The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
December 200
3
Roger
Scruton * &
Thomas Munro **
AESTHETICS (cont'd)
The work of art
As the above discussion illustrates, it is impossible to advance far into the theory of aesthetic experience without encountering the specific problems posed by the experience of art. Whether or not we think of art as the central or defining example of the aesthetic object, there is no doubt that it provides the most distinctive illustration both of the elusive nature and the importance of aesthetic interest. With the increasing attention paid to art in a corrupted world where little else is commonly held to be spiritually significant, it is not surprising that the philosophy of art has increasingly begun to displace the philosophy of natural beauty from the central position accorded to the latter by the philosophers and critics of the 18th century. Nor is this shift in emphasis to be regretted; for the existence of art as a major human institution reminds us of the need for a theory that will attribute more to aesthetic experience than enjoyment and that will explain the profundity of the impressions that we receive from beauty - impressions that may provide both meaning and solace to those who experience them. It is thus worth reviewing some of the special problems in the philosophy of art that have most influenced contemporary aesthetics.
Understanding art
The use of the concept of understanding in describing the appreciation of art marks out an interesting distinction between art and natural beauty. A person may understand or fail to understand T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, Michelangelo’s “David,” or Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, but he cannot understand or fail to understand the Highlands of Scotland, even when he finds them beautiful or ugly. Understanding seems to be a prerequisite to the full experience of art, and this has suggested to many critics and philosophers that art is not so much an object of sensory experience as an instrument of knowledge. In particular, art seems to have the power both to represent reality and to express emotion, and some argue that it is through appreciating the properties of representation and expression that we recognize the meaning of art. At least, it might be supposed that, if we speak of understanding art, it is because we think of art as having content, something that must be understood by the appropriate audience.
The most popular approach to this concept of understanding is through a theory of art as a form of symbolism. But what is meant by this? Is such symbolism one thing or many? Is it a matter of evocation or convention, of personal response or linguistic rule? And what does art symbolize - ideas, feelings, objects, or states of affairs?
Representation and expression in art
Various theories have been proposed in answer to these questions, the most popular being that the forms of art are similar to language and are to be understood as language is understood, in terms of conventions and semantic rules. A few examples of contemporary theories that have described art in this way include Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms, Susanne K. Langer’s theory of presentational symbols, and the works on semiology and semiotics, largely inspired by the writings of Roland Barthes, that have been fashionable in continental Europe. It seems important to review some of the arguments that have been employed both for and against the overall conception of art that such theories share.
In favour of the view, it is undeniable that many works of art are about the world in somewhat the way that language may be about the world. This is evident in the case of literature (which is itself an instance of natural language). It is no less evident in the case of painting. A portrait stands to its sitter in a relation that is not unlike that which obtains between a description and the thing described. Even if the majority of pictures are of, or about, entirely imaginary people, scenes, and episodes, this is no different from the case of literature, in which language is used to describe purely imaginary subjects. This relation between a work of art and its subject, captured in the word “about,” is sometimes called representation - a term that owes its currency in aesthetics to Croce and Collingwood, who used it to draw the familiar contrast between representation and expression.
The concept of expression is variously analyzed. Its principal function in modern aesthetics, however, is to describe those aspects and dimensions of artistic meaning that seem not to fall within the bounds of representation, either because they involve no clear reference to an independent subject matter or because the connection between the subject and the artistic form is too close and inextricable to admit description in the terms appropriate to representation. Therefore, it is widely recognized that abstract art forms - music, abstract painting, architecture - may yet contain meaningful utterances, and most frequently philosophers and critics use terms such as expression in order to describe these elusive meanings. Music, in particular, is often said to be an expression of emotion and to gain much of its significance from that. Expression in such a case is unlike representation, according to many philosophers, in that it involves no descriptive component. An expression of grief does not describe grief but rather presents it, as it might be presented by a face or a gesture.
Expression must be distinguished from evocation. To say that a piece of music expresses melancholy is not to say that it evokes (arouses) melancholy. To describe a piece of music as expressive of melancholy is to give a reason for listening to it; to describe it as arousing melancholy is to give a reason for avoiding it. (Music that is utterly blank expresses nothing, but it may arouse melancholy.) Expression, where it exists, is integral to the aesthetic character and merit of whatever possesses it. For similar reasons, expression must not be confused with association, in spite of the reliance on the confusion by many 18th-century Empiricists.
