Art and Truth after Plato 9780226040165

Citation preview

Art and Truth after Plato

Art and Truth after Plato

tom rockmore

the university of chicago press    chicago and london

tom rockmore is the McAnulty College Distinguised Professor and professor of philosophy at Duquesne University and Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Institute of Foreign Philosophy at Peking University. He is the author of many books, most recently Before and After 9/11: A Philosophical Examination of Globalization, Terror, and History and Kant and Phenomenology, the latter published by the University of Chicago Press.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2013 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2013. Printed in the United States of America 22  21  20  19  18  17  16  15  14  13   1  2  3  4  5 isbn-13: 978-0-226-04002-8 (cloth) isbn-13: 978-0-226-04016-5 (e-book) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rockmore, Tom, 1942– author. Art and truth after Plato / Tom Rockmore. pages ; cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-226-04002-8 (cloth : alkaline paper)—isbn 978-0-226-04016-5 (e-book) 1. Mimesis in art.  2. Imitation in art.  3. Truthfulness and falsehood in art.  4. Aesthetics.  5. Art—Philosophy.  I. Title. n72.7.r63 2013 701.'17— dc23 2013000806 a This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Contents Introduction  1 chapter 1. Plato and Platonism on Poetry, Art, and Truth  11 chapter 2. Aristotle on the Theory of Forms, Imitative Poetry, and Art in General  46 chapter 3. Art and the Transcendent; or, Christian Platonic and Anti-Platonic Art  71 chapter 4. Kant and German Idealist Aesthetics  105 chapter 5. Hegel on Art and Spiritual Truth  146 chapter 6. Marx, Marxism, and Aesthetic Realism  194 chapter 7. On the Theory and Practice of Aesthetic Representation in the Twentieth Century  232 Notes  275 Index  317

Both knowledge and truth are beautiful things, but the good is other and more beautiful than they. plato, Republic 508D9 –E3

Introduction

T

his book addresses anew the old question, often neglected in contemporary aesthetic debates, about art and truth, or art and cognition. This theme is now rarely examined, in part because of the assumption that the question was resolved long ago. A central thesis of this book is that, on the contrary, the question has never been resolved, that in a sense Plato has never been satisfactorily answered, and that taken as a whole the later Western aesthetic tradition counts as an ongoing effort to formulate a successful anti-Platonic analysis of art and art objects of the most varied kinds. Early in the Western tradition, Plato focused on the relation of art and truth in inventing an early form of aesthetics. There is little attention to the Platonic view that philosophers, who alone know reality, are the true artists, but the Platonic attack on artistic representation has been hugely influential in Western aesthetics. The post-Platonic Western aesthetic tradition can be read as a series of responses to the Platonic attack on the relation of art and truth. The perennial aesthetic theme of art and truth can be introduced by a reference in an account of pictorial representation by E. H. Gombrich. Gombrich, who refers to a painting by George Inness entitled The Lackawanna Valley, commissioned in 1855 to advertise the railway, notes that at the time there was only a single track running in the roundhouse, but US president Franklin Pierce insisted on having four or five painted in since they would eventually be built. According to Gombrich the terms “true” and “false” applicable to statements and propositions do not apply to pictures, which cannot be in the same way. It follows that the lie was not in the picture, but in the claim to give accurate information about the railway’s roundhouses. Gombrich, who believes that disregard of this simple fact leads to confusion in aesthetics,1 is unconcerned with representational verisimilitude.



introduction

He thinks the information that pictures are intended to communicate is a historical variable and that in any case an artist must always begin with an idea or concept.2 Gombrich’s view identifies a historical approach to the relationship of art and truth running throughout the entire Western tradition. This relationship is only sometimes evoked, and rarely discussed in detail. It is, for instance, passed over in silence in Richard Eldridge’s recent introduction to the philosophy of art.3 It is mentioned more recently by Harold Pinter, the English writer, as well as by Noel Carroll and by Joseph Margolis. In his Nobel Prize lecture, Pinter examines the relationship between art, politics, and truth.4 Carroll identifies three arguments against the view that art has cognitive value. His basic claim is that artworks connect what we know with what we do not know5 and “function as arguments.”6 Margolis objects several times to the Kantian thesis that art does not yield knowledge.7 The origins of this problem lie in ancient Greek philosophy. The same ancient Greek tradition that proposes the link between the true, the good, and the beautiful also calls it into question. Plato, on some accounts the first great figure in the Western aesthetic tradition, criticizes the familiar ancient Greek imitative approach to art in denying that art is either true or good. The later Western aesthetic tradition can be read as a related series of responses to Plato proposing various analyses of the relation of art and truth. Plato’s view of the relation of art and truth follows from his theory of knowledge, especially from the notorious theory of forms. Hence the stakes in this debate are aesthetic as well as epistemological, focusing on the work of art as well as the question of knowledge. Aesthetic imitation is a form of representation often enlisted to cognize the mind-independent real. This epistemological effort, which appears in the Western tradition as early as Parmenides, is central in Plato’s reaction to his predecessors, Heraclitus and Parmenides. In knowing, we embark on what for Parmenides is the way of truth in respect to what is variously described as mind-independent reality, the real, the noumenon or thing in itself, the absolute, and so on. This is the central insight in metaphysical realism, which has inspired observers from the time of Parmenides through Plato until the present.8 The conviction that to know is to know an unchanging mind-independent reality inspires Plato and many others who supposedly do not fear knowledge.9 Plato’s criticism of artistic imitation (or representation) is not directly focused on the relation to a visible object, but rather to an invisible reality. Plato’s attack on artistic imitation presupposes the failure of represen-

introduction



tationalism in all its forms. This rejection was further strengthened by a long series of post-Platonic thinkers including Sextus Empiricus, Berkeley, Kant, and more recently by Nelson Goodman.10 If reality however understood can be known through intuition alone, it cannot be successfully represented through ordinary or even extraordinary artistic means. Art, understood in the widest possible way as imitating, representing, or otherwise depicting the mind-independent real, fails not on artistic but rather on epistemological grounds. Plato’s widely known rejection of imitative art is motivated and justified by his commitment to a political approach to art in the city-state. This is the art of constructing a just or good state, based on the intuitive grasp of reality beyond mere appearance. The true artist is not just anyone, certainly not someone who on grounds of nature and nurture cannot see invisible reality, but on the contrary, someone qualified to do just this, hence to direct the city. This problem, which echoes through Western philosophy, returns in Kant’s wake, for instance in the poet Schiller’s concern to solve the political problem through aesthetics.11 Plato’s negative view of imitative art that is merely art, art that is not based on the intuitive grasp of the forms supposedly available only to philosophers, presupposes a positive view of philosophical art. Over the centuries, Plato has been answered at key points in the later debate. Some responses support his negative view denying any cognitive link between art and knowledge, and others ratify his positive view in attributing a cognitive role to a special kind of art only.12 We do not know and cannot now recover Plato’s position, if there was one. I will be attributing to Plato the view that ordinary art is socially pernicious, and that the philosophical effort to bring about the ideal state is not only socially just, but further, the only correct way of joining together art and truth. A view of the ideal state as based on true insight, hence just or good in the political context, leads to an understanding of Plato’s view of aesthetics as richer, less arbitrary, arguably more interesting than when it is understood as simply condemning art on cognitive grounds. It is sometimes said there is no ancient aesthetics. In that case, examination of Platonic aesthetics is anachronistic, a kind of category mistake. According to Paul Oskar Kristeller, aesthetics is specifically modern, and modern concepts of art and aesthetics emerged together.13 Kristeller thinks aesthetics begins in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1790), or at least does not precede Alexander Baumgarten’s introduction of the term “aesthetics” to mean epistêmê aisthetikê, or the science of what is sensed



introduction

and imagined in his Halle master’s thesis.14 Yet if, as I believe, aesthetics had already been part of philosophy since Plato attacked it in a variety of dialogues, especially the Republic, and since Aristotle defended it in the Poetics in a complex theory of poetry, then Baumgarten’s denomination of the field was no more than, as has been said, a tardy adult baptism. I suspect that what is at stake is less the onset of aesthetics, which in the West goes back to ancient Greece,15 than the post-Kantian division of philosophy into various subspecialties. When Western aesthetics attains the dignity of a subspecialty is possibly relevant but not decisive for the deeper question of how questions of beauty relate to questions of knowledge in Platonism and in the later debate. Whitehead’s famous remark that the history of Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato16 is misleading. It focuses on a thinker whose position we do not know and cannot now identify and who is mainly known to us in what has come down as Platonism. The enormous influence of Platonism is reflected in later development of key insights as well as resistance to them. It is, then, not always clear if the later debate, though influenced by Platonism if not Plato, always remains within the compass of his thought. This is particularly true for aesthetics, which he does not create, but which he powerfully shapes, and which has struggled ever since to escape from its Platonic shadow. Views of beauty, truth, and the good are historical variables. It appears that until relatively late the Greeks did not detect a connection between, say, poetry and such arts as sculpture and music, since poetry was understood not only as an expression, but also, as Plato indicates in the Ion, as inspired, and on the contrary, sculpture and music were not.17 “Mimesis” later meant “imitation,” but earlier “dance” in Pindar and the Delian hymns.18 Contemporary interest in epistemological representation joins together ancient and modern concerns. It is already central in ancient Greek discussion of the arts. Yet what is meant by “art” is often very different.19 Kristeller usefully points out that “the Greek term for Art (tέcnh) and its Latin equivalent (ars) do not specifically denote the ‘fine arts’ in the modern sense, but were applied to all kinds of human activities which we would call crafts or sciences.”20 The ancient Greek view of art as imitation, which interests Plato and Aristotle, remains central in modern times. Johann Winckelmann, who invented typical German graecophilia in the eighteenth century, influentially argues that the moderns can only become great in imitating the ancients.21 The meaning of the term “beauty” varies widely. According to Tatarkiewicz the Greeks understood “beauty” under the term “kalon” in a wid-

introduction



ened sense as anything that pleases, attracts, and arouses admiration, for instance including the just, as in the pronouncement of the Delphic oracle: “The most just is the most beautiful.” For the ancient Greeks beauty includes charm, harmony, symmetry, appropriate measure, rhythm, and good proportion, all of which were mentioned by poets. “Art” (techne) is used in a widened sense to mean skillful production, following rules and applying to all human crafts.22 The stress placed on knowledge, for which skill mattered, is perhaps one reason why Plato criticizes the lack of knowledge of artists, who in this respect are no better than sophists. Ancient Greek artists did not distinguish between fine arts and crafts since all arts were fine arts. Today one might wish to distinguish between a carpenter, a cabinetmaker, and an artist as belonging to different disciplines. Yet from the ancient Greek perspective Plato’s famous example of a craftsman in book 10 of the Republic speaks to the problem of artistic creation of all kinds. Similarly, for an ancient Greek, poetry is based on inspiration and not, like art, on skillful production according to rules. Poetry, which requires divine intervention, was thought to give knowledge in making human beings better, whereas art produces what are sometimes called useful and perfect objects. Plato strongly denies that poets such as Homer possess knowledge. As Homer believes and Beowulf later still believes, the early, archaic poets see the role of poetry as spreading joy by glorifying the past through accounts of the fates of gods and men. Perhaps with himself as the example, Plato thinks the role of the poet must be to reach truth. Plato provides neither the first nor the last word on the problem of the relation of art and truth, which echoes through the later tradition. Aristotle rehabilitates a conception of art as imitation, including the related claim for social utility. Aristotle’s intervention opens up several possibilities for considering this problem. A short list might include (1) a view of art as grasping mind-independent reality, or art as also good since it reaches truth featured in very different ways by medieval Christianity and Marxism; (2) a more modest view of art as grasping human life, and as true only in a weaker sense proposed by Aristotle in the Poetics; (3) conceptions of art as not useful but simply good in itself in theories of art for art’s sake; and (4) ways of understanding art that abandon any effort at imitation, for instance in cubism, which flourished early in the last century. Post-Platonic claims about an artistic grasp of the mind-independent real are associated with two main aesthetic tendencies: medieval Christian art and Marxist aesthetics. The three main Abrahamic religions propose different views of art and truth. Medieval Christian art typically depicts the transcendent theological dimension of the real. This effort is acknowledged



introduction

but resisted by the shared Jewish and Muslim interdiction of efforts to depict transcendent reality. Marxism is typically opposed to religion, hence to Christianity. But paradoxically the aesthetic anti-Platonism situated at the basis of Christian art returns centuries later in the Marxist view of representational art in the era of industrial capitalism. Thus Lukács claims that only the proletarian perspective of socialist realism can pierce the veil of capitalist illusion. Medieval Christian thinkers as well as modern Marxists suppose a representational aesthetic approach that provides a true grasp of the real understood either as the transcendent religious dimension of religious faith or as the real nature of modern capitalism. Other, more recent, aesthetic approaches drop the requirement of realism underlying truth claims in concentrating on the objet d’art as an end in itself, for instance in the context of the technical issues of artistic depiction without further consideration of epistemological veracity. This book is not intended as a history of aesthetics, even in outline. It is rather a systematic inquiry focusing on several key interventions in the ongoing debate about art and truth concerning finally the social role of art. Each of the seven chapters examines an aspect of this overall theme, beginning with a chapter entitled “Plato and Platonism on Poetry, Art, and Truth.” There is enormous interest in Plato’s writings on art, and a wide divergence of opinion about their message. Many observers think Plato is attacking art in general, but others, including R. G. Collingwood, believe Plato is only attacking contemporary artists in ancient Greece.23 I argue that Plato’s attack on contemporary art is mainly motivated though his theory of knowledge, hence that the Platonic critique of imitative art presupposes the theory of forms. The theory of forms, which never assumes final shape in Plato’s writings, underlies the Platonic conviction that on grounds of nature and nurture some among us can grasp the invisible real to fashion an ideal state. The Platonic Republic is a kallipolis, or imaginary art object instantiating justice in a state not only beautiful but true and also good. With then-contemporary Greek art in mind, Plato criticizes art as imitative or mimetic. “Mimesis,” a central aesthetic concept for both Plato and Aristotle, later gives way to “representation.” I examine “mimesis” and allied terms before turning to Platonic views of mimesis in the Ion and the Republic (books 2, 3, 10). The later development of the Platonic view of mimesis is further sketched in the Cratylus and the Sophist. The chapter then turns to the theory of forms underlying the Platonic understanding of mimesis and mimetic art in the Phaedo and the Republic. The theory of

introduction



forms, which emerges as a nonstandard theory of causality in the Phaedo, and which refuses any inference from effect to cause, remains relevant. The later Western aesthetic tradition can be regarded as a series of reactions to the influential Platonic analysis of art and truth. The second chapter examines Aristotle’s detailed theory of poetry in the Poetics. The chapter begins with Aristotle’s compressed critique of the theory of forms, including the so-called third man argument. Plato’s Parmenides can in turn be read as Plato’s response to his best student. A reconstruction of Aristotle’s theory of poetry follows Gerald Else’s suggestion that Plato and Aristotle focus on imitating different objects. As concerns mimesis, Plato has in mind the invisible forms, and Aristotle is concerned with human life, or action and activity. Aristotle maps out a positive social function for art in general, especially poetry, which he famously prefers to history. The chapter further considers Aristotle’s response to the famous quarrel between philosophy and poetry. The third chapter studies art and the transcendent in Christian Platonic and anti-Platonic art. There are medieval treatises on beauty, but there is no medieval treatise on aesthetics. Yet there is clearly a shared medieval anti-Platonic view of art. According to Platonism, artists cannot know. This Platonic verdict is quickly reversed by Aristotle, and in turn reversed again by medieval Christian thinkers before Aristotle had been translated or known. Christian thinkers are committed to versions of the Neoplatonic view of an unbroken continuity between God and the world, God and nature. This further includes a characteristic triple cognitive link between human beings, who in imitating nature imitate and know God. This belief is voiced in different ways, for instance in Plotinus’s “emanational” theory, and more specifically in Pseudo-Dionysius, who thinks God, who is beauty, transmits beauty to all things. These and related formulations depend on and exhibit faith in the biblical view of God as the author of the world. This faith justifies the anti-Platonic aesthetic belief that in imitating the world due to God we can know God. The chapter studies medieval theories of beauty beginning with a passage on the relationship of art to the wider medieval worldview before turning to biblical and Greek sources of medieval art. The chapter next considers anti-Platonic, Christian approaches to aesthetic phenomena as representational, analogical and allegorical. It then takes up Augustinian and Thomistic aesthetics before ending in a retrospective comment on Christian aesthetics and Platonism. Stress is placed on the substitution of religious faith for epistemological argument to justify the anti-Platonic



introduction

claim, based on the conviction of an unbroken continuity between God and the world, that in knowing the world, or God’s works, we know God. The fourth chapter discusses the aesthetic theory Kant formulates in the third Critique, an obscure and difficult but rewarding work still enormously influential in the debate. Kant’s famous suggestion that he knows Plato better than the latter knows himself points to an unclear relation of Kantian aesthetics to Platonism. Kantian aesthetics follows both the Platonic critique of artistic imitation in denying a link between art and truth—reflective judgment, which is featured in his aesthetic theory, does not yield knowledge—as well as the Platonic effort to link the beautiful to the good. The chapter starts with a section on German idealism, German idealists, and German idealist aesthetics. It then situates Kantian aesthetics through remarks on predecessors who contribute to the formulation of his position (Baumgarten, Shaftesbury, Burke, Hume, and others). It next considers Kant’s discovery of reflective judgment and the anthropological shift in his understanding of the subject. The genesis of the Kantian aesthetic theory is studied in his early Observations. Successive sections, following the exposition in the third Critique, evoke main themes in Kant’s treatment of the beautiful and the sublime. There are accounts of the deduction of pure aesthetic judgments, of the dialectic of aesthetic judgments, and of the supersensible. The chapter further studies the relation of the “Critique of Teleological Judgment” to nature as well as the appendix on the methodology of the critique of teleological judgment. It ends with some critical remarks about Kant’s view of the relation of aesthetics and knowledge, or art and truth. Chapter 5 focuses on Hegel’s view of phenomenology, art, and truth. The contrast between Kant and Hegel could hardly be greater as concerns aesthetic phenomena. Kant, who was familiar with some aesthetic thinkers, had little grasp of the broader aesthetic tradition and, since he did not travel, almost no direct experience of great works of art. His theory of aesthetics is an unexpected dividend of his concern to demonstrate what is sometimes called the unity of reason in relating the theories expounded in the first and second Critiques. In contrast, Hegel was equipped with an exceedingly broad grasp of the entire aesthetic tradition. It is well said that he almost single-handedly created the history of aesthetics. He further acquired a grasp of fine art in his travels and was sufficiently versed in artistic phenomena to be a consultant for purchases of Egyptian art for the museums in Berlin.

introduction



Hegel’s theory of aesthetics links art and truth through his conception of phenomenology in a historical analysis of the discipline. His theory of phenomenology carries forward Kant’s Copernican revolution in restricting knowledge claims to phenomena constructed by the cognitive subject. In aesthetics, this leads to the Platonic conclusion that Kant also shares: we cannot claim to represent reality. Hegel left no treatise of aesthetics. The chapter outlines the three main discussions of aesthetics in Hegel’s corpus: in the Phenemenology, the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, and the Lectures on Fine Art. A brief sketch of Hegel’s phenomenological view of cognition in the Phenomenology is followed by an account of art and cognition in the section on religion in the form of art. The chapter next turns to the very compressed account of art in the Encyclopedia before tackling the Lectures on Fine Art. The account of the Lectures presents Hegel’s understanding of the relation of spirit, the absolute, and aesthetics in general followed by sections on his understanding of symbolic, classical, and romantic art. Special attention is accorded to the vexed question of the end of art both in Hegel and later in a very different key in Danto. The chapter ends with a short section on art and truth after the end of art. The sixth chapter takes up the general theme of Marx, Marxism, and social realism. Until the sudden decline and disappearance of the Soviet Union, Marxism was one of the four main philosophical tendencies of the twentieth century. Marxist aesthetics, which includes such figures as Engels, Lukács, Adorno, Eagleton, Brecht, Marcuse, Benjamin, Jameson, and many others, is often very lively, one of the most interesting aspects of Marxism. Further, with medieval Christianity, Marxist aesthetics has long been one of the main modern sources of the claim for the intrinsic relationship of art and truth. The chapter starts with an account of the relation of Marx and Marxism, followed by separate examinations of Marx’s and Engels’s very different conceptions of knowledge. Since Marx never worked out a theory of aesthetics, I consider his obiter dicta on this theme before turning to Engels and to Marxist aesthetics. Marxist aesthetics accords privileged cognitive status to socialist realism. The chapter considers in turn the theme of socialist realism and then Lukács’s two main efforts to make out the claim that this particular aesthetic style has an epistemological advantage over its alternatives. The seventh and last chapter evokes the relation between art and truth some two and a half millennia after Plato. There seem to be four main

10

introduction

possibilities: first, the view that the relationship between art and truth is plausible; second, the view that the relationship is implausible; third, the view that art has in the meantime come to an end in obviating any claim for the relationship of art and truth; and, finally the romantic view of art for art’s sake. The anti-Platonic view that after Plato’s wake a representational approach to art remains plausible is examined through Heidegger’s (and Sallis’s) defense of aesthetic realism on phenomenological grounds. Both presuppose, but do not demonstrate, a theory of epistemological representation. The view that the relationship between art and truth is implausible is examined through remarks on the general theme of representation as a condition of aesthetic representation in three ways: as concerns imitation and representation in general; in the views of Sextus and Kant on epistemological representation; and finally in Goodman’s attack on representation in general. Plato’s attack on and Aristotle’s defense of aesthetic mimesis, and any theory of representation, presuppose a unified cognitive object. The view that art has come to an end is examined in an account of the cubist movement, where even the possibility of representational verisimilitude gives way in the fragmentation of the object. The account of art for art’s sake as aesthetic anti-Platonism considers this movement as an effort to escape the Platonic critique of imitative art in cutting the link between art and truth. The Platonic relation between the true, the good, and the beautiful presupposes a link between aesthetics and the social good, whose absence Plato stigmatizes in his critique of imitative art.

chapter one

Plato and Platonism on Poetry, Art, and Truth

T

here is an enormous interest in Plato’s writings on art but a very wide divergence of opinion about their message. Many observers think Plato is attacking art in general. Others, such as R. G. Collingwood, believe Plato should be understood as attacking contemporary artists in ancient Greece.1 In this chapter, I argue that Plato criticizes contemporary art not on aesthetic grounds but rather from the angle of vision of his own theory of knowledge, which in turn presupposes a nonstandard conception of philosophical art based on an intuitive grasp of the forms. In short, for Plato aesthetics presupposes epistemology. The suggestion that Plato’s attack on art as imitation derives from the theory of forms presupposes that such a theory can be identified in his writings. Important texts, positions, and theories are often enshrouded in hermeneutical controversy. This factor is increased as concerns the socalled Platonic theory of forms. The theory of forms never reaches a final formulation in his writings. Plato’s view of this theory is unknown and cannot now be determined. The interpretation, the general contours, and even the existence of the theory of forms remain controversial. We do not know and cannot now recover Plato’s position, if he had one. It is scarcely easier to recover his views of art and poetry in particular. It is a commonplace that Plato begins the Western aesthetic tradition through his conception and criticism of a mimetic conception of poetry and art in general. Plato’s theories of the forms as well as of poetry and art in general are specialized topics, which have been intensively studied in an enormous literature, which is probably now beyond the capacity of any single individual to survey.

12

chapter one

Some observers think Socrates is already committed to a version of the theory of forms. Gail Fine points to a series of passages in claiming that he already makes an epistemological argument for the existence of forms.2 If this is correct, and if Plato accepts the theory of forms in its Socratic version, then it is possible that he was already committed to some version of it even before he discusses art. Some think his position developed over time while others believe he continues to restate in different ways the same or roughly the same view. The evolution of the theory of imitative art and of the theory of forms suggests that whether or not Plato has anything resembling a philosophical position, his thought develops. Hence, there is probably a time before he held any version of the theory of art as imitation or possibly even the theory of forms, a time when he began to hold the former and perhaps even the latter as well. Though the theories of art and the forms at least initially appear to arise independently, their fate is later joined, for instance in the Republic, especially in book 10, where the theory of forms, hence a specific approach to knowledge, is invoked to justify Plato’s harsh critique of art produced by poets and others lacking in knowledge. Hence, at least initially, it appears as if Plato’s twin concerns with the nature of art and the theory of knowledge developed separately but later come together with the framework of his overall position.

Mimesis, Imitation, Appearance, and Representation Plato’s view of art is firmly linked to the word “mimesis.” This term (ancient Greek: mimesis [mίmhsiV], from mimeisthai [mimeîsqai]), whose origin is uncertain, is usually translated as “imitation.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines “mimesis” as “a figure of speech, whereby the supposed words or actions of another are imitated” and “the deliberate imitation of the behavior of one group of people by another as a factor in social change.” It further defines “mimicry” as “the action, practice, or art of mimicking or closely imitating . . . the manner, gesture, speech, or mode of actions and persons, or the superficial characteristics of a thing.” The precise meaning of “imitation” is unclear. Richard McKeon distinguishes five different meanings.3 According to Michelle Puetz, who may have Plato in mind, the two core meanings of “mimesis” are imitation and artistic representation.4 This suggests that art has a cognitive function in “correctly” representing an object, or reality.

plato and platonism on poetry, art, and truth

13

This controversial thesis, which turns on the interpretation of “mimesis,” is contested by Plato but supported by a number of important postPlatonic figures. The term “mimesis” is discussed in various contexts by a long list of writers, too numerous to enumerate, where it is associated with a wide variety of themes running from aesthetics and literary criticism to feminism and anthropology. Mimesis is especially important in literary criticism. In one of the most important works in literary criticism of the twentieth century, under the heading of mimesis Eric Auerbach studies the representation of reality in Western literature from ancient times, starting with Homer and the Old Testament, up to Proust and Virginia Woolf.5 Edward Saïd ends his new foreword for the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of this book in suggesting the Hegelian point that the representation of reality in Western literature is in fact the representation by Auerbach, writing out of his historical moment, of the way that central writers in the Western canon, writing out of their own historical moments, represent reality. But the triumph of Mimesis, as well as its inevitable tragic flaw, is that the human mind studying literary representations of the historical world can only do so as all authors do—from the limited perspective of their own time and their own work. No more scientific a method or less subjective a gaze is possible, except that the great scholar can always buttress his vision with learning, dedication, and moral purpose. It is this combination, this mingling of styles out of which Mimesis emerges. And to my way of thinking, its humanistic example remains an unforgettable one, fifty years after its first appearance in English.6

Auerbach illustrates the complex transformation of “mimesis” from the time of ancient Greece until the present. In ancient Greece this term broadly designated such forms of “imitation” as the cross-dressing identified by Aristophanes in which men imitate women. It was also employed in an epistemological sense in classical Greek philosophy. “Mimesis” later takes on a very different series of connotations, such as Auerbach’s concern with the whole span of historically variable literary depictions of the real. Auerbach’s historicist orientation toward the Western literary tradition differs from the ancient Greek philosophical usage of “mimesis” to designate the representation of reality, or again the mind-independent real world as it is beyond mere appearance. Plato, who has no technical vocabulary, or even a fixed philosophical language, uses the term “mimesis”

14

chapter one

loosely and in a pejorative sense in criticizing forms of artistic creation. He applies it, for instance, to painting and sculpture7 as well as to music and dance8 and in other contexts. Aristotle uses the same term in a different way to refer to an innate human tendency, which he relates to different kinds of poetry he analyzes in the Poetics. I come back to Aristotle’s view in the next chapter. Plato does not begin aesthetics, which, depending on how one understands the term, originates in the West as early as the archaic period in the writings of Homer, Hesiod, and the early lyric poets.9 “Aesthetics” refers to theories of beauty, knowledge, and so on. Plato, like many later Western thinkers, approaches artistic creation mainly in terms of beauty. He considers beauty in detail in numerous places, including the Symposium, in which he praises it as the highest value; in the Hippias Major, in which he attempts to define the concept; and in lesser detail in the Phaedrus and the Philebus. In the context of the theory of forms, Plato apparently takes “mimesis” to mean “copying.” The terms “representation and “copy” are related. To copy (something) is to represent it, and the most developed or highest form of representation is copying. A copy is intended to be an entirely faithful representation of something else. In the Platonic view of mimesis, we encounter one of the earliest and certainly one of the most widely known forms of the problem of epistemological representation as it arises within the general field of aesthetics. The general problem of the relation of artistic representation and cognition is a special case of the more general theory of knowledge in which representation has played an enduring role at least since early Greek philosophy. Plato is apparently the first philosopher to discuss mimesis in the Greek tradition but not the first to mention it. When he intervened in the debate, mimesis had already taken root in the prior tradition long ago. Plato famously refers to the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry.10 Earlier ancient Greek philosophers criticize poetry for spreading false stories about the gods. Around 500 BC, Xenophanes attacked Homer and Hesiod for this reason,11 and Heraclitus called for Homer to be excluded from competitions and thrashed.12 The transformation of the meaning of key terms is important. Scholars note that before Plato “mimesis” had a less precise meaning, neither specifically applying to a poetic process nor necessarily implying fraud and counterfeit—with one important exception. In his comedies, Aristophanes comments on the staging of tragedies in using the terms mimeist-

plato and platonism on poetry, art, and truth

15

hai and mimêsis in consistently pejorative ways.13 This pejorative sense is amplified in Plato’s account, which ultimately derives from the theory of forms. There is reason to believe, as I will argue in the next chapter, that Aristotle’s rehabilitation of poetry and art in general crucially depends on reinterpreting the meaning of “mimesis.”

Platonic Mimesis and Representation The core meaning of “mimesis,” or imitation, is “to represent.” “Representation,” which is understood in different ways, is often associated with resemblance. A number of observers, for instance Nelson Goodman, deny that representation can be based on resemblance. I come back to this point in chapter 7. At the limit, there are many cases in which there is not or even could not be a visual image. For instance, the term “sublime” is often used to designate what cannot be represented, or which lies beyond representation, as in the Kantian conception. Representation seems central to visual art but peripheral to music. Some representations refer to particular things and some do not. Sometimes “representation” is employed to claim direct, unmediated knowledge of the external world. The term “representation” is currently used very widely to refer to such varied semantic situations as pictures, three-dimensional models, linguistic texts, mathematical formulae, diagrams, maps, graphs, and so on. In contemporary cognitive science it is widely assumed that cognitive processes concern representations. In representational theories of intentionality, believing is distinguished from desiring, and beliefs are distinguished from other beliefs, desires from other desires, and so on. Representative realism, which is currently popular in analytic circles, is perhaps most famously associated with John Locke. Naïve or direct realists believe we directly perceive the world as it is without a representational interface. Representative realists hold we do not and cannot directly perceive the mind-independent world as it is beyond appearance. Rather, we directly perceive only our ideas. This theory is sometimes related to what is called act /object analysis of sensory experience. The key insight here is that sentences which rely on English terms such as “looks,” “seems,” and “feels” convey direct phenomenological acquaintance with something that has the relevant property. Locke holds that we do not directly perceive objects. We rather perceive primary or secondary ideas, which are constructed by us out of primary ideas. This view goes all the way back in the

16

chapter one

tradition until Aristotle, who, in De Anima, argues that ideas in the mind are images of things it thinks. Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel, who follows Louis Marin, distinguishes four views of representation.14 These views, which emerged in the debate after Plato, include (1) to re-present or to reflect; (2) presence and absence; (3) the substitution of one thing for another; (4) to outline or trace the contours of something in according it visual form. To represent by rep­ resenting or reflecting something is the basis of the familiar reflection theory of knowledge, which probably originates in book 10 of the Republic at 596D, where Socrates talks about someone carrying around a mirror. This theory is usually credited to Francis Bacon, restated by Friedrich Engels, then adopted as the “official” Marxist view of truth by Lenin, restated again in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s early work in the picture theory of language, and more recently refuted by Richard Rorty. Common to such theories is the idea that the original can successfully be made present or reflected, and that at the limit reflection is the functional equivalent of a mirror image. This form of representation is very close to imitation, hence to the view Plato criticizes. Representation also assumes the distinction between presence and absence, between the re-presentation, which is present, and what it represents, or the represented, which is in fact absent, and present only in that and as it is represented. Among recent thinkers, this approach is most closely associated with Martin Heidegger’s theory of the metaphysics of presence. According to Heidegger, being in general is present under the mode of absence. Jacques Derrida, under Heidegger’s influence, formulates a theory of the so-called trace in such works as Writing and Difference and in Of Grammatology.15 One can re-present or make present what is not already present, but what is present can neither be made present nor re-presented. Representation further assumes the form of substituting or standing in for, as when something takes the place of something else. Such a representation is a sign of something else, so that representation here loses the sense of copying or imitating its referent. C. S. Peirce famously invented a triadic theory of signs. “Namely, a sign is something, A, which brings something, B, its interpretant sign determined or created by it, into the same sort of correspondence with something, C, its object, as that in which itself stands to C.”16 Immanuel Kant formulates a sophisticated theory of representation he later abandons in favor of epistemological constructivism identified in the debate as the Copernican revolution in philosophy.

plato and platonism on poetry, art, and truth

17

He indicates in the Opus Postumum that to think is to represent, or “rep­ raesentare per conceptus.”17 Finally, “representation” can mean to give form to something, as, for instance, integers or whole numbers can be represented, but so-called irrational numbers, such as the square root of 2 cannot. Thus for Kant the beautiful can be represented but the sublime cannot be represented. Louis Marin detects a basic turning point in the discussion in Descartes, who supposedly abandons imitation. For Descartes, to represent does not mean to copy18 but rather that the figural, or what can be reduced to a figure, or stated in the form of a sign, takes the place of images.19 It further means that what cannot be reduced to a finite figure, what is hence not finite but infinite, hence cannot be represented at all. Thus, for example, according to Marin, while the beautiful can be represented, the sublime cannot. On this basis, he regards Poussin as a theoretician of the problem of representation.20 This fourfold classification is useful here to call attention to some of the ways “representation” is understood in Plato’s wake. Plato’s critique of mimesis counts as an attack on representation in all its forms. The later debate records a series of different ways in which after Plato—but not after Platonism, which continues to inform the discussion—art and representation have been linked. In appealing to a mimetic theory of art, Plato chooses as his standard the strictest possible form of representation, which supposedly cannot be found within poetry or aesthetics in general, and can only be met with on the philosophical plane. Later theories of representation count as a series of efforts to meet Plato’s criticism in adopting different mimetic and nonmimetic views of aesthetic creation, hence different normative conceptions of art, with an eye to responding to Platonic criticism of aesthetics.

Pre-Platonic Mimesis and Aesthetics in General Plato’s critique of artistic imitation focuses on poetry, particularly Homer, whom Plato attacks but Aristotle praises. Homer and Hesiod are the first great Greek poets whose work has survived. Homer is probably slightly earlier, though that is disputed. If he existed, he probably flourished as late as the end of the ninth century, according to Herodotus around 850 BC,21 or according to other ancient sources even earlier, closer to the time of the Trojan War that supposedly occurred 1194–84 BC.22 Hence

18

chapter one

the early flowering of Greek literature begins as early as the end of the ninth century BC and perhaps even several centuries earlier. Whether or not Homer existed, it is believed that the Iliad is the first great work of Western literature. Literary criticism arose later. G. M. A. Grube points out that Greek literary criticism only begins around 500 BC when Xenophon and Heraclitus “violently attacked Homer for telling immoral and untrue stories about the gods.”23 The Greek view of Homer varies widely. According to some observers, the ancient Greeks accepted the idea of Homer’s influence as formative.24 In attacking poetry on the grounds of mimesis, Plato follows a tradition established by playwrights such as Aristophanes and philosophers such as Xenophanes and Heraclitus. A fragment of Xenophanes says, “Homer and Hesiod . . . have attributed to the gods all sorts of things that are matters of reproach and censure among men: theft, adultery, and mutual deception.”25 Heraclitus believes that Hesiod and Pythagoras, though learned, lacked understanding, and that Homer and Archilochus deserved to be flung out of the contest and to be beaten.26 His innovation mainly lies in creating an epistemological framework in which to embed the critique of imitative poetry and other forms of art. It is not necessary to describe mimesis in exhaustive detail. But some mention should be made of imitation before it comes into the philosophical debate. Two generations before Aristotle’s celebrated treatise on tragic mimesis (or imitation), the comic poet Aristophanes wrote two plays about the subject: Thesmophoriazusae and the more celebrated Frogs. In the former, the women, who are celebrating the festival of their goddesses, agree to release Mnesilochus, if Euripides will depict women as heroines on the stage. He must still outwit the Scythian, and, dressed as a procuress, he lures him with the promise of the enjoyment of a strumpet. The play ends as Euripides experiences the difference between kinds of mimesis that belong to the theatre and to everyday life. In the prologue, after Agathon offers his theory of mimesis, Euripedes asks him to infiltrate the women’s festival at Thesmophoria dressed as a woman, in an early example of cross-dressing or female impersonation. Agathon claims that a dramatic writer has to merge his whole personality into what he is describing. This view is later echoed by Plato in the Ion in the rhapsode’s suggestion that he must not know only the verse but also the mind of the poet. In the latter, the chorus croaks. If the imitator is taken to be the poet rather than the actors, then it is Aristophanes himself who makes these noises while his voice modulates into the trumpets and flutes of the accompanying music and so on.

plato and platonism on poetry, art, and truth

19

Aristophanes uses “mimesis” in an artistic setting, but, since he is a playwright and not a philosopher, does not reflect directly on the concept. For G. M. A. Grube, he mixes together his artistic objections to Euripedean tragedy with moral criticisms.27 This quickly changes when imitation is taken up in Plato’s writings. As Stephen Halliwell writes, “The concept of mimesis lies at the core of the entire history of Western attempts to make sense of representational art and its values.”28 As concerns aesthetics, Plato is also following Socrates, his teacher, as well as the sophists. The sophists, who are credited with turning attention from the world to human beings, developed theories of art rather than beauty. According to Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz, we owe to the sophists a series of fundamental aesthetic views. These include the distinction between artistic production, which follows rules, and nature, which occurs by chance; and the distinction between the useful and the pleasurable with respect to art; as well as hedonistic and relativistic conceptions of beauty.29 Socrates also developed a series of aesthetic ideas, some of which are later taken up by his student, Plato. Though Socrates did not leave any writings, his overall aesthetic position can be pieced together from conflicting accounts given by those who wrote about him, chiefly Xenophon and Plato.30 Tatarkiewicz, who notes this interpretive difficulty, resolves it in following Xenophon on the grounds that Plato probably reports as Socratic his own ideas. According to Xenophon,31 Socrates’s view of aesthetics consists in three main points. These include a distinction between the representative and imitative character of the fine arts and what nature makes, a distinction between the imitation and the idealization of nature, and the thesis that art represents not only bodies but also souls. The Socratic distinction between what art makes and what nature makes naturally leads to the Platonic concern between art as an end in itself and as a means to an end, which in his case is knowledge or truth. In this as in other respects, it is widely believed that many key Platonic doctrines arise through working out problems earlier addressed by Socrates. The distinction between the representation and the idealization of nature echoes in different ways through the later tradition. Late in the nineteenth century, Jean-Baptiste Corot, the leading figure of the Barbizon School, was still concerned with imitating nature. The medieval Christian thinkers and Kant feature an analogous view of art, from which Socrates already differs in his preference for the idealization of nature. The Socratic thesis that art represents not only bodies but also souls, or a claim about spiritual beauty, illustrates the characteristic

20

chapter one

Greek view that what is good is also beautiful, as a shield, which (successfully) protects a warrior—such as the shield of Achilles wrought by Hephaestus—is, hence, beautiful. Two points are relevant here. First, Socrates and other Greeks have what, from a later perspective, is an enlarged conception of beauty, which is not merely physical, but more inclusive. Second, the Socratic conception of beauty seems to be utilitarian and relativistic, not absolute. The main insight is that beauty does not lie in an absolute value, for instance in the illustration of mathematical proportion, famously exemplified in the Parthenon, but in its usefulness. This is extremely interesting because Plato, on the contrary, depicts Socrates as searching for a non-relativistic conception of ethics centered on the search for universal definitions. It follows that Socrates holds views on aesthetics close to or even identical with those of the sophists, whom he opposed as concerns ethics.

Mimesis in the Ion Plato mentions mimesis in the Ion, the Republic, the Cratylus, the Sophist, and other dialogues. In presenting Plato’s view of imitation it will be useful to focus on the Ion, in which it apparently initially appears, and the Republic, in which Plato presents his mature view of imitation in detail. The Ion, the shortest of Plato’s dialogues, is regarded as earlier than the Republic, which is in turn thought to be roughly contemporary with the Sophist but earlier than the Cratylus, all dialogues I will be mentioning here. The Ion illustrates the characteristic Socratic critique of poetry and by extension all the arts from the perspective of knowledge, understood as a form of unspecified expertise in a particular domain. This general perspective, which emerges in this dialogue, is extended and deepened through later development of the theory of forms. The dialogue considers the relation between the rhapsode, the poet, and knowledge. The term “rhapsode,” from “raptein,’ meaning to sew together (songs), is traditionally utilized to refer to the professional performer of Greek epic poetry in the fourth and fifth centuries, perhaps earlier. The Ion opens with a discussion between Socrates and Ion the Ephesian. Ion, a rhapsode who has recently obtained first prize at a festival at Epidaurus, specializes in Homer to the exclusion of, say, Hesiod, Archilochus, or other poets. Socrates immediately claims that a good rhapsode must know what it means to be a poet. The rhapsode must not

plato and platonism on poetry, art, and truth

21

only repeat a poet’s words but also understand what the poet means (see Ion 530C). For instance, a proper presentation of Homer’s poetry requires the rhapsode to understand what Homer means. This suggests that a rhapsode needs to possess a kind of knowledge in pointing indirectly to the question of the kind of knowledge possessed by someone like Ion. Poetry also turns on knowledge since, as Ion concedes, a good poet speaks better of the same material than a bad poet. The rhapsode and the poet both require knowledge, but what kind is never specified in the dialogue. The problem is more general as Socrates now suggests in changing topics to consider painting. According to Socrates, painting is a whole and someone who knows the whole can criticize any single painter. We are meant to infer that knowing finally surpasses the art of any individual domain, such as poetry or painting. But this inference is not further developed in the dialogue. Ion remarks that he speaks more easily of Homer than of the other poets (see Ion 531A). Socrates responds that his gift is due to inspiration by the muse and that poets are inspired. Poetry is not based on art (techne) or roughly knowing how, in which case any poet could write any kind of poetry and speak on any topic. It is rather based on mere inspiration. Art, by inference, requires knowledge. Socrates strengthens this point in a comment on what poets know. As Socrates depicts poetry, it is not rational but irrational or a-rational. According to Socrates, god or the gods speak through poets, who are possessed, in taking away their reason. To illustrate, the rhapsode interprets the poets, who in turn interpret the gods. This is an early form of the critique later leveled against poetry and other forms of artistic creation in Republic book 10 to the effect that poetry and perhaps other forms of artistic creation are thrice removed from reality. The rhapsode, who merely imitates the poet, would, from this perspective, be situated even further from reality, hence from truth. In response, Ion admits that when he recites, his interpretation is not rational in character but ecstatic (Ion 535A). In other words, poetry depends on divine inspiration but not on either art or knowledge. As concerns Homer, a rhapsode like Ion speaks equally well of what he knows and what he does not know. Hence, like the sophists, who also do not know, he speaks falsely. Since every art is concerned with a different topic, and since there is no universal art, the poet surpasses the limits of what one knows in speaking of everything. Other lines of work, however, presuppose a sort of knowledge. As Socrates points out, a charioteer is a better

22

chapter one

judge concerning his line of work, and a fisherman, and so on, than the rhapsode. Ion says that the rhapsode can judge all the different topics, for instance that he knows what a general knows (541A). Socrates argues in response that the people want a general, presumably because he knows, and not a rhapsode, who presumably does not know. Socrates concludes that Ion, who claims to praise Homer on the basis of art and knowledge, is only a deceiver. He neither exhibits his art nor explains it, but merely acts through inspiration (541E). This brief discussion of artistic creation in the Ion is later amplified as Plato continues to work out his approach to art as mimesis. Various themes are already sounded but none is developed at this point. It is possible that when he composed this dialogue Plato already believed in some version of the theory of forms, for instance in a version adumbrated by Socrates, but there is no indication in the text. The characteristic later doctrines tending to justify these claims, above all the theory of forms, are not yet present in the dialogue in even the most elementary way. Treatment of questions concerning the epistemological dimension of artistic creation, which is very tentative here, is consistent with but more developed in later dialogues.

Mimesis in Republic Books 2–3 Plato returns to this theme in later writings, especially in the Republic, where he seeks to justify his condemnation of the arts—above all, poetry —by linking them to the theory of forms. It is usual, since there is reason to believe that Plato changes his view during the writing of the dialogue, to divide his remarks on artistic creation into two parts: the well-known account in books 2 and 3, and the very well-known account in book 10. Book 2 opens with the statement by Glaucon that for Socrates it is better in every way to be just than unjust (357A). This is followed by a distinction between two and possibly even three conceptions of the good: the good in and for itself without consideration of consequences; the good desirable for itself and for its consequences, as exemplified by knowing, seeing, and being healthy; and perhaps also justice as a possible third kind of good about which opinions differ. The discussion then turns to what justice is and what its origins are, to begin with in addressing the proposition that to do injustice is naturally good and to suffer injustice is bad. A

plato and platonism on poetry, art, and truth

23

distinction is now drawn between the most just and the most unjust lives. According to this view, it is best to do injustice without paying the penalty, and worst to suffer it without being able to take revenge (358B–C). Here justice is understood as a mean between two extremes (359B). Glaucon now states a second view according to which justice and moderation are hard and onerous, but licentiousness and injustice are sweet and easy to acquire (364A–E). Adeimantus next intervenes to invite Socrates to show not only in theory but in practice that justice on the contrary benefits its possessors, and injustice harms them (367D). At this point in the discussion, in response to this challenge Socrates famously undertakes to describe justice in the city, or justice writ large, in order to understand justice for the individual, or justice writ small (368D). Socrates, who is challenged to answer in focusing on practice, responds in creating a city in theory, which comes into being based on needs (369B) since none of us is self-sufficient (369C). The view that human beings have needs they cannot meet outside a social context is the answer to the query Rousseau later poses about why we enter into society. This theoretical city features division of labor based on individual human capacities (370B), which is justified since an individual cannot do many things well (374A). After briefly describing the so-called true city (372E), which suggests that politics can be based on knowledge of the forms, Socrates passes rapidly to the study of what he calls a city with a fever (373A), presumably a dysfunctional agglomeration. This will be larger and filled with things that go beyond what is necessary for an ideal city, such as “hunters, for example, and artists or imitators, many of whom work with shapes and colors, many with music” (373B), including poets, actors, and so on. “The city with a fever” presumably refers to an undefined number of real cities as distinguished from the imaginary ideal city. All cities rely on division of labor based on differences in individual capacities due to nature as well as on education. For instance, the role of guardian of the city requires a nature suited to that line of work, plus the necessary conditions (374E), which include philosophy, spirit, speed, and strength (376C) Socrates next turns to the question of how in theory to educate such individuals (376D). This will include physical training for the body and music and poetry for the soul. Music and poetry further comprise stories, which can be true or false, and which precede physical training, and so intervene at a moment when the young are most malleable (377B). Since such stories are significant in the function of the city, the storytellers must be supervised and their stories censored (377C). This approach counts for major stories told by Homer,

24

chapter one

Hesiod, and other poets, who “composed false stories, told them to people, and are still telling them” (377 D), as well as for minor stories. Plato, who demonstrates no qualms about censorship, seems to have in mind a state without freedom of information and in which education plays the circumscribed role of putting out a single version akin almost to ideology. Socrates now objects that telling falsehoods about the most important things does not make a fine story (377E). Such stories should either not be told to the young, or told only to a very few, and not told in the ideal city. For one sets a bad example in suggesting that heinous crimes go unpunished. And if we want the guardians not to quarrel among themselves, there should be no stories about the gods doing so (378C). Socrates has so far pointed to the incorrect model, which must be rejected. What is the correct model? A god must be depicted as he is, hence as good, since nothing good is harmful. If the good is the cause of good things, and if a god is good, then there are other causes for bad things (379C). Homer and Aeschylus must either be kept from addressing the young, or provide the kind of positive account Socrates now recommends. The first law of the city “to which speakers and poets must conform” is that “a god isn’t the cause of all things but only of good ones” (380B). The concealed premise is that what is good is unlikely to be altered by time or circumstances. Further, the gods, who are not deficient in any way, would not make themselves worse than they are, which any change at all would bring about. The second law is that no one should present the gods badly (380D). Even before discussion of the theory of forms, Socrates relies here on the view that the forms, which are perfect and cannot change, serve as the model not only for human beings but also for the gods. Socrates further addresses the question of whether a god would be willing to present the illusion of being false in either word or deed (382A). At stake is the idea that one is not what one seems. Socrates now introduces a distinction between a true lie, based on simple ignorance, and a mere lie, which consists in representing as true what is not true. The true lie is ignorance, which impedes us from distinguishing the real from the unreal. Unlike the true lie, a lie formulated in words, for instance in telling fables about the past that we do not know, which is a bad act, would be incompatible with the gods, who are good. This point sounds like an anticipation of the Cartesian view that the Christian God would not deceive us. The lie in words, which merely imitates the true in order that stories and fables might be deemed “useful,” is a means to an end, roughly what Dostoyevsky later suggests in the famous account of the Grand Inquisitor. If the gods do not lie, nor deceive us in any way, then to depict them otherwise as Homer

plato and platonism on poetry, art, and truth

25

does is false and reprehensible. A lie should not be publicly presented, and the young need to be protected from it. For instance, a poet or playwright could create a falsehood in imitating in words what is in the soul (382D). The difference seems to be between a falsehood and sheer ignorance, for instance in thinking one knows when one doesn’t know, and in communicating such ignorance as truth in oral form. Yet no sort of falsehood is useful to a god. According to Socrates, the daimonic, or inspiration by the daimon, and presumably as well by messengers from the god who take the form of the call of conscience, or again from the divine, are exempt from falsehood. Socrates concludes that in speaking or writing poems about the gods we must acknowledge that “a god is simple and true in word and deed,” and neither deceives others in any way (382E). The account of art in book 2 can be succinctly summarized in two general claims that, as Socrates indicates, govern the understanding of poetry as imitative or representational. First, what, like the gods, is well made, either in nature or in art, which imitates it, can withstand change (see 381B). In other words, what is intrinsically perfect does not change. This view clearly points toward a conception of the forms as eternal or changeless. Second, it belongs to divine perfection that the gods, who as perfect are like the forms, do not attempt to deceive us through word, deed, or in any other way. Book 3 develops and applies the general view expressed in these two precepts in introducing an important distinction between “imitation” and “diegesis.” This is roughly the difference between “showing” through mimesis, or again the narrator telling a story. To amplify the argument made so far, Socrates remarks that these are “the kinds of stories that . . . future guardians should and should not hear about the gods from childhood on” (386A). He has in mind honoring the gods and their parents as well as taking friendship among themselves seriously as conditions of the wellfunctioning city. Once again he insists on the need to supervise the stories and the storytellers. For instance, since courage is a necessary virtue, one should not disparage life in Hades (386B). In fact since a guardian, who is presumably a decent person, is “most self-sufficient,” such an individual is least likely to be affected by personal loss (387E). If there must be lamentations, let women and cowards but not the guardians do it (388A). So we must ask Homer and the other poets not to represent Achilles, Priam, and other descendants of the gods as less than heroic. Socrates now returns to the theme of falsehood raised above in adding that it is useless to the gods, but for people functions “as a form of a drug” (389B). This passage anticipates Marx’s famous remark that religion is the

26

chapter one

opium of the people. Socrates, who has “the good of the city” (389B) in mind, allows falsehoods for doctors and for the rulers or guardians, but for no one else. The idea seems to be that lies by doctors and politicians are permissible since they are consistent with and even necessary for the good of the city. But a lie by anyone else must be punished as subversive and destructive (389D). This suggestion assumes without proof that the doctor does what is good for the patient and the guardian similarly acts in the interest of the city. Both inferences appear questionable now. Doctors presumably act according to what they believe is the best interest of the patient. But they often do not know what that is. An interesting instance is the current practice of letting the prostate cancer patient choose his own therapy from among the available procedures. This is justified only on the assumption that, since the doctor does not know, it is better for the doctor though not necessarily for the patient for the latter to make the therapeutic choice. It is even less plausible to believe that politicians, the contemporary guardians, “know” in Plato’s sense what is good for the city. It is implausible to believe that present-day politicians, who were not educated to Plato’s standards, possess a true grasp of reality. Politicians, professors, parents, and many others routinely claim knowledge when there is none. George W. Bush’s disastrous decision to enter into a war against Iraq in the wake of 9/11 on the assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction is an indication that he did not “know” what he claimed to know. Socrates now returns to the point that since gods cannot do bad things, harmful stories tending to deny that they are no better than humans or even do evil, which might harm the youth, must be stopped (392A). He postpones until book 10 a further kind of story about human beings. Only poets and prose writers speak badly about matters concerning human beings, for instance in saying that the unjust are happy and the just are wretched (392B). According to Socrates, we require an answer about what kind of stories should be told before we can know what justice is, how it profits someone who has it, and so on. Socrates now turns from the content of stories to their style. In this context he draws attention to a distinction, already implicit in Ion but focused more closely here, between narrative alone, narrative based on imitation, and a combination of each, which he illustrates with respect to the Iliad. Narrative alone, or diegesis, and narrative by imitation, or mimesis, both belong to narration in the wider sense in that former “shows” and the latter “tells” as it were.32 In imitating someone else, the poet makes himself

plato and platonism on poetry, art, and truth

27

as much like the other as possible. There are different kinds of poetry and storytelling: one kind, which he identifies with tragedy and comedy, employs only imitation; another kind, which Socrates describes as mainly dithyrambs, rests on narration by the poet himself; and a third kind uses both, as in epic poetry and so on (394C). This distinction is important. At stake is whether, in the ideal state, poets will be able to narrate through imitation in general, through imitation of some things only, or not at all (394 D). Socrates, who now raises the question of whether guardians, not poets, should imitate, responds that one person cannot do all things well. The same person cannot be both a rhapsode and an actor, nor play a role in tragedy and comedy, each of which calls for a form of imitation. It follows that guardians should not try to imitate (395B) a long list of things, such as young or older women, slaves doing slavish things, bad men who are cowards and so on. Socrates further draws attention to the difference in styles likely to be favored by a gentleman, or a so-called good man, who is more likely to imitate or put himself in the place of someone he describes, and someone else who is more likely just to narrate (396B). Though he admits that the mixed mode is pleasing, since it contravenes the argument in favor of specialization, Adeimantus agrees that only someone who imitates a decent person should be admitted to the city (397D). The conversation about music and poetry with respect to speech and stories now veers off in another direction to take up lyric odes and songs, then the regulation of meter, followed by songs and so on. As concerns music and poetry, the main lesson seems to be that on grounds of specialization, guardians should not practice either diegesis or imitation, but that imitation is permissible within limits as long as it appears to improve the city.

Mimesis in Republic Book 10 In book 10 Socrates considers the kind of poetry about human beings that will be admitted to the ideal city, a question which was postponed in book 3 (392A– C). In the meantime, he has worked out the main outlines of a highly influential theory of knowledge, which continues to echo through later Western philosophy. If the theory of forms is central to Platonism, it is implausible to think that it is not central to the Platonic

28

chapter one

rejection of artistic imitation, and plausible to think that without it the Platonic critique of poetry loses its point. Commentators, who note that the approach to imitation is very different now, disagree about whether there are in fact two different approaches to poetry, how to describe the differences, and how to relate them.33 The account in book 10, which presupposes a mature version of the theory of forms, suggests that books 2 and 3 of the dialogue were composed earlier, perhaps even substantially earlier than book 10. In books 2 and 3, imitation is what someone does in imitating someone else, say, in a poem. In book 10, which takes into account the doctrines developed in the meantime, especially in books 6 and 7, above all the theory of forms, imitation is something that a poem or a painting does in virtue of a presupposed epistemological theory. The two views of imitation overlap around the core thesis that imitation, hence representation, always fails as a source of truth. Platonic epistemology distinguishes opinion from knowledge,34 which Plato describes in the famous passages on the allegory of the sun and the divided line35 and in the equally famous parable of the cave.36 I return to both themes below. Socrates begins book 10 in stating that it was correct not to admit any imitative poetry into the city (595A). This statement contradicts the earlier view, set out in book 3, in which special circumstances justify admitting certain kinds of imitative poetry to the city. This difference can be explained by supposing that in the meantime Plato has changed his mind about how poetry relates to the ideal city or, more probably, that he has made progress in working out the theory of forms, which is earlier merely implicit. The reason that poetry should be excluded from the city is that it “distorts the thought of anyone who hears it, unless he has the knowledge of what it is really like” (595B). In short, poetry appeals to the nonrational side of the soul. Since poetry is like what it imitates, its cognitive object, the suggestion points to the relationship of poetic imitation to truth. To justify the interdiction of imitative poetry, the discussion now turns to an account of imitation in general, which is formulated in respect to the forms, or theory of forms. Socrates points out that “we customarily hypothesize a single form in connection with each of the many things to which we apply the same name” (596A). This suggestion, which evokes the central claim of the theory of forms, occurs earlier in books 5 and 6. In the former, Socrates insists that philosophers like the sight of truth. This suggestion points to the view that philosophers and only they, under the right conditions, can

plato and platonism on poetry, art, and truth

29

“see” the forms. Discussion of this claim leads to the view, said to be true of all the forms, that the forms are one, or self-identical, but appear to be many in their instantiations (476A). In different ways this insight echoes through the later tradition in types of idealism. These include Aristotle’s thesis that the soul is in a way all existing things,37 as well as the German idealist so-called philosophy of identity (Identitätsphilosophie) following from Kant’s Copernican revolution, an approach to cognition which is predicated on the thesis of the identity of thought and being.38 Others, who are not philosophers, are unable to see, hence to accept, “the beautiful itself.” Socrates entertains two possible interpretations of that claim in opposing nonphilosophers and philosophers. A nonphilosopher believes in beautiful things but not in the beautiful as such. Such a person only lives in a dream, since he denies that a likeness is not a likeness, hence fails to perceive that imitations fall short of reality. This inference, which requires experience that is possible only for philosophers, follows from accepting the theory of forms. The philosopher, who believes in and can see the beautiful as such, who differentiates between instantiations of the form and the form, is described as fully awake (476D–E). In short, appearances participate in forms. Philosophers, who detect this participation, can distinguish between the thing that participates, which is not a form, and the form. Yet what that means is unclear, unclear even to Plato. In the Phaedo, for instance, Socrates specifies he is not yet able to go beyond such vague expressions as “participation in,” “being present in,” or “communion with” (Phaedo 100D). Unlike those situated in and unable to surpass the world of appearance, and who live in the cave as it were, philosophers, who can go out of the cave to “see” reality as it is, are not asleep but “very much awake” (476D). Socrates reinforces the crucial point about the distinction between one form and many things participating in it in a later passage. “Participation” is not mimetic, hence not itself a form of imitation. Socrates notes that we distinguish in language many beautiful or good things, and that we also speak of beauty itself, and the good itself, each of which is a single form. He points out that the former are visible and seen through sight or encountered through other senses, and the latter, which are invisible, are merely intelligible (507A–D). The distinction between many things or appearances, which participate in the forms, and the forms leads to many puzzles. Socrates notes that craftsmen who make things look toward the form, which they do not make. This suggests a basic distinction between the appearance, and the form of which it is the appearance and in which it participates. Though,

30

chapter one

as Socrates points out, one could make things appear by carrying around a mirror, the fact that the craftsman cannot make the form is “the point that is crucial to the argument” (596E). Since Socrates turns immediately to artistic creation in considering the painter, we must link his remarks about painting and other forms of imitative art to the theory of forms. The painter is like the carpenter who makes no more than a bed, not the form of the bed (597A). Neither the painter, nor the carpenter, nor other craftsmen make the form, but only something like it. In other words, whatever they make differs from the form (597A) At this point, the focus has shifted from the emphasis in books 2 and 3 on the artist, someone who makes in the widest possible sense, to what is made in its relation to what one does not make but merely imitates. The discussion now turns to formulating an account of imitation through these examples. There are three kinds of beds made respectively by a god, the carpenter, and the painter. There can, according to Socrates, be only one bed made by a god since if there were more than one it would yield what we now would call, in Aristotle’s wake,39 an infinite regress (597C). The carpenter makes the bed, and the painter, who is an imitator of what others make, in turn imitates it. An imitator is “someone whose product is third from the natural one” (597E). Plato is at pains to show that imitation always fails for three related reasons as concerns the perspectival nature of appearance, the fact that imitation imitates appearance only but not reality, and the further claim that imitation is deceptive in presenting mere appearance as reality. The claim that imitation is always perspectival suggests that the forms appear to one who imitates from different perspectives, as if there were different things when there is in fact only one. For instance, the form of the bed appearing differently to different observers, or that it “appears different without being so” (598A). The point is not that we do not simultaneously perceive all aspects of a single thing, as Husserl later claims, but rather that a single thing can give rise to many imitations. This argument presupposes an account of appearance and imitation based on the relation of many things to a single form. Further, the argument that imitation imitates appearance, or an image, but not reality, points out that it only wrongly seems as if “it can produce everything” (598B). This argument presupposes that unlike philosophers, those who imitate cannot “see” the invisible forms. Finally there is the argument that imitation merely deceives, as a good painter wrongly appears to be a carpenter. At stake is the difference between the craftsman, who knows how to make something, such as the bed,

plato and platonism on poetry, art, and truth

31

and the painter, who merely appears to know but does not know, which in turn presupposes the distinction between “knowledge, ignorance, and imitation” (598D). Since his writing of these arguments against imitation, clearly by the time he composed book 10 of the Republic, if not earlier, Plato was committed to the theory of forms as the justification of the critique of artistic imitation. Socrates, who has now set the epistemological stage to consider imitative art, turns immediately to tragedy and Homer. He is concerned to rebut two related points: that poets really know what they write about, and that even a great poet like Homer is socially useful. The counterarguments, which emerge quickly in no discernible order, rely on assumptions about the nature of the human soul in ascertaining the effects of imitative poetry. Throughout, Socrates relies on the view that the intent of the kallipolis (from to kalon, “the beautiful”) is to maintain and increase the good of human beings, hence to make them happy. We will briefly evoke the six objections in the order in which they are stated. First, we need to determine whether the poet knows all things or only how to write poetry. Since the works of the poets, which are only images of things that are, or reality, are situated at a third remove from the truth (599A), one can infer that poets do not have knowledge. If a poet really knew what he imitated, he would be more interested in action than in imitation concentrating on images. This interesting remark anticipates Fichte’s view that theory arises out of practical situations, as well as Marx’s view that practice is more important than theory. The main example, which is central to the Republic, is the ideal state, or kallipolis, which is intended, as Hegel indicates, as the instantiation of Greek ethics.40 Next, Socrates suggests that someone who could make both the form and its imitation would be unlikely to do the latter since forms are more important than their copies (599B). This objection, which assumes the priority of practice over theory as well as the correctness of the theory of forms, is unlikely to occur to anyone at present. The third objection addresses the utility of poetry, which is challenged to show that, like Asclepius, it makes anyone healthy (599D). Socrates, who relies on the argument for division of labor, or specialization, points out that a horseman knows how to use the reins and mouth-bit, while the cobbler and the metalworker who make them do not know how, and that the painter does not know either. This is consistent with his distinction, to which he now calls attention, between the three crafts that one uses, makes, or imitates (601D). At stake is Plato’s conviction that the ideal

32

chapter one

state, which depends on knowledge of the forms, is more useful for health than mere imitation. In different ways the Platonic concern to achieve maximum social utility in an ideal state continues to drive later political thinkers. John Rawls, for instance, thinks it is possible to design a state that is not only just but also better for everyone.41 This leads to a fourth argument, which distinguishes knowledge based on acquaintance with a thing from discussion about it. Someone who plays a flute has the right opinion, or knows better than someone who makes it, but the imitator has neither. A poet imitates without knowledge of what is being imitated by others, who know nothing, to guide him. Presumably people who do not play the flute lack knowledge about it, which can only come from practicing this instrument (602B). Aristotle brings out this point in the Nicomachean Ethics in his famous suggestion that the things that we need to know how to do before we do them we in fact learn only by doing.42 Socrates concludes that imitators know nothing, that imitation is no more than a game, and that tragic poets like Homer are only concerned with something that is three removes from the truth (602C). The fifth argument applies the familiar distinction, important in ancient anthropology and in modern depth psychology, between rational and irrational parts of the soul to the role of imitation. Poetry and probably also painting appeal to an irrational part of the individual far from reason. In the case of a decent man who loses a son (see 387D–E), there is an opposition between reason and law that tells him to resist pain, and experience of pain that tells him to give in (694A). In such circumstances we need to follow the rational part of the soul to decide what to do. Yet an imitative poet is not like the rational part, which governs a decent individual, but rather like “the excitable and multicolored character,” who is easy to imitate (605A). The imitative poet arouses, nourishes, and strengthens the nonrational part of the soul at the expense of weakening its rational part. In undermining the soul, which is like the city, the imitative poet also undermines the city. The charge that the greatest enemy of the wellfunctioning state is the imitative poet may or may not have been plausible at the time and seems implausible today, when no cultural figure enjoys a status sufficient to challenge political hegemony or in any other way diminish human rationality. The sixth argument, which is a reprise of the preceding argument, is identified as “the most serious charge against imitation,” that is, that with rare exceptions it corrupts even decent individuals (605C). According to Socrates, an imitative poet “puts a bad constitution in the soul of each individual by making images that are far removed from the truth and by

plato and platonism on poetry, art, and truth

33

gratifying the irrational part” of the soul, which believes irrationally that “the same things are large at one time and small at another” (605C). This is a restatement of the view that imitative poetry harms the individual by strengthening unreason and weakening reason. Today one might say that imitative poetry appeals to base instincts, not to what is best and most noble about human beings. Now returning to the example of a hero who has suffered a loss, Socrates insists that a long speech of lamentation is inconsistent with the correct behavior, which is suffering in silence. The part of the soul that incorrectly enjoys such poetry is only able to do so since the best part, which is inadequately educated, relaxes its guard under the influence of pleasure. The same argument applies ceteris paribus to laughter, sex, anger, and all the desires, pleasures, and pains that we say accompany all our actions” (606D). Poetic imitation causes us to be ruled by what is not useful for us, so that instead of becoming “better and happier” we become “worse and more wretched” (606D). Once again the assumption is that others, in the kallipolis the guardians, know better than we do what we should and should not do, for instance better than those who depict Homer as the poet who has educated Greece. Socrates concedes Homer’s poetic virtues, but insists that the kallipolis can only admit hymns to the gods and eulogies to good people. The central point is that imitation appeals to the irrational part of the soul. For this reason, Socrates says that it is correct to banish “the pleasure-giving Muse” since to admit it will allow pleasure and pain, in short hedonism, to rule the city, instead of law or what is best, reason (607A). Socrates takes the side of philosophy in the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry (607B).43 The friends of poetry must show that “it not only gives pleasure but is beneficial both to constitutions and to human life” (607D). This crucial point concerns the relation between poetry and truth, or “the struggle to be good rather than bad” (608B). At stake is finally the practical possibility of justice and other parts of virtue.

