (Verlebendigung). I here use the notion of infusing life in a manner that anticipates a position of Hegel, hence in order to articulate an important bridge between Kant and Hegel. According to Kant, the interplay of the faculties of knowing brings about an “enlivening” of the subject:  “The animation of both faculties (the imagination and the understanding) to an activity, but yet, through the stimulus of the given representation, in unison, namely that which belongs to a cognition in general, is the sensation whose universal communicability is postulated by the judgment of taste.”11 We can explain Kant’s demonstration in the following way: In experiencing beautiful objects, the subject experiences herself to be enlivened, since such an object speaks to us in an indeterminate way, to our powers of knowing, and thus gives us an experience of these powers. This experience brings to life the context that is decisive for us as the kinds of subjects who 11 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, 104. B 31 in original.

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can only arrive at knowledge through an interaction of sensibility and understanding. In this sense, the enlivening that Kant writes of here acquires the character of infusing life. This infusion of life does not mean that life gets breathed into an entity, but instead that something threatened by petrification gets brought to life. The human subject gets brought to life in the very aspects that constitute it. A human subject is a being whose sensibility is inseparably bound up with conceptual thought. Such a subject has a need of an interaction between both dimensions, sensibility and thought. And it is just this interaction that gets enlivened by dealing with the beautiful. This enlivening does not characterize a specific subject, but all subjects who require an interaction between sensibility and understanding in order to gain knowledge. It is for this reason that aesthetic pleasure is “universally communicable”:  Any subject who needs and can experience this interaction between sensibility and understanding will be able to retrace it. We now have all of the basic features assembled in order to follow Kant in defining art (in the sense of beautiful objects): Kant’s Value Thesis: Humans reflect their capacity for knowledge in dealing with beautiful objects. Such a reflection is valuable because it enlivens the subject by means of an experience of the interaction of its powers of knowledge. Matters are more complicated with respect to Kant’s notion of the specific nature of art. Up to this point in Kant’s considerations, he was dealing not specifically with art, but with the beautiful. For Kant, natural living beings are paradigmatic of the beautiful: flowers, birds, and the like. Thus, phrased in Kant’s terms, the question is: What is the specificity of the beautiful? We can say that Kant answers this with the value of the beautiful: The specificity of the beautiful consists in the way in which beautiful objects make possible a certain form of

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knowledge, knowledge itself. However, since this knowledge is not specific, it is not an actual act of knowing something, but on the contrary, it is so general as not to be any knowledge at all in the strict sense. Kant defines the value of the beautiful in such a way that it is neither possible to specify its value nor to determine specific realizations of its value. A general specificity is not specificity at all. In other words, Kant has nothing to say to define the specific nature of the beautiful, and hence of art.12 At this point, one might object that Kant avoids conceiving of the judgment of taste as a cognizing judgment (Erkenntnisurteil). It should be clear by now that Kant’s version of aesthetic reflection cannot simply be taken as a relation of knowledge. What looks like a solution is actually, however, a severe problem. And now the question poses itself: How can we grasp the aesthetic as a medium of reflection, without making the relation of reflection into a relation of knowledge? Kant does not have an answer to this question, but he covers this over with a highly suggestive elaboration in calling the free play of the power of the powers of knowing a “harmonious” play.13 How does Kant come to these determinations? Since the free play is indeterminate and cannot give any knowledge, it is not clear on what basis these characterizations rest. It could just as well be chaotic and disordered. But since Kant endows it with properties, and hence defines it, he makes clear that the question still remains of how we could conceive of the possibility of a form of reflection that is not to be thought of as relation of knowledge. It is only by answering this question that we can justify the way Kant defines the free play. I am of the view that this also counts for Kant’s explications of art in a narrower sense (see Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, §§ 45ff), though I will not pursue this in the present context, since it would bring us too far from the actual aim of this chapter. 13 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, B 29, B 31. 12

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However, it is not only Kant’s understanding of reflection that remains open, but also the question of what effect this infusion of life has. As I already made clear, Kant’s conception of free play is bound up with the idea of life being infused into us. Free play brings life to the powers of knowledge. The indeterminacy within his notion of free play makes it unclear what this infusion of life applies to, and hence makes the basic character of it unclear. While it is indeed the case that subjects can get petrified in their cognitions, go blank, or fail, these subjects are still nevertheless alive, in the sense that their powers of cognition work in interaction with each other. For Kant, this interaction cannot come into question. The “enlivening” that he speaks of is thus to be understood as an enlivening of something that is already living in its own right. It aims for an effect on something already enlivened and not on something that could potentially come to be enlivened, namely on specific practices of knowing. Another aspect of his position is relevant to this point:  Kant begins with the premise that the notion that beauty does not affect everyday practice as such. Practices of knowing or simple courses of action in the world are thus not affected by dealing with beauty. The sense of pleasure from beauty must be distinguished from all other forms of pleasure, since it is a matter here of a pleasure “without any interest,” whereas everyday forms of pleasure, such as the pleasure in the moral good or the pleasant, are inherently interested, that is, they can motivate us to act. But this is precisely what does not pertain to beautiful objects according to Kant. Even though we seek out contact with beautiful objects, we do not carry out any actions with them or in relation to them. With this, it becomes clear that for Kant aesthetic reflection is bound up with a departure from everyday practices. By emphasizing

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this departure, Kant no longer thinks of aesthetic reflection in continuity with the rest of practice. To this extent, Kant offers a mixed message to the tradition that comes after him. On the one hand, he emphasizes the reflective quality of aesthetic experience. On the other hand, he can only think of this reflection as irrelevant in practical respects. This reflection does not contribute anything to the interplay that it reflects upon, that is, the interplay of the powers of knowing. It emerges as a playful supplement.14 It is true that the process of dealing with artworks is supposed to accomplish something, even in respect to everyday practices: It is supposed to enliven the powers of knowing in their interplay. But Kant cannot make the specific import of this enlivening comprehensible. Why do we have a need of such an enlivening? From Kant’s perspective, the answer can only be:  We do not fundamentally need it, for the interaction between the powers of imagination and understanding functions even independently of its aesthetic reflection. It is indeed pleasurable to experience this functioning, but it does not make any specific contribution. It may well be an experience of a special kind when the subject encounters this functioning of its powers, but it is nevertheless nothing more than a foamy crown on the waves of our powers of knowledge. Kant thus digs a moat between aesthetic reflection and other practices, which leads him, unwittingly, to give in to the autonomy paradigm that we considered and criticized in the first chapter. With this, we are in danger of missing insight into the reflective quality of the aesthetic, and it is just this insight that I believe we have to save and recover in order to arrive at a convincing concept of art. Derrida comments upon the Kantian definition of the aesthetic as a playful abyss by speaking of a “satire of the abyss.” See Jacques Derrida, “Paregon,” in: The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987), 37. 14

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2.  Art as the infusion of life into our essential orientations It is only in a very general way that Hegel refers to Kant’s analysis of the beautiful and his notion of “knowledge itself.”15 We can read Hegel’s aesthetics, and the concept of the beautiful that it develops, in such a way that it both maintains Kant’s insight and yet also seeks to resolve Kant’s “mixed message.” Even if at first glance it does not seem to be the case, Hegel offers a definition of art that bears a strong connection to Kant. He sets out to explain aesthetic reflection in such a way that it makes a real contribution to other practices within the human form of life. This is the goal of his exposition, and in order to achieve it, Hegel commences with this reflective dimension, rather than with autonomy. By choosing this starting point, he avoids the pitfall of allowing the thesis on the autonomy of the aesthetic to undermine clarifying the specific meaning of aesthetic reflectivity. If we see it from this standpoint, Hegel’s position represents a further development on that of Kant. He objects fundamentally to Kant on the grounds that we cannot think of the powers involved in knowledge independently from actual practices of knowing. We can explain Hegel’s critical turn against Kant’s aesthetics by applying such an objection to Kant’s notion of the free play of the powers of knowing, even if Hegel does not explicitly take this argument up in his aesthetics. For Kant, we cannot understand a free play of the powers Compare Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I–III, ed. Eva Molenhauer and Karl Markus Michel, vol. 13–15 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), vol. 1, 83–89. In the student transcript of Hegel’s aesthetics lectures from 1826 he claims that in Kant’s understanding the “reconciliation” of the particular object and the universal concept is “only coincidental” in the case of the beautiful. (See Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Philosophie der Kunst. Vorlesungen von 1826, Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 2004, 61. Not yet translated into English.) Thus for Hegel, Kant’s “knowledge itself ” lacks the contact with the object that allows the power of knowing to reflect in a determinate way. 15

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of knowing as something that takes place without concepts. But since concepts only gain determinacy within practices that are historically and culturally situated, Hegel concludes that we have to conceive of the powers of knowing in terms of historical and cultural practices. Hegel’s critique of Kant on this point has consequences for how we understand Kant’s claim that aesthetic pleasure has subjectively universal status:  In Hegel, aesthetic pleasure can no longer be understood as universal in the same manner as for Kant. Instead, we have to take it as having a status that is established on a historical and cultural level. If we follow Hegel’s sense, we could say that it must be bound to a real practice. What could such a historically and culturally bound practice be? Hegel’s answer goes: The aesthetic rests on elements of a historical and cultural practice that are shared by all individuals who take part in this practice. This is where its subjective universality derives from. The elements I speak of here are to be understood as essential orientations of this cultural practice, as orientations in relation to death, love, transcendence, self-determination, command of the body, and the like, and hence as orientations which stake out the framework for all practices of knowing. It is in this sense that we have to conceive of them as the basis for dealing with the powers of knowing. A subjectively universal state is thus for Hegel a state in which subjects orient their very essence in terms of a historical and cultural form of life.16 The implication of these considerations consists in thinking of universality as concretely realized. This requires us to return to the notion of historical and cultural forms of life. I  understand a form of life as a context of practices in a community that has established itself over time. But for Hegel, such contexts only allow themselves to be understood as forms of life in a deeper sense if the subjects 16 Compare, for example, Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I, 141.

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making up such communities share a basic understanding with each other.17 To the extent that they do share such an understanding, then a contextual connection establishes itself between the community’s various practices in such a way that we can conceive of this community as being a form of life in Hegel’s sense.18 We can also characterize the essential orientations that I speak of as “understandings of the self ” (Selbstverständnisse). Following Hegel, all of the practices that make up a form of life are rooted in such acts of self-understanding. If art makes such acts of self-comprehension thematic, then it directly concerns the subjects within a certain form of life. Since the practical and cognitive ways in which subjects confront the world only have standing against the background of their essential orientations (toward life, death, physicality, etc.), the same applies for their powers of knowing, now understood in a historical and cultural manner.19 This establishes the framework in which we have to conceptualize aesthetic reflectivity:  Art makes thematic the orientations that are essential to a form of life. And making them thematic has an enlivening effect, a point on which Hegel and Kant converge. But for Hegel, this enlivening effect does not concern the human powers of knowing in their entirety, but rather the powers of knowing within concrete historical and cultural formations that guide subjects. This 17 On this point, see Terry Pinkard, Hegel’s Phenomenology:  The Sociality of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 221–268. 18 The concept of “form of life” has had a remarkable run in contemporary philosophy departing from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. I  use this notion in the same sense as the interpretation that John McDowell gives of Wittgenstein’s philosophy (compare John McDowell, “Wittgenstein on Following a Rule,” in: Mind, Value and Reality [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998], 221–262). Hegel’s thesis that shared acts of self-comprehension are requisite for a community does however go beyond McDowell’s Wittgenstein. 19 As opposed to my interpretation of Kant’s position, the one that I  give of Hegel’s aesthetics is basically uncontroversial in its basic features. See, for example, Terry Pinkard, “Symbolic, Classical and Romantic Art,” in:  Hegel and the Arts, ed. Stephen Houlgate (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007), 3–28, especially p. 9.

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means that the essential orientations of a form of life that are reflected back to us in artworks get actualized in and through this reflection, and thus get empowered. Thus, aesthetic practices have a definite enlivening effect.20 Hegel’s viewpoint implies that the orientations that are essential for a form of life can lose vitality, that a form of life can grow ossified. The aesthetic infuses life in such a way as to confront such an ossification and dissolve its paralysis.21 Since the essential orientations of a form of life play an important normative function, they are constantly in need of new life, and aesthetic practices are one of the ways to accomplish this. With this explanation, Hegel succeeds, unlike Kant, in relating the notion that art infuses life to something that actually needs this infusion, since it can lose life. Hegel conceives of the subject being infused with life in a concrete manner. For him, it does not result out of an indeterminate state of free play, but rather out of a determinate state of dealing with a concrete work of art. In his critique of Kant, Hegel makes clear that, unlike Kant, he understands the infusion of life as rooted in the concrete nature of objects. The objects in question do not just offer to infuse us with life in some general way, but instead they have this life-infusing effect through their specific forms. This effect relates to social practices in their entirety.22 In contrast to Kant’s understanding, artworks do not occasion an indeterminate play, but a determinate Correspondingly, Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert explains Hegel’s ideal of the beautiful on the basis of the student transcriptions as the “liveliness (Lebendigkeit) of the idea.” See Einführung in Hegels Ästhetik (Munich: Fink Verlag, 2005), 237–241. 21 Compare this to an explanation of Hegel’s position by Robert B. Pippin, “The Absence of Aesthetics in Hegel’s Aesthetic,” in: The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth Century Philosophy, ed. Fredrick C. Beiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 394–418, here 400–402. 22 Thus, Hegel writes in relation to the historical dimension of essential orientations: “The historical is only ours if it belongs to the nation to which we belong, or if we see the present as a consequence of those occurrences that make up a chain in which we see our character or deeds as an essential appendage” (Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I, 352). 20

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play: determinate play in relation to a social practice. In this play, it is a matter of bringing forth and empowering the essential orientations of such a practice. Art thus does not speak to individual subjects in a general sense, but instead speaks to the concrete universal that pertains to the context in which they stand:  to their position in a certain determinate historical and cultural reality. What we have said up to now is reflected in Hegel’s definition of the value of art: Hegel’s Thesis of Value: Within the framework of a form of life, art infuses life into the orientations that are essential for this form of life. However, in Hegel’s view, this definition is not yet specific enough, since he posits two other practices that infuse life into our essential orientations:  religion and philosophy. They also make our essential orientations thematic, and thus have a relevance to the community that is structurally related to that of art. (Hegel famously articulates this relevance with his notion of “absolute spirit.”23) For this reason, Hegel faces the task of differentiating art from religion as well as philosophy. He suggests that the distinguishing aspect of art lies in the fact that it manages to thematize essential historical and cultural orientations in a special form: in a form that is sensibly intuitable. Artworks are presented to us in media that are sensibly intuitable, media that work with various materials and call for the recipient to engage in various practices of perception and movement. He gives expression to this aspect that distinguishes art from religion and philosophy with his famous formulation on the “sensible semblance of the idea.”24 What

Compare Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften I-III, in:  Werkausgabe, ed. Eva Molenhauer and Karl Markus Michel, vol. 8–10 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), vol. 3, §553. 24 Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I, 151. 23

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is specific to art is that it realizes a sensible semblance: a presentation in definite media of sensible intuition. I have already indicated how the notion of “ideas” is to be translated: Ideas are guiding concepts that permeate the reality of other concepts.25 They are nothing other than essential orientations that we pursue in the framework of our practices of using concepts. Hegel thus does not understand ideas merely as thought constructions, but as concepts that guide real practices. It is not only art that deals with these guiding concepts, but also, as already stated, religion and philosophy. What distinguishes art is the fact that it thematizes these ideas in the medium of sensible intuition: Hegel’s Specificity Thesis: What is specific to art is that it thematizes those orientations that are essential for a form of life in a manner that is sensibly intuitable. Thus, for Hegel, unlike Kant, art is not to be defined by how it leaves behind everyday practices in a disinterested way, but instead by how it provides a specific formation of these practices. Art brings about a unique form of disinterested sensibility. In everyday practices, sensible intuitions are usually either guiding our interests or guided by interests: Sensation informs our practical activities and allows us to realize various goals. But in the aesthetic context, this is not the case, because here sensible intuition stands in the focus of attention. In art, the recipient relates in a special, disinterested way to the sensible intuition. It is on the basis of this special focus that the sensible aspect of art makes a contribution toward its thematic element. In 25 Hegel’s explanation of the idea goes as follows: “the concept posited as present in its reality and at unity with this reality is the idea” (ibid., 145). Ideas are thus for Hegel concepts that determine a reality and ensure the unity between concept and reality. Such concepts guide a conceptual practice and act as the criteria for the connection in which concepts stand to reality.

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Hegel’s notion, aesthetic disinterestedness, and hence the autonomy of the aesthetic, does not stand in contrast to aesthetic reflection, but instead articulates what characterizes it in contrast to other modes of sensation. By explaining the autonomy of art in such a way that does not stand in conflict with its reflexive dimension, Hegel eliminates the central problem I  found inherent in Kant’s position. But this explanation brings back a structure that is familiar. Hegel defines the value of art in a way that demands further elaboration on how this value derives from art’s specificity, a structure that I  also diagnosed in Danto’s value thesis. The situation may appear comparable with Hegel, but not exactly analogous, since he manages to grasp a specific aspect of art with his value thesis. According to this thesis, art accomplishes a specific kind of reflection of the orientations that are essential to a form of life. Artworks are not just objects that have a meaning, but rather they contribute something special to our historical and cultural practices within the framework of a form of life by reflecting those orientations that are central to our practices, and hence they manage to infuse life into these practices. This articulates art’s specific contribution to a form of life, but as a definition it remains too general.26 The question remains:  What contribution does it make to our historical and cultural practices to have their essential orientations thematized specifically in the form of sensible intuition? How is this sensible semblance (Scheinen) particularly relevant for giving life to those orientations that are essential within the framework of a historical and cultural practice? Is this aspect of art relevant in the Robert Pippin gives very good expression to this general point when he writes:  “Art had for Hegel, at least for most of its existence, a specific kind of philosophical work to do.” Robert B Pippin, After the Beautiful: Hegel and the Philosophy of Pictorial Modernism (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2014), 33. 26

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historical sense that art makes up a necessary preliminary stage for the eventual development of free-standing conceptual thought? Must we develop art in order to make possible religion and philosophy, as Hegel seems to suggest? Such a thesis is not very plausible, even on historical grounds. But from a systematic point of view, it is also not convincing: We do not consider artworks to be objects that thematize something that could also be articulated in another way, such as in philosophical concepts. If artworks were such objects, then we could wonder why artists do not simply cut right to philosophizing. Hegel has to assume that those orientations that get thematized by artworks could also in principle be thematized by religion and philosophy. But artworks would be superfluous if what they thematized could simply be said in another way. And this is actually not the case:  Artworks are untranslatable. Yet it is just this untranslatability that Hegel does not do justice to in his account.27 As we have seen, this derives from the fact that Hegel’s explanation of the value of art offers only a very general notion of its specificity, and not one that truly embraces what makes up its distinctive character. This is the price that Hegel pays for his attempt to bring aesthetic autonomy at the very end, even if he does succeed at connecting art more strongly with real practices. Although he does define what makes art relevant, it is at the cost of explaining its specificity. He does not define value and specificity in relation to each other in an equitable way. But this is just what is necessary for grasping art. Hegel cannot explain the specific form of self-consciousness that is made possible by the fact that art is a medium of sensible semblance. In confronting his aesthetics, it becomes clear that this would require a conception of reflection that is specific to the aesthetic. Gadamer also articulates this critique of Hegel. See Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 86. 27

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There is also another point on which Hegel’s definition of aesthetic reflection cannot fully satisfy us. Hegel explains art to be a medium that brings about reflections about those orientations that are essential to a form of life. Put more pointedly, Hegel conceptualizes the subjective universality of art as an intersubjective universality. In contrast to Kant, Hegel thus understands the need to connect universality and particularity with one another: As a form of universality that is historical and cultural, art is always bound up with specific historical and cultural contexts. Thus, Hegel properly understands art as a medium that connects people in a general way, independently of place and time. Yet Hegel’s understanding of particularity is insufficient.28 In his account, we are dealing with the particularity of a universality, the particularity of a historical and cultural form of life, like the polis of ancient Greece or the European Christendom of the middle ages. But is this really particularity at all? The forms of life just mentioned are just as universal or general as the notion of humanity that Kant takes as a basis for his theory. Particularity seems to make sense only when it is situated within a form of life, so that it is grasped from the perspective of those who act within a form of life. In such cases, we see that particularity is not always reconciled with universality, but rather constantly stands in tension with universality. It is just this point, however, that makes Hegel’s explanation incomprehensible, because his account considers particularity from an external perspective. Hegel assumes that a form of life is to be understood as a kind of universality. It One can try to defend Hegel on this point by referring to his analysis of the romantic form of art and of art after the dissolution of this art form. See Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik II, 231–242. See also Robert Pippin, “What Was Abstract Art? (From the Point of View of Hegel),” in: Hegel and the Arts, ed. Stephen Houlgate (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007), 279–306. Even if we find here the opening moves in grasping the particularity of art, Hegel does not see this as a positive feature of art’s definition, but rather as a determination that art has been surpassed (see also Chapter 4, Section 3). 28

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counts for him as a unity. He does not properly consider that within a community a variety of perspectives, including conflicting ones, can coexist (even though Hegel does succeed in other parts of his philosophy at locating and intensively analyzing such a coexistence of conflicting perspectives within a community). His notion of universality remains marked by problematic assumptions, just as much as that of Kant. In concluding, just one more point of criticism: Hegel’s concept of aesthetic reflection leads in some sense to a ranking of the arts.29 According to Hegel, the ideal of artistic beauty is not only different in different arts, but it is also realized more or less well in the various arts. Sculpture comes closest according to his account (in a different context, Hegel says something similar about tragedy). The representation of a human body allows for a reflection of mental reality that actually comes into being completely within the medium of sensible intuition. But on the other hand, neither architecture nor music does full justice to this ideal. Does this mean that aesthetic reflection only gets accomplished by sculpture in an ultimate sense? Is it alone capable of showing that the human belongs in the world? Should we then understand all other arts either as merely preliminary, incomplete developments of the ideal of beauty or as phenomena that surpass what he understands as perfect aesthetic reflection? This does not seem to be truly insightful. We have to be able to understand art as a practice that realizes itself within a plurality of equally justified arts. We should understand aesthetic reflection in a way that leaves room for such a plural understanding of arts.30

Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik II, 256–263. 30 Compare also my critique of the autonomy paradigm in Chapter 1. 29

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3.  Practical reflection Kant and Hegel together develop the pioneering thought that the beautiful has to be conceived of as a reflective practice. However, neither of them manages to spell out this thought in a plausible manner. So in order to grasp the relation between Kant and Hegel correctly, we have to get a better understanding of the concept of reflection and pursue the question of how to think of art as a specific kind of reflective practice. This makes it necessary to leave behind the philosophy of art or aesthetics for a moment, for we can only sharpen our understanding of the notion of reflection through developing a theory of reflection, understood as the process of becoming a selfconscious and self-relating being. “Reflection” is without a doubt one of the most debated concepts in philosophy, and this makes it presumptuous to attempt a definitive solution to this problem in the context of this book. But I would at least like to demonstrate in what direction such a solution would have to be sought in order to give a stronger shape to the thought that art is a reflective practice. I begin by suggesting a simple distinction that concerns the various ways of understanding reflection. In order to avoid misunderstandings, I will emphasize that it is not a matter of distinguishing different kinds of reflection. I am not concerned with giving a typology of reflection, but rather with how we have to conceive of reflection, with the notion of reflection in its entirety. For this purpose, I distinguish between a theoretical and a practical understanding of reflection. Reflection can be understood in a theoretical or a practical way, and I  would like to make clear that the dominant option, that of grasping reflection as a theoretical relation to self, is not the only one. It is precisely the practical notion of reflection that is promising in the context of the present work.

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According to a theoretical understanding, reflection is a process of knowing. It interprets the relation of reflection in such a way as to objectify the object of reflection in a theoretical manner. Reflection here implies taking a distance, not necessarily in a factual sense, but in a conceptual sense. It enables the one who reflects to establish a distance to what is reflected. We might say that the person who reflects objectivizes something about the self, so that it is as if taking the perspective of another on one’s self. When reflection is understood in this theoretical sense, it comes into being in an external sense. But when understood in a practical sense, reflection is an event that intervenes. This involves interpreting the relation of reflection in such a way that reflection has an impact on other practices, or effects their temporality. The impact here involves a self-relation, or as one might say in the sense of Tugendhat, an act of relating oneself to oneself (Sic hzusichverhalten).31 We can explicate what is involved in this practical act of relating to oneself by saying:  A reflective practice influences other practices of the same subject (or of a collective or of any other thing to which we can attribute a practice). This brings an element of distance into play:  The practice that is reflective here relates to the practice that it influences. This distance does not come to bear externally, but rather in an internal relation. In other words, reflection comes to be from within. If we instead understand reflection in a theoretical sense, it faces a problem in terms of relevance. What is the relevance of a theoretical relation to one’s own practice? Asked another way:  How can a theoretical relation to oneself come to influence the one who relates to oneself?32 It seems that the theoretical distance precludes an effect Ernst Tugenghat, Selbstbewusstsein und Selbstbestimmung (Suhrkamp:  Frankfurt am Main, 1979), lectures 8, 9, and 10. 32 See here the consideration of Richard Moran, Authority and Engagement: An Essay on Selfknowledge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 31

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by its very notion. As we already said, it implies that the act of relating happens as if it were the relation of a third person to oneself, and such a relation is not directly connected with any binding impact on the self: One does not necessarily have to hold oneself to that which other parties hold to be right for oneself. What is more, one must not even unconditionally hold oneself to what one theoretically considers right in relation to oneself. That one considers something right does not mean that it necessarily has an impact, as many phenomena of weakness will demonstrate. The question then is:  Why should one hold oneself to what one knows about oneself, if this knowledge does not contain any obligation for the subject or for its practice? These considerations do not mean that we should give up the idea of self-knowledge, or the long-standing injunction to “Know thyself!” Rather they entail that we have to put theoretical reflection back into a practical light. More pointedly, even theoretical reflection has to be understood in a practical manner. The question about the binding effect of self-knowledge and the problems articulated by it are related to questions that we have encountered in thinking about art. What relevance does the reflection accomplished by art have? How is this reflection necessary for historical and cultural practice or for the practice of humans in general? We can grasp this especially well by appealing to our discussion of Kant: If it is true that the interplay of imagination and understanding functions in every practice of knowledge, then why do we need reflection on this functioning? What value is there in a reflection that only confirms what is already established? What results out of infusing life into this interplay that already makes up the life of the subject in question? The relation of these questions with the general problem posed by a theoretical understanding of reflection makes clear that it could be fruitful for our understanding of art to probe more deeply into this understanding of reflection.

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Many philosophical positions presuppose, without much consideration, a theoretical understanding of reflection, just as we have seen even in Kant and Hegel. In his considerations on aesthetic reflection, Kant assumes that reflection is constituted by distance. For him, aesthetic reflection implies that there is a remove between the beautiful and everyday practice. It is aesthetic disinterestedness that guarantees the distance that makes it possible for art to reflect on the capacity for knowledge in a theoretical way. It is true that for Kant the aesthetic reflection of the interplay of the human powers of knowing comes to pass within the medium of experience:  For aesthetic reflection, what is essential is the aesthetic pleasure that expresses the free play of the powers of knowing. But this still implicitly understands reflection in a theoretical manner. Aesthetic pleasure, that is to say disinterested pleasure, is a state that is connected with an element of theoretical knowledge. Now on this basis, we could object that Kant nevertheless understands aesthetic reflection in a practical sense. The enlivening effect that unfolds from a free play of the powers of knowing is a practical effect. It is not a purely theoretical state, but rather one with practical meaning or relevance, for it does nevertheless bring us face to face with the functioning of the interplay of the powers of knowing. As correct as this objection is, it does not clear away the theoretical tendency of Kant’s definition. For Kant, the free play demonstrates something, gives us to know something. As already emphasized, the functioning of the powers of knowledge that this free play demonstrates, or gives us to know, is already given to us independently of this presentation. This reflection does not add anything to what it shows; its practical character plays merely a peripheral role. In Hegel’s aesthetics, we find a practical element in his understanding of aesthetic reflection, and indeed, even more prominently than in Kant. According to Hegel, artworks infuse life into the essential

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orientations of a historical and cultural form of life. They present orientations, such as a specific representation of life and death, and thus enliven the practice that is guided by these orientations. The aesthetic infusion of life here shows a markedly practical tendency. Yet it remains unclear to what extent the aesthetic reflection of these orientations is essential to their constitution.33 But even if we grant Hegel that he has demonstrated this, it still remains an open question as to what the specific function of this thematization is within the medium of sensible appearance. In what respect does this sensible appearance make its own contribution and hence have its own value within the practice of a form of life? Hegel’s thesis on the aesthetic infusion of life into such a practice remains ambivalent, because he does not answer such questions about the unique contribution of aesthetic reflection to human practice. This allows us to formulate a hypothesis on where the problems come from that we have up to now treated in this chapter. The hypothesis goes as follows:  for Hegel and Kant, a theoretical understanding of reflection is the guiding force, despite all of the countervailing practical elements.34 Thus, it might help us make progress if we can gain a better understanding of reflection as a practical relation.

33 Hegel often awakens the impression that the constitution of these orientations completes itself in the practice of a form of life. We see this, for example, in Hegel’s explanation of the “idea” as the togetherness of the concept and its reality. Thus, when Hegel says that art should be thought as a sensible appearance of the idea, he is saying that art thematizes realized concepts. Thus, Pippin (After the Beautiful, 41) cites a passage where Hegel claims about classical art: “the method of artistic production was such that these poets could only work out (herausarbeiten) what was fermenting in them in this way” (Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I, 141). But it is unclear in Hegel’s treatment how exactly this is to be understood, what he means here by “working out.” It is one thing to say that the orientations essential for a historical situation could not be articulated in another way, but another to say that these orientations rely in their very makeup on this articulation. 34 In respect to Hegel, this point also becomes very clear in relation to Robert Pippin’s interpretation. See Pippin, Kunst als Philosophie, 3–9 and especially 39–43.

