John Muir can be taken as a guide to the aesthetics of nature, one that would point us in a somewhat different direction than is predominant today. In a Hegelian fashion, I propose Muir as providing a dialectical synthesis between the antithetical positions of an art-centered approach to aesthetics and a science-based approach. Actually, I would go beyond this artificially triadic way of looking at it an include two other approaches that synthesize well in Muir's thought: the religious or transcendentalist and the somaesthetic. In my last post I argued that Muir took an art-based approach to appreciation of nature as often as he took a science-based approach. Sometimes in the past I have argued for pluralism in this regard. Now I think that something more than pluralism is needed: that what we need is an approach that synthesizes the best of the various traditions of nature appreciation. Muir, and in particular his "A Near View of the High Sierras," is my model for this synthesis. Thus, whereas most contemporary aestheticians of nature take some form of cognitivism as their touchstone, scientific cognitivism being the most widely accepted view currently, I will take Muir's synthesis of the art-based approach, the scientific, the transcendentalist and the somaesthetic, as the touchstone.
Since the somaesthetic dimension is the least discussed I will comment on that first. (Richard Shusterman first developed the idea of somaesthetics and has elaborated it in his many books and articles.) There is an aesthetic of mountaineering and an embodied activity and this has a lot to do with paying very close attention the relationship between one's body (particularly the hands and feet) and the immediate environment. It also means being highly aware of where one's body is in relation to massive natural phenomena. Muir writes: "All my first day was pure pleasure; simply mountaineering indulgence, crossing the dry pathways of the ancient glaciers, tracing happy streams...." The emphasis here is with what he is doing...crossing, tracing, and so forth. Muir speaks of "groping my way, and dealing instinctively with every obstacle as it presented itself." This is somaesthetic engagement with the natural environment. Another passage that stresses the somaesthetic dimension is: "After gazing spellbound, I began instinctively to scrutinize every notch and gorge and weathered buttress of the mountain, with reference to making the ascent." This may seem to many to be a practical matter having nothing to do with aesthetics, but I think of it as part of his "pleasure of mountaineering." This is why the very next sentence (after this seemingly purely practical passage) is put in evocative images: "The entire front above the glacier appeared as one tremendous precipice, slightly receding at the top, and bristling with spires and pinnacles set above one another in formidable array." Muir is still concerned here with the physical task ahead of him, but he puts it in terms that are evocative of the sublime. Once again, the arts-based approach to aesthetic experience is evident here in his references to architecture, for example in his talk of spires and then latter of "massive lichen-stained battlements" and "crumbling buttresses" (70). This way of looking at things is lasting for Muir as he brings it up again when he says, "I thus made my way into a wilderness of crumbling spires and battlements, built together in bewildering combination, and glazed in many places with a thing coating of ice, which I had to hammer off with stones." Here the somaesthetic experience is synthesized with imaginative viewing of the landscape as though it were art.
The religious or transcendental dimension of Muir's aesthetics of nature is often disregarded by contemporary aestheticians. I think that they are worried about seeming to be mystical or religious. Noel Carroll in his "On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History" (also found in Carlson and Lintott's text) takes great pains, for example, to distinguish between his secular sense of "being moved" and a religious perspective. Readers of this blog can refer back to my entries on aesthetic atheism to get an idea about my views on religion. In short, I am an atheist but also believe that religious experience can be immensely valuable: I see it as a kind of aesthetic experience. Carroll is worried about reducing being moved by nature to "a residue of religious feeling" or what T. J. Diffey refers to as "a refuge of displaced religious emotions." Carroll thinks that the emotions aroused "can be fully secular and have no call to be demystified as displaced religious sentiment." (171) Talking about religious sentiment as "displaced" or as "residue" in this case does sound pretty negative. Let us turn again to Muir for illumination.
Muir, writing in 1894, is not squeamish about talking about God. He may actually have believed in God. His accounts of natural beauty are immensely moving, but cannot (to use the term against Carroll) be reduced to something that has no religious dimension at all. The religious language is also often incorporated into the poetic description as a series of religious metaphors. Notice the terms "evangel" and "redemption" in the following description of the cassiope:
"I met cassiope, growing in fringes among the battered rocks. Her blossoms had faded long ago, but they were still clinging with happy memories to the evergreen sprays, and still so beautiful as to thrill every fiber of one's being. Winter and summer, you may hear her voice, the low, sweet melody of her purple bells. No evangel among all the mountain plants speaks Nature's love more plainly than cassiope. Where she dwells, the redemption of the coldest solitude is complete. The rocks and glaciers seem to feel her presence, and become imbued with her own fountain sweetness...I strode on exhilarated, as if never more to feel fatigue, limbs moving of themselves, every sense unfolding like the thawing flowers, to take part in the new day harmony."
This is a fine example of the synthesis of perspectives I have been talking about. The arts-based perspective is found in the evocation of music in the "sweet melody" and the reference to bells. The somaesthetic can be found in the exhilaration in which one feels no fatigue (Shusterman writes about various somaesthetic practices that can turn body functioning into such an art.) The imaginative dimension (which I had not brought up earlier) is found in the happy memories; the religious in the reference to Nature's love and to redemption; and the scientific in accurate description of the flower.
Another passage that does much of this is, "How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! To behold this alone is worth the pains of any excursion a thousand times over. The highest peaks burned like islands in a sea of liquid shade. Then the lower peaks and spires caught the glow, the long lances of light, streaming through many a notch and pass, fell thick on the frozen meadows. The majestic form of Ritter was full in sight..." (69)
I cannot leave this post without mentioning the most dramatic somatic moment in this writing by Muir. While climbing Mt. Ritter, he comes to a point where he cannot find a hold and seems stuck and ready to fall, and is naturally terrified. He then writes, "But this terrible eclipse [his moment of terror] lasted only a moment, when life blazed forth again with preternatural clearness. I seemed suddenly to become possessed of a new sense. The other self, bygone experiences, Instinct, or Guardian Angel, - call it what you will, - came forward and assumed control. Then my trembling muscles became firm again, every rift and flaw in the rock as seen as through a microscope, and my limbs moved with a positiveness and precision which I seemed to have nothing at all to do." (72) Muir describes here an experience that is at once mystical (but without any specific ontological or theological commitment), somatic, and aesthetic. This was clearly a profound moment in his life and certainly the climax of the story.
At this point when one turns to the Carroll and his concern with whether the sentence "The Grand Tetons are majestic" can be appropriate, correct and true, one thinks that perhaps something is being missed here. Carroll writes: "we may be emotionally moved by a natural expanse - excited, for instance, by a towering waterfall. All things being equal, being excited by the grandeur of something that one believes to be of a large scale is an appropriate emotional response." Sure, but what about what happened to Muir during that moment on Mt. Ritter: is that an "appropriate emotional response" or is it too religious for Carroll's taste? I do not disagree with Carroll that "many of our emotional responses to nature have a straightforwardly secular basis," and I am sure we will find good evolutionary explanations for the kind of experience Muir has described. I just would not want to limit a non-religious or secular perspective to one that cannot give honor to this kind of experience.
With respect to evolutionary explanation, Carroll explains our survival interest in certain landscape by saying "open vistas give us a sense of security insofar as we can see there is no threat approaching." Perhaps, and yet there is nothing in Muir's descriptions of the landscape views from Mt. Ritter that indicates he was motivated in the least by concern for approaching threats. If someone says, "Your quasi-mystical experience is explained in secular terms by a great ancestor of yours feeling more secure when looking out on a landscape from a great height" this does not tell us much, even if true, about the aesthetic nature of that experience. On the other hand, Carroll also gives an evolutionary explanation of another type of aesthetic experience: at one point he found himself in an arbor "carpeted by layers of decaying foliage and moss" and he "imagined that in such a situation we might feel a sense of solace, repose, and homeyness." He thinks this might be caused "by our tacit recognition of refuge potential" (184) holding that his emotional response is causally triggered by the usefulness as a refuge. This feeling, he argues is not residual mysticism but "instinctually grounded." Carroll is certainly right that being aroused by nature is not always a matter of repressed religious response. This may be a case here. Muir himself describes a similar experience, but his description seems to have no religious dimension: "I made my bed in a nook of the pine-thicket....These are the best bedchambers the high mountains afford - snug as squirrel-nests, well ventilated, full of spicy odors, and with plenty of wind-played needles to sing one to sleep." (68-9). Here the inspiration is more related to the everyday aesthetics of the home than to transcendent religious experience.
I will close with Muir's description of "the most exciting pieces of pure wilderness...I ever discovered in all my mountaineering." This is the highest point of nature aesthetics, on my Muirian view (note that he refers to all of this as a picture...he truly is an advocate of the picturesque, but in this case as synthesized with the sublime!): "There, immediately in front, loomed the majestic mass of Mount Ritter, with a glacier swooping down its face nearly to my feet, then curving westward and pouring its frozen flood into a dark blue lake...the glacier separated the massive picture from everything else. I could see only the one sublime mountain, the one glacier, the one lake; the whole veiled with one blue shadow." It is right after this that he goes into the scrutinizing I earlier described as introducing a somaesthetic element to his experience.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Monday, February 10, 2014
Are art-mediated responses to be disregarded in appreciation of nature?
Aestheticians of nature frequently refer to John Muir in supporting the idea that art-mediated responses should be disregarded in our appreciation of nature. He is often described as an opponent of the concept of the picturesque. This is surprising given that in his book The Yosemite (1912) he uses the word "picturesque" positively at least eleven times. For example, he refers there to the picturesque Cathedral Rocks and picturesque oaks. The impression that Muir is opposed to the picturesque and to art-mediated responses to nature is usually based on a reading of his "A Near View of the High Sierra" to be found in Nature, Aesthetics and Environmentalism edited by Carlson and Lintott (from his book The Mountains of California, 1894) Here he says that "To artists, few portions of the High Sierras are, strictly speaking, picturesque." (64) However this is not to say that they lack this quality for Muir himself! He seems rather to be speaking here specifically of painters of his time. Even this seems a strange thing to say since there are many amazing paintings of Yosemite by artists of his own time, not to mention the works of later artists, such as photographer Ansel Adams. The paintings of Albert Bierstadt, for example Yosemite Valley, Yosemite Park (1868) and Thomas Moran, for example Domes of Yosemite (1904), show that Yosemite has long been a rich source for painters. More recently, consider the watercolor "Birch Lake, near Hetch Hetchy" by Stephen Curl (2012).
Muir has a theory for why he thinks that painters will find the Sierras problematic. He speaks of how the mountain landscape there is "not clearly divisible" into smaller units and how this fact makes it difficult to isolate "artistic bits capable of being made into warm, sympathetic, lovable pictures with appreciable humanity in them." Perhaps artists in 1894 had trouble using the Sierras to produce such effects. But this in itself is not an argument against seeing the Sierras from an artist's perspective. It may just be that artists from different periods will see different things. Well, actually, that's pretty much the way it is. It is not required to be picturesque that a landscape look like a picture by a typical painter of 1894. The landscape could be picturesque by looking like a painting by David Hockney, a contemporary landscape artist. That is, it doesn't have to be warm, sympathetic and lovable to be picturesque. Or, if readers balk at this expansion of the notion of the picturesque, it is certainly the case that "seeing something in nature as like a picture" is not itself limited to seeing it as like a picture by Claude Lorraine or like a picture by Bierstadt. Muir himself, I will argue, has a view of the picturesque that expands beyond that which is warm, sympathetic and lovable.
Muir actually says some very positive things about the picturesque in "A Near View." There he writes about how "on the head waters of the Tuolumne, is a group of wild peaks on which the geologist may say that the sun has but just begun to shine, which is yet in a high degree picturesque." (65) His description of this scene in terms of foreground, background and colors could have been made by a painter or a poet. Also, noteworthy in his description is his constant use of metaphor: he speaks of the "crystal fountains" of the Toulumne, the river "swaying pensively from side to side with calm, stately gestures past dipping willows and sedges....ever filling the landscape with spiritual animation, and manifesting the grandeur of its sources in every movement and tone." He even gazes repeatedly at the "glorious picture" and encloses it in a frame with his arms, speaking of it as being "ready and waiting for the elected artist." And he wishes that he himself knew how to paint, although he contents himself with mental "photographs" and "sketches" in his notebooks.