The distinction between representation and expression is one of the most important conceptual devices in contemporary philosophy of art. Croce, who introduced it, sought to dismiss representation as aesthetically irrelevant and to elevate expression into the single, true aesthetic function. The first, he argued, is descriptive, or conceptual, concerned with classifying objects according to their common properties, and so done to satisfy our curiosity. The second, by contrast, is intuitive, concerned with presenting its subject matter (an “intuition”) in its immediate concrete reality, so that we see it as it is in itself. In understanding expression, our attitude passes from mere curiosity to that immediate awareness of the concrete particular that is the core of aesthetic experience.
Symbolism in art
Later philosophers have been content merely to distinguish
representation and expression as different modes of artistic meaning, characterized
perhaps by different formal or semantic properties. Nelson Goodman of the
Goodman, like many others, seeks the nature of art in symbolism and the
nature of symbolism in a general theory of signs. (This second part of
Goodman’s aim is what Ferdinand de Saussure called semiology, the general science of signs [Cours de linguistique générale, 1916; Course
of General Linguistics]). The
theory derives from the uncompromising Nominalism
expounded in Goodman’s earlier works, a Nominalism
developed under the influence of two other
A corollary of this view is that relations of identical logical structure and identical genealogy between relevantly similar terms are really one and the same relation. Thus, if we assume that paintings, like words, are signs, then portraits stand to their subjects in the same relation as proper names to the objects denoted by them. (This is the substance of Goodman’s proof that representation is a species of denotation.) We should not worry if that leads us to no new understanding of the relation (e.g., if it leads to no procedure for decoding the painted sign), for Goodman believes the search for such procedure is incoherent. The meaning of a sign is simply given, along with the artistic practice that creates it.
Goodman proceeds to generalize his theory of symbolism, using the word reference to express the relation between word and thing. (We might well characterize this relation as labelling.) Denotation is the special case of reference exemplified by proper names and portraits - a case in which a symbol labels one individual. When a single label picks out many things, then we have not a name but a predicate.
Sometimes the process of labelling goes both ways. A colour sample is a sign for the colour it possesses - say, the colour red. It therefore refers to the label red, which in turn refers back to the sample. In this case, the predicate red and the sample mutually label each other. Goodman calls this relation exemplification, and analyzes expression as a special case of it - namely, the case where the exemplification of a predicate proceeds by metaphor. For example, a piece of music may refer to sadness; it may also be metaphorically sad. In this case, Goodman argues, we may speak of the music as expressing sadness.
The economy and elegance of Goodman’s theory are matched by its extreme inscrutability. On the surface it seems to provide direct and intelligible answers to all the major problems of art. What is art? A system of symbols. What is representation? Denotation. What is expression? A kind of reference. What is the value of art? It symbolizes (displays) reality. What is the distinction between art and science? A distinction between symbol systems but not between the matters they display. Yet, at each point we feel at a loss to know what we are learning about art in being told that it is essentially symbolic.
In this respect, Goodman’s theory is similar to many semantic theories of art: it proves that expression, for example, describes a symbolic relation only by giving a theory of symbolism that is so general as to include almost every human artifact. It becomes impossible to extract from the result a procedure of interpretation - a way of understanding a work of art in terms of its alleged symbolic function. In particular, we cannot extend to the discussion of art those theories that show how we understand language in terms of its peculiar syntactic and semantic structure, for such theories always seem to rely precisely on what is peculiar to language and what distinguishes language from, say, music, painting, and architecture.
A similar result can be found in an earlier theory upon which Goodman’s is to some extent modeled - the one proposed by Langer in her Philosophy in a New Key (1942) and Feeling and Form (1953). She argues that works of art symbolize states of mind (“feelings”), but that the relation is not to be explained in terms of any rule of reference such as operates in language. Works of art are, Langer says, “presentational symbols” whose relation to their objects is purely morphological. The symbol and its object are related by virtue of the fact that they possess the same “logical form.” It follows that what the symbol expresses cannot be restated in words; words do not present the “logical form” of individuals but rather that of the properties and relations that characterize them. (Here again is the familiar view that art presents the individuality of its subject matter and is therefore not conceptual or descriptive.) With such a view we can no longer explain why we say that a work of art expresses a feeling and not that the feeling expresses the work; for the relation of expression, explained in these morphological terms, is clearly symmetrical. Moreover, like other semantic theories, Langer’s analysis provides no procedure for interpretation, nothing that would give application to the claim that in understanding a work of art we understand it as a symbol.
