Defining Art: The Positive View

In my last post I argued that Morris Weitz's famous essay on the role of theory in aesthetics points the way to a more positive approach to the issue of defining art.  He offers us a way of reinterpreting the great theories of art so that they are seen as successes, i.e. as what he called honorific definitions of art.  This was the main point of this truly seminal essay, and yet oddly, in the course of history, it has been ignored.  
 
Joseph Margolis in "The Importance of Being Ernest about the Definition and Metaphysics of Art," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 68:3 (2010) returns to Weitz's essay but seems sometimes more interested in the question of whether Weitz misinterpreted Wittgenstein than in whether or not he was right about the role of theory in aesthetics.  I do not even think we should judge essays of this sort on the basis of whether or not they interpret a great philosopher correctly:  such works should not be judged as though they intended to be mere examples of "secondary literature."  Important philosophers tend to misinterpret other important philosophers:  creative mis-interpretation is part of what goes into thinking great thoughts.  Margolis, ironically, is guilty of this too:  a truly great thinker (certainly one of the finest mind in aesthetics) who often reads others insensitively.

Margolis begins his essay with the traditional negativism about definition:  "The philosophy of art may be doomed, again and again but always once and for all, to define what it is to be 'a work of art'..."  (215) In my last post I argued that the history of efforts to define art has been a history of successes if one interprets these efforts as presenting us with honorific definitions of art that participate in various multidisciplinary efforts at self-understanding understood in terms of their original place at particular times in history.  My take on this is something like what Hegel referred to by saying that in a culture Spirit comes to self-understanding through dialectic, but without the transcendent metaphysics or any notion of progress towards an end-point (there is progress, but it is relative.)  Oddly, in Margolis's effort to show how Weitz misinterprets Wittgenstein, he reconstructs, by accident, Weitz's own discovery, i.e. that definition of art in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions is not going to happen, but that supposed definitions of this sort are best seen as honorific definitions that focus our attention on one central property or type of property.  I argued that this is done through definition as metaphor.  Margolis observes that Wittgenstein is "plainly open to admitting a great many different kinds of definitions," is willing to impose limitations on open concepts such as "game" for some limited purposes, and that Aristotle's definition of tragedy, which is an attempt to capture the essence of tragedy, would not therefore be problematic for Wittgenstein.  Again, I am not interested here in Wittgenstein interpretation:  if Margolis is right, however, about Wittgenstein, so much the better, since the position is, I am convinced, right.  More interesting is that Margolis misinterprets Weitz since he says "what Weitz might regard as failed essential definitions of the realist kind may, in Wittgenstein's tolerant sense, actually be successful in their own way..." (319)  The point attributed to Wittgenstein was exactly Weitz's point when he brought up that these failed essential definitions of the realist kind should be seen as honorific definitions and therefore successful in their own way!  Margolis thinks that Aristotle's definition is successful in this way, and so do I, and so, as I read Weitz, does Weitz.  Well, as it turns out, once we get past all of this silliness about correct readings of Wittgenstein and Weitz, Margolis is deeply right about definition, and right when he goes on to say that Stephen Davies (and many other contemporary philosophers of art) makes a serious mistake when he insists that a definition of art must be in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions.  Margolis says that Davies "agrees with Weitz about what a proper definition requires" (219) which is not quite right since, although Weitz believes that a proper "real" definition of art would be of this sort, a proper honorific definition of art does not have to meet this standard.  As Margolis observes, Wittgenstein is tolerant of many different kinds of definitions. (219).  Further, "a 'defective' definition of the essentialist sort...may, nevertheless, be a complete success in terms of a reasonable reading of its philosophical contribution."  (219)  Weitz (and I) would agree with this point, although I would say that there is another, more valuable, kind of essentialism, in which essences are quasi-fictional and changing objects that can actually be captured quite well by honorific definitions.  Aristotle's definition of tragedy is one of these!  So, where Margolis speaks of the skewed influence of Weitz's misinterpretation of Wittgenstein, I would speak of the skewed influence of misreadings of Weitz himself.  Margolis' take on this is that "real" definitions need not be "essentialist" i.e. in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions.  I would make almost the same point using different language, namely that essentialist definitions of art need not be "real" definitions, i.e. definitions in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions.

In the end, I am not opposed to Margolis' idea that a definition is "realist" if it addresses the "nature" of a thing, although I find it odd when he says that a "real" definition (in his sense of "real," not in Weitz's) "needs only to be 'usable' in the way ordinary usage tolerates." (220) Well, that would make it "real," I suppose, but not particularly good or true, even in a pragmatist sense of "true."  A good definition must not only be usable and tolerable to ordinary usage (actually, that might be a serious disadvantage!):  it should be true in the sense of powerful and fruitful in the realm of reasoned discourse.  Aristotle's definition of tragedy, again, fits the bill (sometimes more successfully, sometimes  less so at different times in history), but so too does Clive Bell's formalist definition of art and Tolstoy's expressionist definition of art, and so also Collingwood's Crocean "intuitionist" version of expressionism. 