Following this description we have the humorous episode in which he encounters two artists, one of them Scottish (is it Moran?), who wanted to know whether he had come across a landscape "suitable for a large painting." He then describes this one at Toulumne meadows which had "excited my admiration." The humorous part is that although the artists are impressed by the colors they saw they are disappointed (at first) saying: "All this is huge and sublime, but we see nothing as yet at all available for effective pictures." The problem, for them, is that the foregrounds, middle-grounds and backgrounds are all similar. However, they are soon satisfied when "the whole picture [of what Muir previously saw and admired] stood revealed in the flush of the alpenglow." What they wanted was "a typical alpine landscape" which they weren't getting previously, but now they are. Notice that nowhere does Muir reject the beauty that the artists seek. Indeed he speaks of "feasting awhile on the view" that the artists enjoyed.
In the story, Muir decides to leave his companions to climb Mr. Ritter on his own. As soon as this happens one might think that his aesthetic references would no longer run into the realm of the arts (if contemporary aestheticians who take a cognitivist approach to the aesthetics of nature are right). And yet this is not what happens. In speaking of the Tuolumne river he says "what a fine traveling companion it proved to be, what songs it sang, and how passionately it told the mountain's own joy! Gladly I climbed along its dashing border, absorbing its divine music, and bathing from time to time in waftings of irised spray." And then "new beauty came streaming on the sight; painted meadows, late-blooming gardens, peaks of rare architecture." Each beauty is described in terms of a different art! Muir did not limit himself to the art of painting in his descriptions: music and architecture also play a role. Sculpture does too when he speaks of a scene "adorned with characteristic sculptures of the ancient glaciers that swept over this entire region." (67) The art of gardening is also mentioned, as when he says "pools at this elevation are furnished with little gardens."
It is true that the knowledge he had about geography also animates his experience. For example, recognizing that the waters lead eventually through the San Francisco Bay to the sea adds to the entire experience. It gives it a certain aura. However, this is not just geographical knowledge that informs perception. Rather, it is form of story-telling in which his experience of the mountains scenes he perceives is imaginatively enhanced by the story.
Yuriko Saito, a well known aesthetician of nature, takes another approach to this. She writes, "In contrast to the accompanying artists' pictorial appreciation of the landscape, Muir attends to the way in which the geological events are embodied in the rock formations, and celebrates nature's own story-telling without imposing his own vision and poetry upon it" ("Appreciating nature on its own terms" in Carlson and Lintott, p. 161.) My reading of Muir is somewhat different. I see him as a strong advocate of using arts-based viewing in his appreciation of nature. He did incorporate his knowledge of geological events into his perceptions and his descriptions of Yosemite. However, rather than this being in contrast to his artist friends and contrary to the picturesque I would say that this is a supplement to his experience that enhances his concept of the picturesque. I would agree that he did not impose his own vision and poetry on the landscape. However, it is clear that he has his own vision and that he constantly uses poetic metaphors in articulating this vision. In a sense he is using his own vision and poetry. The term "imposition" is supposed to imply something negative, something to be avoided, and it may be that some poetic visions or renderings of natural scenes seem like impositions (for example, ones that stress aesthetic properties that cannot be found when one is there). It is not clear to me why his own vision and poetry is any less an imposition than that of Bierstadt or Moran. In any case, I do not accept the idea of contemporary aestheticians of nature that nature has its "own story-telling" independently of the stories we tell about it. At best, we can say that the story Muir tells seems immensely fitting to those who have visited the same scenes.
Many aestheticians of nature have commented on these passages by Muir. They frequently make fun of the painters for their interest in finding something "alpine" to represent. However, remember that what the painters saw was "alpenglow" and that if Muir was opposed to the alpine picturesque one would think that he himself would be opposed to using this concept to describe his own aesthetic experiences. (alpenglow has been described in Websters as "a reddish flow seen near sunset or sunrise on the summits of mountains" and originates from the German Alpenglühen, from Alpen Alps + Glühen glow, first used in 1871.) But instead, as he hikes by himself, he writes of the rosy glow that gradually deepens in the evening and says, "This is the alpenglow, to me one of the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. At the touch of the divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness..." This is hardly someone taken only by the glories of geological science or nature's "own story" told through geology or natural science alone. Nor do we find here that Muir limited himself to perceiving the mountains as an artist would. This is a highly aesthetic experience of the sublime that partakes of the religious. This religious dimension is also to be found when he speaks of "the darkest scriptures of the mountains [the desolate scenes in the very high sierras]" as "illuminated with bright passages of love that never fail to make themselves felt when one is alone." (68) [see my next post for more on this.]
Muir has a theory for why he thinks that painters will find the Sierras problematic. He speaks of how the mountain landscape there is "not clearly divisible" into smaller units and how this fact makes it difficult to isolate "artistic bits capable of being made into warm, sympathetic, lovable pictures with appreciable humanity in them." Perhaps artists in 1894 had trouble using the Sierras to produce such effects. But this in itself is not an argument against seeing the Sierras from an artist's perspective. It may just be that artists from different periods will see different things. Well, actually, that's pretty much the way it is. It is not required to be picturesque that a landscape look like a picture by a typical painter of 1894. The landscape could be picturesque by looking like a painting by David Hockney, a contemporary landscape artist. That is, it doesn't have to be warm, sympathetic and lovable to be picturesque. Or, if readers balk at this expansion of the notion of the picturesque, it is certainly the case that "seeing something in nature as like a picture" is not itself limited to seeing it as like a picture by Claude Lorraine or like a picture by Bierstadt. Muir himself, I will argue, has a view of the picturesque that expands beyond that which is warm, sympathetic and lovable.
Muir actually says some very positive things about the picturesque in "A Near View." There he writes about how "on the head waters of the Tuolumne, is a group of wild peaks on which the geologist may say that the sun has but just begun to shine, which is yet in a high degree picturesque." (65) His description of this scene in terms of foreground, background and colors could have been made by a painter or a poet. Also, noteworthy in his description is his constant use of metaphor: he speaks of the "crystal fountains" of the Toulumne, the river "swaying pensively from side to side with calm, stately gestures past dipping willows and sedges....ever filling the landscape with spiritual animation, and manifesting the grandeur of its sources in every movement and tone." He even gazes repeatedly at the "glorious picture" and encloses it in a frame with his arms, speaking of it as being "ready and waiting for the elected artist." And he wishes that he himself knew how to paint, although he contents himself with mental "photographs" and "sketches" in his notebooks.
Following this description we have the humorous episode in which he encounters two artists, one of them Scottish (is it Moran?), who wanted to know whether he had come across a landscape "suitable for a large painting." He then describes this one at Toulumne meadows which had "excited my admiration." The humorous part is that although the artists are impressed by the colors they saw they are disappointed (at first) saying: "All this is huge and sublime, but we see nothing as yet at all available for effective pictures." The problem, for them, is that the foregrounds, middle-grounds and backgrounds are all similar. However, they are soon satisfied when "the whole picture [of what Muir previously saw and admired] stood revealed in the flush of the alpenglow." What they wanted was "a typical alpine landscape" which they weren't getting previously, but now they are. Notice that nowhere does Muir reject the beauty that the artists seek. Indeed he speaks of "feasting awhile on the view" that the artists enjoyed.
In the story, Muir decides to leave his companions to climb Mr. Ritter on his own. As soon as this happens one might think that his aesthetic references would no longer run into the realm of the arts (if contemporary aestheticians who take a cognitivist approach to the aesthetics of nature are right). And yet this is not what happens. In speaking of the Tuolumne river he says "what a fine traveling companion it proved to be, what songs it sang, and how passionately it told the mountain's own joy! Gladly I climbed along its dashing border, absorbing its divine music, and bathing from time to time in waftings of irised spray." And then "new beauty came streaming on the sight; painted meadows, late-blooming gardens, peaks of rare architecture." Each beauty is described in terms of a different art! Muir did not limit himself to the art of painting in his descriptions: music and architecture also play a role. Sculpture does too when he speaks of a scene "adorned with characteristic sculptures of the ancient glaciers that swept over this entire region." (67) The art of gardening is also mentioned, as when he says "pools at this elevation are furnished with little gardens."
It is true that the knowledge he had about geography also animates his experience. For example, recognizing that the waters lead eventually through the San Francisco Bay to the sea adds to the entire experience. It gives it a certain aura. However, this is not just geographical knowledge that informs perception. Rather, it is form of story-telling in which his experience of the mountains scenes he perceives is imaginatively enhanced by the story.
Yuriko Saito, a well known aesthetician of nature, takes another approach to this. She writes, "In contrast to the accompanying artists' pictorial appreciation of the landscape, Muir attends to the way in which the geological events are embodied in the rock formations, and celebrates nature's own story-telling without imposing his own vision and poetry upon it" ("Appreciating nature on its own terms" in Carlson and Lintott, p. 161.) My reading of Muir is somewhat different. I see him as a strong advocate of using arts-based viewing in his appreciation of nature. He did incorporate his knowledge of geological events into his perceptions and his descriptions of Yosemite. However, rather than this being in contrast to his artist friends and contrary to the picturesque I would say that this is a supplement to his experience that enhances his concept of the picturesque. I would agree that he did not impose his own vision and poetry on the landscape. However, it is clear that he has his own vision and that he constantly uses poetic metaphors in articulating this vision. In a sense he is using his own vision and poetry. The term "imposition" is supposed to imply something negative, something to be avoided, and it may be that some poetic visions or renderings of natural scenes seem like impositions (for example, ones that stress aesthetic properties that cannot be found when one is there). It is not clear to me why his own vision and poetry is any less an imposition than that of Bierstadt or Moran. In any case, I do not accept the idea of contemporary aestheticians of nature that nature has its "own story-telling" independently of the stories we tell about it. At best, we can say that the story Muir tells seems immensely fitting to those who have visited the same scenes.
Many aestheticians of nature have commented on these passages by Muir. They frequently make fun of the painters for their interest in finding something "alpine" to represent. However, remember that what the painters saw was "alpenglow" and that if Muir was opposed to the alpine picturesque one would think that he himself would be opposed to using this concept to describe his own aesthetic experiences. (alpenglow has been described in Websters as "a reddish flow seen near sunset or sunrise on the summits of mountains" and originates from the German Alpenglühen, from Alpen Alps + Glühen glow, first used in 1871.) But instead, as he hikes by himself, he writes of the rosy glow that gradually deepens in the evening and says, "This is the alpenglow, to me one of the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. At the touch of the divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness..." This is hardly someone taken only by the glories of geological science or nature's "own story" told through geology or natural science alone. Nor do we find here that Muir limited himself to perceiving the mountains as an artist would. This is a highly aesthetic experience of the sublime that partakes of the religious. This religious dimension is also to be found when he speaks of "the darkest scriptures of the mountains [the desolate scenes in the very high sierras]" as "illuminated with bright passages of love that never fail to make themselves felt when one is alone." (68) [see my next post for more on this.]
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Some Thoughts on Questions by Robert Ginsberg on the Aesthetics of Ruins
Robert Ginsberg, in a paper to be given at the American Society for Aesthetics meeting at the APA meetings in San Diego, raises several questions about the aesthetics of ruins. I am to comment on his paper, and these are preliminary notes towards those comments. Ginsberg has literally "written the book" on the aesthetics of ruins. I recommend that readers of this blog look at the excellent selections from that book, The Aesthetics of Ruins, made available for free on Google books. For now I will pose some of his questions and my thoughts about possible responses. (This by the way makes me guilty of writing the typical aesthetics paper which Ginsberg says is "a critique, correction, or expansion on some other author's paper.") Before proceeding I should note that I am currently teaching a seminar in which we are studying the aesthetics of nature: many of the issues there are relevant to the aesthetics of ruins as well.