Mimesis in the Cratylus Imitation is also mentioned in other dialogues, including the Cratylus, a so-called middle dialogue, roughly contemporaneous with the Republic; in the Sophist, which is usually believed to be a later dialogue; in the Timaeus; in the Statesman; in the Menexenus; and in the Laws, Plato’s last dialogue (2.67–668; 7.814–16). Plato seems to soften or even lift his criticism of mimesis in later dialogues. The Statesman describes existing constitutions as

34

chapter one

“mimemata” of ethical truths as they are known to philosophical legislators (297C). Such imitations are not fraudulent, but worthy of respect. The Menexenus favors the idea that the young should imitate the virtues of their elders (236E, 248E). The main speaker in the Timaeus suggests that talk about the natural world mimics the intelligible world (47C). In the Laws, where music rather than poetry is featured, Plato maintains that art must imitate in continuing to understand “imitation” as “correctness” or “accurate representation” (see Laws 2.667D –E) and depicts musical imitation as potentially accurate (668B). These and other passages suggest Plato later took a more clement view of imitation than in the Republic. The Cratylus and the Sophist contribute to an understanding of Plato’s view of mimesis in different ways. The former puts forward a theory of language based on imitation. The latter is sometimes regarded as contradicting or at least restricting the view of imitation in the Republic. In the Cratylus, Socrates develops a view of language as imitation in confronting two views of what, after Frege, would now be called semantic reference. Hermogenes maintains that linguistic correctness is conventional, and agreed on by the community (384D), and Cratylus contends that semantic reference is natural since each word names by nature (390E) and not by convention (383AB). According to this view, in which names are natural, a craftsman, the one who first works out the names of things, would know their essence. There is an obvious analogy between artistic creation, language, and reality. If a craftsman knows reality, then a tragic poet like Homer or even a painter could also make a similar claim. Socrates considers etymologies, but it is never clear that he means to take them seriously. It remains unclear how etymologies are supposed to lead to truth. Socrates’s study of etymology is arguably similar to Heidegger’s effort to find out what words originally meant, for instance in analyzing the term “phenomenology.”44 Etymology is important since if it were successful it would undermine Socrates’s critique of artistic creation as mere imitation.45 A poet, for instance, by artfully using words, would at least in theory be capable of successfully grasping reality, precisely what Plato in earlier dialogues, such as the Republic, is at pains to deny. The inquiry into the relation of words to things examines an early version of the correspondence theory of truth based on artistic imitation. If names provide a correct reference, then at least in principle words imitate the real. This presupposes, as Socrates points out, not only the Protagorean doctrine that man is the measure but also that things have a fixed being or essence (see 386A). We should name in what can be called the

plato and platonism on poetry, art, and truth

35

natural way (387D). The way to learn to use names naturally is to consult experts like Protagoras or Homer and other poets.46 But in consulting Homer we learn that the gods and men use different names for the same thing. This raises the question as to which name is more correct, or in this context more natural (see 392ff). This in turn refers back to the deeper question about whether a name accords with the nature, or essence, of what it names. This amounts to asking if those who are specialists in etymology are capable of knowing the real. To know the real requires grasping its essence and not merely representing or imitating it. After discussion of a long series of etymologies, Socrates arrives at the view that a name is a vocal imitation of what it expresses (see 423B), which imitates in written letters and syllables its being or essence (see 424B). This leads to the conclusion that we can do no better than to think we imitate things by letters and syllables. But unless, like tragic poets, we rely on divine inspiration, we have no way to justify this claim (see 425D). In order for this theory to work, written words must in some way always imitate what they stand for. Yet this seems doubtful for various reasons. To begin with, one would have to know what one imitates prior to imitating it in order to know that the imitation is successful. This is doubtful in languages, which have written alphabets, and in which it is not clear what it means for words to imitate things. It is even more doubtful in languages like Chinese in which there is no written alphabet. Chinese ideograms may have originally represented more or less closely that to which they referred. But this reference has been increasingly lost. A Chinese ideogram need not now have any similarity to what it stands for. And this requirement cannot be met if imitation is the only available form of cognitive access. Socrates, who denies that we can justify the general claim that we imitate things through language, drives this point home by considering the degree of correspondence or imitation. If names, like paintings, imitate either truly or falsely (see 430D), then some names are better than others (see 433AB). That a name is good or bad in terms of the degree of resemblance (see 433E) preserves the analogy between naming and painting (see 434AB). Yet how we name what we name depends on what someone who gives the names thinks is correct (see 436B). Indeed there is a paradox since if things can only be known through their names, then those who give names cannot know they are giving them correctly (see 438B). The only way to evade this conclusion, hence to evade epistemological skepticism, is to learn about things independently of their names (see 438E) on the basis of the theory of forms. The latter further enables us to avoid

36

chapter one

the Heraclitean difficulty of knowing what changes—which is a possible source of error (see 439C–D)—by claiming, say, that the beautiful, is unchanging (see 439D). Hence the very possibility of knowledge rests on the truth of the anti-Heraclitean theory of forms (see 440B–C) and, on examination, mere imitation, which correctly grasps the essence of a thing, turns out to be impossible. The Cratylus does not contradict but rather amplifies the view of imitation in the Republic in suggesting two main points. First, any acceptable view of the semantic role of language must be conventional, hence nonnaturalistic. Plato is close here to the view, often identified later with Wittgenstein, that meaning derives from use. According to this view, meanings derive from ordinary use, not from reference to objects in the mindindependent external world, nor through thoughts, ideas, or mental representations.47 This is the obvious alternative to any claim for a so-called natural semantics supposedly based on the putative but obviously unverifiable identification of the essence of objects. It follows that views of language presupposing an etymological grasp of its intrinsic truth, for instance some form of the Heideggerean approach, cannot be sustained. Second, we cannot claim to represent the way the world is in language, which requires knowledge that is only available through the theory of forms.

Does the Sophist Advance Different View of Imitation? It goes beyond the limits of this chapter to consider all the dialogues in which Plato mentions either the theory of forms or criticizes imitative art. I will simply bracket other dialogues that discuss mimesis, including the Statesman, the Timaeus, and above all the Parmenides. If, as is widely thought, the Cratylus is roughly contemporaneous with the Republic, in which the theory of forms is central, it would be surprising if it were inconsistent in important ways from the latter dialogue. This need not be the case for the Sophist, which ostensibly belongs to the last series of dialogues. The Sophist, which centers on the problem of the distinction between being and nonbeing, calls attention to Plato’s antipathy toward the sophists. This dialogue links to sophistry the account of imitation formulated in the Republic. In informal language, one might say that the effect is to worsen its case in showing how pernicious, from Plato’s angle of vision, it really is. This dialogue does not contradict but rather amplifies earlier accounts of imitation in expounding Plato’s view that, like imitative poets,

plato and platonism on poetry, art, and truth

37

the sophists produce false imitations through words, which fail to capture what they describe, and hence cannot be taken to be knowledge. This dialogue interests us here for at least three reasons. (1) Imitation is linked to the sophist, who, on this account, is committed to nonbeing; (2) attention is further drawn to the venerable problem of nonbeing, which strongly interested the ancient Greeks; (3) finally, under the heading of imitation attention is directed to the distinction between a resemblance, which by definition falls short of the original, but, since there is a resemblance, is not wholly false, and an appearance, which is wholly false since it in no way resembles what it claims to imitate. The dialogue begins with a distinction between sophists, statesmen, and philosophers (see 217A) before focusing on the nature of the former. A distinction is then drawn between caring for the body, equipment, and imitation, which, according to the Stranger, all merit a single name, under the heading of production (219A–B). The sophist, who appears to have belief-knowledge about everything, in fact has no knowledge (233D), but relies on imitation. Different forms of imitation are now distinguished, including likeness making (235E), and imitation that appears to be like a beautiful thing but is not (236B), as in much of painting, and which is called appearance making (236C). Hence, the two types of imitation are likeness making (eikastikên) and appearance making (phantastikên)(236C). The former is in some respects like something which exists but in some respects different, and hence can be said to resemble, but the latter is wholly different from, hence unlike, what it purports to represent, and hence does not resemble the object. This crucial distinction is raised again centuries later by Kant, in some respects a deep Platonist, who follows Plato in denying any epistemological connection between representations and what they represent, between appearances and what appears. I come back to this point again below. This distinction further points to the related question of the status of nonbeing (236E). The status of nonbeing is obviously linked to the theme of imitation. Plato now turns in his own name, since Socrates does not appear in this dialogue, to the question of mimesis by introducing the theory of forms in the statement that many different things can be called by a single name as a copy (eidolon) as if they were one thing (240A). A copy resembles the true thing, but is not true (240B). A sophist relies on mere copies, which must not be conflated with reality. Since the sophist does not know reality, he deceives us about appearances. A false or deceptive belief consists in believing that what is not in fact is (240D). The sophist tries to

38

chapter one

induce us into error in getting us to accept as true what is false in deceiving us to infer that an appearance is a representation, or fool’s gold is gold. Plato, who clearly considered this distinction to be important, comes back to this problem again later in the dialogue to remind us (264C) that copy making is divided into likeness making and appearance making. Attention is later drawn to production in distinguishing the production of originals and of copies, as distinguished from things themselves (266B). Production, the capacity to cause things to come to be that previously were not (266B), includes copy making (266A). Imitation is defined as appearance making (267A). Yet, since there are two parts to imitation (267B), there is a distinction between types of imitation based on knowledge or again on ignorance (267D), and the latter, like the sophist, is not sincere but rather insincere (268A). The view of imitation in the Sophist does not conflict with, but only further develops, the overall critique of imitative art. It fills out the previous picture in two main ways. First, it calls attention to a distinction between degrees of imitation, which in all its variations is based on resemblance. These include appearance due to appearance making by sophists, which is based on no knowledge at all and likeness, or the result of likeness making by painters and poets. Left unexplained is how Plato can defend the view that what the sophist has to offer is merely fantastic, with no resemblance whatsoever to the object, a mere appearance, while poets, painters, and other types of artists can be said to produce likenesses with at least some resemblance to what they depict. Plato is even more opposed to sophists, in whom he finds no redeeming virtues, than to Homer. Yet he needs to justify the different degrees of disagreement, as it were. Second, this dialogue helps us to understand the difference between “bad” imitation, which captures none or only some aspects of the object, hence falling short of the truth, and which Plato rejects; and “good” imitation, which is presupposed as a limit and which Plato accepts. An example is the ideal city-state described in the Republic, which presumably instantiates a good imitation of the form of justice.

On the Platonic Theory of Forms This brief review of Plato’s view of mimesis shows that he rejects artistic imitation on epistemological grounds. For it is only if art presupposes truth and if some version of the theory of forms is at least potentially

plato and platonism on poetry, art, and truth

39

correct that he is entitled to his critical attitude toward philosophical aesthetics he creates and at once traduces early in the the Western tradition. This review also shows that his later dialogues further develop but do not contradict the critique of aesthetic imitation that reaches its high point in book 10 of the Republic. I turn now to the Platonic theory of forms, which underlies his critique of mimetic poetry and art in general. There is no alternative to discussing the theory of forms. Yet there is probably also no good way to do so, since, after efforts virtually coterminous with Western philosophy itself, this notorious theory remains a centrally important enigma. The theory of forms is notorious. The term never appears in Plato’s dialogues, though its name was already current in antiquity. Diogenes Laertius famously called it (Plato’s) “Theory of Forms.”48 Yet after some two and a half millennia of discussion, no agreement has emerged about the theory. At this late date, when the Tower of Babel is nearly finished, research concerning the theory of forms has become a separate domain in which specialists compete with each other about the correct interpretation. What is called the theory of forms has been intensively discussed over many centuries since Plato. Suffice it to say there is no agreement about Plato’s view of the theory, about what the theory is, or even about whether there is such a theory. Rather there seem to be a variety of related views, which individually or together are taken as the theory of forms, which are stated in different fashion in Plato’s dialogues, which apparently never reach canonical status, and which he subjects to strong criticism in the Parmenides. Paradoxically the theory of forms can fairly be taken as the centerpiece of Platonism, the highly influential collection of theories often attributed to him, but whose relation to his position, if indeed he has a position, is unknown and cannot now be determined. The considerable uncertainty about even basic aspects of the theory has in turn led to a huge literature about it. There is, for instance, uncertainty in the scholarly discussion on basic questions about the theory of forms, such as how a form relates to particulars. The Aristotelian view that the forms are ontologically separate from sensible particulars has recently been challenged49 but also reaffirmed.50 Other conceptual difficulties, a number of which were already known to Plato, include how to distinguish between forms and nonforms, the order among the forms, and so on. To point out that Plato’s near contemporaries thought there was a theory of forms is only minimally helpful. The theory of forms is clearly central for the Socratic view of art, expounded in Plato’s dialogues, which

40

chapter one

depends on the idea that there is knowledge, or knowledge of the forms, but poets and other types of artists do not have it. For purposes of this critique, Socrates needs to have some kind of positive theory of knowledge in place. Without the possibility of a cognitive grasp of reality the objection that those who produced art objects did not know the truth would be uninteresting. Without a commitment to some version of the theory, or at least to the idea that a theory is necessary, even if he cannot formulate it satisfactorily, his arguments against the link between truth and beauty, hence his critique of aesthetics, would lose its point. The theory seems to have grown out of the Socratic concern to give definitions of abstract terms, such as justice, which in turn led to the concern with universals, or definitions existing apart from things, which Plato formulates in different ways and which Aristotle later criticizes. We can leave open the point of whether Socrates himself formulated an early version of the theory or whether it only arose with Plato in depicting an average form of the theory of forms. There is no appropriate way to sort out the relationship between the views of Plato and of Socrates, hence no convenient way to parse the extent to which the theory of forms is Socratic, Platonic, or more likely some combination of both. Some observers think Socrates was already committed to the theory of forms.51 Plato depicts Socrates as typically concerned with arriving at definitions of virtues. It is often noted that the Socratic dialogues feature Socrates either as opposing proposed definitions or as committing himself to a metaphysical view that definition requires that what is being defined is eternal, unchanging, and situated in an ontologically pure realm, in short what seems to be an early version of the theory of forms.52 On this and similar accounts, the theory of forms, though not under that name, was already implicit and perhaps even explicit in Socratic practice. It is, of course, not possible to evaluate this claim since it presupposes that we can untangle the views of Socrates and Plato, which seems unlikely at this late date. A shorthand way of referring to the theory of forms is through the anti-nominalistic formula: one over many. Ordinary language points to a general relation between words and things in which one linguistic term is routinely used to refer to objects, which have one or more properties in common. The famous remark in the Republic that “we customarily hypothesize a single form in connection with each of the many things to which we apply the same name” (596A) suggests an established habit. This is confirmed, for instance, by the practice of craftsmen—for instance

plato and platonism on poetry, art, and truth

41

the famous example of the craftsman in book 10 of the Republic—who rely on concepts in making objects. The theory is introduced for the first time in the Phaedo as a form of explanation comparatively better than available alternatives. The analysis presupposes the relativity of sense perception, a frequent point in Plato’s dialogues. Since we can be deceived by mere sensation, the soul can be “deceived” by the body. At this point, an argument is introduced to show that in the intellectual realm there is truth beyond mere sensation. In turning to the soul, a distinction is introduced between visible objects and invisible concepts. The Just, the Beautiful, and the Good, which are not visible, cannot be cognized through the bodily senses, but only through the mind. Through thought alone one can approach, or perhaps even grasp, reality (65D–66A). There seem to be four related claims here. First, there is a basic distinction between individual things and general concepts. Second, general concepts, which are not the object of sensation and hence cannot be known through the body, are knowable through the mind. Third, in knowing general concepts one knows either their reality or, if they literally are reality, even reality itself. Fourth, reality, or at least something akin to it, is knowable through concepts. In other words, there is invisible truth beyond the visible illusions of mere sensation. This initial result follows from the effort to show that, though the soul can be “deceived” by the body, it can nonetheless grasp truth beyond illusion. Hence there must be forms if there is to be truth beyond the illusions following from the senses. The linguistic practice of employing one and the same word to refer to a collection of similar things implies we can identify their relevant similarity. The argument here looks very much like what is later called at the time of Kant transcendental deduction.53 We can say that Plato “deduces” or demonstrates the necessary existence of things, or forms, from concepts. A different argument in favor of the forms is introduced in analyzing concepts within the framework of the notorious theory of recollection. Things, which can be correctly referred to by the same word, and which therefore must share at least one characteristic, can be said to be in that sense equal. This line of argument leads to Equality or to the Equal itself. The reasoning here is obscure. But Plato seems to be making two points. To begin with, the concept of Equality (or the Equal itself) cannot come out of or otherwise be the result of experience, by which it is presupposed. For we need to have prior knowledge of it. The point is that in order to attribute claims of equality or inequality, we must already know what that is.

42

chapter one

Further, the concept is not equal to, nor like, but rather inferior to, things, which are equal or unequal. On this basis, Socrates concludes that we must possess the concept, which we already know and merely later recollect, prior to birth (74A–75D). The two arguments canvassed so far are similar, but not especially persuasive. The first argument can be paraphrased as a claim that, unless there are forms, knowledge is impossible. It is assumed that to know means in Parmenidean fashion to grasp something that does not change. Through the theory of recollection, the second argument adds a claim about how one acquires the forms. It is not persuasive to claim that forms exist since if they did not, knowledge of the appropriate kind would be impossible. The theory of recollection still inspires such observers as Noam Chomsky, who over many years linked his view of what he called linguistic universals—which he seems more recently to have abandoned while maintaining a looser view of deep structure54 —to what he depicts as Plato’s problem.55 Yet it seems more plausible, hence comparatively better, to accept a weaker claim for knowledge that does not require the postulation of imaginary entities than to argue for a stronger claim on the grounds that unless forms exist knowledge is not possible. Now when the argument is formulated in this way, it appears weak. Plato simply does not demonstrate that knowledge is impossible unless forms exist. At most he could be said to show that a particular conception of knowledge based on “seeing” the forms requires their existence. Yet he fails to show and it arguably cannot be shown why one should accept this normative view of knowledge. Further, the argument for recollection requires claims about the transmigration of souls, which seem unacceptable to a modern thinker. The arguments advanced so far for the theory of forms both concern the possibility of knowledge. A different argument emerges later in the dialogue with respect to the possibility, not of knowledge as such, but of a better kind of knowledge. Here the theory of forms is advanced not as a supposed condition of knowledge in general, but rather as the condition of an explanatory theory better than its competitors. The situation in question is apparently very modern, since the problem concerns causal explanation as it was emerging in ancient Greece in scientific circles. Socrates, who evokes the problem of what he calls “the cause of generation and destruction,” begins by relating that as a young man he was interested in natural science, which concerns “the causes of everything,” or more generally why something comes into being, hence exists, but also why it perishes (96B).

plato and platonism on poetry, art, and truth

43

The argument unfolds in three steps. Socrates initially raises the question of the nature of causality in relation to Anaxagoras, who explains everything in terms of mind. He then discusses a “scientific” theory of causation, which makes no use of mind, and which explains causality in terms of the sinews and bones in the body, which is absurd (99A). Socrates objects that “scientific” theory does not explain individual situations, which leads to being unable to differentiate between real and apparent causes. According to Socrates, most explanations fail to account for the situations under study, and hence simply do not work. This objection relies on a normative conception of “scientific” explanation for which to explain is to explain the coming into being and passing away of each and every thing individually, not as members of a class. What this means can be explained through the perhaps mythical example of Newton’s apple. According to Socrates, it would not be sufficient to claim that any and all objects fall toward the center of the earth because of gravitation in a way that can be described through a general law. An acceptable explanation must account, or further account, if general laws are admitted, for the fall of this particular apple. This ancient objection to scientific explanation as it was emerging in ancient Greece apparently impressed Hegel, who repeats it in claiming that natural scientific laws are not specific, hence unacceptable.56 Socrates recounts that, after rejecting the best available philosophical and scientific approaches, he decided to study the problem through words in a theory based on the assumption of forms such as the Beautiful, the Good, the Great, and so on.57 His rival, second-best approach to explanation takes shape as a novel causal theory based on the claim that a thing is beautiful on the grounds that it has an unspecified relation to the Beautiful. According to Socrates, this is the safest answer (100E). He further insists, in generalizing, and in eliminating all other types of explanation, that nothing comes to be except because it shares in its particular kind of reality (101C).58 He defends this approach in indicating the consequences of abandoning the hypothesis of the existence of the forms (101D). This complex line of reasoning is proposed in the Phaedo as supposedly providing a better causal explanation than its contemporary rivals. These include prior philosophical theories, mathematics, and natural science, none of which satisfactorily explains the individual thing. Plato’s turn to the theory of forms invokes explanation on the level of the single thing as its normative standard since there is otherwise no need to invoke what Socrates describes as a second-best hypothesis. This reasoning leads to

44

chapter one

a triple conclusion linking things, forms, and names: (1) the original hypothesis, or the claim that invisible forms exist, (2) accounts for visible individual things, which are said to exist because they share in forms, and (3) names, which are general, identify forms but not individual things (102B). The existence of invisible forms is the hypothesis on which the novel Socratic theory of explanation is constructed. According to this hypothesis, visible things are accounted for through an unexplained relation to the forms, which is later called participation. Visible things are identified as members of a class picked out by names, which, as Hegel later pointed out, are intrinsically general but not universal.59 The Phaedo suggests that the theory of forms is forced on Socrates by the inability to find an acceptable theory of explanation. In dialogues later than the Phaedo, Plato often revisits the theory, which he develops and criticizes in various ways. In the Symposium, Diotima distinguishes between knowledge of things and beauty itself, which is described as the “one single form of knowledge, knowledge of the beauty.”60 In the Protagoras, Socrates says that justice is just and holiness is holy in suggesting that every idea participates in itself.61 This leads to the problem of infinite regress later raised by Aristotle. In the Republic, which some observers regard as a dialogue about the theory of forms, he links it to his theory of knowledge. In the Parmenides, Socrates famously subjects the theory to searching, but for his modern readers often baffling, criticism. This series of rapid remarks on the emergence of the theory of forms in the Phaedo does not exhaust the topic. Later reformulations address a series of difficulties while adding new features to the theory, perhaps most impressively in the Republic. It seems unnecessary to track all the changes, but useful to consider Plato’s and Aristotle’s criticisms of the theory in the next chapter.

A Final Note We are left with many puzzles, for instance how to understand imitative poetry, a theme about which scholars disagree.62 Plato’s critique of art as imitation is mainly directed against imitative poetry, but is not specific to it. I have further approached his critique of this artistic genre as if it also counted against other forms of art. The multifaceted attack on poetry points beyond itself to art in general, and is only plausible through the prior commitment to some version of the notorious theory of forms. If not

plato and platonism on poetry, art, and truth

45

initially, certainly after the emergence of the theory of forms, Plato motivates the critique of art as imitation on the basis of that theory. It further is possible that the need to justify the critique of artistic imitation was a factor in working out the theory of forms. The critique of the mimetic view of art is developed in the Platonic dialogues in different ways, and on different levels—with respect to the rhapsode, the poet, the painter, the craftsman, and the sophist—presupposes a positive view of art, which is never directly articulated but functions in the background as the model of what a mimetic form of art can and should be. It follows that the critique of artistic imitation points to philosophical art, or the theory of the ideal city-state, on the supposition that philosophers alone know reality. Poets, painters, and other artists have technical skill but lack knowledge in the full sense, which is reserved for philosophers only and finds its expression in the ideal state. Everyone other than the philosophers dwells in and cannot leave the cave, from which only a philosopher can emerge to “see” the sun, or reality. Only a philosopher can “see” the invisible forms, or construct the kallipolis, the highest instance of art. At the limit artistic imitation, which fails because of the difference between the imitation and what it imitates, between appearance and reality, points toward “philosophical” imitation grounded in the intuitive grasp of what is.

chapter two

Aristotle on the Theory of Forms, Imitative Poetry, and Art in General

T

he preceding chapter described the main lines of Plato’s attack on mimetic poetry and art in general and very briefly expounded the theory of forms on which it is based. This chapter will study Aristotle’s effort to rehabilitate imitative poetry and art of all kinds on the basis of his critique of the theory of forms. For Aristotle, who understands “mimesis” differently from Plato, this term has nothing to do with accurate representation but rather designates the creative depiction of human action not necessarily as it is but rather as it could be. It has already been noted that Plato’s attack on poetry and artistic creation of all kinds inseparably conjoins theories of artistic imitation and cognitive representation, theories which are later disjoined in separate debates on artistic creation within aesthetics and art criticism, as well as in modern accounts of cognitive representation. The theory and practice of the later Western artistic tradition can be understood as a series of responses to the enormously influential Platonic view of art as imitation. The Platonic attack on artistic imitation runs together elements that are often later separated. In order to track direct and indirect responses to the Platonic criticism of artistic imitation, it will be useful to distinguish (1) types of artistic creation that progress through an enormous range from clearly imitative to clearly nonimitative styles; (2) aesthetic and philosophical theories about types of artistic creation, including theories of artistic representation with respect to truth; and (3) finally theories of epistemological representation for which artistic representation is a special and especially important case.

aristotle on the theory of forms, poetry, and art

47

The inelegant term “cognitive representationalism” refers to a representational approach to cognition. Platonic views of artistic imitation, cognitive representationalism, and the theory of forms are closely linked. The theory of forms justifies the rejection of cognitive representationalism of all kinds, including artistic imitation. It is a historical accident that in Plato’s time the main artistic approach was imitative. Nothing requires us to take a representational approach to art. From Plato’s perspective, “true” representation, or representation based on knowledge, is possible only on the basis of direct (or immediate) intuition of reality. Plato’s critique of artistic imitation is mitigated by a number of factors, which only emerged later in the debate. Thus Plato apparently did not anticipate a noncognitive use of representation in the less than perfect real state. He also did not anticipate a type of cognition directed not toward the mindindependent external world but rather toward the subject. Plato is perhaps correct to exclude artistic imitation from the ideal state. But he is incorrect to exclude imitative art from the really existing state, where it plays a significant role in providing knowledge, if not as concerns the object, as least as concerns the subject. In Plato’s wake, numerous thinkers strive to defend art against Plato’s criticism. An influential response to the Platonic rejection of art as imitation is formulated by Aristotle, his most important student, in two steps, including a critique of the theory of forms and in that light a restatement of a socially useful conception of art, art objects, and artistic creation.

Aristotle and the Platonic Theory of Forms This section will briefly describe Aristotle’s reaction to the theory of forms in postponing to the next section his conception of mimesis. There are a great many ways of understanding the relation of Aristotle to Plato, and more specifically the former’s reaction to the Platonic theory of forms. These range from claims that Aristotle rejects only mistaken readings of the Platonic theory of forms to claims that he rejects any form of the theory. Aristotle is typically understood to believe there is knowledge of universals in rebus only. The majority view seems to be that he rejects the Platonic theory of forms as hopelessly confused while proposing a positive formulation of mimesis as a source of knowledge in the so-called sublunar realm. His reading and criticism of Plato and Platonism justify his own alternative theory of knowledge, including, since imitation depends on knowledge, his anti-Platonic rehabilitation of artistic creation.

48

chapter two

Aristotle is the model of a systematic thinker, but his comments on Plato that have come down to us are not organized systematically. It is difficult, perhaps not possible, to give systematic form to Aristotle’s controversial reading of the Platonic theory of forms. Views about his understanding and criticism of the theory of forms are sharply divided. It seems there is no reasonable prospect of formulating something like a single “correct” view of Aristotle’s reading of and reaction to Plato and Platonism. Nothing resembling agreement among qualified observers has ever emerged in the discussion over the centuries. Some observers believe Aristotle’s response to Plato is trivial, but others regard it as decisive. David Ross thinks that much of Aristotle’s criticism is simply captious, or worse.1 According to Harold Cherniss, Aristotle misunderstands Plato on nearly every important point.2 Others believe Aristotle’s grasp of the theory and his criticism of it were so acute that Plato later abandoned this theory under any form. The conviction that Aristotle correctly understands Plato sometimes leads to a preference for reading Aristotle to understand Plato over reading Plato, in roughly the same way as Marxists turn to Engels to understand Marx. Thus Léon Robin reconstructs Plato’s theory solely from Aristotelian sources.3 Others regard Plato as sensitive to Aristotle’s criticism. According to G. E. L. Owen, Plato acknowledged the force of Aristotle’s criticism of the theory of forms, which, after the Parmenides, he abandoned.4 R. M. Dancy believes the Parmenides is directed to the problem of participation, in short to countering a central difficulty raised by Aristotle, hence to overcoming Aristotle’s objections. Gail Fine, who relies on fragmentary Aristotelian writings to describe the theory of forms as well as Aristotle’s critique of it, believes that Aristotle’s criticism is fair and Plato can respond to it.5 According to Fine, Aristotelian ontology is the result of working through Plato’s theory of forms, 6 but Aristotle is incorrect that the forms are separate from things.7 On the contrary, Daniel Dev­ ereux thinks Aristotle follows Plato, who consistently separates forms from things, or more precisely he separates forms from things of which they are predicated.8 Ronald Polansky and Patrick Macfarlane believe that Aristotle succinctly but correctly described and criticized the theory of forms.9 L. P. Gerson contends that Plato answers Aristotle in the Parmenides and that after this point he introduces a distinction between a form and its nature.10 Observers who disagree about Aristotle’s critique of Plato agree that it derives from a very different view of knowledge. Aristotle’s view of knowl-

aristotle on the theory of forms, poetry, and art

49

edge allows him to reverse the negative Platonic judgment of artistic creation. At stake is the very deep problem, which has attracted many of the best Western philosophical minds over many centuries, of what it means to know. Since there is no agreement about Plato’s theory of forms, we cannot determine whether Aristotle’s reading of the Platonic theory of forms is correct. A number of reasons support this conclusion. First, there is the general textual problem of interpretation, which affects all efforts to understand texts. Socrates, who left no written texts, is an exception. In the Western tradition, before and after Socrates philosophy prefers writing over speech. Philosophy of all kinds depends on interpreting written texts. Yet after several millennia, there are still no agreed-upon interpretive standards. The variation in interpretation, which should not be overlooked, includes analytic efforts to isolate so-called arguments from context, nonanalytic efforts to grasp ideas in context, and all the myriad intermediate gradations. Second, and as already noted, there is the fact that the Platonic theory of forms apparently never assumed final form in his writings. We can neither determine what the theory is nor determine with any certainty Plato’s relation to it. Third, there is the widely known difficulty of one important thinker interpreting another important thinker. Among recent thinkers, Heidegger has made a dubious virtue out of “violent,” clearly unfaithful readings of his predecessors, such as Descartes and particularly Kant.11 Important thinkers, who interpret prior texts on the basis of their own theories, are hindered in understanding the views of their predecessors. Fourth, there is the unusual difficulty posed by Plato’s so-called unwritten doctrine,12 in short what is not in the text. In Physics, Aristotle writes, “It is true, indeed, that the account he gives there [i.e., in Timaeus] of the participant is different from what he says in his so-called unwritten teaching (agrapha dogmata).”13 Plato mentions this doctrine in a number of places. In the Phaedrus he criticizes the written transmission of knowledge as faulty, favoring instead the spoken logos: “He who has knowledge of the just and the good and beautiful . . . will not, when in earnest, write them in ink, sowing them through a pen with words which cannot defend themselves by argument and cannot teach the truth effectually.”14 In the Seventh Letter, which may not be genuine, he writes, “I can certainly declare concerning all these writers who claim to know the subjects which I seriously study . . . there does not exist, nor will there ever exist,

50

chapter two

any treatise of mine dealing therewith.”15 In the same text, he also writes, “Every serious man in dealing with really serious subjects carefully avoids writing.”16 According to Plato, such secrecy is necessary in order not “to expose them to unseemly and degrading treatment.”17 The unwritten doctrine, which has been extensively discussed, affects an understanding of the relation of the later tradition to Plato,18 possibly including Aristotle’s reading of his position.19 We do not know how these difficulties, including the so-called unwritten doctrine, impact Aristotle’s interpretation of Plato and Platonism. Some observers rely on his writings to recover Plato’s unwritten doctrines. Others, such as J. N. Findlay, think Aristotle misrepresented or at least partially misunderstood the theory of forms.20 Aristotle refers to the theory of forms in a number of places in contextualizing it in the ongoing debate. If we bracket On Ideas, which survives only in fragmentary form, then Aristotle’s most important extant passage on Plato’s theory of the forms occurs in his concise, summary account in the first book of the Metaphysics, where he is seeking a science of first causes. In this context, he describes21 and criticizes22 Plato’s position and later Platonism.23 In the Phaedo, Socrates describes the theory of forms as originating in his effort to understand the origin of things. If this is the historical Socrates, then Plato’s teacher was already a friend of the forms, which Plato does not invent but only reformulates. This view, which attrib­ utes an early version of the theory of forms to Socrates, presupposes the historical accuracy of the dialogues, which Aristotle seems to contradict. The easiest way to overcome this difficulty is to suggest that Socrates invented the initial version of the theory of forms, which is basically transformed in Plato’s writings. In discussing the theory of forms, Aristotle has in mind later Platonic formulations of a theory that perhaps originates in Socrates, but that Aristotle attributes to Plato. In the first book of the Metaphysics, from the perspective of knowledge of the primary causes, Aristotle takes up the theory of forms as one among other prior theories in presupposing his own quadripartite causal view. His main aim appears to be to show that earlier theories of primary causes at most incompletely anticipate his own.24 Aristotle, who studied with Plato, and presumably knew if the latter defended the theory of forms or merely restated it in various ways in his dialogues, attributes the theory of forms not to Socrates, but rather to Plato himself. According to Aristotle, this theory arises from Plato’s interest in Cratylus and in the Heraclitean doctrine that there is no knowledge of the flux of sensible

aristotle on the theory of forms, poetry, and art

51

things. Aristotle describes the theory, which he believes is not reasonable, in distinguishing it from Pythagoreanism. A Pythagorean influence is visible in Plato’s writings on different levels, for instance in the ideas of the universe as basically mathematical and the view of cosmic harmony worked out in the Timaeus. According to Aristotle, the Socratic search for the universal in ethical matters led Plato to separate forms as the objects from sensible ideas, which are causes of all things that, as the Pythagoreans say, imitate them, or as Plato says, in substituting one term for another, participate in them. Aristotle’s extremely concise, summary description of the theory of forms, and his attribution of it to Plato are both controversial. His remark that nothing other than the word is changed in the transition from Pythagorean “imitation” (mimesis) to Platonic “participation” (methexis) suggests three related points. First, the theory of forms, the standard of true participation, serves as the criterion, which the work of art featuring “false” imitation fails to meet. Second, Plato never succeeds in going beyond vague expressions to account for “participation” in an appropriately precise way. Third, for this reason, the theory of forms fails. Aristotle unsystematically subjects the theory of forms to a veritable farrago of criticisms.25 In a clearly “external” criticism, based on his own quadripartite analysis of causality, Aristotle objects that the theory is not reasonable, since Plato employs only two causes. Aristotle’s interpretation of the forms along the lines of his own interest in first principles as a successor to the views of cause already found in Empedocles and Anaxagoras is consistent with Socrates’s suggestion that forms were introduced for precisely this reason. First principles concern causal relations, or as Aristotle also says, generation and destruction. He compares the pre-Socratic philosophers of nature with the Pythagoreans, who rely on principles borrowed from such nonsensible things as numbers.26 Like the philosophers of nature, they understand the real as what is given in perception. According to Aristotle, the Pythagoreans rely on causes and principles, which are suited to explain reality, but not nature, in turning to those who, as he says, “posit the ideas as causes.”27 He then introduces an unfocused series of complaints, which reads like the proverbial laundry list. These complaints are directed against the adequacy of a theory of ideas as a solution to the problem of first principles, which takes up an entire chapter in the Metaphysics.28 His main objection to the Platonic theory of forms can be summarized as a point, which he also urges against the Pythagoreans: forms, and more general principles,

52

chapter two

which are derived from non-sensible things, do not enable us to provide a satisfactory account of causal explanation. In other words, causal relations of perceptible things cannot be explained by appealing to forms, since the second class of substances does not explain the first. This seems to be a fair objection if we recall Socrates’s account of the origin of the theory of forms in the Phaedo as originating in his effort to provide an alternative to the then-standard scientific approach to causality. Many, perhaps all of Aristotle’s criticisms can be understood as variations on this theme. It follows, since Aristotle’s main concern, in bringing up the theory of forms, lies in identifying a causal analysis able to serve as a first principle or principle, that the Platonic hypothesis is unsuitable. According to Aristotle, a theory of forms cannot serve to construct a scientific theory of causality. Forms cannot serve as an explanation of sensible things of any kind since they are useful neither as causes of movement, change, nor for knowledge, nor for a grasp of being.29 Aristotle develops this view in detail in book 13 (M) of the Metaphysics. Here, he again considers two main views about the substance of things: the objects of mathematics are substances and the ideas are substances.30 He begins by examining mathematical objects31 before going on to ideas. According to Aristotle, Socrates, who sought universal definitions, did not separate universals or definition from sensible things as his successors did.32 This suggests that Plato’s main contribution lies in separating forms from things, or again the world of reality from the world of appearance, in devising the dualistic Platonic ontology. Since Aristotle thinks that the theory of ideas is not only like but also in part inspired by Pythagoreanism, he next studies the relation between ideas and numbers in pointing to various difficulties. In coming back to the status of ideas, he finally contends that the very conception is unintelligible whether understood as separate from or again as conjoined with particular things.33

Parmenides, Infinite Regress, and the Third Man Argument Aristotle’s criticism of the theory of forms provides the reaction of Plato’s most important contemporary. It is tempting to think that many centuries later we have a better grasp of what is true and what is false in the theory of forms as well as appropriate logical techniques to support this inference. Yet that is not clear. A good place to make this point is with respect to the Parmenides, which illustrates an overlap, even a possible interaction, between Aristotle and Plato about the theory of forms.

aristotle on the theory of forms, poetry, and art

53

The Parmenides ranks as the most extensive and arguably most probing discussion of the theory of forms that we possess. Plato, who is often considered as the inventor or at least as the most important defender of the theory of forms, submits this theory to searching criticism in the Parmenides. This criticism attracts our attention because Aristotle was initially Plato’s student and later his junior colleague. It is at least possible that in composing this dialogue Plato was reacting to Aristotle’s criticism of the theory of forms. If the Parmenides belongs to the middle dialogues, then the version of the theory of forms it considers also belongs to that period. In the dialogue, Plato describes the version of the theory of forms he considers in reacting to a question raised by Parmenides in discussion with Socrates: Have you yourself distinguished as separate, in the way you mention, certain forms themselves, and also as separate the things that partake of them? And do you think that likeness itself is something, separate from the likeness we have? And one and many and all the things you heard Zeno read about a while ago. I do indeed, Socrates answered. And what about these? asked Parmenides. Is there a form, itself by itself, of just, and beautiful, and good, and everything of that sort? Yes, he said.34

If this statement is historically accurate, it can be interpreted as suggesting that Socrates was himself committed to some version of the theory of forms, which he understands at a minimum as including three related claims: first, there are mind-independent, or independently subsisting forms; second, the forms are not in things, but again are separate from things; and, third, things are said to “participate” in the forms. This dialogue, which is among the most difficult works in ancient philosophy, proposes two interpretations of participation. These include a model in which what is imitated contains, or partakes in, what it imitates, through a relation of part to whole, and another model, which, as a relation of whole to whole so to speak, maintains the separation between instance and form, and in which it is not the case that in participation the thing is in the form. Here is the passage: But tell me this: is it your view that, as you say, there are certain forms from which these other things, by getting a share of them, derive their names—as, for instance, they come to be like by getting a share of likeness, large by getting

54

chapter two a share of largeness, and just and beautiful by getting a share of justice and beauty?” It certainly is, Socrates replied.

So does each thing that gets a share get as its share the form as a whole or a part of it? Or could there be some other means of getting a share apart from these two?35 This passage has attracted attention in the literature. Discussion of the Parmenides over the last half century often concentrates on the problem of self-referentiality in regard to the so-called third man argument. The term is as old as Aristotle, who reports its use by others in referring to “[The argument] they call the third man.”36 Aristotle further refers to this argument elsewhere in his writings.37 A number of recent commentators have tried to recast Plato’s analysis in terms of modern logic on the assumption that this helps to detect a crucial mistake in his reasoning, though there is considerable disagreement about where that might lie. In the Parmenides, Plato’s discussion is apparently intended as an attack against (and maybe also, depending on how the dialogue is interpreted, as a defense of) the idea of participation, or the so-called participation of an object in a form, however formulated. In that case, Plato’s discussion is meant to demonstrate that the theory of forms, which requires an account of participation, does not and cannot in fact provide it. If we remember that the theory of forms is ostensibly introduced by Socrates as an alternative to the ancient scientific view of causality, then participation is Plato’s solution to the problem of causal interaction. For thencontemporary scientific theories that explain everything in general but nothing in particular, he substitutes the idea of participation that explains everything in particular but nothing in general. Plato’s solution seems to be to claim that the form is both one and many at the same time. If this is correct, then the second part of the Parmenides is arguably devoted to showing how this solution works. The main insight concerns the distinction between a form and its nature (or essence), which both the thing and the form share, though they are separate. For instance, all men share the form of man, but the form of man is not itself a man. Hence, as Lloyd Gerson suggests, there is no regress in the relation between a form and its instantiation.38 Other observers reject this line of reasoning in pointing to a problem of self-referential consistency due to the claim for self-predication. Self-predication belongs to the effort to understand participation, as when a thing is said to possess a quality, say,

aristotle on the theory of forms, poetry, and art

55

redness, which it acquires from a form, which is itself red, and hence, can, at least in principle, transmit this quality to something, which can be said to participate in it, say, an apple. The connection between self-reflexive consistency, self-predication, and participation has drawn attention to Plato in the recent debate. According to Samuel Rickless, many commentators agree that three principles are in play: one-over-many, self-predication, and nonidentity.39 This claim is affirmed by Gregory Vlastos and reaffirmed by Peter Geach, but denied by Wilfred Sellars. Vlastos thinks the so-called third man argument raises the problem of infinite regress, what Hegel calls the bad infinity, in the form of selfreferential inconsistency. According to Vlastos, if the problem is properly construed, it is not fatal to the theory of forms. Yet Plato, who was supposedly not aware of the appropriate logical techniques, was unable to construe it properly.40 Geach agrees with Vlastos that Plato features selfpredication but disagrees about the source of Plato’s difficulty. According to Geach, Plato reaches the conclusion of the third man argument by using two tacit assumptions: self-predication (“F-ness is itself an F”) and nonidentity (“no F is identical with F-ness”). Geach, who sees the problem as related to set theory and ultimately to Russell’s paradox, believes Plato’s difficulty follows from a failure to distinguish between a pair of premises: (4a) some F is a form by which all other Fs are made to be Fs; and (4b) any set consisting of several Fs are all of them made to be Fs by a form that is itself an F.41 Sellars disagrees with Vlastos and Geach. According to Sellars, it is false that self-predication and nonidentity are incompatible, false that Plato did not grasp the full implications of self-predication, and false that this incompatibility lies at the root of the argument. Sellars thinks it is a mistake to attribute a view of self-predication to Plato. He argues that Aristotle’s critique of Plato’s theory of forms is based on misinterpretation since he substitutes substance for form, or his theory for Plato’s.42 The interest of this debate around the third man argument lies in the suggestion that Plato’s ignorance of modern logical techniques leads to a discernible difficulty in his theory. To put the point tendentiously: if Plato had been a modern logician, he would not have fallen into error. Those who claim to possess the appropriate logical techniques are in agreement that a difficulty exists but do not agree on where it lies. They also do not agree on the relevance of Aristotle’s identification and diagnosis of the third man argument to Plato’s theory of forms. Hence it seems as if the appeal to modern logical techniques does not suffice to diagnose the

56

chapter two

difficulty in the Platonic argument or even to show that there is a difficulty to which they apply.

Aristotle’s Poetics and the Problem of Mimesis Modern art is often understood as arising in the period, say, from 1860 to 1970 and as including a healthy dose of experimentation and a tendency toward abstraction. In comparison, the ancient Greek discussion of art is decidedly premodern. Unlike modern art, which is often nonrepresentational, ancient Greek art is strongly wedded to imitation and other forms of representation. Neither Plato nor Aristotle seriously considers the possibility of nonmimetic art, which became strongly influential in the twentieth century. Plato and Aristotle both describe art in terms of mimesis, which they understand in profoundly different ways. Plato’s attack on imitative poetry links epistemology and politics. Plato is not concerned to identify great art or to formulate an aesthetic theory other than indirectly, perhaps most notably in his theory of the ideal state. His main concern seems to be to replace poets, other imitative artists, and sophists with philosophers in linking philosophy to politics. Aristotle’s approach to art is comparatively more modern, closer to the later Western tradition of aesthetic debate, literary criticism, and so on, focused on formulating a general theory of the nature of art of the most varied kinds. Aristotle’s Poetics advances what looks like a full-fledged theory of aesthetics. This seems to contradict the frequent claim that aesthetics only begins to exist in modern times, say, after A. G. Baumgarten or even slightly later around the time of Kant. Plato is not only a great philosopher but also a gifted poet. In comparison, Aristotle seems to lack more than minimal sensitivity to poetry. Aristotle’s remarks about art, other than with respect to Homer, whom he knows very well and clearly appreciates, often appear somewhat “mechanical.” Yet his analysis of aesthetics is arguably deeper than Plato’s. His teacher, who concedes the merit of a great poet such as Homer, has, for instance, only an informal way to evaluate the latter’s poetic merits, since he lacks the kind of overall analysis that only emerges in Aristotle’s discussion. In the Republic, Plato famously contends that an imitative poet such as Homer does not and cannot know what he imitates. Though his poems are stirring, he merely leads astray those as ignorant as he. Plato ends his critique with the challenge to poetry’s defenders: “Then we’ll allow its de-

aristotle on the theory of forms, poetry, and art

57

fenders, who aren’t poets themselves but lovers of poetry, to speak in prose on its behalf and to show that it not only gives pleasure but is beneficial both to constitution and to human life.”43 Though literature is not in the center of his interests, Aristotle wrote no fewer than three books about poetry: On Poets, a dialogue which has not survived; a work divided into three books entitled On Homeric Problems, which is also not extant; and the Poetics, which survives in fragmentary form. Since we do not possess the two former texts, it is difficult to characterize them. One can, however, infer from internal indications in the Poetics that Aristotle was not only thoroughly familiar with but also deeply appreciative of and genuinely insightful about Homer if not poetry in general. Yet everything happens in the Poetics as if Aristotle means in this work to take up the challenge Plato issued in vindicating poetry by redescribing mimesis. The Poetics (Peri poietikes) is a short (roughly sixty pages in English translation), fragmentary, enormously influential, but difficult treatise on poetry in general, especially tragedy. This text was apparently not influential during ancient times. But, since its translation in the twelfth century, it has acquired an enormous reputation. One of the difficulties in reading this text is that Aristotle often uses terms which have different meanings in his writings than in Plato’s. “Tragedy,” for instance, in Aristotle’s writing means drama and not narration as in Plato. The Poetics has, like so many Aristotelian texts, a strongly theoretical dimension, evident in Aristotle’s concern with the basic principles of all poetry in general, a concern absent in Plato’s discussion of imitative poetry. This theoretical dimension is widely acknowledged. According to Richard Janko, Aristotle’s text is the earliest treatise we possess on dramatic theory and the first such work on literary theory.44 The Poetics is, as its name implies, concerned with poetry of different kinds, which the ancient Greeks understand literally as making. A poet is also a maker, not only a maker of verse but also of plots, which is central in Aristotle’s analysis. Aristotle discusses aesthetics in both the Poetics and the Rhetoric. The former focuses on drama understood broadly. Aristotle’s text originally contained two parts concerning tragedy and the epic, which remains extant, and a part on comedy, which was lost. Most of what Aristotle has to say about poetic imitation occurs in the first section of the treatise, with fewer remarks in the second section and only several in the third section. Aristotle, who typically wastes no time in focusing the discussion, begins by indicating he will discuss poetry in terms of its basic principles. He

58

chapter two

then immediately states his basic thesis about all kinds of poetry in the widest possible sense, all of which features imitation. “The epic, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry, most music on the flute and on the lyre—all these are, in principle, imitations.”45 This claim immediately raises the stakes. Aristotle, who admits different kinds of imitation, clearly rules out the very idea of nonimitative poetry or other types of art. The argument between Aristotle and Plato is not joined on the level of imitative versus nonimitative forms of art, but rather in terms of the proper way to understand imitative art. Aristotle distinguishes three different kinds of imitation with respect to its object, the means employed, and the manner.46 The difference in means of imitation concerns color, shape, and voice employed consciously or through habit. All the arts imitate through rhythm, speech, and melody. He mentions music but does not address its imitative role. The different arts employ different means. Dancing, for instance, uses only rhythm. Plato, who is specifically concerned to protect the city against allegedly destabilizing influences, concentrates mainly on imitative poetry without considering what it means to imitate. Aristotle, who has so far mentioned different kinds of imitation, now focuses sharply on imitation through words. Aristotle begins his comments about imitation by noting that there is in Greek no term to designate imitation through words in prose or verse.47 In inventing the relevant vocabulary, Aristotle focuses in a new way on the very genre of literary imitation in formulating a general theory. Imitation occurs widely, such as in poetry and physics, but for Aristotle, Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common. We can infer from this passage that for Aristotle the physicist imitates nature. Aristotle further suggests that different kinds of poetry should be distinguished by what they imitate. Aristotle quickly turns to the central distinction between his theory of imitation and Plato’s. He returns imitative poetry to its social function in the here and now in rejecting the Platonic conception that in concentrating on human life as it is one necessarily neglects what it could be, the ideal. The argument turns on rethinking the key term “mimesis.” Aristotle now uses almost the same words, which take on a different meaning in virtue of a different way of understanding the term “mimesis.” In changing the meaning of this term Aristotle rehabilitates imitative poetry as one form of artistic creation while simultaneously creating the general theory of artistic creation and literary criticism, both of which are entirely lacking in his teacher’s work.

aristotle on the theory of forms, poetry, and art

59

Here vocabulary plays a central role. Liddell and Scott’s translation of mίmhsiV from mimέomai, as imitation (Thuc., Plat., etc.; katά sήn m. to imitate you, Ar. [select] representation by means of art, Plat.: a representation, portrait, Hdt.) does not address the way in which Plato and Aristotle use the term “mimesis” in their writings. For Aristotle “imitation” refers to human action since “the imitators imitate those acting.” 48 Grube translates the full sentence as follows: “Since those who make imitations represent men in action, these men must be superior or inferior, either better than those we know in life, or worse, or of the same kind.”49 His translation is close to that of Bywater, who writes, “The objects the imitator represents are actions, with agents who are necessarily either good men or bad—the diversities of human character being nearly always derivative from this primary distinction, since the line between virtue and vice is one dividing the whole of mankind.”50 Both translators, in using the word “represent,” obscure the clear terminological overlap between Plato’s and Aristotle’s views. The term “mimesis” can mean “imitation, representation,” and so on, but only “to imitate” will do to identify Aristotle’s challenge to Plato in using the same term in a different way. For Plato, imitation ultimately refers to forms separated from appearances. Aristotle rejects the theory of forms, and hence a critique of art based on it, in drawing attention to the relationship between imitation and life. In the Nicomachean Ethics, he contends that life itself is activity,51 whose aim is happiness (eudaimonia), which is itself defined as an activity.52 Aristotle is consistent in suggesting that the object of imitation is human life and, since human beings are active, human activity in all its forms, in different ways, as they are, as better than they are, and as worse than they are. According to Aristotle this is the case in painting, dancing, music, prose, and in poetry, specifically including its dithyrambic and nomic subforms. Imitation further differs with respect to its manner, for instance, imitation either in one’s own voice or in imitating the voice of the one who is being imitated. This is Aristotle’s restatement of Plato’s distinction between narrative imitation and diegesis in book 3 of the Republic. The works of Sophocles and Homer are, like those of Aristophanes, dramas, since they concern men in action. Aristotle next briefly mentions Dorian claims to have originated by tragedy and comedy before passing to the origins of poetry, which he attributes to two causes inherent in human nature: imitation, which is natural from childhood for human beings, who are pleased by it, and the fact that imitation, melody, and rhythm are also natural. In discussing the history of tragedy, Aristotle claims tragedy and comedy arose without deliberate intent. Both were

60

chapter two

later improved and have meanwhile, he suggests, reached their mature forms. The history of tragedy is, he believes, better established than the history of comedy. In reference to the unity of time in epic and tragedy, Aristotle famously says that the time of an epic is unlimited but as far as possible the time of a tragedy is a single revolution of the sun. Aristotle now turns to tragedy, his most important example in this treatise. His definition reads, “Tragedy, then, is the imitation of a good action, which is complete and of a certain length, by means of language made pleasing for each part separately; it relies in its various elements not on narrative but on acting; through pity and fear it achieves the purgation (katharsis) of such emotions.”53 More interesting for our purposes than the famous reference to catharsis is the point that tragedy by definition imitates good (spoudaios) human action. Various qualities, such as pleasing language—which has rhythm, melody, and music—as well as acting are part of tragedy. The quality of human action is derived from the quality of the actor, roughly the kind of person one is. The action itself derives naturally from character (ethos) and thought (dianoia). According to Aristotle, every tragedy exhibits six characteristics: “plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle and music.”54 Music and diction, or language, are the means of imitation, and plot, character, and thought belong to the model. Aristotle, who quickly turns to what he describes as the arrangement of incidents, or what we now call the plot, clearly indicates that tragedy does not concern individuals but rather action and life, “for tragedy is an imitation, not of men but of action and life, of happiness and misfortune.”55 He unambiguously says that the goal of life is not a quality but a kind of activity, presumably the kind described as happiness in his anthropological account of human life as activity in the Nicomachean Ethics. Human beings are what they are, or have a certain kind of character, which leads to happiness or to its reverse in action. Hence, action is the presupposition of tragedy, which cannot exist without it. Aristotle applies his dictum that action is the condition of tragedy to recent poets and some painters, who in his opinion fail to characterize their characters. He has in mind a general theory of types of artistic creation applicable across the board. Aristotle has so far discussed plot as the soul or first element of tragedy, and character as the second element. He turns rapidly to thought, the third element, and character, then to diction, namely the use of words in respect to meaning. He next turns to plot in repeating his definition of tragedy in stressing that action is not only a whole but of a certain size: “We have established that a tragedy is the imitation of an action which is whole and

aristotle on the theory of forms, poetry, and art

61

complete, and also of a certain length, for a thing can be a whole without being of any particular size.”56 In this context, he makes the point that the action in a tragedy or epic must form a whole. Aristotle emphasizes the unity of the plot in commending Homer for building the plot in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, unlike other poets, around a single action. In other words, just as there is one action, there is also one plot. “As in other kinds of imitative art, each imitation must have one object, so with the plot: since it is the imitation of an action, this must be one action and the whole of it.”57 So far little has been said about the social uses of imitative art. Aristotle now takes up that challenge in famously comparing poetry and history. This section begins in again characterizing the poet’s relation to human action. The poet is not restricted to real events but only to what might happen in “accordance with probability or necessity.”58 This enlarges the scope of poetry to include not only real events but unreal events as well, such as those Homer relates, which are in part historical but in part also mythical. With this in mind, he now compares poetry and history. The historian deals with what has happened and the poet with what might happen. In this context Aristotle famously remarks that poetry is in this way like philosophy and better than history since “poetry deals with general truths, history with specific events.”59 Aristotle’s suggestion that poetry is more important than history arguably reflects a narrow conception of history but a wider appreciation of the social role of poetry. A historical approach to knowledge only arises much later in modern times. Vico, who was active in the first half of the eighteenth century, is one of the earliest genuinely historical thinkers. Since Aristotle is not a historical thinker, it is perhaps not surprising that he is not interested in what Nietzsche later calls the uses of history.60 Hegel, who is strongly influenced by Aristotle, is arguably the single most historical thinker in the later debate. He famously echoes Aristotle’s comment in remarking, “What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”61 Unlike Aristotle, Hegel thinks we must in fact learn from history. Hegel is talking not about what can be learned from history but rather about what has so far been learned. The lesson of history is that nations and governments cannot learn from it. If that is true, then either the lessons of history cannot be communicated or in fact there are no lessons, hence, as Hegel implies, nothing at all to be learned, though that does not mean there is nothing to be learned from history.

62

chapter two

Rather as Marx in a thoroughly Hegelian spirit later remarked, since like Hegel, he believes we can learn from history, what in history was initially tragic becomes, in its repetition, mere farce.62 Aristotle is aware of the great historians Herodotus and Thucydides. And he is familiar with a wide range of older and contemporary poets. Let us assume he is correct about poetry in order to consider his depiction of history. We are used to efforts by historians and others, such as Tolstoy, to draw lessons from historical events. War and Peace is an outstanding example. This book explores Tolstoy’s theory of history in stressing the historical insignificance of individuals such as Alexander and Napoleon, who are finally unable to determine history in accordance with their intentions. Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century, is regarded as the father of history in the West. He is the first historian we know of who collected materials systematically, tested their accuracy, and constructed a coherent narrative. We still look to him for his study of the Greco-Persian Wars in 490 BC and 480–479 BC. It is often said that he views history as a source of moral lessons. Thucydides, who lived from the middle of the fifth century until the beginning of the fourth century BC, wrote the History of the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens up to 411 BC. He is considered to be the father of “scientific history” in virtue of his reliance on causal analysis, and the father of political realism because of his view of the relation of nations as based on might not right. His account of the Athenian massacre of the Melians is still often used in contemporary political discussions. Thucydides obviously thought there were lessons to be drawn from study of the past. He begins his History of the Peloponnesian War in remarking as follows, “To hear this history rehearsed, for that there be inserted in it no fables, shall be perhaps not delightful. But he that desires to look into the truth of things done, and which (according to the condition of humanity) may be done again, or at least their like, shall find enough herein to make him think it profitable.”63 Aristotle immediately returns to the matter at hand after this brief foray into history. Once again, he reaffirms his view that the plot is more important than the verse for a tragic poet since “he is a poet in virtue of his imitation, and he imitates actions.”64 His account of types of plots, though interesting, often seems fairly mechanical, as if he were determined to include all possibilities while omitting none. According to Aristotle, episodic plots, in which the episodes have “no probable or inevitable connection,”65 in what one might call a mere hodgepodge, are worst of all. Plots can be simple or complex. They can include reversal ( peripateia), which

aristotle on the theory of forms, poetry, and art

63

differs from change of fortune (metabasis), as well as recognition (anagnorisis) with respect to an individual. He further points out that tragedy is divided into different parts. Aristotle next passes to various changes of fortune, the tragic character, best plots, and the double plot of comedy. Pity and fear must be intrinsic to the plot, and aimed at by the poet, as when one acts in ignorance. There are four things to aim at in respect to character, beginning with the idea that the character should be morally good as expressed in good moral choices. This is consistent with his view in the Nicomachean Ethics. The other traits include being appropriate or true to type, true to life, and consistent even if in inconsistency. Aristotle further rejects a solution like a deus ex machina and recommends that tragedy imitate “characters better than those we know in life . . . [and in this respect] imitate good portrait painters.”66 Aristotle now distinguishes various kinds of recognition. The best sort belongs to the unity of the plot, which emerges so to speak from the events themselves. He further recommends that the dramatist visualize the various incidents before constructing the plot, and that the poet should work out the details about the roles of the actors in the play. This seems like common sense. According to Aristotle, the dramatist needs to invent the outlines of a story and then fill in the details. According to Aristotle, tragedy invariably consists of so-called involvement and unraveling. Tragedy itself has four types, which Aristotle links to specific examples. It is complex, is based on suffering, concerns character, or is spectacular. He then passes on to diction, before turning to parts of speech. This is more interesting for the opportunity to see an omnivorous mind at work than for the light it throws on poetry. Aristotle next addresses the epic with special reference to Homer, whose writings he knows extremely well and to which he appears especially sensitive. He begins by repeating the point, basic to his view, that the plot of the epic, like tragedy, must have unity comparable to a biological entity: “Imitation through narrative in verse obviously must, like tragedy, have a dramatic plot structure; it must be concerned with one complete action, it must have a beginning, middle and an end, in order that the whole narrative may attain the unity of a living organism and provide its own peculiar kind of pleasure.”67 The comparison between the epic and a living organism suggests that literary creations have a life of their own. Aristotle distinguishes between the structure of an epic, which concerns a single action, and history, which “has to expound not one action but

64

chapter two

one time period and all that happens within this period.”68 Yet there are different ways of writing history. Indeed, his teleological view of activity suggests that historical events may have an intrinsic unity that underlies and makes possible the details in very much the same way as the plot of a tragedy or epic. There are the same types of epics as there are tragedies. For Aristotle, who has Homer in mind, tragedy makes us marvel, but epic makes us marvel most. Aristotle, in turning briefly to criticism, again qualifies his view of art as imitation. “Since the poet, like the painter and other makers of images, is an imitator, the object of his imitation must always be represented in one of three ways: as it was or is, as it is said or thought to be, or as it ought to be.”69 Poetry exhibits flaws with respect to the possibility of imitating the subject, or a flaw of the poet, and as concerns the subject matter, which is merely incidental. In this context, Aristotle rapidly mentions the theme of poetry and truth. He responds to the Platonic point that what the poet says is not true, in remarking that Sophocles made characters as they ought to be and Euripedes made them as they were.70 Similarly, in addressing the ethical import of poetry, Aristotle comments that one should consider not only what is said or done, but also the situation in which it occurs.71 The extant fragment of the Poetics ends with two remarks about the right critical attitude and then finally tragedy and epic. Aristotle simply rejects the view that poets can be condemned for disagreeing with what contradicts their own ideas.72 If true, this in itself suffices to dispose of Plato’s rejection of imitative poetry in the kallipolis or even in the Athens of his day. Aristotle’s comment on the difference between tragedy and epic responds to the view, apparently sufficiently widespread to justify a reaction, that impersonation is vulgar, hence bad. According to Aristotle, this criticism is misplaced since it does not apply to tragedy but to acting. Tragedy is like epic but more compact, and epic is more diffuse in that it can contain, as Homer shows, several actions. Yet tragedy is superior to epic, since types of art arouse different kinds of pleasure, but by implication tragedy does so in the higher degree: “then tragedy achieves its purpose better and is superior to the epic.”73

On the Platonic and Aristotelian Views of Imitative Poetry This summary of some main points in the Poetics clears the way to examine differences between Aristotelian and Platonic conceptions of imitative

aristotle on the theory of forms, poetry, and art

65

poetry and art in general. These differences turn on basically different interpretations of “mimesis.” An extremely brief way to make the point is to say Aristotle answers Plato by substituting imitation of human life for imitation of the forms. Aristotle turns to a nonrepresentational view of imitation as making in place of a view of imitation as representing and, arguably on the highest level, as copying. According to Plato, poets fail to imitate correctly, hence fail to know the real. Aristotle suggests that, on the contrary, poets succeed in imitating human life. Hence what for Plato is a dangerous practice, which should neither exist nor be imitated, turns out to be the basis of literary theory, which provides the criterion for evaluating literary works. This change in the meaning of the crucial term “mimesis” belongs to the continued evolution of the word, which, we recall, earlier had various pejorative meanings. In Aristotle’s treatise, this term, which for Plato functions negatively, takes on a very different, basically positive meaning. Differences in the Platonic and Aristotelian ways of understanding this term are discussed in the literature. Richard Boyd, who calls attention to Aristotle’s view of mimesis as the imitation of human life,74 follows Gerald Else. According to Else, in Aristotle’s hands “mimesis” becomes a new idea with only the name in common with Plato, an idea that is almost the exact opposite of Plato’s view.75 Else calls attention to the distinction between producing and making as related to poietike, from poein, and imitation, as in mimesthai.76 In focusing on the distinction,”77 he makes the obvious point that Aristotle’s continued use of the same term as Plato obscures the fact that his own view of “mimesis” is entirely different.78 Plato’s view of mimesis as copying is later restated in various ways, some of which were already mentioned. These include the idea that the mind is the mirror of reality in Francis Bacon, the reflection theory of truth in Engels and then in Lenin, the early Wittgenstein’s picture theory of meaning, and so on. Aristotle favors a view of mimesis as making or creating. Else states the difference clearly in saying that for Plato mimesis is after the fact, which for Aristotle the poet creates.79 This does not mean that the poet literally creates reality. It rather means that the poet, instead of simply imitating the real, creates in discovering a preexistent relation.80 It follows, then, that the poet imitates, for instance, in constructing plots.81 Aristotle’s novel conception of “mimesis” derives from rethinking Plato’s theory. Plato does not have a general theory of artistic creation or even more narrowly of imitative poetry as such. The many insightful remarks scattered through the dialogues do not amount to a theory of, say,

66

chapter two

poetry, prose, or other kinds of artistic creation. In this connection, Else makes two points: first, according to Aristotle the poet makes, creates, or produces a plot; second, and as a result, “imitation,” which for Plato means “copying,” for Aristotle means “producing.” Else writes, “A poet, then, is an imitator in so far as he is a maker, viz. of plots. The paradox is obvious. Aristotle has developed and changed the bearing of a concept, which originally meant a faithful copying of preexistent things, to make it a creation of things which have never existed, or whose existence, if they did exist, is accidental to the poetic process. Copying is after the fact; Aristotle’s mimesis creates the fact. It is clear that his use of the word in such a way can only be accounted for historically. In other words, such a redefinition of a simple concept can only be understood as the end product of a long, gradual development. Without Plato especially, and a considerable development of the idea in him, Aristotle’s use of mimesis would be inconceivable.”82 This linguistic point stops short of considering the underlying difference between the literary views of Plato and Aristotle. The basic difference between copying facts and creating them on the literary plane derives from the underlying difference in the Platonic and Aristotelian epistemological approaches. One way to put the point is that Plato’s position is predicated on the necessary failure of imitative poetry, and more generally of any nonintuitive representational approach to knowledge. Hence it is unkindly disposed to poetry and other forms of art, friendly only to the “artistic” form of philosophy in the politics of the ideal city-state. Plato’s view that to know requires intuitive knowledge of the forms in effect restricts knowledge to “seeing” the invisible, which cannot be successfully represented. Plato is clearly a rationalist thinker, committed to social justice, not an enemy of it.83 Yet in other hands, the Platonic conception of knowledge of an invisible reality encourages visionaries, mystics, and others, who substitute privileged access to reality and oracular pronouncements for knowledge of the visible. There is, for instance, a strongly Platonic element in Heidegger’s effort to realize his vision of the National Socialist ideal.84 Aristotle responds to Plato in changing the terms of the debate. He accepts the principle that art concerns imitation while changing the focus. He gives up the unavailing effort to imitate the invisible mind-independent real in favor of imitation of life in the sublunar world. Aristotle’s rehabilitation of poetry does not overcome Plato’s objection, which has apparently never later been overturned. If knowledge requires successful representation of the real, and poetry and other forms of artistic represen-

aristotle on the theory of forms, poetry, and art

67

tation fail to meet this epistemological standard, then recasting imitation as successful depiction of human life fails to resolve Plato’s problem. In other words, mere imitation of human life does not substitute for imitation of mind-independent reality. The Aristotelian view of aesthetics is richer than its Platonic predecessor. Plato mainly concentrates on criticizing poetry and painting. In comparison, Aristotle considers a wider of artistic creation. Under poetry he includes drama, flute music, and lyre music. He further differentiates in detail, with many specific references, between tragedy, which he prefers, and epic poetry, comedy, and so on. Plato, who casts his net more narrowly, is mainly opposed to certain forms of poetry and painting. Aristotle considers more types of artistic creation and in more detail while removing certain ambiguities in the Platonic account. In sum, Aristotle takes an important step toward formulating a wider thesis about artistic creation in general in all its many forms. Aristotle’s reaction to Plato’s condemnation of poetry and artistic production brings about a sea change in aesthetics. Plato complains that art objects cannot play the role he assigns to knowledge. In associating the true and the beautiful, he rejects by anticipation the idea of the aesthetic object as merely beautiful, what later comes to be called l’art pour l’art, but without any cognitive claim, hence as not false but also as not true. He objects that if art must not only be beautiful but also true, then it fails in this task, since it is sailing under false pretenses. For that reason, imitative art is also not good. For Aristotle, imitation is not cognitive in the Platonic sense. In giving up the principle of imitating the mind-independent real, he abandons the Platonic insistence on knowledge of the forms. Aristotelian imitation is cognitive in another sense. Tragedy, which consists in imitating action and life, has exemplary value in dealing, unlike history, with general truths. For Aristotle, the problem is not to imitate the real as such, but merely to imitate human reality. The result is a different conception of the link between the true and the good, or social utility. Plato is concerned with the conditions of the ideal state in which philosophers are kings. Aristotle is interested in the real state where philosophers do not rule but where poetry and art in general have a useful role to play. Plato founds the claim for the good on a prior claim for the true, which underlies his view of the philosopher king in politics. Aristotle gives up a claim for truth in Plato’s sense, hence for artistic creation as a source of truth, in substituting two further forms of the good: (1) good with respect to good art, for instance

68

chapter two

good poetry, which is good because it successfully depicts what it sets out to describe, or human life, and (2) the view that this imitation can have exemplary value, or utility for human life, where the good is specifically severed from the true. The ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry clearly continues to divide Plato and his most important student. Aristotle contradicts his teacher’s critique in restoring poetry to full honors as, say, comparatively more useful than history. Plato, whose own poetic qualities are undeniable, defends a philosophical view set squarely against the cognitive virtues of painting and poetry in terms of a theory of knowledge and a form of poetry that is yet to come, incarnated in the future ideal city-state. Aristotle, on the contrary, rehabilitates the social function of poetry that he likens to philosophy. Between them, Plato and Aristotle describe two of the fundamental positions with respect to art: as a source of truth if and only if it is itself based on knowledge, but as otherwise guilty of false representation, which should be shunned as socially harmful. For Plato, artistic creation vainly seeks to imitate a reality beyond the world in which we live, which no one other than the philosopher could possibly know, and hence he necessarily fails. But for Aristotle, who refuses Platonic dualism, artistic creation successfully imitates the world in which we live, in particular human action, without reference to a further reality. Aristotle shifts the object of imitation from the mind-independent real in giving up the strong Platonic claim to truth, the constant sticking point in Plato’s discussion, in favor of human life, which from the Platonic perspective is no more than a second-best object. In Platonic terms, Aristotelian imitation concerns no more than appearances. The famous passage on the divided line draws attention to a distinction between physical objects of sense perception, or mere objects of belief, and images of physical objects, including shadows, reflection, and illusions, supported only by the imagination. From this perspective, imitative poetry produces nothing more than imaginary objects (eikasia). In focusing on visible appearances Aristotle rehabilitates imitation in giving up the Platonic claim to truth while further severing the link between the true and the good. Aristotle accepts as useful and true what for Plato is neither useful nor true, but socially pernicious and false. Since the asymmetrical relation between appearance and reality simply vanishes in the Aristotelian position, the artistic problem is no longer how to depict a transcendent but invisible real, but rather how to depict life within what for Plato is mere appearance in substituting appearance

aristotle on the theory of forms, poetry, and art

69

for reality. Aristotle, who rejects Platonic dualism, revises Plato’s critique of appearance. In substituting life for a transcendent object, Aristotle attributes a positive function to forms of art situated within the social context. For Plato, imitative art cannot be socially good or useful. Good art presupposes access to knowledge, which by definition artists cannot possess. Since only philosophers can know in the full sense of the term, Plato rejects any form of art other than philosophical art, or the art of the philosophers. Art, art objects, and artistic creation in general as we know it are created by artists, who are by definition deprived of knowledge, hence is neither potentially true, nor useful. This changes in Aristotle, who, since he drops the dualistic distinction underlying the theory of forms, revises Plato’s negative judgment about art and artists. Art, which no longer concerns the faithful, hence true, depiction of an invisible and transcendent reality, is both true and useful in successfully imitating human life in various ways, above all in tragedy leading to catharsis. Poetry, which is universal, depicts human life on the highest level in affording general lessons. The artist should not be banished from society nor discouraged. Homer must not be banished from Athens. He should rather be feted as one who, through his art on the highest level known to the Greeks, makes a universal, hence basic, contribution to social life.

