Nietzsche writes "For the rapture of the Dionysian stage with its annihilation of the ordinary bounds and limits of existence contains, while it lasts, a lethargic element in which all personal experiences of the past become immersed. This chasm of oblivion separates the worlds of everyday reality and of Dionysian reality. But as soon as this everyday reality re-enters consciousness, it is experienced as such with nausea: an ascetic, will-negating mood is the fruit of these states." What exactly does he mean by Dionysian reality? There seem to be at least three meanings for this term. First it refers to the extremely pessimistic vision of human reality offered by the demigod, Silenus. Second, and perhaps more important, it represents the experience of oneness with nature associated with Dionysian ecstasy. But here it probably means a third thing, the "reality" on stage in the Greek tragedy. The paragraph begins with a reference to "the rapture of the Dionysian stage with its annihilation of the ordinary bounds and limits of existence." The annihilation of ordinary bounds of existence would be a fictional one. As we rapturously experience the events on stage it seems that the bounds of existence are broken down.
Why, however, would this be related to lethargy? Here I feel the limits of not working with the German, but I will continue with Kaufman for now. Writers on Nietzsche generally associate the lethargic element with the lethargy of Hamlet in the sense of his inability to act. And the next paragraph indicates that Nietzsche is indeed thinking of Hamlet. So somehow Hamlet represents for Nietzsche a recognition of "Dionysian truth," although there is a great distance between religious ecstasy of oneness and Hamlet's inability of act. And we have the problem of explaining his idea that "all the personal experiences of the past" are somehow immersed in the lethargic element (immersed in the lethargy?). So we have a rapture that certainly Hamlet is not experiencing at any time in Shakespeare's play and the lethargy which contains personal experiences of the past, as though the personal experiences themselves impede action, although one might think that rapture itself would be enough.
The next sentence indicates that the world of everyday reality is very unlike the world of Dionysian reality: in fact, there is a chasm between them, and this chasm is doubled since it is a chasm of oblivion. The chasm must be related closely to the oblivion, must be the oblivion of Dionysian oneness which is experienced, as we saw previously, with ecstasy. Again, "Dionysian reality" is unclear: surely it means something related to truth of Silenus, but also something related to the rapture of Dionysian oneness, and is perhaps also related to what happens on stage in a Greek tragedy, the reality of that world.
The next sentence puzzles again: "But as soon as this everyday reality re-enters consciousness, it is experienced as such with nausea: an ascetic, will-negating mood is the fruit of these states." What would the everyday reality re-enter conscious after, and how? Would it be after an experience of religious ecstasy as had by the Dionysian revelers or would it be after leaving the theater? In connection with the second, think of the theater-goer leaving the theater, no longer under the rapturous spell of the Dionysian. But why would he or she then experience everyday reality with nausea? Why would he/she be in a pleasure-denying and will-negating mood? For that matter, why would the person returning from a pre-art Dionysian religious festival experience this? Well there would be a disappointment in discovering that the world of oneness presented on stage, or experienced in the religious orgy, disappears in the everyday world. There is no redemption, and hence nausea. But also, clearly this is not a good end-point as far as Nietzsche is concerned. Isn't art supposed to redeem us? And aren't we supposed to say yes to the will and to sensuous life? The state that follows leaving the theater, if this is it, cannot be considered good by Nietzsche. In reading the Birth of Tragedy I constantly think of stages. This appears to be yet another stage, hopefully leading to something higher.
The next paragraph observes that the Dionysian man is like Hamlet in this respect. Presumably the Dionysian man is the man who has experienced Dionysian ecstasy, has entered imaginatively the world presented on stage, and is now faced again with dull everyday reality. I would think also that he is confronted once again with the wisdom of Silenus, the ever-presence of suffering, without the balm either of the Apollonian world of gods or the rapturous oneness associated with the Dionysian. Now the claim is that both he and Hamlet have seen the essence of things, and that they have "gained knowledge" and that this causes nausea that inhibits action. The knowledge could be the knowledge that Silenus is right or perhaps that suffering may be redeemed by the combination of the Apollonian and the Dionysian that great art provides. (This interpretation is defeated below, however.) Nietzsche just does not make clear at this point which knowledge is being discussed. Of course, if you accepted the wisdom of Silenus then this would kill action. But then perhaps the knowledge that the only redemption is to be found in the experience of Greek tragedy or something very much like it could also kill action. Action in the world is then radically opposed to action on stage. Those in the audience are passive spectators, but action is still present, i.e. on stage (except when Hamlet dithers.)
Aristotle has us leaving the theater with a very different feeling: we have experienced something purgative, a catharsis of pity and fear. We will, he thinks, be able to act even more effectively in the world after seeing a Greek tragedy. Plato, by yet another contrast, thought that you left the theater with bad habits, for example a tendency to weep when decisive, clear-eyed action is necessary. Plato might well agree that lethargy is a natural response to the theater experience. So is Nietzsche agreeing with Plato and disagreeing with Aristotle here? This would not be the usual response for Nietzsche, who is mainly against Plato.
The reason Nietzsche gives that nausea inhibits action is that "action could not change anything in the eternal nature of things." The world, as Hamlet sees, is "out of joint," but it would be ridiculous to try to set it right. In fact, in order to act one must have "the veils of illusion," which knowledge of the eternal nature of things tears away. Nietzsche is generally more positive about veils of illusion than most philosophers. Perhaps the redemption of art is that after the death of God we need new illusions, and these are offered by art. In this view, art makes action possible, as we shall see.
This knowledge that eliminates the veils of illusion (belief in the gods, belief in Christianity, belief in the Forms) is "insight into the horrible truth." This leads us back to the more simplistic reason for the lethargy, i.e. that the Dionysian man and Hamlet has seen the horrible truth of Silenus. But the truth of Silenus is not the truth of Nietzsche. Nietzsche is not telling us that it is best we die soon. In fact, he seems quite admiring of the Greeks insofar as they invented their Gods to deal with this wisdom in a more cheerful way. The message of Silenus is not given us either by the Greek invention of the Apollonian gods or by the ecstatic experience of the Dionysian rapture.
Nietzsche continues: "Now no comfort avails any more; longing transcends a world after death, even the gods; existence is negated along with its glittering reflection in the gods or in an immortal beyond." Our puzzlement is compounded. Is the problem that the experience of Dionysian ecstasy somehow negates any possibility of living under the gaze of the Apollonian gods? Why cannot we have comfort in the possibility to return to Dionysian ecstasy, perhaps through going to more plays, perhaps by practicing Zen meditation, perhaps by becoming a genius artist? Or is it that the passage into and out of the theater entails the death of the Greek gods? I suspect that Nietzsche is telling us that neither the Apollonian nor the Dionysian will do alone.
To say that existence is negated is to say that our own existence seems meaningless, which would be true with the illumination of the "glittering reflection in the gods" and yet there is a solution, which is Greek tragedy itself. Isn't it ironic that the nausea that Hamlet experiences is experienced by a figure on stage in our greatest post-Greek tragic drama? So we see him experience nausea, lethargy, and then action that is itself deeply tragic. But then also are we supposed to experience nausea when we leave the theater?
Or is it something closer to catharsis? "Conscious of the truth he has once seen, man now sees everywhere only the horror or absurdity of existence." Now he understands the wisdom of Silenus and is nauseated. This is a strange sentence. The participant becomes conscious of a truth he saw in the past? When did he see it? He sees the horror or absurdity of existence everywhere? Why would this happen after coming out of the theater? Nietzsche seems to be confusing the disease with the cure. It might be that the philosopher (Greek or modern) would become convinced by the suffering around him and then begin to believe that the gods (or God) does not exist, and then find horror and absurdity all around him, and yet surely he cannot stay there, and surely the Greek tragedy, and great art in general, is the only cure available for that, unless perhaps he can achieve the cure through an atheistic form of meditation.
"Here, when the danger to his will is greatest, art approaches as saving sorceress, expert at healing." The whole story was supposed to be about what happens after leaving the theater. But perhaps I misunderstood "Dionysian stage" which refers not to the theatrical stage but to a stage in a sequence of being! Notice that Nietzsche does not even distinguish between Apollonian and Dionysian art here, and in fact Apollo is associated with the art of healing. "She [art] alone knows how to turn these nauseous thoughts about the horror and absurdity of existence into notions with which one can live.." So it sounds as though we are told about the experience of entering the world of the theater, and this does seem to be something like catharsis: catharsis transformed pity and fear into something with which we can live, the tragic theater transforms nausea similarly. We come back out without the oppressive nausea.
N. writes that "these are the sublime in the artistic taming of the horrible, and the comic in the artistic discharge of the nausea of absurdity." The sublime for Nietzsche is very unlike the sublime for Kant or for Burke. It is subjectively oriented, as for Kant, but in this case what happens is that the consciousness of the world as absurd after the death of God is tamed, or made funny. Where does this happen? In the theatrical experience: "the satyr chorus of the dithyramb is the saving deed of Greek art" That chorus provides us with an "intermediary world" a world between the world of on stage and our own world, and it is through this that our feelings of nausea can be exhausted.