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A practical understanding of reflection means that the relation of reflection is a practical relation. When reflection occurs, it shapes the meaning of practice. I  said earlier that such a shaping results out of the very act of relating to oneself. We can call on this point in order to explain the practical relation of reflection, and say that reflection manages to give definition to practice in a way that makes these practices self-posited.35 Such a self-posited determination of practice follows from the insight that each practice gets shaped by other practices, a shape that happens not by external imposition, but that emerges out of the internal connection between them. We can introduce the notion of “commitment” (Festlegung) to explain such a mode of permeation between practices, and say that reflection happens through making commitments. The following statement is an example of such a commitment:  “I understand reflection to be practical in the sense that it brings about a self-posited determination of practices.” When someone in a conversational situation, such as a lecture or seminar discussion, takes a stance on what she goes on to say, she thereby gives shape to her further utterances. By making such statements about her own speech, the speaker commits herself in a certain manner in relation to others. This commitment is not based on a theoretical distance, but rather on the fact that one is able to take up a determining relation to self. We see this in the way that other people might examine the subsequent utterances of the speaker. For example, if the speaker wavers in her original stance in the course of speaking, then the listeners increasingly begin to doubt whether the speaker is committed to the original stance. In this sense, they are paying attention to whether the commitment of the speaker will remain operative during the rest of the speech. On this interpretation that takes self-consciousness as a practical reflection in the sense of self-posited determination, see once again Richard Moran, Authority and Estrangement. 35

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Another example of a practical relation of reflection to oneself that indicates self-determination would be that of explaining one’s feelings. Thus, Carl can reflect on his feelings of love for Maria and tell himself that he considers his feelings to be false, since she always only gives him the cold shoulder, and so on. He can resolve himself to be someone who no longer has these feelings. Of course, we all know from experience that such a goal is mostly doomed to failure, and it is important to consider whether it can even be a good idea to want to change one’s feelings in this way. Nevertheless, there might be some cases, such as therapeutic situations, in which such a change in one’s feelings succeeds. In such a case, the process of explaining one’s feelings does have a determining impact on them, and insofar as this is possible, reflection demonstrates itself to be practical. Reflection shows itself to be potentially efficacious in practical terms. Thus, the import of the fact that Carl explains his feelings is not that he knows them, but that he changes them. This kind of reflection implies a definite commitment, a determining relation to oneself. Heidegger in particular develops such an understanding of reflection—indeed, he does so against the backdrop of Kant and Hegel.36 Heidegger brings up one element in particular:  If we understand reflection in a practical way, then it has a particular temporal permutation,37 since the relation of reflection inherently involves a relation to the future. A  practice is reflective by way of the fact that it seeks to have a pervasive effect in relation to future practices. Such reflection is bound up with a claim to found future practices. At the same time, reflective practices are always defined as See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, §§46–48; Georg W. Bertram, “Die Einheit des Selbst nach Heidegger,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 61 (2013), 197–213. 37 Heidegger’s main expression for this unresolved quality is “care” (Sorge), compare Heidegger, Being and Time, §§ 41f. 36

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emerging out of the past. So a relation between past and future always gets established in any practical relation of reflection. Every reflective relation that happens in the present stands in this relationship. For example, someone who says how he understands the concept of practical reflection makes reference to utterances that he will make in the future. Something is at play for him in the future: the efficacy of the following modification in our understanding. A relation of reflection that is understood in a practical way has a specific dynamic. It is not a matter of a relation that is resolved in the sense of being either fulfilled in the moment or not. When practical reflection happens, it is by its very nature an unresolved event.38 At this point, exploring the notion of imagination will lend valuable insight. When reflective practices refer to the future, they have an imaginative character. Heidegger speaks in this sense of the Entwurf (project). A  project is a practical way of imagining future practice. We are dealing here with imagination because it entails the ability to represent something that by its very nature is not yet present:39 someone who relates to the future as a project represents something as real that is not yet so. However, Heidegger’s point is that such projecting is not a purely theoretical or mental exercise. It is not simply a matter of developing a certain representation of a possible practice. It is far more the case that imaginative representation itself has a fundamentally practical character: It is bound up with the claim to permeate practice, so that imagination is understood wrongly if we see only a mental activity in it. It belongs to the nature of imagination to leave a practical trace. We can give the concept of imagination (Einbildungskarft) a practical sense that dwells in its (German) Heidegger’s formulation for this unresolved quality is “care” (Sorge); compare Heidegger, Being and Time, §§ 41f. 39 Kant’s definition of imagination goes as follows: “The power of imagination is the capacity to represent an object in intuition that is not present” (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 151). 38

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etymology:  It is a power (Kraft) that forms something internally (etwas ein-blidet). This imagining manifests itself in future practice. Reflection, when understood practically, is an imaginative event. This account of imagination thus clearly demonstrates itself to have a relevance for explaining art, and it also gives a new dimension to Kant’s thought of free play. We see art once again to be a practice that is based on imagination. In order to give sense to what Kant means with his notion of free play, we need a notion of imagination like the one we just sketched. Imagination is not just the capacity to represent something that is not present to the senses, but it also has to be understood as the capacity to allow the representation of something to become productive that is not present to the senses. For such an understanding of art in terms of an aesthetics of production, the following holds true:  Someone who makes artworks allows his or her imagination to become productive in the sense of bringing forth definite representations. In the activity of the imagination, these representations prove to be oriented toward both practice and the future. These representations realize themselves in activities that lead to the production of artworks. However, the imagination does not simply make a difference as a power for giving definition to works. Someone who is productive in an imaginative way is not the puppet of her representations. Rather she enters into an interaction between her imaginative productivity and the object that arises out of this process in such a way that she constantly redefines her imaginative practices on the basis of the object, and also redefines the object on the basis of her imaginative practice. We can grasp Kant’s notion of the free play in a new way by means of a practical understanding of reflection, namely as a mode of reflection that is realized in a practical manner. In this understanding, the practices of the imagination, as well as the objects brought forth by these practices, develop playfully in and through each other.

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If we understand reflection in a practical way, then we can say that it is characterized not only by its effect, but also by the fact that it realizes a temporal and imaginative relationship that is rich with tension. It is not merely a matter of a relation to oneself in the present, nor of a relation that would be easily achieved. If we say that reflective practices have an effect, then it does not mean that they have such an effect on their own. Although this would be the case if we envisioned their effect merely in the present, we instead have to posit their effect into the future, surpassing the present. And we can do justice to this demand by saying that in these reflective practices, something is always in play. Thus, the practical notion of reflection does not imply self-creation, but rather that there is a precarious practical element to human existence. The human being does not simply posit himself in his reflections. Rather, she realizes self-posited determinations, to which she has to do justice in the future, like the speaker in a given case. I claimed at the end of the first chapter that it is characteristic of human existence not to establish things in a definitive way, but to relate to the future in an open manner. We do not do justice to this aspect when we understand humans as beings who create themselves in a demiurgic manner. Humans are beings that, in establishing what they are, always put themselves in play. If we understand the reflective relation as a practical one, even in the context of self-knowledge, then we gain an insight into the fundamentally precarious nature of human existence. From this it also follows that reflection, taken in this practical sense, entails change. Reflection is an act of relating to oneself, which gives definition to other practices. So reflection intervenes in other practices. This is essential for its practical character. Reflection leads to something becoming different, which once again emphasizes its temporal character. We should not, however, understand this talk of change too narrowly. Reflection manages to permeate other practices

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not just when it makes them completely different. Often reflection just leads to more empowered reflection. In such cases, it impacts future practices by confirming understandings that we already have. Yet even in such confirmation there is an element of change. We can clarify this through an example we just mentioned:  Someone who claims that practical reflection determines practices in an autonomous manner usually confirms understandings that were already in play. But empowering them changes the situation. An understanding that was already present gets accentuated. But this cannot happen without an intervention that changes something. We can explain the way this empowerment changes things through the example of what happens when we make our understanding explicit:40 Making something explicit does not allow us to grasp something theoretically or practically that is already the case. Instead, it brings about an effect. It empowers ways of understanding something and stabilizes them. In this sense, we have to think of confirmation as a specific form of change. Even in confirming what we already thought, we see that there is a practical intervention, a practical effectiveness. This point allows us to better understand in what sense Hegel seeks to think of aesthetic reflection as practical. It is a matter of a reflection that brings about a confirmation. This is just how we explained the notion of aesthetic life in Hegel. Art enlivens the essential orientations of a historical and cultural form of life. These orientations are empowered by art. Reflection proves itself to be practical in this sense. Aesthetic enlivening does indeed bring about an effect if we see it in the way I suggest. It does not merely have the character of a thematization. In Hegel’s position, we see more clearly than in Kant’s how it is possible to understand aesthetic reflection as practical. This way of speaking has come into fashion especially by way of Robert Brandom’s book Making it Explicit:  Reasoning, Representing and Discursive Commitment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998). 40

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4.  Going beyond Kant and Hegel: Aesthetic freedom Kant’s innovative insight was that aesthetic practices are reflective practices. In aesthetic practices, humans deal with one another. Artworks are not objects that stand in some instrumental relation (Gebrauchszusammenhang) with human practices and get their meaning from this. Art is much more bound up with special human practices:  with practices in which humans deal with each other.41 According to Kant, such practices have a thoroughly universal character: In the aesthetic, we are dealing with the constitution of the human being as a sensible being with an understanding. All human beings share this constitution with each other. So according to Kant, aesthetic experiences are experiences of something that humans essentially share with one another. Humans can only comprehend what they encounter with their senses if they articulate it with concepts. Humans must be in the position to use their concepts in relation to what they encounter in the world. To put it another way, they have to be able to apply their instrument of knowledge, concepts, to the world. The process of dealing with beautiful objects shows that humans are indeed in the position to do so, and are free in this sense.42 In the aesthetic, we are dealing, to put it simply, with human freedom. Beautiful objects unfurl a state of being that makes it possible to experience freedom. This state is pleasurable according to Kant. I will just note in passing that this insight has significant consequences for the ontology of art (see also the introduction). Someone who wants to illuminate the being of artworks first has to illuminate the being of practices that are constituted by the way humans deal with each other. There is no other way to get close to the being of artworks. 42 Kant explains this with his famous definition of the beautiful as a “symbol of the ethical good” (Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, § 59). Because beautiful objects bring us before human freedom (reflect it), they are a symbol for the possibility of ethical behavior. So in light of the critique developed earlier, one might still defend Kant by claiming that 41

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Hegel criticizes this explanation of aesthetic reflection as too abstract. Hegel argues that we cannot simply conceive of ourselves as universally free in our use of concepts, but that human freedom always gets realized in a concrete manner. Hegel essentially agrees with Kant in principle:  In art, it is a matter of the tension that permeates human existence. This tension comes from the fact that the human is both a natural and an intellectual being.43 But humans cannot deal with this tension in a general manner. This tension always finds itself instantiated in a specific historical and cultural form. Thus if humans want to experience to what extent their freedom is in accord with their natural situations, then they have to emerge from the specific form in which their natural abilities are instantiated. This is just what happens in art, according to Hegel’s understanding. He conceives of art as a historical and cultural practice whereby humans deal with themselves, and that means not the least: with their own freedom. We have nevertheless seen that Hegel does not grasp all of the implications of this thought. He understands the freedom that we encounter in art to be one that is realized in a definite form of life. It remains unclear to what extent art itself makes a contribution to this freedom: Does it merely lead us up to this freedom? Or does it make a contribution to realizing this freedom?44 If the latter is supposed to be the case, then art has to stand in relation to other human practices. In the final consideration, the freedom that is found in art can only be relevant if we can find such a connection to human practice within the experience of the beautiful challenges us to act ethically and in this sense has a practical effect. But this defense does not help us further, since this challenge is so indeterminate and thus does not guide any ethical behavior. Since it remains unclear in this challenge what the ethical quality of any behavior consists in, it can have no impact. 43 Compare Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I, 80–82. 44 This problematic becomes especially clear in the way Henning Tegtmeyer reactualizes Hegel’s position in Kunst (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 163, 197f.

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it. What this means for aesthetic practice is that it must somehow leave a trace within the rest of human practice. Change must be comprehended to be an essential moment of aesthetic reflection. In the context of these considerations, it becomes relevant to bring Schiller’s aesthetics into play. In contrast to Kant, Friedrich Schiller suggests a notion of the aesthetic that puts special emphasis on art becoming practical. It is commonplace to consider Schiller as the aesthetic theorist who develops a conception of aesthetic freedom,45 which arises from the way he treats the notions of aesthetic education and play.46 Aesthetic education is supposed to initiate a special practice involving the play-drive, which leads to the realization of thoroughly aesthetic practice. Schiller’s conception of an aesthetic practice is in a certain respect a reaction to the problems that emerge from the fact that Kant’s notion of free play remains without any practical effect in his thought. Reacting to this problem, Schiller draws the conclusion that free play has to be grasped as a state of being that is produced by aesthetic practice. The efficacy of this free play would then rest on aesthetic practice itself. Or put another way, aesthetic practice as such produces the state of freedom. But Schiller’s conception does not allow us to understand either the effect of this free play or art’s contribution to producing freedom. In Schiller’s case as well, the relation of aesthetic practice to other everyday practice falls out of view. He conceives of aesthetic practice as a practice that transforms everyday practice in its entirety. As a slogan, one might say: Everything becomes aesthetic. This means that there is no longer any everyday practice to which aesthetic practice could make a contribution. Schiller’s notion of aesthetic freedom thus remains vacuous, since it posits a questionable freedom, one that leaves no trace. See Friedrich Schiller, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, trans. Reginald Snell (Boston: Dover, 2004), 27th letter. 46 Ibid., 14th and 15th letters. 45

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Schiller does, however, articulate a crucial insight. He implicitly realizes that freedom cannot simply be presented aesthetically, as Kant and Hegel imply. Freedom also has to be conceived of as aesthetically realized. However, Schiller does not draw any plausible consequence from this insight. He finds that it suffices not to understand the presentation of freedom as a mere presentation. With this aim, he isolates the aesthetic state of being, so that we can no longer understand it as the presentation of something different that is realized somewhere else. The state of being that he isolates in this way is supposed to count as the realization of freedom. Schiller’s manner of proceeding is thus exclusively negative. The aesthetic state is according to him a state that is liberated from any kind of relation to other practices. But this exclusively negative definition does not suffice for allowing us to comprehend the realization of freedom. Why do neither Kant nor Hegel manage to make art comprehensible as a realization of freedom? I pose this question anew because answering it will demonstrate what course we have to take, as if by a process of elimination. My answer goes:  because both of them essentially see freedom as independent of aesthetic practices.47 Kant and Hegel are indeed right in saying that practices other than art are crucial to understanding what freedom is. A  realization of freedom cannot for them simply rest on reducing human practice to an aesthetic state. Freedom constantly manifests itself in relation to ordinary practice.

47 I emphasize again that with Hegel, the interpretation of this point remains more ambivalent than with Kant. Hegel claims to make art comprehensible as a moment in the realization of freedom. However, he does too little to reveal the specific contribution of art, so that in the end it remains unclear whether this freedom is constituted as part of a complex practice within which art does not play any essential role.

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If we are to understand art as a practice of freedom, then we must do the following: We have to ask how art makes a contribution to the realization of freedom by looking for a change that it provokes within everyday practices. In what does this contribution consist? How does some kind of freedom realize itself within art? I  have paved the way for answering this question with my considerations on the concept of reflection and on art as reflective practice, because a plausible concept of practical reflection changes the way we understand the relation of art to human freedom. Freedom is then no longer understood in such a way that it is a theme of reflection, but instead reflective practices become recognizable as an element of how freedom is constituted. Both Kant and Hegel are guided by the thought that freedom makes up the basis of human actions. Thus, practices of knowing are practices of freedom. The reflection that happens in art has the task of making clear to those who occupy themselves with art how they can understand their practices as free: as free in the sense of allowing their powers of knowing to come into harmonious interplay, or as free in the sense of being guided by the essential orientations of a historical and cultural form of life. A practical understanding of reflection allows us to take a further step in this direction. In light of this understanding, we see freedom to be produced not only in those actions that realize it, but also in reflection. This additionally raises the question as to how freedom actually comes about. To what degree are humans free? To put it in Christoph Menke’s terms, which practices are “automatized” and which “dis-automatized”? Which practices stand under coercion or are governed by stereotype and, in contrast, which can we conceive of as self-determining? A  practical understanding of reflection also entails that there are no final answers to these questions, but that they instead require ever new answers. Human freedom is always in play, even and especially within human practice.

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Against this background, we can consider Schiller’s plea for an absolute aesthetic state from a different angle. In this context, Schiller advocates for the idea of a practice that is free in a comprehensive sense. In doing so, he does not ignore that human practice can be unfree. But he raises the point that we can eliminate the danger of unfreedom, without remainder, through a definite kind of practice, namely aesthetic practice. I have already shown why such a “totalizing” approach ends up becoming vacuous. However, the notion of play first raised by Kant and then placed at the center by Schiller does enable us to make clear the aspect of human freedom that is discontinuous and tenuous. For this reason, I would like to hold on to this concept of play in what follows, yet grasp it in such a way that it is burdened neither with Kant’s limitations nor with Schiller’s exaggerations. I designate “free play” as a form of play in which aesthetic practices interact with other everyday practices. This kind of play contributes to the realization of freedom and is thus precarious. It is always questionable to what degree it actually succeeds in making a contribution to realizing freedom. This kind of play is also neither harmonious nor disharmonious, since its structure always comes to be worked out within play itself. I would thus like to show how we have to conceive of this play as an unassured process, and how it contributes to the realization of freedom. As I concluded at the end of the first chapter, we have to define the specificity of art in concepts that express a relationship between art and other practices. On the basis of these considerations, I can also formulate the conceptual demand as follows: we have to think of the specificity of art in terms of concepts of practical reflection, so that we understand art as a specific practice by which the human being attends to himself or herself. With this we have more clearly delineated the frame in which to conceptualize the form of art’s practice. Its form of practice has a place within human practices.

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With the thought that art accomplishes a practical reflection, we can see the general outlines of this position, but we have not concretely spelled out what it entails. In order to do so, we will have to understand how art has a special way of provoking changes within human practices.

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3 Autonomy as selfreferentiality— the practical reflection of art In the prior chapter, I was concerned most of all with recovering the Kantian insight that art is a practice of reflecting on human practices. Now I  have to explain to what extent art is itself a special practice of reflection that is distinct from all other practices of reflection that deal with human life. In the vocabulary that I introduced in the prior chapter, I  can formulate the question as follows:  What specifically defines the practical reflection that art accomplishes? If one wants to conceptualize art, then it is decisive to answer this question. In doing so, it will also be important not to lose sight of the results that we achieved in the prior considerations, to pay heed that we do not ourselves perpetuate the problematic aspects of the autonomy paradigm. It is imperative to explain what is specific about art as a practical reflection in such a way that we come, in and through this specificity, to understand what is valuable about art for human

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practice. It does not suffice to say what distinguishes art from other practices of reflection, but we have to explain to what extent this distinction matters for human practice. With this question, we can find echoes of the debate going back to Baumgarten as to what specific contribution art makes to the human activity of knowing. An answer that seems near to hand would be that art brings about a specific contribution to the human activity of knowing because of its sensible and material aspect. It is formulated as a thesis: Specificity of Art’s Contribution to Human Practice: Art makes a specific contribution to human practice because it expands knowledge in a sensible and material way. This does not yet say anything about whether we should interpret the expansion of knowledge through art in a more theoretical or in a more practical way. The decision of this matter would give the discussion a different contour, which I will not pursue here, as I am concerned now with the general structure of art’s distinctive contribution. And in its general structure, this specific thesis demonstrates a problem that can be articulated with the following questions: Why is an expansion of knowledge even relevant for human practice? We can think of the expansion of our knowledge as developing in a way that is, at least in principle, unlimited. Why is it relevant for human knowledge to expand in a sensible-material way like this? To this we can give two different, mutually exclusive answers: either the expansion is relevant because it can be converted into further knowledge or one claims that it is relevant precisely because it cannot be converted into further knowledge. The first claim emphasizes the continuity with other practices of knowing, while the second emphasizes the discontinuity. And with this we stand before a dilemma: If we want to equate the specificity of art with its sensible materiality, then we run the danger

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either of denying what is specific about art or of emphasizing it in such a way that the contact to the rest of practice gets lost. We can grasp the potential of art to expand our knowledge and the dilemma that goes along with this in another way, indeed in terms of concepts that we have already encountered: following Hegel, Danto, and Menke, we can understand artworks as signs that have a particularly thing-like (dinghaft) aspect.1 If we understand artworks as special kinds of signs, then we confront the problem of how such signs are relevant within human practical life. And then we land before an alternative that I  have just articulated in relation to the expansion of knowledge: either we say that artworks can be converted into other signs or we just say that such a conversion is not possible. In the first case, we emphasize the continuity with other instances of sign usage, in the second the discontinuity (the latter view came up in the second chapter as a critique of Hegel through the notion of “untranslateability”). And now we face the dilemma of whether to deny the specificity of art or to emphasize it in such a way that contact with other practices falls away: Dilemma of Defining the Specificity of Art through its Sensible Materiality: If we grasp the specificity of art in terms of its materiality, then we explain art either as a practice of knowing or as a practice of sign usage that can be transferred to other practices of knowing or sign usage, or as a practice of knowing or sign usage that is completely separate from all other practices of knowing or using signs. We must thus consider what is problematic about the effort to define art in terms of notions of sensible materiality. An explanation following Compare Gertrud Koch and Christiane Voss (eds.), Zwischen Ding und Zeichen: Zur ästhetischen Erfahrung in der Kunst (Munich: Fink Verlag, 2005). 1

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the sense of the remarks from the first chapter would go as:  This effort to define art through its sensible materiality does not think the specific nature of art as definite contribution to practice, but rather as a specific determination of art, independent of any contribution that it makes. We see that this approach is problematic if we seek to understand aesthetic practices. Someone who advocates this thesis that art’s sensible materiality is what defines it essentially claims that what happens in dealing with artworks is that we are perceiving in a particularly intense way. In sensible perception, we pursue the details that are characteristic of an artwork. But it remains in question what these practices of perception are good for. Yet this question may not remain open if we want to conceptualize the relevance of art for human practice. This gives a hint of what is at stake in this way of defining art: It finds its basis in the object, and thus not in the practice. We can conclude from this what we already mentioned in the first chapter: that it is crucial to avoid an understanding of what defines the specific nature of art that is formulated in terms of the object. We can avoid such an approach if we grasp this specific nature in notions that have to do with practice. And this is what I will now do. The basic thought that I would like to put forward is that in art, various human practices come to be negotiated in a practical way. In order to explain what is characteristic about art in notions of practice, we will have to say more than just that art adds another kind of practice to the rest of human practice. It is far more the case that we will have to reveal the connection between art and other practices, and a good point of departure here is the claim that art contributes to the negotiation of practices. Now there are many practical ways of negotiating practices. We thus have to give a closer definition of art as a process of negotiation by making clear that art is characterized by a special dynamic between objects (in the broadest sense) and practices. Artworks bring about

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challenges to other practices, so that these other practices come to be confirmed or altered, and hence expanded. It is decisive for such an understanding to take art as a reflective practice: a practice that takes up a relation to other practices. I will thus give form to my suggestion by clarifying that I commence from two paradigmatic positions that characterize art as a specific sensible-material practice: Hegel’s and Goodman’s philosophies of art. I will show that we can indeed correct certain insufficiencies in Hegel’s approach by referring to Goodman, but that this leads even more to the dilemma that I have already described. This will eventually bring me to the thesis that artworks are objects that are constituted in such a way that they initiate specific practices. By means of these practices, other different practices get renegotiated. This will demonstrate why we should give up the thesis that sensible materiality is in every case characteristic of art. It is beyond doubt the case that sensible materiality is characteristic of many artworks. Nevertheless, there are artworks that, despite being realized in a sensible and material way, attach little importance to this aspect of their realization, and an explication of art also has to do justice to these artworks. So it is crucial to give adequate explanation of the notion that artworks determine for themselves what possesses relevance within them and what does not, that the question is to be posed of the artworks themselves whether, and in what sense, their significance is bound up with their sensible materiality. Defining art’s specificity in terms of reflective practice will eventually culminate in the claim that art has no established, specific character.

1.  The sensible materiality of art: Hegel The thesis that art is a reflective practice can be justified by appealing to Kant. On the other hand, I would attribute to Hegel the thesis that a

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sensibly accessible material is essential. Even if I have already alluded to the complexities in his position, Hegel nevertheless succeeds at provoking a key discussion in the philosophy of art. Unlike Kant, he bases his aesthetic philosophy on the premise that objects present what they have to offer in a special sensible-material form.2 In this way, Hegel appeals to Baumgarten3 and Herder4 and gives concrete, material form to the Kantian thesis on the nonconceptual nature of the aesthetic.5 In his view, artworks do not offer their spiritual content in the medium of the concept, but rather in a sensible, material form, which means that they are objects that appeal to human sense by means of their material form. According to Hegel, this happens in an irreducible variety of ways: different arts speak to different senses with their material—colors in painting, the tonal system in music, natural language in linguistic works, and the like. Many of these materials are shaped by history and culture. Others are devoid of meaning, according to Hegel, such as the materials of architecture, and thus have to be understood more as natural materials, which he sees as a deficiency on their part. On the basis of these explanations, we can offer the following considerations toward the goal of defining aesthetic practice, which are derived from the prior chapter: As sensible-material objects, artworks are determined by a wide range of details. And these determinations sort themselves out in such a way that each artwork resembles no other object (and no other artwork). For this reason, one has to Compare this to Hegel’s programmatic determinations in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences (New York: Continuum, 1990), 258–259. 3 Compare Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Ästhetik. 4 Compare Johann Gottlieb Herder, “Viertes kritisches Wäldchen,” in: Schriften zur Ästhetik und Literatur 1767–1781, ed. Gunter E. Grimm (Frankfurt am Main:  Suhrkamp, 1993), 247–443. 5 See Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), §6–8. 2

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perceive artworks in an intensive way in order to make sense of them, and this requires an education of the powers of perception in many respects. Those who produce and those who receive the artwork have to be educated in various practices of the arts in order to cultivate and develop their powers of perception. This is the reason why the process of dealing with artworks is permeated by historical and cultural influences. But such an education on the part of those who produce and receive artworks does not lead them simply to being prepared to understand them in a straightforward manner. As refined as their powers of perception might be, it is essentially impossible for those who attend to artworks to take in the full wealth of detail and every peculiarity of their sensible and material formation. This is the reason why artworks can be interrogated in unlimited ways by the senses, and this potentially endless interrogation is a pleasurable occasion, as we might say with Kant. It generates pleasure to look at a painting or listen to a piece of music in ever more precise ways. We can thus explain aesthetic practices through the process of exploring the endless wealth of detail in the sensible and material nuances of artworks. We can attribute the thesis to Hegel that what is specific to art is the promotion of sensible-material practices. He advocates a variation of the thesis that has already been introduced that art expands human knowledge in a specific way. For Hegel it is a matter of expanding our self-knowledge, that is, expanding knowledge of the guiding historical and cultural form of life. Thus, in Hegel’s sense, we can narrow down the thesis that I formulated at the start of the chapter: Specific Contribution of Art to Human Practice: Art makes a specific contribution to human practice in that it expands our self-knowledge in a sensible and material way. However, Hegel does not manage with this clarification to achieve a satisfactory explanation of what is specific to art, since he reduces

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the effect of art to whatever aspect of its content can be grasped in concepts. I already developed the point that for Hegel, artworks make us aware of essential orientations of a form of life (representations of death, love, transcendence, etc.). Since we can also articulate these orientations in concepts, at least in principle, the process of dealing with sensible and material presentations risks losing its position as the highest form of dealing with a historical and cultural form of life. This is then exactly what happens, according to Hegel, once a corresponding conceptual practice gets developed.6 Art then shows itself to be the propadeutic of philosophy, or more generally, of the process of coming to conceptual terms with a historical and cultural form of reality. With this, he explains the effect of art in such a way that his thesis on the specific nature of art leaves no trace in this explanation its value, as we saw in the previous chapter.7 This means that Hegel does not succeed at explaining the specificity of art in terms of a practical reflection, since he fails to answer the question of what good there is in the sensible process of dealing with such determinate details. It is not a novelty to critique Hegel as having a concept of art that is heteronomous. In the context of aesthetic theories that follow the Kantian tradition, it is quite an established practice to make this objection to Hegel.8 But the question of greater interest is why Hegel misses out on the specific relevance of aesthetic practices, and what lessons are to be drawn from this for a plausible account of these practices. Hegel accomplishes two key steps in his aesthetics: On the Thus the famous sentence on the end of art: compare G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I-III, ed. von E. Molenhauer and K. M. Michel, Vol. I in Werkausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Surhkamp, 1986), 25. 7 On this points, see Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, Einführung in Hegel Ästhetik (Fink: München, 2005), 261–263. 8 Compare Rüdiger Bubner, “Über einige Bedingungen gegenwärtiger Ästhetik,” in: Ästhetische Erfahrung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), 9–51, especially 16–20. 6

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one hand, he claims, contrary to Kant, that we can only grasp the autonomous nature of the aesthetic by emphasizing the relevance of the sensible and material element of art. This thesis runs counter to the Kantian explanation of the autonomy of art in terms of the distinctive pleasure occasioned by art. Aesthetic pleasure is in Hegel’s view merely an expression of the autonomy of the subject, which means that it cannot serve to explain the specificity of aesthetic practices. It would be far more necessary to look more profoundly into the particular nature of artworks and aesthetic practices as such, thus at the relevance of the sensible material within these practices. On the other hand, in Hegel’s account, the sensible and material aspects of artworks do not make any substantial contribution to their meaning or to their influence on the world outside of the aesthetic. In the end, they do not lead to an expansion of knowledge, and this means that Hegel does not succeed at giving an account of the effectiveness of aesthetic practices.