Aristotle and the Ancient Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry Plato, who takes the part of philosophy against poetry, is refuted by Aristotle’s resolute defense of poetry against the negative judgment Plato, in invoking the theory of forms, opposes to all forms of artistic imitation. We can conclude this chapter in calling attention to two points. First, Aristotle’s claim that poetry, unlike history but like philosophy, deals with general truths about things that happen or might happen, reinterprets “mimesis” while continuing to rely on a mimetic approach to poetry. For Aristotle, the crucial distinction is between the general truth and the specific detail. General truths obviously require the generality that in Aristotle’s opinion is lacking in historical writing. The result is not knowledge of the transcendent, hence not knowledge of transcendent truth, but knowledge of the probable. In imitating, as Aristotle says, “men in action,” poetry fulfills a cognitive role he redefines with respect to the here and now. Poetry

70

chapter two

teaches us about the social relations of men in action. Art, which is a form of cognition, recovers its cognitive role in reaching general knowledge of the world, not as it could be, but as it is.85 Art plays its role when it leads to general truths about the human world in which, as the Stoics think, we live and breathe and have our being. Second, many of the points Aris­ totle raises against Plato still rely on the view that poetry is mimetic. This changes as soon as one undoes the connection between poetry and mimesis.86 Thus, for instance, Edmund Burke later claims that poetry “cannot with strict propriety be called an art of imitation.”87 According to Burke, “nothing is an imitation further than as it resembles some other thing, and words undoubtedly have no sort of resemblance to the ideas for which they stand.”88

chapter three

Art and the Transcendent; or, Christian Platonic and Anti-Platonic Art

I

n dealing with the Christian Middle Ages, one has to avoid certain stereotypes due to exaggerating the very strong religious spirit prevalent in this period. It would, for instance, be an error simply to oppose the Christian religious spirit, which pervaded the Christian Middle Ages to the many forms of rationalism which succeeded it. The division is not as sharp as that way of putting it suggests. Not only is the period after the Christian Middle Ages not exempt from problems of belief, but forms of rationality continually flourished during the Middle Ages. Thus this period was particularly important for the emergence of modern technology. The emergence of technological innovation was often fostered and not hindered by various religious groups. Unlike the Eastern Orthodox, the Cisterciens, for instance, were especially active in the development of technology during the entire medieval period. It would, however, be equally incorrect to deny or to diminish the importance of the role of faith in daily life during the Middle Ages. In the present increasingly secular period, when the link between reason and faith is being steadily attenuated, few contemporary thinkers seek to infer from the world to a divine dimension, however understood. Yet for medieval Christian thinkers, there is nothing remarkable about claiming to infer from the world, or God’s works, to God. This kind of inference, which depends not on philosophical argument, but rather on religious faith, is omnipresent as a standard component in thought of the period. It is correct that during the Middle Ages, a number

72

chapter three

of thinkers addressed philosophical themes in ways close to contemporary themes. For instance, skepticism, which denies claims to knowledge based on mere faith, including religious faith, was important in this period.1 Medieval thinkers interested in skepticism include al-Ghazali, the medieval Sunni thinker who introduced Avicenna into Muslim theology, and Christian thinkers such as Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, William Ockham, Adam Wodeham, Nicholas of Autrecourt and others. On the contrary, other medieval thinkers, such as Augustine, attack skepticism in piecemeal fashion as an obstacle to happiness, or like Aquinas propose theories supposedly immune to skepticism.2 During the medieval Christian period, justification of claims to know through reason was often, even mainly, replaced by religious conviction (faith). Religious faith, as distinguished from faith in reason, is an enduring dimension of the thought of this period. This distinction allowed for the emergence of an anti-Platonic, specifically Christian, religious claim for the epistemological grasp of the transcendent realm through a backward inference from the particular instance to the divine. This typical Christian inference from the world as the effect to God as the cause is anti-Platonic, in fact the reverse of Platonism, which specifically denies the possibility of a reverse causal inference from an effect to its cause. The anti-Platonic view of art prominent in this period is symptomatic of a general recourse throughout the misnamed dark ages. For the faithful they were not dark at all, but were in fact continuously and brilliantly illuminated by the light of Christian religious faith. Since it unfolds within a confessional context, religious faith does not meet and is unconcerned to meet the test of independent argument. The Christian view of the relation of the world to God such that, say, a drop of rain can be said to prove the existence of God, as in the so-called argument from design invented by William Paley,3 is based on faith. It is emphatically not an argument, which depends for its acceptance on its own philosophical merits without regard to Christian doctrine. In the aesthetic realm, it leads to a view of art as the obvious source of knowledge in an inference that follows from nothing other than a general religious commitment.

Art and the Medieval Worldview A work of art, any work of art, reflects a vision of the world. The fact that Christian depiction of Christian images enables us to draw nearer to and

christian platonic and anti-platonic art

73

know the transcendent divine is a commonplace. Consider, for example, the following passage from Hume: “We portray the objects of our faith . . . in perceptible pictures and images; and the immediate presence of these pictures makes the objects more present to us than they could be merely through an intellectual view and contemplation.”4 We can start from a truism about the medieval period, which was deeply different from our own. We live in a world in which— certainly in the West — there is an increasingly clear difference between the sacred and the secular, in which the latter is on the whole, with some exceptions, steadily losing ground, and in which change is predominant.5 During the Middle Ages this distinction was neither obvious nor evident since in an important sense the sacred was all-pervasive, for instance in the realm of art. In this period, it was clear to all concerned, and constantly reinforced by the Church, that each person had a specific role in an eternal and unchanging order established by God and protected by his clergy. One way to put the point is in relation to Ludwig Feuerbach, who in the middle of the nineteenth century argues that everything divine is a projection of human being.6 During the long period of the Middle Ages the opposite view was dominant. In short, while Feuerbach later celebrates man by in effect demoting God, during the Middle Ages God was celebrated in place of human being. This point is already stressed by Augustine at the beginning of the fifth century, before the Middle Ages were in full swing. “And how can man better understand, than he does in reflecting on these wonders, that Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who gives the growth? For even that part of the work of production which comes from outside comes from a man whom God has also created and whom He invisibly rules and governs.”7 Georges Duby, who emphasizes this point as descriptive of life in twelfth-century Europe, identifies a triple function for art in the medieval context: as the necessary decoration for sacred ceremonies, which lifted them out of space and time as it were; as an offering to the divine of everything that was most precious in its purest form; and as an emblem, which lifted the momentary beyond the here and now in attaining eternity. An instance is the construction of the splendid architectural works of the Cisterciens, such as Cîteaux Abbey (Abbaye de Cîteaux), the Roman Catholic abbey located in Saint-Nicolas-lèsCîteaux, south of Dijon, France.8 The absolute nature of the sacred during the medieval period was essential to medieval art of the most varied kinds. In general terms, medieval theories of art conflate the religious and the aesthetic in conceptualizing

74

chapter three

art and art objects from an all-pervasive religious perspective completely investing the warp and woof of the medieval world. Medieval thinkers, who take nature as the realm of art, accord an aesthetic status to the natural world, which for later thinkers is not a human creation, hence is not on the artistic level. We detect this in the typical medieval view of art. Platonism relies on a discontinuity between appearance and reality, which is basically altered in the medieval emphasis on their continuity. This continuity makes it not only possible but also plausible to endorse an anti-Platonic form of the Platonic view of art as imitation, or art as leading to knowledge of even the highest things. Thus Plotinus typically reacts against the Platonic condemnation of artistic imitation in exalting nature, including its imitation: “But if anyone despises the arts because they produce their works by imitating nature, we must tell him, first, that natural things are imitations too.”9 In this way, medieval theoreticians and artists turn the Platonic critique of art against Platonism in suggesting that in artworks we honor and know the divine cause of the world. It is a truism to say that medieval philosophy was thoroughly theological. We see this with respect to scholasticism, which arose during the Carolingian renaissance in the early middle ages. We recall that in 787 Charlemagne decreed the establishment of schools in every abbey. The aim of scholasticism (from the Greek word scolastikόV, meaning “that which belongs to the schools”), dominant during this period (roughly 1100–1500), was to reconcile ancient Greek philosophy with medieval theology. The main figures of scholasticism include Peter Abelard, Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Bonaventure, and above all, Thomas Aquinas, in whose Summa Theologiae this movement reached its peak. Their shared commitment to Christianity underlies medieval philosophy and Christian ethics, but it was interpreted in very different ways on the philosophical, ethical, and aesthetic planes. Since the ancient Greeks were not Christian but pagan, the medieval reconciliation of ancient Greek philosophy with medieval Christianity was based on pre-Christian, hence pagan philosophy, which was reinterpreted in the light of faith. The obvious result was that at critical points reason, or at least so-called philosophical reason, needed to give way to religious faith. At the height of the Enlightenment, Kant forcefully put the argument for pure reason, or reason alone purified of all admixtures. In our time the torch for this approach still burns most brightly in the writings of Jürgen Habermas. In fact, well before Kant’s transcendental idealism this argument was already raised by a multitude of earlier thinkers committed

christian platonic and anti-platonic art

75

in different ways to a rational consideration of philosophical themes. In the Platonic dialogues Socrates, for instance, steadfastly relies on argument as distinguished from mere dogmatic assertion. This general approach was rejected during the Christian Middle Ages, when the leading philosophers and theologians relied on the unfolding of reason within the context of faith. Augustine, the paradigmatic Christian thinker of the early Middle Ages, begins De Trinitate, a well-known text from his mature period, in rejecting any effort to know God through reason in favor of faith.10 In the early Middle Ages, much of Greek philosophy was still unknown. Later, during the high Middle Ages, the recovery of Greek philosophy in the early thirteenth century was deepened through William of Moerbeke’s translations and editions, particularly of Aristotle. This gradually led to an increasing reliance on philosophical reason. The perception of the relation between reason and faith during this period varies according to the observer. Many medieval thinkers did not consider themselves to be philosophers. In the eleventh century, Anselm, one of the founders of scholasticism, relies on argument rather than mere authority in his famous ontological argument. Yet at the time he was an exception. A century and a half later, during the period of so-called high scholasticism in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a rational approach within theological limits was already becoming more frequent. Thus Aquinas follows Peter Damian in arguing that philosophy is the handmaiden of theology (ancilla theologiae).11 He relies heavily on argumentation in his creative synthesis of Aristotle and Christian doctrine. Though reason was typically present, hence not absent, it was also typically subordinated to religious faith. For instance, Bonaventure, who is in this respect typical, contends, following Anselm, that philosophical reason can only discover truth on the basis of religious faith. Yet in the substitution of religious faith for reason the die is cast. The point of nonreturn is already reached in the failure even to consider an argument to justify claims to know on the basis of art and art objects of the most varied kinds. For the unrestricted commitment to faith as conceptually prior to reason stultifies even the most ingenious effort to deploy reason on behalf of knowledge. As for the ancient Greek philosophers, the views of the medieval thinkers need to be understood in their historical moment, in reference to their time and place in which they presented solutions to what they regarded as outstanding problems. In discussing medieval aesthetics, I will focus on what I will be calling Western medieval Christian aesthetics. In discussing

76

chapter three

medieval aesthetics, I will adopt the standard view of the medieval period as comprising roughly a millennium running from the rise of Christianity in Constantinople and the fall of the Western roman empire in 476 (and including the rise of Renaissance humanism, the division of Christianity in the Reformation, and the overseas colonization) until the beginning of the modern period in the early 16th century. I will be especially concerned with Christian art, which, unlike Jewish and Muslim art, is generally representational, hence anti-Platonic, with respect to the transcendent but invisible world it takes as real. For the medieval Christian artist, the problem is not whether it is possible to represent but rather how best to represent the transcendent divine dimension. There is an obvious relation between medieval aesthetic views and Platonism. Medieval aesthetics, supposing there is a discernible form of aes­ thetics during this period, features a mimetic, anti-Platonic approach to the successful artistic representation of an invisible reality. It is Platonic in grasping art, artistic creation, and art objects according to mimetic principles. But it is anti-Platonic in sharply opposing the Platonic attack on nonphilosophical, aesthetic imitation, and hence, since imitation is a form of representation, on artistic representation of all kinds. We recall Plato’s insistence that art cannot represent the real mind-independent world that only a philosopher can know. Medieval artists and religious figures take an anti-Platonic, representational approach to art. They consistently claim to represent nature, thus representing divine works, as well as to represent the divine dimension directly, for instance through the doctrines of analogy and allegory. This allows them, for instance, to focus on (divine) beauty in believing, while neither demonstrating nor for the most part even arguing that beauty and truth are identical. Hence, as Robert O’Connell remarks, for Augustine, as for most thinkers in the Early Church and Middle Ages, “truth is fundamentally identical with beauty.”12 The very idea of medieval aesthetics requires a comment.13 “Aesthetics” is understood in different ways. In part, what one understands as “aesthetics,” hence as “medieval aesthetics,” depends on the normative sense assigned to the term. The Christian medieval thinkers did not leave any aesthetic treatises. Attention to medieval aesthetics, which is relatively recent, has been slow in developing, and remains controversial. Those who think that aesthetics only arose in modern times believe that all aesthetics is modern and that earlier discussions of what later became aesthetics simply concern theories of beauty. Others concede the point about medieval aesthetics while insisting on the aesthetic status of ancient debates about art.

christian platonic and anti-platonic art

77

One can speculate that the absence of aesthetic treatises during the medieval period is not simply fortuitous but rather corresponds to the specific function of art in the prevailing social context. Hans Belting and others call attention to the role of art during medieval times as a cult image of the divine in which stress is placed on its role in revealing divine transcendence very unlike the later secular concern with aesthetic values.14 Another way to put this distinction is that, after images have replaced holy relics in the function of the mediation between the medieval Christian and the transcendent divine, there is a dual reading of the social function of the image in the economy of the medieval Christian worldview, where, like the Eucharist, it serves to link the individual to the divine, and, further, as the work of art in which it is no longer the relation to the transcendent divine but rather the specific artistic qualities that come into focus. The former role, which Caroline Bynum characterizes as “disclosures of the sacred through material substance,”15 draws attention to the social function of art in the medieval Christian context. If, as she points out, “a medieval image is an object in a way that a Renaissance or modern painting is not,” then its function explains why the medievals felt no need to write aesthetic treatises. Perhaps in virtue of the absence of medieval aesthetic treatises, until recently studies of aesthetics customarily went directly from the ancients to the moderns in simply jumping over the medieval period. Initial studies of this theme took the form of monographs on the aesthetic views of Augustine and Aquinas at the end of the nineteenth century. An important contribution, which perhaps for the first time covers the entire medieval approach to aesthetics, was made by Edgar De Bruyne’s monumental Études d’esthétique médiévale.16 Since there is no agreement, the jury is still out about whether the term “aesthetics” should be used in reference to this period. Yet this broad claim would disqualify not only the Christian medievals but also, say, Aristotle and Plato. It would further undermine the widespread belief, mentioned below, that during this entire period ecclesiastical art, such as stained glass windows, religious statuary, and so on provided a crucial and on the whole surprisingly successful way over the centuries to inform the mainly illiterate faithful about transcendent Christian reality. We have seen in previous chapters that the ancient Greeks devoted space and attention to aesthetic phenomena. In this chapter, I will be pointing to ways in which, even if they do not subscribe to later normative theories of aesthetics, selected medieval thinkers reflect on beauty, beautiful

78

chapter three

things, on what is sometimes called the aesthetic reality of art, in short on medieval aesthetics. This view is controversial. As Umberto Eco puts it, “before him [i.e., Baumgarten], aesthetics had been a morass of infantile chatter.”17 Yet aesthetics did not spring into existence with Baumgarten, who was preceded by numerous coherent analyses of the problem of beauty and aesthetics in general due to ancient Greek and later Christian thinkers. Carol Harrison argues in favor of a specifically Christian aesthetic in which rhetoric plays a new role of inspiring the love and practice of truth.18 As Eco notes, questions about art were everywhere in writings from this period.19 Such concerns, which were not limited to the psychological and ontological conditions of aesthetic pleasure, as distinguished from artistic creation,20 further touched on the canonical Greek theme of the relation between art and beauty. Hence, I have no hesitation in following as such Tatarkiewicz, who refers to “medieval aesthetics.”21

Medieval Aesthetics and Biblical Sources The important relationship of medieval aesthetic views to biblical sources is often neglected. Many medieval Christian aesthetic views were formed on a biblical basis. All of them agree at least nominally with what later thinkers take to be the biblical aesthetic stance. Yet the aesthetic views of the Holy Scriptures, especially those of the Old Testament (OT), have only rarely been examined. If we cast a glance at the biblical sources of these views, things quickly become murky. There is, to begin with, an obvious linguistic difficulty. During the period of the Middle Ages, few scholars were versed well enough in ancient Greek to work with the original texts, and even fewer were able to do so in Hebrew. This meant that their access to the texts was mainly through translation. Translation is at best a perilous undertaking, fraught with difficulties, unsatisfactory at best. It becomes even more precarious when it is based not on an adequate understanding of the original, or again on a thorough grounding in the languages involved, but on religious faith. It could also be dangerous to one’s health. The fate of William Tyndale, an English Protestant theologian who inspired the King James translation, which only appeared in 1611, is an example. Tyndale, who dared to translate the Bible into English at a time when it was heresy to do so, was forced into exile into Europe, then in 1536 captured and executed for his labors.

christian platonic and anti-platonic art

79

Here is how the Christian view of translation works. If one holds that the Bible is divinely inspired, and that the translators are similarly inspired, then faith in divine inspiration can be called upon to justify the translation, even when it is manifestly unfaithful to the original text. The koiné version of the Septuagint, the Hebrew Bible—which was produced by Jewish scholars living in Alexandria between the third and first centuries BC— often disagrees with the OT. Yet it is given pride of place by Christian observers. Differences in the Greek translation from the Hebrew original include the books of which it is composed, the precise text of the OT that it was made from, which differs in details from the Hebrew original, and the final version of the OT, which was only established long after this translation was made. Various Christian religious authorities attest the authority of this translation. Philo and Josephus made claims for the divine inspiration of its authors. The term septuaginta, which means “seventy” in Latin, derives from the traditional belief that seventy (or seventy-two) Jewish scholars translated the Pentateuch, or Torah, from Hebrew into Greek during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (Ptolemaι˜oV FilάdeljoV, 285–246 BC). Augustine, who was aware of claims for certain disparities between the Hebrew original and the Septuagint, justifies the acceptance of the latter by the Church as definitive. He notes discrepancies concerning dates, which he attributes to scribes rather than to the Jewish translators in recommending, where there is a difference, that one trust the original text.22 Yet he emphasizes the correctness of the belief that through love of truth in the earthly city of Babylon, where confusion reigns—though some philosophers disagree with each other—the learned and the unlearned alike are correct that “their works comprise the fixed and final canon of Sacred Scripture” since “when those authors wrote their work, God Himself was speaking to them, or through them.”23 He further repeats as reliable the implausible legend that, in his version, 72 translators working independently miraculously arrived at exactly the same translation of the text in creating the Septuagint. “For, though each of them sat in a separate place while engaged on the work . . . they did not differ from another in a single word, not even by a synonym conveying the same meaning, and there was no discrepancy even in the order of their words.”24 Jerome, who noticed many errors, later translated the Hebrew Bible directly into Latin in what came to be called the Vulgate. Yet according to Augustine Christians should follow the Church in accepting “the Septuagint as if it were the only translation”25 on the grounds that its translators, like the prophets,

80

chapter three

were inspired. 26 There seems to be no alternative to regarding this as tantamount to saying we do not need to verify the accuracy of the text or what one says about it since faith alone suffices. This view later led to a controversy with Jerome (Eusebius Hieronymus). It seems that before he intervened in translating directly from Hebrew into Latin, all the translations into Latin were based on the Greek translation, or Septuagint. Augustine, who was aware of Jerome’s labors, entered into correspondence with him about the new translation, which differed from the Septuagint. In a letter written about AD 394, he suggests it is not plausible to believe that Jerome could come up with a better version than the translators of the Septuagint had. Jerome evidently did not reply, as Augustine indicates in a further letter in AD 403. In the later letter, Augustine laments the fact that in producing another translation Jerome would also produce differences between the Latin and Greek Churches. Augustine suggests Jerome should confine himself merely to translating the Greek texts into Latin. In his response written in AD 404, Jerome remarks that Augustine does not seem to have understood the differences between the various translations and the original text. He suggests that, since Augustine desires to admire the Septuagint, there is no need to examine its relation to the original text while also defending specific passages in his translation. Augustine, writing to Jerome again in AD 405, asks for a copy of Jerome’s new translation of the Septuagint while noting that his reticence about the translation from the Hebrew was motivated by concern to avoid discord. Yet Augustine was not convinced by Jerome, since in the City of God, composed after the exchange of letters, he continued to insist that the Church was justified in accepting the Septuagint as the authoritative translation of the Hebrew OT even where it is plainly at variance with the original text. The problem of translation is further significant with respect to the medieval Christian views of art. Here we need to be sensitive to possible differences between Jewish and Christian religious views of art. What is a Christian view of art? What is a Jewish view of art? These two questions potentially lead to different answers if there is a difference between the OT view as it is stated in the Hebrew text and as it comes into the later Christian tradition through Latin translation. There is arguably a distinction to be drawn between a Christian view of art, for instance a refusal of luxury in terms of the option in favor of ameliorating poverty, and the sacred texts themselves. According to Henton Davies, there is no theory of beauty in either testament of the Bible.27 Others call attention to the force

christian platonic and anti-platonic art

81

of the second commandment in interdicting idolatry of the most varied artistic forms.28 According to Gerhard von Rad, there is no aesthetics of the Old Testament.29 Yet there is certainly widespread attention in the Holy Scriptures to aesthetic phenomena, such as the poetic language of the OT, the nearly fifty chapters in the Pentateuch devoted to the construction of a sanctuary and so on, the depiction of God as a potter,30 the beauty of priestly garments (Ex 28:2, 40), the magnificence of Solomon’s temple (1 Chr 28:10–13, 19), and so on. Another problem concerns the relation of the Christian view of aesthetics to the OT aesthetic views, knowledge of which depends on translation. The medieval Christian thinkers were aware of this problem, but unclear about how to resolve it. According to Luke Ferretter, the views of the OT mainly or perhaps even wholly antedate the Greek metaphysical views. Current research indicates that the OT was composed between the fifteenth and the fourth century BC. If that is correct, then in basing themselves on older sources, the medieval thinkers in effect developed prephilosophical themes. Hence Christian aesthetics cannot be merely reduced to Greek philosophy + Christian theology. Others dispute this claim in referring to the OT. J. Hempel, for instance, points to a clearly Greek influence in Genesis, in the so-called Greek feeling of respect for the intrinsic worth of the created, which he links to the Sapientia Solomonis.31 Obviously much depends on how the composition of the OT is dated. This text, which was composed over a very long period, was completed only after the completion of the NT. The latter is thought to have been begun in the middle of the first century and completed as early as AD 125, but in any case not later than the third century. According to what we know now, the OT, which was begun earlier than the NT, was only completed much later. Stress on uniformity among the different versions of the OT led ultimately to the view, which still prevails in copying the Torah, that even the smallest deviation renders a Torah scroll invalid. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, dating from c. 150 BC–AD 75, shows that in this period the texts were still being modified. This period continued over many years. The text that was accepted between the seventh and eleventh centuries was established by the Masoretes, or schools of scribes and Torah scholars situated mainly in Tiberias and Jerusalem in Palestine, and in Babylonia. This text is known as the Masorah. Yet some changes continued to be made by the Masoretes as late as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

82

chapter three

If at least some of the books date from the Hellenistic period, then it is at least plausible, pending further analysis, that the OT exhibits traces of Greek philosophical influence. If, on the contrary, the text was complete, or at least substantially complete, before Greek aesthetics arose, then this could not be the case and any similarity would be coincidental. A further factor concerns the translation from Hebrew through Greek to Latin, the form in which the OT was transmitted to the medieval thinkers. Ferretter contends that the aesthetics of the OT are a so-called covenant aesthetics in which “beauty” has social and religious significance for the people to whom God has appeared. 32 Tatarkiewicz indicates without referring to sources that the Greek term “kalos” used by Jewish scholars in Alexandria in the 3rd century BC did not match the Hebrew term. Ferretter, who goes further, contends that the semantical range of the Hebrew word for beauty means “beautiful” or “fair” with respect to form or appearance, that it is said of human beings—where it is linked to glory—but not of God, and that it is used eschatologically to refer to the messianic king of the restored Israel. This etymological exegesis suggests that the Greeks and the Hebrews had different semantic references for beauty. The ancient Israelites understood “y p i,” which the translators in the third century rendered as “kalos,” and which then passed into Latin Vulgate, hence into the Christian tradition as “bonum.” It further suggests that Christian aesthetics, which was founded on the translation of the Bible, is based on an interpretation sometimes demonstrably at variance with the original text. Tatarkiewicz, who points to the idea that the world is beautiful, which is not biblical but Greek, relies on Thorleif Boman33 in contrasting Hebrew and Greek conceptions of beauty.34 His basic point is that what appears to be biblical aesthetics is, through the power of translation, in fact wholly Greek.35 Tatarkiewicz is especially careful to separate Hebrew and Greek conceptions of beauty. He emphasizes that the ban introduced by Moses concerning the representation of God and any living thing is in effect a ban on painting and sculpture to prevent idolatry. This was balanced by music, which belonged to religious worship. According to Tarkiewiecz, the form of the OT, as it came down to the Christian medievals, stressed three Greek aesthetic themes: (1) the beauty of the universe, or Greek pankalia; (2) the so-called derivation of beauty from “measure, weight, and number” familiar from Pythagoreanism, and (3) the vanity and even danger of beauty, which came from the Cynics. Christian aesthetics, which draws on

christian platonic and anti-platonic art

83

both the OT and Greek authors, was developed through the arts, which were forbidden to the Jews, in depicting the works of creation and even the creator. The central idea was that the world, as created by God, was therefore, in virtue of its origins, beautiful. According to Tatarkiewicz, the introduction of the new worldview solidly based on Christian belief led to a threefold aesthetic attitude, including: (1) the superiority of the eternal over the temporal; (2) the superiority of the spiritual over the physical; and (3) the superiority of the moral over all other considerations.

On Greek Sources of Medieval Aesthetics Plato and Aristotle, the most important ancient Greek thinkers, were also the most important influences on medieval aesthetics. Roughly, the early part of the Middle Ages was dominated by Plato and the later part by Aristotle, with the twelfth century as the dividing line. Until that time Plato was more widely available in Latin translation than his great successor, whose works only became easily available after the middle of that century. The reception, hence the influence, of the Greek philosophical tradition, changes throughout the medieval period. It is usual to divide the history of medieval philosophy into three main periods. The initial period runs from the early Latin Middle Ages until the twelfth century, at which time the works of Plato and Aristotle were translated and commented on. This period, which is often thought to begin with Augustine, is followed by the Islamic period from the seventh to the twelfth century, in which there were translations of Plato and Aristotle into Arabic and numerous commentaries. This is succeeded by the socalled golden age of Latin medieval philosophy extending from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, when ancient Greek philosophy was fully recovered and there were extensive philosophical developments in a variety of fields. There are few surviving references early in the twelfth century to Aristotle. But by the end of the century, things had changed radically since the bulk of Aristotle had by then been translated.36 Since knowledge of Greek was not widespread, even among scholars, the ancient Greek thinkers needed to be translated into Latin. One of the early translators was Boethius, a Christian philosopher (Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, AD 480– c. 525), whose faith may or may not have later lapsed while he wrote the Consolation of Philosophy (De consolatione philosophiae) during his time in prison awaiting execution. Boethius,

84

chapter three

who was very influential during this entire period, is sometimes regarded as the first of the scholastics. His main project was to preserve ancient classical knowledge in a wide variety of fields, especially philosophy. His activities included translations from Greek into Latin and writing commentaries. His translations of Aristotle’s logical works are said to be the only significant portions of Aristotle available in Europe until the twelfth century. He also wrote a commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge. Boethius is further believed to have made translations of Euclid on geometry and Ptolemy on astronomy, which are no longer extant. The reception of Plato,37 Aristotle,38 and other Greek thinkers in medieval times has been extensively studied. The medieval receptions of Plato39 and Aristotle occurred independently and in different time periods. We will treat them separately, and, since it is not necessary here to go into the detail each would merit in a more specialized study, equally rapidly. A. Plato The influence of Plato was transmitted directly through translations of his work, mainly the Timaeus, and indirectly through the efforts of Proclus, Plotinus, then later Augustine, Eriugena, and others.40 Plato’s writings were partially translated very early but were only finally rendered into Latin as a whole much later. Cicero (died 43 BC) made a partial translation of the Timaeus, stopping at about 47B, and omitting both the beginning and the whole second half. This translation was later used by Augustine, who did not know Greek. Calcidius, who probably lived in the late fourth to early fifth century, translated the Timaeus. Calcidius’s commentary on his translation was very influential on medieval Neoplatonic cos­mology, for instance on members of the Chartres School such as Thierry de Chartres and William of Conches. The Timaeus was the only text by Plato available in Latin until Henricus Aristippus translated the Meno and the Phaedo in the twelfth century. Plato’s entire corpus was only translated toward the end of the high Middle Ages by Marsilio Ficino, an astrologer and reviver of Neoplatonism, who was also the first to translate all of Plato’s extant works into Latin. Ficino, who was very influential during the Italian Renaissance, strengthened Platonism through his treatise on the immortality of the soul (Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animae). One of his most distinguished pupils was Pico della Mirandola, author of the famous An Oration On the Dignity of Man. Ficino’s controversial thesis about the natural im-

christian platonic and anti-platonic art

85

mortality of the soul was debated during his lifetime and then later quickly adopted as dogma in 1513, fourteen years after his death. Though of lesser importance than Aquinas, his effort to reconcile Plato with Christianity is roughly parallel to the still ongoing Thomistic effort to reconcile Aristotle with Christianity, which has never been abandoned. The nearly complete unavailability of Plato’s texts until later in the Middle Ages meant that his influence was mainly transmitted by a series of Neoplatonists. Neoplatonism can be informally described as a view, deriving from Plato’s theory of the good as the highest form beyond being (epikeina tes ousias, Republic 509B). Later Christian thinkers interpret it as beyond thought and being, as well as the source, or principle, of all being. “Neoplatonism” refers to the school founded by Plotinus (and Ammonius Saccas) in the third century, and based on the views of Plato and later Platonists. Since Neoplatonism is a generally religious philosophy, the Neoplatonists were already on the road leading from ancient Greek philosophy to medieval theology. It is sometimes said that the Neoplatonists would probably consider themselves as Platonists, who sought to preserve and develop Plato’s teachings. Suffice it to say that Plotinus and Porphyry are regarded as more orthodox with respect to Platonic views than such later Neoplatonists as Iamblichus and Proclus. Plotinus was a major thinker, who, according to Porphyry, was sixty-six years old when he died in 270. His Neoplatonism influenced many Christians, above all Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite and more distantly Augustine. Plotinus’s work was edited by his pupil Porphyry as the Enneads. He also transmitted Platonic doctrines, though his writings were not known in the early medieval West. Plotinus was later influential through secular handbooks, the Neoplatonism of Porphyry’s successors, and Augustine. Plotinus’s position can be described as a set of variations on the doctrine of the form of the good, which Plato describes in book 6 of the Republic. In the famous passage on the sun, Plato says the idea of the good is the cause of knowledge and truth, and the aim of knowledge.41 He compares the sun to the good, which transcends being42 as its sole and final source, and which governs the intelligible order.43 So that what gives truth to the things known and the power to know to the knower is the form of the good. And though it is the cause of knowledge and truth, it is also an object of knowledge. Both knowledge and truth are beautiful things, but the good is other and more beautiful than they. In the visible realm, light and sight are rightly considered

86

chapter three alike, but it is wrong to think that they are the sun, so here it is right to think of knowledge and truth as good like but wrong to think that either of them is the good—for the good is yet more prized. This is an inconceivably beautiful thing you’re talking about, if it provides both knowledge and truth and is superior to them in beauty. You surely don’t think that a thing like that could be pleasure. Hush! Let’s examine its image in more detail as follows. How? You’ll be willing to say, I think, that the sun not only provides visible things with the power to be seen but also with coming to be, growth, and nourishment, although it is not itself coming to be. How could it be? Therefore, you should also say that not only do the objects of knowledge owe their being known to the good, but their being is also due to it, although the good is not being, but superior to it in rank and power.44

In Plotinus and other Neoplatonists, Plato’s form of the good reappears as the one. Plotinus’s philosophy is often understood as a series of variations on this Platonic theme. Plotinus goes well beyond anything in Plato’s writing in claiming that literally everything derives from the one. This view is a form of what is called dynamic pantheism. Pantheism, or the view that God and the universe (or nature) are identical, is familiar in modern philosophy in the writings of Bruno, Spinoza, Schelling, and others. An instance is Schelling’s later view of the transcendent absolute from which everything else derives.45 Plotinus, who was possibly influenced by Hindu mysticism, refers to the Supreme Form, which transcends reason, as the One in stressing its unity, intelligence, and soul, or life. This mystical view is similar to the Upanishads and possibly also to Daoism. Plotinus continues the Platonic view that the forms enable to us to know things, but things do not allow us to know forms.46 In his account of virtue and what is called godlikeness, he restates views of Plato and Aristotle. According to the former, we become godlike through virtue47 and for the latter the gods are not virtuous since unlike human beings they do not enter into contracts, and so on.48 Plotinus suggests, in anticipating the general idea of the argument from analogy, that human virtue resembles godly virtue, but not conversely. The difference between Plato and Plotinus is striking. Plato is a pagan, pre-Christian rationalist, who suggests that if knowledge is possible then some exceptional individuals, on grounds of nature and nurture, must be

christian platonic and anti-platonic art

87

able to “see” the invisible real. In other words, if there is knowledge, then the real, even the form of the good lying beyond being, but most real, as the source of all that is, is, accordingly, cognizable. Plotinus is a religious Christian mystic. He holds that what is beyond being, but most real, as the source of all that is, cannot be cognized. The chapter in the Enneads on beauty (1.6) was highly influential in medieval aesthetics. Plotinus’s theory of beauty draws directly on a number of concepts analyzed in various Platonic dialogues. These include the idea of the good in the Republic, the doctrine of the soul in the Phaedo, the concept of the demiurge in the Timaeus, and the ascending movement toward beauty in the Symposium. Plotinus begins from the view that there is a single unifying principle. After reviewing different theories, he claims that the soul detects beauty in the world based on the symmetry deriving from the ideal form. A soul’s beauty is enhanced by leaving behind the physical world in progressing toward the intellectual principle. He identifies beauty and the good as the first principle from which the intellectual principle derives. It follows that we must ascend toward the good. We see beauty through the eye—hence, since beauty and the good, or God, are the same, we also see God. Though this is not Plato’s view, there is clearly a Platonic inspiration: “Like anyone just awakened the soul cannot look at bright objects. It must be persuaded to look first at beautiful habits, then the works of beauty produced not by craftsmen’s skill but by the virtue of men known for their goodness, then the souls of those known for beautiful deeds . . . Only the mind’s eye can contemplate this mighty beauty . . . So ascending, the soul will come to Mind . . . and to the intelligible realm where Beauty dwells.”49 In connection with Plotinus, one should further mention Porphyry and Proclus as sources of medieval Platonism. Porphyry, who died at the beginning of the fourth century, was a Neoplatonist. He is known for publishing and editing Plotinus’s Enneads. He also wrote the Isagoge, a treatise on logic, which, in Latin translation became a standard treatise during the Middle Ages. In this text, Porphyry points to the problem of universals, which later continued to occupy the Christian medieval thinkers. It is said that his most important contribution lies in his Introduction to Categories, in which he brought Aristotelian logic into Neoplatonism. His second commentary on Peri Hermeneias is said to indicate that he believes the views of Aristotle and Plato are compatible. Proclus (Proclus Lycaeus, 8 February AD 412–17 April AD 485), one of the last classical philosophers, was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher,

88

chapter three

who worked out one of the most elaborate and fully developed systems of Neoplatonism. He studied at the Academy founded by Plato and later became its head. Most of his writings are commentaries, in which he also presents his own views, on various Platonic dialogues (e.g., Alcibiades, Cratylus, Republic, Parmenides, Timaeus). His systematic position combines elements drawn from a wide variety of sources in a monism consistent with Plotinus’s position. He was very influential on Christian medieval philosophy, for instance on Pseudo-Dionysius and Boethius, as well as on Islamic thought, and much later during the renaissance on Gethon and Ficino. B. Aristotle In discussing the medieval reception of Aristotle, I will be relying on the aptly named Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism 1100–1600. This work provides a careful survey of what is now known. It shows that the rapid rediscovery of Aristotelian texts in the twelfth century basically changed the medieval understanding of ancient Greek philosophy, leading to an Aristotelian form of medieval aesthetics.50 Speaking generally, all of Aristotle, with some minor exceptions, was translated into Latin, sometimes more than once, from Greek and sometimes from Arabic over a period of about 150 years during the Middle Ages. His views were also transmitted indirectly through Avicenna (980– 1037), a Persian. The latter’s main philosophical encyclopedia, the Book of Healing (Litab-al-Shifa), includes a development of Aristotle’s De Anima, which was very influential when it was translated into Latin around 1150 in Toledo. Prior to this period, only Boethius’s translations of Categories and De interpretatione were known in Latin. This rapidly changed beginning around 1120. It is known that with the exception of the Eudemian Ethics, which was not translated, and the Poetics, which was translated by William of Moerbeke (Willem van Moerbeke) in1260, all of the writings of Aris­ totle were translated at least once from either Greek or Arabic, or both, into Latin and known in the Middle Ages. According to Bernard G. Dod, in addition to the genuine works, there were also a number of translations of spurious works in circulation, mainly translated from the Arabic, during the twelfth century. By the end of the twelfth century, everything except De Animalibus and part of the Ethics had been translated, though not yet

christian platonic and anti-platonic art

89

widely read. The availability of translations meant that Aristotle quickly became a central focus. Dod points out that William of Moerbeke, Aristot­ le’s last major translator in this period, either revised or retranslated the entire Aristotelian corpus between 1260 and 1280 in versions that quickly became popular.51 He further stresses that, despite the legend to the contrary, Aristotle mainly became known in the West through translations from Greek, not from Arabic.52 The study of Aristotle was officially proscribed in 1210 in Paris. Yet this was only a postponement, since by 1255 the University of Paris officially had adopted, or prescribed, Aristotelianism as the center of the curriculum. The fact that for a time Aristotle was proscribed merely slowed, but did not stop, work on his position, which continued to grow, especially in Toulouse. Though there was naturally a lag, by the middle of the thirteenth century Aristotle was important in the academic world. Little is known about the translators, who included Boethius, James of Venice, William of Moerbeke, and Robert Grosseteste. Translation in this period was mainly very literal, or word for word. As a result of this profusion of translation, for the Christian medievals, and later for the Roman Catholic Church, Aristotle rapidly became the Philosopher, whose views were synonymous with philosophy itself. Scholars distinguish between the translation and the interpretation of Aristotle during the medieval period. C. H. Lohr points out that during the medieval period the teacher was not the individual, but the Church, which taught through the clergy.53 This view appeals to the authority of tradition, founded in the authority of the Church, whose ecclesiastical hierarchy is guaranteed by scriptural authority and the Church fathers, whose views are endorsed by the Church as the legitimate representative of God on Earth. According to Rhabanus Maurus, the priest functions as a master (magister) chosen by God to teach the way to salvations.54 The view according to which the Church is the sole and unique source of the truth was maintained over the centuries. It was only finally given up in “Dignitas humanae” (1965), when the Second Vatican Council, in adopting the idea of religious liberty, finally abandoned this pretense.55 The appearance of Aristotle’s corpus in translation invited the Christian medievals to rethink dogmatically held positions through the recovery of ancient learning. The well-known humanist recovery of ancient learning not only took place after the Middle Ages but also during this period, in which it was a rival current challenging ecclesiastical dogma. This reassessment, which was stimulated through the publication of Aristotelian

90

chapter three

translations, continued throughout the entire Middle Ages. An Aristotelian influence was at work, for instance, in the evolution of the trivium and the quadrivium during this period. The result was a slow decline of the authority of the Church in whole areas of scholarship, which were transformed through the active rethinking of various topics in confrontation with newly available ancient Greek texts in Latin translation, above all with Aristotle. In this context, Aristotle, as a revolutionary figure, powerfully challenged accepted thinking in different ways at two crucial points in the development of the Western intellectual philosophical and theological traditions. The first is a challenge to Platonism, the body of thought in the process of emerging in Plato’s wake even as Aristotle was still his student. The second is an equally fundamental challenge to theological dogma in the time of the Christian worldview dominant throughout the Christian Middle Ages. In Plato’s wake, Aristotle provided a well-thought-out but very different analysis in reacting against various Platonic views, which he countered in an original but highly systematic account. In the context of the medieval worldview, Aristotle, an obviously pagan thinker, provided an equally important challenge to the reigning Christian philosophical perspective founded on reasoning within the framework of revelation typical of the medieval worldview. Aristotle presented a challenge. The obvious consequence was that the renewal of medieval thought sacrificed dogma in turning to Aristotle, leading to the rise of the increasingly independent thinker. This challenge was later met by the comparative “domestication” of Aristotelian thinking in the thoroughly Christianized version worked out by Aquinas. The result was that Aristotle, a deeply Greek thinker, was made to speak Latin in the process of being transformed into a pillar of the Catholic Church. Increasing Christian domestication of Aristotle in his intellectual journey from proscription to prescription at the center of the new curriculum in the mid-thirteenth century meant his views could safely be brought into play in the debates of the day. Instead of unveiling unquestioned theological truth, in the interpretation of Aristotle’s texts, medieval philosophical students of Aristotle were interested in bringing out one view of the text among others. This practice led to contrary readings in the growing literature about Aristotle, in trying to grasp the latter’s philosophical position, which, unlike a theological view, need not even be true. Thus Siger of Brabant writes, “But as is clear, Aristotle proves that motion is eternal, and this is apparent from the reasons he gives. Some, however, wanting to har-

christian platonic and anti-platonic art

91

monize Aristotle’s intention with the teachings of faith, say that Aristotle was not for these reasons of the opinion that the world is eternal, or that he did not hold them to be demonstrations necessarily concluding what is true, but that he only adduced these reasons hypothetically and for no other purpose. But this is manifestly false, for it would follow then that Aristotle presented the greater part of his philosophy as an hypothesis.”56 The tension, even the contradiction, between the old theological perspective of different readings of a single revealed truth, which must be true, and the new philosophical perspective that confronts different readings of a philosophical theory that may or may not, but certainly need not, be true, reaches a peak in Aquinas. It is well said that he is simultaneously committed to biblical truths surpassing human understanding, which must be accepted on faith, and rational truths based on demonstration. Both forms of truth are grounded in God, who reveals both supernatural and rational truths.57 This belief led to many difficulties. One of the most fateful was the decision to support theological doctrine against experimental science, for instance in Aquinas’s defense of the Aristotelian deductive approach to astronomical phenomena against the experimental approach featured by Ptolemy. The danger of this approach is clear. Aquinas rightly points out, as Karl Popper reaffirmed centuries later in his fallibilist approach to science, that merely because a hypothesis saves the phenomena does not mean it is true.58 This same approach, pioneered by Aquinas, was later maintained by Cardinal Bellarmine against Galileo.59 Indeed it is still maintained since the ecclesiastical judgment rendered against Galileo has never been overturned. This is merely one among many indications of the difficulty of maintaining religious faith against anything approaching an experimental approach to rational knowledge.

On the Anti-Platonic, Christian Approach to Aesthetic Phenomena Medieval thought leans heavily on earlier Greek philosophic models. Plato and Aristotle, who provide the most important ancient Greek theories of aesthetics, also provide the most influential Greek influences on medieval aesthetic views. Since Aristotle was translated into Latin relatively late—the first commentaries appear in the second half of the thirteenth century—the most important single figure in the formulation of medieval aesthetics is Plato, and among his writings, above all, the Timaeus.

92

chapter three

The reason for the influence of this dialogue is obvious. It is relatively easy to transform the pagan, pre-Christian Platonic model of the creation of the universe by a divine craftsman into the creation of the universe by the Christian God. There is, for instance, only a short step from the Platonic claim in the Timaeus that the demiurge created the world in terms of an eternal ideal to the Augustinian view that God created the universe in respecting the perfect exemplification of which it possessed the form.60 It is sometimes said that art and aesthetic philosophy was a continuation of ancient lines of thought, with the additional use of explicit theological categories. According to De Bruyne, the School of Chartres sought to explain Genesis through Plato and the Timaeus through the Bible.61 One way to formulate this claim is to say that medieval aesthetics consists in the interaction between the views of ancient Greek philosophers and medieval theologians. As part of the change from Greek philosophy to medieval Christian thought, the naïve intuitionism featured in Plato is replaced by a veritable epistemological panoply including argument by analogy, a view of art that in creating art objects reveals and worships God through human works, and so on. For the medieval mind, thoroughly imbued with God, even the Church that supposedly does God’s works is the visible manifestation of God. For instance, the visible church symbolizes the spiritual church, which is God’s mystical body in its typical cruciform manner. During this period, we find the continued interaction between ancient Greek philosophy and Christianity in the most varied ways. Medieval aesthetics is more anti-Platonic than Platonic, and specifically anti-Platonic on the key point of the cognitive function of aesthetic representation. Medieval aesthetics, supposing there is an aesthetics during this period, can be understood as anti-Platonic in grasping art, artistic creation, and art objects according to mimetic principles, and as further anti-Platonic in that it sharply opposes the Platonic attack on representation. Writers on medieval aesthetics claim to represent nature, in thus representing divine works, and in representing the divine dimension directly, for instance through the doctrines of analogy and allegory. This allows it to focus on (divine) beauty in believing, but neither demonstrating nor even arguing that beauty and truth are identical. For Plato, art strives for but cannot know what, in more modern terms, can be described as mind-independent reality, and which, in the medieval period, is conveniently recast as God. What for Plato is the insuperable artistic inability to imitate, hence to represent or otherwise to know the world, is overcome in medieval aesthetics through various cognitive approaches to the divine. For the medieval Christian artists, art in all its many forms,

christian platonic and anti-platonic art

93

including architecture, painting, poetry, and so on, is never, as in romantic art, an end in itself. Rather, like African art, medieval art does not focus on the construction of beautiful images or things to be enjoyed. It rather focuses on fulfilling a specific social function. Thus for John of Salisbury, art realizes possibilities inherent in nature in improving on it through what he, with an eye to the Greek view of methodon, calls an efficient plan.62 In that respect, it is no more than a mere means, a “savoir faire,” what the Greeks earlier understood as a technique (techne), whose sole end or reason for being consists in knowing and glorifying God.63 This adoration, which is basically representational in approach, takes place in a series of three kinds of works: the work of the creator; the work of nature, which resembles the divine ideal; and the work of the artist who imitates nature. But, since artists during this period assume a Christian religious background as a given, there are few interrogations on basic points, for instance with respect to the fundamental theme of the nature of beauty, a question that, according to De Bruyne, is never raised in the Chartres School.64 Muslim and Jewish views of art forbid representation, to which Christian art is strongly committed. Christian art throughout this period features representation as the basic approach to adoration of the divine. Examples are virtually everywhere. In Pope Gregory the Great’s letter of 600, we read, “Pictures are used in the churches in order that those ignorant of letters may by merely looking at the walls read there what they are unable to read in books.”65 Little more than a century later, in 720 John Damascene writes, “An image is, after all, a reminder; it is to the illiterate what a book is to the literate, and what the word is to hearing, the image is to sight.”66 Theodore the Studite (759–826) is reported to have said, “How, indeed, can the Son of God be acknowledged to have been a man like us—he who was deigned to be called brother—if he cannot, like us, be depicted?” A similar view runs throughout this entire period. For example, in the view of the Synod of Arras (1025), pictures supplement scripture.

Representation, Analogy and Allegory in Medieval Aesthetics Medieval aesthetics made use of a wide variety of representational techniques deemed to be suitable within an expressly Christian religious context. It is useful to stress the cognitive dimension of medieval aesthetics since this point has been contested. Eco seems unclear on this crucial point. He argues in favor of an aesthetics during the medieval period that “developed as a metaphysics and epistemology of the beautiful, and eventually

94

chapter three

an idea of beauty as an organic value.”67 But he also inconsistently argues, in referring to Baumgarten, that medieval aesthetics is not concerned with the link of aesthetics and epistemology but rather with a whole range of issues linked to beauty, in other words with the possible objective character and subjective conditions of the so-called experience of beauty.68 Certainly all instances and forms of medieval art cannot be reduced merely to a form of cognition. There were many other functions as well. The Abbé Suger, for instance, correctly insists on a kind of Platonic transportation, akin to the view described in the Symposium, through artistic experience, beyond the here and now by analogy to dwell in the presence of God.69 According to Honarius of Autun, painting serves three aims: to beautify, to recall the lives of the saints, and to be the literature of the laity.70 The post-Platonic resistance to the Platonic condemnation of artistic representation begins in Aristotle. In general, medieval art, like early Egyptian art, is representational; but whereas the early Egyptians were not much concerned to represent the external world in linking their art to religion and to the next world, instead linking it to the world about them,71 the medieval Christians were concerned to represent at least two broad themes. These include nature directly as well as indirectly through the representation of the divine dimension that is its cause, and the divine dimension directly or by analogy through various forms of painting, sculpture, and so on. Medieval representational artistic practice is linked to and rooted in explicit medieval theories of representation, especially analogy. Medieval theories of analogy were proposed to deal with questions about logic, theology, and metaphysics. I come back to this point below. Medieval Christian art cannot be mimetic in the ordinary sense of the term, since, as for Platonism, there is no hope of imitating what one cannot see or otherwise experience visually. But it can depend on various forms of analogy and allegory to make the single point, always the same one, that God’s creation is the visible dimension of the invisible transcendent God.

Augustinian Aesthetics Augustine and Aquinas, the two most important medieval Christian thinkers, are also the two most important medieval Christian aesthetic thinkers. It is surprising, in view of Augustine’s importance, that Augustinian

christian platonic and anti-platonic art

95

aesthetics is not often mentioned, even in standard reference works, and even less often studied in detail.72 Augustine never composed a text on aesthetics, but he often mentions beauty. Observers are largely divided about the importance of Augustine’s meditations on beauty. The three main students of Augustinian aesthetics are arguably Karol Svoboda, O’Connell, and Harrison. Svoboda, who provides a chronological analysis of the various works, particularly the early writings, in focusing on the aesthetic dimension,73 proposes a description of Augustine’s aesthetics. Among recent commentators, O’Connell stands out in his claim for the centrality of Augustine’s concern with aesthetics as akin to loving God. He suggests that Augustine’s need to understand, and by understanding to exorcise, art’s spell on him provides a key to all the philosophical and theological questions that absorbed him. Seen in this light, Augustine’s aesthetics arguably lie at the very heart of his philosophy.74 Other observers disagree with O’Connell. Thus H.-I. Marrou, who is considerably more restrained, thinks Augustine is not concerned to work out an aesthetics but rather to redirect attention from aesthetics to science.75 Harrison claims that O’Connell, in seeking more than what Svoboda finds in Augustine, in particular an incarnate aesthetic, in fact substitutes his own view of aesthetics for Augustine’s view.76 She describes Augustine’s theory as beauty as revealed form.77 Many medieval Christian thinkers are influenced by Neoplatonism, most often through Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The latter is in turn influenced by the later Neoplatonist Proclus. Augustine is reputed to be a Platonist but his precise relation to Platonism is complex.78 His approach to aesthetics, like his position, develops from an initial Neoplatonism, mediated through Plotinus’s teachings, especially as transmitted by Plotinus and Porphyry, to a more original later approach. It is often said that Augustine’s treatise “On True Religion” (387) was still Neoplatonic, but that he later abandoned Neoplatonism for a form of Christianity based on his own distinctive interpretation of the texts. Harrison suggests that the point of transmission lies less in Plotinus than in the appropriation from a Christian angle of vision of the Timaeus.79 Though Augustine rejects Plato’s polytheism,80 he regards himself as close to the Platonists,81 and particularly praises Plato for seeking the cause of the sensible realm in the intelligible realm.82 Since for Augustine God reveals himself in Plato’s theory of ideas,83 Harrison infers that revealed Beauty is the Beauty of God.84 In other words, Augustine’s theological aesthetics is based on the beauty of God’s revelation to fallen human beings.

96

chapter three

Tartarkiewicz points out that the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius deal with beauty, for instance, in the treatise on divine names85 and throughout his writings, but do not feature a treatise on aesthetics. Pseudo-Dionysus was a typical thinker of this period, who fused together Christian and pagan sources in drawing on a religious conception of God deriving ultimately from the scriptures and a philosophical concept of the absolute that came from the Greeks. He is said to have integrated the fundamental insights of Platonism into Christian thought. The result is an abstract conception of transcendent beauty, which, like light, and under the influence of Plotinus, was said to radiate or emanate. Augustine’s earliest writings were on aesthetics. He formulated the basic principles of what later became his approach to Christian aesthetics on the basis of full knowledge of the Roman tradition. Since he produced a treatise on beauty, De pulchro et apto (380), which has been lost, before he converted to Christianity (387), his initial approach to aesthetics ante­ dates his later Christian perspective.86 We know of this work from later remarks in the Confessions, where Augustine summarizes its contents.87 This text was apparently intended to distinguish between the beautiful in itself and what is beautiful with respect to other things, or in Platonic terms the distinction between absolute and relative beauty. De Musica (388–91), the only extant formal aesthetic text by Augustine, was prepared immediately after his conversion. This text reflects both his pre-Christian aesthetics and his dawning Christian convictions. O’Connell, who devotes detailed attention to this work, claims it indicates Augustine’s continued high regard for the liberal arts. O’Connell points out that for Augustine, music is a science in tracing ways that the soul moves from faith to reason in a so-called ascending aesthetic.88 The result is a creative synthesis between the standard Platonic ascent figuring canonically in Plato’s Symposium and the Christian view of the return to God typically understood as first cause and highest good. It is plausible to infer that Augustine’s mature view of aesthetics is influenced by his turn to Christianity and the increasing role of Christianity in his thinking. As Augustine increasingly became an exemplary Christian thinker, not surprisingly religious considerations came to predominate in his thought. As a result, he became dismissive of forms of art he earlier favored. Augustinian aesthetics after his conversion feature a specifically Christian dimension. Maarten Wisse suggests Augustine’s aesthetics must be understood in relation to the trinity, above all in De Trinitate (399–422), since it is a trinitarian aesthetics.89 Yet even if that is correct, one should

christian platonic and anti-platonic art

97

not overlook the fact that Augustine apparently later maintained his original pre-Christian view of art during his period as a specifically Christian thinker. For Augustine beauty is grounded in faith. Some observers think there can be no room in his thought for a secular aesthetics. If that were true, then Augustine’s early pre-Christian analysis of beauty would not qualify. Certainly neither Augustine nor perhaps any medieval Christian thinker offers a theory of art itself, or a modern theory of aesthetics, apart from the role of beauty within a religious perspective. Indeed that is not possible from his Christian point of view since everything, including specifically aesthetic objects, such as paintings, but also the study of nature, leads back to God. In his earlier writings Augustine places beauty above everything else,90 for instance in contrasting philokalia with philosophy in Against the Academicians. But he later abandons his early aestheticism. Augustine worked out a distinctive, powerful theory of aesthetic phenomena, especially beauty, from a Christian perspective, which, together with the writings of Pseudo-Dionysus, functioned as the basis of Christian aesthetics for a millennium. Yet the view is far from clear, with respect to Christianity. The paradoxical result is that, though Augustine played the role of a pioneer in creating Christian aesthetics, in which he became and remained an authority over the centuries, his own aesthetic position is not clearly Christian at all. It is arguably rather, as is sometimes said, the high point of ancient aesthetics, all of whose strands find a place in his synthesis. Since in his writings on aesthetics Augustine draws on the full range of ancient aesthetic ideas, it is difficult to characterize his view. It is useful to compare and contrast Augustine’s aesthetics with the Byzantine view, which emerged at roughly the same time in the writings of John Damascene and Theodorus Studites in reaction to Platonism. Plato’s attack on imitative poetry and other forms of art can be paraphrased as the claim that in ordinary artistic practice claims for beauty and truth must be isolated. This separation is later closed up in the Christian turn underlying medieval aesthetics to the point when, unlike the Neoplatonists, medieval Christian thinkers did not distinguish beauty and utility, or goodness.91 Augustine discusses the domains of both beauty and truth in a context in which, as O’Connell notes, “truth is fundamentally identical with beauty.”92 For the Christian medievals, who link aesthetics to their Christian commitment, beauty, as an attribute of God, was purely intelligible.93 This view is fully in evidence in the Byzantine thinkers, for whom in knowing beauty

98

chapter three

in nature one returns to God. Byzantine aesthetics, which is formulated by writers who consider themselves to be Greek, continues and develops the aesthetics of the Greek fathers and of Pseudo-Dionysus. This view was based on a Neoplatonic theory of emanation running throughout the debate from Plotinus at least to Schelling, and perhaps even, depending on the interpretation, to Heidegger. The basic aesthetic insight seems to be that, since the world in all its forms comes from God, it is beautiful, and in knowing the world one knows God. This doctrine was manifested in an interesting form in the iconoclasts, who hold that God simply cannot be represented pictorially, since pictures do not capture the divine nature. For instance, John Damascene believes that since an image resembles a divine prototype, in contemplating an image one contemplates God. It follows that material things deserve veneration if they depict God.94 Just as man emanates from God, and hence is created in the image of God, so images are also created in God’s image. Theodorus Studites went even further in asserting,95 arguably influenced by the model of the Eucharist, that since the image resembles God, images of Christ not only resemble, but in fact are identical with him. In a typical passage, he writes, “Whosoever sees an image of Christ sees in it Christ Himself.”96 Augustine works out a variant of this same view under the influence of Plotinus, especially his treatise on beauty, and other thinkers. Wisse, who refers to De Trinitate, claims Augustine holds the typical medieval view that “all being is eventually rooted in God’s giving them being in his initial and continuous act of creation. All truth, goodness, and beauty in the creature is dependent upon God, and all truth, goodness, and beauty in the creature refers back to its Creator, with whom we are in a Trinitarian relationship broken only by sin.”97 In a fuller treatment, a number of facets of Augustinian aesthetics could be distinguished. Suffice it to say here that Augustine shares with Byzantine thinkers the general Christian conviction that the world issues from, hence is informed by, its divine origin. This conviction enabled him, like other early Christians interested in aesthetics, to claim that the world is beautiful in virtue of its relation to God. Augustine’s conception of beauty has a number of distinctive aspects. One of them is his stress on beauty as objective, hence distinguished from a subjective attitude later adopted by Kant and many others. Augustine, in anticipating many later thinkers, argues that things are not beautiful because they please us but rather please us because they are beautiful.98 This insight is presupposed in his analysis of beauty. Augustine, who goes beyond the trivial claim that the world

christian platonic and anti-platonic art

99

emerges from and reflects its divine origins, believes, very much like his Greek predecessors, that beauty consists in harmony and proportion, or the interrelationship of the parts in a whole to create harmony, order, and unity. In this way he arrives at his view that “Reason . . . perceived that it is pleased only by beauty; and in beauty, by shapes; in the shapes, by proportions; and in the proportions by numbers.”99 A further point concerns Augustine’s contribution, with PseudoDionysius, to the distinctive Christian idea of divine beauty. Plato and then Plotinus formulate a conception of perfect beauty to which Augustine adds a clearly new dimension. For Augustine and other Christian thinkers, beauty, which is not sensuous, is not perceived by the senses. It is rather intellectual, hence grasped through the intellect. And the theocentric conviction that beauty is lodged finally in God leads to the view that nature is already a work of art. It follows that that the divine art of nature guides the artist in making beautiful things.