Also, as a preliminary, I will describe an experience of mine during a recent visit to Mazatlan, Mexico. The downtown area contains many early 19th century and possibly late 18th century buildings which are now in ruins. The walls are still there, but when you look through the windows you see open sky and random vegetation. Other buildings have been renovated including the wonderful house of our friends where we stayed. Moreover, an elegant new restaurant has been opened in this area called The Presidio. It is very modernistic in design but is situated amongst the ruins of a former grand house. The exterior is completely intact in what looks like its former glory. The interior however contains some crumbling walls some of which still have the graffiti on them that was there when the place was renovated. The effect for restaurant-goers is that of being in a ruin transformed. Eating there under the open sky and looking out onto the various elements of the former house, now re-used, sometimes encased in glass, graced by minimalist fountains, with interesting art on some walls, is a fine experience. Its fineness is partly because of the ambiance created by its intimate references to old Mazatlan: the building has been owned for several generations by the same family, and there are large blown-up portraits of two ancestors in one corner.
"What shall we do with a ruin?" Ginsberg thinks that this is an odd question since the answer to the question "what we should do with a work of art?" is obvious ("we should experience and enjoy it") and the answer to the question about ruins is not so obvious. Yes, artworks have a function (or rather, have various functions). Given the many functions art can have, I doubt that "experience and enjoy it" is always the best answer to the question "what should we do with a work of art?" although this is surely an important function of art. The question posed about ruins feels different. It is somewhat more similar to "What should we do with a forest?" - a question we might ask in the aesthetics of nature. In the aesthetics of nature the term "should" could be taken as indicating an ethical question, in which case environmentalism ("preserve it!") comes in as a possible answer, or it could be taken as indicating an aesthetic question, i.e. how should we go about properly experiencing this natural object aesthetically. In any case, both with nature and with ruins "experience and enjoy it" is not, by itself, enough of an answer: the question is "how?" and "what else?"
In answering this question Ginsberg suggests: "a ruin might not have aesthetic value. It often is the wreck of a work that was of aesthetic value." There is a much-discussed view in the aesthetics of nature that everything in nature (or rather, everything in nature untouched by man) has positive aesthetic value. One could argue equally that everything period has positive aesthetic value (Paul Ziff once argued that anything could be viewed aesthetically), although this view would be opposed by many philosophers. More plausible is the view that everything has the potential to exhibit positive aesthetic value. That something is the wreck of a work that had aesthetic value does not mean that the wreck has no aesthetic value of its own now. It may no longer have the aesthetic value of the original, but this does not erase all aesthetic value and all potential for aesthetic experience. Moreover, there are new aesthetic values to be found in ruins and not to be found in the ruined originals. You lose something, you gain something. You gain nostalgic interest, for example.
"If we enjoy a ruin aesthetically, must we first determine that it is indeed aesthetically enjoyable?" What better way to determine that something is aesthetically enjoyable than to discover that it is aesthetically enjoyed? But then the question is whether the ruin is a proper object of aesthetic enjoyment. I think it is. One way that we can contextualize a ruin so that, in our seeing it, we see more than what our senses immediately tell us is to learn about it, especially about its history. Ginsberg asks whether such information is "decisive in indicating its aesthetic identity?" Well, "decisive" is a strong term. Expecting anything decisive in aesthetics is to expect too much. Information about past history is certainly important to aesthetic experience of ruins. But imagination is also important. Consider the experience of the owners of The Presidio as they dreamed about their future restaurant. Is it not part of the aesthetic experience of a ruin to think about its beauty when transformed into an elegant restaurant? Can we exclude imaginative projections from our aesthetic appreciation of such things? Does aesthetic appreciation have to be fully and entirely centered on the object as it is now? Is there even such a thing as "the object as it is now" that can be fully distinguished in our experience from the way we see the object?
"What on earth is the aesthetic identity of a ruin? Do we have to rely on the experience of others as a guide to what we may enjoy?" It is often argued that we need to rely on knowledge that can be given to us by experts, by art historians in art, and by naturalists in the aesthetics of nature...even that this knowledge contributes necessarily to the constitution of the object as an aesthetic object. Certainly having this knowledge changes our understanding and appreciation of these objects. But it is equally certain that sometimes our initial relatively ignorant gut reaction to the aesthetic object is of great value in itself. Ruins have moved me both when I have had a great deal of previous knowledge and when I have had very little. We often forget that appreciation is usually a temporal thing, and that the first encounter is just that. Appreciation of a waterfall, a ruin or a painting can change over time, becoming richer and deeper through the addition of knowledge, but also sometimes eventually becoming dead and tired through overexposure or through the cultural context moving on historically. We need to think more about the life span of an act of appreciation. We need to also think of our lifespans as appreciators who change over time as we mature and eventually decline. There is the life-span of the art work in our experience and then there is the life-span of the work within the culture too. This too involves birth, maturation and decay, with further possibilities of rebirth, or a renaissance. Those who stress the necessity of background knowledge seem to take as their paradigm only the mid-moment in one's career as an appreciator after the initial moments of ignorant appreciation (as a child, usually) and before the moments of appreciative decay and death. Similarly they tend to look only at the mid-moment of the career of the work-as-appreciated within the culture or worldwide. This may be a mistake endemic to aesthetics as a whole, but it is made evident especially when we consider the aesthetics of ruins, where the ruin may represent the old-age point of the life-span of an art object. (Here I depart somewhat from Ginsberg who sees the ruin as a different aesthetic object from the building or other art object from which it came. I think it can be both.) I am not saying, however, that ruins pose no possibilities for fresh vision and lively new aesthetic experience: Ginsberg has amply shown these possibilities in his writings.
"Most famous ruins are lauded with honorific terms: beautiful, sublime, wonderful. But are these expressions simply of outmoded or otherwise limited taste? A commercial or political interest may be at stake in uttering such terms, for they encourage the business of tourism while bolstering national pride." I agree that the classic terms of aesthetics are malleable. They mean whatever they mean within the context of their use. However, part of the context of the use is the history of the term and also the standard accepted uses as expressed in dictionaries. Another context to consider is the state of play among scholars and other interested parties with respect to the ongoing debates over the meaning of the term or over the essence of it referent, depending on one's preferred ontology and methodology. Yes, "beautiful" and other such terms can in certain contexts be outmoded, tired, and/or manipulative. Such terms can also be revived by using them in a context that gives them new life or recovers old life. Terms and correlated concepts have life-spans every bit as much as aesthetic objects and the humans and cultures that perceive them. "Beautiful" is a term that recently has had a near-death experience, but has also recently been revived in various ways. "Picturesque" is a term ready for the morgue, but is open for revival.
Ginsberg calls for analysis of ruins in detail to show their "aesthetic qualities, values, features, or potentialities." He has done that himself, in spades, in his book. I think though that only a small number of connoisseurs of ruins will ever respond to his proposal. The interest in ruins will never be as great as the interest in nature or in art. We are not talking about equivalents when we speak of aesthetics of art, aesthetics of nature and aesthetics of ruins. Still, the thrust of his approach is to point to deeper levels of appreciation than can be found by way of guidebooks to ruins, and I think this can be achieved.
"Shall we insist on a unique right approach [to ruins] or remain open to multiple ways of making something of value out of a ruin?" My answer is "yes" to the second option. This is also the approach I favor in the aesthetics of nature and the aesthetics of everyday life. Ginsberg also writes that "[t]hough the remnant may be used as material to prompt us to imagine the missing original, that is not the beauty of the ruin." Although I find this sentence attractive I would like to (in the spirit of pluralism) revise it to say "that is not the only beauty of the ruin." For surely part of the beauty of a ruin is found in the way that we see it imaginatively. So, the question remains whether the aesthetic greatness of the site during its heyday guarantees its beauty as a ruin, and the answer is that if one is able to imaginatively see the ruin in terms of its past glory then I would say that this is a guarantee, as much as guarantees are allowed in aesthetics. But it isn't required since one can appreciate it as an interesting setting for a restaurant or a garden without going into any imaginative exercises at all.
"Is beauty the right term for ruins? Is ruin-beauty distinct from art-beauty or nature-beauty?" Of course it is the right term, but only if we recognize that "beauty" has many uses. We can say "we saw some beautiful ruins outside Rome" and this seems quite appropriate although also, a little odd, since a ruin is the ruin of a beauty: but we all know that ruins can have their own beauty. Of course ruin-beauty is distinct from art-beauty and nature-beauty, and also design-beauty: "beauty" operates differently in each sub-domain of aesthetics. Aestheticians of everyday life, for example, have shown many ways in which everyday life beauty is distinct from art beauty.
Ginsberg thinks that the question "How does beauty work in a ruin? is not a question for art historians, since the ruin is not, or is no longer, a work of art. This is a task for the aesthetician." Is it then not a question for aestheticians how beauty works in a work of art? Who gets what tasks? If I google "aesthetics of ruins" I find that archaeologists are interested in this task. Is it any less their task than that of philosophers who do aesthetics? Do art historians have nothing to say about the aesthetics of ruins? I think not. Different disciplines take different angles often on a topic that is quite similar. Moreover, an aesthetician who, as Ginsberg does, devotes himself to showing the aesthetic qualities, values, features and potentialities of a class of things has somewhat expanded the definition of "aesthetician" although I have no problem with that. Ginsberg also asks "Are aestheticians asking for trouble by trying to theorize from concrete experience?" Yes, but that's fine too. And so I favor pluralism over the idea of one right approach. And yet, pluralism can seem to dissipate energies, whereas monism has the aesthetic cleanness of certainty.
"Shouldn't aestheticians be engaged in highlighting the aesthetic merit of candidates for the World Heritage [many of which sites are ruins]? Is not the aesthetic heritage of humanity at stake?" Since as far as I know no one has this job now the question might be whether we shouldn't promote this for some of our graduate students, somewhat like philosophers of Medical Ethics promote the idea of a philosopher working in a hospital helping to make ethical choices. This would depend on training our students to highlight the aesthetic merit of candidates for World Heritage sites: something we do not currently do... but we could (particularly, to be frank, if there was money available.) The process would involve creating/training connoisseurs or critics of ruins. I think philosophers could do this, but equally could art historians and archaeologists. In any case, philosophers would inevitably contribute to the project if only by way of thinking about the requisite theory of ruins and ruin beauty.
"Or is this asking too much for the aesthetic side of our lives? Is that side merely a minor feature of our shared humanity?" This is too big a question to answer fully here, but a short answer could be that if everyday aesthetics and what I have recently called "the aesthetics of life" is viable then aesthetics is hardly minor. At the very least it includes every taste choice (every choice involving application of an aesthetic property term) that we can disagree about. That covers an extremely large territory of human affairs. Ginsberg is well aware that, although hardly any aesthetician would assent to the idea that the aesthetic is "a window-dressing on what is really valuable in life," many others, including some philosophers, would agree. But briefly look at one popular theory that gauges what is valuable in life: utilitarianism. Utilitarianism says that the goal of life is happiness for the maximum number, and Mill's version says that quality is important. Mention quality and you mention the possibility of debate over the value of a pleasure, and this brings in aesthetics as the major determinant of value in the Millean version of utilitarianism: hardly mere window-dressing. But philosophers, even utilitarians, seem blind to this.
"The combat within disciplines might best give way to peace accords that allow a pluralism of approaches and theories to grow. But don't we work in a competitive scholarly world in which we receive praise for triumphing over others?" Ginsberg now turns to the issue of the social function of the very debates in which we engage as philosophers. In reading about the aesthetics of nature it seems obvious that those who have made the biggest splash are the ones who have put forth a plausible defense for a distinctive position. Moreover, it is clear that some positions are dominant whereas others, although considered deserving at least a refutation, are peripheral. In the aesthetics of nature, the position called scientific cognitivism is currently dominant. Allen Carlson's is probably the most successful position of this sort. Carlson has many followers, admirers, and co-defenders. An interesting powerful second place is given to what Arnold Berleant has called "the aesthetics of engagement." Berleant also has followers, admirers, and co-defenders. Other more peripheral but equally interesting theories include ones that emphasize imagination, ambience, and emotional response. I have advocated an arts-based approach to the aesthetics of the natural environment, a position that is definitely an outlier. My current view however is pluralist. I believe that each position has its place, that each model of aesthetic appreciation of nature can be of value, even ones currently out of favor, for example the landscape/scenery model where nature is seen as if it were a landscape painting. Of course consistency is possible only if the pluralist denies the monistic assumptions of most, if not all, of the other positions.
