Taking a Walk with Bob: Stecker's Approach to Everyday Aesthetics

These comments were  originally intended to be given at the American Society for Aesthetics Pacific Division meeting in Berkeley that was to meet last week but was cancelled due to the current pandemic.  I rewrote them somewhat after seeing Bob's intended reply.   All references are to Intersections of Value:  Art, Nature and the Everyday by Robert Stecker, Oxford University Press, 2019.

I went for a walk with Bob yesterday.  He is such a sensitive observer not only of art but also of nature and the world of human artifacts.  Both of us are pluralists about these things.  So there wasn’t much to disagree about, although I did have one or two worries and some thoughts off in my own direction.  First, we walked through the U.C. Botanical gardens, which, although not a pristine natural ecology, certainly offers a lot of occasions for nature appreciation.  Bob explained how there is no one appropriate way to appreciate nature.  There are many models for nature appreciation, and each can be useful under some circumstances.   We looked at a potted cactus in the museum store and we were able to appreciate it even when it was taken out of its natural context.  We looked at the meadow there as if it were a landscape painting, and that was enjoyable in its own way.   However, our fiends Allen (Carlson) and Glen (Parsons) were horrified.  They insisted that we look at nature with a lot of scientific knowledge as background.  Bob and I agreed that, although scientific background can be helpful, it is not necessary.  In short, knowing the chemical composition of a flower doesn’t normally enhance our appreciation of it.  We also agreed that it can sometimes be aesthetically enhancing to look at something in the natural environment using one’s imagination.   

  

From there, we moved on to downtown Berkeley, and we turned our attention to artifacts.  Bob took special interest in a frying pan that someone had used to make a satellite dish.  Some would argue that there is something aesthetically wrong with this, since being a satellite dish is not the proper function of a frying pan.  Bob took a somewhat different position.  He said that some artifacts are aesthetically indifferent, having no aesthetic value, negative or positive, and that this might be an example.  (143)  But I was not sure how you can say that anything is totally without aesthetic value.  In fact I thought that the frying pan satellite dish looked cool.  Isn’t “looking cool,” sometimes at least, an aesthetic attribute?   Bob himself alluded to the possibility that the satellite dish looked “functionally interesting.”  But isn’t “interesting” often an aesthetic predicate?  People use it all the time in artworld contexts.  As with nature, this might be an example of appropriate use of imagination.

Bob replied that even though I might find this artifact to be aesthetically indifferent, I must find some artifacts to be aesthetically indifferent, neither aesthetically good nor aesthetically bad.  I thought about this for a while.  I agreed that at any particular moment I might find something aesthetically indifferent, but that at another time I might not, and this would be true for just about any artifact.  Of course this would introduce an element of subjectivity into everyday aesthetics, but only on this matter of aesthetic indifference.  I also thought one can't say that one prefers a simple cast iron frying pan to other types (as Bob has done) and also say that one finds it aesthetically indifferent.  That would be a contradiction.    

Fortunately, Bob did not think everything that violated its proper function was aesthetically indifferent.   For example, he directed my attention to a church which had been re-purposed as a home.  He noted that although the church once had its proper function as a church, it no longer does.   Bob thought neither the building’s proper function nor its current capacity function is uniquely relevant to aesthetic appreciation.  He further thought that full appreciation of the church-as-house requires recognition both of its history and of its current function.  (143)  I found this idea, which reminded me of his pluralist approach to appreciation of nature, appealing  I thought, however, that the idea of “full appreciation” needed the following clarification, viz. that a fuller appreciation is one which draws on more than one model of appreciation, and this is true both in nature and in artifact appreciation.    

But I was disappointed when Bob returned to the claim that some objects are aesthetically indifferent.  Arguing against Carlson and Parsons’ theory that functional beauty is a matter of something’s look fitting its function, Bob insisted that, generally speaking, can openers do this but are aesthetically indifferent.  I wondered whether this was true.  I was reminded of Beatrice Wood’s defense of Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” in which she said that plumbing is one of the great aesthetic achievements of America.  How do you respond to people who say that ordinary urinals, and can openers, are beautiful precisely because their look fits their function?  Le Corbusier and Sullivan tended to say things like this too.  In fact, this seems to have been the meaning of the functionalist movement in architecture.  Even an ordinary can opener can be aesthetically interesting if looked at from this perspective.  Sure, today, unless we are hard-core functionalists, we do not often find things beautiful just because they fit their function well.  But this is a matter of taste, and taste swings with changes in fashion.  