2.  Artworks as specific sensible patterns: Goodman We will get closer to such an account in Nelson Goodman’s philosophy of art. Goodman explains artworks by understanding them as objects that we treat as symbols in a specific way, by focusing on various aspects of artworks and analyzing them repeatedly in a rather abstract manner. I  will seek, however, to sharpen his position in a concrete manner by looking at it as a version of the thesis that artworks have a special relevance due to their sensible and material aspect. In dealing with an object as an artwork, according to Goodman, there are usually certain details of their form that are relevant to them as symbols. He speaks here of a “syntactic density” in the use

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of symbols.9 We can illustrate this element of syntactic density by exploring how, in dealing with paintings, we can never conclusively decide which of its elements are distinct from one another, so that we can always further divide these elements, right down to the smallest contexts. It is because of this density that we constantly find ourselves rewarded by looking more closely to examine the properties of the painting. With this explanation, Goodman’s account fits seamlessly together with Hegel’s notion of artworks as sensible and material objects that are determined in myriad material ways. Unlike Hegel, however, Goodman grasps this material specificity of works decidedly as a usage of symbols. And this difference allows him plausibly to claim, in a way that Hegel cannot, that the artwork’s presentation rests irreducibly on its sensible material form, and that it cannot be sublated into concepts. Goodman’s thesis is that the symbolic nature of artworks consists precisely in the many details of their sensible and material form. In his analysis of the symbolic function that is characteristic of artworks, Goodman hopes to find an account of the specific nature of aesthetic practices, and in doing so he places value on the idea that this specificity is not meant to be “essentialistic.” He thus claims that there are no definite criteria that we can find for the presence of an aesthetic practice, instead only “symptoms of the aesthetic.”10 This symptom-oriented approach should make clear to what extent we can find ourselves confronting an infinite variety of details of sensible and material form in our process of dealing with artworks. One reason for this is the already mentioned syntactic density of artworks. Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976), 136f. 10 I here refer to only two of the five “symptoms of the aesthetic” that Goodman brings up; compare Nelson Goodman, Ways of World Making (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978), 67–70; compare also Goodman’s understanding of the symptoms of the aesthetic in the sixth chapter of Languages of Art. 9

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There is one of these so-called symptoms of the aesthetic that especially stands out in his account. According to Goodman, there is a specific characteristic way of taking up a relationship that he calls exemplification.11 Artworks thus relate not only to something in the world in a sensible and material manner, but also to properties that they themselves possess. We can explain this manner of relating with a statement such as “x is an example of y”: an artwork is an example of the sensible and material way of forming that characterizes it. Thus, we can understand a form of painting in which brushstrokes are very prominent by explaining that they establish the materiality of the paint being used, the materiality of color. Such painting has the property of being formed by its use of paint. However, this use of paint is not merely a property it possesses, but one it relates itself to in such a way that the use of paint becomes conspicuous in it. Such cases of exemplification in the use of symbols are always found wherever an object is taken as a sample of a property.12 In Goodman’s analysis, it is characteristic of artworks that they provide samples in a variety of ways. Goodman explains this notion of exemplification through the example of what happens in a tailor’s shop. If I want to have a tailor make a sport coat for me, then it might happen that he shows samples of various materials for this sport coat. The samples exemplify the properties of the material, but not all of these properties are relevant: for example, neither their size nor their position within the sample book. The samples relate to the properties that they exemplify in such a way that only certain properties stand out. This point can be applied to artworks: For these as well, it is the case that they do not The canonical definition that Goodman offers for this kind of relationship goes as:  “Exemplification is possession of a property plus relating to its label” (Languages of Art, 52). 12 Compare the explanation in Goodman, Ways of World Making, 63–65. 11

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establish all of the properties that they possess. Yet some properties stand out, such as the brushstrokes of a painting or the tonal colors of an orchestra. They get exemplified by the artwork. Along the lines of Goodman’s notion of exemplification, we could— whether with or against Goodman’s intentions—seek to examine the specificity of aesthetic practices in the following manner: The sensible and material formations of an artwork demand their own proper method of treatment, since only such a treatment can explain what the individual elements of an artwork are an example of. We can only grasp what an artwork means in and through immersing ourselves in its sensible and material form. Artworks make reference to their materials, to tonal colors, to a blending of contours in painting, or to brevity in formulating sentences, or to many other such details. All such elements can make up the meaning of a work of art, so that if artworks are to be understood as signs in this way, the specific material form of them is relevant to their meaning in a variety of ways. They distinguish themselves in this way from the use of signs in the rest of everyday life, because outside of art this material aspect of sign usage is not pertinent in the same way. If I go into a bakery and want to buy three rolls, then it is irrelevant if I speak in a high or a deep voice, quickly or slowly, quietly or loudly. I could also hold up a card on which I  had written, “Three sesame rolls please!” If I wrote these words in a different order, “Please three sesame rolls!” then it would make no difference. In an artwork, it is different, since in this case there are many such elements of material formation that count. We can formulate the decisive thought in Goodman’s notion of exemplification as follows:  Artworks make special sensible patterns apparent to those who occupy themselves with them. They learn to understand these sensible patterns, such as the tone colors of an orchestra or the structure of wood in a sculpture, as meaningful patterns. Artworks refer to features of their sensible and material

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form, which thereby contribute to their meaning within the artwork. These features emerge in a self-referential manner. Now the emergence of these sensible features does not yet completely explain the relevance of these features for human practice. Why is it relevant for human practice that certain tonal colors, or structures of wood, or such things emerge within artworks? According to Goodman’s view, we could answer this question by saying:  The properties that emerge in artworks also play a role in our other dealings with the world. A certain kind of materiality or a certain tone color might also occur within nonartistic practices. We also find the patterns presented by artworks outside of art. They are thus to be thought of as patterns for discovering elements of the world external to art. The process of dealing with these patterns sharpens our sense for these elements and our ability to use our senses to discover them. With this insight, we come to see how the sensible and material elements of art expand our knowledge.13 The notion of exemplification could thus serve to explain the specific nature of aesthetic practice in a way that would represent a variation in the thesis formulated at the start of this chapter: Specificity of the Knowledge Mediated by Art: Art makes a special contribution to human practice by way of the fact that it provides us with a sensible-material pattern for other human practices. Those who produce and respond to art thereby sharpen their senses for sensible phenomena that match these patterns. Yet this explanation does not lead to the intended result, since it does not accomplish what it promises: If we consider exemplification to be the defining feature of how we deal with artworks, then we either Goodman places great value on the notion that art is one practice of knowing among others, such as science. (See Goodman, Languages of Art, Ch. 6.) 13

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lose sight of the relevance of art for other practices or we do not properly grasp it in its specificity. This is an unfavorable alternative that we arrive at by making exemplification into the defining feature for aesthetic practices. As stated, exemplification means that an artwork refers to a sensible pattern. These patterns—a rhythm, a constellation of colors—can also find themselves realized outside of the artwork. If this is the case, then there is nothing specific about the sensible and material form of the artwork. Let us begin, for example, by looking at a case where a painting involves a certain constellation of colors. Now if such a combination of colors were also to be found in a coincidental configuration of pieces of clothing in a crowd of people—or, to take another example, a certain kind of musical rhythm seems to come from a subway riding on its tracks— then such everyday situations naturally do not realize the specific formation of the corresponding artwork. If the effect of artworks is predicated on the fact that their sensible and material patterns also show up in the extra-aesthetic world, then this means that their sensible and material character plays no defining role. The patterns that they prepare for us could also be realized in different ways. Such an approach does not give us any explanation for why an artwork, in its specific character, has any special relevance for our other practices.14 Now we might nevertheless try to maintain such a defining role within our notion of exemplification. But then—and now I come to the second alternative—we lose sight of the relevance of aesthetic In a similar fashion, James O.  Young raises the critique that Goodman’s notion of exemplification only gives us to understand that art offers trivial forms of knowing: see “Art, Knowledge and Exemplification,” British Journal of Aesthetics 39 (1999), 126–137. For a critique of the overall ability of the notion of exemplification in relation to art, see Henning Jensen, “Exemplification in Nelson Goodman’s Aesthetic Theory,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 32 (1973), 47–51. 14

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practices within the human form of life. Let us once again turn back to the example of a painting:  If a painting exemplifies a manner of painting characterized by prominent brush strokes, then the painting only relates to objects that embody just those properties that are to be found in the artwork. If we take the prevalence of the brushstrokes very precisely, then the circle of objects that demonstrates just this element quickly becomes very small. In the end, there is precisely one object that demonstrates just this kind of brushstroke:  the painting itself. Exemplification then explains the relation of the artwork to itself. We can see the specificity of an artwork realized in just this self-relation. But then we no longer gain an understanding of how a path leads from the autonomous artwork to an understanding of the everyday world. The fact that an artwork relates to its own autonomous form does not explain how the process of dealing with the artwork can be valuable for other practices as well. So we might find ourselves compelled to give up on the thesis that artworks have any impact at all. If we wanted to avoid this concession, then we would have to explain exemplification in such a way as to let go of the notion of art’s specificity—we then come back to the first side of the alternative. Exemplification would then be based on what the artwork shares with other objects. And then Goodman’s explanation of the relevance of sensible and material form through his notion of exemplification does not lead to any understanding of the defining feature of aesthetic practice that would reveal the connection between art and extra-aesthetic practices. It will be fruitful to compare Goodman’s notion of exemplification once again with Hegel’s position. Hegel considers art to be a sensible and material way of knowing; yet he is not able to bring it in relation to other sensible and material ways of knowing. This is just what Goodman accomplishes through his notion of exemplification. For

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this, however, he pays the price of raising the dilemma that I already mentioned at the start of the chapter. I repeat: Dilemma of Specifying Art through its Sensible Materiality: If we grasp the specificity of art by means of its sensible materiality, then we explain art either to be a practice of knowing and using signs that can be transferred into other practices of knowing or sign usage, or to be a practice of knowing and using signs that is independent of all others. We can grasp this dilemma once again by looking at art in terms of its value and specificity:  Goodman’s notion of exemplification does not succeed at explaining the specificity of art in a way that also allows us to comprehend its value. He does offer a very important impetus for defining art by understanding artworks as self-referential objects, but he does not combine this thought with the notion of art as reflective practice, and for this reason, his definition of the specificity of art does not reveal the value of art. Goodman explains the relevance of art within the context of human practice by seeing it as a set of signs that are like other signs. This leads him, rightly I might add, to emphasize the continuity between art and other practices. But his explanation does not give us a full understanding of this continuity. It cannot simply consist in the fact that artworks contribute to knowledge in the same manner as other signs, but instead has to be based on the way art serves as a practice of reflection that provides the impetus for a negotiation of practices, and thus contributes to the realization of human freedom, of human self-determination.

3.  The specificity of art understood interactively: A programmatic sketch Now we can to some extent get an overview of what is problematic in all of the explanations of what is proper to art that have been discussed

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up to this point. It is necessary to explain the relevance of the sensible and material form of an artwork by examining why it matters that the material of an artwork is made up just the way that it is, and not in some other way. But this leaves us with the following alternative: We might take the approach that this sensible form explains the specificity of the aesthetic. But if we take this approach, then we end up understanding the process of dealing with it merely as an irrelevant supplement of other practices that are not themselves aesthetic. Or alternatively, we could take the approach that the precise nature of the material form is irrelevant. In this case, we do indeed manage to understand the connection between art and extra-aesthetic practices, but in a way that favors aesthetic specificity. What follows from this diagnosis is that an explanation of the nature of aesthetic practices can only succeed at taking account of the sensible and material elements of an artwork if we do not take these aspects as a definite, fixed form of an artwork. How can we do justice to these conditions? We have to acknowledge that we have sought the specific nature of art on the wrong level up to this point. Our considerations started out from the hypothesis that art expands human practice, that artworks equip human practice with something special. And we concluded that this would be justified by the fact that artworks are, in their own right, endowed with some special makeup. But it is just this conclusion that is not compelling. We could give up on it by saying that art is a practice in which a variety of expansions of human practice become possible. The reason for this is that in art, expansions of human practice come to be negotiated. If we want to understand this, then we cannot base our account of art on how those objects that we call artworks are “constituted,” but we instead have to demonstrate that artworks themselves are concerned, in various ways, with how human practices should be constituted. Artworks may not, I  would like to emphasize, be understood as objects if they are to be understood in what specifically defines

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them as art. Instead, we have to understand their specific nature in relation to those practices that are bound up with artworks, and must understand these practices in terms of how they relate to other, extraaesthetic practices. I can formulate this in a short concept that will become important in what follows:  Art has to be understood as a process of negotiation. With this notion, we are basing our thinking about art on the connection between art and human practices. It consists of two aspects:  first, artworks evoke practices of reception that are characteristic of the recipient: Recipients interact with artworks. And second, these practices of reception stand in connection with other practices in the world that are not aesthetic: They leave a trace within these other practices in a variety of ways. My suggestion is thus to commence the explanation of art by looking at the interactions with artworks and their pervasive force in such a way that we explain the specificity of art in notions pertaining to aesthetic practice. And the way recipients (and producers) interact with artworks is, we might say, the aesthetic practice par excellence. If we start out from this standpoint, then we are not basing our account on the property of an object, but rather on the constitutive connection that pertains between an object and the practices of those who occupy themselves with it. This gives us the sense of a rupture in explaining the specific nature of art that I will bring to a point: We have to understand what is specific to art not in terms of the nature of a kind of object, but in terms of the form of interaction. When we connect this goal with the considerations from the prior chapter, we see the reason why it has been difficult time and again to grasp the reflective character of art properly: because the question about the specific nature of art has constantly been posed in terms of its nature as an object, for example, as a sign object. In this way, we do not get to the level on which we could comprehend the human

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relation to self, the level on which it would become possible to understand art. We only get to this level by grasping what is specific to art in terms of interaction. To put it programmatically, we cannot conceptualize art just as a practice within our ways of relating to the world as an object, but instead have to think of it as a practice of reflection within our way of relating to the world, and this means that we must take the notion of reflection in a practical sense. The program that we get a glimpse of here takes us back to the notion of free play. The change of perspective that I have suggested implies that we begin to think of aesthetic practice as a playful practice, which is characterized by special kinds of interactions, and when we enter into these interactions, it allows us to understand the notion of free play as play that is practically realized. As I will make clear in what follows, what is crucial to a proper understanding of this practically realized play is the connection that pertains between those practices by which we immerse ourselves in an artwork and other practices that we engage in outside of dealing with art. If we take play in a comprehensive sense, it is dedicated not only to artworks, but also extends beyond them. Art develops a free play within the human form of life. To use a compelling expression of Albrecht Wellmer, we can speak of an aesthetic “play of reflection” (Reflexionspiel).15 This aesthetic play of reflection is a dynamic connection between various practices, and it thus serves as the basis for how art leads to a process of negotiation:  Art gives impetus to new determinations of human practice. These general characterizations of free play as a play of reflection are no more than just the first hints of what I  will pursue in the following. Yet it should be clear that merely referring to the notion of 15 Albrecht Wellmer, Versuch über Musik und Sprache (Munich:  Carl Hanser Verlag, 2009), 146.

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interaction does not yet give us a sufficient understanding of free play. This approach does, however, show us the direction, and this is why I will start with it. In order to conceptualize how we have to think of interactions with artworks, we can start with the question of how to analyze the relation between objects and the reactions of those who deal with objects in a proper way. We have already seen the need to avoid thinking of the nature of artworks in terms of their objective features. We thus have to ask ourselves how else we can think of objects. We can proceed schematically at first in saying that artworks are not fixed in terms of their properties, but rather continue to be involved in determining their properties. We can easily clarify this through the analogy with persons, who are precisely not objects with fixed properties. Instead they have properties to the degree that they relate themselves to these properties. But how can we think of artworks as objects that participate in constituting their own properties? Artworks are not people. Even if time and again, we grant artworks a quasi-subjective and in this sense independent status,16 such a discourse remains somewhat obscure. We must find an alternative to thinking of an object in terms of its properties. We have already encountered the beginning of such an alternative, namely, Goodman’s notion of the artwork as self-relating object. The notion of exemplification implies, as we have seen, that artworks relate to themselves. This notion in Goodman is, however, too narrow, since he thinks this self-relation in terms of a relation to a sign. But we could take this idea in a much more general direction: Artworks determine for themselves the properties that are essential to them. The properties are not simply given, but instead This notion is especially rooted in the idealistic tradition. See, for example, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, “System des transzendentalen Idealismus,” in:  Ausgewählte Schriften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985), 417. 16

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get negotiated within the artwork itself. More pointedly, artworks are dynamic objects. They unfold out of themselves a dynamic that permeates them as objects. It might sound funny to say that properties are negotiated in an object, that it unfolds a dynamic from within itself. We will thus have to come to understand why this way of speaking is justified. To the extent that it is possible, we can express as follows the relationship between interactions and artworks as dynamic objects: In interacting with artworks, recipients pursue the configuration that artworks develop in relation to themselves. The dynamic disposition of artworks relates to the practices that seize on this dynamic and articulate it. In the following, I will follow both sides—the self-related constitution of artworks and the practices of recipients. In the next section, the impression might arise as if an artwork could simply be conceived of out of itself alone. We have to understand what I  say here about the constitution of artworks in connection with those practices by which we immerse ourselves in them. The distinctions that I present in what follows arise only from the necessity to present things sequentially and to separate matters for the sake of analysis.

4.  The self-referential constitution of artworks In every artwork, we may discern certain relevant aspects such as rhythm, constellations of color, bodily posture, or displayed words. Such elements have a specific weight in how the artwork confronts those who deal with it. If we give due significance to the point that each artwork determines for itself which elements have special meaning within it, then we can no longer speak of the specificity of artworks in a universalizing way: whether this specificity is that of a sign or of

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a particular sensible materiality. Instead, we have to conceive of what characterizes each artwork by examining the dynamic that it unfolds from its own self-referential constitution. Nevertheless, it would seem helpful to search for an explanation that is at least applicable to most artworks. Such an explanation would give primary significance to the relation between elements within the work: relations between words, between harmonies, between colors, between bodily postures, between different objects in an installation, and so forth. Such relations pervade artworks in the configuration of their elements. These relations have a nature that promises to communicate a good deal: They unfold their own mode of meaning. They contrast, establish boundaries between each other, repeat, form a transition, and much else. Relations within an artwork are in each case configured in a specific way. We can grasp many, if not all, artworks in this manner as a structural connection between different elements, hence between words, tones, or colors. What characterizes such connections is that individual elements gain their profile from the way they are connected:  The identity of an element is defined by the artwork through the relations in which it stands to other elements of the artwork. This is also true in cases where the artwork is made up of elements that exist in some respect independently of it. Let us take the example of a poem. A poem is, in most cases, made up of words within a natural language, and hence in this respect it reaches back to elements that already existed. But they get transformed in the poem. They do not just have meaning in the same way they would in ordinary language.17 For this reason, recipients of artworks always have to reveal the meaning of their elements through interpretation. This is not to say that the meanings of expressions in natural languages are simply fixed. They can certainly be grasped as alterable, but are thereby bound up with interactions between speakers and other factors. Compare for example Davidson’s philosophy of 17

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They cannot simply refer back to meanings that they know ahead of time, but instead have to understand the elements out of the given poem. Something analogous applies for colors in painting or tones and harmonies in music. Even if we can say in a certain respect that these elements have existence outside of individual works, they nevertheless get instantiated differently and in a new way in each individual artwork. Someone who wants to understand them has to do so from out of the respective work (whereby it is obviously the case that this understanding can also depend on artistic conventions, allusions to other artworks). An artwork is not made up of elements that exist independently of it, but instead it establishes its elements by placing them in a mutually determining relation with one another, which it first sets into motion as an artwork.18 The internal relationship between elements within the artwork does not occur in such a way that these elements stand in relation to all other relations in the artwork. Let us imagine for example a poem that comes about in such a way that all of the words or word combinations within it mutually determine each other. That would not be an artwork, but a formal gimmick. In the artwork, elements stand in a variety of relationships that have varying weight. A series of tones recurs as a repetition or a variation of other tones. One word, along with another, forms a rhyme, or a rhythmical context. In such cases, certain relations in particular stand out. The way that elements within an artwork permeate each other should be understood in language in Donald Davidson, Truth, Language and History (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2005). 18 This is also true for artworks that, like most literary texts, work with elements that have a definition outside of the work. The definition of these elements gets reformed and revised in the artwork. See, for example, Theodor W. Adorno, “Commitment,” in: Notes to Literature, Vol. 2, trans. Shierry Weber Nicolson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 76–94; See also Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 137–163.

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this way: Certain relations between elements get emphasized, while others get placed in the background, yet others break off and remain fragmentary, and so on. An artwork thus pervades each of the particular relations between individual elements that make it up. We now face the question of how to understand the emergence of these more or less significant relations within the artwork. How do relations come to be constituted within the artwork as repetitions or variations? Perhaps we would simply like to say that these relations are built into the work. This is not altogether false, but with this explanation we fall back into thinking of the artwork as an object that is constituted in a certain way. And it was just this thought that we wanted to free ourselves from by grasping artworks as dynamic objects that create themselves. Put another way, an artwork relates to itself. It contains relationships in which it relates to itself and gives determination to itself. If it is now the case that relations between elements step into the foreground, then this means that an artwork relates to the relation between its elements. These relations, like other decisive elements of the artwork, get negotiated in a self-relational way. Artworks are dynamic because that which has special relevance within them gets negotiated. Self-references within artworks initiate this dynamic, and thereby create relations in the form of repetitions, variations, and other such patterns. How can we get a better understanding of the self-relations that we are speaking of here? In a general sense, a presentation is selfreferential when it stands in a relation to itself. The following statement epitomizes this: “This sentence consists of six words.” Even here, we could say that the form of the sentence is what stands out, in the sense of exemplification. The sentence directs the attention of the reader (or listener) to its own form, so that it relates propositionally to what it says. Yet, this is just what is normally not the case with artworks, since here the self-relation is normally not based on statements, but on the

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work in its entirety. It is far more the case with artworks that selfrelation concerns individual elements of form. Put another way, in an artwork, the self-relation is not central and comprehensive, but rather decentralized and stands in relation to a localized circle of elements. We can illustrate this particularly through pieces of music. A  musical work of art is based for example on a relationship, a relation of repetition between sequences of tones, and it thus focuses on the relation between the exposition of a theme and its reprisal. It is precisely through focusing on such elements, and then allowing others to fall into the background, that elements within an artwork are defined. It is never clear in this process what functions as an element and what functions as a relation between elements, since the artwork involves negotiating this as a dynamic process.19 So the relation between two words in a poem that make up a rhyme could be an element that the artwork puts into another relation. It is always the case, however, that an artwork is not based on elements that are fully defined as such, but on relationships that emerge between them. This happens through the non-explicit way in which the artwork weighs various relations. Thus, various self-relations permeate the makeup of an artwork, and they lead to focusing on certain relations within it and determining which elements are relevant.20 I would like to call to mind once again that this claim that the constitution of artworks consists of elements and relations between them does not pertain to all artworks. Rather the artwork is selfdetermining in the sense that it negotiates what gets determined within it and upon what it has a determining effect. We cannot give a 19 I will emphasize yet again what I intend to speak of in the following section: The dynamic process that I mention here cannot be gasped independently of the recipient’s process of dealing with the artwork. 20 Adorno writes in this sense that every artwork wants “identity with itself ”(Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 4).

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conclusive, universal explanation, and thus my reference to relations and elements should not be understood to claim that I have found a vocabulary for articulating what art is in principle. This vocabulary will at best pertain to all artworks in a very general way. It is only in a very formal sense that we can say that the self-relationality of artworks is always bound up with relationships between elements. Self-relation is merely one kind of relationship. A  merely formal explanation of artworks does not do justice to them. Instead we have to grasp them as dynamic in the sense that they determine for themselves what has relevance within them. We can understand the suggestion I  have made up to now as a reformulation of one of Adorno’s central concepts. Adorno advocates the thesis that artworks are objects with their own “laws of form” (Formgesetze), which we could rightly understand as the most important concept in Aesthetic Theory.21 With this idea, Adorno manages to reach a central insight into the nature of artworks, which he seems to squander to a certain extent, since he develops this notion in the framework of the autonomy paradigm. But the notion of laws of form is not itself inextricably bound up with this paradigm. Independently of this, he says that every artwork determines internally how it is created and what has relevance within it, and this makes up the self-referential essence of the artwork. The artwork’s law of form includes all of the aspects of the work that are decisive for it, and thus all of the peculiarities that it realizes by way of its selfreferential nature. For Adorno, it is decisive to speak of form as something that is always particular and proper to the artwork. Adorno’s insistence on the formal character of each particular artwork is based on the impetus of his aesthetics toward negativity. Adorno advocates the 21 Adorno calls it the “central aesthetic” category (see ibid., 7).

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thesis that the communicative relations of a society can only be interrupted to the extent that objects exist that by their very form withhold themselves from communication, but if we now detach the notion of laws of form from its association with the aesthetics of negativity, then we can omit this thesis. It is not decisive for art that through its form it interrupt the communicative relations of a society. It is far more decisive for the artwork that it defines its own constitution and what has relevance within it out of itself. In its selfrelational constitution, art is not merely about the formal aspects, but about the respective visual, harmonic, and linguistic material out of which it is made, that is, about elements of meaning, objectivity, and the like. Adorno’s conception is thus misleading in that he emphasizes the formal aspect of the artwork’s self-relation in a one-sided manner. We can continue with this critique of Adorno’s law of form by turning to the notion of improvisation within the arts.22 We can with good reason understand improvisation to be paradigmatic of art in general.23 In an improvisation, we see that we cannot understand the self-referential disposition of the work of art merely in terms of its formal production or in the recognition of its form. Let us consider the improvisations of a jazz quintet. The musicians here have a thematic or harmonic material on which they improvise. In the course of an improvisation, it might come about that a trumpet establishes a rhythmical figure that was not already contained in the underlying material. The piano may then take up this figure and alter it. Then it may come up in an altered way when the trumpet or another instrument plays it again. Such an interaction is inherently It seems to me characteristic of Adorno’s aesthetics that it does not give full value to the element of improvisation in art, and what is more important, does not take it as paradigmatic of aesthetic practices. A symptom of this might be the fact that the term “Improvisation” does not occur in the index of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory. 23 Compare Alessandro Bertinetto, “Improvisation and Artistic Creativity,” Proceedings of the European Society for Aesthetics 3 (2011), 81–103. 22

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self-relational, since in the way that they play, the musicians relate to each other and establish elements that will bind them in their further play.24 This means that the elements it establishes are not written in stone, but instead come to be defined anew in the way the musicians interact. The instance of improvisation demonstrates that the self-relational nature of an artwork does not emerge out of a unified, closed form. Instead, the work negotiates its own relation to itself in a localized and decentralized way, and the makeup of the artwork (in this case the event of musicians playing together) offers the framework in which this negotiation takes place.25 Relations between individual elements recur in a new way at various points, become stronger or get revised in such a way that self-relations occur within the development of the work. The notion of a law of form might seem to suggest a unified organization of all of the self-related elements of the artwork, but this is nevertheless not given. This notion might seem to involve the assumption that the self-referential aspect of the work is contained in a single, central point. But this is not possible, since from any particular point within the artwork, as from any point in an improvisation, only certain definite references to other points will follow. These forms of self-relation are localized. In an artwork, like in an improvisation, a more or less complex fabric can develop. But this assumes that this form of relation happens in a variety of ways, that different relations within an artwork are distinguishable from each other. Formulated in another way, artworks are, as dynamic objects, constituted in a plural way. On the normative element of improvisation, see Georg W. Bertram, “Improvisation und Normitivität,” in:  Improvisationen, Paradoxien des Unvorhersehbaren, ed. Gabriele Brandstetter (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2010), 21–40. 25 Günter Figal writes aptly in this sense of a “decentralized ordering of appearances” in Günter Figal, Erscheinungsdinge—Ästhetik als Phänomenologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 95. 24

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With this claim, we can return to our critical examination of Hegel and Goodman at the start of this chapter. Our treatment of them focused on the notion that art is characterized by a certain sensible and material presentation, a thought we can now put aside. Once we recognize that aesthetic practices relate to a kind of objectivity that is self-relational, then we can take a more relaxed posture in regard to the question of the relevance of the sensible material of art. The positions of Hegel and Goodman each used this feature to explain that artworks require a certain kind of approach in dealing with them. Yet the way we deal with artworks is defined by the fact that it deals with dynamic objects, which is why we can admit that there are artworks for which the relevance of the sensible material does not weigh so heavily:26 This is possibly the case with many literary texts, as well as some works of conceptual art. In some individual cases, we might debate whether sensible details are relevant or not, and in some this material does not stand in the foreground. But it is still definitive of such works that they determine their makeup and what is relevant in them. Artworks negotiate the moments that are relevant within them. We find within them constant renegotiations of the elements within them, even though these renegotiations do not always deal with sensibility.27 These considerations make clear what aspect of Hegel’s and Goodman’s explanations of art does not function:  They do not manage to grasp the specific structure of an artwork by which In this respect, I have been especially convinced by arguments from Daniel M. Feige; see especially Daniel M. Feige, “Zum Verhältnis von Kunsttheorie und allgemeiner Ästhetik. Sinnlichkeit als konstitutive Dimension der Kunst?,” Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 56 (2011), 123–142. 27 In this manner we can also criticize Jacques Rancière for placing the wrong emphasis in his definition of art as “aesthetic regime.” The key is to emphasize the negotiating aspect, and not the sensible aspect, of art. See Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics, trans. Gabriel Rockhill (London: Continuum, 2006). 26

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the sensible, material, and other aspects of artworks become comprehensible in their relevance, and this aspect of artworks only becomes comprehensible if we do not attribute a fixed form to them. Instead we have to understand the artwork as a dynamic structure constituted by self-relations, within which these specific aspects of it are negotiated.

5.  Interpretive activities in dealing with artworks The dynamic structure of the artwork described up to now does not, however, simply exist on its own. This dynamic also is inherently made up of those practices that recipients develop in dealing with artworks. The structure of artworks is configured precisely in relation to these practices. Through their self-related constitution, they challenge forth the practices by which recipients respond to them. In order for this challenge to take effect, recipients have to enter into the artwork and confront themselves with the self-relational dynamic of the artwork. The self-relation of the artwork is in this sense to be taken as a moment within an interaction, as a moment within the interactive relation that constitutes it. The artwork demands to be reenacted, and in its dynamic it is constitutively bound up with this reenactment. It demands practices by which recipients articulate the structures of the artwork. The challenge issued by artworks thus has the character of being essentially practical:  for example, when a recipient follows the relations within a picture with her gaze, this leads to specific pathways of gazing that are oriented toward the self-referentially established relations within the artwork.28 The activities of the recipient develop 28 On this point see the investigations of Raphael Rosenberg.