Notwithstanding these difficulties for semantic theories of art, most philosophers remain convinced that the three categories of representation, expression, and understanding are all-important in making sense of our experience of art. They have become increasingly persuaded, however, with Croce and Collingwood, that the differences between representation and expression are more important than the similarities. In particular, while representation may be secured by semantic rules (as in language itself), there cannot be rules for the production of artistic expression. To think otherwise is to imagine that the difference between a Mozart and a Salieri is merely a difference of skill. Expression occurs in art only where there is expressiveness, and expressiveness is a kind of success to be measured by the response of the audience rather than by the grammar of the work. This response crucially involves understanding, and no theory of expression that is not also a theory of how expression is understood can be persuasive.
Form
Expression and representation form part of the content of a work of art. Nonetheless, it is not only content that is understood (or misunderstood) by the attentive recipient. There is also form, by which term we may denote all those features of a work of art that compose its unity and individuality as an object of sensory experience. Consider music. In most cases when a listener complains that he does not understand a work of music, he means, not that he has failed to grasp its expressive content, but that the work has failed to cohere for him as a single and satisfying object of experience. He may put the point (somewhat misleadingly) by saying that he has failed to grasp the language or logic of the composition he hears. What matters, however, is that the appreciation of music (as of the other arts) depends upon the perception of certain “unities” and upon feeling the inherent order and reasonableness in a sequence (in this case, a sequence of tones). It is this perception of order that is fundamental to understanding art, whether abstract or representational, and that to many philosophers and critics has seemed more basic than the understanding of content. When Clive Bell wrote of art as “significant form,” he really meant to defend the view, first, that form is the essence of art and, second, that form must be understood and therefore understandable (i.e., significant). Other philosophers have espoused one or another version of formalism, according to which the distinguishing feature of art - the one that determines our interest in it - is form. Part answers part, and each feature aims to bear some cogent relation to the whole. It is such facts as these that compel our aesthetic attention.
The study of form must involve the study of our perception of form. A considerable amount of work on this subject has been inspired by the theories of the Gestalt psychologists Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka, whose semiempirical, semiphilosophical researches into the perception of form and pattern seem to make direct contact with many of the more puzzling features of our experience of art. The influence of the Gestalt psychologists is also apparent in works of visual aesthetics; e.g., Rudolf Arnheim’s Art and Visual Perception (1954), which explores the significance of such well-known Gestalt phenomena as the figure-ground relationship and the perception of completed wholes for our understanding of pictures.
Fruitful though this emphasis on the “good Gestalt” has been, it cannot claim to have covered in its entirety the immensely complex subject of artistic form. For one thing, the theories and observations of the Gestalt psychologists, while evidently illuminating when applied to music and painting, can be applied to our experience of literature only artificially and inconclusively. Furthermore, it is impossible either to subsume all formal features of music and literature under the idea of a Gestalt or to demonstrate why, when so subsumed, the emotional effect and aesthetic value of form is made intelligible. Too much of aesthetic importance is left unconsidered by the study of the Gestalt, so that formalist critics and philosophers have begun to look elsewhere for an answer to the questions that concern them.
One recurring idea is that the operative feature determining our
perception of form is “structure,” the underlying, concealed formula according
to which a work of art is constructed. This
idea has had considerable influence in two areas, music theory and literary
criticism, the former through the Austrian music theorist Heinrich Schenker and the latter through the Russian formalists and
the structuralist linguists of
Against this approach it has been argued that in neither case does structural analysis succeed in making contact with the real source of artistic unity. This unity lies within the aesthetic experience itself and so cannot be understood as a structural feature of the work of art. Once again the temptation has been to enshrine in a body of rules what lies essentially beyond the reach of rules: a unity of experience that cannot be predicted but only achieved. Structuralist aesthetics has therefore come under increasing criticism, not only for its pedantry but also for its failure to make genuine contact with the works of art to which it is applied.