Saturday, November 28, 2015
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Burke's Sublime as an aesthetic concept useful for radical environmentalism, unlike Kant's
Burke's concept of the sublime is necessarily connected with a certain concept of religion, a certain concept of politics and a certain concept of human flourishing. What fascinates me first about Burke's conception of the sublime is the close connection he makes between it and the Book of Job as well as certain passages in the Psalms that describe God's power. But why are the things described by God in his dialogue with Job considered to be sublime by Burke? This is where things get interesting. For Burke, only wild animals are sublime. Reading these things from the perspective of our own time, for example a time in which thousands of species are going extinct in the Amazon, we find here a delight in a fiercely independent wild animals. It is, Burke (mis)quoting from the Bible, the horse who "swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage" that is sublime: it is the "gloomy forest" and the "howling wilderness" and the lions and tigers within that are sublime. The useful horse is not sublime. Nothing natural employed for our benefit and pleasure are sublime. The things that are subject to our will are not sublime. The contrast between Burke's concept of the sublime and that of Kant could not be greater here. Kant believes that what is truly sublime is the recognition of our own power as against that of nature. Burke is almost the opposite: it is recognition of nature's power as against our effort to control it. I am reminded here of Stan Godlovitch's approach to the aesthetic of the natural environment. It is said that Burke is misquoting the Bible, I suppose the King James version. Here are the King James passages Burke misquotes on the wild ass and the unicorn. God here is speaking to Job and reminding him of what he cannot do, how powerless he is in relation to God. However, I do not think that the differences between the original and Burke's version is important for our purpose since we are speaking now of Burke's concept of the sublime, not that of early Hebrew writers. Here is the passage from Burke:
"The description of the wild ass, in Job, is worked up into no small sublimity, merely by insisting on his freedom, and his setting mankind at defiance; otherwise the description of such an animal could have had nothing noble in it. Who hath loosed (says he) the bands of the wild ass? whose house I have made the wilderness, and the barren land his dwellings. He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth he the voice of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pasture. The magnificent description of the unicorn and of leviathan, in the same book, is full of the same heightening circumstances: Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee? canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? wilt thou trust him because his strength is great?—Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?—will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant for ever? shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him? In short, wheresoever we find strength, and in what light soever we look upon power we shall all along observe the sublime the concomitant of terror, and contempt the attendant on a strength that is subservient and innoxious."
The key is not that we have God telling Job how powerful He is but how the wild ass insists on his freedom and is defiant of mankind. The unicorn and the leviathan also are unwilling to serve mankind. (God seems to represent this intense anti-human big for animal freedom.) The point is that the Burkean concept of the sublime, unlike the Kantian one could be an aesthetic idea or ideal useful for the radical environmentalist. The radical environmentalist could say that they want not merely to preserve the beauties of nature but even more the Burkean sublime qualities of nature. In a sense Burke gives (by way of his misquotes from the Bible) wild animals a voice against human dominance.
This may also lead us to a different approach to Burke on God as well. Regardless of what Burke himself may have believed, the 18th century reader of his book could easily have been a deist, someone who believes in God, but not of the Christian sort, but rather a God roughly equivalent to nature itself. Burke stresses violent natural phenomena in reference to our awe of God, for example by way of a quote from the Psalms: "The earth shook (says the psalmist) the heavens also dropped at the presence of the Lord." He thinks it interesting that even when God is using his power for good in turning rock into standing water we still experience awe. This event of turning rock into water is much like the natural event of an erupting volcano, except for it being for our benefit and being miraculous. If God were nature and nature God then we find that both the natural and the miraculous in nature are sublime. Is there then an equivalence between the power of the untamed ass and the power of nature itself? Burke sees our awe in God/Nature as the high point of the sublime, speaking of a ladder of the sublime: "we have traced power through its several gradations into the highest of all, where our imagination is finally lost; and we find terror quite throughout the progress, its inseparable companion, and growing along with it, as far as we can possibly trace it." Of course this is also coupled, for Burke, with delight, perhaps also increasing as does the terror, leading to a kind of ecstasy of the sublime.
A second point is that all of this could be seen as a deception or illusion and nonetheless powerful. Burke writes of infinity that it is "the most genuine effect, and truest test of the sublime" and yet "there are scarce any things which can become the objects of our senses that are really, and in their own nature infinite." He then says, "But the eye not being able to perceive the bounds of many things, they seem to be infinite, and they produce the same effects as if they were really so." He goes on to discuss how the parts of some large object can continue indefinitely and hence can deceive us since the imagination has no check. One does not have to be a Theist to benefit from Burke's idea of the sublime.
I also want to make one comment about Stonehenge and its rudeness. This may in a way be connected to the previous comment. It is not the disposition or ornament of Stonehenge that impresses us, says Burke. It is our sense of the immense labor that it took to erect such a monument, and also the very rudeness of the stonework, which he believes to increase the sense of grandeur insofar as it "excludes the idea of art, and contrivance." One could say that the sublime quality of Stonehenge is based, for Burke, on the very thing we find in the wild ass and the untamed unicorn: power, independence, artlessness. Writing at roughly the same time as Rousseau, Burke is giving the name of an aesthetic quality, the sublime, itself associated ultimately with God and Nature and with "the infinite," to something totally other than what humanity produces with civilization. This is not to deny that the creators of Stonehenge created a civilization of their own, but perhaps theirs was more respectful, even in awe of, the fierce independence of nature, than we post-Kantians.
"The description of the wild ass, in Job, is worked up into no small sublimity, merely by insisting on his freedom, and his setting mankind at defiance; otherwise the description of such an animal could have had nothing noble in it. Who hath loosed (says he) the bands of the wild ass? whose house I have made the wilderness, and the barren land his dwellings. He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth he the voice of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pasture. The magnificent description of the unicorn and of leviathan, in the same book, is full of the same heightening circumstances: Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee? canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? wilt thou trust him because his strength is great?—Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?—will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant for ever? shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him? In short, wheresoever we find strength, and in what light soever we look upon power we shall all along observe the sublime the concomitant of terror, and contempt the attendant on a strength that is subservient and innoxious."
The key is not that we have God telling Job how powerful He is but how the wild ass insists on his freedom and is defiant of mankind. The unicorn and the leviathan also are unwilling to serve mankind. (God seems to represent this intense anti-human big for animal freedom.) The point is that the Burkean concept of the sublime, unlike the Kantian one could be an aesthetic idea or ideal useful for the radical environmentalist. The radical environmentalist could say that they want not merely to preserve the beauties of nature but even more the Burkean sublime qualities of nature. In a sense Burke gives (by way of his misquotes from the Bible) wild animals a voice against human dominance.
This may also lead us to a different approach to Burke on God as well. Regardless of what Burke himself may have believed, the 18th century reader of his book could easily have been a deist, someone who believes in God, but not of the Christian sort, but rather a God roughly equivalent to nature itself. Burke stresses violent natural phenomena in reference to our awe of God, for example by way of a quote from the Psalms: "The earth shook (says the psalmist) the heavens also dropped at the presence of the Lord." He thinks it interesting that even when God is using his power for good in turning rock into standing water we still experience awe. This event of turning rock into water is much like the natural event of an erupting volcano, except for it being for our benefit and being miraculous. If God were nature and nature God then we find that both the natural and the miraculous in nature are sublime. Is there then an equivalence between the power of the untamed ass and the power of nature itself? Burke sees our awe in God/Nature as the high point of the sublime, speaking of a ladder of the sublime: "we have traced power through its several gradations into the highest of all, where our imagination is finally lost; and we find terror quite throughout the progress, its inseparable companion, and growing along with it, as far as we can possibly trace it." Of course this is also coupled, for Burke, with delight, perhaps also increasing as does the terror, leading to a kind of ecstasy of the sublime.
A second point is that all of this could be seen as a deception or illusion and nonetheless powerful. Burke writes of infinity that it is "the most genuine effect, and truest test of the sublime" and yet "there are scarce any things which can become the objects of our senses that are really, and in their own nature infinite." He then says, "But the eye not being able to perceive the bounds of many things, they seem to be infinite, and they produce the same effects as if they were really so." He goes on to discuss how the parts of some large object can continue indefinitely and hence can deceive us since the imagination has no check. One does not have to be a Theist to benefit from Burke's idea of the sublime.
I also want to make one comment about Stonehenge and its rudeness. This may in a way be connected to the previous comment. It is not the disposition or ornament of Stonehenge that impresses us, says Burke. It is our sense of the immense labor that it took to erect such a monument, and also the very rudeness of the stonework, which he believes to increase the sense of grandeur insofar as it "excludes the idea of art, and contrivance." One could say that the sublime quality of Stonehenge is based, for Burke, on the very thing we find in the wild ass and the untamed unicorn: power, independence, artlessness. Writing at roughly the same time as Rousseau, Burke is giving the name of an aesthetic quality, the sublime, itself associated ultimately with God and Nature and with "the infinite," to something totally other than what humanity produces with civilization. This is not to deny that the creators of Stonehenge created a civilization of their own, but perhaps theirs was more respectful, even in awe of, the fierce independence of nature, than we post-Kantians.
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Kant's Mathematical Sublime
I am working now with the Pluhar translation of the Analytic of the Sublime from Kant's Critique of Judgment, found in Korsmeyer's textbook Aesthetics: The Big Questions. This is an extremely difficult bit of material, and it is abridged too! My focus is on the sentence "If the human mind is nonetheless to be able even to think the given infinite without contradiction, it must have within itself a power that is supersensible, whose idea of a noumenon cannot be intuited but can yet be regarded as the substrate underlying what is mere appearance, namely, our intuition of the world." So, to start off, I do not think that the mathematical sublime has much to do with mathematics and actually has a lot to do with the aesthetics of nature as well as the aesthetic experience of great works of art. It mainly is concerned with a particular kind of experience, one that is aptly illustrated by the example of the Egyptian pyramid. Kant makes a distinction between apprehension and comprehension, and by the first he simply means the progressive adding of units or numbers. Apprehension is associated with mathematics. It is the second concept, comprehension, that is interesting, and it is illustrated by the example of the pyramid. There is a sweet spot in our appreciation of an Egyptian pyramid: we cannot be too far away or we will not be able to appreciate the individual units of which it is made, but we cannot be too close as then we will not be able to include all of those units in one intuited whole I like to think of this in relation to appreciation of another great work of art known for another kind of complexity, The Night Watch by Rembrandt. The point is to try to hold the entire experience of such a work in one's mind, to contemplate it in such a way as to try to intuit it as a whole. This might be a matter of how one positions oneself spatially before it, although perhaps more important is the amount of time one spends contemplating it: again, not too much or too little. Although The Night Watch is not as enormous as an Egyptian pyramid, it is great in its complexity, and the number of its parts or appreciable aspects can be seen as, if not infinite, at least indeterminately large. Absolute magnitude, which, Kant believes, aesthetic experience of the sublime gives us, is just a matter of taking the whole thing with its indefinitely large number of appreciable parts in with one intuition. The problem with being too close to the pyramid is that, as one looks at the stones, the earlier parts of the experience are "extinguished." So, again, this is a temporal as well as a spatial matter.