Aquinas and Scholastic Aesthetics Medieval Christian aesthetics draws on the Christian scriptures as well as the Greek philosophical background. Since, as noted, Plato’s texts were more readily available than Aristotle’s during the early Middle Ages, it is not surprising that early Christian medieval aesthetics is broadly Platonic. Though Aristotle later became widely available in translation, the Poetics, his main aesthetic work, only became influential later. The first complete translation by William of Moerbeke in 1279 became available only after Aquinas had died (1274). And even then, the translation was questionable since William renders the word “beauty” (kalos) not as pulchrum but as bonum in order to agree with Jerome’s translation of Genesis 1:31.100 Aristotle, who is the model of a systematic thinker, did not directly influence the system of scholastic aesthetics. The schoolmen were concerned, as Tatarkiewicz usefully puts it, “to work out a single conceptual system in accordance with Christian principles,”101 even, according to Eco, as a “motionless system of relations, fully intelligible and not subject to further change.”102 But they did not have direct access to Aristotle’s aesthetic views, which were apparently still unknown to Dante, Boccaccio, and possibly even Petrarch. According to Tatarkiewicz, scholastic aesthetics has three main characteristics: general claims about God and the world, empirical observations

100

chapter three

on art and aesthetic experience, and conceptual analysis. 103 Contributions to medieval scholastic aesthetics were made by a number of writers, including St. Bonaventure, Albert the Great, Ulrich of Strasbourg, and Thomas Aquinas. Though Aquinas was not centrally interested in aesthetics, he arguably made the most important medieval scholastic contribution to this domain.104 Yet observers do not agree even on the nature of his contribution to aesthetics, which remains controversial. Even the interpretation of his theory of beauty, the center of his aesthetic attitude, is uncertain. Aertsen, for instance, who notes that Aquinas did not offer more than scattered remarks on aesthetics, goes on to suggest that the field of aesthetics was not considered in this period to be an autonomous domain.105 Tatarkiewicz points out that Aquinas’s merit does not lie in inventing new ideas, since he mainly relies on insights already in the scholastic conceptual arsenal, but rather in creating a system.106 Even Eco, who devotes a whole monograph to Aquinas’s theory of aesthetics, paradoxically counsels that a historian of medieval art need not devote much attention to Aquinas.107 Eco insists that one should see in Aquinas the high point of the medieval Christian discussion of art, but acknowledges that Aquinas is not an original aesthetic thinker. Aquinas gives systematic formulation to aesthetic ideas borrowed from other thinkers in emphasizing beauty. Since he never formulates a specific aesthetic theory, and since he is not specifically interested in problems of beauty, even though his aesthetic ideas are influential, they remain unclear and difficult to interpret. Close study of different texts often does not suffice to arrive at clear readings even of key terms in his aesthetic approach. It is, however, reasonably clear that Aquinas’s occasional remarks on aesthetic topics derive from his overall position, or system. In discussing Aquinas’s aesthetics, I will follow Eco, who in turn follows Aquinas’s overall system in analyzing beauty as a transcendental attribute of being before considering its relation to man and nature. Aquinas, who holds that being is not a genus, further holds it can have particular or partial properties, or on the contrary predicates that apply to every being. The latter are known as transcendentals, or transcendental properties of being. This problem arises in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, where Aristotle lists ens and unum as properties of all being, to which the Arab philosophers add res and aliquid. Aquinas, who distinguishes among the transcendentals unum, res, ens, aliquid, bonum, and verum, further adds pulchrum in his analysis of beauty.

christian platonic and anti-platonic art

101

Aquinas does not have a theory of aesthetics in a modern sense; he merely follows the traditional medieval distinction between cognition (ratio, cogitatio) and production ( faciendi, factibilium) in claiming that art is knowing how to make (recta ratio factibilium), or knowledge of making according to the rules.108 But he has a theory of beauty, whose interpretation is difficult. Eco, who disagrees with de Munnynck, Maritain,109 and Tatarkiewicz, attributes to Aquinas a view of beauty as a transcendental.110 This view belongs to a tradition which antedates Aquinas. De Bruyne points out that it was already discussed by Otloh of St. Emmeran in his Liber de Tentationibus Suis et Scriptis in the eleventh century111 and again in the thirteenth century in Philip the Chancellor’s Summa de Bono.112 Eco relates Aquinas’s interest in the problem of beauty to the latter’s early studies. As a student, he attended the lectures of Albertus Magnus on Pseudo-Dionysius (1248–1252). In chapter 4 of the Divine Names, Pseudo-Dionysius studies beauty as a divine attribute as well as its causal role. In his Commentary on the Divine Names (1265–1266), Aquinas goes beyond Pseudo-Dionysius, who identifies the beautiful and the good, as well as the analysis of transcendentals in De Veritate, which does not include pulchrum, to identify the good itself (ipsum bonum) with God. In this way, he arrives at the view that beautiful things participate in beauty itself, or in the so-called first good, or again in being. God is super-substantial beauty, which is beautiful in all respects and gives beauty to everything else, and which functions as the effective cause of being as well as the final cause of the world.113 For Aquinas beauty takes the place of the Platonic good, which is the highest cause in the Republic. According to Eco, who in effect depicts Aquinas as the Christian equivalent of an ancient Greek thinker, the latter argues for the equivalence and convertibility of the good, the true, and the beautiful.114 Aquinas further works out this view in later writings. In the Summa Theologiae, for instance, he identifies beauty as a final cause.115 Yet it is difficult to be very clear about Aquinas’s mature view since, as Eco points out, in the Summa he evokes only three transcendentals and rarely even mentions beauty.116 Aquinas’s theory of beauty turns on its relation to pleasure as communicated through the senses, above all vision, which he understands in a broad sense. In the Summa, he links visio to beauty in relation to pleasure in two ways: “Beautiful things,” he writes, “give pleasure in being looked at”117 and are “those things the very perception of which gives pleasure.”118 The difference between mere sensation and perception is spanned by aesthetic visio, which is understood in a widened sense as including sensation,

102

chapter three

or the sense of sight, as well as all kinds of intellectual cognition.119 This means that pleasure can be both sensory as well as intellectual. The theory of aesthetic vision is cognitive, since beauty is related to final causes. It follows that this is not a theory of sensual pleasure, but rather, as is typical in the Christian medieval thinkers, a theory of disinterested intellectual cognition, which also yields pleasure. This line of reasoning justifies Aquinas’s claim that beauty is related to knowledge (vis cognoscitiva). Aquinas further distinguishes pleasure derived from mere seeing (delectatio visus) and from contemplation (delectatio contemplationis). For Aquinas, beauty has both subjective as well as objective dimensions. It is subjective in that it specifically relates visio to human being, who alone is capable of loving beauty, since love is the cause of pleasure,120 or of appreciating sensible beauty for its own sake.121 The theological importance of this claim becomes clear when we remember the typical medieval view that God is beauty. In identifying this as the unique capacity of human being, Aquinas is pointing to a unique human capacity to know God through beauty. Aquinas further defines beauty in terms of three objective formal criteria: proportion, integrity, and clarity. Proportion was widely accepted as a criterion of beauty in Greek antiquity, for instance in Plato’s Sophist,122 as well as in the Christian Middle Ages. Aquinas detects a theory of proportion in Aristotle.123 In Aquinas, proportion serves different purposes and occurs in different contexts, such as the relation between the individual and God, between form and matter, quantitative proportion in music, and so on. It also refers to beauty, which requires order and proportion, as in the harmony of the universe, which consists in different orders pointing to a universal order deriving from God. This is very close to the organic Platonic conception of the world, most clearly spelled out in the Timaeus, as alive. Integritas, which is comparatively less important for Aquinas’s aesthetics, since this term apparently only appears once in a reference to beauty in the Summa,124 is also a type of proportion. According to Eco, integrity concerns the complete realization of potential of a particular thing125 Claritas, which has different meanings,126 concerns the expression of proportion, but also participation, and so on. Eco contends that it refers to the communicability of form in a visual experience.127 Aquinas gives as an example the fact that things are brightly colored.128 The interpretation of these three formal criteria of beauty is difficult. Yet it is at least clear that, as for Augustine, for Aquinas “beauty” is objective, and hence refers to objective characteristics identifiable with the formal aspect of things. This is merely another way of saying that in visio

christian platonic and anti-platonic art

103

the observer grasps beauty with respect to its formal structure, or as a formal cause. Since beauty is objective, not subjective, it is not created or produced by visio, which merely detects it. What makes this view Christian is that Aquinas holds that nature bestows substantial form, and that art, in imitating nature, produces artificial, or accidental, forms.129 This means that art does not create, or produce ex nihilo, as does nature, but rather produces by introducing form into preexisting matter. This way of reading Aquinas’s view leads to two points about the viability of his approach to aesthetics and its relation, in the context of medieval Christian philosophy in general, to Platonism and the Platonic view of aesthetics. Eco, who expounds Aquinas’s view of aesthetics, believes that in it medieval aesthetics reaches its highest possible point. Yet he also believes it is weak and vitiated by an intrinsic aporia. According to Eco, Aquinas’s aesthetics founders on an intrinsic contradiction: one must know through claritas what is beyond any human grasp. “Nature must display the fullness of its proper fact perfection by its claritas, but the system also requires that clarity must be in fact beyond our grasp.”130 If that is true, then Aquinas’s aesthetics simply fails.

A Retrospective Comment on Christian Aesthetics and Anti-Platonism The emphasis here is less on the theory of beauty, which is central for medieval Christian discussion of aesthetic phenomena, or even on medieval aesthetics, than on the medieval understanding of the relation of aesthetics to cognition. The typical medieval Christian aesthetic claim for a cognitive relation between beautiful objects or nature and truth is based on a generic Neoplatonism. Generic or, perhaps better, general Neoplatonism, which is distinguished from specific positions, paradoxically leads to a generally anti-Platonic approach to aesthetic phenomena. Any theory of knowledge presupposes an analysis of the relation of subjects that know and objects that are known. One cannot account for knowledge of a mindindependent external object since, if it is independent, there is no epistemological link to it. This difficulty besets, for instance, all known forms of so-called metaphysical realism. Yet this necessary link can be described if the epistemological subject and object are merely two aspects of a deeper unity. One way to paraphrase this difficult claim is to say that underlying the numerical diversity is a deeper identity.

104

chapter three

The Platonic view that artists do not and cannot know what they depict, so that art cannot correctly depict what is, presupposes a dualistic ontology in which the inference from the world of appearance to the world of forms cannot be justified on merely aesthetic grounds. This severe verdict is quickly reversed by Aristotle and again centuries later by medieval Christian thinkers before Aristotle was either translated or known. Medieval Christian thinkers were committed to some version of the Neoplatonic view of an unbroken continuity between God and the world. The Christian conviction, grounded in religious faith, of this unbroken continuity, a conviction which is everywhere in the medieval period, is expressed in vari­ ous ways. The basic claim is the assertion of an unbroken ontological continuity between God and the world, God and nature, a continuity which sustains the characteristic triple cognitive link between human beings who in imitating nature imitate and know God. This basic general formulation, which underlies the specific aesthetic claim, is stated in different ways, for instance through the “emanational” theory due to Plotinus, and the more specific view, formulated by Pseudo-Dionysius, according to which God, who is beauty, transmits beauty to all things. This and related formulations depend on taking on faith the biblical view of God as the author of the world, which in turn justifies the anti-Platonic belief that in imitating the world due to God we can reliably claim to know God. This cognitive claim refers to an idealized form of the basic Christian view, which is obviously not intended to be descriptive of all medieval thinkers. Merely among thinkers active at about the same time or later than Aquinas, there is considerable variation. Though apparently all the medieval Christian thinkers favor some version of the view briefly stated here, many differ on other points. This difference of opinion in turn impedes or even prevents them from working out a Christian theory of beauty. Thus John Duns Scotus denies that beauty is an absolute quality or that it is a substantial form inhering in the object as a whole, since particulars are unique. William of Ockham holds that created things are absolutely contingent, and denies a stable universal order. Nicholas of Autrecourt (Nicolas d’Autrécourt), in anticipation of Hume, believes we cannot know a cause from its effects, and so on. Yet those who go on to formulate a theory of beauty do so under the Neoplatonic persuasion of an unbroken continuity between God and the world, which, they believe but never demonstrate, in turn permits a reliable cognitive inference from nature to God.

chapter four

Kant and German Idealist Aesthetics

K

ant is a key figure in the aesthetic debate in virtue of his early, decisive role in the modern discussion as well as his continuing influence on the aesthetic debate. Kant, who claims to begin philosophy worthy of the name during his so-called critical period in his critical philosophy, is sometimes thought of as the founder of Western aesthetics. It is perhaps more accurate to say that he did not invent but deeply influenced both theory of knowledge and aesthetics.1 In treating the questions of aesthetics with the same rigor and the same tools as other themes, Kant erased any distinction between aesthetics and the other facets of the critical philosophy, and hence erased any distinction between aesthetics and philosophy in general. Kant, who is deeply influential on the entire later modern debate, is especially influential in later aesthetics, which often can be depicted as a series of reactions to his aesthetic theories. Kant’s emphasis on an a priori approach suggests that his position does not depend on other positions in any way. This inference is obviously inaccurate since his theories, including his aesthetic theory, apparently depend on a wide variety of sources—some of which, such as Baumgarten, influence Kant’s aesthetic theories but are not cited by name in the Critique of Judgment; others, such as Burke, whom are cited but dismissed in passing; and still others whom he mentions as well as arguably misreads.2 Kant himself admits the importance of Hume for his thinking.3 His theories depend on others as well. Recent Kant research points to a strong dependence on Aristotle, especially Aristotelian logic.4 Kant further points to Plato. Though critical of Plato,5 Kant’s famous suggestion that he knew Plato better than Plato knew himself6 suggests a deep, arguably still insufficiently explored link between the critical philosophy and Platonism. Like Plato, Kant works out his aesthetics views on the basis of

106

chapter four

his epistemological approach. This point further holds for post-Kantian German idealists. It is sometimes argued that we cannot grasp Kant’s critical philosophy without grasping his aesthetic theories.7 I believe that on the contrary we cannot grasp the aesthetic theories of Kant and the other German idealists without taking into account their idealist views of knowledge.

Kantian Epistemology and Kantian Aesthetics Kant’s project throughout his critical period can be described as an examination of the conditions of types of knowledge in respect to types of activity in the most rigorous possible way. In respect to metaphysics he aims at a finality that he believes has been earlier reached in setting logic, mathematics, and the natural sciences on a so-called secure path in each case through a basic methodological innovation. In the Critique of Pure Reason he is explicit that nothing in his position can be changed without destroying human reason itself.8 For Kant, the search for rigor means objectivity or objective cognition. He defends this claim in different ways in respect to different kinds of experience he takes up in all three Critiques. In the Critique of Judgment Kant broadens and deepens his critical philosophy in considering further types of experience. He continues to defend objective cognition through aesthetic judgment in bringing together understanding, the central principle of theoretical reason, and moral reason, the central principle of practical reason, in a theory of aesthetic judgment. Kant’s theory of aesthetics is formulated in the third Critique, which is variously known as the Critique of Judgment, the term used here, or again more literally as the Critique of the Power of Judgment (Urteilskraft). Kant’s motivation in preparing the third Critique is extremely complex. We may speculate that several disparate concerns motivate the composition of this treatise. First, there is the deep difficulty concerning the interrelation of pure reason, discussed in the first Critique, and practical reason, analyzed in the second Critique and in the Groundwork.9 Kant, who is a highly systematic thinker, needs to overcome the obvious disparity between these two forms of reason to realize his systematic analysis of reason in general. This difficulty is already apparent in the third antinomy that Kant evokes in the first Critique. The third antinomy concerns the relation of causality, which is the condition of natural science, and freedom,

kant and german idealist aesthetics

107

which is the condition of morality. In the first Critique, Kant solves this antinomy in indicating the spheres in which natural causality and causality through freedom legitimately function. In the third Critique, where Kant returns to the problem of the third antinomy, he proposes two solutions to this difficulty. These include the subordination of theory to practice, or theoretical reason to practical reason, a strategy which hearkens back to Aristotle and later influences Fichte and Marx; and the integration of theoretical and practical forms of reason in aesthetic reason in arguing for the unity of reason through the discovery of a third form of reason based on aesthetic judgment. The unity of reason is a consistent theme in Kant. For instance, in the second Critique, he is clear that a critique of (pure) practical reason must show the unity of practical and theoretical reason since “there can, in the end, be only one and the same reason.”10 Further, there is his possible interest in restating his earlier, precritical view of aesthetics, worked out in his Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime (1764) in rigorous critical form. A third possible concern lies in restating and enlarging the dimensions of knowledge to include knowledge that is not a priori but based on experience through what amounts to a logic of the irrational.11 Still a fourth theme is the relation between the aesthetics and teleology, the experience of beauty and the experience of nature as two sides of aesthetic judgment. The complex series of objectives Kant has in mind in formulating this treatise make it more than usually difficult to identify its major theme. The third Critique treats different themes and appears differently depending on the aim in view. If it is understood as an aesthetic theory, then it is one of the most influential, perhaps even the most influential such theory, at least the most influential Western aesthetic theory in modern times. If it is understood as a philosophy of science, or more generally an indication of the proper approach to a science of science, then it has arguably been outdated by important later scientific discoveries, above all by the Darwinian theory of evolution. I come back to this point below. If it is an effort to demonstrate the unity of reason, then it may or may not succeed in this respect, while assigning the theory of aesthetics to a secondary, or again a derivative, role in the economy of the critical philosophy. In view of the present focus on art and truth, I will be concentrating on Kant’s conception of aesthetics in relation to knowledge in the third Critique. In part, this requires a new understanding of “aesthetics.” In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant takes this term to be any source meeting the

108

chapter four

requirement that knowledge must contain external content (see CPR, B 75).12 In the Critique of Judgment, “aesthetics” takes on a new meaning in what he calls reflective judgments. According to Kant, reflective judgments are peculiar to aesthetics, which they distinguish from other cognitive realms. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant claims to provide an exhaustive list of twelve categories drawn from the table of judgment. In the Critique of Judgment, he similarly asserts that there are only four possible “reflective judgments” as concerns the agreeable, the beautiful, the subject, and the good. The agreeable is a purely sensory judgment of the form: x is good. Such judgments, which are wholly subjective, are based on mere inclination. The good is a moral judgment with respect to universal moral laws. According to Kant, a judgment is either moral or not moral. Unlike Fichte, who introduces the concept of moral striving (Streben), Kant does not acknowledge moral judgments, which are less than wholly autonomous. The remaining two aesthetic judgments, namely the beautiful and the sublime, occupy the conceptual space between those judgments that are merely subjective and those judgments that are wholly objective. Kant, who describes the former as “subjective universal” judgments, seems to mean that in an aesthetic judgment of any kind whatsoever one is claiming that, though in practice there is disagreement, at least in theory everyone ought to agree with a given judgment. Kant grounds this claim on what he calls the sensus communis, a term he earlier uses in the Groundwork.13 Observers are concerned with many different factors in aesthetic judgments. These factors might include instinct; cultural conditioning; unity or disunity across different art forms, as in, say, mathematical structures or judgments; whether or not beauty is a factor; whether (pace Tolstoy) it creates empathy; or whether, as Duchamp and Warhol remind us, we are dealing with art at all. Kant takes a much narrower approach. In virtue of his earlier writings as well as in his apparent disinterest in and knowledge of art in a practical sense, in the Critique of Judgment Kant is concerned only with a single kind of aesthetic judgment, which he models on his account of theoretical knowledge. Theoretical judgment consists in bringing particulars under universals; reflective judgment features the inverse approach, which functions in finding universals from particulars. The latter could be interpreted as an effort to generalize from a single case as in Mill’s view of induction. According to Mill, the identification of a single case is sufficient to draw an inductive inference. Kant, however, has something else in mind. In an important passage, he writes,

kant and german idealist aesthetics

109

To say that the generation of certain things in nature or even of nature as a whole is possible only through a cause that is determined to act in accordance with intentions is quite different from saying that because of the peculiar constitution of my cognitive faculties I cannot judge about the possibility of those things and their generation except by thinking of a cause for these acts in accordance with intentions, and thus by thinking of a being that is productive in accordance with the analogy with the causality of an understanding. In the first case I would determine something about the object, and I am obliged to demonstrate the objective reality of a concept that has been assumed; in the second case, reason merely determines the use of my cognitive faculties in accordance with their special character and with the essential conditions as well as the limits of their domain. The first principle is thus an objective fundamental principle for the determining, the second a subjective fundamental principle merely for the reflecting power of judgment, hence a maxim that reason prescribes to it.14 (Italics in the original.)

On Kant’s Relation to His Predecessors With the exception of nature, to which Kant refers often, there are few examples in his writings on aesthetics. Those he provides often seem contrived, oddly out of place. They include, in the third Critique, his description of color in a treatise on aesthetics as “isochronous vibrations” (CPJ para. 14, p. 109), his allusion to tattooing in New Zealand (CPJ para. 16, p. 115), his trite suggestions that the white color of lilies suggests innocence and that birdsong proclaims gladness (CPJ para. 42, p. 181), as well as romantic references to “shapeless mountain masses piled in wild disorder” (CPJ para. 26, p. 139) and “the sight of mountain peaks rearing themselves to heaven” (CPJ para. 29, p. 152) Yet Kant, who never left his native Königsberg, also certainly never saw a mountain. Hence, Schopenhauer’s observation is warranted that in the Critique of Judgment Kant is concerned with the analysis of abstract concepts, rather than with perceived objects, since “he does not start from the beautiful itself, from the direct, beautiful object of perception, but from the judgment [i.e., someone’s statement] concerning the beautiful.”15 Unlike his numerous predecessors, who reflect on aesthetics and the aesthetic, Kant discusses no, or almost no, specific works of art. He also does not mention J. J. Winckelmann or most of the other important figures in the German aesthetic tradition. One might suppose in writing on

110

chapter four

aesthetics that it would be useful to know as much as possible about works of art, the history of the aesthetic tradition, and so on. Yet in concealing sources he is aware of and to which he is reacting, he often appears more original than he really is, especially if he is responding to ideas in the prior debate and not starting wholly afresh. Kant often seems to write as if, consistent with his emphasis on the a priori, he were totally independent of the prior philosophical tradition. In fact his view of taste depends on his reading of others, especially a series of English writers including Joseph Addison, Anthony Ashley Cooper (3rd Earl of Shaftesbury), Francis Hutcheson, Alexander Baumgarten, David Hume,16 perhaps Johann Gottfried Herder,17 and probably others. He is especially influenced by Baumgarten, with whom he remains in mainly silent debate through the third Critique. In the Observations, Kant is already at least aware of and appears to rely on a variety of earlier views of beauty as disinterested (para. 2), earlier defended by Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. The reorientation of aesthetics from questions of imitation to questions of taste was undertaken to begin with by a long line of English writers and later, under their influence, by a series of German authors. In eighteenthcentury British aesthetics, the question of taste was influentially defined by Joseph Addison as “that faculty of soul, which discerns the beauties of an author with pleasure, and the imperfections with dislike.”18 As Kant later did, Addison links aesthetics and epistemology in that the former points toward the solution of the concerns of the latter.19 Addison’s brief, instructive essays are still interesting. A sample may suffice. In Essay No. 411 (“Pleasures of the Imagination”), he distinguishes between primary pleasures of the imagination as concerns objects that we see, and secondary pleasures based only on ideas of objects that we do not in fact see. He makes a case for the superiority of his approach in correctly noting that a description in Homer has charmed more readers than a chapter of Aristotle. In No. 412 (“Sources of Pleasures”), he distinguishes two types of beauty with respect to shape or proportion, and variety and colors. In No. 413 (“Final Causes of Beauty”), he acknowledges our incapacity to understand the source of beauty: “Though . . . we considered how every thing that is Great, New, or Beautiful, is apt to affect the Imagination with Pleasure, we must own that it is impossible for us to assign the necessary Cause of this Pleasure, because we know neither the Nature of an Idea, nor the Substance of a Human Soul, which might help us to discover the Conformity or Disagreeableness of the one to the other.” This is merely a way of saying that finite human beings cannot

kant and german idealist aesthetics

111

know God. In No. 414 (“The Art of Nature”) he contends that nature is at its best not in the wild state but rather when it resembles art. Addison’s short essays now appear quaint, hardly likely to evoke a major artistic movement. Yet in his time he influenced the general aesthetic problem of how to understand taste. Addison’s 1712 Spectator essays on “The Pleasures of the Imagination” are regarded as particularly influential on later Scottish writers such as Hutcheson, Henry Homes (Lord Kames), and Alexander Gerard. There seem retrospectively to have been three main British eighteenth-century approaches grouping together a great many writers, including internal sense theories (Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Reid), imagination theories (Addison and Burke), and association theories (Gerard, Archibald Allison). Regarded in this way, Hume’s approach to the standard of taste, as distinguished from its analysis, is roughly Hutchesonian. The British aesthetic emphasis on the role of the free play of the imagination was slowly transmitted to the German debate, in particular through the writings of Moses Mendelssohn and Johann Georg Sulzer. In the Prolegomena, Kant praises the depth and elegance of Mendelssohn’s style.20 But the relation between them was deeper and more complicated than this reference suggests. In a contest staged by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1762 on the question of whether metaphysical truths can have the same sort of evidence as mathematical truths, Mendelssohn won first prize over Kant. In the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant responds to Mendelssohn’s argument in Phaedo or On the Immortality of the Soul. He writes, “We consider the beauty of nature and art with pleasure and satisfaction, without the slightest movement of desire. Instead, it appears to be a particular mark of beauty that it is considered with tranquil satisfaction; that it pleases if we also do not possess it and we are still far removed from demanding to possess it.”21 In a review of Meier’s Extract from the Foundations of all fine Arts and Sciences (1757), Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86) rejected the a priori method of Baumgarten and Meier, in writing,22 Just as little as the philosopher can discover the appearances of nature, without examples from experience, merely through a priori inferences, so little can he establish appearances in the beautiful world, if one can thus express oneself, without diligent observations. The securest path of all, just as in the theory of nature, is this: One must assume certain experiences, explain their ground through an hypothesis, then test this hypothesis against experiences from a

112

chapter four

quite different species, and only assume those hypotheses to be general principles which have thus held their ground; one must finally seek to explain these principles in the theory of nature through the nature of bodies and motion, but in aesthetics through the nature of the lower powers of our soul.

He went on to develop a complex aesthetic theory in which aesthetic experience of all kinds depends on mental and physical elements. Aesthetic experience, which is complex, cannot be analyzed merely through simple feelings. In emphasizing the aesthetic subject, Mendelssohn turns attention away from the aesthetic object and toward the observer. Observers regard him as an important link in the accounts of aesthetic experience through the play of the imagination later worked out by Kant and Schiller. But his stress on the aesthetic role of both body and mind is wider than the views of his successors. J. G. Sulzer (1720–79) wrote an encyclopedia of art and aesthetics, which is important as a source of eighteenth-century views. He combines an aesthetics of truth with an aesthetics of play in a view of the mind as representational. Beginning from the insight that beauty is based on the sensory perception of perfection, he depicts perfection as the unity of the disunity of the sensory manifold as well as its unity in a third element depicted as the “complete agreement” of what something is “with what it ought to be, or of the real with the ideal.”23 Sulzer forges a link between purpose and perfection, which is later broken by Kant, for whom aesthetic pleasure is wholly disinterested (see CPJ para. 2, pp. 90–91). The British writers on aesthetics were largely divided into intuitionist and analytic camps. The intuitionists believe that aesthetic experience depends on a mental faculty. Besides Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, they included John Ruskin, Thomas Reid, and William Hogarth. In his Characteristics, Shaftesbury, who is the first intuitionist to write on beauty, combines, very much like Plato, the beautiful and the good. He distinguishes inner and outer senses in claiming that beauty, which is in the world, is perceived by the inner sense, which also grasps the good. For Shaftesbury, who anticipates Kant’s view that aesthetics has moral import, beauty is the sensory equivalent of morality. In his System of Moral Philosophy Hutcheson also anticipates Kant in denying that beauty is independent of the observer. According to Hutcheson, “all beauty is relative to the sense of some mind perceiving it.” He claims that a cause of beauty lies in a certain order among the parts, or “uniformity amidst variety.” He postulates an internal sense defined as “a passive power of receiving ideas of beauty from all objects in which there is uniformity in variety.” This inner

kant and german idealist aesthetics

113

sense resembles the external senses in the immediateness of the pleasure which its activity brings, and further in the necessity of its impressions: a beautiful thing being always, whether we will or no, beautiful. His effort to prove the universality of the sense of beauty in showing that as a function of their education all human beings are pleased by uniformity suggests the possibility that taste is objective, which is important for Kant. Baumgarten is clearly a neglected figure. Kant never mentions him in the third Critique of Judgment, which he strongly influences. Tatarkiewiecz only mentions him twice in his encyclopedic treatment of the history of aesthetics. Yet Baumgarten’s importance is widely recognized. He is often regarded as the founder of modern aesthetics, which he for the first time treated as a separate discipline, parallel to logic, in his dissertation.24 Until Baumgarten, the word Aesthetik was used in the etymological Greek sense, which Kant still employs in the Critique of Pure Reason, to refer to sensory perception. Baumgarten was important in the first half of the eighteenth century. He began to lecture on metaphysics in Halle in 1735. In 1739, he published a book on metaphysics, which was one of the most successful works of the period. He later published a two-volume work on aesthetics.25 Baumgarten was influenced by Jacopo Zabarella, Aristotle can be read as suggesting that poetry is the basis of logic and epistemology. According to Giorgio Tonelli, who has studied their relation,26 this view is developed by Zabarella and then by Baumgarten,27 who differs from Zabarella only in the fact that he extends the primacy of poetry, which becomes relative among the beaux arts, to all the beaux arts.28 Baumgarten’s understanding of the relation of logic and aesthetics is extremely interesting. He denies the possibility of a so-called complete induction, which was favored by Christian Wolff and his followers, in rejecting as impossible a strict inference from the singular instance to a universal. We recall Aristotle’s conviction that poetry, which provides universal statements, is preferable to history, which provides no more than singular statements. This point, which is crucial to Baumgarten, is directly challenged by Kant, who defends a normative view of truth as universal, in claiming in aesthetics to infer from single instances to universal rules. Kant knew Baumgarten’s works well since he used them as textbooks over many years. He used the 1757 edition of the Metaphysics as well as the 1760 edition of Baumgarten’s Initia philosophiae practicae primae as textbooks for his own lectures on metaphysics and practical philosophy over many years. He further used Baumgarten’s Ethica as the text for his lectures in ethics. Kant, who takes Baumgarten seriously, is influenced by him in many ways, especially as concerns the relations between aesthetics

114

chapter four

and logic. In his Metaphysics (para. 451), Baumgarten defines taste in general as the ability, based on feelings of pleasure or displeasure, to judge according to the senses instead of according to the intellect.29 Kant later took over this view without attribution. Baumgarten, like Kant, describes the science of aesthetics as the deduction of the rules or principles of beauty, whether artistic or natural, from an individual’s “taste.” Kant’s stress on the link between taste and beauty is also derived from Baumgarten. He further follows Baumgarten in his view of aesthetics as applied logic concerned with rules of sensibility and the intellect relative to particular objects.30 In the chapter concerning transcendental judgment in the first Critique, Kant describes the power of judgment (Urteilskraft) as the “faculty of subsuming under rules rules, i.e., of determining whether something stands under a given rule (casus datae legis) or not.”31 Kant probably owes to Baumgarten the conception of the universal in the concrete,32 which abstracts from any experiential component, and which can be considered as a typical universal of transcendental logic. Kant clearly owes as well to Baumgarten the distinction between the faculty of practical judgment and the faculty of theoretical judgment,33 as well as the approach to the capacity of aesthetic judgment as a question of taste, in which judgment, which is said to sensible is the same as taste and the discipline which studies it is said to be “critical.”34 And he further owes to Baumgarten the conception of intellectual judgment.35 In the Prolegomena, Kant famously says that Hume awoke him from his “dogmatic slumber.”36 He still has Hume in mind in later turning to aesthetics.37 In “Of the Standard of Taste” (1757), Hume argues that, since beauty is not in the things themselves, but in the mind, and since opinions differ, it is natural to seek what he calls a standard of taste or rule. He believes there are general principles of taste, or general rules of beauty, based on known models, rules which are developed by practice, and acknowledged in those rare individuals distinguished by their delicate taste and understanding. In sum, Hume’s position is that individuals disagree, but through practice we can arrive at a standard of taste, which is best illustrated by talented individuals with sufficient experience. Kant’s aesthetic position is close to Hume’s in several respects.38 Kant like Hume acknowledges that beauty is not in the object but in the mind of the observer, and that different observers judge differently. Yet, in pursuing the universality he earlier defended in epistemology and morality, he breaks with Hume in rejecting the idea that in aesthetics we need to settle for anything less. “The philosopher Baumgarten in Frankfort has made a plan for a science of aesthetics. More correctly, Hume has called

kant and german idealist aesthetics

115

aesthetics a Criticism, since it does not give, as logic does, rules a priori that sufficiently determine the judgment but takes up its rules a posteriori and generalizes, through comparisons, the empirical laws by which we cognize the less perfect and the perfect (the beautiful).”39 Hume, who was a historian, takes a historical view of art. He was aware, as Kant was not, that different climates produce different views. “The great variety of taste, as well as of opinion, which prevails in the world, is too obvious not to have fallen under everyone’s observation.”40 Yet Kant, who is an ahistorical thinker, stubbornly seeks an ahistorical approach to art in the ahistorical form of taste. Kant further takes over Hume’s claim about the limits of knowledge. The first Critique leads to the skeptical conclusion that we cannot claim to know mind-independent external objects as they are in themselves, hence we also cannot claim to represent the world as it really is. If we accept the hypothesis that an unknown and unknowable world affects us, then we can only infer that what we know is constructed by us according to the innate structure of the human mind. Kant writes,41 The sensible faculty of intuition is really only a receptivity for being affected in a certain way with representations, whose relation to one another is a pure intuition of space and time . . . which, insofar as they are connected and determinable in these relations (in space and time) according to laws of the unity of experience, are called objects. The non-sensible cause of these representations is entirely unknown to us, and therefore we cannot intuit it as an object; for such an object would have to be represented neither in space nor in time (as mere conditions of our sensible representation), without which conditions we cannot thank any intuition. Meanwhile we can call the merely intelligible cause of appearances in general the transcendental object, merely so that we may have something corresponding to sensibility as a receptivity.42

Aesthetic Judgment, the Problem of Taste, and the Letter to Reinhold Kant is a post-Cartesian concerned to defend objectivity while taking the subject into account. A central aesthetic problem Kant faces is how to transform judgments of taste, which are subjective, into objective judgments. In Kant’s early “Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime,” taste, at least under that name, has at most a very minor role. In

116

chapter four

section 3, Kant, who has rather dated views of the two sexes, claims that in a marriage the husband’s understanding combines with the wife’s taste. In section 4 he adds that the otherwise fine taste of the Dutch is concerned only with what is useful. In casting a glance on his own period, he suggests that it bears witness to “the sound taste of the beautiful and noble blossoming forth both in the arts and sciences and in respect to morals.”43 Taste, which is at most a peripheral interest in his early writings, later becomes central to his theory of aesthetics. In a letter to K. L. Reinhold Kant points to his discovery of an a priori principle with respect to aesthetics. The three faculties of the human mind include cognition, which concerns the domain of pure reason; desire, which is discussed under the heading of practical reason, or morality; and the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, earlier discussed in the precritical book on the feeling of the beautiful and the sublime. Kant, who thinks he is now in a position to transform his earlier treatment into a fully critical treatment of taste, which later became the Critique of Judgment, writes,44 I am now at work on the critique of taste, and I have discovered a kind of a priori principle different from those heretofore observed. For there are three faculties of the mind: the faculty of cognition, the faculty of feeling pleasure and displeasure, and the faculty of desire. In the Critique of Pure (theoretical) Reason, I found a priori principles for the first of these, and in the Critique of Practical Reason, a priori principles for the third. I tried to find them for the second as well, and though I thought it impossible to find such principles, the systematic nature of the analysis of the previously mentioned faculties of the human mind allowed me to discover them, giving me ample material for the rest of my life, material at which to marvel and if possible to explore. So now I recognize three parts of philosophy, each of which has its a priori principles, which can be enumerated and for which one can delimit precisely the knowledge that may be based on them: theoretical philosophy, teleology, and practical philosophy, of which the second is, to be sure, the least rich in a priori grounds of determination. I hope to have a manuscript on this completed though not in print by Easter; it will be entitled “Critique of Taste.”

Kant’s Anthropological Shift Observers often think Kant’s critical philosophy is incompatible with anthropology. This simplistic view is false with respect to the position itself

kant and german idealist aesthetics

117

as well as the anthropological shift in his later writings. In fact Kant was simultaneously interested in a rigorous approach to knowledge in Descartes’s wake in deemphasizing the human subject in favor of the philosophical subject, and in an anthropological approach deriving from the emerging science of anthropology. Kant is pulled in two different directions by his apparently incompatible interests in anthropology and in transcendental philosophy. Kant began to teach anthropology early in the critical period in 1772–73 at a time when an anthropological approach was part of the popular philosophy he supposedly left behind in inventing his critical approach. In the critical philosophy, Kant initially turns his back on anthropological considerations that were central to the work of Herder, his former student. Despite his criticism of Herder, in the work on aesthetics he turns back toward popular philosophy in taking a more anthropological approach to the concept of the subject. In this respect, Hume is a possible influence. Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature (1739) is, as its title suggests, devoted to the science of man. Hume is crystal clear when in an important passage he writes, “And as the science of man is the only solid foundation for the other sciences, so the only solid foundation we can give to this science of man must be laid on experience and observation.”45 Herder’s approach perhaps initially repelled but may later have seemed more attractive to Kant: “What fruitful new developments would not arise if only our whole philosophy would become anthropology.”46 Some observers believe that the critical philosophy should be understood as an anthropology.47 A weaker version of this claim is that that there is an anthropological dimension in what can be called his “moral anthropology.”48 Kant’s formulation of the critical philosophy in the first Critique is antianthropological, directed toward the elucidation of the general principles of knowledge in the widest sense without regard to the nature of finite human beings. Here he reasons up to the concept of the philosophical subject, which he explicitly identifies as the last and highest conception of transcendental philosophy. He makes a crucial distinction between the philosophical subject, a conceptual invention holding sway in transcendental idealism, and human being, however understood. His abstract view of the subject, or transcendental unity of apperception,49 is the highest point of the understanding, logic, and transcendental philosophy, in short the terminus a quo, the rational origin of his entire position, the logical starting point of the critical philosophy.50 This anti-anthropological view

118

chapter four

of the subject is still in evidence elsewhere in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals where in the preface Kant writes that “when it [i.e., moral philosophy] is applied to the human being, it does not borrow the least thing from acquaintance with him (from anthropology) but gives to him, as a rational being, laws a priori.”51 Here and elsewhere, Kant relies on a distinction between subjectivity, or a philosophical subject, and finite human being to avoid what with Husserl later, beginning in Logical Investigations (1900–1901), became known as the problem of psychologism. This is roughly the conflation between the psychological and logical aspects of knowledge. Kant later shifts in various ways toward an increasingly anthropological perspective. In the Anthropology (1798), which observers regard as still belonging to Kant’s precritical period as an exponent of popular philosophy,52 he studies human rational capacity through a faculty of psychology. He distinguishes three main faculties, or capacities: understanding, reason, and judgment.53 Understanding is the capacity to generate rules, and to recognize as valid only those which the individual generates. This capacity is employed in two domains. In the moral sphere, understanding is the faculty through which the individual generates a moral rule according to which one must act. In perception, understanding is the capacity through which the percept is produced as a result of the application of the categories, or rules of synthesis. In the first Critique he famously enumerates three questions of reason.54 In his lntroduction To Logic (1800), he perhaps more famously adds a fourth question—“What is man?”—and suggests that this is the central question and that the response must be anthropological.55 Judgment is strictly speaking not a new concept, even in the third Critique, which precedes the Anthropology. It is, for instance, already important in the first Critique, where Kant formulates his approach to knowledge by analyzing the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments.56 It later becomes central in the third Critique in various ways. One is with respect to the ongoing problem of understanding finite human being. In the introduction to the first edition of the Critique of Judgment (1790) Kant indicates that there are only two faculties. Yet Kant, who rapidly changed his mind, made use of the faculty of judgment in the introduction to the second edition of the work in still another attempt to unify human capacities. Here he claims that pure and practical forms of reason are related through judgment, a third faculty, which brings the particular under the universal in subordinating pure reason, or the capacity for the deduction of the particular, to practical reason, or the capacity to formulate rules.

kant and german idealist aesthetics

119

On the Beautiful and the Sublime in Observations The problem of taste is central to Kantian aesthetics early and late. Kant’s theory of aesthetics is often thought to turn on the distinction between the beautiful and the sublime. This distinction, though not always under that name, is very old. Kant’s conviction that the sublime is beyond cognition is partially anticipated by Aristotle in the Poetics: “However, an animal, or indeed anything which has parts, must, to be beautiful, not only have these parts in the right order but must also be of a definite size. Beauty is a matter of size and order. An extraordinarily small animal would not be beautiful, nor an extraordinarily large one. Our view of the first is confused because it occupies only an all but imperceptible time, while we cannot view the second all at once, so that the unity of the whole would escape us if, for example, it were a thousand miles long.”57 Kant’s understanding of the distinction between the beautiful and the sublime changes over time. To begin with, he understands this difference in reference to earlier views of fine and elevated style in a tradition he may well have known better than he indicates. One thinks in this connection of the famous description of poetry as the “pleasure-giving muse” attributed to Homer but opposed by Plato.58 A long list of writers going back to Longinus discuss the sublime. The latter may or may not be the author of a treatise composed in either the first or third century, On the Sublime. The author, who is probably unknown, critically applauds and condemns certain literary works as examples of good or bad styles of writing. The treatise begins by referring to an earlier treatise on the sublime by Caecilius, a critic and rhetorician, originally called Archagathus, who lived during the time of Augustus. The author criticizes Caecilius for giving examples but failing to define the theme, which he seems to understand as elevating the written style. This same criticism could well be addressed to Kant, whose initial treatment of the sublime also fails to define his terms in multiplying the examples. Longinus promotes an “elevation of style” and “simplicity,” which he defines as the capacity of forming great conceptions.59 His five sources of sublimity—they include great thoughts, strong emotions, certain figures of thought and speech, noble diction, and dignified word arrangement60 — could all have come from Aristotle’s Poetics. Longinus’s treatise on the sublime, which was translated into English in 1739, attracted attention. It influenced Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757).

120

chapter four

Moses Mendelssohn’s summarizing review of Burke’s book,61 which appeared soon after, made his ideas familiar in German intellectual circles.62 Burke, who seems to be the first writer to argue that the beautiful and the sublime are mutually incompatible, is followed by Kant in the third Critique. Burke’s distinction between the beautiful and the sublime is broadly anti-Platonic. He links the sublime with the familiar Platonic distinction between pleasure and pain, but unlike Plato, with danger and terror as well. He suggests that whatever excites pain, danger, and terror is a source of the sublime. 63 He makes terror what he calls the ruling principle of the sublime.64 According to Burke, the sublime, which cannot be understood as carrying beauty to a higher or highest degree, may inspire horror, but one receives pleasure in knowing that one is out of danger as well as in the difficulties of others.65 Burke’s book was translated into German by Christian Garve as early as 1773.66 Kant was familiar with Burke’s view of the sublime, since he cites a passage from this edition in which Burke defines it in relation to self-preservation and fear in the course of criticizing Burke’s alleged physiology (CPJ paras. 158–59). The failure to define one’s terms while multiplying examples, the supposed defect for which Longinus reproaches Caecilius, could also be raised against Kant’s brief account of the distinction between the beautiful and the sublime in his early book on the topic.67 Kant also fails to define what he has in mind in losing himself in examples, some of which he later repeats in the Critique of Judgment. Kant draws attention to the distinction between the sublime and the beautiful in the first part in suggesting that the beautiful and the sublime each enable the perception of the other. He provides many examples, but does not further define the characteristics of each. This text, which finds Kant writing in a light, engaging style wholly unlike his later, more familiar, ponderous approach, is not exactly enlightening. He identifies, for instance, women, who are more superficial, with beauty, and men, who are deeper, with the sublime. Since women have beautiful virtue, whereas men illustrate noble virtue, according to Kant a marriage should be oriented around a man’s understanding and a woman’s taste. Kant further suggests that the difference between the sublime and the beautiful also divides nations. If his subsequent reputation rested on the merits of this little book, Kant would today be entirely unknown. Kant’s account of the difference between the beautiful and the sublime begins with the familiar distinction between pleasure and pain. The beautiful and the sublime are both agreeable but in different ways. Kant,

kant and german idealist aesthetics

121

who multiplies examples of each, does not adequately specify what separates them. He states that “the sublime must always be large, [but] the beautiful can also be small,” and that “the sublime must always be large” whereas “the beautiful can also be small, or again that “the sublime must be simple” but “the beautiful can be decorated and ornamented.”68 One may speculate that the difference lies in the fact that the sublime lies beyond all limits so to speak. The sublime resembles Kant’s conception of the genius, who produces in a manner beyond all rules (CPJ para. 46, p. 186). Kant further distinguishes types of the sublime according as it is terrifying, which recalls Burke’s view, as well as noble or magnificent. For Kant, the feelings of the beautiful and the sublime are separate because one can have either without the other. Kant indicates this in suggesting that the sublime without beauty is tiring.69

On the Beautiful in the Mature Aesthetics The Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment is divided into two sections concerned with the analytic of the beautiful and the analytic of the sublime, a deduction of pure aesthetic judgments, a second section on the Dialectic of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment, and an appendix on the Methodology of Taste. Kant’s mature views of the beautiful and the sublime take up the main portion of the Critique of the Power of Judgment in which they receive separate but parallel treatment. Kant’s theory of the beautiful, which reflects a long line of prior writers, stresses its subjective aspect, or the fact that is only in the mind of the observer—“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them . . .”70 —as well as the free play of the imagination. The problem of the subjective or objective nature of beauty is a recurring theme in aesthetic discussion over the centuries. Aristotle’s claim against Plato that art is important for truth and morality was central to the aesthetic domain until at least the twentieth century. Starting in the eighteenth century in England a different type of response to Plato emerged in emphasizing not the value of the art object but rather the response to it, in other words the free play of the imagination rather than a mimetic of the art object. We are now very familiar with the emphasis on play of the imagination and play tout court.71 When Kant was writing, this was cutting-edge material, particularly in the German debate.

122

chapter four

The view that beauty consists in the free play of the imagination provided a justification for the arts, whose value lies in the feelings of pleasure (or displeasure) in independence of any supposed cognitive or moral value. This view transforms the aesthetic problem from an anti-Platonic justification of a relation between beauty and truth to consideration of beauty in terms of pleasure (and pain) in raising questions of taste. And it transferred the focal point from the artist’s creation, from the objet d’art to the spectator on whom the effects of the artworks became the central topic. In the Critique of Judgment, Kant is still at the peak of his systematic powers. His analysis of aesthetics in terms of taste, which often seems “mechanical,” turns on four moments drawn from the table of categories: quality, quantity, relation, modality.72 Kant begins his analysis of the beautiful in distinguishing clearly between cognition and aesthetics: “In order to decide whether or not something is beautiful we do not relate the representation by means of understanding to the object for cognition, but rather relate it by means of the imagination (perhaps combined with the understanding) to the subject and its feeling of pleasure or displeasure. The judgment of taste is therefore not a cognitive judgment, but is rather aesthetic, by which is understood one whose determining ground cannot be other than subjective” (CPJ para. 1, p. 89). This statement suggests six closely linked points, which we can simply enumerate. To begin with, the problem of beauty does not depend on the object but rather on the subject. Second, a judgment of beauty is wholly subjective. Further judgments of beauty are based on the perception of pleasure or displeasure. But this depends on the function of a special faculty of the human mind supposedly situated in the imagination. Since a judgment of beauty contributes nothing to cognition, beauty in particular and aesthetics in general are unrelated to cognition. In this respect, Kant is firmly on the side of Plato. And, finally, judgments of beauty, which do not relate to things in themselves, and hence do not concern the objects in the narrow sense, relate solely to representations. Kant’s view of “taste” as “the faculty for the judging [Beurtheilung] of the beautiful” leads to a central difficulty in the analysis of the objective conditions of a judgment of taste, hence of acknowledging that an object is beautiful. Our relation to the surrounding world lies in feelings, which transmit sensations, or objective representations, to the senses. Kant further distinguishes three different relations to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure as concerns the agreeable, the beautiful, and the good. It is objective that

kant and german idealist aesthetics

123

the meadow is green, but my judgment that it is agreeable is subjective. A subjective judgment is not disinterested but rather interested. Only “the taste for the beautiful” affords what Kant deems “a disinterested and free satisfaction” (CPJ para. 5, p. 95) or again results in so-called favor. Kant summarizes his claim in a definition of the beautiful as follows: “Taste is the faculty for judging an object or a kind of representation through a satisfaction or dissatisfaction without any interest. The object of such a satisfaction is called beautiful” (CPJ para. 5, p. 96; italics in the original). Kant’s claim that someone who judges the beauty of an object must be disinterested aims to eliminate private grounds for satisfaction. A judgment of taste must be valid for everyone, and hence exhibit “subjective universality” (CPJ para. 6, p. 97). As concerns the agreeable, tastes differ. But beauty must extend beyond the individual, a claim which Kant grounds in the idea that the judgment is independent of interest, and hence particular interest, thus applies to all individuals. The difficulty lies in understanding the particular character of subjective universality since, according to Kant, in judgments of taste universality is postulated. For in principle everyone agrees. According to Kant, the pleasure we experience is not prior to, but rather only subsequent to, the act of judging that an object is beautiful. At stake is whether beauty is an objective quality of the object or rather no more than the result of a subjective judgment, the view Kant favors. Kant defines purpose in Aristotelian fashion as forma finalis. The ground of a judgment of taste lies in the form of an object (CPJ para. 11, p. 106), which rests on a priori grounds (CPJ para. 12, pp. 106–7). The beautiful relates to formal purposiveness, and is independent of the representation of the good (CPJ para. 15, p. 111). Kant distinguishes two kinds of beauty: free beauty, such as that of a flower, which has no concept of what it should be; and adherent beauty, such as with respect to a person, in which there is such a concept. There cannot be a universal ideal of beauty, since that could only occur if the ground were a concept of an object and not the feeling of the subject. Yet there can be an archetype, which is a mere idea of reason, but not an ideal, or “representation of an individual as adequate to an idea,” which depends on so-called objective purposiveness (CPJ para. 17, pp. 116–17). Kant goes on to distinguish between the normal idea of beauty, which derives from who one is, and its ideal, for which the human figure is the sole illustration. His definition of beauty separates utility, or purposiveness, and teleology, or the end in view: “Beauty is the form of the purposiveneness of an object, insofar as it

124

chapter four

is perceived in it without representation of an end” (CPR para. 17, p. 120; italics in the original). The fourth moment concerns the judgment of taste with respect to satisfaction. A judgment of taste is exemplary for a “universal rule that one cannot produce” since it is empirical and cannot command unanimity (CPR para. 18, p. 121). Unanimity, which should exist, is based on common sense, or mutual feeling, or what Kant describes “as the free play of our cognitive powers” (CPR para. 20, p. 122) as distinguished from judgment through concepts. In pointing to common sense, Kant focuses on the problem of whether subjective feelings can ever be objective. His suggestion that this mutual feeling must be universally communicable does not demonstrate that rational individuals share the same or even similar taste. One person may prefer Beethoven but another might prefer the Beatles and still another could be fascinated by traditional Beijing opera. The mere fact that we presuppose common sense in our aesthetic judgments presupposes but does not show that all aesthetic judgments should be similar or the same since it would be irrational for tastes to differ. Kant defines the beautiful as follows: “That is beautiful which is cognized without a concept as the object of a necessary satisfaction” (CPJ, General Remark, p. 124). Yet, since observers differ, it does not follow that different observers either do or even ought to experience a similar satisfaction with respect to the same object. For this to follow, it would have to be the case that the imagination would have an internal law, hence not be free. Kant entertains this as a possibility but discards it as a contradiction. (See CPJ, General Remark, p. 125.)

Kant on the Aesthetic Sublime The discussion of the sublime in the third Critique seems not to have been part of Kant’s original plan, to which it was only later added.73 Until relatively recently, attention to Kantian aesthetics has focused more on his account of beauty than on his account of the sublime. Reasons include the obscurity of what he says about the sublime and the widespread view that it does not fit well within the overall structure of the Critique of Judgment. Guyer thinks Kant’s analysis of the sublime is important only historically.74 Paul Crowther believes Kant’s conception of the sublime goes well with the structure of the Critique of Judgment, but also believes that Kant fails to make the case for its aesthetic importance.75

kant and german idealist aesthetics

125

Kant’s account of the sublime draws on the prior debate, especially Burke, as well as his account of reason in the Critique of Pure Reason. In the first Critique, Kant contends we can grasp only that which can be given in experience, but we cannot grasp that which surpasses the limits of experience. In his account of the sublime, Kant considers it, in virtue of its absolute size, as surpassing the limits of reason. Kant begins his account of the sublime in comparing it to beauty. Here as elsewhere his desire to remain consistent with the Critique of Pure Reason lends a certain arbitrariness to the discussion. According to Kant, beauty belongs to the understanding but the sublime belongs to reason. Several points seem important. For one thing, though both result in pleasure, beauty has form but the sublime is literally ineffable, or “a formless object insofar as limitlessness is represented in it” (CPJ para. 23, p. 128). Unlike beauty, the sublime constitutes a failure of representation, which merely points toward or suggests something that, since it is ineffable, one cannot successfully depict. Further, nature can be beautiful since, as Kant observes, natural beauty carries with it purposiveness, and can even be represented through natural scientific laws. Yet the sublime exhibits what Kant awkwardly calls “contrapurposiveness.” The point seems to be that the sublime escapes sensible presentation precisely because it cannot be understood in terms of purpose. Kant goes on to consider the mathematically sublime and the dynamically sublime separately. The account of the mathematically sublime begins through a nominal definition. “We call sublime that which is absolutely great” (CPJ para. 25, p. 131), beyond comparison. Kant may be thinking by analogy of mathematical infinity, which is, as he points out, absolutely great (CPJ para. 26, p. 138). Yet since the term “great” suggests quantity, it is difficult to see what it means for an art object, which is by definition formless, to be absolutely great. Kant appears to contradict this claim in affirming that compared to the sublime, everything else is small (see CPJ para. 25, p. 134). In that case, there is a comparative relationship in that everything is smaller than but not incomparable with the sublime. Kant pursues this theme with respect to the magnitude of things in nature. He has in mind raw nature, or nature devoid of either charm or emotion, merely insofar as it contains magnitude. But it is unclear how this differs from the wide ocean (CPJ para. 23, p. 129), shapeless mountain masses (CPJ para. 26, p. 139), or towering mountain ranges, which supposedly provoke astonishment but not actual fear (General Remark, p. 152), and which are not sublime.

126

chapter four

Kant’s account of beauty confronts the difficulty of explaining how, through reflective judgment, a subjective representation can yield universally valid purposiveness. The difficulty is only deepened in the case of the sublime, which lacks the very purposiveness of the form of the object. Kant affirms that nature is sublime when it suggests infinity. The basic insight seems to be that just as infinity surpasses our ability to comprehend it, the sublime surpasses the capacity of reason. We detect this in what Kant describes as the feeling of displeasure that supposedly arises in the inability of the rational imagination to estimate the magnitude, which is absolute, of the sublime (see CPJ para. 27, p. 141). This analogy rests on a further analogy between the mathematical infinity and the aesthetic sublime, which, if it ever held, no longer seems plausible. Georg Cantor and others have in the meantime provided ways to count infinite sets. In other words, even if, as Kant insists, true sublimity is in the eye of the beholder, hence in the free play of the imagination, and not in the object, there are in fact ways of grasping the sublime understood as the absolutely great. It follows that the aesthetic sublime, on consideration, turns out to be very much like mathematical form of infinity that is simultaneously absolute but merely relatively great, hence not incomparable at all. Kant now turns from the mathematical to the dynamically sublime in nature, to begin with in considering nature as a power. There is more than a faint echo of Burke in the suggestion that nature is dynamically sublime only in that it is represented as “arousing fear” (para. 28, p. 143) whether or not one is actually afraid. Kant, who is apparently not convinced by his own claim, seems to open another approach in indicating that nature is called sublime when the mind demonstrates its superiority over nature (para. 28, p. 145). The point seems to be that nature inspires fear, hence appears as sublime, a fear that the observer overcomes through the rational faculty. Kant qualifies this assessment in indicating that the ability to feel the sublime is a function of the receptivity to ideas, hence to personal culture, for instance with respect to morality. It follows that a cultivated individual is likely to respond to the beautiful in terms of taste and to the sublime through feeling. Lest one infer that either beauty or the sublime is merely an empirical reaction, Kant explicitly claims that the power of judgment, which rests on a priori principles, and hence is necessary, belongs to transcendental philosophy (see para. 29, p. 149) Kant concludes the account of the beautiful and the sublime through a general remark about aesthetic reflective judgments in general. A series

kant and german idealist aesthetics

127

of further remarks comparing and contrasting beauty and the sublime accentuate Kant’s inability to clarify the latter conception. Kant appears to be trying to get across the insight that with regard to the sublime reason is confronted with something it cannot successfully represent. He awkwardly describes the sublime in nature as “the representation of which determines the mind to think of the unattainability of nature as a presentation of ideas” (CPJ General Remark, p. 151; Kant’s emphasis). The point is that we encounter nature as a mere appearance, not as it is in itself. This suggests that Kant thinks nature in itself evokes a feeling of the sublime, which in turn makes one wonder why he refers to such aspects as fear or absolute size. In concluding his remarks on the beautiful and the sublime, Kant, who only rarely discusses other writers in detail, interpolates a careful passage on Burke’s views of the beautiful and the sublime. As in remarks in the Critique of Pure Reason on Locke and Baumgarten, whom he accuses of a mere physiological approach, Kant remarks here on the incompatibility between an empirical approach and transcendental philosophy. According to Kant, Burke’s psychological approach is relevant to empirical anthropology but not to the task of providing an a priori principle acceptable to all observers. Kant apparently assumes that, as for morality, there cannot be more than a single correct judgment of taste. Yet there seems no reason to accept this normative view of aesthetic taste, in which there can be legitimate disagreement between different observers whose taste differs.

The Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgments Judgment is defined as the capacity to bring a particular under a general rule. This faculty is exercised in aesthetics, where in response to feelings of interest and disinterest (Lust and Unlust), the art object is evaluated. The same faculty is also exercised in attempts to judge events or situations in terms of an intrinsic purpose attributed to them for purposes of their cognition, as in the supposition of purpose in biological evolution. Reason, the third mental capacity, is now defined as the ability to deduce the particular as necessary from the general rule. Examples are the deduction of the categories of the understanding from the rule that experiential knowledge is possible if the form of the object of experience is supplied by the observer, or the deduction of geometric proofs from prior results or axioms is assumed to be true. In Kant’s view, these three capacities constitute a complete inventory of rational human capacities.76

128

chapter four

Kant typically approaches types of experience through types of activity: theoretical knowledge through understanding, morality through reason, and in the third Critique experience of nature through judgment. Kant’s analysis of aesthetics in the third Critique combines different influences in a highly original theory, which builds on a different analysis of the same term in the first Critique. In the latter, Kant writes, “I call a science of all principles of a priori sensibility the transcendental aesthetic.”77 Kant responds in the “Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgments.” As in the Critique of Pure Reason, the deduction of pure aesthetic judgments and the dialectic of aesthetic judgment are closely related. Kant here makes a series of useful remarks. In answering Burke, he indicates that he wants to avoid mere art, which concerns instances, in focusing on science, which analyzes the faculty of cognition in general (CPJ para. 34, p. 166). The “Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgments,” which suggests a parallel with the arduous metaphysical and transcendental deductions in the Critique of Pure Reason, is misnamed. Kant, who quickly disposes of the deduction, goes on to mention a variety of other themes. We see Kant at his best here in utilizing his formidable analytical capacities to discuss aspects of aesthetics, a topic about which he in fact knows very little, but which he nonetheless helpfully illuminates. According to Kant, any judgment, including an aesthetic judgment, which claims universal validity, requires an a priori deduction. Aesthetic judgments are judgments of taste exhibiting satisfaction or dissatisfaction concerning the form of an object. There is a basic distinction between the sublime, which concerns an object that, since it is entirely formless or shapeless, cannot be judged according to form, and judgments of taste, which concern form. Aesthetic judgments, which are restricted to judgments about beauty only, exclude the sublime. Aesthetic requires a deduction of the universal validity of a singular judgment. A singular judgment expresses “the subjective purposiveness of an empirical representation of the form of an object” (CPJ para. 31, p. 161). A judgment of taste has four characteristics. It requires universal assent (CPJ para. 32), it cannot be proven (CPJ para. 33), it has no objective principle (CPJ para. 34), and unlike logical judgments it does not subsume un­ der a concept (CPJ para. 35). Kant’s solution is to consider the judgment of taste from two perspectives: empirically in that I experience pleasure with respect to an object, but a priori in that “I find it beautiful, i.e., that I require that satisfaction of everyone as necessary” (CPJ para. 37, p. 169). Kant is aware that observers might differ in their reaction to a particular object. He nonetheless argues that a subjective reaction of taste is

kant and german idealist aesthetics

129

universal or at least universalizable because everyone is endowed with the same power of judgment with respect to judging the form of the object. This claim, which is famously suggested by Descartes in the first sentence of the “Discourse on Method” (1637) that arguably more than any other texts constitutes the beginning of modern Western philosophy, seems implausible.78 It is further inconsistent since, as Kant elsewhere notes, intellectual capacities differ widely.79 This deduction is easy because “we are justified in presupposing universally in every human being the same subjective power of judgment that we find in ourselves” (CPJ para. 38, pp. 170–71). In effect, Kant supposes incorrectly that all individuals are biologically identical. If even we allow this mistaken assumption, it would still need to be shown that everyone reacts to the same object in the same way to generalize the response of one person to everyone. Kant, who does not take into account differences between observers, assumes that they are similarly constituted and that they all react in the same way. Yet clearly individuals not only differ but also do not necessarily act or react in similar fashion. In other words, and in virtue of their relation to the surrounding context, different observers, utilizing the same biological apparatus, perceive and judge differently. This point apparently undermines Kant entire effort to demonstrate the universality of subjective judgments of beauty, or, formulated in another way, to prove that subjective taste is objective. Hence, Kant’s deduction of judgments of taste simply fails. This section contains many other interesting comments. One concerns what Kant calls sensus communis. This term goes back to Aristotle,80 who utilizes it to refer to the part of the mind, which synthesizes common sensibles, or again inputs from the different sense organs, in providing representations.81 This term is later employed in a similar sense by Aquinas82 and in a different sense by Thomas Reid in his philosophy of common sense.83 Kant describes sensus communis as a common faculty for judging in the same way by everyone, which, as common, or shared, therefore avoids taking one’s own peculiar foibles, which are subjective, to be objective (CPJ para. 40, pp. 173–74): “By ‘sensus communis,’ however, must be understood the idea of a communal sense, i.e., a faculty for judging that in its reflection takes account (a priori) of everyone else’s way of representing in thought, in order as it were to hold its judgment up to human reason as a whole and thereby avoid the illusion which, from subjective private conditions that could easily be held to be objective, would have a detrimental influence on the judgment.” This reference, with which Kant was probably familiar, suggests he may have based his thesis that subjective reactions yield universal judgments on an uncritical acceptance of an

130

chapter four

Aristotelian approach to knowledge. Kant seems to hold that reason is ahistorical, hence the same in all times and places, so there can be no disagreement among rational individuals. Yet, supposedly rational individuals differ among themselves on particular judgments, for instance about taste, as well as with respect to the nature of reason. Kant’s general comments on art, including beautiful art, are very interesting. He suggests art differs from nature as a kind of doing ( facere), which requires a skill, or practical faculty, as distinguished from science, or a theoretical faculty (see CPJ para. 43). Art directed toward a feeling of pleasure is called aesthetic art. His statement that “beautiful art” is “a kind of representation that is purposive in itself and . . . without an end” (CPJ para. 44, p. 185) suggests art represents but is not teleological. Though nature can be beautiful, art can only be beautiful if we are aware that it is not nature (CPJ para. 45, p. 185). Kant’s remarks on genius in the first and third Critiques were influential on early German romanticism. An artistic genius is an individual who creates without following rules, as someone “[whose] talent . . . gives the rule to art” (CPJ para. 46, p. 186). A genius, whose highest quality is originality, produces without imitation, hence without following a rule in products that are exemplary both for others and because they require a concept for their production (see CPJ para. 48, p. 191) in a way that simply cannot be described. This leads to the view that genius produces beautiful objects, which require taste to judge them (CPJ para. 48, p. 189). Kant sums up his conception of genius in four points: as a talent for art, not science; as presupposing a representation of the concept; as an imaginative presentation of the concept; and as produced without following any rules (CPJ para. 49, p. 195). In that context, Kant comments helpfully that an aesthetic idea refers to thinking without a concept. An aesthetic idea thus turns out to be the counterpart of an idea of reason, which, since it is without a concept, cannot be represented in the imagination. It follows that such ideas, as Kant notes, “strive toward something lying beyond the bounds of experience” (CPJ para. 49, p. 192).

The Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment and the Supersensible The account of “The Dialectic of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment” extends the parallel between the Critique of Judgment and the Critique of

kant and german idealist aesthetics

131

Pure Reason. This brief, but important passage helps in grasping Kant’s view of the relation between judgment and the real external world. Observers disagree about whether there is a philosophical connection between Kant’s views on aesthetics and his views on teleology, or whether he treated them in a single volume as a mere matter of convenience. The Critique of Judgment includes both the “Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment” as well as the “Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment.” Kant relates both aesthetic and teleological judgments to the faculty or power of judgment [Urteilskraft ] with which the Critique of Judgment is officially concerned. According to Kant, antinomies, or conflicts of reason with itself, which arise if one conflates what is given in experience with things in themselves, can be overcome if we understand that they are merely appearances of a substratum, which cannot be known (see CPJ, Remark 2, p. 219). This section is ostensibly about antinomic contradictions between competing aesthetic judgments, or judgments of taste, each of which lays claim to universality. The problem is important since Kant intends to defend the difficult proposition that judgments of taste, which are subjective, are in principle universal, hence binding on all observers. The two propositions that constitute the antinomy of taste claim respectively that judgments of taste are or are not based on concepts (see para. 56). Kant resolves this antinomy in that the term “concept” is used differently in the two propositions. His response casts light on his view of the relation between concepts, representations, and empirical objects in aesthetic judgment. Kant here points out that the judgment of taste concerns sensible objects in again insisting that it is “not in order to determine a concept of them for the understanding, for it is not a cognitive judgment” (CPJ para. 57, p. 215). There cannot be a concept of sensible objects, since they are the appearances of the thing in itself, or the supersensible, which lies beyond cognition (CPJ Introduction, p. 63). Kant’s solution lies in returning to the difficult doctrine of the thing in itself, which he here understands as supersensible. Kant writes, “A concept of this kind [i.e., which cannot be determined by intuition] . . . is the mere pure rational concept of the supersensible, which grounds the object (and also the judging subject) as an object of sense, consequently as an appearance” (CPJ para. 57, p. 216). Here, after the constructivist turning in his position, a turning that is routinely referred to as the Copernican revolution, we find him still inconsistently emphasizing the representational side of his position. In the Critique of Judgment he has in mind the relation of the subject to the

132

chapter four

mind-independent external world, which is given as appearances in experience in the form of what Kant here calls sensible objects, and which can be understood from either aesthetic or teleological perspectives. Aesthetic ideas, as Kant clearly indicates, concern sensible objects, which in turn point to things in themselves, or “the supersensible substratum of appearances” (CPJ para. 57, p. 220), which lie beyond cognition. Kant drives home the point in insisting that here as in the Critique of Pure Reason, one must surpass the sensible “to seek the unifying point of all our faculties a priori in the supersensible” (CPJ para. 57, p. 217). The term “idea” is a representation related to an object, which can never yield a cognition of it (see CPJ para. 57, p. 217). At stake is a relation through an empirical appearance to the supersensible lying beyond cognition. Aesthetic ideas cannot yield cognition, since we cannot know the supersensible (see Remark 1, p. 218).