In general, the study of artistic form remains highly controversial and fraught with obstacles that have yet to be overcome. This area of the theory of art remains difficult and inaccessible equally to the critic and the philosopher, both of whom have therefore tended to turn their attention to less intractable problems.
The ontology of art
One such problem is that of the ontological status of the work of art. Suppose that A has on the desk before him David Copperfield. Is David Copperfield therefore identical with this book that A can touch and see? Certainly not, for another copy lies on B’s desk, and a single work of art cannot be identical with two distinct physical things. The obvious conclusion is that David Copperfield, the novel, is identical with no physical thing. It is not a physical object, any more than is a piece of music, which is clearly distinct from all its performances. Perhaps the same is true of paintings. For could not paintings be, in principle at least, exactly reproduced? And does not that possibility show the painting to be distinct from any particular embodiment in this or that area of painted canvas? With a little stretching, the same thought experiment might be extended to architecture, though the conclusion inevitably becomes increasingly controversial.
The problem of the nature of the work of art is by no means new. Such an argument, however, gives it a pronounced contemporary flavour, so that both Phenomenologists and Analytical philosophers have been much exercised by it, often taking as their starting point the clearly untenable theory of Croce. According to Croce, the work of art does not consist in a physical event or object but rather in a mental “intuition,” which is grasped by the audience in the act of aesthetic understanding. The unsatisfactory nature of this theory, sometimes called the “ideal” theory of art, becomes apparent as soon as we ask how we would identify the intuition with which any given work of art is supposedly identical. Clearly, we can identify it only in and through a performance, a book, a score, or a canvas. These objects give us the intuition that cannot exist independently of them. (Otherwise we should have to say that the world contains an uncountable number of great works of art whose only defect is that they have never been transcribed.)
Clearly then, the physical embodiment of the work - in sounds,
language, scores, or other inscriptions - is more fundamentally a part of it
(of its “essence”) than the ideal theory represents it to be. What then is the work of art, and what is its
relation to the objects in which it is embodied? These questions have been discussed by Richard
Wollheim in Art
and Its Objects (1968), and again by Goodman in Languages of Art (see above). Wollheim argues that
works of art are “types” and their embodiments “tokens.” The distinction here derives from the
Wollheim’s theory is open to various objections. For example, works of architecture are not, as things stand, tokens of types but physical objects, and to make them into types by endlessly reproducing them would be to destroy their aesthetic character. To identify an object in terms of a process that destroys its character is not in any evident sense to identify it. The theory, moreover, seems to be unable to distinguish a musical performance containing a wrong note from a performance of a new work of music containing precisely that note as part of its type.
Goodman’s theory is more technical and displaces the question of the nature of art in favour of that of the nature of an inscription: Just what is it for a particular set of marks to identify a work of art? Other philosophers have concentrated on the question of identity: What makes this work of art the same as that one? Some argue, for example, that works of art have a distinct criterion of identity, one that reflects the peculiar nature and demands of aesthetic interest. Others dismiss the search for a criterion of identity as both aesthetically insignificant and illusory in itself. Still others, notably the Phenomenologist Roman Ingarden, argue that the work of art exists on several levels, being identical not with physical appearance but with totality of interpretations that secure the various formal and semantic levels that are contained in it.
Questions that so obviously lend themselves to the procedures of modern philosophy have naturally commanded considerable attention. But whether they are aesthetically significant is disputed, and some philosophers go so far as to dismiss all questions of ontology and identity of art as peripheral to the subject matter of aesthetics. The same could not be said, however, of the question of the value of art, which, while less discussed, is evidently of the first importance.
The value of art
Theories of the value of art are of two kinds, which we may call extrinsic and intrinsic. The first regards art and the appreciation of art as means to some recognized moral good, while the second regards them as valuable not instrumentally but as objects unto themselves. It is characteristic of extrinsic theories to locate the value of art in its effects on the person who appreciates it. Art is held to be a form of education, perhaps an education of the emotions. In this case, it becomes an open question whether there might not be some more effective means to the same result. Alternatively, one may attribute a negative value to art, as Plato did in his Republic, arguing that art has a corrupting or diseducative effect on those exposed to it.