Margolis is right on the mark in my view when he says that Berys Gaut's cluster account view of defining art does not show how it is "genuinely serviceable as a replacement for a definition."  (220), although one could say, to be fair to Gaut, that cluster accounts could serve as one kind of definition among the many kinds that Margolis, through Wittgenstein, is otherwise allowing.  Margolis also thinks that the cluster account really only captures the kind of usage of terms we find in the teaching of those terms to children.

Despite my criticisms I think this essay to be one of the most insightful (could we expect less from Margolis?) in recent aesthetics.  Margolis is dead right when he says "I see no reason why one must choose, disjunctively, between Aristotle and Nietzsche...":  the rest of the paragraph is wonderful, but I have no time to type it out in full.

What is the point to defining art? Heck, what is the point of philosophy?

This post will not be an attempt to define art.  Based on the theory I am about to propose I do not even think I am in a very good position to provide a definition of art, at least not this year.  My theory about defining art is more a theory about philosophy, about philosophical definition in general, with the question "what is art?" being my paradigm of a philosophical question.  Although I think that the project of defining art goes well beyond the task of distinguishing art from non-art objects I will begin with the quote from Robert Stecker's Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art:  An Introduction  (Rowman and Middlefield, 2010.)  In the summary of his chapter titled "What is Art?" Stecker says that there are three groups of proposals for distinguishing art from nonart.  Begin with the first: "First, simple functionalist proposals identify one valuable property that many artworks share, and claim that this is the defining feature, the essence of art.  Whether representation, expression, form, or the aesthetic is put forward as the relevant property, simple functionalism is never able to cover the whole extension of art, struggles to accommodate bad art, and to exclude all instances of nonart."  (120)  The functionalist theories are the great classical definitions of art, often expressed in terms of "art as" as much as "art is," for example "art as imitation" or "art is expression," or "art as experience."  There is the Imitation theory, the Expression theory, the Formalist theory, and so forth.  These are traditionally associated with specific philosophers.  The usual view of these theories, as expressed in this passage by Stecker is that they are failures.  My view of this is very different.  It derives from Morris Weitz's famous article of 1956  "The Role of Theory in Aesthetics,"  The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15:  27-35.  Everyone in aesthetics remembers Weitz's attack on essentialism and thus on the functionalist theories of art.  Few however remember his actual main point, that although a "real" definition of art (i.e. one in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, like the definition of "triangle") will never be forthcoming, theory is still important since the great functionalist definitions of art in the past, when seen as honorific definitions of art, were actually immensely valuable.  What makes them valuable is the "debates over the reasons for changing the criteria of the concept of art" i.e. the reasons given for "the chosen or preferred criterion of excellence and evaluation."  It is these debates, Weitz argues, that make the history of aesthetics an important study:  "The value of each of the theories resides in its attempt to state and to justify certain criteria which are either neglected or distorted by previous theories."  He gives, as an example, the Clive Bell/Robert Fry theory that "Art is significant form."  He takes this not as a "real" definition of art but as a "redefinition of art in terms of the chosen condition of significant form."  The definition is taken by Weitz to have a pragmatic dimension.  It is a recommendation for a certain set of actions.  It also involves the notion that sometimes that has a current definition can be redefined.  This is also neglected in discussions of Weitz.  That it is neglected is important since all of aesthetic theory since Weitz's article has been based on a certain reading of Weitz.  So to go back and reread Weitz is to reread the last sixty years of aesthetics in the analytic tradition..actually to reread the analytic tradition itself. What does "Art is significant form" mean?  It means, "In an age in which literary and representational elements have become paramount in painting, return to the" formalist ones since these are native to painting.  Thus, he concludes:  "the role of the theory is not to define anything but to use the definitional form, almost epigrammatically, to pinpoint a crucial recommendation to turn our attention once again" to formalist elements.  When the great theories of art are taken as honorific definitions Stecker's objections become irrelevant.  The objection that there are things that are art that do not serve the essential function proposed simply treats an honorific definition as a real definition.  This is also true for the objection that they may include things that are not art but serve a similar function.  It is true that the honorific theories do not handle bad art, but that is also a virtue of the theory since it recognizes that the great definitions of art were interested in telling us something essential about the value of art and not simply in telling us how to sort things properly called art from things not properly called art, say in W. E. Kennick's classical example of the warehouse.  Honorific definitions of art are therefore relatively immune to counterexamples.  You can come up with an example of something most would consider art that has no interesting formal properties, but this is not argument against the idea that one ought to concentrate on making and appreciating art with such properties. 