Pluralism (to follow up on Ginsberg's point) also is not academically interesting: it is not bold or dramatic, and it poses what most philosophers consider the danger of descending into radical relativism. The pluralist is not going to triumph over others. (This is not a complaint: just being realistic.) Moreover, pluralism is not aesthetically interesting as philosophy. One of my favorite essays in the aesthetics of nature is "Icebreakers" by Stan Godlovitch. The theory is that the one appropriate way to appreciate nature is to see it as mysterious and radically other than humanity. Godlovitch calls for an "acentric" approach to the aesthetics of nature. That means it should not be anthropocentric: it should not even be biocentric. Godlovitch provides an interesting counter to the scientific cognitivist position which still relies on human-constructed categories. His theory, however, seems ultimately indefensible largely because we humans cannot not be human, and so we cannot take an acentric position. This is not to say that we should accept anthropocentrism, which is the view that humans are the most important species on the planet or even (in one definition) the universe. I would hesitate to rank species for significance! We just inevitably take humans as the center of things, just as we take our selves as the very center of everything. Nonetheless, there is much to be gained by taking Godlovitch's position on occasion and in certain circumstances (as far as one can, as a human, anyway), although to adopt it as the right one view leaves out too much. Still, reading Godlovitch's essay is a powerful experience: the moves are elegant....all in all, good philosophy, and probably to be preferred, aesthetically, to even the best defense of pluralism. It might seem strange to talk about the competition between philosophical positions in terms of aesthetics especially in a paper in which a position about aesthetics (e.g. the aesthetics of ruins) is taken --- but this comes up when one takes Ginsberg's comments about academia seriously.
Ginsberg suggests that a turn to the aesthetics of ruins involves an escape from "the narrow-mindedness of professional aesthetics." As he puts it, "Ruins escape the standard theories. Neither works of art nor works of nature, ruins could yet have surprising aesthetic merit." I am sympathetic since I have found the same is true for the aesthetics of everyday life: new territory is refreshing.
Earlier I suggested that archaeologists might equally (or even more validly) claim the aesthetics of ruins as their academic territory. Recently some archaeologists have even published in the field. Ginsberg worries that archaeologists are either social science quantifiers or classicists wrapped up in ancient texts and that both are likely to be horrified by aestheticians on the site. But I think that archaeology is more flexible and diverse than that. Ginsberg is exactly right, however, that archaeology has an aesthetic side to it, involving choices that entail aesthetic evaluation, attention to form, material and symbolism: a good reason for the aesthetician to have a role on the archaeological team, a kind of philosophy as kibitzer, but more positive than that.
Ginsberg notes similarities between his aesthetics of ruins and the aesthetics of everyday life, and in particular the aesthetic interest we sometimes take in eyesores and the way we look at these for "redeeming form" and "poignant juxtaposition." He also references the other (perhaps more important) region of everyday life: the aesthetic interest in unbroken things (i.e. of designed objects with functionality). As he puts it, "the aesthetics of the everyday...need not be regarded as a minor corner of aesthetics or a trivial part of life" to which I can only agree. But should we go so far as to give it "predominant scope" in aesthetics? The advantage of this may be, for Ginsberg at least, the Deweyan/Thoreauian impulse to move outdoors, out into the world, and away from theories, categories, and endless arguments in conference halls. He becomes lyrical when he writes that "ruins will have led the way to our being surprised by joy" in much the way that Zen practice concentrates us on the now of everyday life. Along these lines, he suggests that aesthetic experience ultimately is not distinct from spiritual experience (particularly of the Zen variety), a point I have also been suggesting in my blog posts on aesthetic atheism, an atheism which is not inconsistent with some religious perspectives.
"Aestheticians, is it too much to call upon you to save the world?" Ginsberg takes on the role of a prophet coming in out of the wilderness, Zarathustra down from the mountain, to address the scholars: "in turning to the world, do we thereby take upon ourselves a new burden, awesome and inspiring, of assisting the world to recognize, preserve, enhance, and share the beauties of life in the world." The Greek and Roman philosophers similarly often saw the task of philosophy as a transformation of life: this is still attractive to many of us today even though we spend our lives immersed in the details of academia. Aestheticians of nature already ally themselves with environmentalists and naturalists, seeking to do precisely this. Is this also part of the task of the aesthetics of everyday life? I feel uncomfortable with the role of prophet, but also like to be challenged by Ginsberg's vision. William Morris, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche all tried to play this role, the consequences sometimes laughable, sometimes sublime, sometimes downright scary.
Also, as a preliminary, I will describe an experience of mine during a recent visit to Mazatlan, Mexico. The downtown area contains many early 19th century and possibly late 18th century buildings which are now in ruins. The walls are still there, but when you look through the windows you see open sky and random vegetation. Other buildings have been renovated including the wonderful house of our friends where we stayed. Moreover, an elegant new restaurant has been opened in this area called The Presidio. It is very modernistic in design but is situated amongst the ruins of a former grand house. The exterior is completely intact in what looks like its former glory. The interior however contains some crumbling walls some of which still have the graffiti on them that was there when the place was renovated. The effect for restaurant-goers is that of being in a ruin transformed. Eating there under the open sky and looking out onto the various elements of the former house, now re-used, sometimes encased in glass, graced by minimalist fountains, with interesting art on some walls, is a fine experience. Its fineness is partly because of the ambiance created by its intimate references to old Mazatlan: the building has been owned for several generations by the same family, and there are large blown-up portraits of two ancestors in one corner.
"What shall we do with a ruin?" Ginsberg thinks that this is an odd question since the answer to the question "what we should do with a work of art?" is obvious ("we should experience and enjoy it") and the answer to the question about ruins is not so obvious. Yes, artworks have a function (or rather, have various functions). Given the many functions art can have, I doubt that "experience and enjoy it" is always the best answer to the question "what should we do with a work of art?" although this is surely an important function of art. The question posed about ruins feels different. It is somewhat more similar to "What should we do with a forest?" - a question we might ask in the aesthetics of nature. In the aesthetics of nature the term "should" could be taken as indicating an ethical question, in which case environmentalism ("preserve it!") comes in as a possible answer, or it could be taken as indicating an aesthetic question, i.e. how should we go about properly experiencing this natural object aesthetically. In any case, both with nature and with ruins "experience and enjoy it" is not, by itself, enough of an answer: the question is "how?" and "what else?"
In answering this question Ginsberg suggests: "a ruin might not have aesthetic value. It often is the wreck of a work that was of aesthetic value." There is a much-discussed view in the aesthetics of nature that everything in nature (or rather, everything in nature untouched by man) has positive aesthetic value. One could argue equally that everything period has positive aesthetic value (Paul Ziff once argued that anything could be viewed aesthetically), although this view would be opposed by many philosophers. More plausible is the view that everything has the potential to exhibit positive aesthetic value. That something is the wreck of a work that had aesthetic value does not mean that the wreck has no aesthetic value of its own now. It may no longer have the aesthetic value of the original, but this does not erase all aesthetic value and all potential for aesthetic experience. Moreover, there are new aesthetic values to be found in ruins and not to be found in the ruined originals. You lose something, you gain something. You gain nostalgic interest, for example.
"If we enjoy a ruin aesthetically, must we first determine that it is indeed aesthetically enjoyable?" What better way to determine that something is aesthetically enjoyable than to discover that it is aesthetically enjoyed? But then the question is whether the ruin is a proper object of aesthetic enjoyment. I think it is. One way that we can contextualize a ruin so that, in our seeing it, we see more than what our senses immediately tell us is to learn about it, especially about its history. Ginsberg asks whether such information is "decisive in indicating its aesthetic identity?" Well, "decisive" is a strong term. Expecting anything decisive in aesthetics is to expect too much. Information about past history is certainly important to aesthetic experience of ruins. But imagination is also important. Consider the experience of the owners of The Presidio as they dreamed about their future restaurant. Is it not part of the aesthetic experience of a ruin to think about its beauty when transformed into an elegant restaurant? Can we exclude imaginative projections from our aesthetic appreciation of such things? Does aesthetic appreciation have to be fully and entirely centered on the object as it is now? Is there even such a thing as "the object as it is now" that can be fully distinguished in our experience from the way we see the object?
"What on earth is the aesthetic identity of a ruin? Do we have to rely on the experience of others as a guide to what we may enjoy?" It is often argued that we need to rely on knowledge that can be given to us by experts, by art historians in art, and by naturalists in the aesthetics of nature...even that this knowledge contributes necessarily to the constitution of the object as an aesthetic object. Certainly having this knowledge changes our understanding and appreciation of these objects. But it is equally certain that sometimes our initial relatively ignorant gut reaction to the aesthetic object is of great value in itself. Ruins have moved me both when I have had a great deal of previous knowledge and when I have had very little. We often forget that appreciation is usually a temporal thing, and that the first encounter is just that. Appreciation of a waterfall, a ruin or a painting can change over time, becoming richer and deeper through the addition of knowledge, but also sometimes eventually becoming dead and tired through overexposure or through the cultural context moving on historically. We need to think more about the life span of an act of appreciation. We need to also think of our lifespans as appreciators who change over time as we mature and eventually decline. There is the life-span of the art work in our experience and then there is the life-span of the work within the culture too. This too involves birth, maturation and decay, with further possibilities of rebirth, or a renaissance. Those who stress the necessity of background knowledge seem to take as their paradigm only the mid-moment in one's career as an appreciator after the initial moments of ignorant appreciation (as a child, usually) and before the moments of appreciative decay and death. Similarly they tend to look only at the mid-moment of the career of the work-as-appreciated within the culture or worldwide. This may be a mistake endemic to aesthetics as a whole, but it is made evident especially when we consider the aesthetics of ruins, where the ruin may represent the old-age point of the life-span of an art object. (Here I depart somewhat from Ginsberg who sees the ruin as a different aesthetic object from the building or other art object from which it came. I think it can be both.) I am not saying, however, that ruins pose no possibilities for fresh vision and lively new aesthetic experience: Ginsberg has amply shown these possibilities in his writings.
"Most famous ruins are lauded with honorific terms: beautiful, sublime, wonderful. But are these expressions simply of outmoded or otherwise limited taste? A commercial or political interest may be at stake in uttering such terms, for they encourage the business of tourism while bolstering national pride." I agree that the classic terms of aesthetics are malleable. They mean whatever they mean within the context of their use. However, part of the context of the use is the history of the term and also the standard accepted uses as expressed in dictionaries. Another context to consider is the state of play among scholars and other interested parties with respect to the ongoing debates over the meaning of the term or over the essence of it referent, depending on one's preferred ontology and methodology. Yes, "beautiful" and other such terms can in certain contexts be outmoded, tired, and/or manipulative. Such terms can also be revived by using them in a context that gives them new life or recovers old life. Terms and correlated concepts have life-spans every bit as much as aesthetic objects and the humans and cultures that perceive them. "Beautiful" is a term that recently has had a near-death experience, but has also recently been revived in various ways. "Picturesque" is a term ready for the morgue, but is open for revival.
Ginsberg calls for analysis of ruins in detail to show their "aesthetic qualities, values, features, or potentialities." He has done that himself, in spades, in his book. I think though that only a small number of connoisseurs of ruins will ever respond to his proposal. The interest in ruins will never be as great as the interest in nature or in art. We are not talking about equivalents when we speak of aesthetics of art, aesthetics of nature and aesthetics of ruins. Still, the thrust of his approach is to point to deeper levels of appreciation than can be found by way of guidebooks to ruins, and I think this can be achieved.
"Shall we insist on a unique right approach [to ruins] or remain open to multiple ways of making something of value out of a ruin?" My answer is "yes" to the second option. This is also the approach I favor in the aesthetics of nature and the aesthetics of everyday life. Ginsberg also writes that "[t]hough the remnant may be used as material to prompt us to imagine the missing original, that is not the beauty of the ruin." Although I find this sentence attractive I would like to (in the spirit of pluralism) revise it to say "that is not the only beauty of the ruin." For surely part of the beauty of a ruin is found in the way that we see it imaginatively. So, the question remains whether the aesthetic greatness of the site during its heyday guarantees its beauty as a ruin, and the answer is that if one is able to imaginatively see the ruin in terms of its past glory then I would say that this is a guarantee, as much as guarantees are allowed in aesthetics. But it isn't required since one can appreciate it as an interesting setting for a restaurant or a garden without going into any imaginative exercises at all.