Kant on Teleology, Nature, and God The medieval Christians typically accepted the relation of God to the universe on faith. This claim is later restated by a long line of modern thinkers, including philosophers such as Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, who “prove” God’s existence, and natural scientists such as Newton, who explicitly contends the order in the universe could not have come about without God.84 In the General Scholium to the Principia, Newton affirms the existence of the Christian God just before famously claiming not to make hypotheses.85 Kant’s resistance to this approach is basic to his entire position, including his aesthetic theory. He consistently contends we can and indeed must consider natural phenomena as if they were constructed by a supreme deity, though in virtue of the limits of reason we cannot in fact know this to be the case. According to Kant, what the Christian medieval thinkers take on faith and what Newton confesses he cannot explain, simply lies beyond the reach of reason. In taking up the problem of the proof of the existence of God, Kant returns to a theme, which arises early in the pre-critical period.86 We see his qualified resistance to an effort to prove the existence of God in his reaction to the argument from design, which is a form of the cosmological proof. After Newton, William Paley quickly formulated the argument for the proof of the existence of God based on design. Kant later refutes this

kant and german idealist aesthetics

133

argument. In effect he argues that as concerns the relation of God to the world what the medieval Christian thinkers take on faith and what Newton confesses he cannot explain, simply cannot be known. The same Kant who insists that we have to limit knowledge to make room for faith87 also contends the cosmological argument is illegitimate. If we cannot know God as the cause of the world, in knowing the world we also cannot know God. In fact, we cannot even know that we know the world, which we cannot knowingly correctly represent, and which we know only in terms of constructions whose relation to the world is forever unknown. Kantian aesthetics exhibits fidelity to the medieval perspective on nature as the visible face of God’s world in his continuing effort to elucidate the most general a priori conditions of types of experience. Here as well, his approach conserves a certain similarity to the medieval perspective, especially to Augustine. In his lost work on beauty, De pulchro et apto, Augustine follows Hellenic tradition in distinguishing what is “appropriate” (aptum) in the sense of a part adapted to a whole, and what is “beautiful” ( pulchrum). Kant, who takes a more limited but similar approach, denies we can know nature, hence know God’s purpose in nature, while contending that we must approach nature as if it were purposive. But he follows the general Augustinian distinction between useful and beautiful objects. In the third Critique, Kant supplements the Augustinian distinction between types of objects through a notion of judgment, whose fundamental principle is the purposiveness of nature the Christian medievals presuppose but which, on Kant’s theory, we cannot know. According to Kant, nature exhibits (subjective or objective) purposiveness (Zweckmässigkeit) yielding pleasure. This conviction is incompatible with the materialist view favored by Epicurus, who thinks everything happens through mere blind chance (clinamen), but compatible with the Christian view that there is a purpose in the universe. Already in the first Critique, in his argument concerning the impossibility of a so-called physico-theological proof of the existence of God, he examines the idea of the purposiveness of nature. A physico-theological proof argues from a particular experience to the existence of a highest being.88 Kant opposes this approach on Platonic grounds in noting that no experience can be adequate to an idea.89 He further claims that such a proof further depends on the ontological proof.90 This proof depends, according to Kant, on “the analogy between natural products and those of human art.”91 Through this analogy, we consider nature as revealing purposiveness deriving from superhuman art. If the proof were valid, it would establish the so-called highest architect of the

134

chapter four

world, who, like the Platonic demiurge in the Timaeus, does not create but rather manipulates the materials of the world.92 On the contrary, as Kant points out in the third Critique, the analogy between human beings and a deity beyond human comprehension demonstrates nothing at all (CPJ para. 26, p. 135). In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant mentions the idea of the purposiveness of nature in passing in the course of discussing the physicotheological proof of the existence of God. In the Critique of Judgment, he accepts that one cannot prove there is a divine cause of the world while pursuing his analysis of the purposiveneness of nature. In the Critique of Judgment, Kant similarly says that the theological view that nature exhibits the natural purposes of an intelligent author is the best approach (CPJ para. 73, p. 266). Kant now argues that the principle underlying judgment is the purposiveness of nature, which is adapted to its ends or purposes, and constitutes a well-ordered whole or cosmos. We assume that nature forms a harmonious whole, which we are pleased to contemplate. In short, we can only think purpose from the vantage point of God (CPJ para. 75, p. 270), we can know this through faith but we cannot know this through reason (CPJ para. 91, pp. 333–34). Hence it is possible there is a divine cause of the world though we cannot in fact know this to be the case (CPJ para. 77, p. 278).

“Critique of the Teleological Judgment” and the Relation to Nature The Critique of Judgment is divided into two main parts. These include the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment,” which considers the relation to sensible objects with respect to a feeling of pleasure, and the “Critique of Teleological Judgment,” which considers the relation to the same sensible objects with respect to teleology. In considering teleology, Kant returns to and broadens the causal approach he adopts in the Critique of Pure Reason and in the Prolegomena. In the first Critique, he meets Hume’s a posteriori attack on causality by claiming that causality is a priori, intrinsic to the human mind as one of the categories necessarily utilized in working up the contents of the sensory manifold into objects of experience and knowledge. There he understands causality as strict causality along the lines of Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason. In the section on the Second Analogy, he argues that each event is rigorously determined by a preceding event on the basis of

kant and german idealist aesthetics

135

strict causality. This approach conflicts with the Aristotelian quadripartite model, in particular in eliminating teleology as a causal factor. In the meantime, Kant, who has become aware of the interest of teleology for biological phenomena, has become interested in integrating it into an approach to experience and knowledge through mechanical causality. Three points should be mentioned here. First, in now returning to the question of causality, Kant, like Aristotle, examines the relation between merely mechanical and teleological conceptions of causality. Second, his appeal to teleology, which represents an updated form of the Aristotelian teleological approach to causal analysis, is, depending on the interpretation, rendered precarious or arguably even precluded by the later emergence of the Darwinian evolutionary theory. Third, unlike Aristotle, to whom most readers attribute a view of teleology as constitutive, Kant postulates a regulative view of universal teleology in connection with his view of morality, since on moral grounds it is necessary for God to exist as well as for human beings to be the final end of creation. Kant’s interest in teleology originates in his precritical period. There is extensive discussion of this topic in the Only Possible Argument for the Existence of God (1763), in which Kant refutes proofs for the existence of God based on the ontological argument and on the argument from design, as well as in two essays on race from the critical period: “Determination of the Concept of a Human Race” (1785) and “On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy” (1788). Kant’s interest in teleology reaches its most developed form in the Critique of Judgment. At this point, the often tortured account of aesthetic beauty, where Kant seems to be dealing with materials he finds uncomfortable, and which he discusses in awkward, overly complicated ways, is replaced by a still repetitious, but comparatively clearer treatment of already-familiar terrain. The general theme of causality is central in his position at least since the Critique of Pure Reason, but the application of it to biological phenomena is a new feature. Though interesting, the teleological analysis Kant formulates has arguably since been preempted by Darwinian evolution. Kant cannot be faulted for failing to anticipate this scientific development, which can be understood as reconciling natural causality and purpose in the investigation of nature, hence as providing an approach on the level of natural science to a problem that Kant approaches on the strictly philosophical level. This portion of the book is centrally important, not only to grasping the theory of aesthetics, but also to comprehending Kant’s wider position.

136

chapter four

If the critical philosophy reaches its high point in the Critique of Judgment, and if the second half of the study carries further and completes the analysis of judgment, then the critical philosophy as a whole can be said to reach its high point in the account of teleology that is not less but arguably even more important than the more celebrated account of aesthetic judgment.93 Kant’s analysis of the subjective purposiveness of nature culminates in the suggestion that there are good grounds to assume it (CPJ para. 62, p. 233). The “Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment” takes up a related question about the objective purposiveness of nature in asking if nature forms a teleological system. Kant notes that we rely on causality by analogy, hence regulatively, but that we do not use it constitutively in explanation. “But that the things of nature serve one another as means to ends, and that their possibility itself should be adequately intelligible only through this kind of causality, for that we have no basis at all in the general idea of nature as the sum of the objects of the senses” (see CPJ para. 61, p. 233). Kant is correct about nature in general though probably incorrect with respect to biological phenomena. The theory of evolution seems to contradict Kant in supporting the idea of teleology as in fact intrinsic to biological phenomena. Since Kant’s standard of demonstration is a priori, he could reply that the theory of evolution has never been demonstrated. Though it is false that there is no basis for a teleological analysis of the biological component of nature, it is unclear that the theory of evolution undermines Kant’s general project of appealing by analogy to causality to understand nature. The account of teleological judgment is divided into sections on its analytic, dialectic and methodology. Formal objective purposiveness, for instance in geometrical figures, is based on the subject, and material objective purposiveness intrinsic to the object (see CPJ para. 62). Relative purposiveness relates to what is useful for human beings, as distinguished from the inner purposiveness of nature. Yet there is no way, merely by contemplating nature, to demonstrate natural ends or what Kant calls “absolute teleological judgments” (see CPJ para. 63, p. 241). Kant, who turns to so-called natural purpose, examines the conception of things as natural ends, which requires that their form not be wholly explicable through the laws of nature because in this case it is both cause and effect of itself (see CPJ para. 64, p. 243). Organized beings, his term for biological phenomena, are not explicable through the laws of nature, or by analogy with human art. They possess an inner natural perfection,

kant and german idealist aesthetics

137

which marks them out as natural ends, and which must be understood as the ends of nature. Hence natural science is led toward teleology. For organized beings, everything is both an end and a means, and nothing is the mere result of what is often called blind nature or blind natural causality (see CPJ para. 66, pp. 247–48). This claim arguably conflicts with Darwinian evolutionary theory, which explains the origin of biological organisms through blind natural causality. Kant goes further astray in claiming that the need to appeal to teleology in such fields as plant and animal anatomy, what today might be called comparative botany and comparative anatomy, requires us to invoke “a supersensible determining ground” (CPJ para. 66, p. 248). From the present Darwinian perspective, his appeal to noumenal causality simply leaves the empirical world behind. According to Kant, we cannot rely on nature to claim natural things are ends of nature. This would require cognition of a possible end, which can only be supersensible, hence knowledge of noumena. Yet it is unproblematic to appeal to teleological ends as regulative. Hence the idea of a system of ends is valid for a regulative but not a constitutive understanding of nature as a whole. A dialectical antinomy opposing views of material things as explicable or inexplicable through mechanical laws can arise between competing principles in the teleological power of judgment. Yet Kant’s account is too general to be helpful. He makes no distinctions, for instance, between physical, chemical, and biological objects on the grounds that mere causal analysis is insufficient for understanding “organized beings,” for which we must appeal to action according to ends, hence teleological explanation (see CPJ para. 71, p. 260), which might include biological phenomena but also such complex structures as inorganic molecules. Unlike, say, vitalism, Darwinian evolutionary theory avoids teleology in utilizing only mechanical principles. Kant, who is a pre-Darwinian, claims no one doubts that organized beings must be understood according to final causes. This is perhaps good Aristotle but from the present perspective bad modern science. For Kant, the basic question concerns whether this principle is subjectively valid, hence concerns only our way of judging, or is objectively valid, thus operative in nature. Kant concedes that this question cannot be answered in calling attention to artistic creation, which supposedly exhibits a special kind of causality (see CPJ para. 72, p. 262). He denies that any of the nonmechanical, nonstandard causal theories of nature actually have explanatory value. Yet modern science relies on such theories, including in the biological domain however defined.

138

chapter four

A concept can be treated dogmatically in relation to another concept, or critically in relation to our cognitive faculties, hence subjectively. A dogmatic approach cannot explain nature through natural ends, since it would then have to be employed objectively. We may think about nature teleologically, but we cannot know this to be correct on the basis of experience, hence cannot know it to be correct (see CPJ para. 74, p. 268). Kant generalizes this point in calling attention to a basic distinction between a subjective fundamental principle and an objective fundamental principle, or between pointing out that the human mind is constituted in such a way that it cannot judge nature without appealing to teleology and between claiming this is true about nature (CPJ para. 75, p. 268). According to Kant, in considering nature we are obliged to appeal to causality on subjective grounds, which should be considered as objectively the case (CPJ para. 76, p. 274). Yet modern science in fact explains what Kant considers to be teleology on mechanical causal grounds without invoking further explanatory principles. Kant believes we can only explain the apparent natural teleology through reference to a supranatural cause, which we must invoke but cannot demonstrate. According to Kant, an approach to nature in terms of teleology is useful, indeed necessary, but does not prove than an intelligent being exists. This is consistent with excluding any proof of the existence of God from design. In other words, a necessary being is indispensable for reason but problematic for the understanding (see CPJ para. 76, pp. 272–73). Though we may hope for a Newton able to explain a blade of grass, human beings are incapable of such insight (see CPJ para. 75, p. 271). Yet Darwinian evolution appears to correspond to the impossible Newton of the blade of grass. Kant could object that he has in mind the utter impossibility of an explanation of experience that goes beyond its limits. Yet Darwin’s accomplishment precisely lies in explaining biological experience, arguably including even a blade of grass, within its limits. According to Kant, mechanical causal explanation is unsatisfactory in natural science. He sees, as noted, no hope of understanding “the generation of even a little blade of grass from merely mechanical causes” (para. 77, p. 279). His argument can be reconstructed as follows: in virtue of the nature of the human mind, we must analyze nature in terms of mechanical causality; yet mechanical causality is insufficient since explanation requires purpose, which can only be subjective but not objective; natural scientific explanation points beyond the level of experience to the supersensible stratum; hence any causal explanation points toward what Kant grandly calls the cause of the world.

kant and german idealist aesthetics

139

Kant’s way of putting the problem suggests that in natural science we must assume teleology is real or accept skepticism. But Kant sets the bar too high since we do not need to know the cause of the world to explain such phenomena as a blade of grass. Evolutionary theory, in providing a mechanical explanation of apparent teleology, obviates the need to appeal to final ends beyond a more ordinary reading of causality. Hence Kant’s principle of ends need not function more than heuristically (para. 78, p. 280). Kant concludes that mechanical explanation and explanation according to ends could only be united in the supersensible (CPJ para. 78, p. 281). Since the supersensible lies beyond cognition, we can study nature from either perspective without any hope of uniting them. We are left with the unsatisfactory result that Kant, a highly systematic thinker, acknowledges the need to rely on incompatible mechanical and teleological causal approaches to nature, which he cannot bring together in a single explanatory framework.

Appendix: Methodology of the Teleological Power of Judgment Kant closes the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment in a lengthy “Appendix: Methodology of the Teleological Power of Judgment.” In a dozen numbered sections he again passes in review various aspects of the relation of teleology to nature. The appendix begins by raising the question of where teleology belongs in what Kant, in anticipating Hegel, calls the encyclopedia of the sciences. According to Kant, teleology does not belong to any doctrine but solely to critique (CPJ para. 79, p. 286). He claims that for human understanding mechanical explanation is always subordinated to teleology. Yet from the perspective of evolutionary theory, the reverse seems to be true. Kant considers the subordination of mechanism to explanation of a thing as a natural end (CPJ para. 80). A version of the idea was familiar in this period, when P. L. M. de Maupertuis and G.-L. Leclerc (Comte de Buffon) were already discussing organic evolution. Some observers, for instance Ernst Haeckel, believe that Kant here anticipates Darwinian evolution.94 Others, who have studied the problem in detail, such as A. O. Lovejoy, deny this anticipation.95 This latter point seems correct since otherwise there would be no reason to subordinate mechanism to teleology. Kant remarks that the overlap of different genera points to the hypothesis of a common scheme. This is intelligible only if there in fact is such organization. This

140

chapter four

“daring adventure of reason” may have been entertained by someone, but there is in fact no evidence for this hypothesis (para. 80, 288n). In paragraph 81, Kant returns to the link between mechanistic and teleological forms of causal explanation in making two points. First, we cannot do without natural causality, since otherwise we would not have natural products; and, second, we cannot think teleological and natural causality together. Kant refuses internal purposiveness as well as occasionalism, which he has consistently declined at least since the famous Herz letter, as well as so-called prestabilism. The latter is the view according to which “the supreme world-cause” organizes organic being to preserve the species itself. In refusing this view, Kant appears not to anticipate but rather to refute evolutionary theory. In praising Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, he refuses the very idea that life could have arisen through mechanical causality from non-life (CPJ para. 81, p. 292). He concludes (see CPJ para. 82) that we must appeal to final causes with respect to biological systems, but we are never justified in going beyond mere mechanical causality. Paragraphs 83–87 take up various aspects of the Christian view of human being as the ultimate end of nature. Kant here links his interest in natural teleology to his theory of morality. Human being, considered as a noumenon, includes both a supersensible faculty, or freedom, as well as the capacity of determining itself in accord with the “highest end (the highest good in the world)” (CPJ para. 84, p. 302). The argument runs that if what we mean by a final end is acting in accordance with final ends, then, since only human beings are exempt from mechanical causality, “then human being is the final end of creation” (CPJ para. 84, p. 302). Since it is only as a moral being that one acts according to ends, the whole of nature peaks in human morality. In other words, moral human beings are the final and highest end of nature. Kant studies this claim from the joint perspectives of physicotheology and ethicotheology, or moral theology. Both are adumbrated in various ways in earlier writings. He separates them here in order to focus on the moral proof (CPJ para. 90, p. 326). Physicotheology is the attempt to infer from the ends of nature to its supreme cause. Ethicotheology is the attempt to infer from the moral ends of rational beings to that cause. Physicotheology, which cannot tell us about the “final end of creation,” subjectively justifies the concept of an intelligent world-cause. For one cannot go beyond empirical data to an intelligent world-cause. Yet, since Kant stresses objective cognition, a subjective justification is no justification at all. Hence, there is a tension in that physicotheology points us toward theology while

kant and german idealist aesthetics

141

denying its appeal. This amount to claiming that, and despite its interest, teleology cannot be integrated within a causal approach to experience. Ethicotheology (CPJ para. 86) suggests that if the world has a purpose, it must be that human being is its final end, and the final end of human beings is the good will. As he does in the “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals,” Kant once again contends that the only good thing is the good will.96 To acknowledge human being as the end of creation enables us to regard the world as an interconnected system (CPJ para. 86, p. 310). Hence moral theology goes beyond physicotheology in establishing theology. It is as if Kant, the critical thinker, writing in the wake of Leibniz, who argues that this is the best of all possible worlds, established through reason the scholastic view, accepted during the Middle Ages solely on faith, that God’s creation is intrinsically good. The claim that the final end of nature is “the human being under moral laws” (CPJ para. 86, Remark, p. 311; Kant’s emphasis) leads to a moral proof for the existence of God, which takes up most of the rest of the book. This theme has been on the agenda at least since early in the Critique of Pure Reason, where Kant famously identifies the need to limit reason to make room for faith.97 In the first Critique, Kant argues that none of the traditional proofs of the existence of God is valid. In returning to this theme, he now proposes a moral proof of God’s existence (CPJ paras. 87–91). The argument runs as follows: If there is a fundamental principle or a final end a priori, this is the human being under moral laws. Human action is free, or undetermined, so good or bad action is freely chosen and the individual is, hence, morally responsible. If this is not the case, then the world has no final end. Now the moral law requires us to strive for the highest good through freedom. Subjectively this is happiness in accordance with morality. Since there is no connection between happiness and morality, this is possible only if there is “a moral cause of the world” (CPJ para. 87, p. 316) or if God exists. It is, of course, perfectly possible to think that the world has no purpose, in which case this argument falls flat. It would certainly be nice if in doing what is right merely because it is right, hence in acting on principle in deontological fashion, there were also a reward, such as happiness. But there is no reason, and Kant gives none, why this should be the case. Kant, who is careful to specify the limits of the suggested proof, says it is not intended to prove the existence of God, but only to show that an assumption that God’s existence is consistent with moral thinking (CPJ para. 87,

142

chapter four

p. 316). He says that someone who believes there is no God would be worthless in his own eyes if he contravened God’s laws. But why should such a person acknowledge their validity? And why must one believe, if virtue is its own reward, that it must in some way be further rewarded? In the end, it seems that Kant, who stresses moral deontology, inconsistently desires a tangible reward for what one does (CPJ para. 88, remark, pp. 322–23), and hence finds it insufficient. Kant, who does not detect a problem with this view, presses on to describe its social function. Pure reason functions practically in determining how to act. Kant holds a de-ontological view of morality. But his assertion that in promoting a life according to morality, or “what is best in the world,” what Kant describes as the “combination of universal happiness with the most lawful morality,” (CPJ para. 88, p. 318), comes surprisingly close to utilitarianism. The difference, if there is one, seems to lie in the focus on rational beings only as distinguished from the greatest number of people. Kant thinks that though we cannot prove a final end in creation, we are justified in believing it on moral grounds. Yet to assume there is an end to creation points to an intelligent being, though not a moral one. In other words, this inference is justified in practice though not in theory. Or to put the same point in other terms that Kant favors: what is constitutive for practice is merely regulative for theory. Kant regards this moral theological view as pointing to “an anthropology of the inner sense” (para. 89, p. 325). We see here the enormous distance he has traversed from his austere conception of the subject as a mere epistemological concept, or transcendental unity of apperception, in the Critique of Pure Reason, to an anthropological conception of the subject in the “Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment.” Kant sums up his view of the importance of his moral proof of God’s existence in two paragraphs. In rehearsing various possibilities, he restates his conviction that a moral proof of God’s existence has subjective value only since, in his terms, it is not a proof kat’ ‘aletheian but rather kat’ ‘anthropon (para. 90, p. 327). From the theoretical point of view, we can have no more than faith, which Kant understands, in the absence of theoretical cognition, as a mere moral affirmation of reason (CPJ para. 91, p. 335). Kant ends his treatise with a General Remark on the Teleology. This Remark is useful for assessing the import of Kant’s aesthetic theory with respect to knowledge. Kant famously begins the Critique of Pure Reason by claiming that all knowledge begins from experience. Here he states that all affirmation begins from facts in calling attention to the distinction

kant and german idealist aesthetics

143

between theoretical knowledge, which is based on knowledge, and practical cognition, which is based on faith (General Remark on the Teleology, 338). Kant further separates concepts of nature and concepts of freedom before quickly reviewing his accounts in the first Critique of proofs of the existence of God. The moral proof, which has no theoretical force, is practically indispensable. Moral teleology, which is deprived of theoretical validity, “leads to a determinate concept of the supreme cause as author of the world in accordance with moral laws” (CPJ, General Remark on the Teleology, p. 343; Kant’s emphasis) as well as “the recognition of our duties as divine commands” (CPJ, General Remark on the Teleology, 343). In other words, the moral proof leads to theology and religion. But this point fails to convince since even Kant admits his proof has no more than heuristic value if and only if one thinks the world has a purpose. Kant, however, has bigger game in mind. Kant, who has argued that nature leads to morality, further thinks the moral argument leads to theology, and finally thinks that we need theology for “the moral use of reason” (CPJ, General Remark on the Teleology, p. 344). This could be construed as suggesting, as believers in the Abrahamic religions often assert, that an unbeliever cannot be moral. It follows that in determining how to use the concept of God for morality, Kant could be read as making morality possible. Yet this claim seems wholly unfounded, since there is no reason, and Kant gives none, why a non-believer cannot be fully as moral as the most stringent believer. Indeed, if there were a correlation, that would be a powerful argument for the practical utility of religious conviction. Yet religious belief and moral action appear to have no correlation at all.

Kant on Art and Truth Kant suggests he is a deep Platonist while taking an anti-Platonic approach to art and art objects. In denying that aesthetics yields knowledge, or at least knowledge as he understands it in the first Critique, Kant undoes the Platonic link between art and truth. The relation between art and truth in Kantian aesthetics has attracted increasing attention recently. D. W. Gotshalk, for instance, contends that Kant changed his mind in writing the third Critique, since he inconsistently holds a formalist theory of natural beauty but an expressionist theory of fine art.98 Béatrice Longuenesse, one Kant’s most ardent defenders at present, indicates that Kant’s theory is valuable in indicating the possibility for all aesthetic subjects to

144

chapter four

constitute a single community of subjects in going beyond their historical and cultural limitations.99 This “Hegelian” reading of Kant suggests that the latter’s view cannot be constitutive and is at most regulative. Rudolph Makkreel makes a case that reflective judgment is “orientational” in enabling the apprehending subject to put things in context while discerning his or her own place in the world.100 In that case, aesthetics interpretation yields a kind of knowledge, though not in Kant’s strict sense of the term. Others are more critical. Rachel Zuckert holds that Kant’s view that aesthetic pleasure is merely self-referential is “empty”101 and fails to account for aesthetic experience. Still others go beyond Kant in reformulating a Kantian aesthetic, which yields a relation between art and truth or in rejecting the project.102 Hans-Georg Gadamer desires to “absorb aesthetics into hermeneutics.”103 He accepts a version of Kant’s claim that art cannot yield conceptual knowledge, but complains that Kant does not acknowledge the sense in which through interpretation things show themselves to us.104 At stake is what if any kind of knowledge aesthetics has at its disposal. Plato suggests there is true representation, based on intuitive knowledge of the forms, and false representation lacking knowledge as in imitative art. Kant, who is still often understood as a representationalist,105 denies intuition of the real, hence knowledge of things in themselves, and further denies representation in turning to constructivism. The result is a theory of aesthetics that does not yield knowledge as Plato understands in intuitively grasping the forms, nor knowledge as Kant understands in the first Critique in bringing sensation under the categories. In the third Critique, since sensations are not brought under the categories in judgments of taste, the theory of aesthetics does not yield knowledge as understood in the first Critique. It rather yields interpretation. Kant earlier discusses interpretation, or hermeneutics, in the first Critique. Kant, who thought the critical philosophy was misinterpreted, famously suggests that texts should be interpreted not with respect to isolated passages but rather with respect to the idea of the whole.106 His holistic approach to hermeneutics in the first Critique suggests texts can be definitively interpreted in correctly grasping the single correct interpretation. Kant similarly signals that interpretation is a kind of knowledge in the third Critique in suggesting that a judgment of taste is valid for all observers. This interesting suggestion points toward an enlarged, more inclusive understanding of knowledge. In place of the earlier view that knowledge is necessarily a priori only, Kant now substitutes a wider view of knowledge as including both a priori and a posteriori elements. The realm of

kant and german idealist aesthetics

145

knowledge henceforth includes the logic of the rational a priori as well as in effect a logic of the “irrational,” or a logic of the a posteriori formerly excluded but now included in the analysis of taste. It further follows that judgment, which only emerges as an independent faculty in the third Critique, becomes central in Kant’s revised view of experience and knowledge. This points to the later Kantian view, which is incompatible with the first Critique, but compatible with the third Critique, that judgment, which alone determines good and bad usage of the understanding, lies deeper than the understanding.107 In other words, this consists in extending Kant’s theory of interpretation108 beyond the problem of the correct reading of his position or any other philosophical position. This widening of the original view of knowledge suggested in the first Critique has been underway for some time. The distinction in the Prolegomena between sensation, perception, and experience suggests there is a kind of knowledge prior to and larger than bringing perceptions under scientific laws in converting them into experience. Kant now brings this concern to fruition in formulating a theory of aesthetics based on a subjective, or noncategorial approach to experience in the third Critique. Kant has been criticized as adopting an insufficiently rationalist aesthetic view in this treatise.109 Theoretical knowledge is based on the understanding but aesthetic taste is based on judgment. Kant, who was concerned to base theory in practice, emphasizes this point in claiming that judgment is more important because it is practical.110 The difficulty in Kantian aesthetics does not lie in widening knowledge to include interpretation but rather in his overly optimistic view of interpretation. Kant, who acknowledges the need for interpretation, understands it on the unyielding model, akin to the Platonic forms, in which there is neither change, nor development nor history in a result that is always correct and never at any point incorrect. But interpretation occurs in a historical sequence according to standards formed in a social context in which different observers engage in an ongoing struggle about how to understand a text, an art object, and so on. In failing to detect the historical character of interpretation Kant remains consistent with his view of knowledge as unchanging while failing to grasp the interpretive dimension in cognitive claims.

chapter five

Hegel on Art and Spiritual Truth

T

here are trends in the continuing reception of such important figures as Hegel. Hegel was concerned with art, art objects of the most varied kinds and aesthetics throughout his writings. In the Differenzschrift, his first philosophical text, he calls attention to the fact that art, which has been detached from life, has been transformed into either superstition or entertainment.1 This comment prefigures the famous remark on the death of art. I come back to this point below. Though he did not write a book on aesthetics, Hegel discusses art in some detail in both the Phenomenology and the Encyclopedia and delivered as well justly famous lectures on fine art. Yet as recently as 1995, a well-informed observer could correctly point out that unlike the views he expresses in his main writings, Hegel’s aesthetic views, very much like his view of the philosophy of history, had almost no echo in the debate.2 But times have changed. A series of studies have recently appeared that address Hegel’s aesthetic views in shifting the overall understanding of his contribution.3 As for Kant, so for Hegel the theory of aesthetics follows from and presupposes an idealist theory of knowledge. Yet there is a major difference between the two thinkers. Kant’s “official” view of knowledge in the first Critique follows Plato’s view of artistic imitation in denying a link between art and truth. It is only through re-describing his “widened” view of knowledge in the third Critique that art takes shape as a form of knowledge, knowledge of what for Plato is mere appearance. Hegel, like Kant, also defends an anti-Platonic view of art and truth, in Hegel’s case in claiming aesthetic knowledge not of the object but of the subject. It is well said that Hegel is a modern Aristotle. The restricted Kant­ ian approach to the selective study of the aesthetic dimension, restricted mainly to some forms of nature, gives way in Hegel to a many-faceted

hegel on art and spiritual truth

147

concern with an enormously broad range of aesthetic phenomena. Hegel was extremely knowledgeable about an unusually wide sweep of aesthetics and aesthetic phenomena including but not limited to the whole range of ancient Greek literature, Aesop’s fables, and the writings of contemporaries such as Goethe and Schiller, but also Egyptian and Indian art. Hegel’s writings on art constitute “a veritable world history of art.”4 During his time in Berlin he served as an advisor for museums seeking to acquire Egyptian antiquities. He also befriended many actors and assiduously frequented the opera. Through extensive study, interest, and travel, he worked up an exhaustive grasp of the materials available in his time, such as the Indian views of art available in English, French, and German. In consequence, in his writings on aesthetics he is extremely specific where Kant in contrast is general. Hegel also studied the history of aesthetics. He was not only aware of the aesthetic views of earlier writers as well as such contemporaries as Kant, Schiller, Winckelmann, and Schelling, but also of the surrounding discussion. Thus he discusses Winckelmann’s antiPlatonic thesis that art must imitate the ancients5 as well as von Rumohr’s criticism of it in exalting nature6 and the latter’s own views of aesthetics. Hegel understands aesthetics as a secondary discipline, whose task lies not in prescribing to artists but rather in understanding aesthetic phenomena of the most varied kinds. His Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art ends with the statement that the function of aesthetics is the study of the ways in which art develops in comprehending its link to the beautiful: “Art has nothing else for its function but to set forth in an adequate sensuous present[ation] which is inherently rich in content, and the philosophy of art must make its chief task to comprehend in thought what this fullness of content and its beautiful mode of appearance are.”7 In comparison with Aristotle’s fragmentary account, the more limited views of the medieval Christian thinkers, and Kant’s abstract view of aesthetics, Hegel’s view stands out as unusually concrete and as well extremely broad. He covers an enormous amount of material in various ways, descriptively in discussing many works of art, prescriptively in surveying various theories of art and in formulating his own, and cognitively in relating art to other forms of knowledge. He advances what is arguably the most systematic and the most comprehensive philosophical theory of aesthetics we possess. His views of aesthetics form an integral part of his position at least as early as the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and receive separate treatment in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences and in the Aesthetics: Lectures on the Philosophy of Fine Art.

148

chapter five

These three treatments of the theory of aesthetics provide complementary accounts of a theory, which never assumes final form in any single text. In simple terms, the Phenomenology treats religion in the form of art as a specific approach to the problem of cognition; the Encyclopedia provides an ahistorical description of the place of art in Hegel’s overall effort to formulate a systematic account of what he calls the philosophical sciences, and the Aesthetics offers his views on an enormous series of aesthetic phenomena on a historical basis. These different treatments of aesthetics are united through Hegel’s discovery of the concept of spirit, which distinguishes his overall theory, as well as his theory of aesthetics, from other views. Since the approaches to theory of art in the Phenomenology, the Encyclopedia, and the Aesthetics differ, they must be treated separately. Hegel’s writing on aesthetics contrasts with Kant’s in a number of ways. These include Hegel’s comparatively deeper grasp of the history of art and art criticism; his close familiarity with specific artistic developments and works of art he encountered through his travels in Switzerland, the Low Countries, Austria, and France; his opposition to romantic aestheticism that Kant, through his emphasis on genius, did so much to foster; his detailed analyses of specific themes such as Greek tragedy, especially Antigone,8 Greek art, and even Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew; and his nuanced account of the relation between art and knowledge. Unlike Kant, who has few examples, Hegel’s grasp of various artistic avatars is detailed, often encyclopedic. Kant thinks poetry is the highest form of art but says almost nothing about it. In his Aesthetics, Hegel devotes more than three hundred pages to epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry. Yet though he was familiar with the medieval thinkers from his studies in the seminary, their aesthetic views, which seem not to impress him, are nearly absent from his writings on the topic.

Art and Cognition in the Phenomenology Hegel’s initial statement of his theory of aesthetics occurs in the Phenomenology, where he works out a post-Kantian approach to knowledge influenced by Fichte, Schelling, and other intervening figures. In the Phenomenology, Hegel refers in passing to different specific works of art, such as Rameau’s Nephew or Antigone, and criticizes aestheticism under the title of the beautiful soul.9 The single extended passage on art occurs late

hegel on art and spiritual truth

149

in the book in a section on religion in the form of art. This section, which is sandwiched between accounts of natural religion and revealed religion, studies ways in which the artificer or artist produces artworks of various kinds. Hegel thinks that there is a hierarchy among religions in respect to a presupposed model. For Hegel, the peak is reached in modern Christianity, especially Lutheranism. The main difference between natural religion and religion in the form of art is that the latter features the elevation of the spiritual, which distinguishes human being, above the natural. Hegel believes these differences are instantiated in religious art. Hegel’s interest in aesthetics is a natural extension of his educational background. He was deeply interested in the classics. He kept a journal in Latin as a teenager and translated a book from Greek when he was sixteen. He was especially interested in ancient Greek art, literature, philosophy, and culture in general. In his treatment of aesthetics in the Phenomenology, Hegel focuses on ancient Greek art and religion within the framework of religion in the form of art. In later works, he extends his account of art to include the entire aesthetic tradition as it was known at the time. His discussion of religion in the form of art reflects a deep and precise grasp of ancient Greek culture but without the simplistic graecophilia common to the German debate from Winckelmann to Heidegger. Though he appreciates the depth of the Greek accomplishment, Hegel prefers Christianity to Greek religion and later forms of art to Greek art. In comparison to natural religion, Hegel believes that Greek religious art is specifically ethical. Though he regards Christianity as the true religion, he thinks that the ethical element typical of religion is already present in pre-Christian Greek religion. He takes a wide view of art that includes not only art objects, but also language, such as plays, poetry, and oracular declarations. Rather than the narrowly religious forms of Greek art, he has in view the religious dimensions of ancient Greek life in general considered as art. Hegel follows Aristotle in assigning art and culture in general an important social function. In his account of religion as art, Hegel emphasizes the difference between instinctive and self-conscious forms of productive activity. The latter is the activity of the ethical, or true, spirit of human beings, who are fully aware of what they do, and the artificer is “a spiritual worker” (P para. 699, p. 424).10 Very much like a person who acts ethically, a religious artist, indeed any artist, realizes himself in what he does. This view presupposes the idea that in the same way as those who produce products to be sold in the marketplace, artists objectify themselves in what

150

chapter five

they do, concretizing their activity so to speak in bringing about an identity with themselves in the form of externality. Hegel later makes precisely this point in the Philosophy of Right in pointing out that human beings “objectify” themselves in their work.11 This insight later became the basis of Marx’s theory of alienation.12 Hegel further agrees with Aristotle that, since human beings are basically social, they realize themselves in a social context, which Hegel designates through a difficult term as the universal substance. Hegel attributes a specific social function to art in making us aware of ourselves. Self-awareness in the ancient Greek social context is tempered by the historical fact that a full understanding of human individuality only arose after the flowering of Greek philosophy, and after the emergence of Christianity in efforts due to Augustine and other Church fathers to attrib­ ute responsibility for original sin. Greek political theory, parenthetically like Chinese thought in general, did not focus on the individual or on individual rights. Yet Hegel, who attributes a measure of self-consciousness to individuals they may not possess, believes that even in ancient Greece what he calls “the universal substance” is known by the individuals as their own essence and their own work” (P para. 700, p. 424). With an eye toward ancient Greece, he describes real spirit that becomes aware of itself in the religion of art as “the free people [das freie Volk] in which mores [Sitte] constitute the substance of all, whose actuality and existence each and everyone knows as his will and deed” (P para. 700, p. 425). Like all ethics, the ethical religion of ancient Greece requires a thoughtful distinction between the individual and the surrounding social context. This “elevation above its real world,” where, at least in ancient Greece, the modern conception of “pure individuality” is still lacking, receives its “fulfillment firstly in the divorce from its existential shape” (P para. 701, p. 425). For Hegel, the ethics of the free individual reaches its high point and fate in “the individuality that has gone into itself” (P para. 701, p. 425). Though the realization of individuality lies in the social context, the individual who breaks with it is in effect raised above a world it has lost. “In such an epoch,” what Hegel grandly calls “absolute art [die absolute Kunst] makes its appearance” (P para. 702, p. 426). Unlike earlier forms of religious art that are marked by an instinctive mode of production, on this level the self-conscious person realizes himself in the form of an object, through the “activity [Tätigkeit] with which Spirit brings itself forth as object” (P para. 703, p. 426). Hegel can be taken as suggesting that in the role of the artist the individual manifests or externalizes

hegel on art and spiritual truth

151

the shared common spirit of a particular people at a particular time and place. In purple prose, which hinders his readers, Hegel reformulates this idea in writing, “The existence of the pure concept into which Spirit has flown from its body is an individual, which it chooses as the vessel of its pain” (para. 704, pp. 426–27). This point can perhaps be more simply restated as the idea that the artist gives concrete form to the surrounding views. After his remarks on the abstract work of art culminating in the religious cult, Hegel turns more briefly to the living work of art exemplified in the cult. As for the oracle, so the cult of the religion of art is a way in which an “ethical people . . . knows its state and its actions as its will and perfection” (P para. 720, p. 435; translation modified). For its members, such a religion “secures their enduring existence and their substance as such, but not their actual self” because their god is not yet “Spirit” (P para. 720, p. 436; translation modified). The problem of human freedom runs throughout human history. Rousseau famously suggests human beings were freer in a fictitious state of nature before they entered into modern society, and Marx replies that a meaningful form of human freedom can only be reached in surpassing the modern world. Hegel takes an intermediate view of human freedom as realized to the extent this is possible in the modern social context only. On this basis, he evaluates the ancient Greek state. Although the adherents of ancient Greek religion are taken up in the state, the idea of individuality as it later emerges in Christianity is not yet present. For in the art object, the artist is not reconciled with his essence. According to Hegel, the type of satisfaction reached within the cult is that “the Self knows that it is one with the essence” (P para. 722, p. 437; translation modified). As in the Enlightenment, the relation to nature is purely utilitarian, a relation that Hegel, with an eye to Ceres and Bacchus, describes as reaching its highest level in food and drink. For if there is no higher mystery, no higher spiritual realm, then it follows that “enjoyment is the mystery of being” (P para. 722, p. 437). The result is that “through the Cult the simple essence becomes manifest to the self-conscious Spirit” (P para. 723, p. 437). Yet what is disclosed to it is “only absolute Spirit, this simple essence, and not the Spirit in itself” (para. 724, p. 438). From his Protestant perspective that in this respect is closer to Greek religion than to the Roman Church, he repeats that “selfconscious life is only the mystery of bread and wine, of Ceres and Bacchus” (P para. 724, p. 438). With pagan Greek festivals in mind, he says

152

chapter five

that “the statue that confronts the artist,” but is “intrinsically lifeless,” is replaced by the human statue, or “a living self,” such as “a torch-bearer . . . an inspired and living work of art” (P para. 725, p. 438). Unlike Bacchic rites, in festivals the individual surpasses oracular speech and emotional hymns in the form of the living statue with universal import. For Hegel, who is perhaps thinking of the Greek canons of aesthetic taste, this content is simply universal. The beautiful warrior is the honor of his people, as well as a corporeal individual in respect to which anything that is specific has disappeared. Yet the statue and the human statue that depict “the unity of self-consciousness of spiritual essence still lack equal weight [Gleichgewicht]” (P para. 726, pp. 438–39). For Bacchic enthusiasm is completely unlike religious language. In echoing the Christian doctrine of kenosis, or the emptying of Christ on behalf of human beings, Hegel contends that in such ways, say, through “the handsome warrior,” a particular people surpasses its own “particularity . . . and is conscious of the universality of its human existence” (P para. 726, p. 439). In later Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1821, 1824, 1827, 1831), Hegel discusses divine content and then the cults in detail. His very brief treatment here of early Greek cults and rituals is followed by a longer, more detailed account of the spiritual work of art. In this context, he studies the pantheon of Greek gods as well as relevant aspects of Greek literature, including the epic, tragedy, and comedy. We recall that the ancient Greeks regarded those who did not speak their language, or who did not speak it well, as barbarians, as less than fully human. In the Iliad, Homer refers to the speech of the Carians fighting for Troy as literally incomprehensible (barbarophonos).13 In the Statesman, Plato rejects the suggested dichotomy between the Greeks and everyone else as absurd.14 Yet this does not tell us how to bring together those who differ with respect to language and other customs. Modern efforts include the widely known emphasis on the rights of man, including the famous list of liberty, equality, and fraternity that are supposedly incarnated in the postrevolutionary French state. Hegel thinks the function of religion lies in unifying disparate elements with respect to a common purpose expressed in language. Earlier, he discussed spirit as uniting a people or nation. Here, he stresses the role of ancient Greek religion in forming a disparate people into a single state. When the different spirits of the people (Volksgeister) coalesce as a single “animal,” they “form a pantheon” that in turn “constitutes a nation [Nation], which is united [verbindet] for a common undertaking, and constitutes for this task [Werk] an

hegel on art and spiritual truth

153

entire people and an entire heaven” (P para. 727, pp. 439–40; translation modified). For Hegel, “the assembly of national Spirit,” or this pantheon, “embraces the whole of Nature as well as the whole ethical world” (P para. 728, p. 440). This occurs “in representation [Vorstellung], in the synthetic linkage of self-conscious and external existence” (P para. 729, p. 440) provided through language, especially in the epic, or universal song, such as the Homeric poems that are presented by the singer (Sänger). The heroes, whose exploits are recounted, such as Odysseus and Achilles, are “only represented [vorgestellte] and are thereby at the same time universal, like the free extreme of universality, the gods” (P para. 729, p. 441; translation modified). The epic expounds “what takes place in the cult in itself, the relation of the divine to the human” (P para. 730, p. 441). Presumably thinking of the violence depicted in the Iliad, Hegel describes its action, in an obviously sexual metaphor, as “the violation [Verletzung] of the peaceful earth, the pit ensouled by blood” (P para. 730, p. 441; translation modified). The gods are both eternal, above time, as well as particular individuals. They relate to human beings through necessity (Notwendigkeit) that focuses disparate elements, as in the life of the hero, who, like Achilles, the central figure of the Iliad, is fated to die young. The gods are depicted, very much like human beings, as inherently contradictory, because “their universality comes into conflict with their own specific character and its relationship to others” (P para. 731, p. 442). Yet their actions are fraught with “necessity . . . the unity of the concept” (P para. 732, p. 443; translation modified) that brings together the dispersed moments. Hegel thinks of history as inherently tragic. In the Philosophy of History, he describes it as a “slaughter-bench”15 and in the Phenomenology he depicts the abstract conception of freedom motivating the French Revolution as no more meaningful than cutting off a head of cabbage or a drink of water.16 He is especially interested in ancient Greek tragedy. It differs basically from the epic through “higher language” that, since it is not merely narrative but concerns content that is not imagined, “gathers closer together the dispersed moments of the essential and the acting world” (P para. 733, p. 443). It depicts real people, in roles played by actors speaking in their own voices to the audience. The subjects of tragedy are “self-conscious human beings who know and know how to say their rights and purposes, the power and the will of their specific nature,” since the action concerns not contingent circumstances, but the pathos of “universal individuality” (P para. 733, p. 444; translation modified). The “common

154

chapter five

ground,” or basis, of tragedy lies in “consciousness of the first representing language [vorstellenden Sprache]” (P para. 734, p. 444) through which the ordinary people (das gemeine Volk) express their folk wisdom in the chorus of the elders. At this level, spirit appears as combining absolute extremes since “these elementary universal beings [Wesen] are at the same time self-conscious individualities” (P para. 735, p. 445). In comparison with tragedy, Hegel contends that the ethical relation assumes a higher form in religion, where “the content and movement of Spirit . . . reaches consciousness of itself . . . in its purer form and its simpler embodiment” (P para. 736, p. 445). With an eye to the Oresteia, as well as to Macbeth, Hegel says that tragedy exhibits a dualism, reflected in the activity of the individual, “in the contradiction of knowing and notknowing” (P para. 737, p. 446; translation modified). The tragic situation reflects a distinction between appearance and reality. Tragic heroes, even when they are explicitly informed by what a god reveals, are still misinformed and doomed to destruction. In the Philosophy of History, he presents a conception of the so-called world-historical individual devoted to realizing a solitary aim, which surpasses any single person.17 In the Phenomenology, he discusses the tragic fate of the hero, who is trapped in the contradiction between the divine and the human, conscious action and fate. In Greek literature, “mistrust [Mißtrauen]” is justified since the tragic hero is caught in a “contradiction of self-certainty and of objective essence” (P para. 738, p. 447; translation modified), between what he knows and reality. The “world of the gods of the chorus is restricted by the acting individuality” (P para. 739, p. 447) to three beings: substance, or the manifestation of human action; the Erinyes, or the three furies who in Greek mythology inexorably, but justly pursued sinners on the earth; and Zeus. In tragedy, ethical right is powerless against absolute law, or fate, the lesser right that enjoys equal honor before Zeus. In action, the hero becomes “aware of the contradiction” since “the revealed information” is “deceptive” (P para. 740, p. 448; translation modified) and leads to inconsistencies. What is concealed is also revealed in a variety of ways, through the priestess, witches, and so on. The individual is responsible for not knowing. Both sides are equally correct and equally incorrect; and, in the course of events, both are destroyed. “This fate [Schicksal] completes the depopulation of heaven” since, through the interaction of the human and the divine, “the acting of the essence appears as inconsequential, contingent, unworthy” (P para. 741, p. 449; translation modified). The “necessity” of fate emanates from Zeus as a purely “negative power of all the

hegel on art and spiritual truth

155

shapes that appear . . . in which they do not recognize themselves but . . . perish” (P para. 742, p. 449). The “hero” must consciously remove the “mask and present itself as it knows itself as the fate both of the gods of the chorus as well as of the absolute powers themselves” (P para. 743, p. 450; translation modified). Hegel’s literary range includes Greek tragedy as well as all other forms. There is an order among the main types of Greek literature. The situation depicted in tragedy is overcome only in comedy, where “the actual selfconsciousness presents itself as the fate of the gods” (P para. 744, p. 450; translation modified). The comic actor, who surpasses the dualism between the real individual and the divine pantheon, plays a universal role and is also an individual person representing the truth of religion as art. But in taking off his mask, the comic actor shows that he is merely human. Comedy consists in exhibiting this contrast. The transition from tragedy to comedy moves from the depiction of the workings of fate, or at least the will of the gods, to the depiction of human being, or a “universal dissolution of shaped essentiality as such in its individuality” (P para. 744, p. 450; translation modified). The significance of comedy is that “actual self-consciousness shows that it is itself the Fate to which the secret is revealed, viz. the truth about the essential independence of Nature” (P para. 745, p. 451). At this point, Hegel turns to Greek philosophy. In the account of the Unhappy Consciousness in the Phenomenology, he points to the link between philosophy and religion, which he now reinforces. Referring to Plato, he remarks, “Rational thinking,” unlike the ethical maxims of the chorus, grasps the divine essence through “the simple Ideas of the Beautiful and the Good” (P para. 746, p. 451) that lack all content. With Aristophanes’s burlesque treatment of Socrates in mind, he says that such ideas are merely clouds. In the Phenomenology, Hegel criticizes Kant’s theory of morality as formalistic, hence empty (see P paras. 419–37, pp. 252–62). He applies the same standard to Plato, whose ideas “display a comic spectacle” (P para. 746, p. 452). The contradiction of fate and human self-consciousness is only finally overcome through the individual who banishes the gods and takes his place as the only reality. This is parenthetically also the lesson of Spirit. The religion of art is fulfilled in the human being who, as an actor, just is the role he plays. This reconciliation affords “a state of spiritual well-being and of repose therein, such as is not to be found anywhere outside of this Comedy” (P para. 747, p. 453).

156

chapter five

Art plays an important, but still incidental role in the Phenomenology. Art is not discussed for itself, nor for religion in the form of art, but with respect to the contribution of religion, including religion in the form of art, to the general cognitive problem. Hegel’s conviction that religion relies on representations whereas philosophy invokes concepts leads to three related inferences. First, since representations fall short of grasping the mind-independent real, religion considered merely from the cognitive point of view unsuccessfully strives to know what it cannot know. Religious claims for knowledge are undemonstrated and indemonstrable assertions, hence dogmatic, though not in the Kantian sense. Second, if philosophy and religion overlap, then only the former in fact reaches the type of knowledge that the latter falsely claims to attain. Third, art has a limited cognitive role comparable to, but different from, the roles of religion and philosophy. Art, in relying on representation, remains closer to religion than philosophy, which, because it is based on concepts, surpasses either of its cognitive rivals.

Hegel on Art in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences Hegel returns to the theme of art in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1817, 1827, 1831), which was originally intended as a kind of manual for Hegel’s high school students. This twice-revised work, which is often confused with Hegel’s system, is, as its author correctly reported in a letter, no more than a series of claims (thèses) that never reach fully systematic form.18 The fragmentary character of the exposition is apparent in the brief account of aesthetics in the third volume. Hegel’s remarks here are overly compact, often sibylline, and incomplete, sometimes verging on incomprehensibility. Early in the Encyclopedia, he describes the Phenomenology as the first part of the system of science.19 Unlike the Phenomenology, which begins from immediate consciousness, the Encyclopedia develops through description and argumentation. In his logical writings, which include both the Encyclopedia Logic and the Science of Logic, questions of cognition, faith, and representation are studied on the logical plane. The treatments of art in the Phenomenology and in the Encyclopedia differ. In the latter work Hegel revises and recasts his early analysis of art within the scope of religion. In stressing the relation between art and self-knowledge, he now accords art an independent role as one of three

hegel on art and spiritual truth

157

main ways of reaching knowledge. In the Phenomenology, Hegel opposes his account of spirit, which takes up an entire chapter and which is arguably his main philosophical discovery, to reason. With Kant as his model, Hegel lays out a view of reason as a priori, and as advancing universal and necessary claims independent of time and place. On the contrary, spirit is a posteriori, hence situated in and inseparable from the surrounding social and historical context. Its cognitive claims arise within and remain indexed to the historical moment, hence they are never more than relative. Hegel devotes the entire third volume of the Encyclopedia to spirit, which he further subdivides into subjective, objective, and absolute subtypes. Spirit, Hegel’s successor concept to the ancient injunction to know oneself, is influenced by Aristotle’s psychology, for Hegel the only worthwhile book on the topic. In this respect, Hegel and Kant differ. Kant, who denies intellectual intuition, further denies that self-knowledge is possible. Hegel suggests that we reach self-knowledge only indirectly through awareness of the ways in which others react to us, for instance in the famous master-slave passage in the Phenomenology. Spirit, which presupposes that nature is one or a living unity, or in another formulation, identical with its cognitive object.20 I interpret this to mean that in the process of knowing, the cognitive subject reaches knowledge of the world through an identity between subject and object, knower and known. Spirit is accordingly wholly free, but also identical with itself in its manifestation (PM para. 382, p. 15). For instance, in making something, one puts something of oneself into the product. In and through what one does, its characteristic generality (Allgemeinheit) takes on a particular form (see PM para. 383, p. 16). According to Hegel, nature, presumably nature as we know it, is the revelation (Offenbaren) of abstract ideas that become concrete as the manifestation of spirit.21 At stake is presumably the kind of cognitive claim we can make about the world as it is given in experience. Hegel’s remarks on art in the Encyclopedia are rapid, unclear, formulated in dark language, more than usually difficult to grasp, even by elastic Hegelian standards. It will be useful to stay as close to the text in paraphrasing and commenting on some main ideas. In the Phenomenology, Hegel describes a kind of naturalized epistemology in which questions of knowledge must be approached from the point of view of finite human beings striving for knowledge of the world and of themselves from within human experience. Knowledge claims are by definition a posteriori, with no privileged starting point and no conceptual privilege of any kind. I will

158

chapter five

be interpreting this portion of the Encyclopedia in as a continuation of the spirit of the Phenomenology. According to Hegel, the concept has its reality in spirit (Geist). Concepts arise only on the level of conscious experience informed by the surrounding social context, hence within the constraints of the ongoing series of interactions between subject and object, knower and world, knower and the surrounding community. The absolute is Hegel’s term for Kant’s thing in itself or mind-independent reality. Hegel refers to the absolute in terms of the cognitive identity required by a constructive approach to cognition. In the Differenzschrift, he alludes to a philosophy of identity (Identitätsphilosophie). In the Encyclopedia this takes the form of an identity between the concept of spirit and reality in spirit, or the theory of the object and the object, which are both given in consciousness. From the perspective of the subject, this identity has both subjective and objective sides. Knowledge arises as the result of a cognitive process. One or more individuals strive to know in formulating a succession of concepts or theories of reality. Subjective and objective spirit are stages on the road leading to reality (Realität) or existence (Existenz), roughly what is given in conscious experience taking place in the epistemological process (see PM para. 553, p. 292). Hegel integrates religion, which concerns the community, or a plural subject, into his conception of knowledge. “Absolute spirit” presumably refers to a fluid social identity, whose highest form lies in religion. A religion is a shared set of principles, perhaps comparable to a religious version of the spirit of the times shared by the members of the community. Hegel is concerned with faith, not faith opposed to knowledge, but rather, faith that is knowledge. This view can be read indifferently as a religious or a secular claim: from a religious angle of vision it is the familiar dogmatic claim that faith trumps reason in any of the variety of religious assertions; as a secular view it is the idea that reason, which is not self-justifying, ultimately requires faith in reason not so very different from some varieties of religious faith. Hegel seems not to differentiate between organized spirit in organized religion and spirit as an epistemological conception related to the surrounding context, or in the spirit of the community. One result is to shift attention from an objective grasp of mind-independent reality to meaningful assertions for a community of observers whose members are bound together through a common set of views. Hegel is aware of the danger of conflating two very different cognitive domains: a secular approach to human cognition, and a religious approach

hegel on art and spiritual truth

159

to dogmatic belief. He provides in passing an excellent description of religious belief with obvious epistemological overtones. Subjective consciousness of absolute spirit requires a direct unity of belief, which counts as the certainty of objective truth. This untested, dogmatic certainty aims to preserve the initial certainty of belief through reconciliation in reaching spirit. Hegel’s approach to art in the Encyclopedia builds on and widens his account of the religion of art in the Phenomenology in drawing out the consequences of the link he establishes there between art and knowledge. As in the Phenomenology, he considers art and then religion as successive stages in the cognitive process. He begins by claiming darkly that the shape of this knowledge (Wissens) is the production of a subject as well as the concrete intuition and representation of absolute spirit with respect to an ideal. I interpret Hegel to be saying, with Plato in mind, that art objects give form to artistic activity that only imperfectly renders ideals as beautiful things. A thing takes shape and is known as the manifestation of an idea, which is informed by, but is not reducible to, an ideal, on which it depends, which it merely interprets and toward which it points. This crucial distinction allows Hegel to distinguish types of art as more or less successful from various perspectives. Hegel reprises Kant’s point about taste as an aesthetic judgment of the extent to which an object realizes its aim, but differs in insisting on the historical transformation of art itself. After this very brief introduction, Hegel turns to art (Kunst) (paras. 556–63) in a series of rapid, extremely dense paragraphs, two of which contain interpolated remarks. When taken together, they provide a concise but clearly difficult statement of his mature aesthetic view. As in the Phenomenology, the account of art is followed by an account of revealed religion. Unlike Kant, who focuses on beauty rather than truth in his theory of aesthetics, Hegel focuses more on truth than beauty. Hegel begins with a paragraph (para. 556) based on the idealist epistemological identity thesis formulated in the Differenzschrift and defended in all his later writings. According to Hegel, the “principle of speculation is the identity of subject and object,” best illustrated in the critical philosophy in the deduction of the categories.22 Hegel has earlier provided a version of this insight in his description of the subjective consciousness of absolute spirit in the Encyclopedia. He now relates this thesis, which justifies cognitive claims on the basis of a claimed identity of subject and object, knower and known, to art and art objects. Under the guise of the beautiful the art object is the external manifestation of the subject. It is

160

chapter five

also an opportunity for the concrete intuition and representation of absolute spirit in itself, or spirit taken as an ideal. The subject, through its activity, externalizes and knows itself in the form of an object, as well as the difference between the object as idea and as ideal. Very much like Kant, art for Hegel instantiates ideas as well as ideals in terms of which they can be judged. The art object has a double function. It is an immediate, hence finite, ordinary object, in and through which an artist is externalized in the thing one has made as a concrete manifestation of an ideal. The art object, or concrete shape, derives from subjective spirit, from the artist. It constitutes a sign (Zeichen) of an idea (Idee), which is the form of beauty (Gestalt der Schönheit). Or more simply, art objects express an artist’s intuition in the form of a beautiful object, which can be evaluated in terms of the idea it illustrates and the ideal to which it approximates. Art objects have sensory form, and thus have immediacy, or a limited content (Inhaltsbestimmtheit). In other words the god (der Gott) takes shape both as spiritual and as an existent thing. An art object unifies nature and spirit in a way available to intuition. I interpret that claim that this is not a spiritual unity, since the ideal is posited in relation to itself, to mean an art object is both a unity and also a disunity. Hegel insists that absolute spirit is not given in consciousness, hence not experienced. At stake is the extent to which we become aware of ourselves through art. From the subjective side the ethical community knows itself as essentially spiritual (ihr Wesen als geistiges weiss). The community knows itself as a community through its members. Individuals attain really existing forms of freedom (substantielle Freiheit) in their self-consciousness and reality. In assigning an ethical role to art, Hegel distances himself from the Kantian view of the moral function of art. Art is crucial to the social realization of modern human beings. Since the community becomes aware of itself in the art object, art plays an important cognitive role in the social context. Yet since the object is immediate, art leads only to ethical freedom, which lacks the subjective innerness of conscience (Gewissens). I take Hegel to be saying that we know ourselves in and through our art, but only up to a certain point. In this context, Hegel refers obscurely to devotion and religious cults with respect to the fine arts (der schönen Kunst). In paragraph 411, Hegel earlier stated that art depends on spirit, for which it constitutes the sign (Zeichen) or outer manifestation. In virtue of an identity between the inner and the outer, the soul becomes effectively real through what he awkwardly calls “the mediated unity with its natu-

hegel on art and spiritual truth

161

ral being” (see PM para. 411, p. 48.) At stake is the conception of art as manifesting or again as externalizing a prior thought or idea, which may or may not be adequately depicted in the soul of the artist (Kunstwerk der Seele) who expresses it. Hegel develops this insight in paragraph 558 in claiming spirit takes shape in art. The result is to introduce a distinction between art and the imitation of nature. Art requires external material to be fashioned, including subjective pictures and representations. It further requires subjective forms of nature, whose significance (or utility) art must foresee (ahnen) and possess (innehaben). According to Hegel, the human shape is the highest and truest as the only possibility for spirit to take on a bodily character (Leiblichkeit) and intuitable form. In other words, spirit can intuit and know itself in concrete human form. This view seems appropriate for sculpture or painting, but is perhaps less perspicuous with respect to novels or poetry. Hegel claims this view disposes of the principle of the imitation of nature, which is parenthetically so important for the medieval Christian thinkers as well as for Kant. Agreement is possible if and only if nature is considered not as mere externality but rather as the natural form of spirit. Hegel points to the difference between the two views of nature: nature as it is and as it is transformed by the spiritual manifestation in and through the work of art. What he calls absolute spirit cannot be adequately rendered merely through working out (Gestaltens) the details. The spirit of fine art is a restricted form of popular spirit (Volksgeist), which breaks up into an unlimited polytheism (Vielgötterei). I take Hegel to be claiming, like Plato who calls attention to what cannot be said, that absolute spirit simply cannot be depicted. Specification of content transforms beauty in general into something formal, into an art object. In paragraph 560 Hegel comments on the one-sided, hence limited, character of the work of art. In an artwork an artist provides immediacy in mediating an ideal. The subject, or artist, is the formal side of the activity, someone who actively creates the art object of whatever kind. The work of art (Kunstwerk) is a divine manifestation, devoid of subjective particularity, without any adulteration. If the object betrays no sign of subjective particularity, then the content of the so-called indwelling spirit is received in all its purity, unaffected by contingency. Hegel seems to have in mind the familiar idea that the artist is merely the vehicle of the art, much as the new critics, such as T. S. Eliot, claimed early in the last century.23 Hegel immediately tempers the anticontextualism this point suggests. Freedom

162

chapter five

goes only as far as thought. Activity, which fills out content, is the artist’s inspiration (Begeisterung). The work of the artist is not free but inspired. Hegel reinforces this insight in claiming that production, presumably artistic production of all kinds, belongs to genius as to a particular subject, and hence is not unrelated to its producer, for instance as concerns technical understanding and the mechanical externality of work undertaken. The work of art is the result of the free choice of the will (Willkür) and the artist is God’s master (der Meister des Gottes). In this sense, the artist represents or stands in for the community, hence is not a direct conduit from the divine. The realization (Erfülltsein) in the work of art offers an immediately realized (vollbracht) reconciliation (Versöhnung) in subjective self-consciousness. I take Hegel to be pointing out that the artist is not, or is usually not, aware of the wider ramifications of artistic creation, for instance with respect to the entire context in which art takes place. Hegel now introduces the familiar distinction, familiar from Kant’s third Critique, between the beautiful and the sublime. Hegel regards the sublime as a stage (see Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, I, 362; hereafter abbreviated as HA), more precisely as a failed attempt to express the infinite (see HA I, 363), and as further manifesting a separation between meaning and shape (see HA I, 378). The art of the sublime, in which the idea has not yet found its appropriate form, lies beyond the perfection of beauty in classical art. It follows that the beautiful is not inferior to, but rather on a higher artistic plane than, the sublime. Art develops in and belongs to history. In symbolic art thought reaches out in struggling with form through imagination (einzubilden). The finite content indicates that infinite form has not been reached. Symbolic art, which fails to know itself as free spirit, fails the self-assigned task as art. The content, presumably the art object, is only the abstract God of pure thought or a striving toward it, moving restlessly and in an unreconciled manner to and fro in all its forms, since it cannot find its goal. In other words, if reconciliation is a criterion of art, then art that is not merely beautiful but sublime falls below this level. Hegel’s view that the artistic difference between the beautiful and the sublime lies in the compatibility between form and content, or form and idea, is clearly Aristotelian. The next paragraph (para. 562) identifies a second way in which the relation of the idea and its form can be inadequate. Art, which is not exhausted in seeking its proper form (Gestalt), nor through an external form, can only be adequately known on a spiritual

hegel on art and spiritual truth

163

plane. According to Hegel, infinite form, or subjectivity, surpasses mere superficial personality (Persönlichkeit) in the so-called innermost. Hegel obscurely qualifies this insight in contending that the God is not purely seeking or attempting to satisfy itself in externality, but rather finds itself in itself in providing its adequate form on the spiritual plane, hence in becoming conscious. Hegel here is opposing consciousness arising as the result of external or on the contrary internal levels, and he is opposing as well classical and spiritual art. According to Hegel, romantic art abandons the basic task of showing God in external, beautiful form. By implication, then, romantic art surpasses other art forms, which never rise above the level of various types of representation. Romantic art presents God as only consenting to appearance (Erscheinung) and the godly as the inner in the outer, hence in merely contingent, form. In a long comment appended to this paragraph, Hegel assesses the relation of art to religion. Hegel again insists that necessity is the hallmark of knowledge. He makes this point throughout his writings. For instance, in the Phenomenology he defines the task of science as cognizing (erkennen) inner necessity (Die innere Notwendigkeit, daß das Wissen Wissenschaft sei) (P para. 5, pp. 3–4). He assigns the same task to philosophy of religion within the circumscribed religious domain. Philosophy of religion aims to grasp the logical necessity in different known manifestations (gewussten Wesens) of the absolute. As in Hegel’s writings since the Differenzschrift, the term “absolute” functions as a specifically cognitive term devoid of religious overtones. Philosophy of religion determines where the art of the cult comes in this progression. It should also identify worldly self-consciousness, what Hegel, perhaps echoing Fichte,24 calls consciousness of the highest human vocation. This is the worldview (das weltliche Selbstbewusstsein) of a people, the principle of its legal system and constitution, which like its art and science correspond to the principle, which is the substance of a religion. In this complicated series of statements Hegel is indicating that social structures are no more than the historical creations of human beings with respect to particular social mores, which constitute the final criteria of a given society at a given point in time in the form of its Zeitgeist, Weltanschauung, or other similar terms. Hegel goes on to insist that these moments belong to the systematic totality constituting the reality of a people. This systematic totality is created and imagined by one spirit (ein Geist), perhaps because, as Herder thinks, a people is defined by what it has in

164

chapter five

common. For this reason, the history of religion overlaps or, perhaps better, converges with world history. Fine art (schöne Kunst) belongs to those religions only whose motivating principle is not absolute spiritedness (absolute Geistigkeit). In those religions in which the idea is not manifest and known in its free specificity, the need for art lies in the intuition and fantasy of representation, which is the only way to bring natural and spiritual elements to consciousness. Yet this consciousness is faulty, or fails in its task with respect to form and content. Since the form is not immanent, the depiction (Darstellung) is bereft of taste and spirit (Geschmack), spiritless (Geisteslösigkeit). In short, form and content are inadequately related. In comparison, fine art is selfconsciousness about free spirit, and hence conscious of the dependency of the sensory and the simply natural, in which it manifests itself. The point is that this inner form externalizes itself in the art object. In this whole passage, Hegel is insisting that fine art brings together content and form. The emergence of art points to religion, to begin with natural religion, which is still linked to sensory externality. As religion develops, by implication its relation to art changes. In sensory external form, in its manifestation and brilliance (Glanz), religion transcends its limitations. The genius of the artist and of the spectator is satisfied and freed (befreit) in sublime godliness in works of art depicting their meaning and feeling. In other words, art has a cognitive function in a specific form of religious context. Fine art, like philosophy, purifies spirit from unfreedom. Such religion, which calls on and calls into being fine art, includes a thoughtless and sensory beyond (ein gedankenloses und sinnliches Jenseits). Yet the images adored by its followers are unbeautiful idols (Götzenbilder) taken as wonder-producing talismans, which lead to a spiritless (geistlose) objectivity. But, as Hegel points out, bones do this as well as or better than pictures. Fine art, which is merely one stage in the process of becoming free (Befreiungsstufe), is not itself the highest freedom (Befreiung). True objectivity lies only in the element of thought in which pure spirit is for spirit, or in which, as Hegel obscurely indicates, freedom is alongside respect. Yet this is still lacking in works of art that take a merely sensory form. In the final paragraph (para. 563), Hegel returns to the relation of art to religion. Much has been made of the passage on the end of art in Hegel’s Aesthetics, which will be discussed below. Suffice it to say here that Hegel does not simply mean that art has come to an end. He not only thinks that art has a future but that even religious art has one as well. Fine art, like the religion intrinsic to it, has a future in so-called true religion. The

hegel on art and spiritual truth

165

limited content of the idea is transformed into the endless form, which is identical with generality (Allgemeinheit). This is revealed in immediate intuition, in the form of knowledge bound up with the sensory, which is self-mediating, hence in an existent thing, which is knowledge. Hegel concludes in claiming that the principle motivating the content of the idea is free intelligence. In the Encyclopedia as in the Phenomenology, art is intrinsically linked to religion and philosophy. Hegel, who takes note of this point in the final paragraph, ends his account with the comment that the future of beautiful art lies in true religion belonging to it. This means that manifest idea takes on the infinite form of identical generality (identische Allgemeinheit). Revelation (das Offenbaren) is knowledge (Wissen), which is revealed (das Offenbaren) in the concrete form of the artwork. The content of the idea is the concrete form of what Hegel calls free intelligence, or again absolute spirit for spirit. This passage links the account of art in the Encyclopedia with the earlier account in the Phenomenology of religion in the form of art. It further links the account of art in the Encyclopedia to the account of revealed religion. The latter (para. 564) belongs to religion, whose content is absolute spirit that must be revealed and be revealed by God, and which is mainly revealed through art.