The extrinsic approach, adopted in modern times by Leo Tolstoy in Chto takoye iskusstvo? (1896; What Is Art?), has seldom seemed wholly satisfactory. Philosophers have constantly sought for a value in aesthetic experience that is unique to it and that, therefore, could not be obtained from any other source. The extreme version of this intrinsic approach is that associated with Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, and the French Symbolists, and summarized in the slogan “art for art’s sake.” Such thinkers and writers believe that art is not only an end in itself but also a sufficient justification of itself. They also hold that in order to understand art as it should be understood, it is necessary to put aside all interests other than an interest in the work itself.
Between those two extreme views there lies, once again, a host of intermediate positions. We believe, for example, that works of art must be appreciated for their own sake, but that, in the act of appreciation, we gain from them something that is of independent value. Thus a joke is laughed at for its own sake, even though there is an independent value in laughter, which lightens our lives by taking us momentarily outside ourselves. Why should not something similar be said of works of art, many of which aspire to be amusing in just the way that good jokes are?
The analogy with laughter - which, in some views, is itself a species of aesthetic interest - introduces a concept without which there can be no serious discussion of the value of art: the concept of taste. If I am amused it is for a reason, and this reason lies in the object of my amusement. We thus begin to think in terms of a distinction between good and bad reasons for laughter. Amusement at the wrong things may seem to us to show corruption of mind, cruelty, or bad taste; and when it does so, we speak of the object as not truly amusing, and feel that we have reason on our side.
Similarly, we regard some works of art as worthy of our attention and others as not. In articulating this judgment, we use all of the diverse and confusing vocabulary of moral appraisal; works of art, like people, are condemned for their sentimentality, coarseness, vulgarity, cruelty, or self-indulgence, and equally praised for their warmth, compassion, nobility, sensitivity, and truthfulness. (The same may apply to the object of natural beauty.) Clearly, if aesthetic interest has a positive value, it is only when motivated by good taste; it is only interest in appropriate objects that can be said to be good for us. All discussion of the value of art tends, therefore, to turn from the outset in the direction of criticism: Can there be genuine critical evaluation of art, a genuine distinction between that which deserves our attention and that which does not? (And, once again, the question may be extended to objects of natural beauty.)
Taste, criticism, and judgment
All aesthetic experience, whether of art or nature, seems to be informed by and dependent upon an exercise of taste. We choose the object of aesthetic experience, and often do so carefully and deliberately. Moreover, we are judged by our choices, not only of works of art but also of colour schemes, dresses, and garden ornaments, just as we are judged by our manners and our sense of humour. By his taste an individual betrays himself: not merely a small part of himself but the whole. Yet, the relation between taste and morality is by no means straightforward. There seems, in fact, to be a puzzling question as to the precise nature of the relation between aesthetic and moral values, and between the good taste that discerns the first and the good conduct that responds to the second. If there is no relation, the enormous amount of human energy that is invested in art and criticism may begin to seem rather pointless. If the relation is too close, however, the result is an intolerable moral elitism that makes refinement the sole standard of acceptable conduct, as for example, the elitism depicted by Villiers de L’Isle-Adam in Axel, by J.K. Huysmans in À Rebours, and by Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray. The aesthete is one who puts aesthetic values above all others and who seeks for a morality that conforms to them. But like his opposite, the philistine, he fails to see that the relation between the aesthetic and the moral is not one of priority; each informs and is informed by the other, without taking precedence and without dictating the choice that belongs within the other’s sphere.
Contemporary aesthetics has been less disposed to discuss the idea of taste than that of criticism. But clearly, the two ideas are so closely related that anything said about the one has a direct bearing on the other. In both cases, the approach has been the first of those outlined at the beginning of this article: the approach that starts with a study of the concepts and modes of argument employed in discussing beauty and tries to grasp the distinctive problems of aesthetics through a study of the logical and ideological puzzles that these concepts and arguments arouse.