Another factor in the experience of the mathematical sublime for Kant is that the judgment of the sublime only happens when the imagination is unable to exhibit the concept of the magnitude. This idea seems to conflict with the main theme of the preceding paragraph. Our intuition is supposed to grasp the object as a whole, in comprehension, and yet our imagination is not up to the task. I suspect that by "imagination" here, Kant is not referring to creative imagination but simply to apprehension (associative imagination), i.e. to the ability to put things together in an associative and relatively mechanical way. So, when the imagination in this mechanical sense gives out, then we have an intuition that hooks us up to something grander. I take it that this grander thing is much like Aristotle's notion of an organic whole. Aristotle brings in his concept of the organic whole in the Poetics when he discusses beauty. As with Kant, and perhaps Kant was thinking of Aristotle when discussing mathematical sublime, he sees magnitude as something valuable, although he associates it with beauty. He also associates it with the mind's ability to intuit something as a whole. A play is more beautiful if it has magnitude and is still comprehensible, that is, can be apprehended as an organic whole.
Kant goes on to argue that, unlike mathematics operating under the relatively mechanical concept of apprehension, when the mind listens to what he calls "reason" (Kant's notion of "reason" seems to bear little relation to what we mean by reason and does not for example have anything to do with logic or giving good reasons or arguing well) it demands "totality" even of magnitudes that we never can apprehend completely. It "demands comprehension in one intuition" and it requires that we experience the infinite in its entirety. But since the infinite is so large, everything else in relation to it is incredibly small, and to be able to think such an infinite one must go beyond imagination, which is based ultimately on sensation. There is, here, no determinate relation between things expressible in terms of numbers.
Again, this is not about mathematics but about the limits of mathematics, even of the mathematical concept of infinity. Although Kant never mentions the phrase, I find myself thinking of that old saying: "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts." The experience of the sublime is a matter of experiencing a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Kant speaks of the limitations of ordinary intuitions in terms of following standards of sense. So what is this mental power that goes beyond the standard of sense? It is the capacity to perceive totality. Kant explains this in one fascinating sentence quoted above, and quoted again here: "If the human mind is nonetheless to be able even to think the given infinite without contradiction, it must have within itself a power that is supersensible, whose idea of a noumenon cannot be intuited but can yet be regarded as the substrate underlying what is mere appearance, namely our intuition of the world." The substrate of our world of appearance is the idea of a noumenon, of a world of things in themselves. So the substrate that underlies appearance is the intuition of the world, i.e. the background thought that everything that happens happens in the world. This ability is something that goes beyond mere sensation or imagination or even imagination combined with the understanding to point at the noumenal realm, i.e. the realm of God, immortality and the soul, which is to say the realm referred to by religion.
Bear in mind that belief in God is not necessary for this all to work. Belief in an indeterminate whole that subsumes experience and that also makes wholes greater than the sums of their parts may be sufficient.
Mathematical estimation of magnitude, using numerical concepts only, would not allow us to think infinity in its entirety. So transcending mere mathematical estimation is actually the solution to the problem that Kant originally posed at the beginning of the Critique of Judgment, how to find a bridge between the realm of experience and the noumenal realm. His answer is that the mind can expand itself beyond the barrier of sensible experience as long as it has a practical, i.e. a moral, aim, as opposed to one that is focused on cognition. So nature is sublime insofar as the idea of infinity is combined with these its intuition. The introduction of the idea of morality into this discussion seems gratuitous and must have to do with other projects and worries of Kant.
What we are describing is a view of the aesthetics of nature quite contrary to that of those contemporary aestheticians who believe that the proper appreciation of nature is cognitive in a science-like way. Such cognition is bound by its inability to, as Kant would put it, comprehend the infinite. John Muir, as I have argued in earlier posts, manages to go beyond this relatively narrow perspective. If Kant and Muir are right than the cyclical view of nature appreciation I have recently advocated may require an addendum, that although cycles are important, there are also high points in the appreciation of nature, or of anything great, even in art, and these occur when the intuition has within it the idea of totality or something infinite, and the attendant pleasure.
So, the relatively mechanical imagination can't truly judge the magnitude of an object, since a true judgment would be one that would give us the experience of the sublime. So, when the imagination tries to comprehend in a way that surpasses its own ability to encompass all of this in an holistic intuition then we have the experience of the sublime, since at this point reason takes over, as it were, and with it the idea of something that underlies all of our experience, i.e. the intuition of ourselves as experiencing things within an entire world, i.e. the whole of nature. Kant writes that the "basic measure of nature is the absolute whole of nature, which in the case of nature as appearance, is infinity comprehended."
But then it turns out that this basic measure is contradictory, even on Kant's account. There cannot be absolute totality of a progression that is endless. Does Kant realize that he is deconstructing or at least undercutting himself here? He seems to be implying that the experience of the sublime is based on an illusion or an illusory experience. I have no problem with this Nietzschean idea, although it is surprising to find it in Kant. So, when the imagination tries fruitlessly to comprehend the magnitude of some natural thing, this contradiction leads us to think of a supersensible substrate underlying both nature and our ability to think, one that we must judge as sublime. (Why need we think this?) What is sublime in this case, Kant argues anthropocentrically, is not nature itself but the attunement within our minds when we judge such an object, the imagination then being referred to reason in such a way as to harmonize with its ideas, i.e. the indeterminate ideas of the noumenal realm. Kant naively thinks this will be attuned with moral judgments and the influence of moral demands on feeling. I can't follow him here.
So he finds true sublimity in the mind of the person who has this mental attunement of imagination and reason, and not in nature at all! This leads him to the rather counter-intuitive claim that "we would not want to call sublime such things as shapeless mountain masses piled on one another in wild disarray." Rather, in this case, what is happening is that the mind "feels elevated in judgment of itself" because it can contemplate these things without thinking about their form. Instead it can revel in its own imagination and its harmonious connection with reason in its attempt to arrive at noumenal things, although the imagination is inadequate to such ideas. Some harmony! Why would he even think that the experience of shapeless mountains and the sublime pleasure we get from this could be connected with the harmony of the defeated imagination in the face of reason's demand for unity even of the infinite?
Now one important aspect of reason, on Kant's account, is that it demands unity. So, as Kant puts it, "the idea of comprehending every appearance that may be given us in the intuition of a whole is an idea enjoined on us by a law of reason," which depends on the absolute whole as its measure, a measure that is valid for everyone. So the imagination, in trying to obey this law, fails. The feeling for the sublime is respect for our vocation in the sense that what humans can do best is to have the feeling of the sublime that comes from this failure. In having sublime experience we are respecting the idea of humanity in ourselves and not really the magnitude of the volcano or waterfall that we find sublime. This is just what Kant calls a "subreption." We realize then that the "rational vocation of our cognitive powers" is superior to the greatest power of sensibility, i.e. of our imagination even in conjunction with the understanding. So we feel displeasure because our imagination fails in its estimate of magnitude, i.e. of infinity or absolute totality, which reason poses to it, and yet feel pleasure insofar as we realize that such inadequate power is at least harmonious with reason in trying to do this impossible thing. (I see no reason why pleasure should win out over pain in this instance.) So we estimate large objects in nature, for example the galaxy seen through the Milky Way, as small in relation to absolute totality, and more important, in relation to the ideas of reason, for example the idea of God. What arouses in us a feeling of our human vocation is in harmony with this law.
What is valuable in all of this? I am not sure. I feel attracted to certain ideas, the idea that there is a high point in the aesthetics of nature, that this cannot be tied in any simple way with mathematical or scientific forms of cognition, that this also ties to our appreciation of works of art like not only the pyramid but more interestingly The Night Watch, that that background idea of the world as totality is somehow combined with or tied to our experience of things as wholes, and finally that there is something tragic and painful as well as pleasurable about the failure of our mechanical imagination to capture the sublime, which work needs the supplement of the creative imagination or what Kant calls "reason" or the principle that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Another factor in the experience of the mathematical sublime for Kant is that the judgment of the sublime only happens when the imagination is unable to exhibit the concept of the magnitude. This idea seems to conflict with the main theme of the preceding paragraph. Our intuition is supposed to grasp the object as a whole, in comprehension, and yet our imagination is not up to the task. I suspect that by "imagination" here, Kant is not referring to creative imagination but simply to apprehension (associative imagination), i.e. to the ability to put things together in an associative and relatively mechanical way. So, when the imagination in this mechanical sense gives out, then we have an intuition that hooks us up to something grander. I take it that this grander thing is much like Aristotle's notion of an organic whole. Aristotle brings in his concept of the organic whole in the Poetics when he discusses beauty. As with Kant, and perhaps Kant was thinking of Aristotle when discussing mathematical sublime, he sees magnitude as something valuable, although he associates it with beauty. He also associates it with the mind's ability to intuit something as a whole. A play is more beautiful if it has magnitude and is still comprehensible, that is, can be apprehended as an organic whole.