"Is beauty the right term for ruins? Is ruin-beauty distinct from art-beauty or nature-beauty?" Of course it is the right term, but only if we recognize that "beauty" has many uses. We can say "we saw some beautiful ruins outside Rome" and this seems quite appropriate although also, a little odd, since a ruin is the ruin of a beauty: but we all know that ruins can have their own beauty. Of course ruin-beauty is distinct from art-beauty and nature-beauty, and also design-beauty: "beauty" operates differently in each sub-domain of aesthetics. Aestheticians of everyday life, for example, have shown many ways in which everyday life beauty is distinct from art beauty.
Ginsberg thinks that the question "How does beauty work in a ruin? is not a question for art historians, since the ruin is not, or is no longer, a work of art. This is a task for the aesthetician." Is it then not a question for aestheticians how beauty works in a work of art? Who gets what tasks? If I google "aesthetics of ruins" I find that archaeologists are interested in this task. Is it any less their task than that of philosophers who do aesthetics? Do art historians have nothing to say about the aesthetics of ruins? I think not. Different disciplines take different angles often on a topic that is quite similar. Moreover, an aesthetician who, as Ginsberg does, devotes himself to showing the aesthetic qualities, values, features and potentialities of a class of things has somewhat expanded the definition of "aesthetician" although I have no problem with that. Ginsberg also asks "Are aestheticians asking for trouble by trying to theorize from concrete experience?" Yes, but that's fine too. And so I favor pluralism over the idea of one right approach. And yet, pluralism can seem to dissipate energies, whereas monism has the aesthetic cleanness of certainty.
"Shouldn't aestheticians be engaged in highlighting the aesthetic merit of candidates for the World Heritage [many of which sites are ruins]? Is not the aesthetic heritage of humanity at stake?" Since as far as I know no one has this job now the question might be whether we shouldn't promote this for some of our graduate students, somewhat like philosophers of Medical Ethics promote the idea of a philosopher working in a hospital helping to make ethical choices. This would depend on training our students to highlight the aesthetic merit of candidates for World Heritage sites: something we do not currently do... but we could (particularly, to be frank, if there was money available.) The process would involve creating/training connoisseurs or critics of ruins. I think philosophers could do this, but equally could art historians and archaeologists. In any case, philosophers would inevitably contribute to the project if only by way of thinking about the requisite theory of ruins and ruin beauty.
"Or is this asking too much for the aesthetic side of our lives? Is that side merely a minor feature of our shared humanity?" This is too big a question to answer fully here, but a short answer could be that if everyday aesthetics and what I have recently called "the aesthetics of life" is viable then aesthetics is hardly minor. At the very least it includes every taste choice (every choice involving application of an aesthetic property term) that we can disagree about. That covers an extremely large territory of human affairs. Ginsberg is well aware that, although hardly any aesthetician would assent to the idea that the aesthetic is "a window-dressing on what is really valuable in life," many others, including some philosophers, would agree. But briefly look at one popular theory that gauges what is valuable in life: utilitarianism. Utilitarianism says that the goal of life is happiness for the maximum number, and Mill's version says that quality is important. Mention quality and you mention the possibility of debate over the value of a pleasure, and this brings in aesthetics as the major determinant of value in the Millean version of utilitarianism: hardly mere window-dressing. But philosophers, even utilitarians, seem blind to this.
"The combat within disciplines might best give way to peace accords that allow a pluralism of approaches and theories to grow. But don't we work in a competitive scholarly world in which we receive praise for triumphing over others?" Ginsberg now turns to the issue of the social function of the very debates in which we engage as philosophers. In reading about the aesthetics of nature it seems obvious that those who have made the biggest splash are the ones who have put forth a plausible defense for a distinctive position. Moreover, it is clear that some positions are dominant whereas others, although considered deserving at least a refutation, are peripheral. In the aesthetics of nature, the position called scientific cognitivism is currently dominant. Allen Carlson's is probably the most successful position of this sort. Carlson has many followers, admirers, and co-defenders. An interesting powerful second place is given to what Arnold Berleant has called "the aesthetics of engagement." Berleant also has followers, admirers, and co-defenders. Other more peripheral but equally interesting theories include ones that emphasize imagination, ambience, and emotional response. I have advocated an arts-based approach to the aesthetics of the natural environment, a position that is definitely an outlier. My current view however is pluralist. I believe that each position has its place, that each model of aesthetic appreciation of nature can be of value, even ones currently out of favor, for example the landscape/scenery model where nature is seen as if it were a landscape painting. Of course consistency is possible only if the pluralist denies the monistic assumptions of most, if not all, of the other positions.
Pluralism (to follow up on Ginsberg's point) also is not academically interesting: it is not bold or dramatic, and it poses what most philosophers consider the danger of descending into radical relativism. The pluralist is not going to triumph over others. (This is not a complaint: just being realistic.) Moreover, pluralism is not aesthetically interesting as philosophy. One of my favorite essays in the aesthetics of nature is "Icebreakers" by Stan Godlovitch. The theory is that the one appropriate way to appreciate nature is to see it as mysterious and radically other than humanity. Godlovitch calls for an "acentric" approach to the aesthetics of nature. That means it should not be anthropocentric: it should not even be biocentric. Godlovitch provides an interesting counter to the scientific cognitivist position which still relies on human-constructed categories. His theory, however, seems ultimately indefensible largely because we humans cannot not be human, and so we cannot take an acentric position. This is not to say that we should accept anthropocentrism, which is the view that humans are the most important species on the planet or even (in one definition) the universe. I would hesitate to rank species for significance! We just inevitably take humans as the center of things, just as we take our selves as the very center of everything. Nonetheless, there is much to be gained by taking Godlovitch's position on occasion and in certain circumstances (as far as one can, as a human, anyway), although to adopt it as the right one view leaves out too much. Still, reading Godlovitch's essay is a powerful experience: the moves are elegant....all in all, good philosophy, and probably to be preferred, aesthetically, to even the best defense of pluralism. It might seem strange to talk about the competition between philosophical positions in terms of aesthetics especially in a paper in which a position about aesthetics (e.g. the aesthetics of ruins) is taken --- but this comes up when one takes Ginsberg's comments about academia seriously.
Ginsberg suggests that a turn to the aesthetics of ruins involves an escape from "the narrow-mindedness of professional aesthetics." As he puts it, "Ruins escape the standard theories. Neither works of art nor works of nature, ruins could yet have surprising aesthetic merit." I am sympathetic since I have found the same is true for the aesthetics of everyday life: new territory is refreshing.
Earlier I suggested that archaeologists might equally (or even more validly) claim the aesthetics of ruins as their academic territory. Recently some archaeologists have even published in the field. Ginsberg worries that archaeologists are either social science quantifiers or classicists wrapped up in ancient texts and that both are likely to be horrified by aestheticians on the site. But I think that archaeology is more flexible and diverse than that. Ginsberg is exactly right, however, that archaeology has an aesthetic side to it, involving choices that entail aesthetic evaluation, attention to form, material and symbolism: a good reason for the aesthetician to have a role on the archaeological team, a kind of philosophy as kibitzer, but more positive than that.
Ginsberg notes similarities between his aesthetics of ruins and the aesthetics of everyday life, and in particular the aesthetic interest we sometimes take in eyesores and the way we look at these for "redeeming form" and "poignant juxtaposition." He also references the other (perhaps more important) region of everyday life: the aesthetic interest in unbroken things (i.e. of designed objects with functionality). As he puts it, "the aesthetics of the everyday...need not be regarded as a minor corner of aesthetics or a trivial part of life" to which I can only agree. But should we go so far as to give it "predominant scope" in aesthetics? The advantage of this may be, for Ginsberg at least, the Deweyan/Thoreauian impulse to move outdoors, out into the world, and away from theories, categories, and endless arguments in conference halls. He becomes lyrical when he writes that "ruins will have led the way to our being surprised by joy" in much the way that Zen practice concentrates us on the now of everyday life. Along these lines, he suggests that aesthetic experience ultimately is not distinct from spiritual experience (particularly of the Zen variety), a point I have also been suggesting in my blog posts on aesthetic atheism, an atheism which is not inconsistent with some religious perspectives.
"Aestheticians, is it too much to call upon you to save the world?" Ginsberg takes on the role of a prophet coming in out of the wilderness, Zarathustra down from the mountain, to address the scholars: "in turning to the world, do we thereby take upon ourselves a new burden, awesome and inspiring, of assisting the world to recognize, preserve, enhance, and share the beauties of life in the world." The Greek and Roman philosophers similarly often saw the task of philosophy as a transformation of life: this is still attractive to many of us today even though we spend our lives immersed in the details of academia. Aestheticians of nature already ally themselves with environmentalists and naturalists, seeking to do precisely this. Is this also part of the task of the aesthetics of everyday life? I feel uncomfortable with the role of prophet, but also like to be challenged by Ginsberg's vision. William Morris, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche all tried to play this role, the consequences sometimes laughable, sometimes sublime, sometimes downright scary.
Friday, February 7, 2014
Scruton on Judging Beauty
Roger Scruton is a hero of mine. His little book Beauty published in 2009 by Oxford University Press is a nice primer on aesthetics. Moreover, Scruton was probably the first major philosopher to pay serious attention to everyday aesthetics and in this book he devotes one chapter to what he calls "everyday beauty." I want here to make a few comments about his opening chapter on "judging beauty" which also deals with issues of everyday aesthetics while at the same time introducing his readers to issues surrounding the very concept of beauty. He opens cleverly with the idea that in order to understand beauty we need to think about a series of truisms about it. The first four these are truisms in my book too: beauty pleases us, one thing can be more beautiful than another, "beauty is always a reason for attending to the thing that possesses it," and beauty is the subject matter of a judgment of taste. (The fourth will turn out to be problematic not as stated but as interpreted.)
The next two are a bit more controversial, however. The first states that "the judgment of taste is about the beautiful object, not about the subject's state of mind. In describing the object as beautiful, I am describing it, not me." Why can't it be both? It makes more sense to me to say that a judgment of taste is both about the object and about the judger, although sometimes it may be more about one than the other. The sixth truism is that "there are no second-hand judgments of beauty" and that a person cannot argue another into such a judgment. One needs to experience and judge it for oneself. I am inclined also to think this a truism, but then it would seem to contradict the fifth truism, although this is not a problem for me since I question that one.
Scruton, however, sees a paradox here. He notes that the first three platitudes, and even the sixth, may be applied to that which is attractive and enjoyable. It seems however that the judgment that something is enjoyable is about the person and not about the thing. There is no distinction between what is really enjoyable and what is only apparently so. I am not so sure of this since the phrase "that was only apparently enjoyable" is not total nonsense. If the enjoyment of something was based on a falsehood that, upon discovery, put it in a very different light, we might well see it as no longer truly enjoyable, although we may admit that before the discovery it was in fact being enjoyed. To say that something is enjoyable has something normative about it: if I say to some friends that a particular street is enjoyable to walk down I hope and even expect that they will find it so too. The contrast Scruton wants to make is between "beautiful" and "enjoyable," and it is true that there is a contrast, but is it as strong as he finds it to be? For example he insists that we distinguish between true beauty and fake beauty, of which kitsch is an example. True, we may say that something is a "fake beauty" but it is interesting that many would deny this of kitsch (most of my students do so even after they learn what "kitsch" means).
Scruton further observes that "the judgment of taste is a genuine judgment, one that is supported by reasons." (8) This strikes me as probably false if taken universally. (And it poses a problem for the fourth truism if that is what he takes it to mean.) Surely many judgments of taste are not supported by any reasons at all. A connoisseur might say that a painting is beautiful and be entirely uninterested in giving reasons for his or her judgment. I do not see why taste needs to be connected necessarily with reasons given. I suppose that his reply would be that the connoisseur could always give reasons and that implicitly his judgment is based on reasons. But I do not think that this could be established empirically: its just an assumption, and perhaps one that needs to be questioned. The genuineness of a judgment is not dependent on reason-giving or ability to give reasons in support of that judgment. A good judge of painting can just see that this is a good painting. Sometimes curators have to judge hundreds of artworks in a very short period of time: no time to give reasons. This is not to say that the judgment must be irrational: it could be based on long experience and hence be rational because reasonable. But being reasonable is not the same as being someone who gives reasons!