Also it is a matter of how one defines "fitting its function."  I wondered whether functionalism has ever been just about whether things look fit for their function in a narrow sense.  It seems to have been more a matter of a pared-down style that takes certain functional features to, in Nelson Goodman’s sense, exemplify in certain ways. 

Bob said, no no no, none of this Beatrice Wood talk, if you want to see a really attractive can opener you have to come with me into this Williams-Sonoma store.   Turns out that Bob has a real taste for this sort of stuff.   He thinks that design features of the sort you see in such a store, ones that have what he calls “formal aesthetic interest,” are necessary for ordinary artifacts to have aesthetic value.  (146)  I kind of doubt that, as we shall see.

Let’s consider whether, as Bob claims, it is the different design features of such utensils that makes them aesthetically compelling, i.e. variable colors and unexpected shapes, features that, as Bob puts it, “please the eye and engage the mind in forcing it to wonder whether they serve some purpose or are just decorative.”  (146) This does happen sometimes.  But what struck me on this occasion was Bob’s stylistic preference.  He reminded me of postmodern architects and designers.  As opposed to the advocates of functionalism, these figures, prominent in the 1980s, called on us to bring back decoration, without disregarding function entirely.   

Now I confess that I’ve purchased one or two things in stores like this.  But I kind of feel sleezy about it.   Maybe it’s the remains of a youthful Marxism, but isn’t there something a bit wrong about putting a lot of value on such commodities?  Or does my discomfort come from a different source?  Could the problem be more one of excess, of gilding the lily, of a kind of upscale kitsch?  

With these thoughts in mind, we turned to an aisle devoted to decorated plates.  We agreed that attractive designs can enhance the usefulness of these items. (146)  More generally (as Stephen Davies put it) something is functionally beautiful if it has aesthetic properties that contribute positively to satisfying its main function.  Bob elaborated this in relation to some plates on display.  He saw them as not only having shapes that make them better for consuming food but also as having a beautiful visual pattern that would enhance the experience of a meal.   He argued that although such patterns do not make the plates function better as plates, they serve as a secondary aesthetic function that also contributes to functional beauty.  (147)

Although I understood the distinction, I had a problem with separating the different aspects of this in my own experience.  How could the functional beauty aspect be separated from the aesthetic beauty aspect?   Bob says that “the aesthetic features do not strictly have to enhance the primary function of an artifact to contribute to its functional value” (148), which seems to be true.  But what I find more interesting is when he says that, although “the aesthetic function and the food-containing function of plates are distinguishable … they are wrapped together in expectations, even norms perhaps, about the role dinnerware should play in having certain types of meals.”  (148)  What this “wrapped together” means to me is that the distinction of functions is somewhat artificial.  Moreover, it is precisely when functional and aesthetic beauty are easily distinguished that you have a piece which lacks unity and appropriate seriousness.  This may have been the problem with postmodernism, and why the style had such a short life-span.  The decorative elements seemed to be added on gratuitously.  

When Bob says, “a design property contributes to functional aesthetic value if it enhances an aesthetic experience in which the artifact plays a central role when performing it primary function or functions.” (148) it is hard to disagree.   But he also sums up his position in this way: “I claimed that ordinary artifacts have aesthetic value only when they have formally interesting designs”  (150)  That seems wrong to me since it implies a kind of dualism (function vs. aesthetically interesting design) and a rejection of the holism he elsewhere accepts.  Also, sometimes ordinary objects look visually interesting and have aesthetic value but not for formal or design reasons, for example a front yard that expresses the owner’s personality. 

Because of the joy he took in fancy cutlery I directed Bob to Chez Panisse, my favorite restaurant in Berkeley.  He thought that in evaluating artifacts we need to think of their role in an overall way of approaching life.  It struck me that this was in line with his holism.  First, he focused on the experience as a whole, and now on life style as a whole. He talked about experience as embedded in a larger appreciative enterprise, i.e. “the identification and evaluation of the way of life in which the artifacts, their use, and the experiences they generate is understood and evaluated.” (153) And he observed that one does this in appreciating art as well.  Bob is also sensitive to the interplay of different kinds of value cognitive, ethical, and aesthetic, and to how these values “interact or conflict in each way of life.” (154)

But the ethical dimension might pose a problem for the Chez Panisse experience.   As Bob put it, a life in “which eating exquisite food in an exquisite environment is highly valued, but there is complete indifference to the poor and hungry” would be a bad life. (157)  Yet, although I thought this was probably true, I wondered how it should play out in practice.  Would we be ethically allowed to appreciate an experience at Chez Panisse while not thinking about the suffering of the homeless?  Could we enjoy the experience as long as we tried to do something to help them later? Or does engagement with exquisite aesthetic experience in itself show complete indifference to suffering?  