Kant goes on to argue that, unlike mathematics operating under the relatively mechanical concept of apprehension, when the mind listens to what he calls "reason" (Kant's notion of "reason" seems to bear little relation to what we mean by reason and does not for example have anything to do with logic or giving good reasons or arguing well) it demands "totality" even of magnitudes that we never can apprehend completely. It "demands comprehension in one intuition" and it requires that we experience the infinite in its entirety. But since the infinite is so large, everything else in relation to it is incredibly small, and to be able to think such an infinite one must go beyond imagination, which is based ultimately on sensation. There is, here, no determinate relation between things expressible in terms of numbers.
Again, this is not about mathematics but about the limits of mathematics, even of the mathematical concept of infinity. Although Kant never mentions the phrase, I find myself thinking of that old saying: "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts." The experience of the sublime is a matter of experiencing a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Kant speaks of the limitations of ordinary intuitions in terms of following standards of sense. So what is this mental power that goes beyond the standard of sense? It is the capacity to perceive totality. Kant explains this in one fascinating sentence quoted above, and quoted again here: "If the human mind is nonetheless to be able even to think the given infinite without contradiction, it must have within itself a power that is supersensible, whose idea of a noumenon cannot be intuited but can yet be regarded as the substrate underlying what is mere appearance, namely our intuition of the world." The substrate of our world of appearance is the idea of a noumenon, of a world of things in themselves. So the substrate that underlies appearance is the intuition of the world, i.e. the background thought that everything that happens happens in the world. This ability is something that goes beyond mere sensation or imagination or even imagination combined with the understanding to point at the noumenal realm, i.e. the realm of God, immortality and the soul, which is to say the realm referred to by religion.
Bear in mind that belief in God is not necessary for this all to work. Belief in an indeterminate whole that subsumes experience and that also makes wholes greater than the sums of their parts may be sufficient.
Mathematical estimation of magnitude, using numerical concepts only, would not allow us to think infinity in its entirety. So transcending mere mathematical estimation is actually the solution to the problem that Kant originally posed at the beginning of the Critique of Judgment, how to find a bridge between the realm of experience and the noumenal realm. His answer is that the mind can expand itself beyond the barrier of sensible experience as long as it has a practical, i.e. a moral, aim, as opposed to one that is focused on cognition. So nature is sublime insofar as the idea of infinity is combined with these its intuition. The introduction of the idea of morality into this discussion seems gratuitous and must have to do with other projects and worries of Kant.
What we are describing is a view of the aesthetics of nature quite contrary to that of those contemporary aestheticians who believe that the proper appreciation of nature is cognitive in a science-like way. Such cognition is bound by its inability to, as Kant would put it, comprehend the infinite. John Muir, as I have argued in earlier posts, manages to go beyond this relatively narrow perspective. If Kant and Muir are right than the cyclical view of nature appreciation I have recently advocated may require an addendum, that although cycles are important, there are also high points in the appreciation of nature, or of anything great, even in art, and these occur when the intuition has within it the idea of totality or something infinite, and the attendant pleasure.
So, the relatively mechanical imagination can't truly judge the magnitude of an object, since a true judgment would be one that would give us the experience of the sublime. So, when the imagination tries to comprehend in a way that surpasses its own ability to encompass all of this in an holistic intuition then we have the experience of the sublime, since at this point reason takes over, as it were, and with it the idea of something that underlies all of our experience, i.e. the intuition of ourselves as experiencing things within an entire world, i.e. the whole of nature. Kant writes that the "basic measure of nature is the absolute whole of nature, which in the case of nature as appearance, is infinity comprehended."
But then it turns out that this basic measure is contradictory, even on Kant's account. There cannot be absolute totality of a progression that is endless. Does Kant realize that he is deconstructing or at least undercutting himself here? He seems to be implying that the experience of the sublime is based on an illusion or an illusory experience. I have no problem with this Nietzschean idea, although it is surprising to find it in Kant. So, when the imagination tries fruitlessly to comprehend the magnitude of some natural thing, this contradiction leads us to think of a supersensible substrate underlying both nature and our ability to think, one that we must judge as sublime. (Why need we think this?) What is sublime in this case, Kant argues anthropocentrically, is not nature itself but the attunement within our minds when we judge such an object, the imagination then being referred to reason in such a way as to harmonize with its ideas, i.e. the indeterminate ideas of the noumenal realm. Kant naively thinks this will be attuned with moral judgments and the influence of moral demands on feeling. I can't follow him here.
So he finds true sublimity in the mind of the person who has this mental attunement of imagination and reason, and not in nature at all! This leads him to the rather counter-intuitive claim that "we would not want to call sublime such things as shapeless mountain masses piled on one another in wild disarray." Rather, in this case, what is happening is that the mind "feels elevated in judgment of itself" because it can contemplate these things without thinking about their form. Instead it can revel in its own imagination and its harmonious connection with reason in its attempt to arrive at noumenal things, although the imagination is inadequate to such ideas. Some harmony! Why would he even think that the experience of shapeless mountains and the sublime pleasure we get from this could be connected with the harmony of the defeated imagination in the face of reason's demand for unity even of the infinite?
Now one important aspect of reason, on Kant's account, is that it demands unity. So, as Kant puts it, "the idea of comprehending every appearance that may be given us in the intuition of a whole is an idea enjoined on us by a law of reason," which depends on the absolute whole as its measure, a measure that is valid for everyone. So the imagination, in trying to obey this law, fails. The feeling for the sublime is respect for our vocation in the sense that what humans can do best is to have the feeling of the sublime that comes from this failure. In having sublime experience we are respecting the idea of humanity in ourselves and not really the magnitude of the volcano or waterfall that we find sublime. This is just what Kant calls a "subreption." We realize then that the "rational vocation of our cognitive powers" is superior to the greatest power of sensibility, i.e. of our imagination even in conjunction with the understanding. So we feel displeasure because our imagination fails in its estimate of magnitude, i.e. of infinity or absolute totality, which reason poses to it, and yet feel pleasure insofar as we realize that such inadequate power is at least harmonious with reason in trying to do this impossible thing. (I see no reason why pleasure should win out over pain in this instance.) So we estimate large objects in nature, for example the galaxy seen through the Milky Way, as small in relation to absolute totality, and more important, in relation to the ideas of reason, for example the idea of God. What arouses in us a feeling of our human vocation is in harmony with this law.
What is valuable in all of this? I am not sure. I feel attracted to certain ideas, the idea that there is a high point in the aesthetics of nature, that this cannot be tied in any simple way with mathematical or scientific forms of cognition, that this also ties to our appreciation of works of art like not only the pyramid but more interestingly The Night Watch, that that background idea of the world as totality is somehow combined with or tied to our experience of things as wholes, and finally that there is something tragic and painful as well as pleasurable about the failure of our mechanical imagination to capture the sublime, which work needs the supplement of the creative imagination or what Kant calls "reason" or the principle that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Dewey on the pervasive whole and the media of art
In his Art as Experience, specifically in his chapters on "Substance and Form" and "The Common Substance of the Arts" Dewey addresses the issues of medium and media. In a way, this is a key to Dewey's way of thinking. The medium is the material which is transformed in the creative process. A good way to understand Dewey is in terms of the relationship between the public world, the creative process of the artist, the product, and the creative process of the audience. The creative process can be seen as taking materials from the public realm translating them through the individual and then presenting the transformed product to the public again. All of these things are organically connected. For instance, Dewey tells us that "the work of art is complete only as it works in the experience of others." The audience's experience is required for the work to happen. Dewey speaks specifically of the triad: "the speaker, the things said, and the one spoken to" or the external object object, the artist and the audience. In the creative process the artist acts as though she were the audience, and she responds to the emerging work as though spoken to by what she perceives, treating the work as if it were a new child to be understood, i.e. in order to grasp its meaning.
Dewey suggests that matter does not come first in search of a form to embody it, but rather the creative effort of the artist is to form material so that it will be "the authentic substance of a work of art." We do not separate the aesthetic value of sense materials from that of the form that makes them expressive. Beauty is not then seen as some transcendent essence in the mode of Plato that descends on matter from without, but as "the esthetic quality that appears whenever material is formed in a way that renders it adequately expressive." Form, contrary to someone like Clive Bell, is something that emerges "whenever an experience gains complete development." That is, it is a function of this three-way interaction.
We should not see the art product as a mere self-expression where the self is "self-contained in isolation" for, then, substance would be different from form. But substance and form ultimately, and ideally, are one. The self-revelation of the artist cannot be something external to what is expressed. Self-expression is required nonetheless. The reason for this is that the free play of individuality and any freshness or originality the work may have comes with this.
Again, Dewey wants to give credit both to the public realm and to the individuality of the creative artist. The material of the work of art comes from the common world. but self-expression exists because "the self assimilates...material in a distinctive way" a way that makes old material new, fresh and vital. The self then also puts that material back out into the public world in the form of a created object. If those who perceive this object also reconstruct this in their own novel experiences the result will be appropriately called "universal." The material cannot be private: that would be solipsistic and the true solipsist would be considered mad. It is rather the way that the common material is assimilated that is individual.