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by being guided by these relations. To this degree we can say that artworks demand a certain behavior. Employing another one of the central concepts from Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory, we can characterize this behavior as mimetic.29 A behavior is mimetic when it appropriates things in a differentiated manner. We would understand such a mimetic behavior falsely if we think of it mainly as passive (as Adorno sometimes suggests).30 Recipients have to be active in order to be guided, so that aesthetic practices always have two sides: On the one hand, these practices reflect a dynamic that gets its impetus from the artwork by following it, but on the other hand, these practices also involve the recipient in new activities, and thus new approaches and interventions. Gadamer captures this by writing that the recipient always has to be a fellow player (Mitspieler): They have to receive the ball that is passed to them and pass it back.31 Recipients are always just as productive as producers in their dealings with artworks because of how their own activities develop. Artworks that do not stir some activity cannot unfold any effect. This is especially true of artworks that are unfamiliar to the recipients. Let us take the example of a painting that is new for someone contemplating it. In such a case, this person will have to cultivate her visual activities further. If she does not become active in her seeing, she will not be able to follow the painting. This activity always consists in the recipient developing her own impulses in dealing with the artwork, for example, by choosing a specific starting point, or 29 See Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 110–118. 30 In Adorno we also find the clear insight that recipients have to become active. So it is very suggestively phrased in his lectures on aesthetics: “It is less a matter of what the artwork gives us than of what we give it: that means, whether in a state of ‘active passivity’ or of strenuous immersion in the matter, we give it that which it actually expects.” Theodor W. Adorno, Ästhetik (1958/59) (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2009), 190. 31 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “The Relevance of the Beautiful,” in: The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, trans. Nicholas Walker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 23–24.

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bringing up conflicting points within the constellation of the work, or comparing the work to established ways of dealing with it. Our own impulses also have a special relevance, since we use them to act within the framework of a history of receptions. In employing the notion of a challenge to explain the dynamic relation of an artwork to the practices of recipients, it is to demonstrate that the constitution of artworks is inextricably bound up with these practices. The artwork’s structure only shows itself to be challenging by being taken up by the recipient. Through their activities, recipients participate in the dynamic that emerges out of the artwork. As I suggested in the prior section, this dynamic is not merely to be grasped in terms of the artwork. It is far more the case that it includes the process of dealing with artworks. In this process, the constellations of an artwork always gain new determinations, new elements emerge or fall back into the background, and so on. Finally, the dynamic of an artwork comes to be actualized by the kind of connection that pertains between the recipient and the artwork. Only on this basis can we gain an understanding of what we already took for granted earlier: that the properties of an artwork are negotiated and that it unfolds its own dynamic out of itself. Even the dynamic process that emerges from artworks thus has two sides:  on the one hand, the self-relational constitution of the artwork, and on the other hand, the activities that recipients carry out in dealing with the artwork. We cannot understand either of these two aspects independently of the other. The self-related constitution is arranged around activities that recipients unfold, and these activities are arranged around the self-related constitution. Artworks are thus bound up with activities that they call forth. The dynamic of artworks is part of a comprehensive dynamic in which artworks are bound together with each other through the different

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reactions that they provoke. We should not allow ourselves to think of this comprehensive process as a circle that is closed in upon itself. As we have said, there are always other human practices that belong to it. These considerations allow us to come to an understanding of the quasi-subjective nature of artworks that is not mystified. Artworks do not simply generate themselves as objects that are constituted by selfrelation. They are self-relational because of the dynamic relation in which producers and recipients stand to each other while dealing with the artwork. Artworks are not subjective objects that bring forth their self-relation out of themselves. We can thus renounce the obscure way of speaking that we played with earlier. It is an essential element of the dynamic practice of art that those who produce and receive the works of art do not simply determine the objects, but rather form them and interact with them in such a way that these objects unfold a selfrelational aspect. In the production and reception of these objects, a practice establishes itself that brings the challenging elements to light. This practice is constituted by the way that objects realize their own internal dynamic through many self-relational operations. This dynamic embodied in the artwork then unleashes a dynamic within all of those practices in which producers and recipients interact with artworks. Someone who sees an object in some way as a subject does not completely renounce the aesthetics that orients itself around the object, since this view still plays with the idea that artworks are to be determined out of themselves. Artworks are objects that have to be conceived of primarily within the context of the dynamic in which they stand. They do not exist independently of the practice of reflection that they develop. Now that the dynamically contextual nature of art stands before us, we can illuminate those activities that recipients unfold in a more precise way. I  characterize them as interpretive activities, since they

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lead to a practical understanding of the way a work is configured.32 For example, in the case of a painting that uses new color combinations or materials, we see activities of perception that are interpretive. Recipients have to adapt themselves to specific colors and ways of painting, which means they do not simply see colors and combinations of colors that make them feel something, but instead that they have to unfold their own activities of seeing in such a way as to adapt them to specific colors and ways of painting. Such activities involve creativity, that is, experimental ways of interacting, new approaches, and such. This is the sense in which receptive activities are to be grasped as interpretive practices. Under the notion of interpretive activity, I  am thinking of a practice that articulates the structure of the artwork by retracing the way elements are configured in it. I  characterize this process as articulation because it involves orienting one’s own activity toward the relations that are contained in the artwork. Speaking of interpretive activities remains, however, too general. We will have to consider more precisely which practices enable recipients of artworks to articulate the constellations of artworks. Two questions stand in the foreground. First, which activities are involved, that is, which activities can we grasp as interpretive activities? Second, how do these activities relate to the constellation of elements in the artwork? Should we think of these activities as subjective reactions to these constellations? I will approach the first question by distinguishing four types of receptive activities in a schematic manner:  bodily, perceptive, 32 In another place, I  write about “comprehending activity toward artworks” (see Georg W. Bertram, “Was die Kunst der Philosophie zu denken gibt,” Allgemeine Zeitschift für Philosophie 34, 1 (2009), 86–89. In my ongoing work of developing this explanation, I have come to the view that a general notion of interpretation is proper, and for this reason, I now speak of interpretative activities.

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emotional, and symbolic.33 With all such activities, recipients articulate the constellations of artworks. In any event, we are dealing with practices that recipients develop in the face of challenges issued by artworks. Since it would burst the confines of this book to analyze each of the mentioned kinds of practices, it is my sole aim here to make the functional relation between these practices comprehensible, since it often gets overlooked in aesthetic discussions. We mostly consider interpretation as an articulation in words, and we understand this to be a distanced, cognitive way of dealing with the artwork. Such a view may be prevalent, but it is problematic in two senses: First, a linguistic interpretation of an artwork is not necessarily a distanced, cognitive way of dealing with the work, since an interpretation can only succeed if a recipient enters into the configuration of the work with her linguistic interpretation, if she follows the work’s configuration despite being independent in her activities and perspectives. Second, such a linguistic articulation is only one among the several practices that articulate an artwork in this way. In order to gain a full notion of these practices, we have to consider linguistic interpretation in connection with other practices. 1. Bodily activities usually get left out of the way we understand the interpretation of artworks. Nevertheless, they play a central role in dealing with many artworks. Bodily activities are not merely a basis for dealing with art that is distinct from art, but rather they are elements of such a process. This typology is not meant to be complete. It is merely meant to collect important activities. It might be sensible to complete these with activities of the imagination: Such activities come into play in reading literature. See Wolfgang Iser, “Akte des Fingierens, oder Was ist das Fiktive im Fiktionalen Text,” in: Funktionen des Fiktiven, ed. Dieter Henrich und Wolfgang Iser (Munich:  Fink Verlag, 1983), 121–151. It might also be sensible to grasp interpretative activities on a whole as activities of imagination, and in this way reveal the practical character of imagination (compare the consideration on the power of imagination in ­chapter 2, section 3). I leave this open here. 33

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They typically come to bear in the reception of music, and also in works of architecture and visual arts. The process of interpreting music often occurs through simple rhythmical movements of the fingers or hands, bobbing the body, or tapping our feet. Another common form is dance, which just like the practices already mentioned also articulates rhythmical constellations of music, and also harmonic or melodic elements. The process of dealing with sculpture or works of architecture also leads to similar forms of movement: Recipients do not dance in these cases, but they do walk around the work, or through it, in a rhythmical way that articulates it in a more or less rhythmical manner. In each case, the movements of the recipient are oriented toward the constellation of the work in such a way that these movements articulate the work. 2. Unlike bodily activities, we do often pay attention to the role of perception in dealing with artworks. However, such accounts usually do not pay proper attention to the active quality of perceptions. Whether explicitly or implicitly, we think of them mostly as passive states, which does not do justice to them.34 It is precisely in dealing with artworks that perceptions show an active side. They come to be developed and refined. Activities of perception are at play in dealing with all arts and are characteristic of all arts. In dealing with music as well as architecture, we have to practice forms of hearing; in dealing with sculpture, forms of seeing play a role, and also tactile feeling (even when we do not actually touch the artwork). Artworks demand feeling, hearing, and seeing. They On this point, compare the thoughts of Alva Noë, Action in Perception (Cambridge: Bradford, 2004). 34

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demand activities of perception with which recipients follow the respective work. 3. Another form of activity has increasingly become an object of theoretical exploration in recent times. Recipients constantly find themselves to be emotionally challenged by the process of dealing with artworks, especially with narrative artworks.35 Someone who reads a novel or watches a film has to get involved in order to understand the work with which she is dealing. This is especially true if recipients are occupied with something else. When outside events capture our attention, it prevents us from entering into the artwork. Recipients understand the artwork by following it as a configuration that has to be articulated through such activities. For example, they empathize with a protagonist, get outraged by the behavior of another figure, or grow concerned or paralyzed by fear. We have to grasp such emotional reactions as activities inherent to the reception of the work, and they thus demonstrate a specific form of interpretation of artworks. 4. Even though we usually take interpretations to be activities that take place through symbols, especially through language, we run the risk of losing sight of the aspect of these activities that involves articulation. Recipients often follow artworks through linguistic articulation, or in the case of music, through singing along or other forms of vocal articulation. We often think of such symbolic activities as standing in contrast to perception. This is deceptive, however, for linguistic interpretation is also an element in dealing with artworks. In Emotional activities also come into play with hearing music; compare Susanne K. Langer, Philosophie auf neuem Wege Das Symbol im Denken, im Ritus und in der Kunst (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1984), ­chapter 8. 35

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dealing with artworks, we bring forth linguistic utterances and develop a vocabulary, sometimes even a very complex one, by means of which we articulate the connections within an artwork. Such utterances and vocabularies are often adapted in very specific ways to various epochs of art, artists, and works, as we see when looking at the academic study of literature, art history, and film studies, which cultivate the linguistic articulation of artworks in a very specific way. Many of the most important predicates that we use to articulate artworks in language relate exclusively to individual aspects of artworks.36 In just this sense, they are to be grasped as elements of a linguistic interpretive process of dealing with artworks. I would like to make clear that to articulate in language the constellations within the artwork is something that we should understand as only one interpretive activity among others. We can only gain a theoretical grasp on all of these activities that belong to interpretation by thinking of linguistic articulation as being one type of interpretive activity among others, and thus overcoming the onesided understanding of the kind of activity provoked by an artwork. Such one-sided understandings are common in aesthetics. We find them wherever theory grasps art primarily as an object of sensible perception37 or linguistic interpretation.38 But it would also be possible 36 On this, compare Frank Sibley, “Ästhetische Begriffe,” in:  Das Ästhetische Urteil, ed. Rüdiger Bubner and Peter Pfaff (Köln: Kiepenheuer, 1977), 87–110. 37 In the present discussion, the most-well-developed effort to think sensible perceptions primarily as interpretive activities can be found in Martin Seel, Aesthetics of Appearing, trans. John Farrell (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004). 38 We can attribute such an approach to Arthur Danto, at least when we look at the following statement: “What these considerations show is that there is an internal connection between the status of the artwork and language with which the artworks are identified as such, in as much as nothing is an artwork without an interpretation that constitutes it as such.” Arthur

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to emphasize bodily activities in a way that is one-sided. For example, Matthias Vogel makes the suggestion to consider all activities of dealing with artworks in terms of the notion of “reenactment” (Nachvollzug), which is revealing in the context of our discussion.39 He develops this suggestion through the example of music: Activities such as replaying, re-singing, and bodily enactment have a primary status in dealing with artworks. Even though this suggestion rightly emphasizes the active character of how we interact with artworks, it remains too narrow. First, it ignores other forms of activity that genuinely articulate the artwork, and second, it gives too little credit to the self-sustaining nature of interpretative activities. Vogel starts from the premise that articulation always takes place in the form of reproducing the work. But we can also engage with the work through activities that articulate the artwork in other ways than those that reproduce it. In their various interpretive activities, recipients always proceed in an autonomous way. This autonomy and variety40 are essential to interpretive activities. We can articulate artworks in a variety of ways, and with varying degrees of intensity. We can articulate a complicated contrapuntal piece of music by means of simple bodily activities, but we can also explore it through activities of hearing and symbolic articulation C. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 135. 39 See Matthias Vogel, “Nachvollzug und die Erfahrung des musikalischen Sinns,” in: Musikalischer Sinn. Beiträge zu einer Philosophie der Musik, ed. Alexander Becker and Matthias Vogel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2007), 314–368; see also Matthias Vogel, Medien der Vernunft: Eine Theorie des Geistes und der Rationalität auf Grundlage einer Theorie der Medien (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001), 212–226. 40 Wittgenstein can serve as the godfather for this approach with his remarks on understanding music, where he constantly emphasizes the variety of interpretive activities. For example, in the following note: “Understanding and explaining a musical phrase.—The most simple explanation is sometimes a gesture; another would be a dance step, or words that describe a dance,” Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Vermischte Bemerkungen,” in: Werkausgabe Band 8 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984), 548.

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(such as explaining the complications of contrapuntal relations in language). The variety of interpretive activities also indicates that there are various ways of dealing with artworks. In a basic sense, we see how children deal with artworks differently from adults. But even a music expert who has command of very refined processes for dealing with pieces of music may notice that she can only explore paintings in a very clumsy way. Without a doubt, many of the challenges entailed by artworks only come to the fore when recipients encounter them by employing refined activities. But this does not mean that we can only follow the constellations within an artwork by means of such refined activities. Every form of articulation has its own capacity to do so.

6.  Interpretive activities and the objectivity of art With this, we have acquired a preliminary concept of the diversity of activities involved in dealing with art. Even though we have not exhausted this notion in the treatment of this material up to this point, it is nevertheless sketched out sufficiently enough that we can take on the second question mentioned earlier:  How do these activities relate to the constellations realized in artworks? Up to now, I  have continually repeated that artworks guide activities, and this is why I attributed a mimetic character to them. I would agree with Adorno that in dealing with the artwork we have an experience of the “primacy of the object.”41 This primacy consists in the fact that the object presents configurations by which practices are guided. But in the meanwhile, we have seen that not all of the dynamism in art comes from the side of the object. Art also requires interpretive

41 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, for example, 108.

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activities that unfold a dynamic by interacting with the self-relational determinations of the artwork. To this extent, it is deceptive to speak of the primacy of the object. We cannot understand this to mean that an object simply asserts itself in relation to a subject, but we have to understand it instead as entailing a dynamic that is bound up with practices. These practices gain their specific quality not through their own routines or the decisions of the subject, but rather out of the process of dealing with objects that are constituted by self-relation. It is in this sense that the self-relational constitution of works of art is dynamic in nature. Up to this point, I  have merely recapitulated points that were already developed. I can sharpen our understanding of the connection between the constellations of artworks and interpretive activities with a reference to John McDowell’s defense of the objectivity of properties of aesthetic value.42 Such properties of aesthetic value are, for example, the richness of tension or balance of the work, as well as its openness or fragmentary character. We can translate McDowell’s question into our context by saying that the self-related constitution of the artwork is the basis of its aesthetic properties: To what extent are interpretive activities oriented by relations within artworks that are independent of the activities of the recipient? In relation to this question, McDowell argues against positions that consider properties of aesthetic value as subjective projections, and thus defends the thesis that these properties are found in the work. With his arguments, McDowell aims essentially to disturb a common prejudice: that something can only be considered objective that the natural sciences consider to be natural. In McDowell’s view, it is important to consider the assumptions that are bound up with On this point, compare John McDowell, “Aesthetic Values, Objectivity and the Structure of the World,” in: Pleasure, Preference and Value, ed. Eva Schaper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1–16. 42

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such an understanding of objectivity. According to his analysis, this involves the key assumption that there is transparent access to the makeup of the world.43 Anyone who claims a transparent relation to the world has to distinguish this transparency from any points of possible opacity. The makeup of the world in itself is not accessible to an opaque view, merely the world from a certain perspective. If we want to arrive at a transparent relation to the nature of the world, then we have to subtract every particular perspective that obscures this transparency. We have to draw out all of those aspects of our relation to the world that obscure our view of the makeup of the world. What do such aspects consist in? They belong to the perspective of those who deal with the world in a cognizing, that is, in a knowing manner, or to put it pointedly, to a subjective perspective. And these positions that connect objectivity to the scientific understanding of nature no longer have a satisfactory answer to such a question. They have to admit that the perspective of a subject is both subjective and objective. On the one hand, the perspective of a knowing subject is beyond any doubt subjective: It does not belong to the makeup of the world as it is in itself. On the other hand, it also has to be grasped as objective, since we can separate this perspective from the makeup of the world as it is in itself. If the process of differentiating a distorting view of the world from an undistorted one really is supposed to lay the ground for an undistorted view, then this difference must be of an objective nature. McDowell thus advances the thesis that we cannot effectively manage to distinguish between an opaque and a nonopaque perspective on the makeup of the world as it is in itself. Efforts to make this distinction show that we cannot draw a clear boundary between the subjective and the objective. McDowell concludes that we have to understand the subjective in such a way that it is constitutively 43 Ibid.

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bound up with the objective. What we encounter in the world with a subjective coloring belongs to the makeup of the world. According to this corrected understanding of objectivity, that which is objective belongs to the world in a deeper sense than the position criticized by McDowell would have us believe. Much of what is excluded from the paradigm of the natural sciences as subjective belongs to the structure of the world, according to McDowell. From these considerations, he concludes that we can plausibly claim to have direct perceptions of properties of aesthetic value (which does not mean to say that we do not need a great deal of practice and knowledge in order to perceive in such a way). And this is why he argues that we have to conceive of properties of aesthetic value as part of the structure of the world. McDowell thus adds a hermeneutical dimension to our understanding of the world. Following in the tradition of Hegel, Heidegger, and Gadamer, McDowell claims that objects and properties with a subjective character also belong to the world. In relation to the way recipients deal with artworks, this means that artworks confront recipients with connections that belong to the nature of the world and in this sense have an independent existence. Recipients discover these connections in dealing with artworks; they do not invent them. Such a defense of the objectivity of properties of aesthetic value does indeed point our treatment of art in the right direction, but it does not suffice. McDowell rightly emphasizes that we find ourselves objectively confronted with properties of aesthetic value, that is, with aspects of the configuration of artworks that make them valuable for us. When they do not offer us any resistance, then there is nothing in relation to which our bodily activities or our perceptions can develop. Although this is a correct insight, McDowell takes it in a manner that is too one-sided, since he understands aesthetic experiences in a manner that is too passive, that is, too receptive. But as we have seen, these experiences by their very nature contain all of the activities that

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recipients unfold in dealing with artworks. Because of this, we have to reveal the artwork’s value properties in an interpretive manner. Now we could make the objection that even though McDowell does emphasize the receptive aspect of aesthetic experience, he fully acknowledges the connection between discoveries made in a receptive manner and activities of the recipient, and thus he does not deny the relevance of activities.44 This is correct, but does not change the fact that these activities acquire an overly receptive character in his account. McDowell suggests that activities of reception get their character from the properties of value in an artwork. But we have seen that such a suggestion is misleading, since it pays no heed to the challenging quality of artworks as dynamic objects. If we emphasize the relevance of activities in dealing with artworks, then we also have to emphasize that these activities are not simply established by artworks. Artworks do not simply offer a structure for activity that gets reproduced in the activities. What the artwork involves is far more the recipient’s own productivity, which depends on creativity, quirks, and other things. It is this creativity on the part of the recipient that first provides a counterpart to the configuration of the artwork, and this counterpart is essential for bringing about a dynamic play between the work and the recipient, like what I described earlier in allusion to Gadamer. The challenge that the artwork entails can manifest itself in ever new activities on the side of the recipient. It is only as a result of these activities that the dynamic comes into motion in which an artwork stands. The artwork’s configuration is constantly in need of further, new determination, and this means that it depends on the articulating activities of recipients in its dynamic. At this point we can refer to the fact that McDowell, like Kant, always emphasizes the interplay of activities of understanding and sensibility. See, for example, John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998). 44

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For McDowell, properties of value can always be determined based on their objectivity. This claim is problematic, since it robs us of the free space that we would need in order to pay heed to the dynamic of art, a dynamic that is characterized by the fact that the value properties of artworks refer to a horizon of indeterminacy. The determinacy of properties of value always refers to indeterminacy, which manifests itself in the fact that the process of dealing with artworks constantly renegotiates this determinacy. This is just what McDowell does not explain in an adequate way. We have to understand the objectivity of aesthetic value properties in a different way from how McDowell suggests. This objectivity does not consist in a given determinacy, with which recipients find themselves confronted, but instead consists in the way in which these value properties in artworks constantly evoke new determinations. These properties of value are indeed objective in the sense that a dynamic process takes place on their basis. This objectivity of artworks consists in a provocation to practices that is always new throughout the process of dealing with them and can never be controlled. We would misunderstand the nature of this objectivity if we always thought of it in terms of what is directly accessible to perceptions. At this point, we can come back to Goodman’s explanations by saying that an artwork does not simply show itself to be something fixed. It is not like a seismograph on which we could simply examine each bend in the line down to the last nuance.45 A seismograph is a static object from which we can read at any given time, but is not a part of a dynamic process. Instead, an artwork is a structure that is constituted in a self-referential way, and from this a dynamic emerges that is open for constant further development. These further 45 Goodman explains the notion of syntactic density repeatedly through the analogy to monitors, display devices, and thermometers. See Goodman, Languages of Art, 228–231.

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developments occur in and through the way in which those who deal with artworks articulate them. Thus, an artwork is connected with the practices that it provokes among those who deal with it, which entails that these practices are always subject to further refinement and do not come to an end point. The unlimited nature of how we deal with an artwork has a decisive dimension in this:  An artwork develops itself further through the interpretive activities that are practiced upon it. And it changes as a result of these activities. So today we deal with a painting by Velásquez or a piece of music by Monteverdi in terms of a specific tradition of interpretive activities. Many prior activities of interpretation have left their traces on these works. This means that new activities of interpretation can only articulate a work by dealing with those activities that have already articulated it. The work is constitutively bound up with the history of articulations that pertain to it. Gadamer introduced the notion of Wirkungsgeschichte (historically effected consciousness) to describe these relations.46 As he makes clear, an artwork is not simply a self-related object that remains identical to its self. It is far more an object containing an internal dynamic of activities that articulate it in a historical manner. We can easily understand the way in which these interpretive activities belong to the dynamic of relations and elements within the artwork by returning to the model of improvisation. As I claimed in the prior section, an improvisation constantly takes up the elements and develops them further. This leads to the improvised artwork unfolding a series of relations between the elements that make it up. We can also make these thoughts fruitful for the reception of other kinds of artworks: The interpretive activities that recipients develop in See Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weisenheimer (London: Continuum, 2004), 298–305. 46

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dealing with an artwork have a somewhat improvisational character. They carry on the relations of an artwork. The continual reception of an artwork thus bears a resemblance to ongoing interactions within an improvisation, in that it continues to develop the selfrelational structure that takes place within the artwork. Within an improvisation, it can happen within a very short time that the musician can no longer play as if nothing prior had happened. This is also true for interpretive activities. These too stand within a context of prior interpretive decisions—to say it with Hegel, Gadamer, and others: within a historical and cultural set of relations. We can use the example of practices of interpreting music to explain the significance of the notion of historically effected consciousness (Wirkungsgeschichte) for how recipients deal with artworks. For example, during the nineteenth century, baroque music came to be permeated by romantic practices of interpretation. Musicians performed thematic lines as great arches, with correspondingly great dynamic contrasts. Such practices of interpretation led to changes in baroque music. Then in the second half of the twentieth century, these romantic practices of interpretation were criticized in the name of so-called historically informed practices of interpretation. This established new ways of shaping tones and dynamics, which once again changed baroque music. Contemporary interpretations have to take up a relation to these ways of playing the music, and this means that they cannot take up either romantic or historically informed practices of interpretation in a seamless manner. We see how musical practices of interpretation exemplify what is involved in the history of reception. They show how interpretive activities change artworks, and that artworks are only accessible by means of interpretive activities. What we see illustrated here through musical practices of interpretation is also true for our perceptive, bodily, and symbolic activities in relation to artworks. They also stand within the context

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of the historical and cultural activities that arise out of an artwork. Gadamer explains the impact of this notion of historically effected consciousness through the dynamic of different moments of understanding that an object passes through at various points: Prior understandings always indicate “what will reveal itself in time to be questionable, to be an object of possible investigation.”47 We could extend this concept by saying that activities that are already developed indicate what it is in artworks that is worthy of articulation and counts as a valid object of investigation. The constellation of an artwork is always already mediated by articulations that shape not only how we perceive it, but also the other activities by which recipients deal with artworks. These processes of dealing with an artwork thus show a genuinely multifaceted element. Recipients never find themselves merely within individual processes of dealing with an artwork. We are always dealing with one reception among others, one artwork among others. Recipients do not merely appeal to one another, but also confront one another in a critical manner. As the example of practices of interpreting music makes clear, there are often conflicts in the way various receptions relate to each other. Such conflicts will occupy us more thoroughly in the next chapter. They allow us to understand the genuine plurality of receptions. Artworks always develop within a multifaceted process. Interpretive activities are to be understood in this sense as a continuation of the dynamic inherent in artworks, and as this continuation, they belong to the artwork.48 This dynamic belongs to the structure of the world. 47 Ibid.,  298f. 48 In a related way, Allbrecht Wellmer credits Adorno with having articulated “the double processuality of the artwork and its experience” (compare Wellmer, Versuch über Musik und Sprache, 127). Even if Wellmer’s explanations of this double processuality are illuminating, it still remains problematic how Wellmer seeks to grasp the activities of recipients in terms

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Based on what I have developed up to now, we are still not in a position to understand the inherent relationship between art and the activities of reception that develop out of it. To get to this point, it will be helpful to elaborate what is lacking in an approach like that of McDowell more deeply than I have done up to now. Properties of aesthetic value are not simply part of the objective world with which we find ourselves confronted, but rather part of a dynamic context that involves interpretive activities. The notion of historically effected consciousness (Wirkungsgeschichte) and its structure does not allow us to understand the way in which properties of aesthetic value belong to the world. Instead, it seems to suggest that interpretations are merely an intersubjective event. That they are not merely so, that is, that they reveal what belongs to the structure of the world, is something that we have yet to comprehend fully. But this will involve a further step, which I will take in the next section.

7.  Art as reflective practice, first part Before taking the step of explaining the specific nature of aesthetic reflexivity, I will recall once again why we are taking it: The definition of art can all too easily fall back into what I  called the autonomy paradigm, a paradigm that is in its broadest sense bound up with defining art in terms of its objective features. However, as I  argued in the first chapter, such a specification threatens to emphasize the difference between art and other human practices in a way that is too one-sided. It struggles to make the relevance of art comprehensible. In order for an alternative explanation to be in a position to accomplish this, it would have to allow us to comprehend the relevance of art by of notions of aesthetic experience. In the next chapter, I  will argue that we can first get access to a notion of aesthetic experience on the basis of such activities.

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viewing it within the framework of human practices. Thus, as a test of our conception, we have to ask ourselves whether the connection between the self-related constitution of artworks, on the one hand, and the activities of interpretation, on the other, is not of such a nature that it isolates this connection from everything that is not aesthetic.49 To sharpen the issue, are we not forced to understand this connection between works and their interpretation in terms of the world of art, which is separate from the rest of the world? If this question can be posed, it is a symptom of the fact that our explanation of the process of dealing with an artwork cannot conclude with what we have established so far. According to the explanations up to this point, the process of dealing with artworks consists in a number of activities by which recipients articulate the configuration of artworks. They sit in a concert and develop activities of listening, they walk attentively through a building, or discuss the meaning of a film at length—the interpretive activities in dealing with an artwork are many and sort out in a variety of ways. They are dynamic, and in this respect an element in the development of the artwork. But this does not yet demonstrate the specific nature of interpretive activities. These activities do not merely take place in dealing with artworks, a misunderstanding that would push us toward the autonomy paradigm. We can eliminate such a misunderstanding by grasping the activities that come into being in dealing with an artwork as what they are: as bodily activities, activities of perception, emotional activities, and symbolic activities, each of which we find widely disbursed 49 We can articulate this question with the notion of formalism often used in philosophy of art and art theory: Is not the connection between artworks as self-related objects and interpretive activities to be understood as formalistic? Are we not dealing with formalism here because recipients always deal with specific constellations of artworks in their articulations?