  

After our walk and when I got home I couldn’t stop thinking about the whole issue surrounding the can opener.   Bob uses the example to counter Carlson and Parsons’ theory that something is functionally beautiful if its form fits its functions.  Their theory is quite technical.  Based on Kendall Walton's concept of categories, they argue that an object looks fit when, viewed under a functional category, it is perceived to have no contra-standard features and has, to a high degree, variable features indicative of functionality.  In response, Bob writes, writes, if I may quote at length, “First, regarding the purported aesthetic property of looking fit, the fact is that many artifacts are aesthetically indifferent even though they are well designed to fulfill their function or functions on whichever conception of function that is relevant to appreciation.  Further, the artifact’s ability to fulfill its function may be quite visible without this making the artifact aesthetically valuable.  That is, it may have design features that give it variable features that are indicative of functionality without making that object aesthetically valuable in any way.  The basic metal can and bottle cap opener tends to open cans and remove bottle caps quite efficiently.  Because its design is well known, simple visual inspection may reveal its aptness to fulfill these functions.  But this is not sufficient to make it aesthetically interesting or valuable.  The can opener looks fit in the sense defined above" [i.e. “occurs when an object, viewed under a functional concept, has only standard features"] (144-5).  "Hence looking fit per se is not an aesthetic property, at least not one that has any implications for aesthetic value." (145)

What exactly is meant by “looks fit for its function?”  The phrase is quite uncommon.  When I Googled it, the only users were Carlson, Parsons, and following them, myself and Bob.  “Looking fit” is much more common.  It registers about half a million hits on Google, most of which have to do with the physical fitness.  Although it might make sense to simply stipulate what it means based on Parsons and Carlson I am more interested in what it might mean torn away from that narrow context, as when we might ask someone about a bar in a former church, do you think this building looks like it fits its current function?  What is a natural way to talk about fitting form and function?  

I tend to think that the ordinary houses I see on my walk to work look like they fit their function if they look good to live in.  But, as with the plates Bob and I were looking at, it seems difficult to separate this issue in my mind from whether or not they look good, period.  That is, if I were looking for a house to buy or rent I would also want it to look good, to be aesthetically attractive.  It seems obvious that if something is designed well then it looks good. 

What does it mean to say that something looks like it fits its function?  Are we simply saying it looks like it will do its job?  Are we simply predicting whether it will do its job?   But wouldn’t that be true of most of the houses I see on my walk, the only exception being the one recently gutted by a fire (although, to be sure, a walk in gutted districts of a major city, might find houses that look fit for their function much rarer).

So, is functionality just a minimum condition for attractiveness in houses?   Or is something different happening when we say that something looks good to live in, which is what I take us to mean when we say a house is functionally beautiful.  Are we making a prediction about how well the house will fit its function, such a prediction seeming to have little aesthetic about it?  But, again, it is really hard to separate functionality from aesthetics when it comes to houses once we get beyond the minimal interpretation of what “functionality” means.  Shouldn’t we distinguish here between thin and thick  functionality, only the later having to do with functional beauty?  Again, what does it mean to say that a can opener looks like it will actually open cans?  Isn’t this just a prediction of functionality (a thin one) based on looking at something?  Is it really a characterization of something’s look?   I think not.  Prediction of functionality is very different from functional beauty, and functional beauty is ultimately not separable from beauty as such.

Here is another way to look at it.  Even between two can-openers we can be asked to choose which is more attractive.  Similarly, between any two houses one can decide which one looks nicer.  Looking nice seems at first to have nothing to do with functionality.  But what about “looks nice to live in”?  If a house looks nice to live in then most would agree that it looks fit to fulfill its function.  The function of a house is to BE nice to live in.  (Admittedly that might not have anything to do with looking nice: for example it might be nice to live in this house because the people are nice.) You might say “that house looks nice but I couldn’t picture living in it,” but normally “looks nice” is short for looks nice to live in.  And to say that a house looks nice but you couldn’t picture living in it sounds odd. 