So a work of art is only actually such when it "lives in some individualized experience," and is recreated every time it is experienced aesthetically. Dewey uses the Parthenon as his example. You cannot ask what its creator really meant and get anything of value since, first, he would have found different meanings in the work himself at different times in the creative process and even after completion of the work, and second, because artists generally mean by a work whatever the audience member gets out of it in virtue of his or her own vital experience. The Parthenon continues to inspire new personal experiences and only this makes it universal. Moreover, one could never experience it in the way a contemporary Athenian would have. The work, or what Dewey calls the "substance," is formed in such a way that it can "enter into the experiences of others and enable them to have more intense and more fully rounded out experiences of their own." As opposed to Clive Bell, the work as form/substance is "a way of envisaging, of feeling, and of presenting experienced matter so that it....becomes material for the construction of adequate experience" in the audience. We just saw Dewey use the word form and the word substance, but in fact as can be seen here, he does not really distinguish the two. His ontology of the artwork is simply this: "the work itself is matter formed into esthetic substance." The critic or the theorist or the artist might distinguish between form and substance in terms of "the how" and "the what" of what is produced, yet the act is what it is because of how it is: manner and content are integrated.
But what binds these things together? It is the "pervasive quality" that makes the work of art. or any example of "an experience." a unified whole. If a part does not have that quality it does not belong. Again Dewey describes this in terms of sanity and the relation between the individual and the public realm. An immediate sense of "an extensive and underlying whole is the context of every experience and it is the essence of sanity." The insane is that which is "torn from the common context" and thus appears in a world totally other than our own. All material requires setting to be coherent.
It is here that Dewey seems to violate the principles of pragmatism itself since the work of art not only accents the quality of its being a whole but also the quality of belonging to a larger whole, which Dewey calls"the universe in which we live." The "in which we live" is important here. Dewey is not speaking of the physical universe so much as of our lived universe, our world. Each sentence of the paragraph in which this passage appears needs to be explained in detail. The quality of unity which exists at these two levels explains "the feeling of exquisite intelligibility and clarity we have in the presence of an object that is experienced with aesthetic intensity." It is more clear and intelligible, and perhaps even more intense, because of its harmonious situation within a larger unity. And this in turn explains why religious feeling accompanies such aesthetic intensity.
This need not be a dropping off point for an atheist since Dewey is by not means positing a God. He is simply pointing out the source of religious feeling and an aesthetic intensity accompanied by a sense of greater clarity when encountering great art or magnificent nature: it is the background sense of a larger unity that is somehow harmoniously one with the pervasive quality of the work. Oddly, the pervasive quality would not even be present without the background unity since the intensity of the pervasive quality depends on it. Dewey speaks of us being introduced to "a world beyond this world" which on first reading might be seen as the transcendent realm. But he makes clear this world is really just "the deeper reality of the world in which we live in our ordinary experiences." We always live in a world. We always experience things against a background which can be a larger whole or not. Dewey believes the "sense of an enveloping undefined whole" that accompanies every experience is clarified and deepened by the work of art, or rather, I suspect, by the great work of art.
He speaks of this experience moreover as finding ourselves and as "an expansion of ourselves" insofar as satisfying aesthetic experience gives the world meaning that goes beyond mere egotism. In this experience we become citizens of a vast world, and get a "satisfying sense of unity in itself and with ourselves."
Further, this sense of a "qualitative pervasive whole" is carried by the medium of the work of art insofar as a specialized organ, e.g. sight or hearing, touches the world. A painting touches the world portrayed without the impurities of ordinary perception in which the other senses are involved. And now color alone must "carry the qualifies of movement, touch, sound, etc.," that were present in ordinary vision. This enhances both the expressiveness and the energy of color.
Dewey suggests that matter does not come first in search of a form to embody it, but rather the creative effort of the artist is to form material so that it will be "the authentic substance of a work of art." We do not separate the aesthetic value of sense materials from that of the form that makes them expressive. Beauty is not then seen as some transcendent essence in the mode of Plato that descends on matter from without, but as "the esthetic quality that appears whenever material is formed in a way that renders it adequately expressive." Form, contrary to someone like Clive Bell, is something that emerges "whenever an experience gains complete development." That is, it is a function of this three-way interaction.
We should not see the art product as a mere self-expression where the self is "self-contained in isolation" for, then, substance would be different from form. But substance and form ultimately, and ideally, are one. The self-revelation of the artist cannot be something external to what is expressed. Self-expression is required nonetheless. The reason for this is that the free play of individuality and any freshness or originality the work may have comes with this.
Again, Dewey wants to give credit both to the public realm and to the individuality of the creative artist. The material of the work of art comes from the common world. but self-expression exists because "the self assimilates...material in a distinctive way" a way that makes old material new, fresh and vital. The self then also puts that material back out into the public world in the form of a created object. If those who perceive this object also reconstruct this in their own novel experiences the result will be appropriately called "universal." The material cannot be private: that would be solipsistic and the true solipsist would be considered mad. It is rather the way that the common material is assimilated that is individual.
So a work of art is only actually such when it "lives in some individualized experience," and is recreated every time it is experienced aesthetically. Dewey uses the Parthenon as his example. You cannot ask what its creator really meant and get anything of value since, first, he would have found different meanings in the work himself at different times in the creative process and even after completion of the work, and second, because artists generally mean by a work whatever the audience member gets out of it in virtue of his or her own vital experience. The Parthenon continues to inspire new personal experiences and only this makes it universal. Moreover, one could never experience it in the way a contemporary Athenian would have. The work, or what Dewey calls the "substance," is formed in such a way that it can "enter into the experiences of others and enable them to have more intense and more fully rounded out experiences of their own." As opposed to Clive Bell, the work as form/substance is "a way of envisaging, of feeling, and of presenting experienced matter so that it....becomes material for the construction of adequate experience" in the audience. We just saw Dewey use the word form and the word substance, but in fact as can be seen here, he does not really distinguish the two. His ontology of the artwork is simply this: "the work itself is matter formed into esthetic substance." The critic or the theorist or the artist might distinguish between form and substance in terms of "the how" and "the what" of what is produced, yet the act is what it is because of how it is: manner and content are integrated.
But what binds these things together? It is the "pervasive quality" that makes the work of art. or any example of "an experience." a unified whole. If a part does not have that quality it does not belong. Again Dewey describes this in terms of sanity and the relation between the individual and the public realm. An immediate sense of "an extensive and underlying whole is the context of every experience and it is the essence of sanity." The insane is that which is "torn from the common context" and thus appears in a world totally other than our own. All material requires setting to be coherent.
It is here that Dewey seems to violate the principles of pragmatism itself since the work of art not only accents the quality of its being a whole but also the quality of belonging to a larger whole, which Dewey calls"the universe in which we live." The "in which we live" is important here. Dewey is not speaking of the physical universe so much as of our lived universe, our world. Each sentence of the paragraph in which this passage appears needs to be explained in detail. The quality of unity which exists at these two levels explains "the feeling of exquisite intelligibility and clarity we have in the presence of an object that is experienced with aesthetic intensity." It is more clear and intelligible, and perhaps even more intense, because of its harmonious situation within a larger unity. And this in turn explains why religious feeling accompanies such aesthetic intensity.
This need not be a dropping off point for an atheist since Dewey is by not means positing a God. He is simply pointing out the source of religious feeling and an aesthetic intensity accompanied by a sense of greater clarity when encountering great art or magnificent nature: it is the background sense of a larger unity that is somehow harmoniously one with the pervasive quality of the work. Oddly, the pervasive quality would not even be present without the background unity since the intensity of the pervasive quality depends on it. Dewey speaks of us being introduced to "a world beyond this world" which on first reading might be seen as the transcendent realm. But he makes clear this world is really just "the deeper reality of the world in which we live in our ordinary experiences." We always live in a world. We always experience things against a background which can be a larger whole or not. Dewey believes the "sense of an enveloping undefined whole" that accompanies every experience is clarified and deepened by the work of art, or rather, I suspect, by the great work of art.
He speaks of this experience moreover as finding ourselves and as "an expansion of ourselves" insofar as satisfying aesthetic experience gives the world meaning that goes beyond mere egotism. In this experience we become citizens of a vast world, and get a "satisfying sense of unity in itself and with ourselves."
Further, this sense of a "qualitative pervasive whole" is carried by the medium of the work of art insofar as a specialized organ, e.g. sight or hearing, touches the world. A painting touches the world portrayed without the impurities of ordinary perception in which the other senses are involved. And now color alone must "carry the qualifies of movement, touch, sound, etc.," that were present in ordinary vision. This enhances both the expressiveness and the energy of color.
Friday, October 23, 2015
More on Korsmeyer on Food as Fine Art
I have posted previously on Korsmeyer on food as art but am not sure I have done full justice to her position. I think that one of reasons Korsmeyer rejects food as fine art is that efforts in previous centuries to treat it as such were often based largely on piggy-backing on other art forms. So, for example, she includes an illustration from the 17th century of decorative carved fruits and from the 19th century of elaborate decorative concoctions by Careme, and writes, "we may also note an objection to decorative food that points to an adventitious element to the representational capacities of food: the examples of symbolic function in food [discussed in her book] are largely the result of visual manipulation" (126) where the artist treats the food in the same way a sculptor would treat marble. Korsmeyer notes that this objection comes from Larry Shiner and that she herself does not think this shows "poverty of symbolic possibility for food." It simply shows that eating involves more than one sense. But the "objection" nonetheless may be a motivating factor in her rejecting food as fine art. I think the problem is little different from problems in other media, for example in film, where early forms often imitated other art forms, whereas as the medium developed it came to have forms that were more its own. If we look at the visual appearance of dishes in contemporary high-end restaurants we find that they are no longer crudely representational or imitative of architecture, sculpture or other art forms, although they may have some affinities with these. The idea is that the form, color and texture of the presentation should combine with the various tastes to present an experience overall. As John Dewey would say, it is the experience that is the work of art, not the physical object taken alone and isolated from context. I also think that, as I have argued previously, the gastronomical experience includes a multiplicity of elements including the place of dining, the service and even the background sounds and smells. These various elements are hierarchically arranged, so that the center of the experience is the food on the plate, and the peripheries, such as the architectural setting, are intended to enhance that experience. (This can go either way, of course. An architecture enthusiast might go to the restaurant mainly for the architecture, the food serving mainly as an enhancing periphery.) Even the clothes fashions of the other diners can be part of the overall aesthetic experiences (that one is for you, Karen), although this is much less under the control of the artist (i.e. the chef or the restaurateur) and would not be included in the judgment of the performance. I say "performance" since I think of the art of food presentation as a performance art where it is the event that is to be judged in the end, not just the individual object that is consumed.