Philosophers often distinguish between two kinds of critical discussion - the interpretative and the evaluative - and two classes of concepts corresponding to them. In describing an object of natural beauty or a work of art, we may use a host of so-called aesthetic terms, terms that seem to have a particular role when used in this context and that articulate the aesthetic impression which it is the first task of criticism to convey. Among such terms we may notice affective terms - moving, frightening, disturbing; terms denoting emotional qualities - sad, lively, mournful, wistful; terms denoting the expressive or representational content of a work of art, its formal features, and its overall artistic genre - comic, tragic, ironic. Some of these terms can be applied meaningfully only to works of art; others may be applied to the whole of nature in order to articulate an aesthetic experience. The examination of their logic has had an increasingly important role in analytical aesthetics. Frank N. Sibley, for example, has argued that such terms are used in aesthetic judgment in a peculiar way, without conditions (i.e., without a reasoned basis), and in order to describe aesthetic properties that are discernible only by the exercise of taste. This sophisticated reminder of Kant’s theory that aesthetic judgment is free from concepts has been criticized as creating too great a gap between the language of criticism and the language of everyday life. But it is of considerable interest in itself in attempting to revive a conception of taste that was highly influential in 18th-century aesthetics. As noted above, taste is, according to this conception, a faculty not of evaluation but of perception.
In aesthetics, however, evaluative judgments are inescapable. Theories avoiding the implication that taste is a form of discrimination, which naturally ranks its objects according to their merit, are peculiarly unsatisfying, not the least because they have so little bearing on the practice of criticism or the reasons that lead us to assign such overwhelming importance to art.
What then of the concepts employed in aesthetic evaluation? Burke introduced a famous distinction between two kinds of aesthetic judgment corresponding to two orders of aesthetic experience: the judgment of the beautiful and that of the sublime. The judgment of beauty has its origin in our social feelings, particularly in our feelings toward the other sex, and in our hope for a consolation through love and desire. The judgment of the sublime has its origin in our feelings toward nature, and in our intimation of our ultimate solitude and fragility in a world that is not of our own devising and that remains resistant to our demands. In Burke’s words,
Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of
pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant
about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a
source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which
the mind is capable of feeling.
Burke’s distinction emerges as part of a natural philosophy of beauty: an attempt to give the origins of our sentiments rather than to explain the logic of the judgments that convey them. In Kant, the distinction is recast as a distinction between two categories of aesthetic experience and two separate values that attach to it. Sometimes when we sense the harmony between nature and our faculties, we are impressed by the purposiveness and intelligibility of everything that surrounds us. This is the sentiment of beauty. At other times, overcome by the infinite greatness of the world, we renounce the attempt to understand and control it. This is the sentiment of the sublime. In confronting the sublime, the mind is “incited to abandon sensibility” - to reach over to that transcendental view of things that shows to us the immanence of a supersensible realm and our destiny as subjects of a divine order. Thus, from the presentiment of the sublime, Kant extracts the ultimate ground of his faith in a Supreme Being, and this is for him the most important value that aesthetic experience can convey.
The distinction between the sublime and the beautiful is now less frequently made than at the time of Burke and Kant. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that aesthetic judgment exists in many contrasting forms, of both praise and condemnation. A philosopher who sought to account for the idea of beauty without attending to those of the elegant, the refined, the great, the delicate, the intelligent, the profound, and the lovely would be unlikely to provide us with much understanding of the nature and function of criticism. There may be, however, something that these judgments have in common which might be used in order to cast light on all of them. Kant certainly would have thought so, since he argued that all such judgments share the distinctive features of taste revealed in his antinomy. In other words, they are all grounded in an immediate (“subjective”) experience, while at the same time being “universal” - i.e., held forth as valid for all rational beings irrespective of their particular interests and desires. Thus, the critic tries to justify his aesthetic judgments, seeking reasons that will persuade others to see what he sees as elegant or beautiful in a similar light.
Could there be a genuine critical procedure devoted to that enterprise of providing objective grounds for subjective preferences? This question is integrally connected to another that we have already discussed: the question of the value of aesthetic experience. If aesthetic experience is valueless, or if it has no more value than attaches to idle enjoyment, then it becomes far less plausible to insist on the existence of objective evaluation than if aesthetic experience has the kind of importance attributed to it by Kant.