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throughout the human form of life. They determine the way we interact with objects, the way we encounter other human beings, and how we relate to ourselves. Now it is evidently the case, as we have emphasized repeatedly, that these activities develop in a special way in dealing with an artwork. But this does not mean that because of the artwork, utterly new kinds of activities come into the world. What do come into the world are new developments of activities that were already pervasive in the world. The ways in which we deal with artworks depend on the forms of activities that we already carry out in other ways in the world. This connection is something we have yet to understand. I will explain it through two examples (referring back to the two examples that I gave in the introduction): A recipient understands a painting by developing a way of perceiving colors that does justice to the challenge that the specific picture offers. In this sense, she articulates her optimal way of perceiving the constellation of elements in the picture. This way of perceiving colors then has relevance for perceiving colors in the rest of the world, since it can initiate ways of perceiving color that are new, different, or more expansive. It can change the way she perceives colors within ordinary life. If the recipient learns to see something different in dealing with a picture, then she can also uncover something new in the world with these visual abilities. She can learn for example through dealing with the painting to see colors more in terms of their opaque materiality, or however else we might want to characterize such a change in perception. What is decisive here is that those activities of perception that we develop in dealing with an artwork have the potential to support the further development of activities of perception in the rest of the world. However, activities of perception do not simply allow themselves to be transferred over, as Goodman implies with his notion of exemplification, since

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a painting is a specific object of perception. In such a case, we see a configuration of colors that is realized in specific materiality. In the rest of the world, we see, for example, the color of tree bark, the finish on a table, or the colorful print on a tube of toothpaste. The activities of perception that we develop in dealing with a painting do not suit these objects, at least not as such. But these activities can call forth changes in other activities of perception and thus provoke a process by which we renegotiate the very activity of perception. A second example would be:  a film moves us to reflect on the failures of human existence. After the film, we then come to speak about melancholy, about our inability to change the world, about certain gestures or about the moment in which something still succeeds despite everything. All such discussion articulates a cinematic narrative and the specific dramaturgy of affects that a film might develop. Nevertheless, such discourse also has implications for the other ways we use language and for the linguistic articulation of other human practices and their connection. Those concepts that the film provokes us to think about grow more refined in the process of interpreting the film. As we refine these concepts, it has consequences for the other ways that we use them. So the linguistic-interpretive activity that relates to a film can suggest a new way of emphasizing specific concepts in other contexts, or in an extreme case, it can move us to establish new terms, as we often see in reviews of important works of art. And these terms can prove to be appropriate for articulating other subjects and events in the world. What is the connection between the interpretive activities by which we deal with artworks and other practices in the world? We can grasp it as a special kind of permeation: Other practices in the world come to be permeated by those interpretive activities that relate to the artwork. This relation of permeating reveals the dynamic process of dealing with an object and articulating it. These articulations do not simply

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stand on their own, but manage to permeate other activities. To say it in a vocabulary that I introduced in the second chapter: The dynamic process of dealing with objects that are constituted in a self-relational way unfolds an imaginative character due to its relation to other practices in the world.50 In the process of dealing with artworks, we come to new formations of practices, such that these new formations imply an indeterminate future. It leads to a renegotiation of other practices. If we want to understand art as a practice of imagination, then we have to clarify the kind of provocation that the process of dealing with artworks gives to human practices. This process realizes itself in permeations of practice that result in an open future. Thus, the connections that we are examining can be outlined through two theses:  first, that artworks and aesthetic events evoke interpretive activities that pursue and articulate the constellations involved in them. These activities sort themselves out in a specific manner in the case of each artwork. Second, these activities have the potential to provoke a renegotiation of other practices on the basis of their specific imaginative potential. It is the specific nature of activities evoked by an artwork or an aesthetic event that forms the basis for the special possibility of new permeations to our practice. Objects or events provoke these new permeations through their self-related constitution. With this we can give a first, general explanation:  In the dynamic event that an artwork unleashes, the determinations of human practices get renegotiated. With both of these theses, we posit a connection between the specific nature of art and its value within the framework of human practice. Correspondingly, we can now venture to formulate the

Martin Seel also claims an essential connection between art and imagination in his aesthetics: see Martin Seel, Eine Ästhetik der Natur (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), 237–240; Seel, Aesthetics of Appearing, 69–86. 50

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specificity thesis and the value thesis in such a way that their mutually constitutive relation becomes apparent: Specificity Thesis: Artworks evoke various activities in recipients on the basis of their self-related constitution, activities by means of which these recipients articulate the challenges inherent in the artwork’s constellation of elements. Value Thesis: The constellation of elements in an artwork issues challenges by the way they provoke other activities in the world. In dealing with art, we manage to redefine other activities in the framework of human practices, although this redefinition can also result in confirming already established activities. We can only understand the specificity of art in terms of the connection between the self-referential constitution of artworks and interpretive activities. This connection is not, however, closed in upon itself, but is bound up with other activities in human practice. The specific nature of art is thus fundamentally related to the value of art. However, this relation also goes in the other direction. Art is a practice by which humans leave a mark on their other practices. In the framework of aesthetic practice, we constantly renegotiate activities. But we fail to grasp this value of aesthetic practice when we see art merely as an expansion of other practices. It is far more the case that art stands in an essential connection with other practices and it is in terms of this connection that the process of dealing with artworks is valuable. Or to put it in relation to the prior section of this chapter, the properties of aesthetic value that we find embodied in artworks belong to the structure of the world in that they provoke the renegotiation of human practices. They belong to the structure of the world in that they challenge the way we deal with the world. Art reflects human practices and their embeddedness in the world in a practical manner.

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With these considerations, we come back to the notion of art as a reflective practice that was developed in the second chapter. We saw there that Kant and Hegel lack a sufficiently practical understanding of reflection. I  argued that a practical understanding of reflection is one that shows how reflection permeates and intervenes in other practices. This relation of permeation is bound up with a temporal dynamic that reaches from the past over the present and into the future. In just this way, we have now come to grasp the connection that pertains between interpretive activities in dealing with artworks and other practices in the world. Interpretive activities are practices that permeate and intervene into our other activities. In just this sense, interpretive activities are part of how we renegotiate other practices in the world, and this makes it comprehensible in what sense art accomplishes a practical reflection. When recipients of artworks articulate the meaning of them, this has to be thought of as a practical articulation of the second order: as practical articulations that relate to other practices in the world and, in specific cases, permeate them. To put it a different way, we are to think of them as articulations that accomplish a redefinition or confirmation (which is one mode of redefining) of other articulations. For this reason, we cannot fully explain interpretive activities if we understand them only in relation to artworks. We will only arrive at a sufficient explanation to the extent that we also keep the rest of human practice in view. This alone will allow us to see interpretive activities as practices of a second order, as practices that have a reflective character. Art thus shows itself to be a specific kind of reflective practice, for on the one hand it is a matter of a practical reflection:  It develops activities that have a pervading character—all of those activities that I summarized under the notion of interpretive activities. Like other kinds of reflective practice, aesthetic practices also include not only

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those activities that are doing the reflecting, but also those activities upon which we reflect. On the other hand, it is characteristic of aesthetic reflection to begin by attending to the proper and distinctive constitution of objects, that is to say, objects that are self-related, or to formulate it another way, dynamic. They confront us as recipients with their special configurations in such a way that we find ourselves challenged in our practices of articulation by these configurations. Taking both determinations together, we could say: Art is a practice of reflection based in a dynamic interaction with objects that are constituted in a self-relational way. By understanding art in this way, we come to see the extent to which artworks are objects that form their own specific configurations and involve a dynamic connection with practices. This additionally allows us to explain how art deals with the production of objects and events in its own particular way, such as when academies and conservatories cultivate the production of artworks. Both the practice of production on the whole and the institutions involved in such production are subject to historical and cultural developments, as Hegel and Adorno among others have emphasized.51 We can now understand this historical and cultural embeddedness of art to be an aspect of the practical reflection that art accomplishes. In doing so, we can distinguish two orientations that such reflection could gain within a historical and cultural context:  On the one hand, it can be developed and understood in such a way as always to seek out new and different provocations for reflection. On the other hand, it can also be practiced in such a way that the provocations it unleashes have the character of confirming or preserving traditions, as we saw in Hegel’s position among others. To put the alternative another way, art can be practiced in an elite, 51 Adorno speaks here of “laws of movement” (Bewegungsgesetz) of art (Aesthetic Theory, 3).

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avant-garde manner, or in a pop-culture or traditionalistic direction. Either way, then, we produce artworks as objects that demand specific interpretive activities. We search for the reflective impacts of these interpretive activities by looking at the framework of a human practice. This search conditions the production of particular objects.

8.  A universal aesthetics At this point, I  can take the step that was promised in the subtitle of this book, An Aesthetics, a step that I  have not yet ventured. The reflections up to this point might give the impression that I exaggerated with this subtitle, because what I have offered up to now would more appropriately be described as “an aesthetics of art” (Eine Kunstästhetik). And beyond doubt, it is correct that I am dealing in the first order with an aesthetics of art. Yet we are now in a position to see the way that these considerations go beyond an aesthetics of art. They allow us to understand that within the dynamic practice of dealing with artworks we also can draw objects other than those produced with the demand of being artworks. As such a practice develops, we can also discover the challenging potential of other objects, such as landscapes or ritual artifacts. We manage to make such a discovery when such objects evoke interpretive activities that follow their structure and thus demonstrate themselves to be fruitful in the sense of a practical reflection. The provocations that emerge from such objects can be of various kinds. I  have always sought to emphasize that such diversity is essential for aesthetic practices. So it is plausible to say that natural objects, such as a desert landscape, issue a different kind of provocation from other objects, such as a nineteenth-century naturalist novel. Yet both objects can provoke aesthetic practices in their own ways.

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Artworks possess a primacy in that they are constituted by a self-relational dynamic. A  painting contains a contour or a shaded area, and it then takes this up in another place or carries it on in a contrasting way. We cannot understand natural or ritual objects to be constituted as self-relational in this way. Yet, much like artworks, we can make the configurations that we find in them into the object of interpretive activities. In doing do, we also discover that these objects are determined out of themselves as objects. A natural landscape, for example, offers a series of connections in which different elements interact in a complex manner. It confronts those who deal with it with a structure, and in this process of dealing with it as an object, we discover it as an object that is determined out of itself. Or to put it another way, we discover the natural landscape as an object that has the potential to guide interpretive activities. Something analogous is true of ritual objects or other cultural artifacts, which we can also find to be objects that unfold a dynamic for us as recipients when we interact with them, and they can thus become objects of an unlimited process of exploration. Regarding the relation between artworks and other objects of aesthetic practices (natural objects, ritual objects, etc.), we can reconcile two theses: First, objects that are not produced as artworks can also be objects of aesthetic practice in the full sense. Even in such cases, their aesthetic potential does not represent a subjective projection on our part, but is present in the object as a component within the world. We are not dealing here with objects in the mode of “as if.” We can grasp natural objects, ritual artifacts, and so forth in the fullest sense as objects that reward an aesthetic approach. Second, however, we have to explain the specific constitution of the aesthetic practices that occur in relation to artworks, for they do demonstrate a special constitution that provokes a dynamic interplay with interpretive activities, and they serve as the basis on which we work

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out these activities. So we have to grant artworks a constitution that plays a special role in explaining aesthetic practices. But this does not allow us to conclude that artworks have a special aesthetic value, that they have greater value as aesthetic objects or a special rank among them. As the next chapter will demonstrate, such relative value or rank is always subject to debate. The only primacy that I grant artworks is an explanatory one. Insofar as one explains the connection between the constitution of artworks and interpretive activities with reference to artworks, one can bring this connection to bear upon other objects of aesthetic practice. With the experience of art as a specific form of practical reflection, we have reached a first intermediate result in our considerations on art’s form of practice. We now have a better understanding of the deficiency inherent in positions involving the autonomy paradigm. These positions explain the process of dealing with artworks in such a way that the reflective character of this process does not fully, or perhaps even at all, come into view. As argued in the second chapter, this has to do with the way that they always operate with a one-sided understanding of reflection. If we go beyond such an understanding and grasp reflection as something that is realized practically, then we can consider the specific activities that artworks demand from us in a more expansive sense. From this point of view, we can see that these activities demonstrate themselves to be bound up with other human practices in the sense of a special form of practical reflection. The specific nature of art as a form of practical reflection is justified by how this reflection emerges out of objects that are produced for the sake of this reflection or discovered as rewarding such reflection. With the understanding of art that we have gained up to this point, we can take a step in the direction of a universal aesthetics, as I suggested. But this step will also be blocked in some respects

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by the danger of falling back into the autonomy paradigm. As we have seen, this paradigm often makes it seem as if the aesthetic were simply a certain kind of sensibility that is either indeterminate or over-determinate, or simply bound to certain historical and cultural formations. The impression often arises that in questions of the aesthetic, we have to choose between Kant and Hegel. But this impression is deceptive: Starting from Kant and Hegel, it is not possible to establish a dichotomy between an understanding of art that operates purely in terms of indeterminate free play and one that operates in terms of culture. On the contrary, both of them seek to illuminate the specific form of reflection that the aesthetic brings about. When we get to the heart of this specific form of reflection, then we see that art, culture, and nature stand in a connection with each other. They belong together within a practice that has the potential to inspire dynamic interactions by evoking activities among recipients. The potential of objects to inspire reflection depends on a dynamic interrelationship that is irreducible to any one term. We can also consider natural objects as well as cultural artifacts in this way. What is decisive is thus not the alternative between indeterminate sensibility and determinate cultural meaning. What is far more decisive is to explain the relevance of the dynamic examined up to now within the framework of other human practices. In order to overcome the shortcomings within the autonomy paradigm, we thus have to grasp art as a form of practice within the framework of the human form of life. We see this in the sense that all of those activities that provoke us to renegotiate everyday practices can belong to art’s form of practice. Art involves activities that carry out such a negotiation. The specific nature of these interpretive activities is also their value: It is a matter of activities that renegotiate human practices. This is just what is misrecognized by those

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philosophical positions that bring aesthetic practices into opposition to everyday practices. On the contrary, it is necessary to conceive of art specifically, and more broadly the aesthetic, as forms of practice within the framework of the human form of life. We now have to give greater definition to such a conception.

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4 Art as practice of freedom The last chapter taught us that art is a practice whose specific nature consists in being the form of a practice (Praxisform). The value of this form of a practice consists in the way in which we renegotiate various practices within it. The specific nature of artworks thus does not have to do with the particular properties of artworks, but rather with the way in which they provoke us to negotiate new practices. We thus have to think of art as a reflection that arises from dealing with dynamic objects. In art, objects provoke various activities by means of which humans seek to define (or redefine) the rest of their activities. Art is to this extent a practice by which people define themselves, and this self-definition is connected in a special way with objects that are valuable to humans because of their special potential for negotiating practice. It is one thing to say that art has to be thought of as a practice of reflection that sets out from objects constituted by self-relationality. It is something else to think of it as a practice of freedom, that is, a practice that is self-determined. A practice that is focused on objects would seem to be more heteronomous than autonomous, that is to say, more determined from without than self-determining. In light

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of the conception of art developed up to this point, we have to raise the question whether art permits us to grasp it as a self-determined practice. Must we not far more say that artworks commit (festlegen) humans in their practices? Adorno’s influential notion of the primacy of the object could be understood in just this way: Artworks determine the practices of recipients in various ways. They commit their recipients to certain things, and hence seem not to contribute to their freedom, but rather to their unfreedom. In the second chapter, I found in Kant and Hegel, among others, the thesis that art makes a contribution to realizing human freedom. But how can we understand this after the reflections in the previous chapter? In order to answer this question, I  would like to commence by returning to the thesis that a dynamic results from the interplay between the artwork’s constellation and interpretive activities. We can pose the question of whether this dynamic is not to be grasped as a blind process that unfurls in an aimless manner. To ask another way: What allows us to say that art does not simply lead to changes in this way? In order to make comprehensible that art provokes changes in a way that entails self-determination, it will be necessary to distinguish between mere changes and those changes that result from a reflective practice. We have to make it plausible why changes of the latter kind are the result of freedom. When we articulate the question about how to understand art as a practice of freedom in this way, it immediately becomes clear that it will not help us further simply to ascribe freedom to interpretive practices. I have emphasized that interpretive practices are not simply passive in relation to artworks. Interpretive practices emerge out of one’s own activity and they always pursue their own approach. But we cannot understand these activities, and their corresponding impulses, as the basis of the freedom produced by art, and for at least two reasons. First, this would assume freedom and not explain it. It would

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simply attribute to recipients the ability to comport themselves freely in interpreting the artwork. But it remains unclear what this freedom would be based on. Second, and on a related note, this would be to understand the possible freedom of interpretive practices as a merely arbitrary freedom. This would be just as blind as passively pursuing the constellation of various artworks. It thus does not help us solve the problem of aesthetic freedom to have recourse to the self-determinate nature of interpretive practices. Even if this self-determination is crucial to the dynamic that results out of the interplay between artworks and interpretive activities, it cannot explain to what extent art is a practice of freedom. In order to be able to understand the changes provoked by art as changes resulting from freedom, it might seem necessary to take up a common motif from aesthetic theory that we already encountered in the first chapter and interpret it in a new way. The notion goes back to Nietzsche among others that the aesthetic, or art, is indeterminate in a special sense. This view considers art as a practice that gives expression to the fundamental indeterminacy of human existence, a basic “not being able” (Nichtkönnen). As I already claimed in the first chapter, if we start out along these lines, we end up in contradiction to many aspects of artistic practice that we can sum up under the notion of determinacy:  Artworks consist of determinate materials, have determinate themes, represent a determinate standpoint, and so forth. It is hard to reconcile all of this with understanding art as an expression of a fundamental indeterminacy. According to my diagnosis, this difficulty is based in how this view objectifies the indeterminacy in a problematic manner. According to this objectification, there are practices of determinacy and practices of indeterminacy. Practices of determinacy are all of those countless practices that we engage in day in and day out. Practices of indeterminacy on the other hand are those by which we surpass the ordinary: Aesthetic practices are one

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such example (meditation practices would be another). This view understands these practices in such a way that in their indeterminacy, they bear witness to a fundamental indeterminacy, which is not apparent in ordinary practices. This opposition between determinacy and indeterminacy is problematic in relation to not only how we understand art but also how we understand human practice on a whole, for in its central thought it takes indeterminacy as the basis on which the determinacy of human existence rests, as I  already argued in the first chapter. However, one does not adequately grasp the foundationless quality of human practice with such a dichotomy, such a two-level model, since it suggests that such a lack of foundation has to be founded. But we can avoid such a suggestion by taking the determinacy of human practice to be unfounded. As such, it is bound up with indeterminacy.1 At the end of the first chapter and in the third section of the second chapter, on practical reflection, I  already sketched how we can understand these connections. Human practices always stand facing an open horizon, as I demonstrated. They are always the object of revisions and renegotiations, and for this reason they cannot ensure their own determinacy out of themselves. It is far more the case that this determinacy only reveals itself before the openness of the future. Indeterminacy is thus not something that undermines the determinacy of human practice, but rather a productive aspect of it. I would like to recall once again the context in which this reinterpretation of the motif of indeterminacy of art stands. We can summarize it with the simple thesis that art is a fundamentally unassured practice. Artworks lead to the realization of many Heidegger and Wittgenstein among others have given us to understand this. See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time Being and Time, trans. Joan Stanbaugh (Albany: SUNY Press, 2010). Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, trans. Denis Paul (New York: Harper, 1972). 1

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determinacies that are thoroughly exposed to the possibility of failure. This unassuredness is not a foundation for art; instead, it is realized in art and in the framework of its determinacies. We can understand what this means if we recognize art as a practice that is oriented toward its own success, even though it is unable to guarantee this success. Art always struggles for its success as art and cannot escape being confronted with the possibility of failure. This is how every determinacy within art has an indeterminate moment. This unassuredness of art is essential to how it contributes to human freedom. Art’s struggle to succeed is connected to the fact that producers and recipients wrestle in ever new ways with how art contributes to human freedom, or to put it in a more neutral way: They always find new ways to sound out the depths of this contribution. Art thus does not simply unleash changes within human practice, but it also, by its very nature, contains discussions and reflections about these changes. It is for this reason that the changes emerging from art are the realization of human freedom, changes that do not simply intervene on us. If we understand art as a practical reflection, it does not mean that it makes those who deal with it unfree. It is rather to be understood as a self-determined practice, the essential aspect of which consists in the fact that those provocations that we get from objects constituted by self-relation are not predictable, that is, that those who deal with art do not have command of these provocations. But this does not mean that they blindly follow these provocations. It is far more the case that they find themselves confronted with the task of responding to these provocations and thus responding to the question of art’s success. In this concluding chapter, I  would like to make art comprehensible along these lines as an open and unassured practice. With this, I would also like to explain more deeply in what way art manages to make a contribution to human self-determination, and

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thus to freedom. In order to conceptualize art as an open practice, my analysis will focus on the diversity of art. I  will demonstrate that we cannot conceive of this diversity without a connection that binds together artworks and the various arts. This connection consists of principles of configuration—what I  will call generic constellations—on which artworks are based. Artworks and the various arts are bound together not only on the level of the constitution of artworks, but also on the level of the experience that recipients have in dealing with artworks. So in the second step, I  come back to the practices of dealing with artworks and demonstrate that these practices explain aesthetic experiences and make them comprehensible as aspects of an unassured practice. With these practices, we come to have experiences that are valuable to have, even though we cannot summon up these experiences through calculable operations. In the third step, I will make clear that this insight lays the basis for grasping art as a practice of freedom. In order to get to this point, we will also have to clarify to what extent the idea of self-determinacy is realized in the practice of art. Artworks are not only bound together in constellations, but they also influence each other in that they struggle with each other over the proper way to determine human practice. I speak of them struggling because artworks are always bound up with the demand to challenge forth determinations of human practice in as successful a manner as possible. They always develop this demand in contrast to other artworks. Every artwork is concerned in its own way with realizing what art is in a paradigmatic way. The struggle is thus not to be understood in such a way that artworks turn themselves directly against the challenges realized by other artworks. The struggle has more to do with the claim to be art, and is thus reconcilable with the fact that artworks complete themselves in many ways. It is on

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this basis that they develop a contribution to human practice that is critical. If we grasp art thus as a critical practice, it becomes clear that we will need a fourth step in order to bring the critical activities of recipients into play. Recipients sound out the status of artworks in a critical way in order to judge the success of artworks, and this process is an essential element within art’s form of practice, a point we will first manage to grasp when we are able to reconstruct the connection between interpretive activities in dealing with artworks and other practices. It is against this background that we will first be able to understand that while recipients on the one hand follow objects in their interpretations, on the other hand they judge in a critical way to what extent the impulses that the artwork offers to practice are of a challenging nature. Critical judgment makes us understand to what extent art is to be conceived of as a practice of self-determination, that is, a practice that leads to reflecting upon the challenges issued within art. In addition—and this is the fifth step—we see that the way we conceptualize art comes into play not only on the theoretical level, but is also inseparably bound up with the practice of art. Recipients pick up the demand of art, as pursued by artworks, and take a stance toward it. Artworks always realize this demand in a way that is exemplary. In their differing determinations, their various materials and subjects, artworks nevertheless always pursue an idea of art that we grasp in aesthetic judgments through the concept of art, a concept that articulates the demand of art. It does not function in a way that is primarily descriptive or classificatory, but far more in a way that is normative and evaluative. Art is a practice of freedom precisely because of the manifold variety of determinations that artworks realize. In art, these

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determinations are always connected with indeterminacy, with openness and unassuredness. Hence, art does not fundamentally transcend the indeterminacy of ordinary practices, and also does not remain stuck at the level of this indeterminacy. Instead, it contributes in many ways to human practice precisely because its contribution is essentially unassured.

1.  Generic constellations: The diversity of artworks and arts Artworks are objects that are constituted by self-referentiality. But how do such objects come into being? What is the basis for an artwork being an object that is constituted as self-relational? Even though we explained in the previous chapter how we should think of the self-referential constitution of objects, we have not yet said anything about how artworks come to exist in such a way. We get closer to answering such a question by understanding artworks as objects that are produced. In the spirit of Danto, we can ask: What makes up the difference between an object that is simply produced and an artwork? At first glance, we can answer this question in the following way:  Artworks stand within special contexts of practice, which guide in specific ways how pictures get produced, how texts get written, how musical instruments get played, and many other such practices. The makeup of artworks assumes these practices, which are connected to tradition in a complex manner. The way in which artworks are produced as self-related objects gets passed down from artwork to artwork. This directs our gaze to the notion of the arts. It seems obvious to consider individual arts as contexts of practice in which artworks are constituted. So we could say that there is a medium and a method of

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proceeding inherent to literature. Artworks come into motion within this medium and method of proceeding.2 Each work develops the possibilities located in an art in a particular way. Thus, instead of a single, grand context of practice for art in its entirety, we can posit various contexts of practice for individual arts, and then we have to spell out to what extent individual arts such as sculpture or film possess a medium and a method of proceeding. Even if this approach might seem appealing at first glance, not the least for justifying distinct scholarly disciplines devoted to the various arts (einzelner Kunstwissenschaften), it confronts us right away with problems if we think about the dynamic by which various arts emerge and cease to exist. There is no stock of various arts that is determined once and for all (nor is there a determinate stock of scholarly disciplines devoted to them). Film studies or installation art are of recent provenance. How do they come about? How do the media and methods of proceeding within an art come about so as to make possible the constitution of corresponding artworks? To what extent can we speak of media and methods of art as parts of the practice of art, and not of completely different kinds of practice? It seems to be difficult to find answers to these questions if we simply base our account on individual arts. We thus have to conceptualize the connection that pertains between the various arts, and which allows for their respective formation and development, thus also their emergence and disappearance. This means that we have to ask: How should we think of the diversity of arts in their interconnection? This brings me back once again to Hegel. Among the philosophers in the aesthetic tradition, he could count as the one who first confronted the diversity of arts in full measure in that he takes on the task of connecting the many different arts For an instructive treatment of media and ways of proceeding within the arts, see Martin Seel, Aesthetics of Appearing, trans. John Farrell (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 106–110. 2

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into a system. Hegel’s system of different arts is thus an important basis for understanding the diversity of arts, and indeed in a double sense: On the one hand, we can consider to what extent Hegel lays the groundwork for conceptualizing the diversity of arts, and on the other hand, since he does not manage to do this in a fully satisfactory way, we can learn by negative examples from him how to accomplish this in a more adequate way. Hegel begins with a gesture that we have already discussed in the third chapter:  He bases his theory on the notion that artworks are formed in a special sensible and material way. So he poses the question whether we can classify the arts according to the various senses, but he rejects the plausibility of this hypothesis.3 If we orient ourselves to the senses in this way, then we establish an order that has nothing to do with the kind of value specific to art, since such an order remains completely external to art. It does allow us to understand why art is sensibly and materially formed, which we have to understand in order to establish an order. The sensible and material formation is the form in which art presents itself, in which it thematizes the essential orientation of a cultural form of life. In Hegel’s terms, sensible appearance in art is the appearance of the idea. Art presents spiritual content (Geistiges) in a manner that is sensibly intuitable. According to him, we can on this basis bring order into the diversity of arts by enquiring after the relation that pertains between the sensible and material presentation and what is spiritually thematized in each art. Out of this results a field of tension spanned between two poles.4 At one pole, the sensible and material presentation outweighs the Compare Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I-III, in: Werkausgabe, Vol. 13–15, ed. Eva Molenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Surhkamp, 1986), Vol. II, 256f. 4 In Hegel’s texts, we find this field of tension formulated in the following manner: “Art has no other function than to bring the true, as it is in the spirit, before sensible intuition in its totality, reconciled with objectivity and with the sensible. Insofar as this should happen at 3

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thematization of the spiritual, while at the other the relation is reversed. Hegel now advocates the thesis that we can arrange the arts along this field of tension. According to this view, the relation between the arts that gives rise to the field of tension has various forms. Materials like wood and stone, used in architecture and sculpture, are not spiritually formed if taken in themselves. Their spiritual formation in an artwork can allow spiritual content to come forth into appearance in a thoroughly sensible and material way. This is especially the case in sculpture, which Hegel continually emphasizes for this reason. Other materials are already formed as such, for example, the tonal system in music, and natural languages as the basis of literature. Arts that work with such materials cannot realize the same degree of sensible and material presentation as those arts that work with a “spiritless” material. Is this a plausible way to grasp the plurality of arts? A first objection could be: Hegel only knows of five arts, which he arranges in terms of the field of tension that he sketches. He omits other arts, in some cases because of aesthetic prejudice (such as dance or landscape architecture) and in some cases because he simply could not yet have known of them (film or installation art). Yet this objection is easily defeated: The field of tension laid out by Hegel is not limited to “his” five arts, but we can easily extend it as needed. In the field of tension proposed by Hegel, arts such as film or dance can find their place in his schema insofar as we manage to grasp them as formations of the relation between sensible and material presentation and the thematization of spiritual content. And this is evidently the case. A further objection is not so easy to refute, however. Hegel explains the system of arts in such a way that it always realizes this relation this phase in the element of external reality of artistic formation, the totality, which is the absolute in terms of its truth, disintegrates into its different elements” (ibid., 257).

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between sensible and material presentation and the thematization of something spiritual, which holds for all arts, despite the historical dynamic of development in the arts, a dynamic which Hegel himself often emphasizes. Yet this is implausible. As we saw in the prior chapter, artworks define for themselves what is relevant within them, and for this reason, we cannot simply say that artworks always realize a relation between their sensible and material presentation and the thematization of something spiritual. But Hegel would have to claim this in order to stay with the thesis of an ever identical field of tension. This leads him to the difficult-to-follow claim that literature is always pervaded by a sensible material. Hegel’s system compels claims such as this one, even if he also claims that literature is the most spiritual of the arts, since its sensible material is always spiritually formed through and through. How can we avoid such implausible claims? I believe we can do so by not positing the two poles of a field of tension, but instead understanding the connections between the arts far more in such a way that they emerge out of the respective arts and their transformations and expansion. We thus need a way of explaining the connections between the arts that we have acquired by confronting once again the question of how to conceptualize the specific constitution of artworks. In the third chapter, I maintained that artworks always establish their constellations in their own way. This is true, but perhaps it does not go quite far enough. An artwork does not establish the elements that configure it simply out of itself, but rather it necessitates a foundation that is appropriate for establishing this configuration. We can either ascribe this foundation to a specific, individual art, or grasp it like Hegel as a definite formation of the relation between sensible and material presentation and spiritual thematization, a point that however leads to the unwished consequences we have seen. My suggestion

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goes as follows:  An artwork refers back to constellations that it manages to make relevant in new ways. Its foundation is neither the material of an individual art nor an established polarity in which all artworks stand. In the constellations that I have in mind, very different elements can acquire relevance (sensible, spiritual, bodily, intersubjective, etc.). They get reactivated in different ways by artworks. And for this process of making relevant, constellations function as a basis that makes it possible to establish configurations. We can support this thesis by looking at works in terms of elements and their relations, as I  did in the prior chapter:  The relations within an artwork determine the meaning of the elements of the work to such an extent that these elements cannot be thought of outside of their relation to one another. But these relations are also based on these elements that they are relating. Relations and elements form a constellation that cannot be reduced to any single one of its components. This also explains why we cannot decipher constellations on their own, since the individual components have to be understood as the starting point for the forming of constellations. But another option remains:  Such constellations are based on predecessors, or more precisely, on model constellations that have already been actualized in other artworks. These model constellations always realize certain contextual connections between various elements and relations. It may be true that the constellation of elements in an artwork is determined within the context of the said artwork, since the artwork is constituted in a self-relational manner. But these constellations do not find anything within the artwork itself that they could rely on for support; even if the elements in the work gain greater determinacy through the context that is unfolded by the work, they are not founded by this context alone. In order to explain how constellations come into being, we need to see how they adopt precedents from the constellations in other artworks.