Although Korsmeyer thinks that food can meet some of Goodman's "symptoms of the aesthetic" including "exemplification" and "relative repleteness" she thinks that there are important differences between food and the fine arts, that the concept of art as fine art is "a poor category to capture the nature of foods and their consumption." (141) There is some confusion here, however. She lists fine arts as "paintings, sculptures, poems and symphonies." Let's take painting. This is a vast category including much that is not fine art. Painting refers to paint on some support such as canvas or wall. It can include graffiti art, children's murals, kitsch seascapes in Carmel, works by Thomas Kinkade, and painted works by David Hockney. Painting is a somewhat different kind of concept than "sculpture" which seems to be limited to three-d constructions that are works of art, although there are many three-d art works that are arguably not sculptures. Moreover, there are a vast number of three-d figures, for example in religious shops or in tourist galleries, that could be seen as sculptures but not as fine art. The concept of fine art does not capture of nature of foods and their consumption because not all food is fine art just as not all painting and not all things called sculpture are fine art.
Korsmeyer makes the interesting point that food and art do not have parallel histories. I have perhaps not taken this point seriously enough in the past. It certainly is true, and no one will contest it, that food and art have different histories. The art books appear together in one part of our libraries, the food books in another part. But history has a way of bringing things together that were previously apart and vice versa. Gardens were once considered to be fine art and then began to lose that status in the 19th century, becoming a kind of adjunct to architecture. Then, in the second half of the 20th century some gardens began to gain the status of fine art again, often when the garden was designed by someone well known as a sculptor, for example Robert Irwin's garden at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Although I agree with Korsmeyer that food has its own history, I also believe that food has been converging with painting, sculpture and performance art in recent years, particularly in high-end restaurants, so that some food productions can now partake in and draw from those traditions, although again, only if this is done with care and not as a form of inauthentic piggy-backing. Something similar has happened in fashion design.
I think that Korsmeyer's inability to see great restaurant food as fine art is partly because of her focus on other kinds of food presentation, ones associated with festival aesthetics. She says: "I hope that the examples of ritual and ceremonial eating and the complex situations in which foods and tastes exemplify metaphorical properties lay to rest the idea that tasting and eating are to be appreciated only for sensuous enjoyment. The uses of foods and rink for religious and commemorative purposes clearly foster, even force, reflection on the meaning of the event taking place....unlike music or other fine art, however, this sort of reflection....is not a mark of greatness for food as food." (142) What is left out is that great restaurant food exemplifies metaphorical properties in complex ways (often drawing on many of the meanings associated with food in these other contexts) and fuses these with sensuous enjoyment. It might be thought that fine restaurant food is just for sensuous enjoyment, and it is true that sensuous enjoyment is the main focus of the dining experience, but this enjoyment is enhanced significantly by the various other properties metaphorically exemplified and the various other stories told. The concept of "food as food" can be distorting of the issue insofar as it isolates food from its complex meaning content, flattens it out, as it were. It would be like those who say that art should only be addressed in terms of the isolated object, art as art, and not in terms of any contextual considerations which may enhance its meaning.
Although Korsmeyer thinks that food can meet some of Goodman's "symptoms of the aesthetic" including "exemplification" and "relative repleteness" she thinks that there are important differences between food and the fine arts, that the concept of art as fine art is "a poor category to capture the nature of foods and their consumption." (141) There is some confusion here, however. She lists fine arts as "paintings, sculptures, poems and symphonies." Let's take painting. This is a vast category including much that is not fine art. Painting refers to paint on some support such as canvas or wall. It can include graffiti art, children's murals, kitsch seascapes in Carmel, works by Thomas Kinkade, and painted works by David Hockney. Painting is a somewhat different kind of concept than "sculpture" which seems to be limited to three-d constructions that are works of art, although there are many three-d art works that are arguably not sculptures. Moreover, there are a vast number of three-d figures, for example in religious shops or in tourist galleries, that could be seen as sculptures but not as fine art. The concept of fine art does not capture of nature of foods and their consumption because not all food is fine art just as not all painting and not all things called sculpture are fine art.
Korsmeyer makes the interesting point that food and art do not have parallel histories. I have perhaps not taken this point seriously enough in the past. It certainly is true, and no one will contest it, that food and art have different histories. The art books appear together in one part of our libraries, the food books in another part. But history has a way of bringing things together that were previously apart and vice versa. Gardens were once considered to be fine art and then began to lose that status in the 19th century, becoming a kind of adjunct to architecture. Then, in the second half of the 20th century some gardens began to gain the status of fine art again, often when the garden was designed by someone well known as a sculptor, for example Robert Irwin's garden at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Although I agree with Korsmeyer that food has its own history, I also believe that food has been converging with painting, sculpture and performance art in recent years, particularly in high-end restaurants, so that some food productions can now partake in and draw from those traditions, although again, only if this is done with care and not as a form of inauthentic piggy-backing. Something similar has happened in fashion design.
I think that Korsmeyer's inability to see great restaurant food as fine art is partly because of her focus on other kinds of food presentation, ones associated with festival aesthetics. She says: "I hope that the examples of ritual and ceremonial eating and the complex situations in which foods and tastes exemplify metaphorical properties lay to rest the idea that tasting and eating are to be appreciated only for sensuous enjoyment. The uses of foods and rink for religious and commemorative purposes clearly foster, even force, reflection on the meaning of the event taking place....unlike music or other fine art, however, this sort of reflection....is not a mark of greatness for food as food." (142) What is left out is that great restaurant food exemplifies metaphorical properties in complex ways (often drawing on many of the meanings associated with food in these other contexts) and fuses these with sensuous enjoyment. It might be thought that fine restaurant food is just for sensuous enjoyment, and it is true that sensuous enjoyment is the main focus of the dining experience, but this enjoyment is enhanced significantly by the various other properties metaphorically exemplified and the various other stories told. The concept of "food as food" can be distorting of the issue insofar as it isolates food from its complex meaning content, flattens it out, as it were. It would be like those who say that art should only be addressed in terms of the isolated object, art as art, and not in terms of any contextual considerations which may enhance its meaning.
Monday, October 19, 2015
Dewey's version of expression theory, or his definition of art
Too much has perhaps been said about Dewey's theory of art as experience insofar as this focus has directed readers away from Dewey's central views on the nature of art itself. Just as Dewey observed that great works of art can hide fundamental facts of aesthetics, Dewey's great idea of "an experience" can hide facts about his even richer view of the nature of art. It might be helpful then to skip over those passages and think about what makes something artistic for Dewey. This material comes at the end of his chapter on "Having and Experience" in Art as Experience, but then is spread out throughout other aspects of the book as well. I am working now with the selection found in Stephen David Ross's Art and its Significance.
Before going on, I should note a significant mistake in the Ross edition. The selection from "Substance and Form" actually goes to page 213 bottom, and the selection from "The Common Substance of the Arts" begins with "The undefined pervasive quality" on the bottom of that page, not halfway down page 214 where the title appears in this selection. Actually "unit in itself and with ourselves" is continuous with "every work of art" on that page. So, in short, the heading "The Common Substance of the Arts" should be moved to the bottom of page 213.
To have a theory of art you need a definition of art, and there is a definition of art implicit in Dewey, a definition which sees art as expression. This expression has to do with a dynamic relationship between the artist and his or her audience. In this respect Dewey is carrying on in the tradition of Tolstoy.
Also striking here is that for Dewey art is an activity. "Art denotes a process of doing or making." It does something with physical material. He explicitly mentions "molding of clay, chipping of marble, casting of bronze" and so forth, through the various traditional fine arts. The result must be "visible, audible, or tangible." So the dynamic relationship goes beyond author and audience to materials. As much as Benedetto Croce thought that Dewey was simply following him, this is far from an idealist theory of art.
Dewey also stresses that art is a "skilled action," here in the tradition of John Stuart Mill, who described art as "perfection in execution." Not only materials but skill in the making process is important. This idea has not been popular in contemporary aesthetics, although it was picked up again by Dennis Dutton in his The Art Instinct. Although art is skilled action, this would only count as a necessary condition for fine art, and as we shall see, Dewey is concerned that overemphasis on this condition would lead to an overly limited definition of art.
This emphasis on doing/making is not to say that Dewey is unaware of the other side of art, that of the consumer - what is commonly called the "esthetic" side. Instead he stresses both the perceiving, appreciative side and the skillful side of art. The two are to be distinguished but not separated, this because the object is produced for the consumer and its value is found in its consumption.
Although skill is important, mere perfection of execution is not the goal. Dewey is similar to Tolstoy to this extent: he thinks that the good artist, far from simply being good at technique, "has an experience of his own that he was concerned to have those share who look at his products." Dewey measures this in terms of the greatness of the artist. Cezanne is a great painter even though not a great technician, Sargent a great technician but not a great painter.