Modern considerations of this exceedingly difficult question tend to
concentrate on the criticism of art and on the role of the critic of art. What is a critic doing when he discusses a
work of art, what does he look for, and with what purpose? It might be said that a critic should first of
all study the artist’s intention, since this will show the real meaning of his
work, the real content that he is trying to communicate. The
The existence of an intentional fallacy has been doubted. Some argue, for example, that Wimsatt and Beardsley make too sharp a distinction between an intention and the act that expresses it, assuming the intention to be a kind of private mental episode forever hidden from an observer rather than a revealed order in the work itself. But when a critic refers to the artistic intention, it is not clear whether he means anything more than the general purposiveness of the work of art, which can be interpreted by a critic without supposing there to be some intention beyond that of producing the precise work before him. (Indeed, in Kant’s view, there can be purposiveness without purpose, and this phenomenon provides the central object of aesthetic interest whether in aesthetic interest whether in art or in nature.) The dispute here is tortuous and obscure. Nevertheless, the move away from intentionalism, as it is called, has been regarded as imperative by most modern critics, who tend to see the role of criticism in either one of two ways: (1) criticism is devoted to the study and interpretation of the aesthetic object rather than of the artist or the recipient; and (2) criticism is devoted to the articulation of a response to the work of art and to the justification of a particular way of seeing it.
Underlying both these conceptions is the fashionable preoccupation with art as the principal object of critical judgment. Nevertheless, in suggesting that the choice which lies before the critic is between the aesthetic object and the experience that it arouses, the two views ensure that the artist is kept hidden. As a consequence, it is not difficult to adapt them to a wider view of aesthetic judgment and aesthetic experience - to a view that makes room for natural beauty and for the aesthetics of everyday life, as it is manifested in dress, manners, decoration, and the other useful arts.
It might be thought that only the first of the two conceptions can give
rise to an objective critical procedure, since it alone requires that criticism
focus on an object whose existence and nature is independent of the critic. The most important contemporary defense of an
objective criticism, that of the British literary critic F.R. Leavis,
has relied heavily on the second idea, however. In a celebrated controversy with his
If criticism were confined to the study of nature, it would look very peculiar. It is only because of the development of artistic and decorative traditions that the habit of aesthetic judgment becomes established. Accordingly, contemporary attempts to provide a defense of aesthetic judgment concentrate almost exclusively on the criticism of art, and endeavour to find principles whereby the separate works of art may be ordered according to their merit, or at least characterized in evaluative terms. Leavis’ “objective” criticism is expressly confined to the evaluation of literary works taken from a single tradition. The reason for this narrowness can be put paradoxically as follows: Criticism can be objective only when it is based in subjectivity. Criticism is the justification of a response, and such justification requires a frame of reference that both the critic and his reader can readily recognize. The successful communication and justification of a response are possible only by reference to the canon of works accepted within a common culture. The canonical works - what Matthew Arnold called the touchstones of criticism - provide the context of relevant comparisons, without which no amount of detailed analysis could convey the quality of the individual work. Critical reasoning is an attempt to place works of art in relation to one another, so that the perceived greatness of the one will provide the standard of measurement for the other. At the same time, the individual quality of feeling in each work must be elicited and discussed exactly as we might discuss the quality of feeling in everyday life, praising it for its intensity, exactness, and generosity, and criticizing it for its sentimentality, obscurity, or lack of seriousness. All of the moral categories that we apply to human feeling and character we may therefore apply equally to art, and the basis of an objective criticism will be no different from the basis (whatever it might be) for an objective morality. The value of art, on this account, resides partly in the fact that it gives exemplary expression to human feeling and character, and so enables us to measure our own lives and aspirations against their imaginary counterparts.
These ideas are vague and have been frequently criticized for their moralistic overtones as well as for the seeming narrowness of their application. Even if they apply to the criticism of literature, what do we say about the criticism of music, of architecture, of dress and decor, of natural beauty? In the nonliterary arts much criticism is directed first to form, style, and workmanship, and only secondly to the moral content of the works under consideration. There are exceptions to this rule, and once again the principal exception is English - namely, John Ruskin’s profoundly moralized criticism of architecture. Nevertheless, the extreme difficulty experienced in extending the Leavisite procedures of practical criticism (in which the reader’s response becomes the principal focus of critical attention) to the nonliterary arts has given sustenance to the view that this “moralized” criticism is really only one kind of criticism and not necessarily the most widely applicable or the most important. If such is the case, it cannot really claim to have discovered a basis for the objective exercise of taste.
The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
December 200
3