Hegel’s Lectures on Fine Art An account of Hegel’s aesthetics further needs to take into account materials not prepared by Hegel for publication, whose reliability is uncertain 25 and which have come down to us as Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art.26 This book was compiled in 1835 by H. G. Hotho, Hegel’s publisher, on the basis of Hegel’s notes and the notes of his students on lectures in Heidelberg (1818) and in Berlin (1820–21, 1823, 1826, and 1828–29). Though its authenticity is uncertain, a number of observers believe that, as Heidegger puts it, Hegel’s Aesthetics is “the most comprehensive reflection on the essence of art that the West possesses.”27 This view is also shared by some historians of art. According to Ernst Gombrich, Hegel provides the first attempt to survey the entire history of art. Hegel rather than Winckelmann is the father of art history.28 The contrast between the arid, obscure, allusive, abstract nature of Hegel’s published texts on aesthetics and the very rich, detailed, largely comprehensible view described in these notes is striking. It is as if

166

chapter five

Hegel—the formidable thinker in whose thought German idealism perhaps reaches its zenith, and his near contemporaries, the young Hegelians, believed that philosophy had reached a peak and an end—had suddenly come alive in a newfound capacity to transmit, in something approaching ordinary language, a fascinating vision of the nature and significance of works of art. These lectures formulate in still systematic but enormously detailed form the same general approach to art Hegel earlier advances in the Phenomenology and in the Encyclopedia. Hegel’s term Kunst, which normally means “art” in all its many forms, is here perhaps arbitrarily rendered into English as “fine art.”29 This latter term is normally used in English to refer to art on aesthetic grounds. ”Fine art” is often associated with academic art as distinguished from, say, textiles or advertising. It refers to art produced with regard to beauty as well as to various types of art (e.g., painting, sculpture, music and so on) concerned with this type of production. Today the term “visual arts,” as distinguished from music or literature, is more frequent. In these lectures, the question of beauty forms no more than a subset of Hegel’s wider concern with all forms of aesthetics. In his short preface, Knox, the translator, suggests that, through their wealth of examples, these lectures might interest lovers of art and historians of art, but they are uninteresting to philosophers for two reasons: Hegel has already laid out his view of art in the Encyclopedia, and his view that “art has a meaning . . . transcending our” everyday experience leads to the untenable inference that “art in the last resort is superfluous” (HA I, v). Both reasons for turning away from Hegelian aesthetics seem questionable. On the one hand, Hegel’s systematic conception of aesthetics in the Encyclopedia, which is compressed to the point of being nearly unintelligible, becomes more comprehensible and certainly more interesting in his richly illustrated lectures to his students. The lectures illustrate the philosophical point that theories of art should not be formulated a priori but only on the basis of detailed acquaintance with many instances, starting from “particular and existent” art objects (HA I, 21). The lectures further illustrate Hegel’s concern to understand art against the historical background and as itself historical. It is then not by accident that his Aesthetics centers on an approach to the full range of artistic phenomena from a historical perspective, a perspective clearly lacking in the systematic but extremely cryptic statement of his aesthetic theory in the Encyclopedia. Hegel’s views on art, formulated so compactly and hermetically in that work, become more intelligible in their application to an enormous range

hegel on art and spiritual truth

167

of concrete instances. On the other hand, the claim that Hegel holds that art as such has been superseded, hence deprived of philosophical interest, reflects a double misunderstanding of Hegel’s position. To begin with, as noted, Hegel does not hold that art has been superseded but rather as noted above that its role has changed. Hegel is also not claiming that art is superfluous. He is, on the contrary, once again contending, as he earlier argued in the Phenomenology and the Encyclopedia, and as becomes clear on even a superficial reading of his lectures here, that art is central to the cognitive problem. In his lectures on aesthetics, Hegel criticizes Plato very rapidly and Kant at greater length while advancing his own rival theory. The critique of Plato is short and explicit. Early in the book, and after describing the mode of treatment of art that starts from particular and existent works, Hegel considers, as its opposite, the purely theoretical approach to understanding the beautiful through its idea. He identifies this approach with Plato and says it is no longer acceptable. According to Hegel, it is common knowledge that for Plato we grasp objects not in their particularity, but in their universality, for instance as the good, the true and the beautiful. Hegel’s remark is directed less to the problem of the beautiful as it relates to modern aesthetics than to the Platonic theory of forms. In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel objects that Plato’s famous republic is an empty idea.30 He raises a similar objection here in claiming that Plato’s conception of an idea is an empty abstraction, which “no longer satisfies the rich philosophical needs of our spirit today” (HA I, 22). This remark reflects Hegel’s view that cognitive claims are indexed to their time and place, thus intrinsically historical. Hence what one takes as the normative conception of knowledge is relative to criteria accepted in a particular historical context. I take Hegel, who lived in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Germany, to be suggesting three points: First, in his own time the social context had changed to the extent that the criteria accepted in ancient Athens were no longer acceptable. Yet the only way to support cognitive criteria lies in their acceptability to a philosophical audience in a particular historical moment. Second, if cognitive claims are intrinsically historical, then Hegel’s approach is incompatible with the Kantian approach to cognition through an a priori or transcendental analysis of the general conditions of knowledge. Third, for Hegel a modern theory of aesthetics cannot build on the Platonic idea of the beautiful or the Platonic theory of ideas motivating it. Both must now be abandoned.

168

chapter five

Hegel’s alternative conception of art partly embraces but also partly rejects Platonism. In his works on logic, Hegel discusses particularity (Bestimmtheit) as the result of the intersection between singularity, the really existent thing, and generality (or perhaps universality). His approach to the beautiful brings together metaphysical generality or universality— depending on how one translates Allgemeinheit, the main focus of the Platonic approach—and real particularity, or the existent thing. This allows Hegel to unite reflection, which simply disappears in any version of the empiricist identification of knowledge, and experience with particularity. The latter is necessary to avoid the utter sterility of mere abstraction from the plane of experience. According to Hegel, the concept, or idea leading to an existent thing, takes shape as a series of characteristics, or better predicates, through which it is instantiated. Hegel is critical of the Kantian approach to aesthetics in several places. In the lengthy discussion of the critical philosophy in the Encyclopedia, he devotes a paragraph (para. 55) to Kant’s conception of reflective judgment in depicting the Kantian theory of art from a teleological perspective as an incomplete anticipation of his own view. According to Hegel, in the third Critique Kant treats the products of art and nature as exhibiting particulars “moulded and formed by the universal itself” (E para. 55, p. 102). For Hegel, Kant is not a genuinely speculative thinker. Kant calls attention to the relation of a concrete representation to an ontologically prior universal, and points toward, but fails to reach, the genuinely speculative plane. Hegel has in mind the concrete unity between a concept and what it conceptualizes. Hegel thinks better of the poet Schiller. Schiller, who is closely Kantian, appears as a forerunner of Hegelian aesthetics in his grasp of the unity of thought and the sensory object in the objet d’art for which an extreme example might be Kant’s postulated harmony of nature and free purpose. Kant’s dualistic perspective falls short in isolating, to use Humean terms, ought from is, or concept from reality. Though Kant fails to “think the ideal realized” in living things and in beautiful things, he points beyond his own theory toward what Hegel calls the concrete idea.

Spirit, the Absolute, and Hegelian Aesthetics Hegel’s philosophy of art depends on his conceptions of spirit, absolute, ideas, and ideals. Spirit, Hegel’s main philosophical category in the Phenomenology, is central to his Aesthetics and is arguably his main philo-

hegel on art and spiritual truth

169

sophical category overall. Writers on Hegel usually do not say nearly enough about it, perhaps because they do not know what to make of spirit or perhaps because they do not comprehend what Hegel makes of it. A typical approach is to trace the different senses of “Geist.”31 Those who discuss spirit mainly avoid more than a cursory effort to consider spirit’s dual religious and philosophical background so crucial for Hegel.32 Apparently the only book in the English-language Hegel literature, perhaps the only work in the immense Hegel literature, directly devoted to this crucial topic, focuses on its religious dimension.33 Hegel draws on both religious and philosophical sources in formulating his view of spirit. Spirit is an old but never fully clarified idea, probably best known in the Christian doctrine of the trinity, according to which the Holy Spirit is God under the form of the third person.34 The doctrine of the trinity is relatively recent. At the Council of Nicea in AD 325, nothing more than belief in the Holy Spirit was affirmed. Trinitarian doctrine was only elaborated in the last quarter of the fourth century.35 Earlier, Tertulian and Aphraates used spirit as a synonym for Christ. According to Origen, who worked out a parallel between the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the doctrine of Logos,36 the Holy Spirit belongs to the Godhead but as a creature occupies a lower stage than the Son. Differences in approach to spirit are inevitable since the textual basis in Christian scripture is extremely weak. For Gregory of Nazianzus, writing in 380, about the time that the trinitarian doctrine was emerging, “to be only slightly in error [i.e., about the Holy Spirit] was to be orthodox.”37 Scripture itself never seems to call the Holy Spirit God. Examples include Isaiah 63:7–14, where the spirit is identified with God, and Romans 1:3–4, where the distinction between the spirit and the flesh is drawn in order to speak about the relation of the divine and the human in Christ. Alan Olson, who has studied the problem closely, maintains that the relative lack of theological reflection about spirit is due to the rapid development of theological monarchism that led instead to ecclesiology. He regards the Christian doctrine of spirit as a mere potpourri.38 Spirit is an important theme in post-Kantian German idealism, particularly for Fichte and Hegel, who build on such predecessors as Montesquieu and Herder. In The Spirit of Laws, Montesquieu argues for a general spirit influenced by climate, religion, laws, and government.39 Herder, Kant’s former student, later an important adversary of the critical philosophy, maintains that through the study of a people’s language we understand the people.40 His approach is carried further in theories of linguistic relativism

170

chapter five

due to philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt,41 who regards language as “a formative organ of thought”42 resulting in “differences of representing the world,”43 and the linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf. After his expulsion from Jena (1799) on charges of atheism, Fichte developed a complex view of spirit in subordinating his initially secular philosophy to contemporary religious views. From the perspective of faith, the individual belongs both to a sensuous and to a spiritual world, where he operates through the will.44 He believes, like Herder, that a people, for instance, the Germans, has an intrinsic spirit that animates the nation and is manifest in language.45 The unclarified status of the Christian conception of spirit and the diffuse modern philosophical debate surrounding it enabled Hegel to adapt it for his own philosophical purposes. It is a main theme in his writings as early as his first major study, which remained unpublished during his lifetime, “The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate.”46 His conception of spirit draws on contemporary Lutheranism, all of Christianity, and selected philosophical views. These include the ancient Greek concept of virtue and the spirit of a people in Herder and Fichte. Hegel consistently approaches spirit from a Lutheran perspective. As late as his last period in Berlin, he insists that Luther’s teachings are recognized by philosophy, meaning his philosophy, as true.47 He describes the Lutheran view of the relation between God, subjective will, and being as the richest but not yet fully developed view.48 The theme of spirit runs throughout Hegel’s writings. In a discussion of the Reformation, he describes the three aspects of spirit as self-reflexive, thinking (denkender Geist), and concrete speculative thought. The Reformation began what he calls the main revolution, or the Protestant Reformation, in revolting against the Roman Catholic view of religion, based on authority. This revolution shows how spirit became aware of its reconciliation (Versöhnung)49 without priests.50 According to Hegel, the Protestant Reformation marked the beginning of freedom of the spirit.51 In a passage on the metaphysical period in modern philosophy, Hegel draws attention to a link between Luther’s religious revolution and Descartes’s role in beginning modern philosophy. In a reference to Lutheranism, he describes the so-called Protestant Principle as the view that in Christianity consciousness focuses on its contents in making thought its principle: Philosophy, on its own, proper grounds, wholly leaves theology with respect to its principle. Philosophy asserts the principle of thought as the principle of

hegel on art and spiritual truth

171

the world. In the world, everything is regulated through thought. The Protestant Principle is that in Christianity innerness [Innerlichkeit] in general comes as thought to consciousness, as that on which everyone has a claim; indeed, thought is the duty of each, since everything is based on it. Philosophy is, hence, the universal situation, on which everyone knows how to pass judgment; for everyone thinks from his earliest period [von Haus aus].52

According to Hegel, thinkers such as Montaigne, Charron, and Machiavelli belong neither to philosophy, nor to the history of philosophy, but to general culture.53 Perhaps because he fails to appreciate Montaigne’s philosophical importance, Hegel overlooks the extent to which Descartes depends on his reading of and response to Montaigne, his French predecessor. Hegel is especially interested in Descartes, whom he describes as the genius who began the modern philosophical tradition in focusing on thought that becomes the principle of philosophy. “René Descartes is in fact the true beginner of modern philosophy in so far as it makes thought into its principle. Thought for itself is here different from philosophizing theology.”54 In focusing on thought as such, Descartes began philosophy anew. “He began from the beginning [von vorn], from thought as such; and this is an absolute beginning [Anfang].”55 In pointing to the dual religious and philosophical origins of Hegel’s view of spirit, I mean to acknowledge an obvious objection to cognitive reading of Hegel’s position. Hegel is often understood as a specifically religious thinker.56 This way of reading Hegel is central to the Young Hegelian left-wing religious reading and criticism of his position as essentially religious. This approach was made central to Marxism by Engels,57 who differs in this respect from Marx, who is less concerned with religion. Religion is very important for Hegel, but his philosophical theory is not a specifically religious theory. For as concerns spirit, he transforms what is originally a religious concept into an epistemological one without transforming his philosophy into a philosophy of religion. He does not do this in the Differenzschrift, his first philosophical publication in 1801. He begins to do this as early as the next year in an essay on Faith and Knowledge. His criticism of Kant, Jacobi, and Fichte ends with an appeal to “re-establish for philosophy the Idea of absolute freedom and along with the absolute Passion, the speculative Good Friday in place of the historic Good Friday.”58 This is an early statement of the speculative view of the subject, certain of its freedom, which Hegel later advances in

172

chapter five

the Phenomenology. In place of Kant’s pure reason, he offers a view of what we can call impure reason, or spirit. Spirit is central to Hegel’s theory of art. He opposes the medieval idea that nature is beautiful since beauty originates in the human spirit (HA I, 2). Yet like the medieval Christian thinkers, he stresses the link between art and knowledge. Art, like religion and philosophy, is a way of expressing “the Divine, the deepest interests of mankind and the most comprehensive truths of the spirit” (HA I, 7) and “a perfected form of spirit” (HA I, 13). According to Hegel, the task of art lies in presenting the absolute, whose highest form lies in religion, and which takes form as an idea realized in sensory form (HA I,74). This requires fulfilling three conditions. First, art must reconcile its content, or the idea, with the material in which it is presented. In other words, as noted above, Hegel loosely follows the Aristotelian view of the relation of matter and form. Second, art must not be abstract but rather take concrete form. Hegel, who thinks art is central to religion, illustrates religion in the form of art in claiming that only Christianity is successful in depicting God. “For in Christianity God is set forth in his truth, and therefore as thoroughly concrete in himself, as person, as subject, and, more closely defined, as spirit” (HA I, 70). Third, genuine correspondence between form and content, hence a successful work of art, must be concrete, individual and single. In this regard, Hegel notes the difference between classical Greek and Christian art. For the former, the god is not abstract, but rather individual, and can be known as such. Yet for the latter, though represented as an individual, God cannot be known as such. God can only be known through spirit, not in external but rather only in internal form. In the final analysis art reaches its peak not in the form of an outer representation but in an inner form fusing as one idea and shape as it were. In the Aesthetics, as in the Encyclopedia, Hegel outlines a view of art based on the difference between ideas and ideals. He follows Plato’s famous example of the craftsman, who makes a bed on the basis of a prior idea, which is realized so to speak in the form of a thing. Ideas inform and are in fact “realized” in works of art, as distinguished from the ideal, which designates the limiting case of artistic beauty and general success. According to Hegel, the comparative relative lack of artistic success of the Chinese, the Indians and the Egyptians can be attributed to a defectiveness of “form” he describes as the “defectiveness of content” beyond particular artistic skill (HA I, 74; italics in original). Even a technically perfect work

hegel on art and spiritual truth

173

of art can, in virtue of its content, fall short of the artistic ideal, which is in principle attained only in Christian art. The highest form of art gives the correct shape to the idea, the true or genuine content it expresses. In and through art God is completely known as spirit. This depiction of the divine can take two forms. Either it is abstract or, as Hegel claims, the idea is self-realizing, hence self-manifesting. When, at the highest level, the idea successfully manifests itself in concrete form, then the art object is “true” in that it exhibits the complete correspondence of the idea and the thing, which Hegel calls the ideal. “Thus the truly concrete Idea alone produces its true configuration, and this correspondence of the two is the Ideal” (HA I, 75). Hegel has in mind concrete particularity that also exhibits individuality in the highest degree. Though he may finally be thinking of Jesus, he does not hesitate with respect to Homer and Shakespeare, for instance in his description of Achilles among other Homeric characters as a paradigm of the many-sided individual: “Of Achilles we may say: here is a man; the many-sidedness of noble human nature develops its whole richness in this one individual” (HA I, 237). Hegel’s quasi-Platonic distinction between ideas and ideals enables him to consider art from a teleological perspective realized in human history. Art is in a way similar to a living thing. Art has a beginning, next a period in which it matures, and then at least in principle an end, which may never be reached in a finite temporal period. It evolves through history in a series of particular stages and forms on the way to the full realization of its idea as the aesthetic ideal. Hegel, who recognizes the interpenetration of many perspectives in different historical epochs, identifies a small number of tendencies or types characterizing the main stages in the development of art in the historical context in different ways consistent with local criteria. He divides the history of art into a series of three stages or steps with many intermediate forms centering on symbolic, classical and romantic art. According to Hegel, the abstract content of symbolic art does not and cannot manifest itself adequately in sensuous, visible form. It is then strictly speaking art that is not yet art, since it is earlier than, or prior to art in the full sense of the term. Classical art, which is distinguished by perfect expression in sensuous, visible form, is fully art, the fullest manifestation of art in the successful union of form and matter. In this sense, Hegel partly follows the traditional German approach to the ancient Greek tradition in enfranchising classical art as a central model. Unlike Winckelmann and his later followers, Hegel acknowledges the importance of, but does not adulate, all things Greek, nor see in ancient Greek art the highest, unsur-

174

chapter five

passable aesthetic peak. Ancient Greek art is not the terminus ad quem of aesthetics, since it is neither the only nor even the highest artistic model. Hegel, who thinks a kind of art reaches its height in ancient Greece, differs in this respect from, say, Heidegger, who thinks art as such has in an important sense already come to an end in ancient Greece. 59 One difference lies in the advent of the Christian religion in the period between ancient Greece and the modern world. Hegel, who is opposed to philosophical and literary romanticism, which he criticizes in the Phenomenology under the heading of the beautiful soul (see P paras. 632–71, pp. 383–409), is favorably disposed to romantic art. Romantic art is not on a lower level, an expression of aesthetic decay, but rather surpasses classical art. Romantic art, like classical art, provides adequate expression in sensuous, visible form. But romantic art transcends classical art in the realm of the sensuous and the visible.

Hegel on Symbolic Art Hegel argues for a cognitive role of art in different ways. In the Phenomenology he stresses the cognitive roles of art and religion, and art with respect to religion, in the cognitive sequence running from art through religion to philosophy, and further within the intra-religious sequence. Art functions in the cognitive progression within religion. On this level, Hegel distinguishes between natural religion or spirit in the form of immediacy, the religion of art in which religion has externalized itself in concrete form, and revealed religion that unites the other two forms of religion in true religion (see P paras. 682–83, 415–16). Art is a stage in the progression from representational approaches to cognition, illustrated by art, religion, and religious forms of art, to philosophy, which is conceptual. As pointed out above, religion as such, which relies on representation in all its forms, falls short of the concept (Begriff ) that is specific to philosophy. In the Phenomenology religion has a twofold role as a necessary stage in an ongoing sequence, which falls short of philosophy, which does not leave religion behind, since it continues and completes it. In the Encyclopedia, Hegel formulates his analysis of art within religion as well as of philosophy within the framework of absolute spirit. As in the Aesthetics, Hegel changes the focus of his approach in no longer including art within religion as it has been in pointing to the way that art further subsists and thrives beyond the period in which revealed religion, or Christianity, continues to

hegel on art and spiritual truth

175

play a central social role. This change of focus suggests two points. First, art features a distinctive approach to knowledge that is not exhausted in its relation to religion. This was at most implicit in the Phenomenology. In later writings Hegel clearly holds that the way in which human beings know the world and themselves in the social context in rising finally to selfconsciousness that is not exhausted within religion, and not situated solely on the religious plane, further continues beyond it in an increasingly postreligious society in the romantic form of aesthetics. We know the world and ourselves in and through art objects. But it is finally only when art develops beyond art, when art is in the process of disintegrating as it were that we reach self-knowledge of ourselves as we are in a stage that mainly or perhaps even wholly takes place in a post-Christian period. This claim is closely related to Hegel’s very well-known but famously misunderstood claim about the end of art. Hegel’s detailed account of symbolic art in the Aesthetics again goes over the discussion of this topic in Phenomenology, which he here treats in greater detail derived in the meantime from study in translation of works on Indian and Persian poetry, from his acquaintance with works of Egyptian art in Berlin, and from his lectures on art. In the Aesthetics, under the heading of symbolic art Hegel discusses Persian, Hindu, Egyptian, and Jewish art. Art for Hegel is typified by the striving for unity of meaning and shape. It is then characteristic of the symbolic form of art that like Christian art of the medieval period, Eastern art, which Hegel regards as comparatively undeveloped, seeks meaning as intrinsic to nature while taking nature as itself divine (see HA I, 602). Hegel does not discuss this comparison, but his theory of art suggests a deep parallel in this respect between Eastern as well as medieval Christian types of art. Eastern pantheism illustrates his view of pre-art, or art that is still only on the threshold of art. The lectures marshal many details to support this judgment in passing in review information about Zoroastrianism, Hindu art, Egyptian art, and so on. In this connection he repeats in similar form remarks on art made earlier more rapidly in the Phenomenology. In Zoroastroanism, there is an immediate identification between spirit and nature, especially as concerns light, which he earlier discusses under the heading of God as light. For the Zoroastrians, who conflate spirit and nature, light is the Absolute or God (HA I, 325). On the contrary, Hindu art features an immediate difference between spirit and nature. Since spirit becomes aware of itself only in distorted depictions of natural things, the gap between spirit and nature is not overcome, and spirit remains abstract.

176

chapter five

Egyptian art, which is genuinely symbolic, is comparatively more advanced but finally unsuccessful HA I, 354). Its spiritual side, which is fixed, separate and determinate, points to an invisible spiritual realm often associated with death. Hegel further identifies a fourth stage of symbolic art before art that he associates with Jews and Muslims. The prohibition against graven images prevents Jewish (or for that matter Islamic) art from producing representational art, hence from reaching individuality. As in the Phenomenology, Hegel insists here that the transcendent dimension of the God of the Old Testament lacks finiteness. According to Hegel, Jewish poetry praises the sublimity of God while dwelling on pain and suffering. Symbolic art falls short of art in the full sense since its objects are indeterminate or abstract. In symbolic art, the relation of meaning and shape is also abstract. By “symbol” Hegel understands an immediately given thing that expresses meaning. According to Hegel, a symbol is a sign, which stands in for something else, but which is further inadequate to its meaning (see HA I, 303–5).

Hegel on Classical Art According to Hegel, the double defect of symbolic art is overcome in classical art. Here in the first real form of art, the idea is correctly expressed in external form as the completed, actualized ideal. Classical art contains the complete interpenetration of form and content in a way that is neither symbolic nor romantic, but spiritual (see HA I, 441). Classical art goes beyond symbolic art in transcending nature permeated by spiritual meanings (see HA I, 443) in the correspondence of matter and form. For Hegel, in classical art content takes the form of a concrete idea in an external shape that is concretely spiritual. I take the latter condition as signaling Hegel’s conviction that art in the true sense of the term draws its content from the spiritual realm but finds its appropriate shape in human individuality only. Hegel is here continuing the non-standard anthropomorphic approach to religion at work in the Phenomenology where he anticipates Feuerbach (see P para. 208, pp. 126–27). For instance, there is an intended parallel between Hegel’s view of classical art and the crucifixion, which points beyond classical art to later romantic art. Hegel, who compares the ancient idea of metempsychosis to physiology, obscurely claims that for the latter only the human form is appropriate to spirit. This approach obviously presupposes that the human spirit is sui generis among forms of life. Hegel

hegel on art and spiritual truth

177

without argument seems to take as his artistic standard the Christian view of the manifestation of the eternal divine as human spirituality in time and space. According to Hegel classical art is art in the full sense with respect to external objects as works of art, or again art that reaches full expression in the manifestation of the human form. Classical art, which still falls short of the ideal, reaches the level of true beauty lacking in the various forms of symbolic art. Classical art is entirely adequate in that spirit gives itself external form. Hegel seems to be relying throughout on the simple but important insight, expressed, for instance in the Philosophy of Right, that a person is crystallized in what that person does, in short in work.60 Hegel’s conviction that art manifests spirit can be restated in terms of the spirit of Greek religion. Classical Greek art is the highest form of the fusion of the spiritual and the natural. The analysis, which has three steps, begins in a grasp of Greek religion as spiritual, hence as an expression of divine subjectivity. Next there is the view that the polytheistic Greek spirituality is embodied in various depictions. Finally, in classical Greek art the various gods who personify spirit are portrayed in idealized human form, such as Pallas Athena, winged Mercury, and so on. The capacity to personify the gods in individually idealized form, which characterizes classical art, constitutes an advantage in respect to symbolic art but a disadvantage relative to romantic art, which in turn demands a transition to a still higher, final plane, the last major form of art. The idealized representation of spirit in particular human form in classical art by definition falls short of the so-called absolute and eternal. For Hegel, there is a dimension of human spirituality that is not and cannot be expressed in the form of classical Greek art, and which after the period in which Greek art flourished stands as the highpoint of art that takes the form of external sensible objects. In his analysis of romantic art Hegel clearly breaks with typical German graecophilia that since Winckelmann takes Greek art as its model. Hegel is sensitive to the accomplishments of Greek art. Art in all its forms concerns the unification of content with adequate shape in what Hegel refers to as a free totality (HA I, 427). The ideal provides the content and form of classical art, which is already art, and in which spirit makes itself into an object (HA I, 434). Classical contributes to, but fails to achieve, the unity of the spiritual and the natural. According to Hegel, classical art dissolves in the incompatibility between finite externality and infinite internality (HA I, 501). In other words, the anthropomorphism

178

chapter five

of Greek art is defective since the Greek gods lack actual human existence only later reached in Christianity. At this point, in knowing man one knows God (HA I, 505–6).

Hegel on Romantic Art If symbolic art is art before art, then romantic art can be described as art after the period in which art flourished, that is, art after the absolute highpoint, or “the pinnacle of what illustration by art could achieve” (HA I, p. 79), which was earlier reached in the aesthetic production of ancient Greece. Yet it should be noted, Hegel does not say that this is art after art, say art after art has in a real sense ended. Hegel’s claim, which is by no means obvious, turns on the content of art, which on its highest level surpasses the content of Greek religion in “what Christianity asserts of God as a spirit” (HA I, 79). Hegel’s theory of cognition stresses the difference between consciousness and self-consciousness. He draws attention to levels of each in arguing, for instance in the famous master-slave analysis in the Phenomenology, that self-consciousness arises only within certain forms of social relations. Consciousness is a necessary condition of self-consciousness. The argument can be reconstructed as follows. The production of an art object leads to consciousness and then in certain circumstances to self-consciousness, or awareness of oneself as the producer of that object. The latter form of awareness is based on the insight that an artist in effect objectifies himself in the concretized form of an object. Hegel advances a variation of this argument in the Aesthetics in obscurely pointing to a link between classical art and consciousness, and romantic art and self-consciousness. Classical art leads to consciousness in the form of an art object, which is not yet full self-consciousness since the human spirit is still not fully manifest in this type of art. In Christianity, a higher stage is finally reached in which so-called free concrete spirituality is attained. I take Hegel to be suggesting that human being has finally overcome the distance between human and the divine since the individual is finally reconciled with God in a religious sense, as Augustine suggests in leaving Athens for Jerusalem. Hegel’s obscure claim amounts to the idea that Christianity surpasses the individuality typical of Greek religion in a conception of God “not as an individual, particular spirit, but as absolute in spirit and in truth” (HA I, 80). This view presupposes a difference in kind between human beings

hegel on art and spiritual truth

179

and animals. We are used to contemporary efforts to argue for degrees of animal consciousness and self-consciousness. Hegel, who lived in a period when such arguments had not yet been formulated, thinks that animals are merely conscious but human beings are capable of self-consciousness. For human beings, who are intrinsically spiritual, the highest level of selfconsciousness is not reached in “the sensuous immediate existence of the spiritual in the bodily form of man,” in other words in classical art, but rather in “the inwardness of self-consciousness,” which attains its peak in the Christian concept of God as spirit, the third person of the trinity (HA I, 80; italics in original). Hegel’s claim can be elucidated as a simple question: can there be art that is not in some sense religious art? Hegel is often read as a specifically religious thinker, for instance as a thinker whose position can be depicted as a many-sided argument for the existence of God, in one interpretation as a variation on the ontological argument.61 If religion were Hegel’s central concern, then it ought to take pride of place and the Phenomenology, for instance, should end with the chapter on religion instead of continuing on to the enigmatic account of absolute knowing. Yet Hegel, on the contrary, argues that religion is constrained to represent what it cannot know, and which can only be known on a postreligious, conceptual, philosophical plane. From an epistemological point of view aesthetics and religion, which are representational, are no more than intermediate stages on the road to philosophy, hence stages falling short of philosophy, the conceptual terminus ad quem of the knowing process. If religion is not the end of the artistic quest, what is its precise role? Hegel argues that art on its highest levels finally leads to full selfconsciousness. In other words, we know ourselves in and through what we construct. Since art is the manifestation of spirit, we know ourselves in different ways through different forms of art, of which the highest type leads to full self-consciousness. If we take full self-consciousness as the aim of art, we can reason backwards as follows in making three related points. First, there can be nonreligious art but, since the aim of art is selfknowledge, and since we know ourselves best in religion, religious art is preferable to nonreligious art. The reason seems to be that in religious art the subject takes on more general form, and the Christian view of the subject is more general, thus preferable, to other, earlier religiously informed kinds of subjectivity. Second, it is not necessary that religion exist. If it had not existed, art would have been secular.62 Yet since religion exists, there is a choice among forms of art that are either nonreligious or

180

chapter five

religious, and among different types of religious art. Though some forms of art are secular, religious art is perhaps more interesting than nonreligious art, especially from the angle of vision of self-knowledge. Third, if one accepts Hegel’s assertion that the highest form of religion is reached in Christianity, the highest form of art is reached in Christian art. In other words, this line of reasoning supports the view that Christian religious art trumps non-Christian religious art, for instance art based on classical Greek religion. According to Hegel, classical and romantic art differ in the type of art object to which each leads. Classical art, like symbolic art, manifests itself in an external object. Romantic art, on the contrary, manifests itself not externally but internally, hence in a way independent of sensory form, within the spiritual unity of self-consciousness. In transcending the plane of sensation romantic art is said to reach so-called free concrete spirituality, or spirituality, which is inward and not outward (A, I, 80). In varying his claim, Hegel asserts that romantic art manifests itself not in externality but in the heart. Romantic art is similar to symbolic art in that neither provides for an adequate union between the idea and externality. But the reasons are entirely different. Symbolic art aims at, but fails to reach, an adequate relation of idea and shape in the form of an object, which in romantic art, which transcends sensory objects, is not even a possibility. Hegel identifies different forms of romantic art: religious art, art of the secular virtues, and art concerning character. For many Christians, including Hegel, explicitly religious art centers on the life of Christ, which is doubly exemplary as the model of divine life as well as the truly human life. On this plane, life is simple bliss, what Hegel in the Phenomenology notoriously satirizes as the mere tinkling of temple bells, in short as basically meaningless.63 Second, there is the life of worldly virtue in which an individual human existence centering on religion gives way to a life in the wider community. Hegel believes the Christian religion is central to the modern social world. He also believes that in the secular context individuals develop and realize themselves in a way wholly independent of religious reconciliation through the return of human beings to God. Hegel has in mind the development of such virtues as subjective honor, love and fidelity in a specifically secular context. Such virtues constitute the modern form of autarchy earlier discussed by Aristotle and others.64 Honor, for instance, centers neither on bravery nor on justice but on personal recognition and the (legal) status of the abstract individual, which is finally only secured in the modern state (see A, I, 553). Hegel thinks that these

hegel on art and spiritual truth

181

three feelings are most prominent in medieval chivalry, a stage of social development mid-way on the path between religious inwardness and the varied character of the modern social world. In this connection, he alludes to the treatment of chivalry in Ariosto, Shakespeare, and Cervantes, in also noting that the latter simply ridicules it. This stage is superseded in a third form of romantic art characterized by the formal independence of individual characteristics. The first two attitudes, which understand human development as consisting either in reconciliation with God, or again in the affirmation of human subjectivity, are superseded by the third romantic attitude consisting in the realm of freedom in the modern state. At this point, the religious dimension has vanished, or at least largely been superseded in its earlier function, and chivalry belongs to the past in a social stage in which individuals are caught up in the realm of the modern, independent individual. Religion, which continues to be central in the modern context, has meantime been demoted from its earlier central position. Yet religion remains of vital importance since it is in and through religion that “a nation defines what it considers to be true.”65 The importance of this point can be illustrated by the continued struggle throughout the Western world about the place of religion in society. According to Aristotle, human beings, who are social, satisfy their needs in organized social structures.66 Hegel breaks with Rousseau and Marx, but goes further than Aristotle in suggesting that individuals can only realize themselves in the modern state. At stake is whether full human realization is possible prior to the modern world, as Rousseau thinks; only within the modern world, as Hegel thinks; or only after leaving the modern world behind, as Marx thinks. In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel presents an account of the realization of the human individual in the modern state. In the Aesthetics, Hegel points out that particular individuals are called upon to act in the most varied ways in response to situations and events in which art can no longer play the same social role. Art continues to be important if for no other reason than that human beings, who cannot live solely on the conceptual plane, require as well art and religion. Hegel’s theory of art turns on the basic distinction between three ways in which the ideal, the true idea of beauty, is realized. The unification sought in symbolic art and achieved in classical art is transcended in romantic art. Romantic art arises on the ruins of classical art, which runs in the direction of comedy, satire, and what Hegel describes as “perfunctory and bad technique” (A, I, 575). Hegel states in different ways his view that romanticism is the highest form of art. In romanticism, the principle

182

chapter five

of inner subjectivity takes precedence in an anthropomorphism striving for infinite self-knowing (HA I, 518–19). At this point, the true absolute reveals itself in art (HA I, 520). Again: romantic art presents the reconciliation of God with the world (HA I, 521). Hegel maintains his view since the Phenomenology of the peculiarly important place of Christian art in reconciling God and the world, ideas and ideals. Yet as before, he continues to insist on the limitations of art, even in its highest or romantic form, which points beyond itself to forms of truth lying beyond art (HA I, 520). Hegel sums up his approach to the particular forms of art in several passages in the Aesthetics stressing different aspects of the overall position. In the introduction he writes, “This we take to be the general character of the symbolic, classical, and romantic forms of art, as the three relations of the Idea to its shape in the sphere of art. They consist in the striving for, the attainment, and the transcendence of the Ideal as the true Idea of beauty” (A, I, 81). At stake is a series of different views of the Platonic relation between the idea and the ideal of beauty. In the last sentence to the introduction to the account of symbolic art, he indicates its specific place between symbolic and romantic art in writing that “symbolic art seeks that perfect unity of inner meaning and external shape which classical art finds in the presentation of substantial individuality to sensuous contemplation, and which romantic art transcends in its superior spirituality” (italics in original). Hegel stresses two familiar points: first, classical art reaches the adequacy of content and form, and, second, this quasi-Aristotelian solution, although an important step, is finally inadequate to manifest the spiritual dimension of human life (HA I, 302). Hegel returns to this latter point in a passage in the introduction to the romantic form of art. In stressing spirit, he writes about the dissolution of the classical form of art leading to its romantic reformulation: “The simple solid totality of the Ideal is dissolved and it falls apart into the double totality of (a) the subjective being in itself and (b) the external appearance, in order to enable the spirit to reach through this cleavage a deeper reconciliation in its own element of inwardness. The spirit, which has as its principle its accord with itself, the unity of its essence with its reality, can find its correspondent existence only in its own native spiritual world of feeling, the heart, and the inner life in general. Thereby the spirit comes to the consciousness of having its opposite, i.e., its existence, on and in itself as spirit and therewith alone of enjoying its infinity and freedom” (HA I, 518). The central point is that in knowing spirit, one knows oneself

hegel on art and spiritual truth

183

as spirit, hence accedes to full self-consciousness that is only possible for human beings, and to which art has a central contribution to make.

Hegel and the End of Art Hegel’s view of the development of art through a series of phases points to the historicity of the art object and of art itself. It seems that if art comes into being, then it can also pass away. Yet Hegel, who thinks that art has in a sense come to an end, does not think that either knowledge or philosophy have come to an end. Hegel’s conception of the end of art has attracted attention in the recent debate. The idea that art is either over or that it continues but no longer has an important role to play is rife in the debate. Yet no clear agreement has emerged. Anthony Cascardi states, “Hegel says that art is no longer possible in the present age.”67 Rutter similarly begins his recent book by stating in the first sentence, “That Hegel bears witness in his lectures on aesthetics not to a cessation of artistic activity but to a decline in its significance for human self-understanding is quite certain.”68 Dieter Henrich insists that “[Hegel] sharply opposed the general opinion of his age and of his friends about the prospects for art, and maintained that art could no longer be the expression of truth, the medium of man’s insight into the main features of the world from which he comes and in which he lives.”69 According to Moland, Hegel only thinks that “art can no longer have the significance for the modern Western world that it had for the Greeks,70 since no art form can portray the complex embeddedness of modern subjectivity, which can only be articulated in philosophy.71 Moland suggests that visual art cannot depict Christian inwardness, though this could arguably have been the case earlier as well. Others take as the example the Romantic ideal, which is essentially concerned with the inner life that has withdrawn from the eternal world. According to John Barber, in the modern world, art is not suited or again not well suited to depicting inner life.72 Hegel is arguably less pessimistic but more realistic about the social function of art than many of his critics.73 For Hegel, who is acutely aware of the importance of history, art is a function of the historical moment. Art in the full sense requires unity that no longer exists in modern times when art itself has entered into a period of “dissolution and decay” (HA I, 576) in which “art falls to pieces” (HA I, 608). Since art is historical, and

184

chapter five

since the very subject matter has changed, there are historical limits to the possible forms of art. “No Homer, Sophocles, etc., no Dante, Ariosto, or Shakespeare can appear in our day” (HA I, 608). As we shall see in the next chapter, Marx, perhaps following Hegel, later makes an analogous point. The controversial statement about the end of art belongs to a passage in which Hegel considers the conditions of a scientific approach to aesthetics as well as the general worth of the topic (HA I, 7). Hegel points out that art can serve many ends, such as recreation, entertainment, and so on. He claims that, in a passage already in cited in part, it is only when it is taken in itself that art is in fact art, and that it has a legitimate claim to truth. “Now, in this its freedom alone is fine art truly art, and it only fulfills its supreme task when it has placed itself in the same sphere as religion and philosophy, and when it is simply one way of bringing to our minds and expressing the Divine, the deepest interest of mankind, and the most comprehensive truths of the spirit” (HA I, 7; Hegel’s emphasis). I take Hegel to be restating a point already pressed earlier in the accounts of art in the Phenomenology and in the Encyclopedia: like philosophy and religion, art constitutes an essential path to knowledge. In the Aesthetics, Hegel contends that art is a source of knowledge about human beings in the most varied and important ways, including philosophy and religion. More specifically art is a central form of expression of human understanding about the world and themselves, in short an indispensable window on the human soul. Art carries out its task in depicting what is supposedly highest in specifically sensuous fashion “in displaying even the highest reality sensuously” (HA I, 7). This suggests there is a highest plane, level, or reality, which art manifests in sensuous fashion. This latter point can be interpreted restrictively as indicating that art must have sensuous form, for instance in some sense be a thing, or artwork, such as a statue or a painting, or in a wider sense that would include, say, music and poetry. Hegel’s conception of art is anti-Platonic in that its subject matter lies in the suprasensuous world not independent from but rather derivative of the activities of finite beings. Art’s aim lies in rescuing its subject matter from the here and now in providing something beyond sensuous reality and finitude. Art creates a middle term between pure thought and the transient here and now, between “nature and finite reality and the infinite freedom of conceptual thinking” (HA I, 8). Hegel understands art as the appearance (Schein) or manifestation of truth, which is not a mere deception. He defends this conception against various forms of the common sense reproach, or the naturalistic view for

hegel on art and spiritual truth

185

which the natural world is the only real world. Hegel’s basic claim seems to be that truth that does not appear would seem to go against what we mean by truth, which in all cases refers to appearance of some kind to some audience at a given time and place. Since truth depends on the observer, Hegel links truth claims to the observer in providing an anthropological basis to his aesthetic theory. Such claims further relate to what it is that is appearing, which is appearing truly or falsely, and beyond the single human subject to human spirit in general. For instance, scientific theories depend for their acceptance on observations carried out by an individual or group of individuals, but accepted by the scientific community. Hegel writes, “But appearance itself [Schein] is essential to its existence [Wesen]. Truth would not be truth if it did not show itself and appear, if it were not truth for someone and for itself, as well as for the spirit in general too” (HA I, 8). If there can be appearance, there can also be false appearance. Criticism about deception (Täuschung) is warranted only through comparison between one or more art objects in the external world of true appearances (Erscheinungen) and what Hegel calls the inner sensory world that we take to be reality. Hegel—who employs both Wirklichkeit and Realität while English has only a single term, “reality”—points out that we are used to taking reality as the point of reference in judgments about the lack of reality. This view opposes truth and reality on the side of the inner world, and then in the outer world in which works of art lacks reality and truth. If true reality is not external but internal, then Greek art, which does not possess the spiritual dimension that only later arises through the emergence of Christian religion, is no more than a stage in the development of art, a stage which is later superseded by romantic art. The “real” is what, in Hegel’s words, has being in and for itself, hence is independent of the here and now. The distinction between true appearance (Erscheinung) and false appearance (Schein) justifies the claim that truth appears through. “Thus, far from being mere pure appearance [blosser Schein], a higher reality and truer existence is to be ascribed to the phenomena of art in comparison with [those of] ordinary reality [der gewöhnlichen Wirklichkeit]” (HA I, 9). The writing of history is concerned, not, like art, with immediate existence (Dasein) but rather with spiritual appearance. Thus art is not deceptive in comparison to truer expositions of the writing of history (die wahrhaftigeren Darstellungen der Geschichtsschreibung). In turning to philosophy, Hegel reaffirms the view he has consistently held since the Phenomenology that the content of thought, his way of designating philosophy, is the truest type of reality. There is a hierarchy in the

186

chapter five

relative truth claims of the various approaches. Not unlike Aristotle, who famously prefers poetry to history, Hegel prefers art to ordinary existence and to the writing of history. Art is not deceptive since in pointing beyond itself to a spiritual plane it brings it to representation (Vorstellung). This further dimension is falsely denied by immediate existence, which deceptively presents itself as true reality. In this respect art has a comparative advantage over the unsophisticated standpoint of immediate existence. The cognitive limits of art relate to the limits of its content. Only a part of truth can be displayed in artworks. It must be able to be displayed in sensory fashion as in the case of the Greek gods. Some types of content do not lend themselves so readily to be taken up and manifested. According to Hegel, this includes the Christian conception of truth and above all—Hegel is thinking within the context of the first third of the nineteenth century—the spirit of the contemporary world. He seems to have in mind conceptions of religion and of reason. Both lie beyond what art can provide toward becoming aware of the absolute. Hegel’s suggestion that the cognitive limits of art fall below those of religion and philosophy builds on the view already advanced in the Phenomenology. Religion in the form of art has a more limited cognitive capacity than revealed religion. Unlike the thinkers of the Christian Middle Ages, Hegel thinks art is incapable of rendering the highest religious truths. In that restricted sense he agrees with the Jewish and perhaps also the Muslim view that the highest truths of religion cannot be depicted through art. Further religion, which is a historical manifestation of human culture, evolves. Hegel marks this change in stating that the specificity of artistic production and artworks no longer satisfies our highest need (unser höchstes Bedürfnis). Hegel, as noted above, takes an anthropological approach to religion more often associated with his critic Feuerbach,74 the same anthropological approach to religion that was quickly opposed to Hegel by the young Hegelians. Hegel, like Feuerbach, depicts religion as a human creation.75 The Phenomenology depicts the relation of the finite and the infinite in the unhappy consciousness depicted as occurring within the limits of consciousness, not from a traditional Christian perspective as the interaction between the individual and God. Hence he is closer to Feuerbach, closer to his young Hegelian critics than they understand. According to Hegel, religion responds to a human need, which was earlier met through religion in the form of art, but which is no longer the case. Hegel is perhaps thinking of various religious cult forms in stating that in the present historical

hegel on art and spiritual truth

187

moment we are beyond the point of worshipping and praying to artworks. Unlike the religious thinkers of the Christian Middle Ages, Hegel thinks art is and always has been simply incapable of rendering the highest religious truths in sensuous form. This disqualifies the medieval Christian effort to know God either directly or indirectly through religious art, since revealed religion lies beyond religion in the form of art. According to Hegel, art, which need no longer be evaluated according to its religious function, requires “a higher touchstone and a different test” (HA I, 10). Art earlier functioned within religion, and hence could earlier be evaluated on that basis. At present it requires an extra-religious, cognitive perspective, because “thought and reflection have spread their wings above fine art” (HA I, 10). Though the detachment of art from religion can lead to artistic decay, Hegel is clear that the period now belongs to the past in which art satisfied, or at least was thought to satisfy, spiritual needs (Befriedigung der geistigen Bedürfnisse gewährt). The Protestant Reformation displaced attention from outer displays of fidelity in the form of icons and images intended to depict the religious dimension in concrete form to inner faith. Hence art’s social role changed. In loosening the ties that since the early Middle Ages bound it to religion, art became increasingly secular, increasingly unrelated to the religious dimension, increasingly caught up in the most mundane types of subject matter and in mere technical skill. As Hegel notes, those who come after the Reformation “no longer venerate works of art.”76 Hegel does not doubt that “the beautiful days of Greek art, like the golden age of the later Middle Ages, are gone” (HA I, 10). Kant argues in aesthetics from particular cases to general rules, but in theoretical philosophy from general rules to particular cases. Hegel is perhaps thinking of Kant in his remark that the contemporary understanding of the development of reflection (Reflexionsbildung) invokes general perspectives, such as forms, laws, duties, rights, and so on to regulate the particular. The Kantian emphasis on reason is not very different from, but rather in harmony with, the spirit of the times. In that sense contemporary philosophy is a kind of rational sublimation of the surrounding world. Hegel draws attention to a comparison between contemporary art and the products of imagination and sensation. Art requires a type of life (Lebendigkeit) independent of rules and maxims, but consistent with the senses and feelings. Imagination brings together the general (or universal) and the rational as if united in a concrete sensory appearance. Yet the circumstances of the contemporary world are not propitious for art. One factor is the general

188

chapter five

emphasis on reflection, as manifested through increasing cultural emphasis on meanings and judgments, which misleads the practicing artist to bring more reflection into his work. Through spiritual education (geistiger Bildung ) the practicing artist is situated within such a reflective world and its relations. The romantic idea of the artist as isolated from the surrounding society is not practically possible. The main idea seems to be that, since the world has changed, art must also change. Art requires certain conditions to work its magic, conditions that for historical reasons, such as the change in the nature of religion, and the prevalent emphasis on reason, no longer obtain. In this specific context, Hegel famously writes, “In all these respect art, considered in its highest vocation, is and remains for us a thing of the past” (HA I, 11). Art, which has lost its genuine truth (echte Wahrheit) and lively quality (Lebendigkeit), is now resituated within our representation (Vorstellung). I take Hegel to be saying that the social role of art within human culture has been transformed on historical grounds. This corresponds to his view that, as he indicates in the Phenomenology, in the wake of the French Revolution there is a time of transition to a new period (P para. 11, 6–7). Hegel thinks that in the present historical moment, works of art provide enjoyment and appeal to reason. In other words, sheer enjoyment increasingly yields to rational study. This transformation is directly linked to the decline in art’s capacity to provide full satisfaction merely as art. According to Hegel, art should be treated rigorously, which invites us to thoughtful consideration of what art is without any view of recreating its former function (zu dem Zwecke, Kunst wieder hervorzurufen). In essence, Hegel is suggesting that the change in the social function of art does not permit the recovery of what it once was, but rather close study of it. Hegel’s thesis of the end of art, which continues to attract attention,77 is ambiguous. The ambiguity lies in Hegel’s belief that in one sense art already came to an end in Greek art, which reached its high point in Greek classicism. From this perspective, as noted, romantic art is art beyond art. Yet Hegel is not saying that art is over, finished, done with, or dead. He is also not saying that it has lost its cognitive function. He is rather saying that as a result of historical changes in religion and modern society, art can no longer satisfy human needs in the same way it once did. He says roughly the same thing about the Christian religion as well. In the Jenaer Realphilosophie, he indicates that it is not this individual man but the godly or the divine that dies in becoming human.78 Hegel, who believes in historical development, hence continuity through change, is notoriously associated with various claims about the

hegel on art and spiritual truth

189

“end.” His thesis of the end of art has been widely but superficially influential in philosophy and culture in general. The misunderstanding of Hegel’s view of the end of art is comparable to misunderstandings about other equally extreme claims widely but erroneously attributed to him concerning the end of philosophy, the death of God, the end of history, and so on. Hegel never says that history has come, is about to come, or will later come to an end. This view is due to Alexandre Kojève. According to Kojève, Hegel believes that history ends with Napoleon. Kojève later amended this view to claim that from the Hegelian perspective, certainly anachronistically as concerns Hegel, history ends with Stalin.79 The myth that Hegel thinks history has come to an end is an artifact of the Hegelian debate, which was more recently popularized by Kojève’s politically conservative admirer, Francis Fukuyama.80 This claim about history resembles an even more famous, influential but equally inaccurate claim that philosophy comes to a high point and to an end in Hegel. This claim was a central theme immediately after his death in the young Hegelian reaction to his position, perhaps most famously expressed by Engels. The latter invented Marxism in calling attention, following Schelling, to a watershed distinction between idealism, which peaks in Hegel’s thought, and materialism. I come back to this point in the next chapter. Yet Hegel believes that God has died. In the Phenomenology, in a passage on revealed religion, Hegel, who is discussing a hymn by Luther, remarks in reference to what he calls the unhappy consciousness that for such a person “God is dead” (see P para. 752, 454–55).81

Danto and Hegel’s Thesis of the End of Art Hegel’s conception of the end of art has been widely echoed by a series of writers including Nietzsche, Benjamin, Adorno, and Heidegger, each of whom presents some version of this thesis.82 Among recent writers, this theme is most closely identified with Hans Belting83 and especially with Arthur Danto. Danto initially presented this thesis in an article, “The End of Art” (1984)84, later considered Hegel’s end of art thesis,85 and still later developed his view in book form in After the End of Art (1997).86 Danto refers to Hegel, but their aesthetic views are very dissimilar. Hegel’s claim concerns the relation of art to culture and the aspirations of human beings. Danto’s claim turns on the perennial question of what is an artwork. This question was highlighted early in the twentieth century by the artist Marcel Duchamp, who became interested in what is called “readymades,”

190

chapter five

or found objects, which could be presented as art. In 1917, he famously submitted a urinal, which he called “Fountain,” to an art exhibition. This object raises the obvious but very difficult question: what is a work of art? Danto’s version of the end of art thesis can be considered as a distant response to Duchamp as well as to Clement Greenberg’s quasi-Kantian view that about the unchangeableness of art.87 Danto’s main interest does not lie in discussing the appropriate role of art in the social and historical context. It rather lies in examining the possibility of art in terms of what we can take an art object to be. Danto’s answer, with the mimetic theory of art in the background, lies in suggesting that what at any given time is meant by “art” is a function of the dominant style. He writes, “In our narrative, at first only mimesis [imitation] was art, then several things were art but each tried to extinguish its competitors, and then, finally, it became apparent that there were no stylistic or philosophical constraints. There is no special way works of art have to be. And that is the present and, I should say, the final moment in the master narrative. It is the end of the story.” 88

Danto’s main concern is a stipulative definition of art but not, like Hegel, art’s social function against the historical background. Danto concentrates on the question of what art is as a function of various artistic styles. From Plato to the present, Western art exhibits many different views about art. For Giorgio Vasari, for instance, centuries after Plato the criterion of art was still representation. The ancient view that art is mimetic later gave way to other views, which were at least identifiable, but which later led to the present period in which there is no dominant paradigm. As late as modernism, there was still an identifiable artistic paradigm. But that ended when the distinction between works of art and objects could not longer be made out, say, in the work of Duchamp or Warhol.89 Danto, who relates the idea of a dominant paradigm to a particular period, thinks of the present period, which lacks such a paradigm, as posthistorical. This view has been enormously influential as well as controversial.90 Danto has answered his critics.91 Danto’s theory about the end of art points to different but interrelated questions, such as the following: Is it Hegelian in any recognizable sense? Is it correct? Does it force a rethinking of Hegel’s view of the end of art? My answer to the first question is that there is no useful way of deciding whether a successor theory is Hegelian, or genuinely Hegelian, though it is clear that Danto is influenced by Hegel.

hegel on art and spiritual truth

191

My answer to the second question is that Danto does not demonstrate his point since his example does not illustrate his central claim. My answer to the third point is that, since Hegel is talking about the social function of art and Danto is rather concerned with its stipulative definition, Danto does not force us to rethink Hegel’s claim about the end of art. Danto’s concern with the end of art can be interpreted as raising two questions: Is there still art? What is meant by art? His answer is that there is still art but there is no longer a canonical view of what art is, since the distinction between art and non-art can no longer be drawn. He points, for instance, to Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box which looked sufficiently like the commercial object so that merely by inspecting a photograph one could not distinguish what was an art object and what was not.92 In effect, Danto employs Leibniz’s principle of the identity of indiscernables to claim that the distinction between art and non-art cannot be made out, which he in turn uses to illustrate the wider claim that the multiplication of different artistic styles means that through its historical evolution art itself has come to an end. Danto’s central insight seems to be that the agreement about the essence of art gave way to disagreement followed by an open-ended period in which anything goes.93 Yet if what counts as art is stipulative, then it is neither more nor less the case that there is art in a period such as ancient Greece when observers agree about what art is while disagreeing about its analysis or in a period such as our own when they disagree. The question of the uses of art is different from the question of the nature of art. The former has changed over time but the latter has not. The historical changes in society result in changes of the social role of art as Hegel perceptively notes. Yet the rather different problem of what is a work of art, which simply cannot be settled other than through fiat, but not through argument, has not changed over time. It, hence, makes just as much sense to argue that there has never been any art when judgment is passed from a particular perspective as to claim that art continues today through a kind of stylistic pandemonium.

On Art and Knowledge after the End of Art Hegel’s and Danto’s independent views about the end of art are finally fairly tame since neither believes art has in any important sense come to an end. Danto shares Hegel’s conviction, which it seems implausible to

192

chapter five

deny, that artists are still producing art even after the supposed end of art. His thesis is another sign of the conceptual exhaustion following Hegel, when it no longer seemed possible to continue to go further down the same philosophical road, when it appeared he had already said about everything that could be said. This exhaustion is distantly reflected in French postmodernism through the unsubstantiated suggestion, widely identified with Lyotard, that there cannot be any general argument, claim, or analysis.94 Danto rehearses a form of this assertion in the aesthetic domain in the denial that, given the very multiplicity of artistic styles, there can be any theory of art. It remains to examine the relation between art and cognition. In assessing the cognitive function of art after the end of art, we need to distinguish between Hegel’s theory of knowledge and his view of the relation of art and religion. Hegel applies his generally constructivist theory of knowledge in his theory of art as the unification of content with an adequate shape in a free totality (HA I, 427) in which spirit literally makes itself into an object (HA I, 434). This does not mean that art has come to an end, nor that for Hegel we live in a period after art. It rather means that as society changes, art changes and its social role also changes. One way to put the point is that at present we no longer seek anything so grand as ultimate truth in art, for instance in its supposed capacity to represent the divine in images, statues, paintings, poetry, and so on. If art has lost its earlier capacity to represent the great religious themes, which no longer have their earlier hold on us, it does not mean that it has also lost all cognitive function. On the contrary, it conserves another cognitive function it has always had. One way to put the point is to say that art and art objects carry out a centrally important function with respect to recognition in a social context. Hegel works out his widely known theory of recognition piecemeal in different writings, in the Phenomenology in the struggle for recognition between human beings that, as he indicates in the Encyclopedia, reaches its highest level, or mutual recognition through love. In the Philosophy of Right, as noted, Hegel formulates conception of self-objectification underlying the sense in which we come to self-consciousness in work and through its objects. I take Hegel to be saying that we recognize ourselves in and through what we do. Art and art objects of the most varied kind are a central form of the way in which, as Gadamer points out for Hegel, in virtue of his view of self-recognition, in art “humanity encounters itself.”95

hegel on art and spiritual truth

193

In depicting art as the manifestation of spirit, Hegel points to the way we know ourselves in and through the work of art. In other words, if the standard is not mere imitation or representation but grasping reality, we must say that art does not provide knowledge of the mind-independent, invisible real, but does provide knowledge of the subject, of ourselves. Hegel signals this view very clearly in different ways throughout the his lectures on aesthetics, for instance late in the first volume in writing that in giving up its traditional religious topics art “makes Humanus its new holy of holies: i.e., the depths and heights of the human heart as such, mankind in its joys and sorrows, its strivings, deeds and fates” (HA I, 607). He signals this view at greater length very clearly early in the book, when he writes, “The universal need for art, that is to say, is man’s rational need to lift the inner and outer world into his spiritual consciousness as an object in which he recognizes his own self. When art directs our attention to sensory exemplars in aesthetic experience of which we become conscious in a special way, it also shows us our autonomy as we represent ourselves and our world, ourselves in our world, and our world in ourselves. The need for this spiritual freedom he satisfies, on the one hand, within by making what is within himself explicit to himself, but correspondingly by giving outward reality to this his explicit self, and thus in this duplication of himself by bringing what is in him into sight and knowledge for himself and others. This is the free rationality of man in which all acting and knowing, as well as art too, have their basis and necessary origin.” (HA I, 31)

According to Hegel, writing in the first half of the nineteenth century, hence during the modern period, art enables human beings to become self-conscious. Human beings respond to the desire to know themselves in freely representing themselves and their surroundings. We do this through the creation of aesthetic objects of the most varied kinds. In other words, art helps us to reach self-consciousness, and thus to know ourselves. And in this crucial role, it has in no sense been outmoded.

chapter six

Marx, Marxism, and Aesthetic Realism

M

arxist aesthetics, which includes important figures such as Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, Terry Eagleton, and Fredric Jameson, has long been one of the liveliest and most interesting of all the many Marxist themes. Major themes in Marxist aesthetics include aesthetic realism, art as ideology, and the relation of aesthetics and politics.1 It is further an important source of the anti-Platonic argument for art as a source of truth. Yet after the breakup of the Soviet Union starting in 1989, leading to a widespread turn away from Marx and Marxism, interest in Marxist aesthetics sharply declined in the West. It is axiomatic that throughout the Middle Ages no wide-ranging philosophical effort of any kind was ever undertaken or even deemed necessary to justify artistic claims to knowledge. Such claims were simply assumed to be correct as the theological basis of a series of Christian analyses of beauty—a theory of aesthetics in the modern sense as it emerged after Baumgarten did not yet exist—firmly rooted in religious faith. In Marxism a postreligious political faith arguably takes the place earlier occupied by religion. Marxism further deploys a series of arguments of varying levels of cogency to justify knowledge claims in relation to particular artistic styles. Marxist aesthetics builds on the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.2 Marx was particularly interested in the classical literary background, including ancient Greek literature, especially Aeschylus, as well as Shakespeare. His interest in aesthetics, especially literature, was further strengthened by his period at Bonn University, where he studied with A. W. Schlegel, who, with his brother Friedrich Schlegel, was one of the leaders of the early German Romantic movement. Engels, on the contrary, was

marx, marxism, and aesthetic realism

195

attracted to the Junges Deutschland movement, a group of politically inclined, progressive writers, which was important in Germany from about 1830 to 1850. This movement, which originated in Italy, and then spread to France and Ireland, included among its core proponents Karl Gutzkow, Heinrich Laube, Theodor Mundt, Ludolf Wienberg, and such more widely known figures as Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Börne, and Georg Büchner. I will follow the lead of others in separating the aesthetic views of Marx and Engels. Though the political views of Marx and Engels coincide, their philosophical as well as their aesthetic views differ in basic ways.3 I argue that their aesthetic views follow from their very different epistemological theories.4 Marxist aesthetics is closely linked to the Marxist theory of knowledge invented by Engels, including the notorious reflection theory of knowledge, which is unrelated to Marx’s own approach to knowledge. Marxism since Engels routinely conflates Marx and Marxism. In describing Marxist aesthetics, I will outline the very different approaches to knowledge in Marx and Marxism before describing Marx’s obiter dicta on aesthetics. I will then turn to the debate on socialist realism before ending with discussion of Lukács’s realist approach to literature.

On the Epistemological Relation of Marx and Marxism Marx and Marxism feature different approaches to aesthetics, which derive from very different approaches to theory of knowledge, but which are covered up by routine Marxist claims for the seamless continuity between Marx and Marxism. Beginning with Engels, who invented Marxism, Marxists have always insisted on the seamless continuity between Marx and Marxism. This claim is advanced in various ways in the Marxist debate. Engels insists on the basic distinction between philosophy, which allegedly reaches its high point and end in Hegelian idealism, in drawing attention to a supposed watershed distinction between idealism and materialism. He further claims that Feuerbach enabled Marx to escape so to speak from idealism, hence to materialism, which in his interpretation is situated beyond philosophy. This raises the question of the status of the views of Marx and Marxism, a basic query to which different answers are provided by a series of Marxists as well as by Marx himself. In the famous preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx claims that in Brussels in 1845, he and Engels “decided to work out in common the opposition of our

196

chapter six

view to the ideological view of German philosophy.”5 Engels, who depicts Marxism as the positive result of the dissolution of the Hegelian school, suggests that there is a single theory created by both Marx and himself. For instance, in Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy, perhaps the single most influential statement of Marxism, in an important footnote, Engels modestly but straightforwardly claims that both laid the foundations of what, by implication, could only be a single theory. “Here I may be permitted to make a personal explanation. Lately repeated reference has been made to my share in this theory, and so I can hardly avoid saying a few words here to settle this particular point. I cannot deny that both before and during my forty years’ collaboration with Marx I had a certain independent share in laying the foundations, and more particularly in elaborating the theory.”6 Lenin, who follows this line, famously claims that Marxism is the science of Marx’s views. Yet the views of Marx and Marxism were always very different, clearly incompatible. In very general terms, Marx favors a categorial interpretation of experience, closely related in this respect to German idealism beginning in Kant. He differs from Kant, who stresses that immutable, ahistorical categories must be derived prior to and apart from experience in his emphasis on historically-mutable categories derived from and, hence, dependent on experience. Marx conjoins his categorial approach to experience with a complex analysis of the role of the economic dimension in the important distinction between the superstructure and base. Engels, on the contrary, rejects any form of the categorial approach to experience in favor of what is now often called direct, or naïve realism. Economic determinism is developed in the German Ideology as the theory of ideology, which Engels applies in distinguishing between types of art on stylistic grounds. Marx was trained in philosophy soon after Hegel died, in a period when the latter’s influence remained extremely strong, even overwhelming. He earned a PhD in philosophy in 1841 with a dissertation entitled “The Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature.” Philosophy of nature, or a philosophical approach to nature, was important in the modern period before a clear distinction was drawn between philosophy and natural science. Newton’s famous Principia is entitled Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687). Kant studied The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science and the second part of Hegel’s Encyclopedia is entitled the Philosophy of Nature (Naturphiloso­ phie). Hegel takes the position that the need for philosophy emerges in difference. In his initial philosophical publication, Hegel studies the Dif­ ference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy. Following

marx, marxism, and aesthetic realism

197

this model, Marx’s dissertation applies Hegel’s view of difference to isolate the difference in two early Greek views of nature. As Marx was coming to intellectual maturity, Hegel’s influence was so strong that the young Hegelians, a loose group of contemporary left-wing intellectuals to which Marx belonged, believed Hegel had brought philosophy to a peak and to an end. The origins of Marx’s thought lie in his effort to define his views in reaction to Hegel’s. His relation to Hegel is similar to Hegel’s relation to Kant, who is present in every page of Hegel’s writings. Marx’s early writings from the 1840s continually refer to Hegel, and his later writings presuppose Hegel’s strong influence on Marx’s categorial approach to experience, above all to the grasp of modern industrial capitalism. It is an open question as to how well the young Marx understood Hegel, whose thought is not easy to master. It is arguable that Marx did not understand or fully understand a position that he sometimes acutely but also sometimes mistakenly criticized. It is arguable as well that he misunderstands the relation of his own position to Hegel’s. In the second afterword (1873) to Capital, Marx famously writes, “My dialectical method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. . . . With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.”7 This statement plays a crucial role in the development of Marxism. Generations of Marxists have understood this passage to mean that idealism and materialism are incompatible. According to this view, one can be either an idealist or a materialist, but not both. From the Marxist angle of vision, Hegel’s position is idealism, not materialism, and his form of idealism is both rational and irrational or mystical. Its irrational or mystical aspect does not prevent it from making fundamental conceptual discoveries. According to Marxism, Marx successfully extracted the rational kernel from Hegel’s mystical position as the basis of his own position. Marx’s position, though dependent on Hegel’s for an important impetus, is not in any sense idealist but materialist. All of these statements are at least controversial and probably false. “Materialism” is used in this context as a synonym for “realism.” In the thought of this period the description of idealism and materialism as incompatible opposites and the identification of materialism and realism was prominently associated with Fichte.8 Idealism and realism are not incompatible but compatible. Kant’s famous “Refutation of Idealism” rejects “bad” idealism that Kant attributes to Descartes and Berkeley but not idealism as such. The critical philosophy combines transcendental

198

chapter six

idealism and empirical realism. Fichte, who is inconsistent, arguably draws on both idealism and realism in his own position. Above it was pointed out that Hegelian idealism features empirical realism. Hegel continually stresses the concrete over the abstract.9 Marx may have believed that in discussing political economy and in stressing empiricism he was going beyond idealism and even beyond philosophy. In the Preface to the Paris Manuscripts (1844), he claims that his results are based on “a wholly empirical analysis.”10 Yet his approach in this text is very close to, difficult to differentiate from, Hegel’s categorial approach. Marx only rarely describes his methodological beliefs. Perhaps the most important account in his writings occurs in the Introduction to the Grundrisse (abbreviated in this text as G), especially in part 3, which the editors have entitled “The Method of Political Economy.”11 Marx here describes a categorial approach to experience and knowledge obviously closely related to the views of Kant and Hegel.