But what really makes Cezanne great? Perhaps this is answered in the next paragraph. Dewey mentions there that in order to distinguish artistic craftsmanship from craftsmanship that is not artistic we need to consider it "loving" in the sense that the artist cares deeply about "the subject matter upon which skill is exercised." This does not mean that the artist must be exact in representation (something presumably that Sargent could accomplish). Rather, the artist must have "an experience of his own" that he/she wishes to share with others. This takes us back to Dewey's discussion of "an experience." Presumably Cezanne had "an experience" and Sargent did not. (This is not fair to Sargent, but this is not my concern here.) So the relationship needed for art is between artist/receiver and subject matter insofar as that is itself "an experience."
This leads to a kind of definition of "artistic" if not of art: "to be truly artistic, a work must also be esthetic - that is, framed for enjoyed receptive perception." That is, to be art it must be both a making and esthetic, and this is understood in terms of the relationship between the artist and his or her audience. The perception of the artist should be aesthetic also in the sense that it is not merely mechanical. Further, the work must be the result of "constant observation" which involves esthetic, not mechanical, or "cold and colorless" perception.
So, we are not to understand art simply as an experience, but rather as a kind of "an experience," one that is mutual between artist and audience: "Art, in its form, unites the very same relation of doing and undergoing, outgoing and incoming energy, that makes an experience to be an experience." But in this case, the doing and undergoing are applied to the artist and the audience in their dynamic relation. What Dewey calls "esthetic art" eliminates whatever is not conducive to the mutual organization of the active and receptive aspects of art experience, the making and the consumption: "the doing or making is artistic when the perceived result is of such a nature that its qualities as perceived have controlled the question of production." The artist selects those traits that are conducive to such "interpenetration" of his action and the audience's reception. In short, the definition of art for Dewey is essentially dynamic in the interaction between artist and receiver.
This idea of art is elaborated on in the next chapter on "The Expressive Object." Whereas other theorists may just want to define art in terms of the result, Dewey is equally concerned with "action and its result." We should not view the object in isolation from the process which produced it. The process, as he often observes, comes from the interaction between a live creature (the artist in this case) and his or her environment, and as we shall see, that environment is very much the public realm. It is a mistake, Dewey believes, both to "ignore the individual contribution" of the artist and to isolate the process of expression from the "expressiveness possessed by the object." We should not see expression as a mere "discharging of personal emotion." So, to put it another way: a work of art presents material "passed through the alembic of personal experience" and yet the material comes from "the public world." Dewey insists that the "oppositions of individual and universal, of subjective and objective, of freedom and order...have no place in the work of art" for expression as personal and as objective are "organically connected." That is, the work of art is both individual and universal, both subjective and objective, both freedom and order.
So a work of art is representative not in the sense of being a literal reproduction, for it has a uniqueness "due to the personal medium through which scenes and events have passed," that is, the above-mentioned alembic. At the same time, the artist also "tells something to those who enjoy it about the nature of their own experience of the world" insofar as the artwork "presents the world in a new experience which they undergo." Art is about the public world, the world of everyday life. Moreover, it contributes to constitution of the world for others in a new way: it provides the possibility not only of "an experience" i.e. with a work of art, but also transformed experience of life outside of art.
Dewey observes that there are some who deny that works of art have meaning. They certainly do not have meaning in the way that signboards do, or in the way that scientific propositions do. The meaning of art is unique. At the same time we do not want to insist that the meaning is "so unique that it is without community or connection with the contents of other modes of experience than the esthetic." That would make art merely esoteric, which Dewey rejects. (The formalism of Clive Bell might be an aesthetic theory of that sort.) Rather, the unique quality of the work of art is "that of clarifying and concentrating meanings contained in scattered and weakened ways in the material of other experiences." Art clarifies and concentrates meaning by expressing meaning in materials.
That, in short, sums up Dewey's definition of art. The aesthetics of art is based on the aesthetics of life. Art, as opposed to science, expresses "the inner nature of things" by which he means that it does not lead to experience in the way that a scientific claim can be confirmed by an experiment, but rather "constitutes" experience as meaningful. The two examples Dewey focuses on to explain this are the way that Tintern Abbey "expressed itself to Wordsworth in and through his poem," and our experience of the meaning of a city which, he suggests, may "try to express itself in a celebration attended with pageantry" that would "render its history and spirit perceptible."
It is interesting that Dewey chooses here not just to focus on the expressive qualities of a poem but also on the way in which a pageant can operate as a kind of artwork that expresses a city. It is not just the self that is expressed in art (as we would find in Collingwood, for example) but also larger units, such as a city or a culture. He goes on that the visitor who "permits himself to participate" in this city celebration has "an expressive object" which is similar in some ways to the poem: neither is a "correct descriptive statement.
(Nietzsche uses Wordworth's "Tintern Abbey" to explain his point, but in a strange way since he thinks the poem reveals something about the abbey. In reality the poem never mentions the abbey except in the title. It actually describes a scene a few miles upriver from the abbey. It has been said that Wordsworth intended the reference to the abbey to add to his tendency to spiritualize nature. Based on reading the poem it is difficult to see how Tintern Abbey could have expressed itself in Wordsworth's poem.)
Dewey's definition of art then shows art to be necessarily interconnected with the creative process and the process of reception as well as with the public world which forms the material of expression. Philosophy of art for Dewey must be based on the aesthetics of everyday life which includes also the aesthetics of the creative process of the artist and the aesthetic of the receptive process of the viewer.
A bit more could be said about Dewey's implicit definition of art can be said in relation to the chapters on "Substance and Form" and on "The Common Substance of the Arts" since work on the ontology of art is surely related in some way to definition of art.
Before going on, I should note a significant mistake in the Ross edition. The selection from "Substance and Form" actually goes to page 213 bottom, and the selection from "The Common Substance of the Arts" begins with "The undefined pervasive quality" on the bottom of that page, not halfway down page 214 where the title appears in this selection. Actually "unit in itself and with ourselves" is continuous with "every work of art" on that page. So, in short, the heading "The Common Substance of the Arts" should be moved to the bottom of page 213.
To have a theory of art you need a definition of art, and there is a definition of art implicit in Dewey, a definition which sees art as expression. This expression has to do with a dynamic relationship between the artist and his or her audience. In this respect Dewey is carrying on in the tradition of Tolstoy.
Also striking here is that for Dewey art is an activity. "Art denotes a process of doing or making." It does something with physical material. He explicitly mentions "molding of clay, chipping of marble, casting of bronze" and so forth, through the various traditional fine arts. The result must be "visible, audible, or tangible." So the dynamic relationship goes beyond author and audience to materials. As much as Benedetto Croce thought that Dewey was simply following him, this is far from an idealist theory of art.
Dewey also stresses that art is a "skilled action," here in the tradition of John Stuart Mill, who described art as "perfection in execution." Not only materials but skill in the making process is important. This idea has not been popular in contemporary aesthetics, although it was picked up again by Dennis Dutton in his The Art Instinct. Although art is skilled action, this would only count as a necessary condition for fine art, and as we shall see, Dewey is concerned that overemphasis on this condition would lead to an overly limited definition of art.
This emphasis on doing/making is not to say that Dewey is unaware of the other side of art, that of the consumer - what is commonly called the "esthetic" side. Instead he stresses both the perceiving, appreciative side and the skillful side of art. The two are to be distinguished but not separated, this because the object is produced for the consumer and its value is found in its consumption.
Although skill is important, mere perfection of execution is not the goal. Dewey is similar to Tolstoy to this extent: he thinks that the good artist, far from simply being good at technique, "has an experience of his own that he was concerned to have those share who look at his products." Dewey measures this in terms of the greatness of the artist. Cezanne is a great painter even though not a great technician, Sargent a great technician but not a great painter.
But what really makes Cezanne great? Perhaps this is answered in the next paragraph. Dewey mentions there that in order to distinguish artistic craftsmanship from craftsmanship that is not artistic we need to consider it "loving" in the sense that the artist cares deeply about "the subject matter upon which skill is exercised." This does not mean that the artist must be exact in representation (something presumably that Sargent could accomplish). Rather, the artist must have "an experience of his own" that he/she wishes to share with others. This takes us back to Dewey's discussion of "an experience." Presumably Cezanne had "an experience" and Sargent did not. (This is not fair to Sargent, but this is not my concern here.) So the relationship needed for art is between artist/receiver and subject matter insofar as that is itself "an experience."
This leads to a kind of definition of "artistic" if not of art: "to be truly artistic, a work must also be esthetic - that is, framed for enjoyed receptive perception." That is, to be art it must be both a making and esthetic, and this is understood in terms of the relationship between the artist and his or her audience. The perception of the artist should be aesthetic also in the sense that it is not merely mechanical. Further, the work must be the result of "constant observation" which involves esthetic, not mechanical, or "cold and colorless" perception.
So, we are not to understand art simply as an experience, but rather as a kind of "an experience," one that is mutual between artist and audience: "Art, in its form, unites the very same relation of doing and undergoing, outgoing and incoming energy, that makes an experience to be an experience." But in this case, the doing and undergoing are applied to the artist and the audience in their dynamic relation. What Dewey calls "esthetic art" eliminates whatever is not conducive to the mutual organization of the active and receptive aspects of art experience, the making and the consumption: "the doing or making is artistic when the perceived result is of such a nature that its qualities as perceived have controlled the question of production." The artist selects those traits that are conducive to such "interpenetration" of his action and the audience's reception. In short, the definition of art for Dewey is essentially dynamic in the interaction between artist and receiver.