The only problem I can see with Weitz's approach is that he misconceives the nature of essences.  If essences are patterns in experience that are real but changing (as I have argued in various writings) then honorific definitions can be paired with them so that the recommendation to focus on this property could be based on the claim that this is the essence as it has emerged at this time in history.  An honorific definition can be true in the sense of "true" in which truth is something that emerges historically, something that happens.  Honorific definitions of true on the pragmatist theory of truth, which is the one I follow.  Thus, on this view, the history of aesthetics is not a history of failure but rather a history of successes in which different honorific definitions are successively offered.  Each great theory of art is actually a manifestation of the spirit of its time (in the sense that artists, philosophers, and others in the culture share certain questions and attempt to resolve certain burning issues of the time) and is paired with at least some of the great artworks of the time.  

An excellent example of this process working in a practical context and a specific art form is Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's idea that "architecture is a decorated shed."  This theory captures the essence of architecture for them at a particular time in history and also exemplifies an entire theory and practice of architecture, i.e. their version of postmodern architecture, one that is not intended just to cover their own buildings but also to reinterpret the best buildings of the past and provide a framework for future architectural work.  Great definitions are epigrams of this sort, to use Weitz's term.  "Decorated shed" is itself a concentrated metaphor that needs a lot of theoretical and historical knowledge in order to fully understand. 

So the future of theory for each person who believes with Socrates that the unexamined life is the only one worth living (i.e. for each human who is a philosopher in the sense of being a lover of wisdom) is to create one's own honorific definition of art, one that gives the function of art now, and also for the future as an object of personal or group vision. 

As time goes on, great definitions of art (and of subgroups like architecture) lose their liveliness, richness, and creative force, and need to be replaced by new definitions.  They may however be revived a new in a new context, and this is why we have new versions of the expression theory or the imitation theory popping up again in history.

Stecker then gives the second strategy:  "Second, there are proposals derived from the view that our classificatory practice is best captured by something other than a definition:  by similarity to various paradigms (family resemblance), by clusters of properties forming several sufficient conditions, by prototypes."  This is how Weitz's lesson (he used the term "family resemblance") has been interpreted.  But, as I have shown, the point is to avoid trying to capture classificatory practices.

However, Weitz was right that paradigms are important.  To go back to Clive Bell, he took the paintings of Giotto and Cezanne as his paradigms of art (Giotto representing values to be recovered, Cezanne representing a radical new interpretation of those values, i.e. "significant form" that  that gives new life).  I argue that these paradigms flesh out the meaning of the metaphor "significant form."  They are the practical real-world basis for the honorific definition proffered.  By saying that art is essentially significant form Bell is saying (unconsciously, since he did not realize he was offering an honorific definition, unlike Venturi and Brown) that this is the new center of art, and that everything else in art is art to the extent that it shares in this.  Unfortunately, Weitz's insight has been taken to mean something very different; that we can only have real definitions as clusters of sufficient conditions.  This is a form, I believe, of opting out of the Socratic quest, of not taking a stand, of providing a merely formal solution to the problem of defining art.  The question is whether something essentially resembles the paradigms, and if it does it partakes in the creative power of art at that particular moment in this history of spirit.  

The third approach to definition mention by Stecker consists of "relational definitions comparing the institutional and historical views" and I will discuss these in some later posts.  I'll just say here that the great institutional theories of art were also paired with paradigmatic works, for example Duchamp's Fountain in the case of George Dickie and Warhol's Brillo Boxes in the case of Arthur Danto.   So there is reason to believe that these theories too were honorific definitions of art pretending to be real definitions of art in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions.

Stecker concludes that "the concept of art is a vague concept, and this means that any proposed definition either has to capture this vagueness or be considered to some extent an idealization of the actual concept."  (121)  The concept of art, I argue, is not a vague concept:  it is a philosophically contested concept.  Any proposed definition that makes the concept vague loses out on the importance Weitz saw for theory in art.  Redefinition, which is essential to honorific definitions, is a matter of idealization, to be sure.  We create new definitions based on a vision of a fiction (a rich and deep metaphor like "significant form" or "decorated shed") grounded on chosen paradigms and values and expressed in a metaphor ("art is significant form") elaborated by a philosophical narrative and also by practice itself (for example in the work of Venturi and Brown, or any other seminal architectural firm).  These fictions, when successful in encouraging creative work, are what make life meaningful.  

Unlike Weitz, however, I do not think that new powerful definitions simply recover things that are neglected:  rather they are truly creative in addition to this.  Architecture as decorated shed was neglected by modernist architecture, but the idea is not just a recovery of something that was always there:  it also carries a projection into the future, a vision of what can be, an "idealization" as Stecker put it. 

Interested in learning more?  See my book:  Thomas Leddy The Extraordinary in the Ordinary:  The Aesthetics of Everyday Life.  Broadview Press, 2012.  Available at Amazon in paperback, and an electronic version at google where you can also find most of the first 47 pages including the table of contents.  You can also buy it fro  Broadview.