On Marx’s Theory of Knowledge In very general terms, Marx’s theory of knowledge has three main components, including contextualism, or a relation of cognitive claims to the surrounding context; a categorial approach to the empirical world, which develops an approach central to German idealism beginning with Kant; and an emphasis on the economic component of modern industrial capitalism on everything else, which is arguably most prominent in the superstructure-base distinction, which some observers, such as Jürgen Habermas, take as the central insight in the position, but whose interpretation is difficult. Marx’s contextualism follows upon other forms of contextualism, which emerge after the modern view of the subject. Generally speaking, “contextualism” is a view that other claims, for instance claims for knowledge, depend in some crucial way on the social and historical surroundings. Contextualism only arises in the modern debate after the invention of the modern subject. There is no subject in the modern sense in ancient Greek philosophy. What later becomes the modern subject arises in early Christian thought in order to solve the problem of individual responsibility. This view is only plausible if individuals are free to act and take responsibility for their actions. This view, which is already formulated by Augustine,12 later influences such thinkers as Montaigne and above all Descartes.

marx, marxism, and aesthetic realism

199

The invention of the modern subject raises the question of its relation to the surrounding world. Descartes, Kant and a number of others are anticontextualists, who believe the subject is in no sense restricted or constrained by its surroundings. Contextualists, on the contrary, claim the subject is restricted or constrained in some significant way by its surroundings. Anticontextualism is more common than contextualism. From Descartes to Davidson, a long series of writers, including Kant, advance versions of the view that the subject is unconstrained by its surroundings. Frege, for instance, explains logic without reference to the mental or the material worlds. Frege’s anticontextualism depends on the critical philosophy. Kant is a philosophical anti-contextualist, concerned to work out the conditions of knowledge in general on the a priori plane, by definition prior to, hence in independence of, context however understood. In varying degrees, all the post-Kantian German idealists are epistemological contextualists, hence aware of and interested in the relation between cognitive claims and the context in which they arise. There are different forms of cognitive contextualism, different ways of understanding the claim that epistemology, aesthetics, ontology, or ethics depend in some crucial way on the surrounding world. In general this term is understood to refer to the dependence of important features of language (and thought) on the social, conceptual, linguistic, historical, or other surroundings. Dependence, which is often taken to mean relative to, is interpreted in many different ways. One form of dependence is relative to a point of view, such as contemporary perspective (Zeitgeist), worldview (Weltanschauung), and so on. This approach is identified with Wilhelm Dilthey and rejected by Edmund Husserl and Heidegger. Another kind of dependence is relative to a framework, linguistic or other­ wise. This idea was worked out in philosophy of science by Thomas Kuhn under the heading of a shift of what he called scientific paradigms. G. E. Moore’s celebrated refutation of idealism, which was directed against Berkeley, Kant, and all subsequent idealists, specifically including British idealists, presupposes immediate knowledge based on common sense. It was strenuously criticized by Ludwig Wittgenstein, who proposes the view that cognitive claims are relative or indexed to what he called language games (Sprachspiele). Wittgenstein’s attention to language was one of the important factors leading to a focus on language, or linguistic relativity. Thus it is sometimes believed that claims are relative to, or dependent on, the language in which they are formulated. This is the main insight in the

200

chapter six

widely known linguistic turn, a term which seems to have been invented by Richard Rorty.13 Still a further form of contextualism is historical relativism. Hegel can be understood as holding that claims to know are relative to, hence in some way dependent on, the historical moment in which they are worked out. Marx’s theory depends on the relation of the subject or subjects to the social and historical surroundings. Marx’s contextualism takes the form of a philosophical anthropology. By “philosophical anthropology,” I mean that he based the theory on a conception of finite human being, in his case a conception of finite human being situated in a social and historical context. It has already been noted more than once that in the Critique of Pure Reason Kant takes an anti-anthropological approach to the subject, which is not in context, or not situated. In refusing a psychological conception of the subject, he draws attention to the difference between finite human being and, in anticipating Husserl’s anti-psychologism, the abstract epistemological subject. This approach is turned on its head in Fichte, who claims utter fidelity to Kant, while immediately invoking an anthropological conception of the subject in context. Marx, who criticizes Hegel’s supposed lack of a conception of the finite human subject, criticizes the latter while borrowing and developing the relevant conception from Fichte. In the Paris Manuscripts, Marx draws attention to the distinction between basic reproductive needs, which must be met for the continued physical existence of the human being, and what can be called human needs. The latter, in Marx’s opinion, can only be met through the transition from capitalism to communism bringing about a new set of human possibilities.14 Marx follows the German idealists in taking a categorial approach to experience. In modern philosophy claims to know often rely on a relation of ideas to the mind-independent world. This approach is common to continental rationalism as well as to British empiricism. Descartes, for instance, depicts the relation to the world as mediated by ideas, some of which are unreliable and others of which, since they are clear and distinct, supposedly support a cognitive inference from the mind to the world. Similarly Locke calls attention to the distinction between complex ideas, which are created by the subject on the basis of simple ideas, and can be incorrect, and simple ideas, which are always correct. According to Locke, simple ideas, which are not created by the subject, match up one to one with the world. By a “categorial” approach to knowledge I mean that the relation between the cognitive subject and the object, or mind-independent world, is indirect, not direct, and that it is further mediated through categories.

marx, marxism, and aesthetic realism

201

German idealist epistemology depends on a categorial approach to knowledge, but there is no agreement about what that entails. The main German idealists — there is no agreement, but they are usually considered to be Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel—propose different theories of categories. According to Kant, a closed, invariant categorial set, which is the same for all subjects and does not change in history, can be deduced on a priori grounds. Hegel, who rejects the Kantian deduction, believes Fichte is the first one to deduce the categories, hence that the Kantian attempt is unsuccessful. Hegel is concerned with the logical progression of categories running from abstract to concrete. Marx’s theory of categories is central to his cognitive method. In general terms, he claims that categories are not independent of experience, but rather dependent on and derived from experience. And he further claims that as the social context changes, categories must also change as a condition of being able to grasp it. Marx’s categorial approach to knowledge is central to his epistemological view, but only rarely discussed. Marx takes up this theme in the introduction to the Grundrisse, especially in part 3 of the introduction, which is divided into four parts, and which is entitled by the editor as “The method of political economy.” Marx’s analysis stresses the situated, contextual character of human beings. Economists such as Smith and Ricardo, as well as philosophers such as Rousseau, start with free or independent individuals as they supposedly exist in nature. Marx’s discussion of production, or more precisely material production, begins with “the socially determined production of independent individuals” as they exist within a social group, which, since the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century, takes the form of civil society. Agreeing with Aristotle,15 Marx claims that human being is a social being (zoon politikon, from the Greek zoein, meaning “living,” and polis, meaning “city” and by extension “society,” literally a “social” being) who lives and develops in the state or society. As a human activity, production is also social. All production is of a certain kind in a certain social situation, hence never general. Now disagreeing with economists—it is at least significant that he does not include himself among them —Marx clams that they represent production as manifesting so-called suprahistorical or eternal laws, parenthetically the same critique he earlier brought against Proudhon,16 whereas distribution is wholly arbitrary. Marx criticizes this ahistorical approach on two grounds: for incorrectly separating production and distribution, and for failing to see that in the same ways as for production there must be general human laws for distribution. He sums up a somewhat confusing argument with the obviously empiricist claim

202

chapter six

that what are called general conditions of production are nothing more than abstract conceptions which are never exemplified in pure form. Marxist aesthetics follows from a similar basic insight as concerns the production of art in relation to modern industrial capitalism. Since his earliest criticism of Hegel Marx consistently suggests that economics is in some undefined sense prior to all other kinds of social phenomena, which accordingly need to be understood in terms of it. Legal relations and types of state cannot be grasped either directly or through the socalled “general development of the human mind,” an obvious reference to Hegel, but rather as rooted in the “material conditions of life” (materielle Lebensverhältnisse). It is usual to refer to this relation as one of the superstructure to the base. Using this terminology, Marx’s point amounts to the claim that the superstructure, including legal relations and types of state, depends on and can only be understood through the economic base, or material conditions in general. In a famous turn of phrase, Marx summarizes this claim in the statement that “the anatomy of this civil society . . . is to be sought in political economy” (CW, vol. 29, 262). When generalized, Marx’s suggestion amounts to the idea—familiar from the recent slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid,” that economics is the main explanatory factor in comprehending modern industrial society. In a single complex sentence, Marx now describes the principle following from his examination of Hegel and then his study of political economy, which, he affirms, has remained the guiding principle of his studies since they began in Paris, from the Paris Manuscripts until the present work. In an important passage, he writes, “In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of the material forces of production” (CW XXIX, 263). Like Hegel, Marx believes that human beings mainly meet their needs through economic activity within civil society. Now it makes eminently good sense, since continued personal existence is mainly more important than anything else, and since continued personal existence depends on economic activity, to hold that everything else we do is in some undefined sense dependent on our economic activity. Marx now makes that point. In place of the term “civil society,” which in Hegel refers to the totality of the material conditions of life, Marx now refers to the totality of the relations of production. “The totality of these relations of production [Die Gesam­ theit dieser Produktionsverhältnisse] constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation [die reale Basis], on which arises a legal and

marx, marxism, and aesthetic realism

203

political superstructure [Überbau] and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness” (CW XXIX, 263). This statement establishes an order of priority between the economic structure of society, or the base, and everything else, or the superstructure. Since the economic base is not fixed, but historically variable, the type of life one leads depends on, or is a function of, the particular way that real individuals meet their needs. It is not by chance that, say, workers in an automobile factory tend to think in one way or another. How they think is determined or at the very least usually influenced by the fact that they work in a particular industry at a particular moment in the development of modern industrial society. Marx, who does not provide any specific examples, makes the more general point that the superstructure depends on the economic base in writing: “The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life” (CW XXIX, 263). Lately it has become unclear how the influential volume known as the German Ideology is related to the manuscript Marx and Engels, whose precise contributions are unknown, in fact worked out together.17 Suffice it to say now that the superstructure-base model, which Marx delineates here, is implicit in the view in the German Ideology that consciousness depends on life, hence on material conditions. There pains were taken to argue that consciousness is determined by, but does not itself determine, life. Yet this thesis would be indefensible if understood as asserting that in any and all conditions consciousness is determined by life. Habermas, for instance, relies on this kind of interpretation in suggesting that Marx’s position is self-reflexively inconsistent so to speak, since there is no place for the theoretician within the theory.18 But it seems sound when understood as asserting that for the most part, or in the first instance, that is, prior to reflection, this is the case. Marx now repeats verbatim the claim from the German Ideology. “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness” (CW XXIX, 263).

On Engels’s Theory of Knowledge Engels’s approach to theory of knowledge is very different from, in fact incompatible with, that of Marx. It was suggested above that Marx’s position combines cognitive contextualism, a categorial approach, and emphasis on the economic component of modern industrial society. In general terms,

204

chapter six

one can say that Engels maintains contextualism but drops the categorial approach in favor of direct, or immediate, realism, now often called naïve realism, which he appears to equate with materialism, and further reworks economic determinism in a theory of ideology, which is later applied as a key insight in the distinctive Marxist approach to aesthetics as a source of social truth. Unlike Marx, who was trained as philosopher, Engels has a mainly distant relation to the texts and a schematic, simplistic view of philosophy. In part, the difference relates to talent; in part it relates to philosophical background. Engels’s philosophical background is very weak in comparison to its Marxist reputation. He was a philosophical autodidact, a high-school dropout, who began to work at an early age. He later went to Berlin, where he was associated with the Young Hegelians. While in Berlin, he attended some lectures, notably Schelling’s in 1841, when he was in a class with Kierkegaard. Marxism is largely based on Engels’s application of Schelling’s critique of Hegel to the relation of Marx to German idealism. Schelling, Hegel’s former roommate, later fell out with Hegel after the latter famously compared the absolute, in a reference to Schelling’s position, to the night in which all cows are black.19 After Hegel died, Schelling gave lectures in which he took the measure of contemporary philosophy. In these lectures, he drew attention to a distinction between what he called negative and positive philosophy. The former, which he associated with Hegel, is logical but supposedly fails to grasp existence, which allegedly can only be grasped through the latter, or Schelling’s own approach to philosophy. Schelling’s distinction influenced Kierkegaard and Engels. Kierke­ gaard claims that Hegel’s position, which is logical, fails to grasp existence, in working out a position later known as existentialism. Engels relies on Schelling’s distinction in differentiating idealism, whose problems are real but cannot be solved, resolved, or otherwise confronted in philosophy, and materialism, which, though it lies outside philosophy, affords a vantage point to deal with its problems. Marx died in 1883. In Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy (1886),20 Engels provided an easy, bite-size view of Marx’s legacy with a touching simplicity utterly devoid of philosophical nuance, but hugely influential on generations of Marxists unable or unwilling to read Marx’s own often difficult but infinitely more rewarding texts. Engels’s account emphasizes Hegel’s famous, enigmatic statement in the Philosophy of Right—“All that is real is rational, all that is rational

marx, marxism, and aesthetic realism

205

is real”—which Engels interprets as illustrating Hegel’s support for the Prussian state of his time (LF 10). Though the Hegelian School has disintegrated, Hegel has still not been refuted. In correctly observing that Hegel’s position has important political implications that have not so far been realized, Engels undertakes to turn Hegel’s system against him. In Hegel, Engels contends, philosophy itself terminates for two reasons. Hegel sums up the prior development and futher shows us how to go beyond philosophical systems, which are merely transitory, “to real positive knowledge” (LF 15), Engels’s term for scientific cognition. The difference between Hegel and philosophy, on the one hand, and science, on the other, can be seen with respect to nature. For Hegel, nature is merely the other of the Idea. In contending, on the contrary, that for materialism only nature is real, Engels anticipates the current philosophical infatuation with naturalism, especially analytic physicalist and extensionalist efforts to restrict meaningful statements to those relating to the spatiotemporal. According to Engels, Feuerbach’s revolutionary importance lies in the transition from idealism to materialism, which refutes philosophy in reestablishing nature as independent and simply destroying the (Hegelian) “system” (LF 33–41). Engels’s point is that if philosophy culminates in Hegel, and if Hegel is refuted by Feuerbach, then philosophy is over. Yet to sustain this argument, it would need to be shown that Feuerbach, more important in philosophy of religion than in respect to German idealism, has successfully criticized Hegel, one of the true philosophical giants. Engels’s central claim is that philosophy of all kinds turns on the relation of “thinking and being.” It would obviously be considerably easier to come to grips with philosophy as a whole if the amazing profusion of different theories could be reduced to no more than a single theme with only two possible attitudes, yes and no, true and false, spirit or nature, materialism or idealism. In that case, it would suffice to ask someone “Which side are you on?” to close the debate. Engels, who is interested in cognition, is concerned with whether thought can know being. He sees philosophers as divided on the question of knowledge—for Hegel we know the world. Kant claims to have devised his transcendental idealism to answer Hume, but for Hume and Kant, whom he considers together as skeptics, we cannot know it. According to Engels, knowledge is the result of the proper attitude toward nature. In a very crude passage, which further reveals his misunderstanding of Kant, he writes that “practice, namely experiment and industry,” suffices to show us what is correct, which brings him close to

206

chapter six

pragmatism, and puts “an end to the Kantian ungraspable ‘thing-in-itself’ ” (LF 23). Conversely, there are definitive answers to scientific questions. For instance, in observing that Leverrier’s calculation of the orbit of Pluto, later discovered by Galle, proves the Copernican system, Engels echoes Kant’s view of Newton (LF 23). Engels reads Feuerbach as reformulating Hegelian idealism, which is unacceptable, in a materialist manner, which is acceptable. His remark that Hegelian idealism is an inverted materialism echoes Marx’s famous suggestion that, to find the rational core of dialectic, it must be inverted.21 Engels attributes to Feuerbach a supposed transition from idealism to materialism in which philosophy is left behind while the resources of Hegel’s system are effectively marshaled. But according to Engels, Feuerbach, who never wholly overcame his earlier commitment to idealism, stops short of an adequate materialism. Since he conflates natural processes and history, he is lacking a historical view of nature (see LF 41). Up to this point, Engels has been arguing that Feuerbach goes beyond Hegel. Now he reorients his account in contending that Feuerbach does not go far enough beyond Hegel. According to Engels, the new religion leads to a cult of abstract man that “must be replaced by the science of real men and of their historical development” (LF 41), which is only a stepping-stone on the path to an adequate materialism. In suggesting that Marx and Marx alone was able to criticize and overcome Hegel by making the transition to the materialist standpoint (see LF 42), Engels, faithful to his view of the watershed separating idealism and materialism, locates Marx, as a nonidealist, firmly in the materialist camp. This reading of Marx’s position as beyond philosophy in virtue of its supposed materialist commitment is simplistic. Marx, who wrote a dissertation on ancient Greek materialism, obviously knew that materialism is not an extraphilosophical but rather a philosophical doctrine. It is never clear what “materialism” amounts to in Engels’s view. If it is linked to a concern with knowledge of the surrounding world, then this supposed commitment does not allow us to distinguish between Marx and the German idealists. A commitment to materialism neither means that one has left philosophy behind nor that it affords a new perspective that allows a solution of problems idealism can neither solve nor resolve. According to Engels, Marx overcomes Hegel by overcoming Hegel’s view of dialectic, which is an “ideological perversion” (LF 43), in favor of concepts as “images of real things” (LF 44). In putting forward the idea that knowledge mirrors mind-independent reality, Engels clearly parts company with Hegel, and with anything Marx ever says, in restating a re-

marx, marxism, and aesthetic realism

207

flection theory of knowledge familiar in forms of empiricism. This theory was later adopted by Lenin and made canonical for Marxism. Engels suggests that knowledge must be knowledge of independent objects, or at least of processes concerning them. Dialectic, for Engels, is “the science of the general laws of motion, both of the external world and of human thought,” and “the dialectic of concepts becomes the conscious reflex of the dialectical movement of the real world,” resulting from the fact that the “dialectic of Hegel was placed upon its head; or rather, turned off its head, on which it was standing, and placed upon its feet” (LF 44). The result is supposedly to free Hegel’s method from its idealist moorings in transforming it into an instrument of revolution based on an interpretation of Marx’s suggestion that his own position inverts Hegel’s. Engels ends with a sketch of the Marxist conception of history which, he claims, put an end to philosophy in the realm of history (LF 59) in revealing the general laws governing historical processes, which in the last instance reflect economic interests (LF 53).

Marxian Aesthetic Obiter Dicta Aesthetic concerns are important to Marx, even if he never works out a free-standing aesthetic theory. Marx’s basic aesthetic insight seems to be that in a future form of society, one will be able to, so to speak, “produce” oneself as an individual. Some observers point to a similarity in this respect between Marx and Schiller in speculating that Marx was later influenced by the great Romantic poet.22 In short, according to Marx, through the basic transformation of society human beings will be transformed from homo faber, constrained to work, to homo ludens in a society in which work will no longer be the dominant mode of human existence and alienation following from private property will have vanished.23 If this is correct, then it is further plausible that Marx’s position centers on the aesthetic transformation of human beings through transformation of the social context from capitalism to communism, a transformation which recalls Plato’s similar effort to work out a genuine aesthetic on the level of the city-state. Marx’s conception of human individuality presupposes at least four forms of dualism. They include the distinctions between a generic person, such as a worker, who is fungible, hence can be replaced by any other worker, and a fully individual human being, someone who can progress beyond merely meeting one’s reproductive needs to develop one’s individual

208

chapter six

capacities; capitalism, in which one can continue to exist but not develop as an individual, and communism, in which one can develop one’s individual capacities, and hence, in beginning human history, finally become an individual; reproductive needs, or the needs one must meet in order to continue to exist, including the familiar trio of food, clothing, and shelter, and human needs, or needs that must be met in order to develop as a specific human individual; and work or labor (Arbeit), the form human activity takes within the economic framework of capitalism, and so-called free human activity, a term Marx never employs, but which can be used to designate the form that will supposedly be taken by human activity in communism, a social phase in principle lying beyond capitalism, in which human activity will no longer be constrained by its limitation to the mere productive process. What is Marx thinking of in thinking of human life beyond capitalism? This is never made clear and there are inconsistent indications in the texts. His romantic remark in the Paris Manuscripts about a new humanity beyond capitalism presupposes, as he latter points out in Capital, that the transition from capitalism to communism will bring about the possibility of human life understood as free time situated in the social space beyond the need to accumulate capital.24 In the German Ideology, a famous passage imagines life in a future society without division of labor, the very practice that, in capitalism, normally forces an exclusive occupation on each person. At stake is the development of individuals in communism in ways no longer determined, or at least not strictly determined, by the tendency of capitalism to accumulate wealth. The change is from a society in which one has a fixed social role to play which is forced on each of us by the need to continue to exist as a physical being, a need we meet in producing commodities, to a different kind of society in which one has no predetermined role to play, and in which one’s central occupation consists in freely, hence without constraint, producing oneself. In the German Ide­ ology, Marx and Engels famously write, He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity, but each one can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd, or critic. (Ger­ man Ideology, 53; V, 47)

marx, marxism, and aesthetic realism

209

In the Grundrisse, the difference between the worker subservient to capital in modern industrial society and the human being beyond the yoke of economics in communism is again on Marx’s mind. But he seems not to have found a definitive solution to the problem. Here he returns from the German Ideology to his earlier view in the Paris Manuscripts in stressing the many-sided development of all human powers. This is understood as a viable alternative to a prevailing economic system, which is interested in individuals only as far as their development is economically useful. In a discussion of the nature of wealth, he asks what wealth for an individual is or could be other than “the working out of his creative potentials” (G 488, vol. 28, 411–12) in building upon whatever prior history has taught us as opposed to the narrow sacrifice within modern industrial world of the individual to strictly economic aims. In another passage, he points out that this possibility depends for its realization upon the prior development of the means of production since communism cannot precede but can only follow capitalism (G 542; XXVIII, 465–66). In a passage on competition, he observes that within capitalism, free development is basically limited to what is useful for capital (G 652; CW XXIX, 40). And in a passage on the introduction of automation, he remarks that the limitation of labor time provides for individual development “which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individual in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them” (G 706; XXIX, 91). He restates this view in a passage on disposable time in stressing the role of capital in creating the necessary preconditions for people to develop outside the process of production. Certainly, this is not the aim of capitalism, which nonetheless is “instrumental in creating the means of social disposable time, in order to reduce labor time for the whole society to a diminishing minimum, and thus to free everyone’s time for their own development” (G 708; XXVIII, 94). He returns to this problem in a seldom-cited passage, where he further develops the idea of the self-production of individual human beings in the realm of freedom opened up by the transition to a new phase of human history. Marx writes,25 In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labor which I determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to main and reproduce life, so must civilized man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the

210

chapter six

forces of production, which satisfy these wants, also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favorable to, and worthy of their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working day is its basic prerequisite.

Despite his interest in art of all kinds, especially literature, Marx left no systematic aesthetic study. He twice began to write on the topic. In 1841–1842, he worked with Bruno Bauer on a study of Hegel’s theories of art and religion, which was later abandoned. In 1857, he seems to have begun an article on “aesthetics” for the New American Cyclopedia, which he never finished. The main text in his writings on aesthetics consists in a short passage in the introduction to the Grundrisse, where he discusses the relation of art to its surroundings in addressing “the uneven development of material production relative to, e.g., artistic development.”26 A related concern is well known in Marxism. Trotsky based himself on Engels in working out a theory of uneven development in regard to the relative stability of society after the Russian Revolution and the thencontemporary crisis of Western capitalism. Trotsky, who applied his theory to the interpretation of the Russian Revolution,27 further argued that the decline of capitalism is characterized by sharp crises, which contrast with the descending curve of development.28 Trotsky focuses on simultaneous but independent phases of economic development, and Marx on the relation of general superstructural or cultural development in relation to the development of the economic base. Unlike Trotsky, Marx is not concerned with the relation of the proletarian revolution to capitalism but rather with the relation of art, including progress in the artistic field, to its social surroundings. He raises this problem in remarking that the arts flourish in ways apparently unrelated to overall social development, hence unrelated to its material base. According to his seminal distinction between superstructure and base, the former in some way depends on the latter. Above it was noted that the two main ways of interpreting this relation include the claim that the base determines the superstructure and the further claim that each determines

marx, marxism, and aesthetic realism

211

the other. In a passage on the relation of art to its surroundings, Marx apparently raises the possibility of a third model, inconsistent with his seminal distinction, in which the superstructure is simply independent of its economic base. “In the case of the arts,” Marx writes, “it is well known that certain periods of their flowering are out of all proportion to the general development of society, hence also to the material foundations, the skeletal structure as it were, of its organization.”29 The view that certain types of art are only possible at certain periods is familiar in the aesthetic debate. Heinrich Wölfflin, the Swiss art critic, is concerned to relate the type of art to the particular social stage.30 This point is also made by the Marxist writer Christopher Caudwell.31 Marx’s passage raises two questions: first, how is it possible for art on the absolutely highest level to arise at a comparatively early social stage? This question can be generalized as follows: what is the relation of the artistic realm to society as a whole? And, second, why does Greek art still interest us, and even, as Marx elsewhere suggests, “count as a norm and as an unattainable model”?32 The first question is important since if art, hence, the superstructure, is independent of the economic base, then Marx’s seminal distinction fails in practice. He answers in claiming that certain forms of art, such as Greek art, “are possible only at an underdeveloped stage of artistic development.”33 Marx might be correct that once art becomes a going enterprise, it would be too late to produce anything like Greek art, which depends, as he points out, on Greek mythology, which is inconsistent with later developments. He answers through a rhetorical question: “Is Achilles possible with powder and lead?”34 This general view that certain achievements are possible only in certain historical periods, for instance that Greek art is only possible in the period of ancient Greece, is anticipated by Hegel.35 Marx’s rhetorical question does not resolve but only deepens the mystery. If Greek art is a summit of human creation that can only appear early in the general development of society, then it must be explained in independence of his seminal distinction. It follows that the problem is not to explain why Greek art still interests us, as Marx suggests, but rather to understand the relation of art to its surroundings. Marx’s remark on Greek art apparently undermines the very distinction between superstructure and base, which justifies the Marxist claim for the cognitive superiority of socialist realism, and that is the basis of the Marxist theory of aesthetics. Marx did not work out a theory of aesthetics, and one can only speculate what form that might have taken. Yet it is not difficult to imagine it

212

chapter six

might have been very different from the official Soviet emphasis on socialist realism. Margaret Rose, who thinks Marx was influenced by SaintSimon, points to the Soviet constructivist movement in the 1920s as plausibly concerned to develop a new kind of art appropriate to a new society and consistent with Marx’s aesthetic insight. She understands “constructivism” with regard to the supposed influence of the French socialist Henri de Saint-Simon on both Marx and a particular Soviet artistic movement. According to Saint-Simon, artists, scientists and industrialists must lead us out of social oppression. He believes artists should take the lead in spreading progressive ideas.36 A version of this idea is shared by constructivism. Constructivism, which emerged in the Soviet Union in 1919, hence shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution, was an artistic and architectural movement, which rejected art for art’s sake in favor of art in the service of the revolution, hence oriented toward social purposes. The First Working Group of constructivists (it included such figures as Popova, Vesnin, Rodchenko, Stepanova, Gan, Arvatov, and Brik) understood constructivism as combining faktura, or the material properties of the object, and tek­ tonika, that is, its spatial presence. The constructivists, who were favored by Trotsky, were antirealists opposed to social realism, which was later officially adopted. Tatlin, for instance, was influenced by the Saint-Simonist conception of politically engaged art. Rose claims that such constructivist artists as Tatlin, El Lissitzky, and Rodchenko can be understood as relying on Saint-Simon’s view of art as both technically avant-garde and economically productive, which also corresponds to Marx’s view. 37

Engels and Marxist Aesthetics Though he never produced a theory of aesthetics, Engels was interested in aesthetic phenomena of various kinds over many years. As early as 1844, he was already writing about painting from a socialist perspective.38 His aesthetic interest is further depicted in a series of letters. These letters are interesting for at least three reasons: for an understanding of how Engels interpreted Marx’s position; with regard to his own position; and as concerns his understanding of aesthetics. For instance, in 1859 he wrote a long letter to Lassalle about the latter’s play concerning Franz von Sickingen.39 In a letter to C. Schmidt (5 August 1890) Engels says that the materialist conception of history requires study of history as opposed to construction of it in a Hegelian manner.40 In a further letter to the same correspondent (27 October 1890), he contends that “in a modern

marx, marxism, and aesthetic realism

213

state, law must not only correspond to the general economic condition and be its expression, but must also be an internally coherent expression, which does not, owing to inner contradictions, reduce itself to nought.”41 This statement still leaves unclear the relation of superstructure to base. In a letter to J. Bloch (21 September 1890), he says roughly the same thing in other words. “According to the materialist conception of history, the ulti­ mately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted.”42 Engels adds a further point in a later letter to Franz Mehring (14 July 1893) in which he acknowledges the need to discuss the causal mechanism through which economic base influences the superstructure.43 Otherwise there is only one other point lacking, which, however, Marx and I always failed to stress enough in our writings and in regard to which we are all equally guilty. That is to say, we all laid, and were bound to lay, the main emphasis, in the first place, on the derivation of political, juridical and other ideological notions, and of actions arising through the medium of these notions, from basic economic facts. But in so doing we neglected the formal side—the ways and means by which these notions, etc., come about—for the sake of the content.

This statement points to the problem without identifying a solution. In a letter to W. Borgius (25 January 1894), Engels, who is aware of the difficulty, invokes an interactionist view of the relation of superstructure to base. Yet he is unable to make more than a vague claim about the causal action of the economic facts on forms of culture broadly understood.44 What we understand by the economic relations, which we regard as the determining basis of the history of society, is the manner and method by which men in a given society produce their means of subsistence and exchange the products among themselves (in so far as division of labor exists). . . . Political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc., development is based on economic development. But all these react upon one another and also upon the economic basis. It is not that the economic situation is cause, solely active, while everything else is only passive effect. There is, rather, interaction on the basis of economic necessity, which ultimately always asserts itself.

Engels is unable to interpret the seminal Marxian distinction between superstructure and base in a way that justifies the materialist interpretation of history. In his view of aesthetics, he falls back on the notion of social

214

chapter six

realism (also called socialist realism) as a way to distinguish a Marxist approach from its rivals. Engels refers to this strategy in two widely known letters from the same period in which he is also tries to clarify the relation of the cultural superstructure to the economic facts. The letters are directed to two aspiring women novelists: Minna Kautsky and Margaret Harkness. Engels’s comments center on two themes: his rejection of so-called Tendenzliteratur, and his insistence on social realism. The two points are related. According to Engels, there is no need to take a tendentious approach, which simply results in bad writing, since a realist attitude is sufficient to depict the true state of affairs. This is equivalent to claiming that the correct stylistic form defeats ideological distortion in revealing the true state of affairs, or the world as it really is. In insisting on realism as an aesthetic criterion, Engels goes beyond Marx. Other than a few scattered remarks, the latter never discusses realism. At most one can say that Marx focuses on going beyond the so-called illusions of bourgeois economics. Thus he remarks, significantly without any reference to ideology, that “all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.”45 This remark apparently commits him to realism, though not to a specific kind.46 In his letters, Engels insists on historical realism as an aesthetic criterion in a literary context. In his letter to Minna Kautsky (London, 26 November 1885), Engels reports he has read her novel about Vienna. He praises the characters as both types as well as sharply individual but objects to her apparent need to take a stand. According to Engels, it is sufficient to give an accurate description to refute the validity of the present situation. Engels writes,47 and therefore a socialist-biased novel fully achieves its purpose, in my view, if by conscientiously describing the real mutual relations, breaking down conventional illusions about them, it shatters the optimism of the bourgeois world, instills doubt as to the eternal character of the existing order, although the author does not offer any definite solution or does not even line up openly on any particular side.

Engels’s letter reveals a wide literary interest, which leads him to the point that better literature is not tendentious but neutral. If literature is formulated in neutral terms, how can one preserve its social function? Engels’s answer points to a theory about knowledge of the social sur-

marx, marxism, and aesthetic realism

215

roundings based ultimately on Hegel’s distinction between being (or perhaps essence [Wesen]) and false appearance (Schein). Hegel, who makes this distinction basic to his theory of knowledge, provides a practical test to surpass false appearance in knowledge of essence. He describes knowledge as arising out of and returning to practice. Theories are formulated in order to explain experience, in terms of which they are tested. Theories are modified if and only if they fail this test. This Hegelian approach provides the background of the Marxist theory of ideology. The Marxist conception of false consciousness presupposes a true grasp of the object. Engels suggests that our false consciousness about our surroundings can be revealed by careful description. The present situation suggests an illusory view of permanence, which can be destroyed merely by a careful depiction of the real situation. Engels’s literary adaptation of this Hegelian approach is problematic. Left unclear is how to know in the literary context that a particular view is merely a false appearance and that another reaches conceptual bedrock through correct description. His suggestion consists in recommending aesthetic realism, which, properly in principle, provides an accurate description of the real social surroundings. Engels continues his approach social truth through literary realism in a subsequent letter to Margaret Harkness (London, April 1888). He reports he has read her novel, which is not realistic enough. He describes his alternative in the following words: “Realism, to my mind, implies, besides truth of detail, the truthful reproduction of typical characters under typical circumstances.”48 Engels’s suggestion is hopelessly unclear. How do we know that a given description truthfully reproduces typical characters under typical circumstances? This difficulty besets any form of the correspondence theory of truth. We only know that a given view is true if we already know what it is supposed to correspond to, and we only know that a description typically reproduces typical characters under typical circumstances if we already know the truth about the situation. Engels concedes that Harkness’s characters are typical, but objects that from the perspective of the revolutionary proletariat she fails to provide a satisfactory description of their circumstances. In other words, an acceptable description is only possible from the standpoint of his particular variety of socialism, which differs from the views of Saint-Simon and Owen. A proper description must represent the view of the working class, whose rebellion, he claims, “may therefore lay claim to a place in the domain of realism.”49 But this begs the point of a neutral description in according

216

chapter six

privileged status to the proletarian standpoint, which, in case there is more than one possibility, constitutes the only acceptable form of realism. Engels explains his view in denying the interest of so-called Tendenzlit­ eratur. For Engels, the author’s opinions must be hidden. But that is not possible if the author identifies with the revolutionary proletariat. According to Engels, the realism of Balzac’s history of French society in the first half of the nineteenth century offers an example. Though he identifies with the decaying class, he goes against this identification in his descriptions, which are exemplary in that respect. In referring to Balzac’s account in the Comédie humaine of “how . . . this . . . to him model society gradually succumbed,” Engels says, “I have learned more than from all the professessional historians, economists, and statisticians of the period together.” This is, he continues, “one of the greatest triumphs of realism.”50

Marxist Aesthetics and (Socialist) Realism Marxist aesthetics derives from a reductionist reading of Marx’s economic contextualism, which depends on his seminal distinction between superstructure and base. Aesthetics belongs to the superstructure. Marxist aesthetics relates aesthetics to the surrounding context, which it supposedly truthfully represents. Marxist aesthetics differs from anticontextual approaches such as the new criticism and contextualist approaches such as the new historicism. The new criticism features strictly immanent textual readings while rejecting any extratextual information as irrelevant. This approach returns in caricatural form in the work of Jacques Derrida and other French postmodernists. Derrida’s so-called textualism (from textu­ alité) reduces the work to the text but rejects any relation to the context. It rejects the claim of anything outside the text in featuring elaborate textual analysis. The new historicism, which is influenced by Michel Foucault, is closely associated with the name of Stephen Greenblatt. Green­ blatt stresses understanding a work through its historical context. Marxist aesthetics breaks with new criticism in relating aesthetic creation of all kinds to the surrounding context, and differs with the new historicism in privileging analysis of the relation of aesthetic phenomena to the under­ lying economic context. Though both Marx and Engels were interested in aesthetics and the arts, neither ever produced anything approaching a systematic theory of art. There have been many efforts to produce a specifically Marxist aesthetics, perhaps most impressively in the work of Georg Lukács. Numer-

marx, marxism, and aesthetic realism

217

ous Marxists have addressed aesthetic phenomena from various points of view. Those writing on Marxist aesthetics include an astonishing range of figures, including revolutionaries such as Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky; early Russian Marxist philosophers such as Plekhanov;51 philosophers and aestheticians such as Georg Lukács; a number of writers associated with the Frankfurt School (Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse); more recent philosophers such as Antonio Gramsci; literary figures such as Bertolt Brecht; and cultural figures such as Christopher Caudwell (Christopher St. John Sprigg), Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, Raymond Williams, and many others. The relation of Marxists to aesthetic phenomena is very variable and difficult to predict. The early Russian revolutionaries were interested in art from different points of view, whose relation to the views of Marx and Engels was extremely diverse. Lenin, who was critical of Maxim Gorki, was concerned to “instrumentalize” aesthetics through his view of party­ ness ( partiinost’) or aesthetics in the service of the communist party.52 Plekhanov, Lenin’s professor of philosophy, took part in a debate (1912) with Anatoly Lunacharsky about objective aesthetic criteria and the possibility of a proletarian culture. He was clear about the tendency of political power to take a utilitarian view of art. Leon Trotsky, Stalin’s great Bolshevik rival, took a keen interest in art and literature.53 After 1917, he opposed the concept of proletarian culture and argued for the independence of aesthetic creation.54 His multidimensional interest in aesthetics addressed such topics as prerevolutionary art, literary fellow travelers, and contemporary developments in futurism.55 In the 1930s he coauthored a manifesto on revolutionary art with Diego Rivera and André Breton.56 Marxist interest in aesthetics, which blossomed after the Russian Revolution, exploded in an enormous discussion. Marxist aesthetics continues to influence the aesthetic debate. Many writers, too numerous to survey or even to list here, have contributed to Marxist aesthetics in most varied ways. Their widely diverse views can at least be related around a distinctive series of problems, especially aesthetic realism. Marxist aesthetics assigns an anti-Platonic cognitive function to artworks that go beyond mere false appearance to grasp of society as it is. We find here a distant but clear echo of Hegel’s celebrated master-slave analysis.57 Lukács famously points out the revolutionary potential of self-consciousness.58 Artistic realism turns out to be the key to unlocking this potential, which is only able to burst its bonds if it comprehends the real situation beyond any bourgeois mystification.

218

chapter six

Engels restates this claim in terms of realism, or the cognitive grasp of the real. He is not making an intuitive but rather a causal claim based on the distinction between the subject and object, knower and known, subjectivity and objectivity. Hegel famously argues for knowledge on the basis of a cognitive identity (Identitätstheorie) reached through a historical process of trying out different theories with respect to experience. Hegel’s basic cognitive insight consists in aiming at a result in which there is no longer any discernable difference between theory and observation. His approach is descriptive, not causal, in a word kinematic rather than dynamic. Engels, who supposedly turns his back on idealism, adopts a causal approach, which has been a hallmark of science since its beginnings. Modern science is based on the idea that there are identifiable causal laws, which justify the inference from experience to reality. According to modern science, the object causes the subject to know it through a causal representation based on experience. Engels’s causal analysis differs in the complex claim that the object causes the subject to misperceive it, though the supposed misperception can be identified and corrected by the Marxist observer. It is not surprising, since Engels was not trained as a philosopher, that his approach to knowledge, including his cognitive view of Marxist aesthetics, remains fraught with difficulties of many kinds. A Marxist version of the causal theory of knowledge must confront many known difficulties in this strategy as well as additional ones emerging from its specific perspective. Marxist aesthetics is further problematic for at least four reasons. One is its relation to Marx’s position, to which it has always claimed a privileged link. Second, there is a difficulty in distinguishing Engels’s view of social realism, often called socialist realism, from other, non-Marxist forms of realism. Another difficulty consists in the typical Marxist claim that socialist realism is the only acceptable aesthetic style. This problem later led to an important controversy between Lukács and Brecht, two of the most important Marxist cultural figures.59 A fourth difficulty consists in distinguishing a correct from incorrect, false or merely ideological description of the social surroundings.

Lukács and Social Realism Marxist aesthetics relies on socialist realism as distinguished from social realism. Socialist realism, also called social realism, developed after the Bolshevik Revolution in the Soviet Union and later spread to other com-

marx, marxism, and aesthetic realism

219

munist countries. Socialist realism, which was directed toward advancing the goals of these countries, was usually understood as the realistic depiction of subjects of social concern. What “socialist realism” means and how to justify it constituted the object of many debates in Marxism, and between Marxists and others. Lukács, the Marxist literary critique and philosopher; Bertolt Brecht, the Marxist playwright; Herbert Marcuse, a first-generation member of the Frankfort School; and others disagreed in the so-called expressionist debate (Expressionismusdebatte) about whether the only admissible aesthetic style is social realism.60 This debate took place against the backdrop of National Socialism in Germany in the period leading up to the Second World War. Artistic “expressionism” was understood in relation to fascism and National Socialism, and as an alternative to the materialistic aesthetic favored by Marxism. Lukács and Alfred Kurella evaluated expressionism as an incipient stage of fascism and National Socialism. Lukács later developed his attack on selected intellectual movements as forms of irrationalism lending aid and succor to the enemies of human freedom in a huge study of what he called The Destruction of Reason.61 Lukács began the debate in “Grösse und Verfall des Expressionismus.”62 He restated his position in “Es geht um den Realismus” (1938), translated as “Realism in the Balance,” in which he typically claims that socialist realism grasps reality as it really is while attacking what he called bourgeois realists and their followers. This criticism was countered by a series of figures including Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Hans Eisler, and others, who underlined the aesthetically innovative character of the bourgeois avant-garde movements, which Lukács rejected.63 In “Realism in the Balance” (1938) Lukács was ostensibly replying to his Marxist colleague and friend Ernst Bloch, who defended modernism.64 Lukács was later answered by both Bloch and Brecht. Others who later took part in this controversy opposing socialist realism to expressionism include Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Marcuse, and Fredric Jameson.65 Modernism is a movement which extends backward into the nineteenth century and whose heyday occurs roughly in the period 1900–1920. It leaves realism behind in its concern with individualism, a general mistrust of institutions such as government or religion, a disbelief in absolute truths, and an emphasis on radical individualism. According to Georg Simmel, “the deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in

220

chapter six

the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life.”66 Modernism is related to expressionism, which differs from expressivism. The latter is a theory in meta-ethics associated with moral language, associated for instance with the American philosopher Charles Stevenson. Expressionism, which is a cultural movement that emerged in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century, spread from poetry and painting to many other art forms. Expressionism is characterized by a deeply subjective perspective, which is violently distorted to express emotions, moods and ideas. Expressionists typically stress “being alive”67 and in general emphasize emotional experience. In his essay, Lukács objects that Bloch and other defenders of modernism unfairly neglect the Marxist realist literary tradition, and hence disregard the problem of the literary representation of objective reality. In claiming in “Probleme des Realismus” that Realism was not merely a “style” but “the basis of every literature,” Lukács disqualifies all nonMarxist forms of literature. He opposes modernism, and attacks such writers as Joyce and Kafka for supposedly taking technique as an end in itself. He rejects the work of nearly all major avant-garde writers in Western literature who deviate from nineteenth-century realism, including Brecht’s dramatic theories. According to Lukács, the fate of realism hangs in the balance. In defending realism, he claims to be defending not the ancients versus the moderns but rather the progressive trends in contemporary literature. 68 Lukács, who responds to Bloch by invoking Marx and Lenin to buttress his position, clearly assigns a cognitive mission to literature and art of all forms. For Lukács, a true realist must strive to depict reality as it truly is. “If literature is a particular form by means of which objective reality is reflected, then it becomes of crucial importance for it to grasp that reality as it truly is, and not merely to confine itself to reproducing whatever manifests itself immediately and on the surface.”69 Lukács is particularly supportive of Thomas Mann’s treatment of Tonio Kröger in a short story of the same name. He writes that “when Thomas Mann refers to Tonio Kröger as a ‘bourgeois who has lost his way,’ he does not rest content with that: he shows how and why he is still a bourgeois, for all his hostility to the bourgeoisie, his homelessness within bourgeois society, and his exclusion from the life of the bourgeois. Because he does all this, Mann towers as a creative artist and in his grasp of the nature of society.”70 Bloch responded to Lukács in an essay entitled “Discussing Expressionism” (1938).71 In the essay he notes that expressionism was condemned by

marx, marxism, and aesthetic realism

221

various Nazis, including Hitler. But he concentrates on Lukács, whose essay on this topic forms the conceptual framework of the discussion. Bloch points out that Lukács’s ideological denunciation of expressionism does not adequately deal with contemporary writings, which alone are of interest. He points to the schematic character of Lukács’s view for which in “general, the Classical is seen as healthy, the Romantic as sick, and Expressionism as sickest of all.”72 He indicates that Lukács equates literary experimentation of any kind with decadence.73 And he points out that the abstraction typical of Lukács’s approach is unlikely to provide the solution.74 Brecht answered with a cryptic critique of Lukács, playing with the connotations of “realism,” “formalism,” and “popular”: “If someone makes a statement which is untrue— or irrelevant merely because it rhymes, then he is a formalist. But we have innumerable works of an unrealistic kind which did not become so because they were based on an excessive sense of form.”75 Both Brecht and Benjamin characterized Lukács’s version of socialist realism as a “deluded and timeless formalism.” With a reliance on outdated methods this realism was inappropriately based upon the cultural products of a class whose relevance and radicality had been lost and superseded by the very dynamics of capitalism itself. What it meant to live in the constantly transforming “modern world” could, in both Benjamin’s and Brecht’s eyes, never be adequately engaged by the “historical forms of individuality of the Balzacian or Tolstoyan type—hence to refurbish such figures in new conditions would actually be a signal flight from realism.” For them it was fragmentation, the interruption and reordering of reality by some sort of montage technique, which seemed to offer the most effective approach to creating a relevant realist practice. The dissolving of contradictions so desirable for Lukács’s brand of realism was again the converse of Brecht’s and Benjamin’s positions. According to John Roberts, “it wasn’t the imaginary totality that would lead the artist to realism but the fragment. . . . for if the artist is truly to inhabit the contradictions of the bourgeois order, bourgeois reality had to be made available in a form that actually embodied these contradictions.”76 Lukács was also criticized by Adorno,77 who wrote, “Today the primacy of the object and aesthetic realism are almost absolutely opposed to each other, and indeed when measured by the standard of realism: Beckett is more realistic than the socialist realists who counterfeit reality by their very principle. If they took reality seriously enough they would eventually realize what Lukács condemned when during the days of his imprisonment in Romania he is reported to have said that he had finally realized that Kafka was a realist writer.”78

222

chapter six

Lukács on Aesthetic Realism and Social Truth Lukács is triply interesting in this context: as arguably the outstanding Marxist philosopher in large part because he was thoroughly trained in classical German philosophy before he turned to Marxism; in virtue of a special interest in aesthetics; and because he arguably provides the strongest form of the typical Marxist, anti-Platonist claim to penetrate bourgeois ideological illusion in correctly grasping the social surroundings on the basis of socialist realism. Like Engels, Lukács favors literary realism,79 which he also calls “critical realism,”80 and which he regards not merely as one style among others, but as in effect the only style, and hence as the real basis of literature.81 Lukács wrote about literary realism over a long period in many texts. A typical statement of the theory is provided in the volume translated under the title Studies in European Realism. Here he suggests, in favoring a conceptually holist approach, that true, or what he also calls great, realism depicts man and society as complete entities.82 Realism is the style, then, which captures individuals and society as historical entities, located at a given time and place in the historical flux providing, as he also says, a three-dimensionality, an all-roundedness that is required for successful depiction of independent characters and human relationships.83 It follows that the central aesthetic problem of realism lies in the adequate presentation of the complete human personality in its historical rootedness.84 Lukács’s single-minded commitment to literary realism strongly influences his choice of literary models and his reaction to works that deviate from his favored style. Although a revolutionary Marxist, his literary views are not even mildly liberal but intensely conservative, even reactionary in their unwavering refusal of change of any kind. He is opposed on principle to literary experimentation and new forms of writing, which he regards as emerging in virtue of the decadence of free-enterprise economics. He has no hesitation in condemning any writer who deviates from his own realist model. In insisting on realism as the only adequate style to grasping social reality, Lukács favors a mimetic, anti-Platonic representational approach to art. Despite his Marxist Hegelianism, the roots of Lukács’s realism, and hence his form of the general Marxist approach to art, is surprisingly not Hegelian but Kantian. Hegel, who opposes concepts (Begriffe) to representations (Vorstellungen), criticizes both art and religion as limited by a representa-

marx, marxism, and aesthetic realism

223

tional approach that cannot know what it merely represents. Lukács, who adopts the view that art is the collective memory of human beings, applies his thesis at the representational level. Its roots lie deep in Kant’s view that the cognitive object represents or stands in for an unknown and unknowable thing in itself, or the mind-independent world. Kant denies that one can know the world as it is (in itself). Lukács differs from Kant in two ways. On the one hand, Lukács holds that social structures are historical variables, hence not invariant; on the other, he claims that through literary realism though not otherwise we can in fact know the social world as it is.

Lukács’s First Argument for Literary Realism Lukács’s version of socialist realism inconsistently combines two incompatible lines of thought: on the one hand, he features a version of the standard Marxist reflection theory of knowledge drawn from Engels. This approach is inconsistent with Lukács’s early critique of Engels. Yet he later increasingly emphasized it on political grounds in an effort to remain within orthodox Marxism. On the other hand, Lukács advances a very different conception of social knowledge, drawn from Marx as well as Hegel, but incompatible with Engels and orthodox Marxism, a conception he adumbrates in his early, critical Marxist writings. In his writings on aesthetics, Lukács does not separate these two lines of thought, which he runs together in the different phases of his Marxist period. I will be isolating them here to evaluate each on its own terms. I contend the first is false and the second is true but insufficient to justify Lukács’s basic Marxist aesthetic claim that literary realism alone provides insight into an otherwise uncognizable, mind-independent social world. Lukács’s defense of the cognitive virtues of artistic realism elaborates a line of argument which goes all the way back to the ancient Greek mimetic approach to art. Lukács silently transposes the Platonic distinction between appearance and reality into a further distinction between two artistic styles—roughly socialist realism, and everything else—in his claim that literary realism as he understands it is the only artistic style that affords a true depiction of social reality. Lukács, who publicly renounced his ideas from time to time under political pressure, remains a slippery target.85 It is never possible to know whether he stands behind his published writings or regards them as simply tactically necessary at different points in the debate. In the foreword to

224

chapter six

a book on critical realism published after Stalin’s death, for instance, he notes the need to make political compromises (in order to be published) during the Stalinist period, but characteristically reaffirms socialist realism as well as the reflection theory of knowledge.86 A typical example of his argument for the cognitive virtues of realism occurs in “Concerning Realism” (“Es geht um den Realismus”) in a volume that appeared shortly after the Second World War.87 Lukács here straightforwardly claims that there are no more than three types of literature in the capitalist period: (1) direct defense and apologetics, which is antirealist or pseudorealist, (2) the so-called avant-garde, ranging widely from naturalism to surrealism, which is always sharply directed against realism, and (3) various forms of realism, including the writings of Gorki, the Manns, Romain Rolland, and Balzac. This simplification, which simply falsifies the profusion of forms of literature during this period, can only be justified for polemical purposes. From the Marxist perspective, the first two types of literature fall under the heading of false appearance, whereas the third belongs to true appearance. Lukács’s classification presupposes that only socialist realism provides a true appearance. This view is based on three presuppositions. First, there is a way that objective reality, or more precisely the social world, in fact is. Second, it can in fact be known as it is in independence of mere appearance, which provides no more than a false or distorted insight into social reality. Third, the only appropriate method to know social reality is the reflection theory of knowledge in the Marxist form restated by Engels. According to Lukács, who relies here on the reflection theory of knowledge he earlier rejected, the difference between realism and all other artistic forms lies in the way realist literature reflects or mirrors objective reality: If literature is really a particular form of the reflection of objective reality, then it is very important to grasp this reality as it actually is, and to limit oneself to simply transmitting what immediately appears. If the writer strives to grasp and to expound reality as it actually is, then he is in fact a realist, and, hence, the problem of the objective totality of reality plays a decisive role, without regard to its conscious formulation.88

Lukács develops the same idea in his letter to the important East German writer Anna Seghers (in the same volume) featuring the unlikely term “Fabel.” For in grasping the world as it really is, realism at least in principle surpasses any mere fable in what Lukács, perhaps ironically, calls a real fable:

marx, marxism, and aesthetic realism

225

Then a real fable brings the essential and very complex relations of a man with his world into the open. The pure observation of an individual, no matter how artistically sensitive it is, is insufficient. Every fable constrains the writer to set it into situations, which he could not himself have possibly observed.89

Socialist Realism as a Reflection of Reality Lukács’s version of socialist realism depends on the reflection theory of knowledge, which in turn depends on classical empiricism. Empiricism, which has a long and checkered past, was criticized in the eighteenth century by Thomas Reid and in the nineteenth century by Hegel, and was extensively criticized in the twentieth century by analytic philosophers including Ludwig Wittgenstein, Otto Neurath, W. V. O. Quine, Wilfrid Sellars, Donald Davidson, and Richard Rorty.90 The problem running throughout the critique of empiricism is always the same: there is no way to justify the claim to know the mind-independent world as it is. This problem further recurs in Lukács’s appeal to socialist realism. A view of realism as the only literary style which successfully “mirrors” an otherwise hidden reality is difficult to defend. We can differentiate between strong and weak cognitive claims. Lukács can be read as making the strong claim that in penetrating the veil of ideological illusion literary realism in fact grasps things as they really are (in independence of the observer). Or, Lukács can be read as making the weak claim that a particular aesthetic style (or styles), such as socialist realism, provides the best, or at least a comparatively better, account of the social world than its stylistic rivals in helping us to penetrate the veil of illusion as distinguished from a grasp of the mind-independent reality it is supposedly is. The strong claim clearly presupposes the weak claim. Both depend on the difficult assumption that a representation in fact adequately represents, or correctly depicts, the mind-independent world.91 Yet this cannot be shown. The very idea of representation points to an insuperable epistemological difficulty, which has often been noted, particularly about the correspondence theory of truth,92 and which undermines any representational theory of cognition. There is simply no way to know that a representation correctly represents without knowing what it represents independently of any representation. Since there is no way to know this, there is no way to know that we know independent reality. Since Lukács explicitly claims that realist art reflects mind-independent social reality, this same difficulty undermines the Marxist preference for

226

chapter six

literary realism. What does it mean to say that literature “reflects” or “mirrors” objective (social) reality? Since the claim cannot be meant literally, it can only be meant metaphorically. The reflection theory of knowledge typically claims that, under certain specifiable conditions, there is a oneto-one relation between ideas in the mind and the independent external world. Items in the mind are said to reflect — or again, mirror — mindindependent reality. Thus Engels, who is the canonical source in Marxism of what is widely known as the reflection theory of knowledge (Widerspie­ gelungstheorie), claims in various ways that dialectical philosophy is “a mere reflection of” the historical process of science93 and that “cognition of the real world” requires us “to produce a correct reflection of reality.”94 The reflection theory of knowledge, which is not original with Engels, is anticipated by Francis Bacon and restated by a long line of thinkers, including the early Wittgenstein, and often criticized, most recently by Richard Rorty.95 Its basic claim is that knowledge consists in a relation of mirroring, hence the names Widerspiegelungstheorie and Abbildtheorie, both of which are used to designate the central insight of Marxist-Leninist theory of knowledge.96 The theory is controversial, even within Marxism. Marx, who is a categorial thinker, never discusses the reflection theory of knowledge. Lukács, who simply takes over this theory, never questions either its origin or epistemological usefulness in simply basing his approach to aesthetics on the assumption that socialist realism in fact correctly reflects, hence yields knowledge of, the social world. The problem here, which is twofold, consists in knowing the way the mind-independent world is and in knowing that one knows the way the mind-independent world is. Like the correspondence theory of truth, it would have to be possible to know the way the world is independently in order to know that ideas in the mind correctly reflected external reality. To put the point in slightly different language, in order to show that realism pierces the veil of ideological illusion, it must be shown that and how we know the world as it really is. Since that cannot be shown, it cannot be shown that realism pierces the ideological veil in grasping independent reality. Hence, the argument fails.

Lukács’s Second Argument for Literary Realism I see no way to defend the view that socialist realism literally or even metaphorically mirrors the mind-independent objective world in penetrating

marx, marxism, and aesthetic realism

227

the supposed veil of capitalist illusion. This claim is merely another species of a long-standing conviction that in principle some privileged observers, in Plato’s case philosophers, are reliable sources of truth claims about the social world, claims which do not have to be argued on a case-by-case basis. Lukács’s second argument in favor of the cognitive importance of literary realism rests on a very different, more promising approach, entirely independent of orthodox Marxism. I believe we should discard the former but strive to recover the latter approach to literary realism. Lukács’s second argument eschews the naive empiricism underlying Engels’s reflection theory of knowledge, which he regards as incompatible with idealism,97 in favor of a form of idealism already implicit in Marx. The difference can be depicted as a distinction between a supposed reflection of the mind-independent real and a “construction” [or “reconstruction”] of the real. Kant’s Copernican revolution in philosophy can also be read as laying claim to know what we in some sense “construct.” This brilliant insight, which is the basis of Kantian and post-Kantian idealism, including Marx’s position—which on scrutiny is not, as usually claimed, materialism, but rather idealism—suggests that the real is not independent of time and place, but is constantly being “constructed” or negotiated as it were among informed observers.98 In this view, to know is to “construct” or to “reconstruct” the real, not to know it independently. The proximate origin of Marxian constructivism lies in Hegel’s Phe­ nomenology of Spirit, which describes successive cognitive stages beginning in bare sense certainty (sinnliche Anschauung), or immediate contact with the mind-independent external world, which cannot be directly or immediately known, and ending in a comprehensive grasp of cognition on a social and historical basis.99 For Marx as for Hegel, the cognitive criterion is not a simple reflection of the mind-independent real but rather the whole synthetic model of reality as “constructed” (or “reconstructed”), and hence revealed in various levels of reflection in conscious experience. Emil Lask points out that Hegel’s emphasis on the whole separates his synthetic approach from Kant’s analytic approach.100 In History and Class Consciousness,101 Lukács stresses the importance of the category of the whole for Hegel. He follows the Hegelian holistic model in his second argument about the cognitive virtue of literary realism in contending that it is the only literary style that correctly captures the character or situation in the form of a totality. What Lukács, following Hegel, elsewhere calls particularity (Bestimmtheit) is not mere averageness, but rather the union of the general and the particular. Lukács belonged to the circle around

228

chapter six

M. Weber during his early studies in Heidelberg. In an important passage, clearly influenced by Weber’s theory of ideal types, he brings his view of particularity to bear on realist art: Realism is the recognition of the fact that a work of literature can rest neither on a lifeless average, as the naturalists suppose, nor on an individual principle, which dissolves its own self into nothingness. The central category and criterion of realist literature is the type, a peculiar synthesis, which organically binds together the general and the particular both in characters and situations. What makes a type a type is not its average quality, not its mere individual being, however profoundly conceived; what makes it a type is that in it all the humanly and socially essential determinants are present on their highest level of development, in the ultimate unfolding of the possibilities latent in them, in extreme presentation of their extremes, rendering concrete the peaks and limits of men and epochs.102

With respect to realism, the central ideas here are the Hegelian ideas totality and particularity—not reflection, which Lukács significantly does not mention. Unlike Engels, Lukács neither claims that realist literature mirrors reality, nor even that we know mind-independent reality as it is. Silently following Marx, he rather claims that realist literature depicts particular characteristics within a conceptual totality. According to Lukács, so-called great literary realism depicts people and society as a concrete whole. Lukács’s main claim is that realism alone among all literary and artistic styles permits a “reconstruction” of reality as experienced, as distinguished from reality as it is. This claim is obviously either trivially true or false. It is trivially true if by “realism” is meant no more than a particular literary style that correctly abstracts from the inessential in order to grasp the essential. It is false if what is claimed is that only socialist realism permits us to grasp the mind-independent world in which we live. It is interesting if it suggests that a realist approach “constructs” or “reconstructs” a whole, which provides more insight into the social world than other literary styles. It is plausible that some literary styles are better than others in helping us to understand ourselves and our surroundings. Like Lukács, one might prefer literary realism, which abstracts from certain details as the price of representing typical, but essential, characteristics, to other alternatives, for instance naturalism, which strives as faithfully as possible to represent

marx, marxism, and aesthetic realism

229

any and all details exactly as they occur. This might well provide a reason for preferring, say, Balzac to Zola. Just as the power to abstract from the inessential permits us to grasp the essential, so, too, the inability to do so creates an impediment to an overall conception. Yet a preference for literary realism on aesthetic (or other) grounds cannot justify the Marxist claim to socialist realism as the only successful way to depict and know social reality. It merely shows that, for certain purposes, this or that literary style is relatively better than another. On this analysis, all accounts may be instructive, but those that integrate central features in an overall synthesis are justly favored for that purpose. If, however, “true” means to capture mind-independent reality directly, or as it is, then no account can be shown to be true, although some can be dismissed as false. There is also no way to distinguish between Marxist and non-Marxist accounts since all forms of literature need to be judged by the same criteria. This last point affects Lukács’s choice of examples. He condemns Beckett, whose literary production supposedly reflects no more than the decadence of contemporary society, but praises Balzac as pointing to the intrinsic tensions of modern society.103 If art “reflects” life in some way, then this precept should hold for art in all of its forms. The contemporary social decadence Beckett allegedly reflects is no less significant for understanding the contemporary world than is Balzacian realism for life in France in the mid-nineteenth century. An absurd claim that only realist art is great would exclude such writers as Goethe, Pushkin, Dante, Milton, and Proust, none of whom is a social realist in the Marxist sense, nor arguably even a realist. Yet each surely belongs on any list of the very greatest writers in the European literary tradition. Great art is great in part because it continues to offer insight in different times and places into our surroundings and into ourselves. On this basis, Bach is preferable to Pachelbel, Shakespeare to Shaw, Proust to Daudet, without regard to status as realists.

Truth and Aesthetic Truth Lukács presents two arguments for the typical Marxist claim that literary realism pierces the veil of ideological illusion so as to grasp objective reality. The first, orthodox Marxist view, according to which socialist realism claims to mirror objective social reality, is refuted by its failure to establish

230

chapter six

that we ever in fact know reality as it is. The second, Marxian (but not Marxist) claim according to which realism provides the best, or at least a comparatively better, account of the social world than its stylistic rivals, is more plausible. Yet its very success paradoxically undermines the key Marxist claim to understand society in a way that cannot be grasped by bourgeois thought. This point can perhaps be brought out with respect to Hegel. The Marxist view of ideology follows Hegel in distinguishing sharply between true and false appearance. Yet if we can only know reality as it appears in experience, then we must give up any distinction between true and false appearance, hence we must abandon the typical Marxist distinction between bourgeois theory as offering no more than a false, or inaccurate, depiction of the social context and Marxism as providing the only true depiction of social reality, hence as the only reliable source of social knowledge. Four conclusions follow. First, the Marxist preference for literary realism cannot be defended through any unique, or even supposedly privileged, link to social truth—hence, on cognitive grounds—but only on the aesthetic basis of literary preference. For in the final analysis there is no way to make out this epistemological claim. Second, the idea that socialist realism alone unveils objective reality is indefensible, since we cannot know the way the world is independently, but only know how it appears in experience. Third, the way to recover a weaker but infinitely more promising view of Marxist realist aesthetics, or simply realist aesthetics, lies in developing the idea that a realist approach “constructs” or “reconstructs” a totality affording comparatively more insight into social reality. Fourth, the problem of recovering Lukács’s “idealist” form of aesthetics is another form of the problem of recovering Marx, who is not a materialist committed to knowing the real, but an idealist committed to knowing what human beings “construct” and must “reconstruct” in order to know it. I will end with a remark about recovering Lukács’s aesthetics in the context of Marx and Marxism. Lukács’s Marxism is marked by his concern with Marxist orthodoxy. Marx’s position, which is often misread through Marxism, proposes a historical conception of social reality, which human beings “construct” and “reconstruct” in order to know it. Marxism since Engels defends a reflection theory of knowledge that presupposes that the ahistorical real can be known. Lukács inconsistently combines both strands. He asserts with Engels that aesthetic realism uniquely mirrors the real, and further asserts with Marx (and Hegel) that aesthetic realism provides better insight into social reality, which it “constructs” or

marx, marxism, and aesthetic realism

231

“reconstructs” as a whole. Lukács’s work in aesthetics is very selective, mainly confined to the literary domain, with almost no mention of painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and so on. The interest of Lukács’s aesthetic realism is diminished by his stark rejection of nonrealist art. Marx never worked out his aesthetic insights, which Lukács only begins to systematize. The way to recover Lukács’s interesting aesthetic insights lies in acknowledging that through the construction of a whole world in literary form great writers such as Dante, Balzac, Tolstoy, Proust, and Joyce offer unparalleled insight into their historical moment. Such an approach will not offer the truth about mind-independent reality but comes close, perhaps as close as we can come, to offering the truth about the social world.

chapter seven

On the Theory and Practice of Aesthetic Representation in the Twentieth Century

M

odern art differs from earlier art forms in a variety of ways too numerous to mention. One is the transformation of what was earlier an artistic endeavor that appeared in many guises but that increasingly responds to financial imperatives. Clearly financial motivations were important in earlier times. Yet now they seem increasingly important. Mark Taylor, for instance, thinks that with increasingly fewer exceptions (e.g., Joseph Beuys, Matthew Barney, James Turrell, and Andy Goldsworthy), contemporary art is either in the process of becoming or has already become a form of commodification.1 Another is arguably the increasing loss of the cognitive dimension so important in earlier forms of art. The situation with regard to artistic cognition has probably never been as unclear. There is little attention to the Platonic view that philosophers, who alone know reality, are the true artists, but the Platonic attack on artistic representation has been hugely influential in Western aesthetics. Philosophers and even artists further divide in supporting or denying the Platonic verdict. Cézanne famously claims, “I owe you the truth in painting and I will tell it to you” (emphasis in original).2 Picasso, on the other hand, says roughly the opposite in claiming there is no truth in art, which is an imposture: “We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.”3 As the difference of opinion between Cézanne and Picasso illustrates, until recently, the aesthetic discussion and even the practice of Western

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

233

art in all its many shapes has often assumed the form of a reaction to the Platonic critique of art. This is now changing for two reasons. On the one hand, representationalism, a main theme in the modern epistemological debate, seems rapidly to be losing favor. On the other, it appears as if art itself through the medium of its practitioners, the artists, is apparently now in the process of turning away from a representational approach. As a consequence, we may finally, after many centuries, be entering on a postPlatonic aesthetic phase, a historical moment in which Platonism, which functions less and less as a cardinal reference, increasingly belongs to a past whose time has come and gone, and which exerts ever less influence on the present. Imitation is a form of representationalism. At the dawn of Western philosophy, in formulating the theory of forms Plato forges a link between art, truth, and representation, which he rejects. This Platonic link, which has survived over some two and a half millennia, continues to resonate in modern times, perhaps never more strongly than in John Keats’s famous, enigmatic lines: “ ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” The Platonic aesthetic approach has recently come under attack from two perspectives: first, there is the practice of art itself, which seems finally to be on the point of emancipating itself from its bi-millenial Platonic philosophical tutelage, not, to be sure, in making good on artistic representation, but rather in finally abandoning it as an artistic goal and further in undermining its very possibility. Second, aesthetics, or the theory of artistic practices, is also now in the process of not merely reacting against, but also of emancipating itself from the venerable representational approach through continual attacks on the very idea of representation, hence on artistic representation. Artistic practice and aesthetic claims evolve in different ways. Artists who turn away from representation can be understood as giving up claims for truth in art, roughly the same claims writers on aesthetics reaffirm in attempting in invoking nonrepresentational epistemological strategies. The paradoxical result is that in taking a nonrepresentational approach to art, philosophy is in the process of making a qualified return to the Platonic view that correctly understood that there is a constitutive link between art and truth. In recent artistic practice, the two occurrences that currently appear most interesting with respect to representationalism are cubism and what seem to be attacks on the very idea of an aesthetic object. The rise of cubism as a movement, primarily in the work of Picasso, Braque, and later Juan Gris, results in the fragmentation of the object, hence, from a

234

chapter seven

representational point of view, in the disintegration of the representation as well as its very possibility. Duchamp and Warhol can be understood as calling into question the difference between an objet d’art and any object, in other words, the difference between artistic objects and just any object. Hegel denies that imitation of nature is art, which, on his view, consists in manifesting the human transformation of preexisting materials to express distinctively human aims, hopes, and so on. Warhol can be said to contradict this view in proposing that art objects merely imitate more or less successfully other objects, so that art, which is bereft of spirit in Hegel’s sense of the term, merely reduces to technique. I will argue that beyond its undoubted artistic merits cubism in effect counts as an attack on representationalism, hence on the association of truth and art, but that the problem of whether we are in fact dealing with an artwork is an unrelated concern. In adopting a normative view of art as imitation, Plato provides a standard, which is set aside or honored in the breech by such philosophers as Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Gadamer, each of whom takes a nonrepresentational, hence non-Platonic, approach to the traditional Platonic claim for art and truth.