Scruton insists (following the sixth truism) that "these reasons can never amount to a deductive argument." Well, that is a bit disingenuous. If I say that A is a reason for B then aren't I saying that you can deduce B from A given the assumption that "If A then B"? We often carry out our arguments assuming hidden premises of this sort. (Most arguments are enthymemes.) So, to speak of giving reasons for believing something is already to be in the realm of deductive argument. (To put it another way: in most cases when we say something is a deductive argument we mean that it can be translated into a deductive argument by supplying the hidden premises.) If I question whether A is sufficient reason for B is that not the same as questioning the hidden premise that "if A then B"? So it seems to me that the claim that there can be no second-hand opinions about beauty is quite consonant with the claim that Scruton rejects, i.e. that beauty is something that has both an objective and a subjective dimension.
Here's how he states the paradox of beauty: "The judgment of beauty makes a claim about its object, and can be supported by reasons for its claim. But the reasons do not compel the judgment, and can be rejected without contradiction. So are they reasons or aren't they?" They are reasons, of course. But reasons said to just refer to qualities of the object independent of any experience are not (and should not be!) compelling. Reasons have to be contextualized (and given weight!) within experience, especially in aesthetics. Here, the subjective side needs to be taken into consideration. When this happens the paradox is resolved.
It is interesting that although Scruton refuses to countenance "enjoyable" as an aesthetic quality he nonetheless has no problem with what he calls "minimal beauty" i.e. what he calls the lowest degree of beauty. This idea brings in aspects of aesthetics that I have championed elsewhere (although I am somewhat uncomfortable with the notion of "the lowest degree": I would just say "lower degree"). Scruton is an everyday aesthetician when he says "There is an aesthetic minimalism exemplified by laying the table, tidying your room, designing a web-site, which seems a first quite remote from [fine art]." (Why would he consider these as exemplifying the lowest rather than just a lower degree of beauty?) He stresses that you want your room etc. to "look right" and this is a way that not only pleases the eye but also conveys meaning and value. (This is a profound point.)
Scruton illustrates the idea of the relation between great beauties and minimal beauties nicely by an architectural example: how great buildings need to be set amongst more modest neighbors. Most important is that there be an appropriate fit. One could go so far as to say that the beauty of the great building is partly a function of its relations to the buildings surrounding it, and that the building of a minor building is also a function of its relation in a supporting role to that of the great building it frames. Scruton is so right when he says "Much that is said about beauty and its importance in our lives ignores the minimal beauty of an unpretentious street, a nice pair of shoes or a tasteful piece of wrapping paper...." Moreover, "these minimal beauties are far more important to our daily lives...than the great works..." (12)
All of this fine, with one exception. To say that there are minimal beauties is one thing, but to say that things with great beauty and things with lesser beauty need each other is quite another thing, and to say that beauty is comparative is quite another thing again. On the last point, it is one thing to rank works of art, but it is another thing to see them as parts of a larger ensemble that makes their comparative value a matter of interaction and mutual enhancement.
Another statement in favor of everyday aesthetics is "for most of us it is far more important to achieve order in the things surrounding us, and to ensure that the eyes, the ears and the sense of fittingness are not offended" than to pursue absolute or ideal beauty. Scruton follows this by noting that there are other aesthetic terms besides "beauty": "we appreciate the pretty, the charming and the attractive" (14) But wait! Wasn't his big point in the preceding section that "attractive" was not an aesthetic property and was unrelated to beauty? An easier way to resolve the problem is to admit that the enjoyable, the pretty and the attractive all emphasize the subjective dimension somewhat more than the beautiful, and that there is no strict dividing line between these. When he ends the section by saying that "Delight is more important than the terms used to express it" he seems to be avoiding the issue since the delight of enjoyment was precisely what he was using as an example of something that was not beautiful previously.
The next two are a bit more controversial, however. The first states that "the judgment of taste is about the beautiful object, not about the subject's state of mind. In describing the object as beautiful, I am describing it, not me." Why can't it be both? It makes more sense to me to say that a judgment of taste is both about the object and about the judger, although sometimes it may be more about one than the other. The sixth truism is that "there are no second-hand judgments of beauty" and that a person cannot argue another into such a judgment. One needs to experience and judge it for oneself. I am inclined also to think this a truism, but then it would seem to contradict the fifth truism, although this is not a problem for me since I question that one.
Scruton, however, sees a paradox here. He notes that the first three platitudes, and even the sixth, may be applied to that which is attractive and enjoyable. It seems however that the judgment that something is enjoyable is about the person and not about the thing. There is no distinction between what is really enjoyable and what is only apparently so. I am not so sure of this since the phrase "that was only apparently enjoyable" is not total nonsense. If the enjoyment of something was based on a falsehood that, upon discovery, put it in a very different light, we might well see it as no longer truly enjoyable, although we may admit that before the discovery it was in fact being enjoyed. To say that something is enjoyable has something normative about it: if I say to some friends that a particular street is enjoyable to walk down I hope and even expect that they will find it so too. The contrast Scruton wants to make is between "beautiful" and "enjoyable," and it is true that there is a contrast, but is it as strong as he finds it to be? For example he insists that we distinguish between true beauty and fake beauty, of which kitsch is an example. True, we may say that something is a "fake beauty" but it is interesting that many would deny this of kitsch (most of my students do so even after they learn what "kitsch" means).
Scruton further observes that "the judgment of taste is a genuine judgment, one that is supported by reasons." (8) This strikes me as probably false if taken universally. (And it poses a problem for the fourth truism if that is what he takes it to mean.) Surely many judgments of taste are not supported by any reasons at all. A connoisseur might say that a painting is beautiful and be entirely uninterested in giving reasons for his or her judgment. I do not see why taste needs to be connected necessarily with reasons given. I suppose that his reply would be that the connoisseur could always give reasons and that implicitly his judgment is based on reasons. But I do not think that this could be established empirically: its just an assumption, and perhaps one that needs to be questioned. The genuineness of a judgment is not dependent on reason-giving or ability to give reasons in support of that judgment. A good judge of painting can just see that this is a good painting. Sometimes curators have to judge hundreds of artworks in a very short period of time: no time to give reasons. This is not to say that the judgment must be irrational: it could be based on long experience and hence be rational because reasonable. But being reasonable is not the same as being someone who gives reasons!
Scruton insists (following the sixth truism) that "these reasons can never amount to a deductive argument." Well, that is a bit disingenuous. If I say that A is a reason for B then aren't I saying that you can deduce B from A given the assumption that "If A then B"? We often carry out our arguments assuming hidden premises of this sort. (Most arguments are enthymemes.) So, to speak of giving reasons for believing something is already to be in the realm of deductive argument. (To put it another way: in most cases when we say something is a deductive argument we mean that it can be translated into a deductive argument by supplying the hidden premises.) If I question whether A is sufficient reason for B is that not the same as questioning the hidden premise that "if A then B"? So it seems to me that the claim that there can be no second-hand opinions about beauty is quite consonant with the claim that Scruton rejects, i.e. that beauty is something that has both an objective and a subjective dimension.
Here's how he states the paradox of beauty: "The judgment of beauty makes a claim about its object, and can be supported by reasons for its claim. But the reasons do not compel the judgment, and can be rejected without contradiction. So are they reasons or aren't they?" They are reasons, of course. But reasons said to just refer to qualities of the object independent of any experience are not (and should not be!) compelling. Reasons have to be contextualized (and given weight!) within experience, especially in aesthetics. Here, the subjective side needs to be taken into consideration. When this happens the paradox is resolved.
It is interesting that although Scruton refuses to countenance "enjoyable" as an aesthetic quality he nonetheless has no problem with what he calls "minimal beauty" i.e. what he calls the lowest degree of beauty. This idea brings in aspects of aesthetics that I have championed elsewhere (although I am somewhat uncomfortable with the notion of "the lowest degree": I would just say "lower degree"). Scruton is an everyday aesthetician when he says "There is an aesthetic minimalism exemplified by laying the table, tidying your room, designing a web-site, which seems a first quite remote from [fine art]." (Why would he consider these as exemplifying the lowest rather than just a lower degree of beauty?) He stresses that you want your room etc. to "look right" and this is a way that not only pleases the eye but also conveys meaning and value. (This is a profound point.)
Scruton illustrates the idea of the relation between great beauties and minimal beauties nicely by an architectural example: how great buildings need to be set amongst more modest neighbors. Most important is that there be an appropriate fit. One could go so far as to say that the beauty of the great building is partly a function of its relations to the buildings surrounding it, and that the building of a minor building is also a function of its relation in a supporting role to that of the great building it frames. Scruton is so right when he says "Much that is said about beauty and its importance in our lives ignores the minimal beauty of an unpretentious street, a nice pair of shoes or a tasteful piece of wrapping paper...." Moreover, "these minimal beauties are far more important to our daily lives...than the great works..." (12)
All of this fine, with one exception. To say that there are minimal beauties is one thing, but to say that things with great beauty and things with lesser beauty need each other is quite another thing, and to say that beauty is comparative is quite another thing again. On the last point, it is one thing to rank works of art, but it is another thing to see them as parts of a larger ensemble that makes their comparative value a matter of interaction and mutual enhancement.
Another statement in favor of everyday aesthetics is "for most of us it is far more important to achieve order in the things surrounding us, and to ensure that the eyes, the ears and the sense of fittingness are not offended" than to pursue absolute or ideal beauty. Scruton follows this by noting that there are other aesthetic terms besides "beauty": "we appreciate the pretty, the charming and the attractive" (14) But wait! Wasn't his big point in the preceding section that "attractive" was not an aesthetic property and was unrelated to beauty? An easier way to resolve the problem is to admit that the enjoyable, the pretty and the attractive all emphasize the subjective dimension somewhat more than the beautiful, and that there is no strict dividing line between these. When he ends the section by saying that "Delight is more important than the terms used to express it" he seems to be avoiding the issue since the delight of enjoyment was precisely what he was using as an example of something that was not beautiful previously.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Plato's Socrates on literary interpretation in Ion
Since Plato's Ion is a short dialogue, humorous, and probably quite early, it has not often been taken seriously. Yet it does take very seriously the question "what is interpretation?" This blog post will not be a systematic explication of Ion but rather a musing on the notion of interpretation set forth there. The notion is ambiguous, perhaps even paradoxical. Socrates asks Ion in his typical way to explain his art of being a rhapsode (a rhapsode was in part a reciter of great poetry, but also someone who interpreted what he recited. His recitations were like one-person theatrical performances). The conclusion of the story is that Ion has no art at all but rather that he is inspired by Homer and Homer by the epic muse. Thus Ion is simply a spokesperson or a conduit, as Homer is, for a god. The magnetic chain that begins with the muse goes through Homer to Ion and thence to the members of the audience. Yet Ion himself, at least at the beginning of the dialogue, sees his art as one of interpretation, this to include not only the capacity to give interpretive readings, but also to interpret what Homer means, and to evaluate Homer's writings. As Ion says "interpretation has certainly been the most laborious part of my art" and that this involves being able not simply to recite Homer but to "speak about Homer," which Ion believes he can do better than any other man. Socrates himself had understood Ion's task as not merely to memorize Homer's words but to be able to "understand the meaning of the poet" and interpret his mind to the audience. To interpret well requires that he understand what Homer means. Ion peculiarly insists that he can interpret Homer and Hesiod equally well when they agree but not when they disagree. We then find him agreeing with Socrates that a good prophet is a better interpreter of what each poet says about divination than he is. It seems to us that Socrates is confusing the interpretation of the meaning of poets when they say something about divination with evaluation of the truth of what they say about divination. He thinks that to understand Homer is to understand whether or not what Homer says about something, e.g. military tactics, is true. (If this were what the dialogue came to in the end, it would not be worth much. It would be based on a mistake.) In any case, the prophet will not be limited to whatever Homer and Hesiod agree about but will be equally able to interpret when they disagree, unlike Ion. Ion also admits that only an arithmetician will be able to judge whether someone is a good speaker in the area of arithmetic, and he will be able to judge the bad speaker as well. We naturally think here that Ion should say that he is indeed a good judge of epic poets just as the arithmetician is a good judge in math. But of course what Socrates wants to say is that neither Homer nor Ion has a subject- matter proper to himself that he can be said to understand well. That Ion probably is able to say better what Homer's intended meaning was seems to count not at all. Socrates' solution to the dilemma is to insist that Ion does not speak of Homer with any "art of knowledge" or with "rules of art" or he would be able to be equally a good judge in all poetry: for "poetry is a whole." Socrates then says that the gift by which he speaks of Homer is not an art but inspiration, that he is inspired by Homer, and Homer is inspired in turn by the muse. Inspiration is described as a kind of possession in which the interpreter is not in his right mind. An example given for not being in one's right mind is falling "under the power of music and meter." Another example given is feeling as if one were in the very scene one is depicting, and thus having the same emotional reactions that the characters would have.