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In the prior chapter, I developed a view of artworks as configurations of elements and their relations, a thesis which we can support through the following argument:  The relations within an artwork determine the elements of this work in such a way that we cannot understand them in a concrete manner outside of these relations. At the same time, these relations are based on these elements. Relations and elements thus form a constellation that cannot be reduced to individual components. Such a constellation thus cannot be discerned on its own, since we would then be conceptualizing individual components as a basis for the development of the constellation. There remains however another option: Each constellation is based on prior exemplary ones, more precisely, on model constellations that may be found in other artworks, which thus have already undergone a process of actualization. Within these prior exemplary works, the connections between relations and elements have already been realized. It may be the case that the constellations within an individual artwork always get determined by the work itself—the artwork has a self-relational constitution. But the artwork’s constellation does not find anything within the artwork that it could rely on for support; even if the structure of the work gains determinacy through various elements that become relevant within the artwork, it is not founded on these elements. We can, however, explain the genesis of these constellations by saying that they adopt model constellations found in other works.5 One can speak of such models without speaking of a material that one attributes to individual arts, or that one positions within a field of tension. We must not say anything more than what we have already The notion of pattern that I  develop functions in a different way from that of Nelson Goodman that I discussed in Chapter 3 (see the second section). Patterns of constellations in other works do not carry any meaning as such, but rather are the basis for the production of elements–relations–configurations that realize meaning in their own right. In addition, and more importantly, these patterns are not only realized in an artwork, but rather develop themselves further in interplay with other works. 5

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said:  These models consist in realizations of connections between relations and elements, or connections, in which we do not speak of relations and elements, but we explain in different ways. Such models are for example rhythm, seriality, and narration. In artworks, rhythmical, serial, or narrative constellations are established. The models already established serve as the background of these constellations, since they are realized in prior works. However, the models are often not so general as it might sound in these formulations. There are rhythmical, serial, or narrative models that get established in an artwork, more precisely: get made relevant anew in each of them. A work of prose has a linguistic rhythm and realizes a narrative model. In another prose, we find another linguistic rhythm and another narrative model. Such specific developments join together with one another to make specific models, which I characterize as generic constellations:6 Generic Constellation: A generic constellation is a model for establishing constellations of elements and relations to other aspects in the work. It arises through various readaptations of the constellations in question.7 These constellations are generic first because they can be readapted in an unlimited variety of ways, and in this way we see that they realize something universal. But they are also generic because they are potentially productive: They make possible ever new configurations of In the context of research to which this text owes its essential impulses, the term “generic forms” comes from the influence of Gertrud Koch. I  here make use of this notion in speaking not of forms, since the notion of form does not work well for grasping the dynamic connection of elements and relations within a work, and is also burdened with the distinction of form and content or form and material. A rhythm is always material and realizes itself in a content. It includes formal as well as material and content-laden aspects to equal degrees. For these reasons, I speak of constellations. 7 I will renounce the possibility here to define all of the aspects of generic constellation in greater detail, but will just mention some examples of generic constellations that I consider to be insightful. 6

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artworks. We can only carry forth what is universal in a constellation through specific realizations. A generic constellation is thus not a form for which we could deliver a definitive account of what belongs to it, but instead something that always stands ready for new possibilities. A generic constellation of rhythm, for example, offers the basis for a piece of music by establishing relations between elements. A generic constellation of narration on the other hand is the basis for relations between linguistic elements in a story. With every new rhythm and every new story, the respective generic constellation modifies itself. And with every artwork, it is a question of whether a constellation gets carried forth. In this sense, generic constellations are the basis for individual artworks. The connections that come to be established in aesthetic objects and events (such as improvisation) find their basis in generic constellations. They adapt themselves to artworks and form constellations in their own self-referential way. If we think of artworks in terms of generic constellations in this way, then we can draw two conclusions:8 first, it follows from this that artworks are essentially plural. There cannot be just a single artwork. An artwork can only establish its configurations by taking up certain generic constellations, which can only continue to develop if they are readapted in a variety of ways. Generic constellations connect constitutively different artworks with each other, and thus fundamentally surpass every individual work. In addition, they allow for infinitely many reactualizations in artworks. Artworks are thus always based on other artworks, so that there are either many artworks or no artworks at all. The second conclusion is of at least the same relevance: If a generic constellation always connects infinitely many artworks with each With this I return to the reflections of the first chapter. Compare also Georg W. Bertram, Kunst. Eine philosophische Einführung (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2005), Chapter 2. 8

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other, then it does not allow itself to be bound to just a single work. A generic constellation of rhythm can be realized not only in musical works, but also in other sorts of works, such as dance or in visual works. Rhythm is a way of bringing forth elements, relations, and constellations that is not limited to a musical context. It can also be carried forth in movements or in constellations of color. A  generic constellation such as rhythm can thus always be readapted in a new manner. Rhythm connects works of music, dance, painting, and many other arts with each other. It forms a basis for works within these various arts. Now we can object that a constellation can also develop in such a way that it only applies to one art, such as music. But this objection operates with the problematic premise that we already described with the notion of material. A  generic constellation is not, however, the material of an art, but the basis from which an unlimited variety of works emerge. Rhythm is the basis for differentiation, and also for connecting, music, dance, and painting. We thus cannot limit the generic constellation to one art. Insofar as artworks are based on generic constellations, there cannot be only one kind of art. The plurality of artworks as well as arts is an essential aspect of art itself. Generic constellations thus explain both the development of various arts as well as the movement of artistic modernity that Adorno describes with the notion of the “infringement” (Verfransung) of arts on one another.9 Generic constellations can become stable in the practice of art, and indeed, in a way that we can conceptualize through contexts of practice that are related to individual arts:  still life painting, Western music composition, and so forth. But such stabilities are never absolute, since arts cannot be cleanly and lastingly Compare Theodore W. Adorno, “Art and the Arts,” in:  Can One Live after Ausschwitz? A Philosophical Reader (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 368–387. 9

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delimited in this way on the basis of generic constellations. Since generic constellation can always be carried on outside of locally stabilized contexts of practice, they go beyond individual arts. The combining and joining of different arts, as in the Gesamtkunstwerk, as well as the various movements of dissolution that we find in modern art are thus both made possible by generic constellations. They get carried on in such a way as to lead to a connection of arts or to works that overstep the boundaries between the various arts. In each case, it is a question of reactualizing generic constellations. With each such reactualization, the order of the arts can come to be displaced, even to the point of dissolving this order altogether. As the analysis shows up to this point, the notion of a generic constellation is that of a comprehensive, open connection between artworks. Artworks are not isolated objects that are definable by recipients in an immediate way. With their challenging configurations, they always stand in a connection with other artworks that diagonally intersects the individual arts, and they are not reducible to the determinacy of any single art, but are instead genuinely tied to the further development of artworks and arts. Constellations such as rhythm, color contrasts, or fictionalization are comparable to stem cells for the various kinds of artworks in which they play a role. Most of these artworks are to be understood in such a way that there are multiple constellations that come together in them. A  narrative constellation can be bound up with a rhythmical tendency, but also with aspects of color contrast. Generic constellations thus break open a space in which indeterminably many reactualizations are possible. The connections founded by artworks open up a diverse space of objects constituted by self-relation. So far, so good. Now we also have to clarify how exactly the appropriation of generic constellations within an artwork takes place. A pervasive motif on this point from the philosophy of art and art

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theory would say that we have to speak here of a deformation of art. In this view, artworks deform structures that they allude to in a distinctive manner. Using an expression that Maurice MerleauPonty takes from André Malraux, we can say that artworks always develop a “coherent deformation” of such structures, and by this they gain their own characteristic language that is constituted by self-relation.10 But we cannot explain the appropriation of generic constellations in artworks in this manner, since we can only speak coherently of a deformation in those cases where solid structures have already been established. But this is precisely not the case with generic constellations. Although generic constellations are always already established in different objects, they also continuously open up possibilities for future development. This is what makes up their productive character. Since every work further shapes the generic constellation that it takes up in a specific manner, we cannot think of the generic constellation as endowed with a given structure that could be deformed. Rather, each such constellation always continues to be formed in an individual way. It gives further development to the generic constellation that it takes up. This is why I speak of the reactualizing of generic constellations, which drives their ongoing development. Now we can better understand why Hegel’s systematic treatment of the various arts is problematic, and this sheds light on what we have achieved up to this point. I criticized Hegel for the thesis that the arts always realize a relation between their sensible and material presentation and spiritual thematization, and I argued that we cannot confine the arts to such a relation in this way, but rather that they determine for themselves the relation that permeates them. Now we See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Indirect Speaking and the Voice of Silence,” in: Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 39–83. 10

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know that these permeating relations occur mostly in a manner that is not closed. The problem with Hegel’s explication of the plurality of arts, if we see it in this way, is that he conceptualizes this plurality as a closed circle. But the arts do not allow themselves to be located and confined in this way, since they fundamentally develop against the backdrop of indeterminacy. This is why there cannot be any frame of reference in which we could tie them down. It belongs to the notion of generic constellation that elements of the artwork constantly get renegotiated in relation to each other.11 An example of this would be the rhyme structures of lyric poetry, where we find different elements established out of relationships, so that rhyme schemes turn out to be elements. We interpret the tension between the elements of the poem and their relationship in each new poem in a specific way. What is characteristic of this tension is that it is not established by a single art or a single artistic medium. It is far more to be grasped in terms of the way in which specific artworks readapt. The tension that reigns in a generic constellation between elements and relations between elements is thus always configured in a specific manner. We cannot make it applicable in a general way for generic constellations, which are always determinate. The notion of generic constellations thus does not lead us to a system of arts, but rather to an understanding of many different constellations that we find continually readapted in artworks and arts. We can articulate the open connection between artworks and arts as an essential basis of aesthetic self-determination in the following manner: Connection between Artworks and Arts: Artworks and arts are connected in that they readapt generic constellations in I consider this to be a reformulation of Heidegger’s thesis that within the artwork “a struggle between earth and world” gets contested (see Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in: Basic Writings, trans. David Ferrell Krell (New York: Harper, 2008)). 11

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their self-related constitution. Generic constellations can be reactualized in an unlimited number of ways in different artworks and arts. This notion of generic constellation allows us return to our considerations from the third chapter. There I  established that the self-related makeup of the artwork corresponds to various interpretive activities by which we articulate the constellations established within an artwork, and now we can tie these interpretive activities together with generic constellations. For example, we can articulate a rhythmical constellation by means of activities involving movement and perception, a fictional one through various emotional activities, activities of imagination or symbolic activities. These kinds of correspondences are illuminating since they allow us to understand the extent to which interpretive activities are bound to the given artwork and yet also to many other ones. On the basis of their relation to generic constellations, we refine activities in relation to various artworks. Recipients learn to move according to music, to see pictures and to use words to articulate literary texts in a fitting manner. Interpretive activities develop and become refined due to generic constellations. In this way, recipients evolve by dealing with artworks; they refine their abilities and learn specialties. Since we also reactualize the generic constellations in individual works in a specific way, the activities that we have already developed in order to articulate artworks in general do not guarantee that we can articulate a new artwork. In articulating each new artwork, we instead have to focus on the way in which the artwork in question reactualizes the generic constellations. The plurality of generic constellations thus finds its compliment in the plurality of interpretive activities, and is connected with them in a systematic way. As I demonstrated in the previous chapter, the

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process of constituting generic constellations does not determine an artwork completely out of itself, but is instead constitutively bound up with the interpretive practices in which it continues to develop itself. Art is in this sense a dynamic process that provokes us through the interplay between objects and practices. The provocations that we get from art do not simply arise from objects, since they are based instead on a form of practice that realizes a dynamic between objects and practices. For this reason, we cannot pursue the practice of art through an account of paradigmatic objects, as Jerrold Levinson has suggested.12 If we want to understand art, including its origins, then it does not suffice to refer to outstanding artworks, since we instead have to keep in mind a form of practice in which objects and interpretive practices remain in a dynamic interplay with each other. We have to delve into such a form of practice if we want to come to terms with art. Here we once again find the expression of Albrecht Wellmer that I already introduced in the third chapter to explain the entire dynamic context of art to be inightful:  “play of reflection.”13 He allows us to grasp the interplay of constellations that are reactualized in the work and interpretive activities as follows: The constellations and the activities reflect each other in a reciprocal manner and develop each other further. The play of reflection does not, however, have just two poles, constellations and interpretive activities, since along with the interpretive activities, their complementary practices in everyday life also come into play. Activities of perception that we develop in dealing with artworks or aesthetic events stand in relationship with activities of perception in everyday practices. The Compare Jerrold Levinson, “Refining Art Historically,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 47 (1989), 21–33. 13 Albrecht Wellmer, Versuch über Musik und Sprache (Munich:  Carl Hanser Verlag, 2009), 146. 12

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play of reflection thus entails a somewhat doubled reflection:  The way in which we reflect on our aesthetic activities also leads us to reflect on the related activities that make up part of everyday practical life. Or to put it differently, the relation of reflection is autonomous and heteronomous: autonomous insofar as it includes a dynamic connection between artworks and interpretive activities, and heteronomous insofar as this connection is always in relation to everyday practices. The arts and their generic constellations are thus essentially bound to the practice of reflection (in the sense of the terminology introduced in the second chapter), which art accomplishes in the overall framework of human practice. Observing the position of art within human practice is essential in order to attain an understanding of constellations in artworks and the arts. These constellations are an element in the comprehensive play of reflection that art initiates in the framework of human practice.

2.  Aesthetic experience The coherence contained in both artworks and arts that we conceptualize with the notion of generic constellations cannot in its own right explain why recipients get caught up in interpretive activities by artworks. It is true that the notion of generic constellation allows us to understand the degree to which each artwork is bound up in its self-related constitution with other artworks in a complex manner; and it also now makes sense that the activities of recipients undergo a formation and schooling despite the idiosyncratic character of artworks. But what is not yet clear is to what extent the process of dealing with these constellations has value for recipients. But this is just what we have to explain if we want to claim that such practices are practices of self-determination. We now face the challenge of grasping

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to what degree it can be productive for recipients in their subjective perspective to deal with these constellations. On this point, the notion of aesthetic experience has often been thrown into the ring in recent philosophy. Aesthetic experiences, being remarkable kinds of experience, are supposedly the reason why dealing with artworks is valuable for recipients. In the tradition of Kant, these specific experiences have constantly been conceived of as experiences of indeterminacy. Now it might seem as if we had refuted this with our prior considerations. The basis of these experiences is, as we have said, interpretive activities. And we have now understood that these activities orient themselves in terms of various generic constellations that we find developed in artworks. Constellations such as rhythm, color contrast, narrative context, and fictionalization get readapted and reactualized in artworks. These differences also leave their traces in interpretive activities. We thus always have to conceive of the constellations within the artwork as well as the corresponding interpretive activities to be determined in ever different ways. This makes it seem as if aesthetic experiences are to be understood as determinate experiences and not as experiences of indeterminacy. This impression deceives however, since it relies on an assumption that we have to give up, namely, that an aesthetic experience has to be an experience of something in particular. If we want to grasp aesthetic experiences in their particularity, then we must, as many positions assume, demand an account of this something particular, especially if we arrive at the insight that it is something altogether indeterminate. Then we can say with Martin Seel that we are dealing with the experience of appearing14—or with Christoph Menke that we here have an experience of an “other” good.15 Either way, the See Seel, Aesthetics of Appearing (Martin’s Seel’s position is definitely not exhausted by this basic definition). 15 See Chapter 1, Section 1. 14

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experience comes to be specified in terms of what it deals with or what it relates to. But it is just this path that is no longer open to us, since the realizations of various generic constellations that we experience aesthetically do not have any universal point of reference. This must not necessarily mean, however, that we have to conceive of aesthetic experiences as determinate through and through, for it might also mean that this assumption in question is not to be maintained. And this is precisely the case. The specificity of aesthetic experience does not rest on a common point of reference, but rather on the commonality of all of the activities that recipients carry out in dealing with artworks. Even if these activities are guided by the constellations in artworks, we are still dealing here with activities on the part of the subjects who are recipients, as I have always emphasized. If they are now guided in their activities, then it means that they have an experience of their lack of independence (Unselbständikeit). To put it more precisely, we here have an experience of lack of independence within independence. In their activities, experiencing subjects are always independent. But if these activities are guided by the object, then the experience that results is one of lacking independence within independence.16 The lack of independence of which I  speak here often gets misunderstood as aimlessness on the part of someone experiencing art.17 Someone having an aesthetic experience is essentially guided by the constellation of an object or event. In this sense, we can say that Martin Seel has pursued such an analysis of the interrelation of activity and passivity in several works. See especially Martin Seel, “Sich bestimmen lassen. Ein revierter Begriff von Selbstbestimmung,” in:  Sich bestimmen lassen (Frankfurt am Main:  Suhrkamp, 2002), 279–298. In more recent works he makes such an understanding fruitful; see the suggestive passages in Martin Seel, Die Künste des Kinos (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2013), 236–239. 17 The thought of aimlessness is related to the now often employed notion of aesthetic immersion. Compare Werner Wolf, ed. Immersion and Distance: Aesthetic Illusion in Literature and Other Media (Amsterdam:  Rodopi, 2013). It is also characteristic of the explanations that are bound up with this concept that the relevance of activities for aesthetic experience does not receive enough emphasis. 16

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experience occurs due to an object. Because of its lack of independence, those who have such an experience find it impossible to anticipate what will happen in the course of the experience. The course of activities is essentially guided by the configuration of the object, which leads to the impression of aimlessness. But considered more precisely, aimlessness does not prevail, for it is far more correct to say that because these activities are dependent, their aim is not determined purely from within, but rather also posited by an object. Hence, the recipient will always have the impression that she is following an indeterminate movement, even despite her own activeness. But this impression of following an indeterminate movement is not the only one we get when dealing with art, since the recipients of art will also often have the impression of posing questions, either to herself or to the object, the impression of understanding aspects of the work and of evaluating it. We have to explain both of these impressions in context, and this becomes possible precisely by explaining the impression of an indeterminate movement through the nonindependence of the activities that the recipient carries out. Then we can indeed say that there are determinate activities that get carried out within this lack of independence. This lack of independence defines the specific kind of experience that recipients have in dealing with artworks and it is what allows this process be one that is challenging for them. On the basis of this lack of independence, our activities have a direction that is indeterminate. This is true in general, regardless of what determinacy these activities realize. If we explain the indeterminacy of aesthetic experiences in their way, then we come to understand that the variety of interpretive activities does not result in a conflict. We can understand it far more as a dimension that connects various activities with each other and gives expression to the fact that they are not independent. Thus, we cannot and do not have to understand aesthetic experience on the

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basis of the determinacy of activities or their ever-shifting points of reference. We can give even more contour to the specific character of aesthetic experience by appealing to the philosophical formulation of the notion of experience in Hegel and Gadamer. Taking up one of Hegel’s main thoughts, Gadamer claims that experience always has a negative element.18 If we take experience in the paradigmatic sense, we do not have experiences, but we make experiences.19 When we make experiences, we revise or transform our way of understanding. By negating one way of understanding, new ways of understanding emerge. Someone can only make experiences by putting her mode of understanding into play, while experience is impossible for someone who is guarded in her way of understanding the world, someone who always persists in the same views no matter what. We can understand such a person to be thoroughly passive and immobile. To “make an experience” requires that one become active and put one’s way of understanding into play. This is also true of aesthetic experiences, which always entail the subjects of aesthetic experience being active in their own right. Recipients put some of their established practices in play with the activities that they develop in dealing with artworks. This is exactly what we assert with the notion of “lack of independence within independence.” Recipients follow the constellations of the artwork with their activities and allow themselves to be guided by these constellations, which challenge questionable activities in a way that is completely unpredictable for the recipients. 18 On this point, see Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (London: Continuum, 2004), 348–352. 19 Trans.: In German, it is a normal formulation to speak of “making” an experience (eine Erfahrung machen), rather than “having an experience.” For example, “I made a bad experience on that trip.”

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In the philosophy of art, the notion of aesthetic experience has, at least since Schopenhauer, constantly been understood as an experience of losing oneself.20 According to this view, the subject dissolves its structure in dealing with art. This explanation does not adequately grasp to what extent recipients put some of their practices, and thus their very selves, at play in dealing with art. Putting oneself at play does not lead to a loss of self; such would only be the case if what we put at play would thereby cease to exist, and thus could no longer be put at play. If we think of aesthetic experience as a loss of self, then we can no longer understand the way in which recipients have to become active in their way of dealing with art. With their activities in dealing with artworks, recipients put themselves at play in a different way:  They open themselves to being changed in their activities, enter into the possibility of being changed as the subject that they are. These reflections are directed against the recurring temptation to consider aesthetic experiences as paradigmatic of experience in general, a notion thats we find spelled out precisely in Gadamer’s philosophy. Even though Gadamer reconstructs the notion of experience in a helpful manner, he takes it in a way that is too unified, and thus tends to make aesthetic experience into a model case for experiences in general.21 He defines the very notion of experience in such a way that it contains aesthetic aspects, so that a tendency emerges to claim that true experiences are always aesthetic. We find similar explanations in John Dewey,22 and in a different respect in On the notion of aesthetic experience as an experience of losing oneself, see Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, trans. Richard Aquila (New York: Pearson, 2007), esp. Ch. 39; as well as Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1967). 21 Among other formulations along these lines, Gadamer writes: “In the experience of art, we see a geniune experience induced by the work work, which does not leave him unchanged who has it.” Gadamer, Truth and Method, 86. 22 See John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Perigree, 2005), Ch. 3. 20

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Adorno.23 We can also understand the position of Christoph Menke that was discussed in the first chapter in this way. Despite their significant differences, all of these positions share the thought that aesthetic experience delivers the model for what it means to “make” a real experience (in the emphatic sense of “making an experience”). I believe to have already demonstrated how we can resist this thought. We have to understand how the activities involved in aesthetic experience turn out differently from those involved with other experiences. What helps us here is to think of what is meant for aesthetic experiences to be lacking independence. Activities that lack independence within independence are not a model case for other experiences, in which we carry out activities that separate what is independent from what is dependent. We can explain this by considering our experiences of our own actions. Actions, by their very nature, are essentially bound up with the independence of those who act. Someone who slips on an icy spot does not “act” in this sense. In slipping, he or she is not independent and autonomous. In the course of an action, on the other hand, subjects are self-determining and thus independent. Of course, we cannot overlook here that our actions also inherently involve aspects that demonstrate a lack of independence. Yet these aspects do not enter into independence in the same way as the case with the interpretive activities of art. In the case of actions in general, independence and its lack are in a constant interplay with each other, while in the case of aesthetic experience in particular, our independence shows itself to lack independence. This is the reason they are not paradigmatic of other experiences, a point that confirms that art does have a specific nature, despite its Adorno writes correspondingly of aesthetic experience: “This experience runs contrary to the weakening of the ego that the culture industry brings about,” Aesthetic Theory, 245. I could complete Adorno’s thought as follows: It works against the loss of experience that is connected to the weakening of the ego in the culture industry. 23

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connection with other human practices. This specific nature that defines art is indeed bound up with an element of indeterminacy— an element of indeterminacy that is not the content of specific experiences, but rather the mode of those activities that make these experiences possible. This allows us to grasp indeterminacy as an essential element of interpretive activities in dealing with artworks and as an explanation of aesthetic experience in the following manner: Aesthetic Experiences of Lacking Independence within Independence: Aesthetic experiences are experiences that we engage in based on our own activities, while these activities are bound up with contexts that they follow in a way that is not independent. We are dealing here with experiences of a lack of independence within independent activity. Equipped now with this notion of the specificity of art, we can also evaluate in a new manner a common motif of aesthetic theories, namely, that aesthetic experiences are contemplative in nature. As in so many other areas, Kant also set the course for this discussion. What he calls the free play of the faculty of knowing is a contemplative play, the contemplative character of which we can make clear by saying that we conceptually explore an object or a presentation in a way that is unlimited. We only make use of concepts in a playful manner. We can now dissolve such an explanation from Kant’s idealistic approach. We can understand it in a thoroughly practical manner, so that someone who has aesthetic experiences hovers over a wide variety of details. As Martin Seel writes, this person perceives the object “in the momentary fullness of its appearances.”24 An indeterminate multitude of aspects of an object is set into motion that does not tend 24 Compare Seel, Aesthetics of Appearing, 45.

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to any goal, a motion that instead “strengthens and reproduces itself,” to follow Kant once again.25 Now such an explanation is always confronted with the problem that we have run into in various forms up to this point, namely, to make clear how we can conceptualize such an aesthetic experience in a concrete way. To what extent can we find in music a comfort for transcendental homelessness, or in film the depth of what humans can mean to each other? If we conceive of aesthetic experience as contemplative in nature, then we will struggle to make such definite aspects of content or meaning plausible. How can aesthetic experiences be concrete in such ways if they are essentially indeterminate? If we take contemplation as our model, then we can only undertake to explain aesthetic experiences in a way that will not be able to deal with such aspects.26 Aesthetic experiences are, we can say, thoroughly determined—just in a different way from other experiences. This will allow us to give a better explanation of the valid intuition that is latent in the appeal to the notion of contemplation: Experiences are aesthetic experiences in precisely those cases where we can speak of experiencing the lack of independence within independence. Since they are essentially based on activities, on all of the interpretive activities that we have already mentioned, and these activities are always determined in concrete ways, aesthetic experiences are also fundamentally determined. Their specific nature, as a special mode of experience, is based on the lack of independence that is characteristic of interpretive activities.

Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), B 37. 26 For such a theoretical maneuver, we can also see Kant as exemplary. His notion of “aesthetic idea” (ibid., B 193) fills in the notion of taste in just this way, so that the indeterminacy of aesthetic experience is bound up with an aspect of determinacy, which Kant holds to be characteristic of art. 25

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3.  The modernity of art and the struggle for aesthetic success The notion of aesthetic experience allows us to make sense of the fact that there is a connection among the variety of activities that recipients pursue in dealing with artworks. The explanations that I have given of this concept also allow us to understand once again what I already emphasized in the third chapter: that all activities are by their nature independent, and this independence also pertains to aesthetic practices. Even if I  have explained the experiences of recipients in dealing with artworks in such a way that they are constitutively bound up with independence, this does not make clear to what extent aesthetic practices make a contribution to the further development of autonomy. Even if we understand aesthetic experiences on a whole as experiences of the lack of independence within independence, does this not mean that although independence is assumed, it is not further promoted? To ask another way: What is happening in the experience of a lack of independence within independence? I have emphasized repeatedly that with interpretive activities other activities in the world also come into play. Or to put it in terms of aesthetic experience: I have emphasized that interpretive practices bring other practices from the world into play. But with what aim do such activities come into play? Answered in general terms:  These specific activities that involve the lack of independence within independence have the aim of being experienced as having value. The production of artworks is in this sense oriented toward making us experience them as valuable for us as recipients. It is surely not the case that all artworks succeed in realizing this aim, but all of them are oriented toward it. Artworks struggle for their success as objects that are valuable to deal with. Put concisely, artworks struggle for their aesthetic success. How can we

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conceptualize such a struggle as the basis for art making a contribution to the realization of freedom? On the basis of this question, we can undertake to understand the degree to which aesthetic experiences not only assume the existence of autonomy, but also produce it in their own way. If we seek to understand the struggle of artworks for aesthetic success as a basis for realizing freedom, then we run into the classic intuition that art is a practice that always strives for complete modernity. The struggle for aesthetic success leads art to constant further development. We can articulate this intuition with Adorno’s notion of art’s orientation as a “category of the new,”27 since it bears within itself the tendency toward being avant-garde. An explication of the struggle for aesthetic success that tends in this direction is not only a common intuition, but also a position advocated in an implicit or explicit way by many philosophers of art. Two philosophies that I  have repeatedly taken as points of orientation are representative of this view:  those of Adorno and Danto. For this reason, it seems helpful for me to discuss the fundamentally avant-gardist tendency of art that these philosophies posit. I undertake this discussion with the aim of showing that we cannot conceive of the struggle for aesthetic success adequately by attributing an avant-gardist tendency to art. Adorno explains the basic tendency of art as one of self-dissolution. In its social context, art strives to ensure its autonomy, since it is only through this autonomy that it can manage to resist its broader social circumstances. This autonomy realizes itself through the particular languages of artworks, through the laws of their form. Yet as soon as we find such a language in a successful artwork, this language comes to be assimilated by society. The language peculiar to an artwork gets 27 Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 20.