This idea of art is elaborated on in the next chapter on "The Expressive Object." Whereas other theorists may just want to define art in terms of the result, Dewey is equally concerned with "action and its result." We should not view the object in isolation from the process which produced it. The process, as he often observes, comes from the interaction between a live creature (the artist in this case) and his or her environment, and as we shall see, that environment is very much the public realm. It is a mistake, Dewey believes, both to "ignore the individual contribution" of the artist and to isolate the process of expression from the "expressiveness possessed by the object." We should not see expression as a mere "discharging of personal emotion." So, to put it another way: a work of art presents material "passed through the alembic of personal experience" and yet the material comes from "the public world." Dewey insists that the "oppositions of individual and universal, of subjective and objective, of freedom and order...have no place in the work of art" for expression as personal and as objective are "organically connected." That is, the work of art is both individual and universal, both subjective and objective, both freedom and order.
So a work of art is representative not in the sense of being a literal reproduction, for it has a uniqueness "due to the personal medium through which scenes and events have passed," that is, the above-mentioned alembic. At the same time, the artist also "tells something to those who enjoy it about the nature of their own experience of the world" insofar as the artwork "presents the world in a new experience which they undergo." Art is about the public world, the world of everyday life. Moreover, it contributes to constitution of the world for others in a new way: it provides the possibility not only of "an experience" i.e. with a work of art, but also transformed experience of life outside of art.
Dewey observes that there are some who deny that works of art have meaning. They certainly do not have meaning in the way that signboards do, or in the way that scientific propositions do. The meaning of art is unique. At the same time we do not want to insist that the meaning is "so unique that it is without community or connection with the contents of other modes of experience than the esthetic." That would make art merely esoteric, which Dewey rejects. (The formalism of Clive Bell might be an aesthetic theory of that sort.) Rather, the unique quality of the work of art is "that of clarifying and concentrating meanings contained in scattered and weakened ways in the material of other experiences." Art clarifies and concentrates meaning by expressing meaning in materials.
That, in short, sums up Dewey's definition of art. The aesthetics of art is based on the aesthetics of life. Art, as opposed to science, expresses "the inner nature of things" by which he means that it does not lead to experience in the way that a scientific claim can be confirmed by an experiment, but rather "constitutes" experience as meaningful. The two examples Dewey focuses on to explain this are the way that Tintern Abbey "expressed itself to Wordsworth in and through his poem," and our experience of the meaning of a city which, he suggests, may "try to express itself in a celebration attended with pageantry" that would "render its history and spirit perceptible."
It is interesting that Dewey chooses here not just to focus on the expressive qualities of a poem but also on the way in which a pageant can operate as a kind of artwork that expresses a city. It is not just the self that is expressed in art (as we would find in Collingwood, for example) but also larger units, such as a city or a culture. He goes on that the visitor who "permits himself to participate" in this city celebration has "an expressive object" which is similar in some ways to the poem: neither is a "correct descriptive statement.
(Nietzsche uses Wordworth's "Tintern Abbey" to explain his point, but in a strange way since he thinks the poem reveals something about the abbey. In reality the poem never mentions the abbey except in the title. It actually describes a scene a few miles upriver from the abbey. It has been said that Wordsworth intended the reference to the abbey to add to his tendency to spiritualize nature. Based on reading the poem it is difficult to see how Tintern Abbey could have expressed itself in Wordsworth's poem.)
Dewey's definition of art then shows art to be necessarily interconnected with the creative process and the process of reception as well as with the public world which forms the material of expression. Philosophy of art for Dewey must be based on the aesthetics of everyday life which includes also the aesthetics of the creative process of the artist and the aesthetic of the receptive process of the viewer.
A bit more could be said about Dewey's implicit definition of art can be said in relation to the chapters on "Substance and Form" and on "The Common Substance of the Arts" since work on the ontology of art is surely related in some way to definition of art.
Sunday, October 18, 2015
Women Aestheticians and Philosophers of Art
There has been much discussion in the
media recently about how philosophy tends to be a male-dominated field.
This is perhaps not as true in aesthetics (although I know of one classroom
anthology that only has one female writer).
However, in my own career I have been
very aware of a number of women who have made strong contributions to the
field. Here is a list of some of my female heroes in aesthetics, along
with one of their publications. (I make not claim that the listed publication
is the author's most important). I will add to this list from time to
time. When I started this project I forgot that Christy Mag Uidhir had
already done one on his blog here which
is more extensive than mine. It is organized towards producing more
gender appropriate anthologies. So let's just say this is my personal
list.
Sally Banes. Dancing Women:
Female Bodies on Stage. 1998.
Annette Barnes. On
Interpretation. 1988.
Christine Battersby. Gender
and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics.
1989.
Emily Brady. Aesthetics
and the Natural Environment. 2003.
Peggy Brand.
"Disinterestedness and Political Art." in Carolyn
Korsmeyer Aesthetics: The Big Questions. 1998.
Amy Coplan. co-editor. Empathy:
Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives. 2014.
Eva Dadlez. What's Hecuba to
Him?: Fictional Events and Actual Emotions (Literature and Philosophy) 1997.
Mary Devereaux. “Feminist Aesthetics,” The Oxford
Handbook of Aesthetics, Jerrold Levinson (ed.), 2003.
Ellen Dissanayake. Homo
Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why. 1995.
Jane Duran. Women, Literature
and Philosophy. 2007.
Anne Eaton. “Feminist
Aesthetics and Criticism,” Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
2nd edition, London: Macmillan. 2014
Marcia Mueldor Eaton. Aesthetics
and the Good Life. 1989.
Catherine Z. Elgin. with Nelson
Goodman. Reconceptions in Philosophy: and Other Arts and
Sciences. 1988.
Susan Feagin. Reading with
Feeling: The Aesthetics of Appreciation. 1996.
Jane Forsey. The Aesthetics
of Design. 2013.
Cynthia Freeland. But is it
art? 2002.
Lydia Goehr. The Imaginary
Museum of Musical Works. 2007.
Heide Gottner-Abendroth. The
Dancing Goddess: Principles of
Matriarchal Aesthetic. 1982 tr.
1991.
Karen Hanson. "Dressing
Down Dressing Up." 1990.
Jean Gabbert Harrell. Profundity:
A Universal Value. 1995.
Hilde Hein. Public Art:
Thinking Museums Differently. 2006. Hilde was an early mentor of
mine. We co-edited the newsletter for the American Society for Aesthetics
for many years.
Kathleen Higgins. The
Music of Our Lives. 1991.
Sherri Irvin. "Scratching and
Itch." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 66:
1. 2008. Body Aesthetics.
2016.
Jennifer Judkins. “The
Aesthetics of Silence in Live Musical Performance.” Journal of Aesthetic
Education 31 (3):39.
Deborah Knight. "Aesthetics
and Cultural Studies." 2003.
Carolyn Korsmeyer. Gender and
Aesthetics: An Introduction. 2004.
Suzanne Langer. Feeling and Form. 1977.
Vernon Lee. The
Beautiful: An Introduction to
Psychological Aesthetics. 1913.
Sheila Lintott. "Toward
Eco-Friendly Aesthetics." 2006.
Sandra Rudnick Luft. Vico's
Uncanny Humanism. 2003. Luft was my adviser for my M.A. in
Humanities from SFSU.
Eva Kit Wah Man. Bodies in China: Philosophy, Aesthetics,
Gender, and Politics, 2016.
Katya Mandoki. Everyday
Aesthetics. 2007.
Sally Markowitz. "Guilty
pleasures: aesthetic meta-response and fiction." Journal of
Aesthetic and Art Criticism 50:4 (1992) 307-316.
Mara Miller. The Garden as an
Art. 1993.
Mary Mothersill. Beauty
Restored. 1986.
Iris Murdoch. The Sovereignty
of Good. 1991.
Linda Nochlin. “Why Have There Been No
Great Women Artists?” Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays. 1988.
Martha Nussbaum. Love's
Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. 1992.
Puffer,
Ethel P. The Psychology of Beauty. 1905.
Jenefer Robinson. Deeper than
Reason: Emotion and Its Role in Literature, Music, and Art. 2005.
Monique Roelofs. The Cultural
Promise of the Aesthetic. 2014.
Stephanie Ross. What
Gardens Mean. 2001.
Cynthia Rostankowski.
"Motivating Aesthetics," Journal of Aesthetic
Education, 2003. Rostankowski has been my aesthetics colleague
at San Jose State for many years.
Barbara Sandrisser. "On
Elegance in Japan." in Aesthetics in Perspective ed.
Kathleen Higgins. 1996.
Yuriko Saito. Everyday
Aesthetics. 2007. Aesthetics of the Familiar: Everyday Life and World Making. 2017.
Barbara Savedoff. Transforming
Images: How Photography Complicates the Picture. 2000.
Elaine Scarry. On Beauty and
Being Just. 2001.
Sonia Sedivy. Beauty
and the End of Art: Wittgenstein,
Plurality and Perception. 2016.
Anita Silvers. "The Story of
Art Is The Test Of Time." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism. Vol. 49, No. 3, Summer, 1991. Silvers wrote a number of
great articles for this journal. She was also my first aesthetics teacher
and basically inspired me to pursue the field.
Ellen Handler Spitz. Inside
Picture Books. 1999.
Kathleen Stock. “Historical
Definitions of Art.” In Stephen Davies & Ananta Charana Sukla (eds.), Art and Essence. 2003.
Mary Bittner Wiseman. The
Ecstasies of Roland Barthes. 1989.
Julie van Camp. John Dewey's
Notion of Qualitative Thought. 2014. Van Camp is currently
Secretary/Treasurer for the American Society for Aesthetics.
Rachel Zuckert. Kant on Beauty and Biology: An Interpretation
of the Critique of Judgment. 2007.
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