Socrates has offered, it appears to me, an alternative theory of interpretation, one that does not see it as a rule-following activity in the way the art of being a doctor or a charioteer might be, but as emphasizing a radically different kind of perception. To understand this different kind of perception we need to look at the metaphors Socrates uses. He waxes quite lyrical here, and this raises a question of whether or not he himself isn't like the poet and the rhapsode in being inspired (after all, we have the story of his personal daemon.) This is the paradox: Plato has Socrates make fun of poets and rhapsodes as having no real knowledge of the sort that doctors and charioteers have, and yet he waxes lyrical when talking about poetic inspiration, as though this were a good thing and even a valid method of interpretation. In contemporary theory of interpretation the view that inspiration plays an important role in interpretation is usually discounted. Some authors believe that we need to accurately transcribe the intended meaning of the author, some that we need to get the correct interpretation from the language itself, and some bring in social and historical context. But what about creative interpretation? What about inspiration? What role does it play?
Socrates describes the poets as being like Bacchic maidens "who draw milk and honey from the rivers when they are under the influence of Dionysus but not when they are in their right mind." What is this to "draw milk and honey from the rivers"? The answer to this question is, I believe, the key to the dialogue. Both the good poet and the good interpreter are like ecstatic religious participants who perceive mere water at something both more nutritious and sweeter, something transformed, something with an aura of significance. They are not in their right minds because they perceive the physical world radically transformed, as perhaps transformed into a mythological or a fictional realm. (Note that the passage shows indirectly an intense interest in the aesthetics of nature, one not usually recognized in the ancient Greeks. The idea presumably is that nature is properly understood aesthetically when it is perceived in the way the Bacchic maidens would perceive it: transformed.) Socrates also says that the soul of the lyric poet brings "songs from honeyed fountains, culling them out of the gardens and dells of the Muses; they, like the bees, winging their way from flower to flower." And so the good poet is someone who works in a place where nature is transformed under the eyes of divinity. Socrates then says, "For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him." The poet can invent things but only when inspired. He is inspired when he is no longer rational but rather is possessed. His lightness seems to imply something non-serious or at least less serious than science. The poetic way of perceiving nature is here proposed as a viable alternative to the scientific way. Even when the poet says "noble words" concerning men's actions he is not speaking "by any rules of art."
But let's set aside the idea promoted by Socrates that poetry and literary interpretation are just the work of God himself, and focus on the way in which this alternative works against current views of literary interpretation and current views of the aesthetics of nature, both of which shortchange the ways in which ecstasy transforms the field of perception. Ion says "I am persuaded that good poets by a divine inspiration interpret the things of the Gods to us" the things of the Gods being simply the things of the world perceived as transformed in the way the river was transformed into milk and honey for the revelers. After this, how can one take seriously Socrates' surface message that the works of poetry should be replaced with tracts on medicine, charioteering, and other crafts that involve following rules. Of course, we might today prefer to say that these crafts too can benefit from inspiration, and that they are what we now call "arts" exactly when they do these, and otherwise they are simply technologies. Funny how words change their meaning.
Socrates has offered, it appears to me, an alternative theory of interpretation, one that does not see it as a rule-following activity in the way the art of being a doctor or a charioteer might be, but as emphasizing a radically different kind of perception. To understand this different kind of perception we need to look at the metaphors Socrates uses. He waxes quite lyrical here, and this raises a question of whether or not he himself isn't like the poet and the rhapsode in being inspired (after all, we have the story of his personal daemon.) This is the paradox: Plato has Socrates make fun of poets and rhapsodes as having no real knowledge of the sort that doctors and charioteers have, and yet he waxes lyrical when talking about poetic inspiration, as though this were a good thing and even a valid method of interpretation. In contemporary theory of interpretation the view that inspiration plays an important role in interpretation is usually discounted. Some authors believe that we need to accurately transcribe the intended meaning of the author, some that we need to get the correct interpretation from the language itself, and some bring in social and historical context. But what about creative interpretation? What about inspiration? What role does it play?
Socrates describes the poets as being like Bacchic maidens "who draw milk and honey from the rivers when they are under the influence of Dionysus but not when they are in their right mind." What is this to "draw milk and honey from the rivers"? The answer to this question is, I believe, the key to the dialogue. Both the good poet and the good interpreter are like ecstatic religious participants who perceive mere water at something both more nutritious and sweeter, something transformed, something with an aura of significance. They are not in their right minds because they perceive the physical world radically transformed, as perhaps transformed into a mythological or a fictional realm. (Note that the passage shows indirectly an intense interest in the aesthetics of nature, one not usually recognized in the ancient Greeks. The idea presumably is that nature is properly understood aesthetically when it is perceived in the way the Bacchic maidens would perceive it: transformed.) Socrates also says that the soul of the lyric poet brings "songs from honeyed fountains, culling them out of the gardens and dells of the Muses; they, like the bees, winging their way from flower to flower." And so the good poet is someone who works in a place where nature is transformed under the eyes of divinity. Socrates then says, "For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him." The poet can invent things but only when inspired. He is inspired when he is no longer rational but rather is possessed. His lightness seems to imply something non-serious or at least less serious than science. The poetic way of perceiving nature is here proposed as a viable alternative to the scientific way. Even when the poet says "noble words" concerning men's actions he is not speaking "by any rules of art."
But let's set aside the idea promoted by Socrates that poetry and literary interpretation are just the work of God himself, and focus on the way in which this alternative works against current views of literary interpretation and current views of the aesthetics of nature, both of which shortchange the ways in which ecstasy transforms the field of perception. Ion says "I am persuaded that good poets by a divine inspiration interpret the things of the Gods to us" the things of the Gods being simply the things of the world perceived as transformed in the way the river was transformed into milk and honey for the revelers. After this, how can one take seriously Socrates' surface message that the works of poetry should be replaced with tracts on medicine, charioteering, and other crafts that involve following rules. Of course, we might today prefer to say that these crafts too can benefit from inspiration, and that they are what we now call "arts" exactly when they do these, and otherwise they are simply technologies. Funny how words change their meaning.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Emerson on Beauty Again
This post will be on "The Nature of Beauty" a selection from Emerson's Nature: Addresses and Lectures (1849) which appears in Carlson and Lintott's textbook Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism. I had posted before on Emerson on beauty here.
What interests me most about Emerson is seeing his vision as a kind of foil for the most commonly held view concerning the aesthetics of the natural environment, scientific cognitivism. This passage from Emerson ironically appears at the beginning of a textbook compiled by aestheticians who favor scientific cognitivism.
An interesting feature of Emerson's approach to nature not shared by contemporary aestheticians of nature is stress on the idea of return to childhood: "few adult persons can see nature." For example we may see the sun but we do so, as adults, only in a superficial way: "The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child." So the lover of nature becomes as a child. Emerson speaks of this in terms of of a harmony of inward and outward senses. This is achieved only when the adult "has retained the spirit of infancy." When this happens there is "a wild delight" that "runs through the man" and makes all his sorrows and griefs seem small. This leads to appreciation of all seasons of nature, not just the summer: "every hour and change corresponds to an authorizes a different state of mind." One of my favorite lines is the following: "Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the bring of fear." This is something we can all relate to, even atheists. Emerson connects this to becoming a child once again. In the very next sentence he writes, "In the woods too, a man casts off his years...and at what period soever of life, is always a child." The response to nature of becoming like a child is not discussed in the aesthetics of nature literature I know. Even Kant, who talks about the free play of imagination and understanding in aesthetic experience, does not associate this play with child-likeness. Scientific cognitivism as a position in the aesthetics of nature could not accept this stance since scientific cognition is a matter for adults, not children or the child-in-us. For Emerson, this childlikeness is even a moment of a kind of pleasant false belief: in the woods "I feel that nothing can befall me in life...which nature cannot repair." I feel "uplifted into infinite space" and my sense of ego vanishes. Emerson then writes, famously, "I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God." Whether an atheist can have these same feelings is open to question. But he or she can certainly get part of the way there, for example in becoming like a child and in feeling as if one's ego as dissolved. For Emerson, immortal beauty can only be found in the the wilderness: "In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages." But I wonder why such feelings cannot be had in urban settings as well.
In my earlier post on this topic I discussed Emerson's view of the eye as the "best of artists." He also speaks in the same paragraph of light as "the first of painters." Indeed, "there is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful." It can give the sense "a sort of infinitude" which makes "all matter gay." I think of the experience of walking through my neighborhood at sunset or at sunset and seeing everything in a golden glow of light, so that even the uglier homes are beautiful. The opposite of this is certain gray days when everything seems tawdry.
Emerson says "almost all the individual forms [of nature] are agreeable to the eye, as is proved by our endless imitations of them, as the acorn, the grape, the pine-cone...." This makes me think of the works of my artist friend Judith Miller who captures the spirit of Emerson by taking little hand-sized pieces of nature and incorporating their images into her paintings.
Emerson stresses that city inhabitants only favor the country half the year, and yet every season has its beauties. We today do not have a problem with this idea. He goes further to stress that "each moment of the year has its own beauty" to the attentive eye, and further that such an eye could even notice the different unique beauties at different hours of the day, for example as different insects come out. It is therefore implied that some people are better appreciators of nature than others, those who attend to these changes. We should bear in mind that Emerson is not talking necessarily about untrammeled or pristine nature. He sees beauties as changing in the countryside based on changing agricultural conditions: "The state of the crop in the surrounding farms alters the expression of the earth from week to week." Emerson has special admiration for the river which is a "perpetual gala" which art cannot rival. However, he then expresses the puzzling view that "this beauty of Nature which is seen and felt as beauty, is the least part" and that if these beauties are sought out consciously, "eagerly hunted," then they will be "mere shows" and will "mock us with their unreality." The moon will be "mere tinsel" unless viewed when it "shines upon your necessary journey." His idea seems to be that only when we observe these things in the course of practical activity are they beautiful, or perhaps that it is better to be caught unawares by beauty than to seek it out. But perhaps this talk about beauty as mere tinsel when not related to human action is a lead in to the higher, spiritual element to beauty, which is "essential to its perfection." This higher type of beauty is "combined with the human will" and especially virtue and "natural action." Here follows one my favorite quotes: "Every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine." Contemporary aestheticians of nature do not make this distinction or discuss it at all, and yet it is arguable that there is a deeper form of natural beauty, one that is connected to human action.
Another favorite passage is "To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone. The tradesman, the attorney comes out of the din and craft of the street, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. In their eternal calm, he finds himself. The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon." Would that we could have this experience so immediately today. And yet, when I pull myself away from my study and take a walk, I head where I can see greater distances.
Emerson does not leave art out of analysis entirely. He writes "The creation of beauty is Art" and "The production of a work of art throws a light upon the mystery of humanity. A work of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in miniature." Works of nature cannot be counted and all all different, and "what is common to them all, that perfectness and harmony, is beauty." So "the standard of beauty is the entire circuit of natural forms, the totality of nature" and nothing is beautiful alone, individual objects being beautiful only insofar as they suggest universal beauty. "The poet, the painter...seek each to concentrate this radiance of the world on one point, and each in his several work to satisfy the love of beauty..." So Art is nature passed through man.
What interests me most about Emerson is seeing his vision as a kind of foil for the most commonly held view concerning the aesthetics of the natural environment, scientific cognitivism. This passage from Emerson ironically appears at the beginning of a textbook compiled by aestheticians who favor scientific cognitivism.