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taken up into the familiar forms of language, and for this reason it can no longer initiate an irritating effect. Thus, art would always lose its autonomy. In order to avoid this consequence, according to Adorno, art would have to develop ever further in its autonomous language. In this way, it embodies a “law of movement”28 that constantly drives it on to new things. Adorno explains, however, that with the onset of modernity, the realization of this law of movement becomes increasingly precarious. It becomes ever more problematic for art to enclose itself in an autonomous sphere. For Adorno, this is based on the fact that society increasingly absorbs all of the autonomous formations of art into itself, so that art is left with no free-playing room for the development of new languages. In an earlier work, Adorno already analyzed this modern development under the notion of the “culture industry” as a process of communicative assimilation:29 the autonomous language of art comes to be made compatible to society in such a way as to eliminate any resistance to socially established contexts of communication. Art would then become completely commensurable in its language. According to Adorno’s explanations, art reacts to this development with its own self-dissolution. Adorno expresses his notion of selfdissolution of art as the “de-artification of art” (Entkunstung der Kunst).30 In modernity, works increasingly emerge that no longer claim any specific linguistic quality, which thus denies their status as art. Among these works belong the icons of avant-garde art such as Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades and Warhol’s pop art. But in Adorno’s view, the de-artification of art also realizes itself in the technocratic Ibid., 2–3, 19. 29 Compare Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, “Culture Industry, or Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” in:  The Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 94–136. 30 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 16. Trans.:  The term Entkunstung is translated as deaesthetisization in Hullot-Kentor. 28

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tendencies of serial music, and in the semantically curtailed aspect of concrete poetry. Through these movements, art seeks to save itself by no longer insisting on itself as art. It paradoxically seeks to reinforce its autonomy by renouncing precisely this autonomy. Since we are dealing with a development that results out of art’s own internal law of motion, art can seek to preserve itself in this way. Adorno has in mind just this tendency of art to despairing self-preservation when he says that art enacts a “rebellion against semblance.”31 Aesthetic semblance is an essential element of unity that artworks gain, and that sets them apart from what is outside of the aesthetic. The modern rebellion against semblance thus means precisely that we no longer seek such a unity. Art acquires a fragmentary face on its own. This consequence of art’s law of motion thus has the character of self-renunciation. In renouncing itself, art also renounces the potential for resistance that it sought to develop within social relations. With its de-artification, art increasingly gives up on itself. These arguments from Adorno rest on faulty premises. The premise seems decisive to me that with its social relations, art strives to ensure its autonomy. With this notion, it seems to me that Adorno interprets the linguistic quality specific to art in the direction of what I called the autonomy paradigm in the first chapter. His view is that art is only autonomous in its own way when it grows reticent, that is, when it makes itself incommensurable to communication. But we have seen in the meanwhile that such an explanation is not plausible. Even if art is communicative in its own sense (this means, even if it is constituted by self-relation), it lends itself to being connected to other ways of communication. In order to conceive of this, we merely have to pay attention to the connection that pertains between the reactualization of generic constellations in artworks, or between interpretive activities 31 Ibid.,  102.

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in dealing with artworks, on the one hand, and other activities in the rest of the world, on the other hand. If we take a look at this connection, then we can understand art to be a specific practice of reflection. We can grasp the specificity of art in such a way that we think of it as communicatively reticent, in the sense of the autonomy paradigm. But if we do away with this central premise of Adorno, then we can no longer draw the conclusions that he does. We can no longer interpret art in its historical development according to a law of motion that aims toward ensuring art’s communicative reticence. We need another way of explaining art’s struggle for aesthetic success. We can look for a different explanation in Danto, who suggests understanding art as defined by its own self-understanding, returning to an understanding of art in a broadly Hegelian sense. In the first chapter, I already came to speak of this explanation at length, so that it will suffice here to recall its essential features. For Danto, an essential element of art consists in the way it is marked by its own understanding of itself as art. He sees this aspect realized in the way artworks relate themselves to their own presentation of what is presented in them. On the other hand, they also guide the interpretations of recipients through this self-relationality. For Danto as well, this definition entails that art has a tendency to develop in the direction of modernity, a direction that consists in the way in which art becomes increasingly self-reflective, the way in which art’s own orientation is embodied in its self-comprehension. In modernity, art increasingly has to do with its own understanding of what it means to be art. Art ends, according to Danto, with the “birth of its own philosophy.”32 This entails what 32 Arthur C. Danto, “The End of Art,” History and Theory 37, 4 (1998), 127–143. Danto here supports his view with that of Hegel. This is a misunderstanding. For Hegel, the end of art is not connected with the dawn of philosophy, but with the way philosophy is set free once it gets separated from art (I will come back to Hegel’s understanding of post-Romantic art).

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Adorno calls a self-dissolution. Art dissolves itself from those concrete contents that it socially thematizes, and it increasingly has itself as an object. It dissolves itself by falling into a state of self-occupation. In the first chapter, I already examined to what extent this notion of art rests on problematic assumptions. It is problematic to assume that art’s self-relationality—as the way that we explain art’s specific nature—can be disassociated from the significance of art. We can correct this by relating art to the activities of those who deal with artworks, and referring back to this to explain art’s self-relation. Artworks are in their constellations essentially constituted as selfrelated objects, and as a result of this, they guide the activities of recipients. This allows us to reformulate Danto’s definition without completely agreeing with his philosophy. If we give up a central aspect of Danto’s definition, then we also have to give up his conclusions and can no longer agree with his thesis that the development of art tends to a state in which it occupies itself exclusively with its own concept. Even such a brief recourse to Danto thus does not give us an adequate conception of the struggle for aesthetic success. As a result of our reflections on Adorno and Danto, we can continue to maintain what we already found in the first chapter to be the case: There are crucial points of convergence between them, since both explain the unity of art in a way that leads to the dissolution of art in modernity. How can we avoid this conclusion and yet nevertheless explain the phenomena that Adorno and Danto have in mind? Let us call to mind once again the premises for their respective theses on the dissolution of art: For each of them, this self-dissolution derives from art’s definition as an autonomous occurrence in the broadest sense. This definition appears plausible because art is indeed constituted in a self-relational manner. But not only is this the case. As a result of this, it also happens that art is occupied with its own status as art. Yet, it is just this status that Adorno and Danto do not plausibly explain. This

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has to do with the way that Adorno and Danto do not conceptualize the self-relationality of art in an altogether consistent manner as an aspect of its practical essence. Danto ends up with a more or less theoretical understanding of what it means for something to be self-relational, since he takes art’s self-relation as an instance of self-knowledge. For Adorno, on the other hand, a theoretical understanding is at play on a more indirect level, insofar as art’s self-relationality is understood in terms of how art opposes itself to a problematic view of rationality as oriented to identity. We see the practical aspect of art’s self-relation more in Adorno than in Danto:  Art accomplishes a critique of rationality. We have to understand such a critique to be practical in nature, which means nothing else but that art contributes to further development of rationality. Because of this practical essence, art does not aim in its self-relation to clarify what art is. Instead, it aims more for a clarification of what art accomplishes. Art creates patterns that engage recipients in a dynamic play, which we experience as having value in a variety of ways. Some of the patterns in art are all too familiar, some uninteresting, overly forced, exhausting, or with many other possibilities. The recipient can be challenged to experience this dependence in a variety of ways,33 which makes up an element in art’s self-comprehension. Artworks struggle to succeed at preparing configurations that are valuable for recipients to deal with. It can mean various things for a process of dealing with a work to be valuable: It can mean that the constellations of an artwork release great irritations, open up surprising perspectives, that they present a grand structure, rich in tension, that recipients are provoked, that they are able to articulate their feelings in dealing with the constellations, and many other things. Artworks are valuable in that See Paul Ziff, “Gründe in der Kunstkritik,” in: Das ästhetische Urteil, ed. Rüdiger Bittner and Peter Haff, 63–80. 33

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they challenge recipients—which can also result in the confirmation of how they understand themselves. We have to understand the notion of challenge introduced in the prior chapter as connected in this manner with the notion of the artwork’s self-relationality. Artworks struggle to develop challenges. This struggle is part of how artworks confront themselves and each other as artworks. The practice of art thus demonstrates itself to have a deeply agonal element.34 Adorno articulates this element in a quite drastic way by citing the words: “each artwork is the deadly foe of the other.”35 This formulation is quite drastic because it suggests that an artwork aims to dispute the existence of another artwork, to negate it. This is false to the extent that the contest between artworks does not concern their existence, but rather their success. Artworks compete with each other to offer especially challenging constellations. If an artwork succeeds in this contest, it can count as an example of the success of art. This is not the case for an artwork that does not achieve such success. This success does not concern their existence. It concerns instead what we might call the standing of the artwork. Speaking of the standing of artworks does not imply that artworks can be positioned along a scale of aesthetic success. When artworks succeed, they do so in a way that is exemplary. Their standing measures itself in terms of their own claim to succeed as art. Artworks compete with each other in developing such a claim, which they always develop on their own. Thus, it is no wonder that the contest between artworks is always bound up with an interplay between them. It is by far not the case that all challenges issued by artworks are mutually exclusive of one another. They can also interact in the manner of a productive multitude, be it that they The agonal element of art is especially prevalent in the so-called Paragon. Compare the key work on this:  Benedetto Varchi, Paragone: Rangstreit der Künste (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2013). 35 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 34. 34

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direct themselves at differing activities, or that they challenge forth different aspects in developing these activities. Thus, the contest between artworks often leads to their mutual completion, or to impulses that stand indifferently alongside one another. The way in which artworks understand themselves as art is thus an element in their struggle for aesthetic success. In the framework of their struggle to open up valuable occasions for dealing with them, artworks are concerned with what it means to be art. They do not aim for knowledge of themselves as art, but instead to realize challenging constellations in the sense of art’s demand. For this reason, artworks thematize their success as art. Since this success is once again always bound up with the specific constellations that are actualized in an artwork, it is a matter of a specific success. A poem demonstrates an understanding of itself as a poem—as a love poem, an elegy, a play of words, or in many other possible respects. It articulates in an implicit or explicit way an understanding of the specific way in which it seeks to realize art. An installation exposes an understanding of itself as a way of structuring space. In doing so, installations compete with other installations and with other artworks, such as works of architecture or sculpture, in order to structure space in a successful manner. Artworks thus establish the specific criteria for realizing the challenges at which they aim. By means of these criteria, they specify their claim. In the prior chapter, I  explained the fundamentally self-related character of artworks by saying that artworks relate themselves to various elements within the configuration they develop. It is based on this self-relation that artworks create an understanding of what they seek to accomplish, and they do this by developing criteria for their own success. In their competition with other works, they issue the claim to succeed as artworks, so that we think of their self-understanding as a claim that they make.

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In order to better understand the agonal character of art, we can come back to Hegel’s aesthetics. This requires us to start from a somewhat unconventional place, namely where Hegel reflects on post-Romantic art, that is, art “after the end of art.”36 According to Hegel, such post-Romantic art is irreducibly plural, whereby it differentiates itself from art in the classical epoch, which articulates a historical and cultural society in its unity. For Hegel, the substance of art is bound up with such unity. For this reason, he understands the plurality of forms that art gains after what he claims to be the end of art as a symptom of its decline—incorrectly, I might add. Contrary to his own estimation, Hegel nevertheless explains the multifarious development of modern art in such a way as to make it fruitful for his notion of art on the whole. The first specification that Hegel gives for this art in a state of decline—thus in my sense, for art in general—goes as follows:  Art is to be understood as an articulation of the various determinations of the human being. Hegel finds a fitting formulation for this aspect when he says that post-Romantic art makes “the Humanus into its new saint.”37 This also leads to the way in which art articulates the definition of what it means to be human in a variety of ways. This articulation results out of the particular perspective of (individual or collective) subjects. But if art essentially gives expression to such particular perspectives, then we have to conceive of it as an agonal practice. Artworks then struggle with each other to promote productive determinations of the human being. This is an essential element of their contest for aesthetic success.

To put it more precisely, it is a question of the end of art “according to the perspective of its highest determination” (Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I, p. 25). 37 Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik II, 237. 36

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We can better understand what it means to speak of these determinations of the human being by saying that it is a matter of determinations of human practices—determinations of bodily practices, practices of perception, emotional practices and symbolic practices. Artworks accomplish such determinations in that they enter into a dynamic interplay with interpretive activities. They thus contribute to negotiating the determinations of human practice.38 Art accomplishes a practical reflection in this sense:  The activities that artworks provoke in recipients permeate other activities. Art, as a medium of reflection, aims at such a permeation. Thus, in art, it is never just a matter of competing for art’s understanding of itself as art. In the final analysis, this competition is always oriented toward defining what it means to be human. In all of their different permutations, artworks and aesthetic events seek to make a contribution to such a definition. They do this by challenging forth practices in various ways and thus provoking a renegotiation of practices. In art’s agonal practice, various artworks and art forms come into an interplay with each other. An individual artwork cannot initiate this interplay of its own accord. For this, an interplay with other artworks would be necessary, and this interplay would have to lead to ever new understandings of what it would mean for 38 We find such a thought in abbreviated form in the works of Heidegger and MerleauPonty as well. We can understand Heidegger’s thesis of art as the happening of truth (Wahrheitsgeschehen), the way that he attributes to art a world-opening dimension in such a way that it founds practices or understandings of them in a new way (see Heidegger, Basic Writings, 186–191, find English). Merleau-Ponty has a corresponding understanding of painting and optical perception. According to him, painting accomplishes a new basis for seeing. See Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind,” in: The Primacy of Perception, trans. William Cobb (Evanston:  Northwestern University Press, 1964), 159–190. We can grasp each of these as a specific version of the general thesis that in art, new practices are negotiated. We can also interpret Benjamin’s thesis on the loss of aura in such a way that it articulates a specific renegotiation of human practices. See Walter Benjamin, “The Artwork in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility,” in:  Selected Works, Vol. 3, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 101–133.

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art to succeed. To say it with the vocabulary gained from Hegel’s understanding of post-Romantic art:  A competition of different particular perspectives would be needed, a competition in which various determinations would stand in opposition to each other and lead to new human practices. Such differences, as well as the open struggle for adequate definitions of human practices, allow us to comprehend that art deals with human self-determination. The struggle for aesthetic success is oriented toward defining human practice. Since this very process of definition is initiated by human beings, it represents a practice of self-determination, a specific practical reflection. We can grasp hold of how the demand followed by this practice brings the idea of self-determination into play in the following manner: Artworks’ Demand for Self-determination: In competition with each other, artworks pursue the demand that they contribute to the definition of human practices in that they provoke a process of negotiating human practices, and they are valuable objects to deal with for this reason. This brings us back to the thought that we already encountered in Kant and Hegel: Art reflects the human being. Of course, it does not reflect the human being in general in his or her specific cognitive situation, and it also does not reflect the essential orientations of the shared practice of a historical and cultural form of life. It is rather the case that artworks reflect various practices in which humans are immersed. Its reflection has a practical character:  Artworks bring greater definition to our practices in various ways through their challenging aspect. It is at just this point that an essential aspect of the theories of Adorno and Danto becomes comprehensible: On the basis of its practical character, art is fundamentally situated in a historical and cultural way. Artworks always develop a demand for proper

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definitions of this practice in relation to the historical and cultural state of human practice in general, and in this respect they struggle with other artworks. This point is confirmed by the basic orientation of the aesthetic philosophies of Hegel, Heidegger, Adorno, Gadamer, and Danto, among others, who all claim that art has an essentially historical character. The agonal struggle of art for proper definitions of human practice takes place within a historical and cultural framework. These reflections do indeed imply a different understanding of the basic tendency of art than the one that I laid out at the start of this section. In their definitions of modern art, Adorno and Danto run the risk of missing one of its essential elements, namely that art is at its very root an unassured practice. If artworks struggle for their status as art, then whether they are art is always in play. The competition between artworks over how they understand themselves as art has just this dimension. It represents a struggle over which Damocles’ sword of failure constantly hovers. In this respect, art always has a relation to its ending, as Eva Geulen has demonstrated.39 The end is not, as Adorno and Danto claim in different respects, a state of selfdissolution toward which art advances in a teleological way. Art does not strive to reach its own modernity in a state of self-dissolution. The end is far more an element to which every artwork is fundamentally related. Every artwork runs the danger of not realizing an adequate challenge, or indeed any at all, and hence the possibility of failure has a constitutive meaning for it. This potential of failure grows sharper because of the competition that artworks carry out with other artworks. The end of art and the possibility of its success are bound together in each work in a systematic manner. Vgl. Eva Geulen, Das Ende der Kunst—Lesarten eines Gerüchts nach Hegel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2002), esp. ch. 2. 39

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If we understand the competition of artworks and arts in this way, then we see that the ordinary theorems on the end of art that refer back to Hegel are problematic, since they essentially serve to take the edge off of the end of art. We come to see them as attempts to immunize certain areas of art (with Hegel we might say: the classical arts) against this ending. This is not justified, however, since every artwork always confronts the possibility of failure, as I  have already shown. At no moment can there be a definitive certainty as to whether a work is successful or not. Artworks are always in a state of controversy. The relation to their ending is the modernity from which they cannot dissolve themselves. Art is always essentially modern—indeed even in its traditional or popular forms. It does not steer toward modernity as a historical point at which the dissolution of art threatens. Someone who claims such an end of art fails to see the unassuredness of art itself and conceives of the modernity of art in the sense of an avant-garde. But we have to understand the modernity of art not in the sense of an avant-garde. Artworks are not modern because they always strive after newness or make themselves autonomous in their self-comprehension, but because they are by nature unassured. And this is true for artworks ordinarily characterized as traditional, as well as for those usually understood as avant-garde. In their unassuredness, artworks are bound up with their reception and ongoing transmission, since the configuration of an artwork— especially in competition with other artworks and art-forms—is constitutively connected with interpretive activities. They must demonstrate themselves to be challenging in and through these activities. In just this sense, we can now gain a good understanding of the extent to which artworks are always subject to controversy in their reception. Since interpretive activities first show themselves to be challenging in and through their relation to other practices in the world, the context demonstrates itself to be decisive on how

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productive these activities are. In an altered historical and cultural context and on the basis of these changes in practices, activities can lose their relevance and interest. This can lead to a change in the status of an artwork, so that we cannot consider an artwork to be challenging once and for all. Its struggle for success as art does not cease. To this extent, every artwork takes part in a competition and thus essentially faces the possibility of its own failure. It is this competition that establishes a fundamental context in which artworks and the various arts relate to each other. This competition takes place in every individual work against the backdrop of this overall context.

4.  Aesthetic judgments and the classification of artworks In order to grasp the way in which the competitive conflict between artworks and various arts is connected to its contribution to human self-determination, we have to take a further step. Up to here I have always spoken of the way in which artworks demand activities from recipients; and I also claimed that these activities have to demonstrate themselves to be valuable for the recipients. These two statements contain an element to which my hitherto work does not yet fully do justice, an element that I would describe by saying that the process of dealing with artworks has a normative, practical character. Art does not simply succeed or fail in the eyes of the recipient. Recipients are not only involved in interactions with artworks but they also relate critically to the artwork’s claim to realize art, and take an evaluative stance to the artwork and to interactions with the artwork. They compare the merits and relations of various artworks as well as their dynamics, comment upon their way of functioning and evaluate their aesthetic success. They argue with each other over whether

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or not artworks do justice to their own demands, and why.40 With their normative and evaluative activities, recipients take part in the competition between artworks. Because of such activities, the reflection that recipients seek in artworks is not a blind occurrence, but rather a reflection that is far more oriented to the idea of selfdetermination. I have also characterized the competition of artworks and arts in a way that relates to the search for adequate definitions of human practice. It is by doing justice to the normative and evaluative activities of recipients that we first come to understand the extent to which we can speak of “adequate” definitions. With these activities, recipients constantly explore the contribution that artworks make within the framework of renegotiating human practices. The way in which artworks and arts compete is inseparably connected to those activities by which art critics judge artworks, even in private discussions or blog entries. In speaking of judging activities, I have in mind first and foremost all of the normative and evaluative statements and comparisons that producers and recipients bring forth in discussions that follow upon the process of dealing with artworks, in art criticism and in the context of critical and scholarly treatments of art. Paradigmatic cases of such utterances would be those such as “That was an altogether successful performance,” or “The work is convincing as a result of the great tension that it builds between its various parts.” If we understand art as controversial, then we also have to consider such utterances as an element within art’s form of practice. Yet what do they deal with? What are we saying when we judge an artwork to be successful, when we refer to how it is rich with tension, or when we criticize a lack of connection between various parts or an unfitting subject? This leads us back to a question that has played For a summary of this conflict in the tradition of Hegel, see Henning Tegtmeyer, Kunst (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 159. 40

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a great role in the philosophy of art and often been treated under the rubric of “taste.” In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the question of what defines the critical capacities of recipients, that is, the question of taste, often stood at the center of the philosophy of art. It was only at the end of the eighteenth century that this discursive context dissolved.41 I will not, however, approach the question of what is at the root of normative and evaluative utterances by way of the tradition, but instead by way of a philosopher of art who has recently taken up the traditional notion of judgment of taste in an interesting manner: Noël Carrol. I would like to gain an understanding of art criticism in the broadest sense through a discussion of Carrol’s position. In doing so, I shall maintain and make use of his central insight that evaluation is a central element in art criticism (Carroll writes of a primes inter pares).42 Carroll argues that evaluation possesses an objective basis, and is thus distinct both from a subjective aesthetics of taste as well as aesthetic formalism. Evaluation, he argues, is oriented toward the “success value” of an artwork. Carroll distinguishes this success value from the “reception value” of an artwork, and advocates the thesis that the former is of primary importance in evaluation.43 With these distinctions Carroll makes an important contribution toward discussing the question of how we are to understand the Kant made a decisive contribution to this in his analysis of the judgment of taste in The Critique of Judgment and advocated the theses that such a judgment is not based on concepts and says nothing in relation to the nature of the object. Kant thus plausibly concludes that a judgment of taste cannot be the object of a disagreement over reasons. With this he deprives the judgment of taste of the possibility of making an autonomous contribution to dealing with art (or beautiful objects in general). For Kant (and many aesthetic theories after him), the judgment of taste counts merely as a symptom of the encounter with an artwork and with a beautiful object. As the thesis goes, this specific quality can be neither grasped nor promoted. 42 Noël Carroll, On Criticism (New York and London: Routledge, 2008), 9 43 Ibid.,  53–65. 41

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normative and evaluative activities of recipients in dealing with artworks. I  would like to continue his approach by appealing to an interesting analogy that Carroll makes in order to render plausible the distinction between the notion of success value and that of reception value.44 Let us imagine an exceptionally good soccer match (or as Carroll chooses, a baseball game). Two teams at the highest level are playing against one another. What difference does it make in the quality of play if the game takes place without any audience or as a public event with an audience? Carroll’s answer is simple: It makes no difference. The value of such a game is to be measured by its success, not the reaction of the public. We might have doubts about whether Carroll is correct with this estimation of how things really are with a baseball game or soccer match, but let us grant him this for the sake of argument. It is beyond doubt, however, that this analogy misses the mark. Carroll uses it to understand the artwork in the context of its production by the artist. If we grasp this production as an essential point of comparison for this analogy, then it does not work:  A soccer match is located essentially in the place where it is played—an artwork on the other hand is often not located in the place where it is produced. An artwork is rather the result of its production, in a certain respect. We see in a basic way that at many moments of its production, the artwork is not yet completed as an artwork. Now we can grant this to Carroll and formulate the analogy in relation to artworks that are performed (thus focusing on those arts that Goodman calls “two-phased”).45 Let us imagine a theater ensemble on the stage performing without an audience, or a symphonic orchestra at a rehearsal where no one is present except the musicians. Here we might say along with Carroll that the value of such Ibid.,  65. 45 Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976), 113–115. 44

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a performance is in what the actors or musicians do, so that it does not matter whether the audience is there or not. The performers are in this case their own public (as we would have to say of the athletes in Carroll’s example). If they play for themselves, then they are at once performers and recipients (we can also say similar things about artists and their works).46 But this makes the very distinction upon which Carroll places so much value suspicious. We cannot speak here of the success of a performance without understanding the performers here in the double role of both producers and recipients. The improvisational arts are, once again, the model for such an understanding of art. Let us imagine a jazz quintet once again. The musicians of such a quintet are performers in that they play with one another. But they cannot do so according to established patterns, since it is a matter of improvisation. They have to listen to each other, and perceive what they hear as aesthetic recipients. Only this can lead them to discovering what will lead them further aesthetically and to differentiating it from what is unproductive and uninteresting. In this sense, those who improvise comment upon each other, and in this commentary upon one another, they are both performers and recipients. Without listening to one another, they could not respond to each other. At the same time, they have to play in order to be able to respond to each other. We have to conceive of a jazz quintet as an ensemble that produces works in the act of playing together, which also includes moments of receptivity, even aside from the receptivity of an audience. This is just what Carroll ignores by playing up the success value as opposed to the reception value. My thesis is that one cannot speak of the success value of an artwork without referring to its reception value. What an artist attains We can support this explanation of the theater with the thesis of Erika Fischer-Lichte that there is no theatrical event without an audience; see Ästhetik des Performativen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2004). 46

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with an artwork, what Carroll calls its “achievement,” is essentially bound up with its reception. Whether artworks are successful, and to what extent, is something we cannot evaluate independent of whether the process of dealing with them proves to be challenging. Production and reception are essentially connected to one another, as we see in the paradigmatic case of improvisation. Artworks are successful if they provoke new determinations of practice. This is exemplified by the case of improvisation. If the percussion introduces a rhythmical variation, then the piano can take it up in such a way as to elaborate upon it. What is provoked in this way can also continue to have an effect within the on-going course of improvisation. In this way, an aesthetic practice (the rhythmical variations of the percussion) contributes to the renegotiation of practices. The success of artworks can only be judged with reference to such a process of negotiation. In this sense, we cannot conceive of the success value of artworks independent of their reception value, that is, their contribution to human practice. The evaluation of an artwork thus always includes the perspective of the recipient, contrary to Carroll’s argument. We can see why Carroll misses this point by once again coming back to the critique of the autonomy paradigm. In the first chapter, we saw that this paradigm extends even beyond those philosophical positions that explicitly understand themselves as theories of aesthetic autonomy. We now see that even Carroll’s notion of evaluation is guided by this paradigm. Carroll cuts off the evaluation of artworks from the contexts in which they stand within the human form of life, and this is why he takes the notion of evaluation in a one-sided manner. If we want to avoid this one-sided view, then we have to conceive of evaluation in such a way that it keeps in mind the connection of art with the rest of human practice. Someone who criticizes an artwork, who judges it to be successful or not, takes a stance as to whether and

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to what extent the work gives impulses for human activities. These impulses can be of various natures, and can relate to various practices and contexts of practice. Does this mean that we have to give up Carroll’s demand to think of aesthetic judgments as objectively oriented? If we say that aesthetic judgments are always oriented to the reception value of artworks, then it is not clear whether this value is to be discerned subjectively or objectively. Upon what is the reception value, and hence the aesthetic judgment, of an artwork based? In responding to this question, we can take our response to Carroll a bit further and ask whether his explanation of the objectivity of aesthetic evaluation leads us further, independent of his insistence on the success value of artworks. In his explanation of this matter, the classification of artworks plays a decisive role.47 We can understand the key thought in these reflections as follows: If I know to what kind of art and to what artistic genre an artwork belongs, then I know its goal, and can judge to what extent it reaches its goal. This thought is based on the notion that we can discover the goal of an artwork through classification. But this is not the case. The goals of an artwork are based on its self-relational constitution and on the struggle for aesthetic success that occurs according to this constitution. Despite all of the possible artistic conventions that might pertain to specific genres, styles, and the like, every artwork internally poses its own goals and negotiates the way it is to be classified in its own way. Thus, it can come about that a still life actually enacts a representation of social relations, or that a text that at first view seem to be a bildungsroman actually functions more as a novella. In this way, artworks develop all of their classifications further in new ways. A classification that assumes more or less stable genre conventions thus cannot provide the basis for explaining the goals of 47 See here Carroll, On Criticism, 170–190.

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an artwork. The internal negotiation of the aims of an artwork thus stands in an inseparable connection with the challenge that artworks seek to realize in relation to the definition of human practice. Artworks do not enclose themselves and isolate themselves as a result of this challenge, but instead stand in a connection with other practices. At this point, it will be fruitful to pay attention to the oft-noted communicative aspect of critical evaluations of artworks. Someone who critically evaluates an artwork makes suggestions to others: She refers to valuable objects, gives pointers as to ways in which dealing with them can provide a challenge, by paying attention to individual elements, by taking in a certain position, and so on. If we relate such a practice to the classification of artworks, as Carroll does, then it does not become clear what makes the process of dealing with the work challenging. Is it challenging to deal with an object that exemplifies a genre in an especially fitting way? This does not seem to be a plausible explanation. We could say that a work is challenging not if it exemplifies a genre in an especially fitting way, but rather if it has especially interesting contents, is rich in tension, and so forth. We can give a good explanation of this challenging character of artworks if we concentrate on the connection between the constellations of an artwork and activities of interpretation. Then we come to see that a critical evaluation can serve as a way of recommending something rewarding:  An artwork that evokes interpretive activities has an intrinsic value because these activities reflect other human activities. We can summarize the problems that reveal themselves in Carroll’s position by stating that he understands classification in a purely descriptive manner,48 which does not grasp classification correctly; instead we would have to think it in terms of the individual nature On this compare also my discussion of McDowell’s defense of aesthetic objectivity in Chapter 3, Section 6. 48

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of each artwork, in the sense suggested by the first section of this chapter. If we think of it in this manner, then we have to conceptualize classification as normative and evaluative. There are no minimal criteria for individual arts that we could take up descriptively, in terms of which we could define an individual work. Instead, individual works constantly renegotiate their criteria as measures of their own success. With this reactualization, an individual artwork stands in the context of many artworks with which it shares certain generic constellations, and in this reactualization it poses standards for its own evaluation that imply a claim to aesthetic success—standards for its own success. If a critical text on art articulates these standards, then it does not assert something that is descriptive of the artwork. Its assertions are far more of a normative and evaluative nature. Documentarians or writers of historical fiction, for example, articulate a standard that the work poses for itself and in terms of which it is to be judged as successful or not. We thus have to think of all of the classificatory standards that we might critically or theoretically bring to bear on a work as elements of the normative or evaluative process of dealing with the work. These standards have no sense outside of such a process, and we thus misunderstand them if we take them to be descriptive. This does not mean that there are no descriptive aspects that constantly come into play within the process of classification. We classify artworks for example by clarifying their properties. However, such a descriptive process does not serve as the basis of classification. Such a basis is to be found far more in the way that these descriptive properties serve as standards that a work establishes for its own success. We thus come to see that these descriptive aspects of how we deal with art are embedded in the normative process of evaluating art. Explaining the classificatory process of dealing with artworks in this manner allows us to understand the fluidity of artistic genres. Someone who takes classification in a descriptive sense like Carroll

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has to posit the criteria of a specific artistic genre so rigidly that specific developments within the respective genre or art form do not fit. For this reason, we could only formulate a catalog of criteria in a very general way. Yet if this true, then it is hard to see how these criteria could be the basis for evaluating an artwork in an aesthetically insightful manner. So, for example, in relation to film we can pose the question whether the difference between silent film and sound film is relevant to the very concept of film. If we seek to gain a universal notion of film as art, then we might seek to neutralize this difference in the way we formulate the criteria of what makes up a film. Yet for many, it is highly relevant for sound film that it creates sonic spaces, and that it realizes the possibilities in such spaces (in contrast to other films, in which this is not the case). We can only do justice to such films if we grasp the form of sonic space as a standard according to which they have to be measured. This belongs among the aesthetic criteria that apply to each respective film. This brings us to the notion of artistic genre, and of the arts in general, for which the constant development of criteria is central.49 We cannot define an artistic genre on the basis of an established set of criteria—even a very minimal set. Instead, we have to understand it based on an evolving set of criteria. Film has changed aesthetically since the advent of sound films, and also since the invention of various animation techniques. Articulated in a one-sided way, we can see the development in which artistic genres or art forms find themselves as follows: Artistic genres are always caught in a state of dissolution. They are always about to transform into new genres. Established genres are constantly reconfigured by generic constellations that have not yet been established in them (like the way film changes through the additional element of sound space). We can also understand 49 On this as well see the reflections in the first section of this chapter.