So I cannot agree with Bob that there are well-designed artifacts that are aesthetically indifferent.  (Maybe there is a scale here, and ordinary can openers as well as battery rechargers are relatively indifferent.  But isn’t this a problem with our civilization, one that such design reformers as William Morris and the Bauhaus, as well as the functionalists generally, rightly tried to oppose?)  An important function of most artifacts is to look good:  a good knife should not only cut well but look good.  Looking good is one of the functions of kitchen utensils in general.  Functionality in the thick/rich sense cannot be separated from aesthetics.  Although we might be able to predict by inspecting it that a can opener will be able to open a can adequately, this has nothing to do with aesthetics.  But if we look at a can opener and say that it looks like a nice can opener then we are referring to an aesthetic quality, albeit a low level one.  “Nice,” as I have argued elsewhere, is like “pretty” in this regard:  one of the neglected low-level aesthetic qualities.  Nor does it have to be a fancy Williams-Sonoma product to have such qualities.  

Bob denies that the ordinary can opener can be aesthetic because such things are not aesthetically valuable.  And yet they may have aesthetic properties.  For example, the can opener can still be nice-looking.   Similarly, I wouldn’t say that a nice looking house is necessarily aesthetically valuable, if by “aesthetically valuable” you mean something we might find in the architectural guidebooks.  Standards for “aesthetically valuable” are a lot higher than standards for “looks nice,” “pretty,” “looks good,” or “charming.”  Something can have aesthetic value in the sense of having aesthetic properties without being aesthetically valuable in the sense of having high level aesthetic values.  Such things, however,  would not be aesthetically indifferent.  

However, I like resolving what Carlson and Parsons called the problem of indeterminacy (how to determine the right function for evaluation) in Bob’s way more than in their way.  That is, it is not a matter of eliminating all functions but one, the proper function, but a matter of considering all functions.  Looking at the Plaza Major one should consider both the original and the current function in order to get a better, richer, appreciation of it.  This goes along not only with pluralism but with the idea of combining different perspectives…a matter already discussed with respect to appreciation of nature.   

Bob says “to make an adequate overall judgment one must weigh up all these considerations.” (149)  I would go a bit further: one must not only weigh considerations but synthesize approaches.  Bob considers the Zaha Hadid designed museum at Michigan State.  Here, it is clear that he is concerned with the fact that some functions do not work well together, for he says that “an evaluation of the overall aesthetic effectiveness of the museum should consider this defect [that it would work better in its own space] and weigh it against the building’s virtues.”  I am just not surely that weighing here is as important as synthesis, but I am not sure this is a point of real disagreement between us.

On an issue of great concern to everyday aestheticians, whether we should treat the ordinary as ordinary,  Bob answers very sensibly:  “this is a problem if only one way of seeing the chair is required for aesthetic appreciation” and he replies “this is not even true for art or for nature, much less for everyday artifacts.” (151)  Again, on this, Bob and I both take a pluralist approach and we both think that synthesis of more than one approach is best.  One can take a relatively disinterested approach and one can look at it in terms of intentions and context (taking these two stances alternatively for example).   Bob wisely wants to “leave room for standing back and looking at an artifact in a more detached manner” (151) but also recognizes that this is just one way of looking at it.  He also thinks that in this regard there is no big difference between aesthetic appreciation of art and of artifact, although, of course, there are many differences between the two, some of which he describes.  I think that this is a great way of resolving a continuing debate in everyday aesthetics.   Overall, there is no radical break between artifact and art-oriented aesthetic appreciation. 

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. 

Can there be a single, comprehensive, correct interpretation of an artwork?

Philosopher Robert Stecker (in "Art Interpretation" in Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Literature ed. David Davies and Carl Matheson, Broadview Press, 2008) argues that "questions about the interpretations of artworks not only can have correct answers but a single, comprehensive correct answer" although he also thinks this view can be consistent with the idea that there can be many perspectives on art that may produce equally good interpretations of the same work.  I think that Stecker is wrong, and that there can be no single, correct interpretation.  Stecker seeks, counter-intuitively, to combine Critical Pluralism and Critical Monism by reinterpreting Critical Pluralism to no longer deny the view that there can be a single correct interpretation of a literary work.  Part of the disagreement between Stecker and myself must be based on different ways of interpreting the term "true."  Stecker sees truth as a matter of correctness, and distinguishes this from acceptability.  The standard view of truth in the analytic tradition, to which Stecker belongs, is that truth is a matter of correspondence:  "snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white.  Sentences are the things that are true or false, and they are true if they correspond "point by point" with the facts that they describe.  I am more attracted to the pragmatist theory of truth, that truth is a matter of what works, and the Heideggerian theory of truth, where truth is something that emerges in the process in inquiry and has great significance.  Heideggerian truth is closer to wisdom than standard analytic versions of truth.  A pragmatist/Heideggerian approach to truth (PH truth) would downplay the distinction between truth and acceptability since it would not accept the reduction of truth to correctness or reduce acceptability to something purely subjective or fictional.  That is, the truth (as correctness) vs. acceptability disjunction, is based on a radical dualism between the objective and subjective which is denied by the theory of PH truth. 