An interesting feature of Emerson's approach to nature not shared by contemporary aestheticians of nature is stress on the idea of return to childhood: "few adult persons can see nature." For example we may see the sun but we do so, as adults, only in a superficial way: "The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child." So the lover of nature becomes as a child. Emerson speaks of this in terms of of a harmony of inward and outward senses. This is achieved only when the adult "has retained the spirit of infancy." When this happens there is "a wild delight" that "runs through the man" and makes all his sorrows and griefs seem small. This leads to appreciation of all seasons of nature, not just the summer: "every hour and change corresponds to an authorizes a different state of mind." One of my favorite lines is the following: "Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the bring of fear." This is something we can all relate to, even atheists. Emerson connects this to becoming a child once again. In the very next sentence he writes, "In the woods too, a man casts off his years...and at what period soever of life, is always a child." The response to nature of becoming like a child is not discussed in the aesthetics of nature literature I know. Even Kant, who talks about the free play of imagination and understanding in aesthetic experience, does not associate this play with child-likeness. Scientific cognitivism as a position in the aesthetics of nature could not accept this stance since scientific cognition is a matter for adults, not children or the child-in-us. For Emerson, this childlikeness is even a moment of a kind of pleasant false belief: in the woods "I feel that nothing can befall me in life...which nature cannot repair." I feel "uplifted into infinite space" and my sense of ego vanishes. Emerson then writes, famously, "I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God." Whether an atheist can have these same feelings is open to question. But he or she can certainly get part of the way there, for example in becoming like a child and in feeling as if one's ego as dissolved. For Emerson, immortal beauty can only be found in the the wilderness: "In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages." But I wonder why such feelings cannot be had in urban settings as well.
In my earlier post on this topic I discussed Emerson's view of the eye as the "best of artists." He also speaks in the same paragraph of light as "the first of painters." Indeed, "there is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful." It can give the sense "a sort of infinitude" which makes "all matter gay." I think of the experience of walking through my neighborhood at sunset or at sunset and seeing everything in a golden glow of light, so that even the uglier homes are beautiful. The opposite of this is certain gray days when everything seems tawdry.
Emerson says "almost all the individual forms [of nature] are agreeable to the eye, as is proved by our endless imitations of them, as the acorn, the grape, the pine-cone...." This makes me think of the works of my artist friend Judith Miller who captures the spirit of Emerson by taking little hand-sized pieces of nature and incorporating their images into her paintings.
Emerson stresses that city inhabitants only favor the country half the year, and yet every season has its beauties. We today do not have a problem with this idea. He goes further to stress that "each moment of the year has its own beauty" to the attentive eye, and further that such an eye could even notice the different unique beauties at different hours of the day, for example as different insects come out. It is therefore implied that some people are better appreciators of nature than others, those who attend to these changes. We should bear in mind that Emerson is not talking necessarily about untrammeled or pristine nature. He sees beauties as changing in the countryside based on changing agricultural conditions: "The state of the crop in the surrounding farms alters the expression of the earth from week to week." Emerson has special admiration for the river which is a "perpetual gala" which art cannot rival. However, he then expresses the puzzling view that "this beauty of Nature which is seen and felt as beauty, is the least part" and that if these beauties are sought out consciously, "eagerly hunted," then they will be "mere shows" and will "mock us with their unreality." The moon will be "mere tinsel" unless viewed when it "shines upon your necessary journey." His idea seems to be that only when we observe these things in the course of practical activity are they beautiful, or perhaps that it is better to be caught unawares by beauty than to seek it out. But perhaps this talk about beauty as mere tinsel when not related to human action is a lead in to the higher, spiritual element to beauty, which is "essential to its perfection." This higher type of beauty is "combined with the human will" and especially virtue and "natural action." Here follows one my favorite quotes: "Every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine." Contemporary aestheticians of nature do not make this distinction or discuss it at all, and yet it is arguable that there is a deeper form of natural beauty, one that is connected to human action.
Another favorite passage is "To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone. The tradesman, the attorney comes out of the din and craft of the street, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. In their eternal calm, he finds himself. The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon." Would that we could have this experience so immediately today. And yet, when I pull myself away from my study and take a walk, I head where I can see greater distances.
Emerson does not leave art out of analysis entirely. He writes "The creation of beauty is Art" and "The production of a work of art throws a light upon the mystery of humanity. A work of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in miniature." Works of nature cannot be counted and all all different, and "what is common to them all, that perfectness and harmony, is beauty." So "the standard of beauty is the entire circuit of natural forms, the totality of nature" and nothing is beautiful alone, individual objects being beautiful only insofar as they suggest universal beauty. "The poet, the painter...seek each to concentrate this radiance of the world on one point, and each in his several work to satisfy the love of beauty..." So Art is nature passed through man.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Thoreau on Walking
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| Henry David Thoreau, June1856.by Benjamin D. Maxham |
The comments here are on a selection from Thoreau's "Walking" that appears in a textbook Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism ed. Allen Carlson and Sheila Lintott, Columbia university Press, New York, 2008. All quotes are from pages 54-56. I am currently using this text in my graduate seminar on aesthetics. Ideally I should be commenting on Thoreau's essay as a whole, but I like the limitation of using a selection, or in this post, a selection of a selection.
Much of the interest in reading a writer from another time is to try to perceive the world a bit as he did, testing his experience against one's own, and perhaps finding one's own a bit wanting. Thoreau begins his essay by identifying Nature (he capitalizes it!) with "absolute freedom and wildness." This in itself requires the modern reader to stretch his or her imagination: I at least would not associate these words closely together. For me, nature is just the world, i.e. what is, and some of it is more free, some less free, some more wild, some less wild. But clearly Thoreau is talking about a small part of what I call "nature" when he speaks of Nature. Moreover, it seems clear that he is speaking not just of a type of place but of a type of experience associated with a type of place. The type of place is really wherever he took his walks, i.e. within ten miles of his home of Concord, Massachusetts. (Bear in mind that this land would have looked a far cry different then than it does today.) The type of experience is one characterized by feelings of absolute freedom and wildness. The feeling of wildness is associated both with the fact that the place is wild and that one is oneself wild or wilder than at home. Thoreau also stresses that he wants to make "an extreme statement" i.e. as a champion of Nature. He wants to see man as part of Nature rather than as part of society. But it also turns out that he thinks there are enough champions of civilized society already. So, perhaps his "extreme statement" is a rhetorical device and he does not want to wholly dispute the value of civilization. In fact, there are many passages in his writings that show a profound love of reading, and reading the classics at that.
The second paragraph starts by observing that he has met few who have understood the art of Walking (his caps. again). Of interest here for the aesthetician is the very idea that Walking can be an art. We do speak of the art of conversation. Perhaps Walking is an art of that sort. He then speaks of a genius (which term was, at that time, associated with the fine artist) of SAUNTERING (his caps!), his term for the art of Walking. The implication is that walking can be a creative, art-like activity.
He draws on the etymology of "sauntering" to explicate the art a bit more: one source is in the notion of those who are on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and another is those who are without home, i.e. their home is everywhere. They are like a river, which meanders, but at the same time seeks the shortest route to the sea. (One senses something Taoist about this.) Thus, every walk (in the sense of a walk as part of the art of walking) is a crusade (religious) and the ideal walk is one from which one will never return, leaving family and friends, having settled one's affairs, "ready for a walk." This is extreme, indeed, as if Thoreau were Jesus himself asking us to follow him. Walking then, for Thoreau, is a fine art with religious pretensions or overtones.
I can hardly claim to know anything of walking in this sense, and yet, when reading Thoreau, I must connect him with my own experience. Like Thoreau I often take walks from my home, although much shorter ones, and much more urban. I live near the center of San Jose, a city of almost a million people, spread out over miles. One walk I take is towards Olinder park, a park that was open grasslands and a clump of pine trees when I first moved here, but now has a green park lawn and marked trails. It is a small park of a few acres bounded on the south by a freeway and on the east by Coyote Creek. This creek is not cemented in: so it does have a certain wild look, and fortunately, there is another park on the other side of the creek. So, for me, Nature on this walk, is what happens to me when I am walking along the path that parallels the creek. I admit it...not terribly wild, but pleasant enough. My wife asked me yesterday whether I experienced things as magical and whether I could give an example. I thought that a vision I had of a very old oak tree on that walk, near the creek, had something magical about it. In my book I speak of aesthetic experience as experience of objects as having aura, and in this case, the oak tree had a magical aura.
Hey, I am not saying that Thoreau would consider me a fellow Walker. Speaking of himself in the plural (in the way of a journalist?) he writes "We have felt that we are almost alone hereabouts practiced this noble art," and then he observes that the others cannot do so since they need the "requisite leisure, freedom, and independence" which can only come by God's grace. Others have only experienced Walking when they have lost themselves for half an hour in the woods. Most have since confined themselves to public roads.
Perhaps my experiences hiking with friends in the mountains count a bit more to practicing the art of walking. Although an atheist, I still find myself feeling as if I were on some sort of pilgrimage, as if something spiritual were happening. Or perhaps I could say that something spiritual does happen to me while walking in the Sierras, although I do not connect the word "spiritual" in any way with belief in God (or "magic" in any way with belief in things that violate the laws of nature). So there it is, perhaps I partake in the art of Walking a bit.
Thoreau distinguishes Walking from mere "taking exercise" and makes a humorous comment about how swinging dumb-bells is of no real value in this respect since while you are doing this for health you are not visiting springs bubbling in far-off pastures: "If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life." This tells us something more about Sauntering. It includes a search for the springs of life, and this includes, sometimes literally, a search for a bubbling spring.
Thoreau oddly worries some about the impact of Walking on his civilized side. He observes that it might produce a certain "roughness of character" and rob us of "delicacy of touch." The other extreme is to stay at home and have "a softness and smoothness, not to say thinness of skin" and also "increased sensibility to certain impressions." He even thinks that if he had spent less time outdoors he would have been "more susceptible to some influences" important to his moral development. The conclusion he seems to draw is that one should balance these two: "proportion rightly the thick and thin skin." This proportion is like that between thought and experience. His concluding thought on this, however, is more like Rousseau: "The callous palms of the laborer are conversant with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism, whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of idleness. That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience." So, so much for proportion, I suppose.
Language can be funny and sometimes there is a quote that has a newer aptness just because of the change of word meaning. Thoreau says "When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?" Mall! Well, he probably meant a sheltered walk, or a walk by a park bordered by trees: basically an urban walk. But it works well with our sense of "mall" too. I have no quasi-mystical experiences walking in Valley Fair Mall, although I could see myself having one walking in one of the 18th or 19th century walkways Thoreau was probably thinking of....maybe because of the historical nostalgia I would feel. Thoreau, in this paragraph, also speaks of philosophers "importing woods to themselves" since the ancient philosophers would plant goves and walks and walk in "porticos open to the air." I often feel more philosophical on walks in nature, by which I mean that it puts me in a contemplative mood and turns my thoughts to life, meaning, reality....the big topic (although not usually in any way that I could turn into a professional article.)
One part of the art of Walking is the right attitude. Thoreau believes that one should be in the woods in spirit, not just in body. One should forget one's morning obligations and ones obligations to society. To do this is to "return to my senses." When I take my urban walks I often find that it works best if I try to make my mind empty. Perhaps Walking is a kind of meditation.
What was the goal of Walking for Thoreau? He talks about how when he can achieve an "absolutely new prospect" this is "a great happiness." An example of this is being carried in one of his local walks to "as strange a country as I expect to see," and an example of that, in turn, is that "a single farmhouse which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the dominions of the King of Dahomey." So it is the strangeness and beauty of something new that he seeks. Another aspect of his aesthetic experience, discussed in the same paragraph as this one is the harmony he finds between his own lifespan and the capability of the landscape within walking distance of his home which cannot be exhausted aesthetically during that span. How often do we experience things as bracketed by and conditioned by our own awareness of our own lives, how long we have lived, and what the future holds for us personally.
This then is followed by a new paragraph with a familiar theme: "Nowadays, almost all man's improvement, so called, as the building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap. A people who would begin by burning the fences and let the forests stand!" I do regret not being able to see the things Thoreau saw on his walks. And yet we just have to live with what we have, or improve it in some way.
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