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such a reconfiguration to be insightful in that it leads to a new art of additional generic constellations, in this case: a new art of sonic space, so that it is not simply a matter merely of continuing with the prior art—film—with new means. However, in each case, this is dependent on the specific development that the generic constellations undergo in artworks. On the one hand, we thus have to understand the mobility of genres and arts in terms of individual artworks. On the other hand, it is essential for understanding these artworks to grasp the constellations that are realized in these works. Arts can be established as well as dissolved by the reactualization of generic constellations. We can only adequately grasp the overall context of connection between artworks and arts if we do so in such a dynamic manner. On the question of whether aesthetic judgments are objectively founded, we will approach an answer with the following insight:  Aesthetic judgments are not based on the classification of artworks, since the criteria of each judgment has to be based on the individual artwork. Aesthetic judgments start from these criteria. They measure an artwork in terms of its specific demand to realize art, which is expressed in those properties of aesthetic value that an artwork demonstrates: in a unique sonic space, a displayed surface, a fragmentary quality, and so forth. Such properties serve as the starting point for evaluation. We cannot grasp them descriptively, but only in a normative and evaluative manner. What is essential here for grasping the claim made by the artwork is, as we have seen, the contribution that it makes to human practices. Someone who judges artworks in terms of whether they are the object of a challenging encounter judges them in terms of this contribution. Thus, it does not lead to subjectivism to emphasize the normative and evaluative character of judging an artwork in this way,50 but it 50 On this, compare the reflection in Chapter 3, Section 6.

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leads instead to positioning art in a historical and cultural human practice. These judgments are oriented toward the question of whether artworks provoke an adequate definition of human practices. This is their objective basis. We can only understand the objectivity of normative and evaluative judgments in terms of the world within which recipients live. We do not accomplish this by taking artworks as belonging to the structure of the world, but only by comprehending to what degree their claim to aesthetic success can be made good on within this world. The practices of recipients within their world are decisive for making good on this demand. If we now relate these considerations to Carroll’s notion of criticism, then we see that Carroll understands the objectivity of aesthetic evaluation in a way that is too one-sidedly focused on the object. Carroll suggests that orienting the evaluation toward the reception value leads to a subjectivist notion of evaluation. This might be the case if we think of evaluation only in relation to artworks as objects that are received by subjects, but this is not our position. Evaluations are oriented toward the contribution that art makes to human selfdetermination. They aim to explain whether the work succeeds in provoking renegotiations of the way we define human practices. This now allows us for the first time to grasp this process of negotiation in its full dimension. Normative and evaluative judgments belong to this process in an irreducible way. Art’s process of negotiation emerges from a dynamic connection between artworks and those interpretive activities that challenge forth definitions of human practice. These challenges do not take place in a straightforward way, but are instead bound up with a complex process of judgment in which we consider artworks as valuable or criticize them as failing based on their own claims. It is only through these normative and evaluative practices that we can explain the intersubjective character of the aesthetic process of negotiation in an adequate way: The judgment of

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an artwork never stands alone; it always has a need of being completed through other judgments, and is thus exposed to being corrected or contradicted. Judgments come up within complex disputes, in which we discuss which challenges are productive, which lead to the further definition of human practices, which should be modified, and so on. What we evaluate in dealing with artworks is thus never related merely to an individual subject—even if the perspectives of individual subjects are essential to the conflict-laden process of evaluation. What we evaluate are provocations to human practice—provocations that I have summarized by saying that art deals with defining what it is to be human. Through their judgments, producers and recipients contribute to the way art is constituted as a practice of self-determination. Producers and recipients do not simply give themselves over to the definitions contained in artworks, but rather they always have to take a stance on these determinations. In doing so, they, on the one hand, participate in the ongoing production of artworks, and on the other hand, they work on clarifying which definitions will be taken up in the rest of human practice, and which will not. Judgments thus cannot generate definitions on their own, but instead always have to take a stance on them. They come into play only if the dynamic interplay between artworks and interpretive activities has developed to a sufficient point as to become effective for challenging definitions of human practice (or not). If I emphasize the relevance of the normative and evaluative process of dealing with artworks, this does not mean that art is controlled by subjects and their judgments. Instead it means that these judgments are an irreducible element in the process of dealing with artworks, which is always by its very nature not independent: Normative and Evaluative Process of Dealing with Artworks and Aesthetic Self-determination: Art’s form of practice is

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constitutively bound up with the normative and evaluative activities of judgment that occur in the context of complex disputes in which we discuss the challenges that emerge from artworks. In their capacity to critically discern and evaluate, these activities of judgment contribute in an essential way to how we negotiate the definition of human practice as a process of self-determination. Aesthetic judgments allow us to understand something about the process of aesthetic negotiation that we already ran into in the first chapter:  Asesthetic judgments reveal the various formations of individual and intersubjective perspectives within the framework of this negotiation. Some negotiations are relevant for a greater sense of collective identity, others more for individual subjects or for groups of individual subjects. In each case, aesthetic judgments allow us to articulate the ways in which subjectivity and intersubjectivity are cultivated. We can present aesthetic judgments in the name of a collective experience or in the name of an individual. Judgments can make claim to a widely shared orientation or an orientation that is bound up with the completely personal perspective of an individual subject. Thus, we produce and participate in conflicts or moments of agreement within the aesthetic process of negotiation. The process of aesthetic negotiation does not take place on the basis of individual subjects, groups, or collectives, but is instead constituted in such a way that these instances constantly get redetermined. So even the collective We in the name of which we understand the notion of art is a result of the aesthetic process of negotiation. In conclusion, I will once again come back to McDowell’s explanation of aesthetic objectivity, which I discussed in the prior chapter. Now we are in a better position to understand why the explanation we discussed there cannot hold up. This is based on the fact that it interprets the

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connection between artworks and the world in a false manner. McDowell wants to explain this connection by considering artworks as objects in the world. These objects then supposedly have properties (aesthetic value properties), which are elements in the makeup of the world. The connection of artworks and the world can only be explained by focusing on human, world-related activities—as well as the subjects who carry out these practices. This connection is produced by the practices of subjects, that is, by the way that subjects seek impulses for developing their self-determination in dealing with artworks. Selfdetermination is thus always oriented toward the adequacy of human practices as an objective standard to which subjects relate themselves in their practices in the world. The notions of self-determination and adequacy are the basis for understanding the position of art within the world, and thus also for understanding the objectivity of art—a basis that is lacking in McDowell’s explanations. We can maintain an objective understanding of aesthetic judgments without, however, advocating descriptivism in respect to value properties and the classification of artworks. We will only be in the position to gain an understanding of the objectivity of art if we give up a model of art that is object oriented, which we see once again to be problematic. This allows us to claim that the judgment of artworks finds its objective basis in the way that they claim to make a contribution to the selfdetermination of human practice.

5.  The grammar of the concept of art and the conflict over art This clarification of the way in which normative and evaluative judgments function within the process of negotiating the aesthetic does not fully answer the question as to what gives these judgments

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their orientation. Do these judgments only follow the criteria that an artwork itself posits in its self-relationality? Let us take the example of a poem that we judge to be successful in this sense. Are we saying with such a judgment that the poem makes a contribution to human practice? Why do we understand the poem as such a contribution, and is this the sense in which we consider it successful? At this point, we do not get any further if we understand its success merely in terms of the criteria that the poem itself posits. It would then merely be comprehensible as an individual success, one that might indeed carry cultural and practical significance, but that does not involve any further meaning or interest. In order to get further here, we can once again take up the thought that guides Kant in his “Analytic of the Beautiful” and that was already implicitly in play in the section before last: The success of an artwork is exemplary. Judgments of taste (i.e., of the kind “X is beautiful”) are reflective judgments (i.e., judgments of the power of reflective judgment, as Kant says51): On the basis of a single object, they posit a rule under which the object falls. Since the rule is not applicable independent of the object, the judgment is exemplary. We already saw in the second chapter that Kant offers an explanation of this exemplary character that remains overly abstract. For him, a beautiful object is successful to the extent that it makes possible for us an experience of the functioning of the interplay of our powers of cognition. In the earlier treatment, I  grasped Kant’s thought of free play in terms of practices:  The aesthetic play of reflection is bound up with various practices and formations of artworks, which on a whole are oriented toward the valuable process of giving definition to human practices.

51 On the distinction between determining and reflecting powers of judgment, see Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, B XXV–B XXVIII.

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Now on the basis of this we can say that an aesthetic object is successful in the event that it allows us to carry out a form of dealing with objects that is valuable in its entirety. This process can be valuable because it opens up for recipients a renegotiation of the determinations of human practices. We judge an object in terms of whether it stands within a practice that realizes a valuable way of dealing with objects—that is, whether it stands within a specific self-determining practice. Or put more simply, we judge an object in terms of whether it is aesthetically successful. In every normative and evaluative process of dealing with an artwork, what is at stake is its exemplary character. It is exemplary for the practice in which it stands. In order to grasp this point, it does not suffice to refer to the internal standards of the artwork, its specific aesthetic properties. Instead we have to take account of how an artwork relates to the practice in which it stands. The value of the underlying practice is an object of judgment for us in every concrete evaluation of an artwork. We judge an artwork not only in terms of its specific configuration and whether it realizes its own internal standard, but also in terms of its realization of art, whereby both of these aspects are inseparably bound up with each other. Seen in this way, the normative and evaluative process of dealing with artworks always stands in a relation to the very notion of art. If every judgment of an artwork takes it as an exemplary case of art, as oriented to its aesthetic success, then the notion of art comes into play in every judgment. Even if many critical or evaluative statements about art do not explicitly speak of “art” or “the value of art,” these statements are implicitly oriented in terms of the notion of art, as an evaluative concept. In addition, they always touch on the question as to what extent the specific success of an artwork or an aesthetic event is to be understood as a case of art succeeding. In such a process of dealing with artworks, we always also debate how art can succeed.

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It does not follow from this that the process of dealing with artworks has to do exclusively with art. It has to do with art in an exemplary sense, as we already said with Kant. We are interested in the specific realizations that art finds in individual works or aesthetic events. One cannot be interested in art or debate it in any other way. But from this, we cannot conclude that art does not matter to us, that this concept is thus superfluous for us. We can only conceive of the value of each specific process of dealing with an artwork if we think of it as a process that deals with an exemplary realization of art. For this reason, our position on the concept of art comes into play whenever we take a normative and evaluative stance on an artwork. The notion of art comes into play in every such stance—even if the concrete stance merely deals with the question to what degree an artwork renegotiates its definition through specific criteria. It is always a matter of a specific realization that makes a contribution to practice, that makes a special difference among the practices of human beings, and which we designate with the notion of art: The Notion of Art as a Point of Orientation for Aesthetic Judgments: Recipients judge artworks on their claim to be objects that are valuable to deal with. In aesthetic judgments, we evaluate the potential for artworks to provoke a renegotiation of the definitions of practices. In this process, our judgments are oriented by the idea of a specific process of negotiating the definitions of human practice. This is the sense in which the notion of art is a point of orientation for aesthetic judgments. This explanation gives further clarity to what we could characterize as the grammar of the concept of art. Positions in the philosophy of art have always had a tendency to understand the notion of art as a concept that is descriptive, that is to say, classificatory. The problems in such

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an approach have led, in the wake of Wittgenstein, to abandoning the demand to understand art as a unified concept.52 Such positions use Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblances to explain that there are no unified criteria for art, since it instead involves a variety of criteria in an unsystematic way. Art is a heterogeneous joining of various objects and practices, the criteria of which loosely come together in the notion of art. Renouncing a unified concept of art in this way draws the wrong conclusions from the problems with grasping art in a unified way. It is not the lack of unity within the notion of art that is responsible for these problems, but rather the primarily descriptive approach with which they have grasped this notion, and which they continue to employ in taking recourse to Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance. Such a descriptive approach has to be renounced, and this becomes possible by understanding the notion of art in a normative and evaluative manner. Such a normative and evaluative approach implies that in dealing with objects and events, we use the very notion of art in order to enquire whether these encounters have value for us. With this concept, we grasp the idea of art in a normative manner. It is part of this idea that we always relate it to specific objects. For this reason, it is realized in an exemplary way, and we always have to understand it in terms of individual objects. We do not understand the way in which objects realize the notion of art in a descriptive or classificatory manner, but rather in terms of the way in which they are rewarding to deal with. When someone says “That is art” it is thus to be understood as an evaluative statement, which we can paraphrase as follows: “This On this point, the approaches of Moritz Witz and Barys Gaut; see Moritz Weitz, “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics” and Barys Gaut, “ ‘Art’ as a Cluster Concpet,” in:  Theories of Art, ed. Noël Carrol (Madison:  University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), 25–44. Among such approaches, we can also count that of Nelson Goodman, whose “Symptoms of the Aesthetic” (see Chapter 3, Note 10) also does not give sufficient conditions for the presence of art. 52

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is worthy of being encountered in this special way.” The encounter that we speak of here is realized in the framework of human practice. The specificity of art is, as I have once again articulated, always bound up with its value. At the end of a long path, we thus once again come back to the notion that art is a specific practice in a new manner. We are not dealing here with the notion of a practice that is neatly distinguishable among human practices, but rather with a notion that stands for a specific kind of success of this practice. The notion of art is not merely an aesthetic or philosophical invention, but instead comes out of the very practice of art. Normative and evaluative stances are a constitutive element within this practice. By means of these stances we clarify the constellations that are the basis of aesthetic encounters (e.g., revenge narrative, waltz rhythm, color contrast, etc.). Taking a normative and evaluative stance thus examines the success of these specific constellations:  They are concerned with aesthetic success, with art succeeding in an exemplary way. In this sense, the notion of art comes up within the framework of the practice of art. It stands at the center of judgments that we make in relation to the success of art or aesthetic events—quite independently of how exactly we articulate these judgments. For this reason, it is not up to theory to decide whether this notion is superfluous or meaningful. This concept is far too much a part of the practice of art for philosophy or theory to be able to revoke it or give it up for (debatable) theoretical reasons. The philosophy of art faces the task of explicating the notion of art as an element of the practice of art, by means of which we debate about the objects and events of art, as well as about the process of dealing with them. We debate about what the criteria of art’s success would be and how these criteria are fulfilled in objects and events. We can thus only grasp aesthetic judgments within the context of the practice of art. Within this practice, they are inseparably bound

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up with art’s agonal character—and with this I come back to the point at the end of the fourth section of this chapter. Aesthetic judgments, and the notion of art that gives them their orientation, serve as elements within controversies. This has consequences for explaining judgments of the kind “This is art”: Such judgments do not ascertain something, but rather take a stance on something, and such stances are inherently subject to debate. Judgments challenge us to contradict them. Thus, everyone who deals with artworks participates in art’s agonal process with his or her judging activities. They make claims about and debate the value of individual objects, and with their claims and disagreements, they contribute to the development and the definition of art’s practice.53 As a practice of dispute, art is thus not merely permeated by the particular interests of recipients, by their taste preferences, their ignorance, or their expertise as connoisseurs. We could not simply avoid dispute if the recipients were epistemically better off, for dispute is constitutive for the very practice of art. We face here a practice in which what is challenging about objects is always in question. What is at dispute here are definitions of human practice in its entirety. And it is not particular interests that play a role here in driving these disputes, but rather different vantage points. I maintained earlier that art could not develop as an agonal practice if there were only a single artwork. Now I  can add to this that art could just as little exist as an agonal practice if there were only one vantage point. The various vantage points of those who deal with artworks are thus to be grasped 53 My reflections once again touch on the work of Jacques Rancière, who takes the “experience of dissensus” as a central element in the political character of art. Jacques Rancière, Le spectateur émanicipé (Paris: La Fabrique, 2008), 67. In English: The Emancipated Spectator, trans. Gregory Elliott (London:  Verso, 2009), 48. He grasps the process of aesthetic negotiation and its experience as abstract, whereas I am of the view that it has to be brought into connection with the activities of recipients and the definition of human practices.

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as essential for the practice of art. They make it possible to dispute about the determination of human practice that gets carried out in art. It belongs to the grammar of the concept of art to be a concept within a practice of dispute. All of those conversations that take place after a visit to the cinema, an evening in the theater, in the culture section of the newspaper, and in many other places, contribute to the agonal development of this concept.

6.  Art as reflective practice, second part: Art as critical practice We are now in a position to see that at the end of the previous chapter we grasped art’s form of practice in an incomplete manner. It might have given the impression that we grasp art’s practice merely as a relationship between objects that are constituted in a specific way and activities that are promoted by our encounter with these objects, thus suggesting that a critical, commentating, judging, philosophical, or theoretical attitude toward this relationship comes about externally to art’s practice. This might allow us to clarify what art means for us from a somewhat external perspective. We can now see that such a suggestion leads us astray. A  philosophical or theoretical attitude toward art is part of art’s practice. To put it in a schematic manner, there are two different types of activities that belong to the practice of art: interpretive and normative-evaluative. It is constitutive for the process of dealing with art to judge the achievements of artworks in a normative and evaluative manner. We cannot correctly understand the interpretive activities evoked by art without considering them in connection with the corresponding aesthetic judgments. Or put differently, it belongs to the competition of artworks for aesthetic success to articulate this competition. Artworks do not carry out a

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competition for their own sake. They carry it out in the framework of a social practice. And judgment of aesthetic success is an essential element in this. It will be worthwhile in yet another respect to consider art as a reflective practice, a practice of self-determination. Someone who engages in self-reflection always faces the question to what extent this reflection is successful. If, for example, I follow in the good Socratic tradition of knowing myself, then I have to examine the practices that I engage in with this aim of self-knowledge as to whether they bring me to the desired goal. One cannot want to know oneself by simply carrying out practices. These practices would have to be accompanied by a reflection on reflection. I have to ask myself whether the project of self-knowledge succeeds or does not (as often happens in the context or therapy or other practices). This is true also for art’s reflective practice, which also has a need of a reflection on reflection. Such a reflection on reflection comes about through normative and evaluative judgments. Such judgments accompany aesthetic practices through and through, including the processes of production, performance, and reception of all kinds. We can understand normative and evaluative practices in such a way that within them we explore the reflective potential of each work. We thus evaluate to what extent and to what degree such a potential is present. Art criticism and many discussions on artworks have the task of accomplishing this. Artworks have a reflective potential because they challenge us to engage in interpretive activities. Thus, the normative and evaluative process of dealing with artworks is always connected with such interpretive activities. We can observe this in an insightful manner in texts on art criticism. We find a rich variety of interpretive elements precisely where such texts present individual artworks as worthy of being dealt with in an aesthetic manner, or claim that a work is not worthy of such attention. They describe and characterize the specific

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nature of certain obvious or latent structures within the work, and such interpretive activities then provide the basis for normative and evaluative statements. They exemplify the reflective potential of a work, that is, the potential to provide provocations for activity that can also prove to be valuable in permeating other practices. It is just this potential that is the object for evaluation. We can provide a further explanation of the importance of distinguishing between interpretive and normative-evaluative activities with reference to Albrecht Wellmer. In his Essay on Music and Language, he defends a notion of art that puts the connection between artworks and receptive activities in the center. At many points, he arrives at explanations that have an affinity to those developed here. Of course, his explanations are characterized by the tendency to distinguish inadequately between the various elements of what he calls the “aesthetic play of reflection.” Up to this point, we have seen on the other hand that it is important to distinguish between the variety of activities involved in dealing with artworks in an especially clear manner. This is especially relevant within the systematic context that we are dealing with here. On this point, Wellmer advocates among other things the thesis “that the explicit forms of interpretation, analysis and criticism merely unfold, illuminate or correct what belongs to aesthetic experience as an interpretive, reflective or analytic element.”54 We can grasp this thesis in a more pointed manner by speaking of an explication model of criticism. According to such a model, the criticism of artworks only makes explicit what is already implicitly given in aesthetic experience. That is, criticism lays bare what is contained in aesthetic experience. This model is problematic for two reasons. First, it cannot make comprehensible how criticism contributes to the practice of art. Why 54 Wellmer, Versuch über Musik und Sprache, 130f.

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is criticism needed if what it articulates is already implicitly contained in aesthetic experience? Do these experiences not suffice? Do they not already present their content in a sufficiently articulated manner? If they do not, then how can that which is articulated by criticism be considered as implicit within these experiences? The second reason weighs even more heavily:  The explication model of criticism starts from the notion that experiences contain everything that is relevant for an understanding of art. But if aesthetic experiences contain everything that makes art what it is, then we cannot understand art as a practice of self-determination. It will not become comprehensible why the aesthetic play of reflection is more than some happening to which recipients aimlessly give themselves over. In order to make this comprehensible, we have to grant the process of dealing critically with art its own self-sufficient and irreducible character. This will allow us to claim that when we deal with artworks in a playful manner, it actually arises out of the nature of the artwork. Artworks immerse recipients in dynamic interactions. These interactions do not stand on their own, but are part of a process of negotiation. In their interactions with artworks, recipients also stand within the context of their other practices. In this context, aesthetic interactions do not simply come about on their own, but rather always involve the taking of a stance, and it is only through such taking of a stance that we can understand art as a practice of self-determination. By means of such stances, recipients evaluate the challenges that they experience in dealing with artworks. These stances explain to what extent recipients participate in negotiating the definition of their practices in dealing with artworks. Recipients are active not only in their interpretations, but also in their criticism. If we do not grasp this normative and evaluative stance taking as an independent element of art’s form of practice, then we cannot explain the aspect of art that involves self-determination. We see here the price that aesthetic theory has to pay for the autonomy paradigm.

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This price does not have to be incurred if we conceive of normative and evaluative activities not merely as activities that serve to explain something already implicitly present, but rather as separate activities within the process of dealing with artworks. To do this, we have to dispense with the model of criticism as explication, and thus at this point we have to once again take seriously the way we understood reflection in the second chapter. We have to understand reflection in a practical sense, and this means that normative and evaluative activities permeate our process of dealing with art. We thus interpret the very notion of art in ever new ways and, in doing so, we define new criteria according to which we understand art. These activities do not recapitulate something already contained in the process of interpretation. Instead, they contribute to defining art as a practice. Their relevance consists in the way in which they articulate the success or lack thereof, the challenging or non-challenging character of the way reflection happens through art. It is just this point that makes Wellmer’s model not altogether satisfying. Normative and evaluative activities in dealing with artworks thus once again shed light on the practice of art as a whole, by making clear that the practical reflection that is elicited by the object, by which we have defined art, is nevertheless fashioned by humans, despite all of the power of objects. The contribution that art makes to shaping human practices is brought about—in the founding instances—by human beings. They produce the objects and events that are supposed to give impetus to the ongoing development of human practices. Art is, in a basic sense, something made by human beings. Within art, humans develop objects and events by means of which they are able to give provocations for changes within practice. These objects neither refuse every communication nor do they merely surpass everyday connections. They are far more part of a practice that follows the demand to give specific provocations to other practices.

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In this chapter, I  began by posing the question to what extent art contributes to the realization of human freedom. Now it has become clear that art’s contribution is unique. Art offers its own way of determining human practice by bringing a fundamental lack of independence into those activities of recipients that are otherwise independent. In this respect, recipients embody autonomy in these activities in yet another respect: They judge artworks as valuable (or without value) based on how they contribute to human practice. The independence involved in criticism relates to its own lack of independence as an essential aspect of its activity. Recipients thus clarify the potential for independent activities to be permeated by lack of independence. The critical activity of the recipient thus does not lose its lack of independence in encountering artworks, but rather it relies on this very lack, since it is only possible to absorb impulses from artworks because of this dependency. In art, human beings integrate objects within their activities of self-determination:  Artworks are objects by means of which human beings determine themselves through activities that are not independent. To articulate this thought in yet another way, art has a fundamentally critical potential. It is a practice that we as humans develop in order to give critical provocations to our practical life. As humans, we produce objects here that lead to uncalculated activities. The fundamentally critical character of art now becomes especially clear through those normative and evaluative activities with which art is bound up, even in its traditional or pop-culture forms. These activities explicate the critical provocations of art, and thus contribute to the further development of practice. Art thus has something of a dual face as a critical practice. On the one hand, criticism takes its impetus from the objects, that is, from dynamic interactions with them. On the other hand, this practice is bound up with a normative and evaluative selfassurance, which weighs critical provocations against one another

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and thus gives a certain direction to the practice of art. This dual aspect is an essential feature of art. One can understand this notion as a reformulation of Adorno’s “dual character of art”:  Adorno does not tire of emphasizing that art is at once both “autonomous and fait social.”55 Artworks are, as I have argued, constituted by self-relation, yet at the same time, they stand in connection with the entirety of other practices in the world. On the basis of their self-related constitution, they are objects that by their very nature issue provocations. However, it is just a matter of provocations within the framework of practices, within which the artwork’s critical provocation can be normatively isolated. Art is thus a fait social not only due to its position in the social context, but also because of activities by means of which we explore art’s contribution to human practice in a normative and evaluative way. I ascribed the thought to Kant and Hegel that art makes a contribution to human freedom. As I argued in the second chapter, it remains unclear in their reflections how exactly we are to understand this contribution. At the end of a long path, we now see more clearly how to render Kant and Hegel’s thoughts applicable. Artworks accomplish a contribution to freedom because of how they challenge human practices. They raise the question of what permutation individual human practices should have. This is why we need artworks to serve as challenging objects or events. Through their competition with one another, these objects provoke new determinations of human practices. The freedom that is realized in art demonstrates this peculiarity:  It is not the kind of freedom that is involved in a critical reflection by means of concepts. Rather, this realization of freedom is bound to objects that guide the selfdetermination of practices. 55 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 5.

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Kant defines the relation of art and freedom through the notion of a free play. Since the second chapter, I have pursued the thought that we have to think of Kant’s free play as realized in practices— as a complex form of practice. This means giving up two of Kant’s assumptions:  first, that the play is a harmonious one, and second, that the play actually functions in every case. Now we have assembled everything that is required in order to make good on this project. Aesthetic play is realized in practices:  in dynamic interactions with artworks, as well as in other practices that these interactions promote. But this play surpasses these practices: It also includes those practices by which we further develop the orientation of this play and by means of which those who participate in the process of play deal with the fact that this play is unassured. This process can also turn out differently: harmonious, disharmonious, fragmented, open, irritating, and in many other ways. All of these different permutations of the process of play are symptoms of the way in which the possibility of failure is constitutive of art, a possibility that represents the flip side of the freedom that is opened up by art. A free play has to have an open outcome in order to contribute to freedom, which contradicts Kant’s definition of the free play as harmonious. Human practice does not get fixed by play, but rather gets opened up as a self-determining practice. It is for just this reason that the potential for failure is embedded in this play. In my considerations, I based the direction of my inquiry on the point that many philosophies and theories of art have not succeeded at explaining the specific nature of art in such a way that they could also account for the value of art within the framework of human practice. Thus, in the account developed here, I confront the demand that my explanation of art’s specificity must genuinely be integrated with an explanation of its value. At the end of the third chapter, I undertook an attempt to make good on this demand. Since our understanding

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of art has developed further with the reflections contained in this chapter, it seems important to summarize once again how we now have to understand the specificity and value of art, and how they belong together: Specificity Thesis: Artworks play a role in those dynamic interactions that provoke renegotiations of the definitions of human practices. This process of negotiation is not only bound up with interpretive practices, but also with the normative and evaluative practices that reflect the artwork in the light of their critical determinations. Value Thesis: Through the course of the normative and evaluative practices that occur within the process of aesthetic negotiation, we come to see art as a process that is valuable for negotiating the definitions of human practices in its own specific way. The value of this process is constitutively bound up with the way that this process can possibly fail. Art is a specific form of practice that constantly reflects its value in new ways within itself. The specificity of art is thus constitutively bound up with its value, and the latter with this specificity. With this explanation, I give further development to what Kant and Hegel lay out in their notion of art. I  have argued that we have to connect the further development of their views with the question of how to conceptualize art’s form of practice. We can polemically set off the notion of a form of practice that we arrived at by saying: Art’s form of practice is not that of a specific institution. It is not aimed at a special experience or a specific transcendence of other practices. Rather art’s form of practice aims as a practice of freedom at making a special contribution to human practice. Self-determined forms of practice are essential to the practice of freedom, and art serves to establish such forms of practice in its own specific way.

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As we have seen, very different kinds of practice come to bear in dealing with artworks, and in their various ways they contribute to the development of self-determinate forms of practice. This is precisely what makes up the essential aspect of art:  It provokes the self-determining of practices in a way that surpasses linguistic or conceptual practices in a narrow sense. This requires artworks as mediating objects. In art we put our work into objects, though not for the sake of the objects, but for our own sake. Objects do not stand on their own, but in relation to human practices. In this later respect, they must always stand up to the test of being challenging in new ways. In order to submit them to this test, recipients need an articulation of the idea of this challenge:  the concept of art. It belongs in an essential way to the open practice that gives rise to this challenge to engage in reflection on what art is and how it functions; that is, the philosophical reflection on art belongs to art’s form of practice. This philosophical reflection on art is thus no more and no less than one element within the uncertain process that is art. And this element also has to prove itself within the framework of art’s practice.

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