Stecker assumes that "all correct interpretations about a given work are conjoinable into a single true interpretation" since standard logic tells us that true propositions, when joined, yield true propositions.  This, to me, shows a deep misunderstanding of the nature of literary interpretation.  Interpretations are not simply conjoined sentences proposed as truth.  They are, to be sure, a series of sentences, but unlike the realm of logic, the sequence of the sentences in the series is immensely important.  Interpretations are literary works in their own right.  We usually read them sequentially from beginning to end, or if we jump back and forth, we still see them as presented in a specific order in which later sentences and paragraphs illuminate what came before.  Moreover, it is less important that each sentence be true in some sense (many may be mythical, hypothetical, ironic, or even outright false) but that truth emerges from the reading of the interpretation as a whole.  A literary interpretation is an organic whole, and Stecker's entire analysis fails to see this because it is based on a model that allows sentences to be interchanged randomly without any concern for that fact.  To put this another way, a literary or other art interpretation is not true simply because it contains true sentences.  Moreover from a PH truth perspective these individual sentences can only be considered true insofar as they participate in the truth that emerges in the whole which is the interpretation.  Stecker has allowed himself to be seduced into belief in Critical Monism by this trick of formal symbolic logic, a trick that cannot be applied to the real world of art interpretation.

Stecker allows for interpretations that are acceptable but not true, but I would argue that his conditions for acceptability show that his notion of truth is anemic insofar as it excludes them.  For instance, he believes that enhancing appreciation can make an interpretation acceptable although not true.  What exactly would count as enhancing appreciation that did not also enhance our understanding of the work or of the world through the work?  I would suggest that you cannot do one without the other.  Stecker admits that acceptable interpretations must be consistent with some of the facts about the work.  I would argue that mere acceptability is too weak-kneed to be of much value in interpretation of art.  We do not want something that is just acceptable  As a teacher I think of the acceptable paper as one that passes, and no more:  a C+ paper, let's say.   It does, of course, make sense to speak of facts in a way that fits correspondence theory when we are speaking of uncontroversial truths about works of art.  A good literary interpretation minimally requires that it not be contradicted by the work itself.  For example, this novel contains sentence X.   However, talk about facts is usually governed by concepts that are conditioned by theories, and so in the interpretation of art, the non-controversial facts only provide a base-line for testing interpretation.

Stecker says he thinks of acceptable interpretations as neither true nor false, as simply "asking us to imagine the work in certain ways" i.e. "in terms of a further fiction" for example an ideology.  This is an important place where he goes wrong.  Imagining works in certain ways is one of the main paths by which truth emerges.  Imagining a work in such a way as to relate it to contemporary interests can help to bring the work alive again.  Bringing a work alive is a matter of making it have truth value, one perhaps it had lost.   Truth is something dynamic, something that happens, on the PH view.

Stecker says that when it is suggested that we think of King Lear as an example of theater of the absurd we should not think of this as asserting that King Lear actually represents characters in this modern way.  He thinks that interpreting works in such a way as to "shed light on the meaning of our own times" as Martin Esslin put it, is precisely not to be concerned with the truth of the interpretation.  It seems to me, rather, that this is the best way to address the truth, i.e. from the PH truth perspective.

Stecker thinks he can combine Critical Monism and Critical Pluralism by insisting that all the true interpretations can be combined into a comprehensive true interpretation, and yet (he adds) there may also be a multiplicity of interpretations that are acceptable because they enhance appreciation through getting us to see things in different ways, although they are neither true nor false.  The distinction is dualist in an important way:  it depends on a radical dichotomy between subjective and objection and, importantly, between fictional and non-fictional.  Stecker fails to recognize that essential role that fiction plays in the construction of truth, at least of the deeper truth that approaches wisdom.