Imitation and Representation The Platonic critique of artistic creation is premised on the rejection of cognitive representationalism as well as the normative view of art as imitation. There are, of course, many kinds of imitation, including those in which art imitates other kinds of art. One problem is whether the view of imitation is broad enough to encompass all the arts. The different arts seem to lend themselves differently to representation, but even that is disputed. Thus Nietzsche’s denial that music is representational4 is rejected by Charles Nussbaum.5 Literary imitation is particularly important from Ovid, who in the Amores imitates the elegies of Propertius, to James Joyce, who in Ulysses famously imitates a veritable host of styles. Then there is artistic forgery, which is perhaps most prevalent in painting and sculpture, but in poetry as well, for instance in the Scottish poet James Macpherson’s Ossian poems. There is also the rise of the emulator in computer science in which one system emulates or behaves like another system. Imitation is further common within the arts, as in the pastiche and the parody. Imitation further plays an important role in religion. Thomas à Kempis is the author of The Imitation of Christ (De imitatione Christi), first pub-

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

235

lished anonymously in Latin (ca. 1418). The Judaic and Christian view that human beings are made in the image of God (imago dei) leads to the Jewish conception of imitatio dei, which consists in taking on godly attributes. Observers suggest this doctrine is suggested in Leviticus 19:2: “Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: ‘Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy.’” Christians are also told to imitate God in various biblical passages including Matthew 5:48 (“Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”), Luke 6:36 (“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful”), Ephesians 5 (“Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children”), and 1 Corinthians 11:1 (“Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ”). Plato’s objection to art as imitation mainly concerns its cognitive capacities as distinguished from its artistic merit. Imitation is representation. The analysis supporting Plato’s presupposition is only worked out much later in studies of cognitive representation. Plato’s attack on art as imitation presupposes an analysis he does not provide and which was unavailable when he was writing. He does not show that imitation fails as a cognitive approach since he does not work out an analysis of cognitive representation. The central meaning of imitation is representation. It is sometimes thought that representation is a recent concept or has only recently become important. Thus Robert Brandom claims it is the master concept of epistemology and semantics since Descartes.6 Yet theories of representation did not suddenly come into the discussion, but were present much earlier in the tradition. In fact the discussion of representation goes all the way back in the Western tradition. Stages in philosophical debate about representation run from medieval theories of representation, in the context of accounts of intentionality, through modern debates in Descartes and his successors, including empiricists such as Locke, up to Kant, and then in more recent discussion. To represent is widely understood as re-presenting something absent as present by making it present again. Studies of representation were common in medieval philosophy. Medieval thinkers, like recent philosophers of mind, believe that a mental state has content or is about something other than itself due to its representational nature.7 In different ways, the continental rationalists and the British empiricists make use of a causal theory of knowledge, which relies on an idea in the mind as the representation of the mind-independent world. The famous Port-Royal Logic (La logique, ou l’art de penser, 1662), published anonymously by Pierre Nicole

236

chapter seven

and Antoine Arnauld, offers a classical theory of representation, which was central for philosophy of language until the nineteenth century. Franz Brentano revived a scholastic notion in his view of intentionality as the main characteristic of mental phenomena.8 But Brentano apparently never uses the terminology of representation to explicate intentionality, which in the twentieth century becomes frequent in post-Wittgensteinian philosophy of mind.9 In later medieval philosophy, it was already standard to explain the content of a thought by referring to its representational nature. Lagerlund, who surveys the views of Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham, claims that the terminology of internal representation, which was introduced to Western philosophy through the Latin translation of Avicenna, rapidly became central to most scholastic accounts of cognition and in­ tentionality. According to Lagerlund, debate centered on two different theories of thought he calls the “Aristotelian” or conformality view, and the non-Aristotelian, inherence view. Aristotle believes that the mind takes on the form of the object and represents it by virtue of being its likeness or picture. In a certain sense, the object is in the mind.10 On the non-Aristotelian view, thinking is simply having a concept in mind. This approach depends on the causal theory of perception, a theory everywhere in the modern discussion according to which the concept is an effect caused by the object it represents and, in more precise language, can be said to function as its sign in mental sentences or thoughts. The Platonic view of art as mimetic was dominant over a very long period. Centuries after Plato, Vasari takes representation as the criterion of art.11 This is also the case for Piero della Francesca.12 All of this comes to a provisional end, and perhaps even to a final end, with the end of representationalism itself found in cubism and allied movements. To be sure, to say that modern art is post-representational is hardly a new insight. The bulk of twentieth-century writing on art, from R. G. Collingwood to Clement Greenberg to Rosalind Krauss to Gary Shapiro’s study of vision in Foucault and Nietzsche,13 can be viewed as a series of elaborations on the post-representational theme. My claim is not that modern art is postrepresentational, since that is obvious and not obvious, obvious in that the main thrust of contemporary art, if there is something we can call contemporary art, now has turned away from all the many facets of representation, though representational art is still part of the art scene. My claim is rather that it could not have been otherwise since in so-called modern art the object itself disintegrates in obviating as a result the anti-Platonic representational view that arose in reaction to Plato’s own normatively

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

237

nonrepresentational view of art.14 Yet this “contemporary” idea is already formulated in the middle of the nineteenth century by Nietzsche, who in turn points out that the imitative approach to art is already rejected as early as Plato.15

Sextus Empiricus, Kant, and Epistemological Representationalism Attacks on representationalism take many different forms. These include attacks on “representation” as such (e.g., Nelson Goodman); attacks on the relation between the representation and what it represents (e.g., Berkeley, Kant); views of art as cognitive but not representational (e.g., Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer); and conceptions of art in which either there is no single unitary object, hence no representation (cubism), or the distinction between the art object and other objects is called into question, which in turn tends to undermine the distinction between the representation and the represented (Duchamp, Warhol). Plato’s argument against artistic imitation in rejecting a representational approach to knowledge was further strengthened by a long series of post-Platonic thinkers of whom I will mention only three: Sextus Empiricus, Berkeley, and Kant. Several of the ten tropes of Pyrrhonism point out reasons for the general unreliability of perceptual claims, hence representation, of the external objects. Sextus specifically focuses his attack on representation.16 “Yes, but the truth is perceived not in so far as it appears, but owing to another cause.” What, then, is this cause? Let the Dogmatists state it openly so that it may either attract us to assent or repel us to avoidance. Further, how do they perceive this cause itself? As appearing to them or as not appearing? If as appearing, they lie when they say that truth does not exist in so far as it appears; but if as not appearing, how have they perceived what is not appearing to them? Through itself or by means of another? To perceive it through itself is impossible, for nothing which does not appear is perceptible through itself, while if it is by means of another, is this in turn appearing or not appearing? And as the inquisition thus proceeds ad infinitum, the true becomes undiscoverable.

In this interesting passage Sextus formulates the Platonic problem of the relation of a representation to what it represents in terms overlapping

238

chapter seven

with Kant’s later reformulation of a representational approach to knowledge. Kant often contends that the cognitive subject is affected by a mind-external object that is distinguished from its appearance.17 Kant’s argument is based on his version of the causal theory of perception. He distinguishes between what can be thought, hence is intelligible but does not appear, and what can be intuited, hence appears. “I call intelligible that in an object of sense which is not itself appearance. Accordingly, if that which must be regarded as appearance in the world of sense has in itself a faculty which is not an object of intuition through which it can be the cause of appearances, then one can consider the causality of this being in two aspects, as intelligible in its action as a thing in itself, and as sensible in the effects of that action as an appearance in the world of sense.”18 This view of the thing in itself as the cause of which the appearance, or representation, is the effect is closely linked to Kant’s response to Hume. He tells us more than once that Hume woke him from his dogmatic slumber and insists that causality can be demonstrated a priori as a condition of experience. This suggests his conviction that, in response to Hume, who attacks causality on the a posteriori plane, he has in fact demonstrated causality on the a priori plane. Yet to make good on a claim of causal perception it must be possible to demonstrate that, say, the representation in the mind is the effect of a particular cause. Kant’s normative standard of knowledge is the a priori claim to know as universal and necessary. A causal analysis must show that one can rely on causality and that the causal relation has in fact been established. More precisely, it must meet the standard of the correspondence theory of truth, which Kant endorses, or “the agreement of cognition with its object.”19 Kant’s refutation of Hume meets the first condition but not the second, since it fails to show how to identify the causal connection in the individual case. Yet, as Socrates already points out in the Phaedo, on the basis of scientific causality one can never show there is a unique causal relation between a supposed effect and its supposed cause.20 Even if we grant that Kant has shown the existence of causal relations in any and all items of experience, he fails to meet his own criterion of a universal and necessary connection between representation and its putative cause. Hence, there is no contradiction in claiming there is a causal framework between events while denying it can be established between any particular set of events. For Kant’s abandonment of the representationalist strategy is consistent with a causal analysis.

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

239

I believe that in Kant’s critical philosophy the causal theory of perception comes to a high point, which it has not later surpassed. Kant here reaches the peak of efforts throughout modern philosophy among continental rationalists as well as British empiricists to formulate a causal theory of perception. In order to make out this argument, one must, as Kant correctly sees, refute Hume. Kant’s failure to do so also signals the end of the fruitful part of the debate. Continuing efforts after Kant restate different variations on the causal theory of perception, often in detail, but do not, to my knowledge, go further than Kant. In fact, in some ways Kant does not go further than the preceding debate, which already reaches the crucial point, namely the inability to show that representations represent. Thus Berkeley, whom some regard as a poor reader of Plato,21 supports Platonic anti-representationalism as follows: “It is your opinion the ideas we perceive by our senses are not real things, but images or copies of them. Our knowledge, therefore, is no farther real than as our ideas are the true representations of those originals. But, as these supposed originals are in themselves unknown, it is impossible to know how far our ideas resemble them; or whether they resemble them at all. We cannot, therefore, be sure we have any real knowledge.”22 It is worth pointing out that though Berkeley has often been decried, he is less often read, certainly read carefully, and in fact has never been answered.

Goodman and “Representation” after Kant Efforts continue after Kant to criticize or to demonstrate representationalism. Paul Grice, for instance, argues that correspondence does not establish a causal connection, and Peter Strawson claims that perception reliably informs us about the external world.23 Among recent critics, Goodman is distinguished by his frontal attack on the very idea of “representation” in all its forms, which he regards as unintelligible. In the case of a likeness, one might speak of degrees of resemblance. This theme remains unclear. Important thinkers argue from divergent angles of vision. Goodman appears to suggest that there is no likeness at all so that the question of degrees is no longer a factor. Plato, who discusses imitation, presumably has in mind contemporary artistic practice. According to Jessica Moss, Plato, who was only familiar with realist painting, takes as his model a man with a mirror who copies exactly what he sees, in short an anticipation of the already mentioned famous (or infamous)

240

chapter seven

copy theory24 invoked by F. Bacon, Engels, Lenin, Wittgenstein, and others, and criticized by Rorty. In Languages of Art, where he examines symbols and symbol systems, Goodman, who has been described as a radical conventionalist, criticizes the underlying conception of representation. It is notoriously difficult to specify what a successful representation should look like or even what “representation” means. If one assumes, following Goodman, that a representation must “fit” with what it represents,25 that leaves open the difficulty that causes and effects need not resemble each other. The assassination of the archduke Ferdinand is widely believed to have led to the First World War. Yet the assassination, which is the cause, does not “fit” with, or otherwise resemble, its supposed effect. It does not seem possible to construct anything resembling a univocal causal chain leading from the assassination of the archduke Ferdinand taken as the cause to the First World War understood as its effect. It is even more difficult to show that representations represent. Rationalism and empiricism are inversely symmetrical approaches to knowledge. Efforts by rationalists to argue from the mind to the world, and by empiricists to argue from the world to the mind, presuppose an indemonstrable relation between ideas, understood as representations, and objects, understood as causes, in arguing for an inference from effect to cause. No known form of this argument is successful. The rationalist Descartes insists on limiting the will in accepting clear and distinct ideas whose relation to the world rests on a mere, indemonstrable conviction about God’s nature. The empiricist Locke relies on the supposed capacity to identify ideas, which, since the subject did not create them, cannot be demonstrated but are merely believed to represent the cognitive object. Representation is a form of mimesis. The debate on artistic mimesis and cognitive representation has increased in recent years.26 Kendall Walton’s theory of the representational arts is based on what he calls makebelieve.27 He analyzes different forms of representation from a broadly mimetic perspective without ever discussing, or even referring to, its Platonic origins. Richard Boyd, who is committed to the view that all literature is basically mimetic, shifts attention from Plato to Aristotle. He provides a comparably wide account focused on Aristotle’s contribution to the mimetic approach and what Boyd regards as the close of this tradition in England. Goodman attacks the very idea of representation in the course of replacing realist theory of representation with conventionalism.28 Goodman, who contends that “representation” cannot be defined in any of the usual ways,29 substitutes syntactic and semantic relations among

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

241

symbols for relations of resemblance or description. He rejects the socalled innocent eye, following Ernst Gombrich,30 as well as the so-called absolute given as myths. He further distinguishes between representation and denotation. If the eye were innocent, one could, like Plato, claim that, in selected situations, one in fact sees or otherwise perceives what is as it is, in bypassing representation through a direct grasp of the real. The same result would be achieved if there were a so-called absolute given. Wilfrid Sellars is well known for resisting any version of so-called givenness.31 Goodman similarly rejects the view that representation can consist in resemblance or imitation since there is no one way the world is. Since the world can be described in many ways, it is unclear what is to be copied. He regards this argument against realism as conclusive against painting as well as sculpture. Goodman is opposed to representation as a source of knowledge but not to representation in general. Representation is not denotation, which demands a stricter burden of proof. This view of representation and description as denotative32 leads to a conception of symbolization, which is to be judged by how well it functions.33 Goodman’s critique of the general concept of representation counts for artistic representation. In effect, he replaces the cognitive function of representations by a theory of symbolization with cognitive weight in retaining no more than a referential function, which, as denotative, belongs to semantics. The relation between Goodman’s views of representation and semantics lies outside this study. Suffice it to say that Goodman seems to be saying that representation only finally succeeds as denotation, which in turn obviates the need for representation. The consequence of Goodman’s attack on representation is clear. Plato argues that art as imitation fails; Kant, like Berkeley, argues against representationalism in further developing a nonrepresentational theory of art; Goodman, who regards “representation” as incoherent, argues against the possibility of representation as well as artistic representation in sustaining the views of Plato and Kant, whom he never mentions.

Plato and Post-Platonic Claims to Know the Mind-Independent External World Plato’s view of art presupposes the fantastic precondition, a precondition that has arguably never been met, of a cognitive grasp of the mindindependent real as it is. Platonism relies on a series of related insights: an ontological distinction between appearance and reality; a normative

242

chapter seven

conception of knowledge as grasping the mind-independent real beyond mere appearance as it really is, in short in satisfying the criterion of metaphysical realism (or Platonic realism); as well as a conception of some selected individuals capable on grounds of nature and nature of in fact grasping the real as it is, in basing his theory of knowledge on what now appears to be a kind of epistemological privilege. Plato seeks to avoid epistemological relativism of all kinds, especially Protagorean relativism, which he seems to equate with sophistry. When Plato was active, these insights may have seemed more plausible than they do now. Many observers reject cognitive relativism, which is likened to skepticism or more recently even to fear of truth.34 Plato can be understood as formulating an argument to justify Parmenides’s canonical suggestion that to know means to know mind-independent reality as it is. Numerous writers are still committed to some version of the Platonic conviction that to know requires a cognitive grasp of mind-independent reality. Metaphysical realist claims are a staple of the modern debate, never more frequently than at present. In different ways they are central to all the main philosophical tendencies in twentieth-century philosophy: pragmatism, Marxism, what is routinely called continental philosophy, and analytic philosophy. There is no point in rehearsing the long series of fruitless efforts to claim that we must (and in fact do) know the mindindependent real as it is. This claim is made in different ways consistent with the particular tendency. C. S. Peirce, the founder of American pragmatism and arguably the most impressive American philosopher, thinks we can know reality, which he famously defines as what in the long run we take it to be. Marxists claim to go beyond the veil of ideological illusion to see social reality as it is. A number of twentieth-century phenomenologists, particularly Heidegger, insist on the appearance of the real. I come back to the recent phenomenological approach to art below. The conviction that we in fact know mind-independent reality is especially prominent in recent analytic thought. Putnam’s recent turn to natural realism, Davidson’s attack on the scheme-content dualism in favor of establishing immediate touch with objects that make our claims true or false, and Brandom’s inferentialist view that reality makes our concepts true or false all depend on getting it right about metaphysical realism. It would go beyond the scope of the present discussion to analyze these various efforts. Suffice it to say here that Plato’s argument for a cognitive grasp of mind-independent reality fails to convince and, despite the con-

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

243

tinued adherence to this claim, it is clear that a convincing argument to support it has never been formulated.

Some Recent Nonrepresentational Theories of Artistic Truth Later responses to the Platonic view of the link between art and truth can be grouped thematically into two broad groups, which seek either to maintain or to reject it. These views are merely ideal types, which are not perfectly illustrated by any single position but help us to understand the possible responses to Plato’s position. Efforts to maintain a link between art and truth can further be subdivided into anti-Platonic representationalist and Platonic or quasi-Platonic intuitive theories. In our time when representationalism seems to be in decline, antiPlatonic views of the relation of art and truth based on the capacity to represent the real appear to be less frequent than efforts to grasp it directly through artistic means. Putnam draws attention to a contrast between external realism, a so-called God’s-eye view, or view without perspective, and internal realism, or the view that there is more than one “ ‘true’ theory or description of the world.”35 Heidegger raises a prominent recent claim for a nonrepresentational but constitutive link between art and truth. Heidegger’s view of aesthetics as a source of deep truth about the world as it really is can be understood as his response to Hegel’s famous suggestion that in an important sense art has come to an end.36 Heidegger’s theory of art as disclosure can be regarded as in part a response intended to rehabilitate art in suggesting that it continues to play and has indeed always played a primary role in disclosing the world. Heidegger’s view of aesthetics depends on Schelling and Nietzsche. From Schelling he takes the view that art discloses what is. And from Nietzsche, he borrows a nonrepresentational view of art. Kantian aesthetics concentrates on beauty (and the sublime), which it separates from truth. Schelling participates in the general effort to carry the critical philosophy beyond its author. Schelling understands aesthetics as that toward which everything converges in a single overall theory of beauty and truth. He attempts to complete the critical philosophy through reconstituting the link between beauty and truth, which Plato disjoins, in inverting Kant’s Platonic aesthetics.37 Schelling’s interest in aesthetics is close to the center of his protean position. It is sometimes claimed that in his Philosophy of Art (1802–3) he

244

chapter seven

was the first to write a philosophy of art, which articulates the place of the various arts. In Schelling’s anti-Platonic approach, art has an equal status with philosophy as a source of truth. Accounts of the relation of art and truth by Adorno, Gadamer, Heidegger, and Derrida are all in some way related to Schelling’s views. System of Transcendental Idealism is arguably Schelling’s most important work and certainly his single most important contribution to aesthetics. Here Schelling finally breaks with Fichte in depicting art as the organ of philosophy that can show, as philosophy cannot show, the absolute. In the Critique of  Judgment, Kant analyzes the relation of the subject toward nature, which, understood as a thing in itself, cannot be known. Although Fichte immediately rejects any vestige of the thing in itself as a dogmatic concept, Schelling is less cautious. His early philosophy turns on the impossible task of knowing what for Kant lies beyond reason. Schopenhauer similarly goes beyond the strictures established by Kant in claiming we can know the world in itself, or will.38 In working out various constructivist approaches to knowledge, postKantian German idealism appeals to different conceptions of the absolute. In the Critique of Pure Reason, as already noted, Kant introduces this term (das Absolute) to designate what is not merely comparative or valid in a restricted sense,39 and later in the third Critique he uses it in reference to God. Fichte appeals to the so-called absolute subject or self as the source of everything other than the subject in questioning Kant’s epistemological limits. The same view leads Schiller and Novalis to turn away from Fichte. In Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism, the concept of the absolute reappears in a different guise in which any and all cognitive limits, which Kant and Fichte emphasize, have meanwhile disappeared. In the foreword, Schelling immediately announces his intention to present the solution to all possible problems in a single system. Neither transcendental philosophy nor the philosophy of nature is sufficient, since both are necessary. Through the deduction of history, he claims to prove the harmony between the subjective and the objective through an absolute identity. This is, he tells us, the solution to the problem of the coexistence of mechanism and purpose, or the unsolved problem running throughout Kant’s third Critique. Schelling’s demonstration peaks in what he now calls the philosophy of art. Schelling invokes a novel version of the idealist theory of identity. Like Kant, he believes an underlying identity is the basis of any claim to know.

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

245

All knowledge requires a “coincidence” or identity between the subjective, or the conscious subject, or again intelligence, and the objective, or unconscious nature.40 Since either can be primary, the ultimate harmony lies in an absolute identity.41 Natural science proceeds from nature to intelligence, and transcendental philosophy proceeds inversely from the subjective out of which the objective arises. The “absolute identity” is based on an absolute, which is “neither subject nor object, nor both at once, in which [there] is no duality at all.”42 Schelling, who understands this absolutely identical principle as ontological, claims that everything derives from it. In this way, he makes a qualified return to Neoplatonism. He argues that the whole aim of transcendental philosophy lies in focusing on an unknowable absolute, what he also calls the indifference point, as the ground of the harmony between the subjective and the objective.43 Schelling’s ontological reinterpretation of the absolute identifies an intrinsic connection between epistemology and aesthetics in reestablishing a link broken by Plato. In developing Kant’s conception of genius as someone who creates beyond rules and Fichte’s theory of activity, Schelling contends that the work of art is a product of spontaneity or a spontaneous product. Both science and art are means of revealing the absolute. This approach quickly leads to systematic philosophical presentation of various kinds of art in the Philosophy of Art, and in Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. In part 6 of his System of Transcendental Idealism, Schelling sketches his philosophy of art. Art unites freedom and necessity in a product common to both. The absolute is the common ground of a preesteablished harmony between the conscious and the unconscious. Schelling follows Kant’s view that art is the result of genius. He describes art as a revelation that is neither objective nor subjective, and that, since it is not the result of mere talent, can neither be learned nor acquired. Works of art depict the identity of the conscious and the unconscious. The identity between the subjective and objective dimensions is given in intellectual intuition in philosophy, and in artworks in aesthetics. According to Schelling, art serves “as the only true and eternal organ and document of philosophy, which ever and again continues to speak to us of what philosophy cannot depict in external form, namely the unconscious element in acting and producing, and its original identity with the conscious.”44 For Plato, knowledge of reality is available only through philosophy, not through art. According to Schelling, in and through works of art we accede to knowledge of what cannot otherwise be known, and which cannot be known rationally, but which is known aesthetically. We

246

chapter seven

can only know the absolute underlying the difference between human being and nature through art. The highest form of life is not the philosophical but rather the artistic since “art brings the whole man, as he is, to that point, namely to a knowledge of the highest.”45 The a-rational or antirational aspect of Schelling’s theory of aesthetics is further developed by Nietzsche. Nietzsche, who writes under the influence of Schopenhauer as well as the Austrian composer Richard Wagner, features a nonrepresentational aesthetic view in The Birth of Tragedy.46 The discussion is based on a distinction between Apollonian and Dionysian forms of ancient Greek tragedy. All forms of art are imitations of nature, and in that sense the artist is an imitator (BT 24), but there are forms of art that are not imitative. Rational art reaches its high point in opera. Such art is, like Socratic philosophy, profoundly rational and representational. Apollo is the true apostle of the principium individuationis (BT 33), a term Nietzsche simply takes over from Schopenhauer. According to this principle, the artist reproduces Ideas grasped through aesthetic contemplation and situated in the realm of reality. The goal of art is to communicate this knowledge, which is communicated only by philosophers, but not by artists. Yet there is a truer, deeper subject, who speaks through the artist, who, from this perspective, is merely a medium (BT 41). Following Schopenhauer, Nietzsche affirms that music appears as the will, and as such it is beyond language (BT 45), which does not copy the phenomenon, hence is not imitative, and which is not representational, but is the direct copy of the will itself (BT 99). This principle leads to a view of art as the rejection of individuation in the prerational Dionysos, who is the source of all tragedy (BT 66–67). This view yields knowledge of what we cannot know through reason, but which can be known through music. Tragic art, which is not representational, arises from music (BT 103). Dionysiac wisdom provides a non-Socratic link through music, which is now exemplified by Wagner, with what is deepest in Greece (BT 120, 138, 144), since music is the true idea of the cosmos (BT 130). Nietzsche’s theory of the origin of Greek tragedy provides a sophisticated version of the graecophilia that arose among German philosophers in Winckelmann’s wake, and in different ways still affects Heidegger and Gadamer. Winckelmann’s view that ancient Greek art offers the highest aesthetic criterion suggests the need for a qualified return to ancient Greek art. This suggests three further points. First, Nietzsche, who rejects the Socratic element in Greek culture as a sign of decay, allies himself with the rejection of the Platonic view of art as the imitation of an imitation,

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

247

hence rejects the Platonic view of cognizing the underlying Idea (BT 87) in favor of a prerational form of Dionysian rapture. The higher, Dionysian, prerational form of art is intended to reveal the being of nature in nonrepresentational form. Second, in Nietzsche’s nuanced conception, it is not enough merely to return to ancient Greece. According to Nietzsche, the difference between the Dionysian and the Apollonian elements in Greek culture reflects the decay of the original, authentic form of Greek tragedy through its transformation into a rational, but deficient Apollonian form. The deeper problem lies in the proposed return not merely to ancient Greece, but rather to the prerational, Dionysian element that supposedly appears earlier in the tradition than the rational, Socratic, imitative view. Third, in rejecting the Platonic view of imitative art Nietzsche becomes enmeshed in a performative contradiction in that he relies on reason to argue in favor of the irrational element that lies deeper than the rational element. In short, he invokes reason to argue for unreason. Nietzsche’s romantic theory of the recovery of the authentic form of ancient Greece through a prerational, nonrepresentational grasp of the world is clearly mythological. He provides no argument and probably none could be provided to justify his concern to substitute prerational rapture for Socratic reason, the myth of the prerational for what he regards as the myth of the rational. Nietzsche’s influential text was written in 1870–71. A little more than a half century later, a simpler, perhaps less powerful version of the myth of the return to ancient Greece through art was formulated by Heidegger in Being and Time (1927) and even more specifically in “The Origin of the Work of Art” (1936). Heidegger’s essay can be read in different ways, for instance as a direct challenge to Hegel, whose view of art he praises as the most comprehensive Western reflection on this theme precisely not, say, because of Hegel’s encyclopedic grasp of it or the depth of his analysis, but rather because it is supposedly based on metaphysics,47 the ontological approach Heidegger himself favors. Heidegger picks out Hegel’s famous pronouncement on the end of art in raising the question, “Is art still an essential and necessary way in which that truth happens which is decisive for our historical existence, or is art no longer of this character?”48 Heidegger suggests that the answer to Hegel’s claim about the end of art has not yet been decided. But he clearly believes that from the perspective of being he favors, an anti-Platonic link between art and truth remains in force. Heidegger proposes a return to ancient Greece with respect to his central philosophical concern, which can be briefly characterized as the

248

chapter seven

question of the meaning of being in general as opposed to beings. In Being and Time, he suggests that after its first flowering in ancient Greece, philosophy deviated from its original, supposedly true path. He believes that it is necessary to go back behind the later tradition to take up the question of the meaning of being as it was to begin with and in his view authentically raised in early Greek philosophy. Some time later, after the mysterious turning (Kehre) in his thought, which may or may not be linked to Heidegger’s political turning toward National Socialism, he turned against Platonism—against philosophy, which he may or may not have then equated with Platonism, perhaps as a result of his disastrous effort to leave the library and go into the streets during his service as rector of the University of Freiburg—in favor of thought (Denken). During this period, he began to claim, as he contends in his studies of Hölderlin, that a great poet has the gift of telling us who we are. Both of these suggestions for a qualified return to ancient Greece are clearly questionable. The initial philosophical proposal to return behind the early Greek tradition to take up the problem of the meaning of being as it was allegedly originally raised in early Greek philosophy presupposes an impossible grasp of early Greek philosophy as it was, undistorted by the unfolding of the later tradition. Gadamer, Heidegger’s most important German student, argues, correctly I believe, that all interpretation is always and necessarily perspectival. This suggests we can never transcend perspective to grasp the early Greek tradition in undistorted form, hence we can never recover the supposedly original, authentic way that the question of the meaning of being was raised in the early Greek tradition. In Kantian terms, Heidegger’s concern can be regulative, since it makes perfect sense to strive to go behind later distortions to grasp early Greek philosophy in pristine form, but it cannot be constitutive. Heidegger’s further, anti-Platonic claim about the importance of poets and poetry distantly recalls the Aristotelian view. Yet Heidegger’s view is comparatively weaker than Aristotle’s, since the Stagyrite provides an argument about why poetry, unlike history, grasps general truths, whereas Heidegger provides no argument at all. Heidegger’s third, most interesting claim for a qualified return to ancient Greece is provided in “The Origin of the Work of Art,” where he influentially formulates a nonrepresentational theory of art and truth. Heidegger’s discussion applies his theory of truth as disclosure (aletheia). According to Heidegger, Husserl’s effort to grasp “the acts of consciousness as the self-manifestation of thought,” which is close to the central

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

249

thrust of his version of phenomenology, was “thought more originally by Aristotle and in all Greek thinking and existence as aletheia, as the unconcealment of what is present, in being revealed, its showing itself.”49 Heidegger’s theory of phenomenology is premised on a version of claim he attributes to Aristotle that objects show themselves, which he formulates in detail as a theory of truth as aletheia in Being and Time and in other writings, especially in “Plato’s Doctrine of the Truth” (1942). In the latter he “finds” the same theory of truth in Plato’s cave analogy. Heidegger’s readings of historical figures are often, as he concedes in his reading of Kant, violent, hence questionable. For present purposes, it is not necessary to pass judgment on the accuracy of his reading of Greek philosophy in general, or Plato and Aristotle in particular. It will suffice here to note that if Heidegger were correct about his readings of ancient Greek philosophy, then his application of the alethic theory of truth to work out a theory of art and truth would be justified as an extension of an ancient Greek approach to art. The alethic theory of truth is intended to go beyond views of truth as correspondence or coherence. Heidegger applies this view in his hugely influential discussion of art. “For Greek thought the essence of knowing consists in aletheia, that is, in the revealing of beings.”50 From the perspective of his nonrepresentational stance, Heidegger links art and truth: “Thus art is the creative preserving of truth in the work. Art then is the becoming and happening of truth” (emphasis in the original).51 Heidegger illustrates his view in referring to an unidentified Van Gogh painting of peasant shoes—there are several such Van Gogh paintings— about which he claims, “Van Gogh’s painting is the disclosure of what the equipment, the pair of peasant shoes, is in truth.”52 He adds in qualifying his claim, “By this means, almost clandestinely, it came to light what is at work in the work: the disclosure of the particular being in its Being, the happening of truth.”53 He goes further in stating that “there is here a happening of truth at work.”54 In sum, for Heidegger so-called truth happens in Van Gogh’s painting, not in that something which is at hand is correctly portrayed, but, on the contrary, in that in the revelation of the equipmental being of the shoes reaches what he calls “unconcealedness.”55 Heidegger is clear about the link between truth and beauty, art and knowledge: “Truth is the unconcealedness of that which is as something that is. Truth is the truth of Being. Beauty does not show itself alongside and apart from the truth. When truth sets itself into the work, it appears. Appearance—as this being of truth is the work and as work—is

250

chapter seven

beauty. Thus the beautiful belongs to the advent of truth, truth’s taking of its place.”56 Heidegger’s remarks about Van Gogh’s painting have led to intense discussion.57 He has been criticized by Meyer Schapiro, the art historian, and defended by Derrida. According to Schapiro, Heidegger, whose interpretation is imaginary, confuses Van Gogh’s depiction of his own shoes with the depiction of a peasant’s shoes.58 Derrida responded to Schapiro in Truth in Painting,59 a book that finally says very little about the point at issue between Heidegger and Schapiro and is mainly about his own view.60 Heidegger’s nonrepresentational theory about the relation of art and truth depends on the theory of truth as disclosure, which in turn presupposes the questionable claim, central to his reading of ancient Greek philosophy as well as to his view of phenomenology, that cognitive objects show themselves to us. Suffice it to say that if that were true, it would be crucially important for theory of knowledge but that, in the absence of any argument, this rather seems to be a “misdescription” of the relation between the cognitive subject and cognitive object. Further, there is an important equivocation at the heart of the theory. What is one to make of a claim about the disclosive power of a conception of art, where “disclosure” apparently refers to the capacity to unveil from a realistic perspective what is in fact conveyed by the artwork, but that is so cavalier with respect to definite reference that all historical specificity evaporates? Like Hegel, but for different reasons, Heidegger also takes an antiPlatonic line, in his case in rehabilitating the poet.61 Heidegger turned to Hölderlin as part of his reaction to his failed effort to intervene in German higher education as in effect Hitler’s man in the German university system. According to Heidegger, poets, or at least great national poets, are inspired, hence a source of truth.62 Plato seems to suggest that under the right conditions philosophers can know reality. Beginning with his lectures on Hölderlin, Heidegger argues that the poet, not the philosopher, is the source of truth, which he later extends in his text on the work of art to art in general. Like Plato, Heidegger holds that to know is to know what is. Heidegger’s long account in “The Origin of the Work of Art” turns on a distinctive claim for the relation of art and truth. His view develops the idea of truth as disclosure that in Being and Time he earlier claimed to discover in early Greek philosophy.63 T. S. Eliot and the new critics typically claimed like Nietzsche that the artist, for instance the poet, is merely a kind of vessel through whom poetry speaks. Heidegger similarly argues that being speaks through the artist in bringing forth art objects that tell us who we are.

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

251

His basic claim is repeated in various ways in the essay. In a typical passage, he writes, “Truth is the unconcealedness of that which is as something that is. Truth is the truth of Being. Beauty does not occur alongside and apart from this truth. When truth sets itself into the word, it appears.”64 The main idea seems to be that being, or what is, manifests itself through artworks, which can be said to “deconceal” so to speak what lies hidden. Truth, for Heidegger, happens, or becomes visible, or again appears, in art. Heidegger suggests that art constitutes a real to which it calls attention.65 He seems to have in mind that great works of art call attention to the nature of a historical people, which knows itself through artworks 66 such as the Greek temple, in which the god who is present tells the Greeks about themselves.67 The unconcealing through art objects, or beings in general, is due to being.68 According to Heidegger, all artists are poets in the triple sense of what he calls bestowing, grounding, and beginning.69 Like the poet, the artist sees into things in a way that focuses them differently and anew. Artworks provide insight into who we are, about what is, concerning our world, and so on, hence bringing about unconcealedness. Thus Van Gogh’s painting of a peasant’s shoes tell us the truth about them,70 and through the Greek temple the Greeks learn about themselves and we learn about them. The derivative character of Heidegger’s example of the Greek temple is striking. Thus Hegel distinguishes between the Ideal as the true idea of beauty, the general types of art, which realize it (primitive artistic pantheism of the East, classical art, and romanticism), and the beautiful as it is actualized in the various arts. Heidegger merely seems to take over Hegel’s account of aesthetics in claiming that the temple fixes who we are and makes us conscious of it. Yet as concerns aesthetics Hegel and Heidegger agree in only a very limited sense. Hegel understands phenomenology as the science of the experience of consciousness, whereas Heidegger understands it as universal phenomenological ontology.71 According to Heidegger, phenomenological truth, or veritas transcendentalis,72 grasps what is as it is. Applied to art, this means that through the artwork, the artist depicts the being of a people, who they are as they are, and through them, by extension, being. Hegel’s point is more modest. Hegel, who does not claim to depict what is as it is, claims no more than that we recognize ourselves in artworks. Hegel is anti-Platonic in denying that we know any deeper reality than human beings. Heidegger, who suggests that Hegel is a metaphysician, hence a Platonist, is himself a Platonist in maintaining, like Schelling,73 that art tells us what is.

252

chapter seven

Hegel takes a humanist approach in regarding art as the product of human beings that tell us about them and the community in which they live, which becomes aware of itself in and through artworks. Though we do not always know the consequences of what we do, for Hegel nothing is deeper than human reality. For Heidegger, deeper than human beings lies being, which manifests itself through them. For Heidegger, the great poet, and in fact any artist, is really a very, very good phenomenologist who tells us about being, that is, about origins. Heidegger takes an anti-Platonic approach in claiming without argument of any kind that not the philosopher but the artist lets us see what is. Plato and Heidegger disagree about whether art tells us about the real, but agree that knowledge grasps reality. On the contrary, Hegel, who denies anything beyond human reality, claims that art and other forms of culture tell us about the human world. Heidegger’s claim for aesthetic truth relies on the Kantian conception of the thing in itself. For Heidegger as for Kant, phenomena are appearances through which the object, for Kant the thing in itself, and for Heidegger being, appears. For Hegel, who denies there is anything cognizable other than the contents of consciousness, nothing appears to human beings through artworks other than human beings themselves as they are at a given moment. Kant never succeeds in making plausible the relation of the thing in itself to appearances. The limitation of Heidegger’s thesis about artistic truth, even about his overall position, lies in its indebtedness to the Kantian model. The plausibility of the Hegelian view, on the contrary, lies in its proposed solution to the Kantian problem without appealing to mindindependent reality. Hegel’s theory of artistic truth features the conception of identity in difference that runs throughout his writings. In simplest terms, we recognize ourselves in artworks that literally are the externalization of ourselves, or us in the form of externality so to speak. In Heidegger’s writings, there is nothing even approximating an argument to justify the anti-Platonic view of art as disclosing the truth.74 John Sallis has recently undertaken to defend a quasi-Heideggerian phenomenological aesthetic vision in a book entitled Transfigurements: On the True Sense of Art.75 The title, which distantly echoes Danto’s view of art as the transfiguration of the commonplace,76 further implies there is a supposedly true sense of art, or a single correct conception of what art is, should be, or could be. Sallis’s aesthetic view depends on a basic distinction, which supposedly underlies the traditional view of art, but is no longer valid. Merleau-Ponty

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

253

famously distinguishes between the visible and the invisible.77 Sallis similarly remarks that, in looking at a painting, except in the case of abstract art, there is what is visible and what is invisible, or again what is directly depicted on the canvas, which is visible, and what lies beyond the sensible and is merely intelligible. Sallis claims that this distinction, which earlier provided the framework of the entire later aesthetic discussion, has collapsed, imposing on us the task of rethinking art.78 The importance of this claim is that if the distinction cannot be drawn, or can no longer be drawn, then it becomes plausible to assert something like a Heideggerian view of art as a form of disclosive truth. In other words, the historical decline of this canonical distinction, which underlies other theories of art, and would, if it were valid, preclude a Heideggerian approach, can be said rather to validate a Heideggerian theory of art. In place of this distinction, Sallis proposes a quasi-Heideggerian theory, perhaps more precisely a theory inspired by his reading of Heidegger, linking art and truth, where art is understood as transfiguring sensation. In reference to Jesus, Hegel, and Nietzsche he claims, “In art sense is transfigured.”79 What for Danto is the transfiguration of the commonplace, or ordinary objects, which become art objects, illustrates Sallis’s Heideggerian, nonrepresentational view that art is “a happening of truth.”80 Sallis restates this claim in his own language: “Art presents the true, the heavenly gift, by wrapping it in song or in some other sensible cloak by infusing it into the sculpted marble, by making it shine through the colors of a painted surface, or by letting it resound in the human voice.”81 Sallis’s view of art rests on three claims: the transfiguration of sense apparently borrowed from Danto; the Heideggerian view of art as the disclosure of the truth of being, which he merely takes over while restating it in his own language; and the novel assertion that the ancient Greek distinction between the sensible and the intelligible has in the meantime collapsed. It is unnecessary to consider here the procedure through which objects become art objects other than to note that it offers a prosaic response to the Heideggerian question of the origin of art. We also do not need to comment on Heidegger’s view of the link between art and truth, which has been mentioned above. It will suffice to focus on the controversial claim concerning the alleged collapse of the canonical Greek distinction. Sallis’s suggestion that the distinction between the sensible and the intelligible has collapsed suggests that, on historical grounds, certain moves, distinctions, or approaches have lost or might at some later point lose their plausibility. Examples might include the biblical view that the earth is the

254

chapter seven

center of the universe, which becomes implausible after Copernicus, or the Hegelian view of the death of art in the increasing loss of its transcendent religious reference. Yet this latter point would be misinterpreted as suggesting there is no distinction between the visible and the intelligible. This distinction in different ways remains basic, for instance in the widespread Platonic approach to mathematics, in Frege’s canonical distinction between sense and reference, and even within cubist art that gives up representation, or at least representation as ordinarily understood, while maintaining the intelligible, hence the distinction between the sensible and the intelligible. Thus Picasso’s interest in the “reasonable” or conceptual character of African art emphasizes what one knows about the person depicted as opposed to a strictly representational approach.82 Yet if the distinction in question is still “valid,” this undermines not only Sallis’s theory of art but, if his inference is correct that Heidegger’s theory of art presupposes the collapse of this distinction, then it further undermines Heidegger’s theory as well.

Art for Art’s Sake as Aesthetic Anti-Platonism It will be useful to make some rapid comments on the theory of art for art’s sake. Phenomenological theories of art typically link it to claims to truth, which theories of art for art’s sake, or l’art pour l’art, just as typically deny in focusing on the artwork as an end in itself. This slogan, which is identified with the French poet Théophile Gautier, seems to have been coined by Benjamin Constant, the French writer of Swiss origin, who employed this term in his diary.83 Irving Singer points out that historically those committed to l’art pour l’art were not philosophers, but artists or art critics.84 The emergence of a movement centered on a conception of art for art’s sake can be regarded as indicating a conceptual exhaustion late in the process of the bimillennial Western effort to formulate a non-philosophical alternative to the Platonic philosophical rejection of imitational, hence representational art. In turning away from knowledge of reality, those interested in an autotelic conception of art focus solely on the object to the exclusion of any possible epistemological reference as well as on the artist.85 It is not difficult to find illustrations. E. A. Poe, for instance, contends in “The Poetic Principle” (1850), “We have taken it into our heads that to write a poem simply for the poem’s sake [. . .] and to acknowledge such to

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

255

have been our design, would be to confess ourselves radically wanting in the true poetic dignity and force—but the simple fact is that what would we but permit ourselves to look into our own souls we should immediately there discover that under the sun there neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified, more supremely noble, than this very poem, this poem per se, this poem which is a poem and nothing more, this poem written solely for the poem’s sake.”86 Poe, who briefly bows in the direction of further uses of the poem, is clear that it is its own end. If we generalize Poe’s claim, we arrive at the idea that art has no other end but art itself. This is not the case, say, for Proust, since the narrator is mainly concerned with the search for lost time, or the recovery of the past, as opposed to the life of a dandy, as illustrated by M. de Charlus, one of the characters in the novel In Search of Lost Time. Although Proust has a further ax to grind as it were, Poe is interested in no more than literature, in this case poetry, which he holds up, by implication against those who prefer other professions, as the highest human calling. The idea of art for art’s sake is associated with numerous movements often linked with “aestheticism.” This term, which is unrelated to “asceticism,” refers to a nineteenth-century social movement that emphasized aesthetic values over moral or social themes in literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior design.87 The slogan of art for art’s sake is linked in English art and letters with Walter Pater and his acolytes in the Aesthetic Movements, who rebelled against Victorian moralism. Théophile Gautier, for example, denied any relation between art and morality. British decadent writers were strongly influenced by Pater, especially his essays published in 1867–68, where he recommended living intensely according to an ideal of beauty. In the preface of his influential Studies in the History of the Renaissance88 he recommends finding beauty not in universal but in concrete form (vii). Pater sounds like an anti-Plato who emphasizes the personal reaction instead of metaphysical analysis (viii). He follows Kant in insisting that artworks produce pleasurable sensations or pleasure (ix). A good critic is someone who is deeply moved (x). In the conclusion, he makes the anti-Platonic recommendation that we fix upon the “exquisite intervals” (207) in physical life. We end up with a series of unstable impressions in the mind of the individual (see 209), which is finally all that is real in life (see 210). A successful life is the life of the aesthete turned inward to that individual’s emotions: “To burn always with this hard gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life” (211).

256

chapter seven

Pater is focused not on permanence but on the impermanent contained in the fleeting moment: “While all else melts under our feet, we may well catch at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge, that seems to set the spirit free for a moment” (211). He ends his anti-Platonic plea for the impermanent in extolling a life devoted to art for art’s sake: “Of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the life of art for art’s sake has most; for art comes to you possessing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moment’s sake” (213). In Britain the decadent aesthetic movement counted in its rank, beyond Pater, such figures as Oscar Wilde and Algernon Charles Swinburne, who were influenced by the French symbolists, as well as James McNeill Whistler and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Such writers and artists believed that the purpose of the arts is to provide refined sensual pleasure but not to convey moral messages nor further to address the well-being of society. In their view art was not intended to be moral, useful, or of social benefit. They broke on this point with, for instance, John Ruskin and Matthew Arnold. Pater, like others influenced by him, as well as Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Nietzsche, who were interested in the cult of beauty, were, despite the slo­ gan of art for art’s sake, also interested in the life of an aesthete. Hence the anti-Platonic effort to stake out a rival theory of art as interesting in and of itself, without reference to a further end, apparently fails. If the anti-Platonic effort, coming late in the reaction to Plato’s view of art, fails, then art, which is a form of human activity, illustrates the general Aristotelian claim that human activity is always directed at a conception of the good and, if there is a choice, at the human good. It follows that views of art as such, hence in all their many forms, are essentially directed at the human good. I come back to this point below.

Platonic Aesthetics, Cubism, and Representation It is widely thought that the cubist movement is enormously important on artistic grounds. According to John Golding, a qualified observer who does not mince words, “cubism was perhaps the most important and certainly the most complete and radical artistic revolution since the Renaissance.”89 The cubists were of course not philosophers, hence not concerned with the formulation and solution of philosophical questions, but rather artists intent on pursuing a developing artistic tendency as it arose in the first decade of the twentieth century. Yet the emergence of cubism is also

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

257

philosophically significant. There is a measure of truth in the view that the cubist movement marks a qualified return behind modern reliance “on visual perception, one-point perspective and natural light,” which arose in the fifteenth century in the concern to depict what one sees, to the medieval period in which the artist depicted not what he saw but what through belief he knew to be the case.90 Yet it is more than that since cubism not only abandons theological conviction in returning to a revised form of the earlier intellectual approach to painting but also deeply alters the conception of the object. Cubism is crucially important in respect to the Platonic view of art as imitation, which, if it was ever possible, is apparently no longer possible in the wake of cubism, as a result of which there is no longer any object in the ordinary sense, hence, if representation presupposes unified art objects, no possibility of artistic imitation. Many observers think the Fauvists went beyond art as imitation in establishing cubism. The cubists followed in the wake of various movements, including the impressionists. Cézanne is often said to form the bridge between late nineteenth-century impressionism and early twentieth-century cubism. The point I will be arguing is that the “disintegration” of the representational object in cubism obviates on artistic grounds the very possibility of representation, hence supporting Plato’s philosophical view through changes about the conception of art within the artistic community. In the course of the development from impressionism to cubism, the object, which comes apart so to speak, can no longer be considered to function as a representation. It is arguable that in going beyond representation, for instance in its cubist phases, in which the image apparently disintegrates, modern art nonetheless retains a minimal form of representation, for instance in the very lines and planes that come apart. Yet the possible representation of lines and planes is certainly different than earlier reliance on lines and planes to represent something else through artistic means. The rise of cubism is not unprecedented, but related to cultural developments at the time in the period preceding the worldwide economic crisis in 1929. In the same period which some thought of as a kind of new golden age, when literally anything was possible, others took a much darker view. William Butler Yeats, the great Irish poet, symbolized this view in a justly famous poem, “The Second Coming” (1920): Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

258

chapter seven

The ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The interpretation of this text is uncertain. Yeats can be read as inveighing against the rise of materialism, which early in the twentieth century increasingly dominated the present and future, in the name of the past, which represented other, spiritual values. Among recent thinkers, Heidegger is distinguished by his incessant emphasis on the tradition, hence the past at the expense of the present and the future. According to some interpretations “the beast” refers to the traditional ruling classes of Europe, which were unable to protect the traditional culture of Europe from materialistic mass movements. The concluding lines apparently allude to Yeats’s belief that his age represented the end of the cycle that began with the rise of Christianity. Of interest here is the dark pessimism Yeats exhibits with respect to the mere possibility of social change. This is the same pessimism that prevailed at the end of the First World War, and which quickly led some leading German intellectuals, such as Heidegger, Ernst Jünger, Alfred Baeumler, and Carl Schmitt, to identify with National Socialism. In Christian theology, the “second coming” or “second advent” is a time of joy signaling the return of Jesus from heaven to earth in fulfillment of the messianic prophecy. In this time, it is thought that the dead will be raised, that the last judgment will occur, and that God’s kingdom will be established on earth. Yeats, however, is apparently thinking not of the coming into being of a new age, but rather of the passing away of the old age. He is not thinking of the second coming of Christ but rather of the arrival, as he says, of a “rough beast,” presumably a new and disordered world, which will take the place of the Christian world. The second coming is not then the Christian salvation but, following the failure of the Christian prophecy, the post-Christian decline of the world as it was known until that point. The social decay Yeats detects in the passing of an established way of life is already preceded by the revolutionary transformation of modern painting in the move away from academism and the subsequent transformation of the conception of the painterly object. This “decay” of the painterly object, not as it is or is in itself but as it is represented either on canvas or in some other form, occurs gradually in a series of stages. I will be focusing

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

259

rapidly on impressionism, Cézanne, and cubism in depicting the general emergence of a reaction against artistic realism and representation. As a result of the shift to impressionism and then to post-impressionism and cubism in particular, attention shifted from the standard academic concern to represent the mind-independent, stable external object or objects, objects that are never seen or otherwise experienced but are thought to exist, to study of what is immediately given to consciousness, and then still further to the compositional factors underlying perception. Impressionism is a nineteenth-century art movement that brought together a loose grouping of Parisian artists, who became prominent in the 1870s and 1880s. It gave rise to eight public exhibitions in Paris between 1874 and 1876, which marked the public break with academic art. The movement, which began in art, soon spilled over into music and literature. After Louis XIV, academic painting in France was dominated by the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, which fixed the rules of beauty roughly until impressionism (impressionisme) emerged in the nineteenth century. At the time, the Salon de Paris played a central role in presenting painting to critics and to the public. The name, which derives from Claude Monet’s painting Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), was attributed to the movement as a whole in Louis Leroy’s satirical review in Le Charivari. In 1863, the jury of the Salon rejected Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe on the pretext that it represented a nude woman in a contemporary context. Manet then joined forces with the impressionists, who demanded that their works be presented to the public. Napoleon III, the French emperor, gave the order to hold a Salon des Refusés, where the impressionist works could be publicly exhibited. This led to violent polemics. In 1867 and 1872, efforts to hold further Salons were blocked. In reaction, a series of important artists, including Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Cézanne, Berthe Morisot, and Edgar Degas founded a formal association in April 1874: la Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs et graveurs. Cooperation among these and other painters was never more than distant. Pissarro was the only one to participate in all eight exhibitions. Camille Corot, who is often considered as the first impressionist, never in fact belonged to the movement. Degas, who preferred design to color, refused to paint outside the studio. Renoir left the movement but later returned to it. Manet continued to exhibit with the Salon de Paris. After the FrenchGerman war in 1870, Cézanne, Renoir, Sisley, and Monet left the impressionists for the Salon. In 1886, when Signac and Seurat, who abandoned impressionism for pointillism, organized an exhibition of their own, the

260

chapter seven

remaining impressionists disbanded. Others associated with impressionism in different ways include Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Van Gogh. The impressionists, who broke the established rules of academic painting in various ways, are often said to paint realistic scenes of modern life in stressing overall effects rather than details. Their focus lies on fleeting impressions, hence the name, as distinguished from concentration on the stable and conceptual aspects of things. There is clearly a phenomenological dimension in the focus on what is directly given in consciousness. In the impressionist movement, attention turned from what the object was thought to be to what the impressionists claimed was actually perceived. In turning away from ideal beauty and the eternal, the impressionists turned toward the personal vision of each painter. Postimpressionism developed from impressionism. Beginning in the 1880s, several slightly younger artists, who became known as postimpressionists, began to develop different views about the use of color, pattern, form, and line in departing from impressionism. They included Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, and Henri de ToulouseLautrec. Cézanne, who is often considered to be a key intermediary between impressionism and cubism, plays an important role in the further transformation of the relation of the painter to the object, hence in the conception of painting. Other possible intermediaries include Courbet, Gauguin, and le Douanier Rousseau, and perhaps even Derain91 and Matisse. Still other influences include African art. Cézanne is often said to be obsessed by the representation of volume. According to Léon Gard, Cézanne was concerned to resolve the problem of painting without relying on such devices as outlining figures, chiaroscuro, and so on, but rather through the shimmering (diapré) of colors. In short, he wished to follow the old painter in Balzac’s famous short story “Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu,” who exclaimed: “The sketch does not exist!” in wishing to say that in painterly work everything should be expressed, sketch and values, only through the modulation of color.92 With this in mind, he studied space, the geometry of volumes, and the relation between form and color. According to Cézanne, color and form were related since the most powerful color is associated with the fullest form. Cubism claims to be influenced by Cézanne, though this paternity is doubtful. All his life, Cézanne insisted on the concrete study of nature as the true task of the artist.93 He was concerned to transform authentic observation into accurate representation in paint. Unlike many impressionist

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

261

colleagues, who were in revolt against the permanent, Cézanne wanted to transform impressionism into something permanent akin to museum art. “I want to make of impressionism something solid and lasting like the art in the museums.”94 In effect, he tried to unite intense observation of nature with the permanence of classical composition. His strategy included decomposition of what is seen into its constituents such as simple forms and color planes. For instance, he treated nature as a series of cylinders for a tree trunk, a sphere for an apple or orange, and so on. He also explored binocular vision in noting the slightly different but simultaneous visual perceptions recorded by each eye. In this way he replaced one-point perspective, or vision from a single perspective, with vision from two or in principle more perspectives. Cézanne’s innovations in breaking nature down into its constituent elements, in depicting objects in terms of color and volume, and in distancing himself from one-point perspective all go in the direction of the complex movement later known as cubism. Cubism is an artistic movement that developed from 1907 to 1914 under the influence of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, and that after the First World War began to lose steam, finally ending in the 1920s. Though cubism quickly became widely influential, it is often thought that there were finally only three authentic cubist painters: Picasso, Braque, and Gris. Cubism arguably originates in a letter from Cézanne to Emile Bernard (15 April 1904), in which the former writes, “Treat nature in terms of the cylinder, the cone, everything in perspective, or alternatively so that each side of an object, or a plane, is directed toward a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give the width of a cross-section of nature, or, if you prefer, of the spectacle that the Pater Omnipotens Aeterne places before you. The lines perpendicular to this horizon indicate depth. Nature for us human beings is more in depth than on the surface, hence the need to introduce in vibrations of the light, as represented by reds and yellows, enough blue to feel the air.”95 Cubism, which has attracted an immense amount of attention, is analyzed from varying perspectives. Many scholars consider cubism to have begun with an analytical phase, which ended in 1912–13, supposedly followed by a synthetic phase. When this transition occurred depends on the observer. The art dealer D. H. Kahnweiler later suggested that the transition occurs in Picasso’s work at Cadaquès in 1910, work that made it possible to combine a great deal of information into a single image, and signaled the move from an analytical to a synthetic approach.96 The

262

chapter seven

En­glish art historian Douglas Cooper identifies three phases of cubism: early cubism (1906–8), when the movement arose in the work of Picasso and Braque; high cubism (1909–14), when Juan Gris emerged as an important cubist; and late cubism (1914–21) when cubism declined as a radical avant-garde movement.97 Cubism is the joint invention of Picasso and Braque, the main innovators, who both lived at the time in the Montmartre section of Paris. They were in very close contact from the inception of the movement until the war. They would later be joined by the Spanish painter Juan Gris. At the time, Braque was associated with the Fauvists, a postimpressionist movement, which favored strident colors, undisciplined brushwork, simplification, and abstraction. Fauvism belonged to the ongoing reaction against residual impressionist interest in representation and realism. In a meeting in 1907, Picasso persuaded Braque to abandon fauvism to develop cubism. According to some sources, the term “cubism” is due to Henri Matisse,98 but others say that the French art critic Louis Vauxcelles first used the term “cubes” in reviewing an exhibition by Braque in 1908,99 and then “bizarreries cubiques” in 1909 after seeing further pictures by Braque at the Salon des Indépendants.100 The influences in the prior tradition on the emergence of cubism are also unclear. Some observers trace it to two tendencies in Cézanne’s late work: his emphasis on the plural standpoint of binocular vision achieved by breaking up the painted surface into small areas of paint, and the simplified depiction of natural forms through geometrical objects such as cylinders, spheres, and cones. If this is true, it is clear that the cubists carried these tendencies further than Cézanne. For instance, they combined all the surfaces of the object of representation at the same time, thus creating an entirely new way to depict objects in artworks. Husserl talks about the way that a particular object is studied from different perspectives in serial order. In cubism, these perspectives are present simultaneously. Cubist art typically breaks up the objects depicted in analyzing and reassembling the parts in an abstract form, whose surfaces intersect in unexpected ways. Ordinary space gives way to what has been called a shallow ambiguous space without depth. Others point to precubist but clearly anti-academic tendencies in Picasso’s work. In the summer of 1907, immediately prior to the emergence of cubism, he completed a famous painting, now known as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Despite its name, this painting depicts five nude female prostitutes in a brothel on Avinyó St. in Barcelona. Of this painting, it is usually said that Picasso turns his back on the academic European tradi-

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

263

tion of painting, in adopting so-called primitivism—apparent here in the depiction of the figures as angular and disjointed, not conventionally feminine, two with faces like African masks—and in giving up perspective for a flat, two-dimensional plane. Observers regard this painting, one of Picasso’s most famous, as a revolutionary work, the first twentiethcentury masterpiece leading to modern art.101 One particularly interesting feature is the shift from vision to a more intellectual, even conceptual approach. This tendency is especially clear in Picasso’s painting. As cubism was emerging, Picasso, but not Braque, was under the influence of African art. This influence is visible in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon in various ways, for instance in the masklike faces of two of the women. As Golding, for instance, points out, Picasso was especially struck by the “reasonable” or conceptual quality of African art, which was based not on the immediate appearance but on what the artist knew about the subject of the painting. At the time, Picasso said to Gomez de la Serna as cubism was emerging, “I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.”102 This suggests Picasso relied on African art, which is supposedly primitive—in French it is routinely called “art primitif” or “art premier” to indicate that it originates in preliterate societies—to withdraw from both academism with its stress on formal representation as well as impression, which relied on what one supposedly sees in the instant. This further suggests that African art is not primitive, but rather, from the perspective of cubism—which was by contrast with Western art the most advanced movement of the time—advanced, more advanced than recognized by observers who, in relying on traditional Eurocentric criteria, regarded it as a mere untutored precursor of supposedly advanced European art. Since cubist artists were less interested in representation than thought, they were willing to abandon traditional representational techniques developed over many centuries of experimentation. Observers note that both Braque and Picasso take liberties with traditional approaches to painterly representation. Their paintings reflect a revision of aspects of Cézanne’s approach in more conceptual terms, including a less-naturalistic approach to shading, restriction of the range of colors, simplification of forms, combination of more than one viewpoint, less reliance on traditional perspective, combination of various aspects of an object in a single vision, painting from memory as opposed to painting from models, and so on. The relation of cubism to Cézanne was not lost on contemporary observers. La Fresnaye, writing in 1912, in looking back at Cézanne as cubism emerges, remarks, “Each object, in one of the late canvases, has ceased to exist only in itself, and become little by little a cell within the

264

chapter seven

whole organism of the painting. That is the really fruitful aspect of Cézanne’s painting and the reason for which it is at the root of all the modern tendencies.”103 One way to put the point is to say that the cubists carried further aspects of Cézanne’s work, which they restated in more abstract form. The degree of abstraction was initially more apparent than its relation to Cézanne. Thus Arthur Jerome Eddy, who wrote the first book in English on cubism, noted in 1914, “In short Picasso and a few followers have reached a degree of abstraction in the suppression of the real and the particular that their paintings represent the same degree of emotion as the demonstration of a difficult geometrical proposition.”104 Cubism divides into different analytic and later synthetic subtendencies. Analytic cubism, which developed between 1908 and 1912, focused on simple geometrical forms such as the cylinder, cone, and sphere to represent nature. Analytic cubists analyzed natural forms into their basic geometrical parts in the two-dimensional plane of the painting. During this period, the works of Picasso and Braque, which tended toward abstraction, were stylistically similar. This similarity is manifest in the Picasso’s Ma Jolie (1912) and in Braque’s Le Portugais (1911). Both paintings focus on form instead of color. Both are almost monochromatic, including grey, blue and ochre. Both also retain few signs of an outside reality in focusing on complex geometrical structures made out of simple geometrical shapes. Analytic cubism analyzed or pulled apart objects. Synthetic cubism put them together in various ways. Synthetic cubism, which succeeded analytic cubism, lasted between 1912 and 1919. It innovated in utilizing collage, or papier collé, including pieces of newspaper, sheet music, and so on, as well as more than one type of medium in a single painting. Its main representatives were Picasso, Braque, and Gris. In comparison to analytic cubism, synthetic cubist paintings are less schematic, though not less abstract, and employ less shading, which creates still flatter space. The first synthetic cubist painting is Picasso’s Still Life with Chair-Caning (1912) on oil and pasted oil-cloth, or oil-cloth pasted literally on to the canvas. The overall intention of this movement is unclear. Cubism later led some toward increasingly abstract art. This is consistent with the views of observers who argue that the intention was representational and anti­ naturalistic. Others believe that its basic intention is to depict an object or the human figure from multiple perspectives simultaneously. Yet about all that remains realistic in these paintings is the name, which presumably still refers to real objects. Those who think cubism is realist, and who even use the term “cubist realism,” vary greatly in their understanding

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

265

of it. Some believe that in comparison to Cézanne, Picasso and Braque went further toward dismantling the object while depicting its reality in a new way without using traditional laws of perspective and shading. This suggests cubism continues the traditional concern with representation for which it invents new procedures. Apollinaire, the French poet, apparently believed that cubists did not paint from visual reality but rather from what he called the reality of the concept. According to Edward Fry, a cubist artwork is defined, on the contrary, by its internal consistency. This indicates that cubism is not based on direct experience but on intellection. Its intellectualist dimension differs in this way from fauvism, which relies on phenomenalistic and sensualistic tendencies. Left unclear is the relation of cubism as a revolutionary artistic approach to the representation of the mind-external real world. This recurrent problem, in recent times, runs throughout academic painting, then through impressionism to Cézanne and cubism. It is useful to distinguish between whatever the various artists thought they were doing and what they in fact accomplished. Apollinaire’s refusal to isolate abstraction from realism is comforted by others, including Maurice Raynal. Writing in 1913, he states, “Sincere artists today feel the need to canalize and tame their inspiration in order to extract from their faculties the maximum returns, and to strike a balance between sensitivity and reason. . . . They therefore no longer imitate the misleading appearances of visual phenomena but the truer ones of the mind.”105 Other observers make similar claims. Braque reiterates this point in 1910 in writing, “When the fragmentation of objects appeared in my painting around 1910, it was as a technique for getting closer to the object.”106 This view is partially supported but also undermined by Golding, who indicates that Picasso introduced clues into his paintings to help the spectator and that Braque always retained a link to reality.107 Yet there is a clear difference, in fact a veritable gulf between retaining a tenuous link to reality and depicting it in representational form. There is obviously a tension between the problem of representing reality and the painterly representation of the subject of a given painting. Gris, who later joined forces with Picasso and Braque, claimed in a letter written toward the end of the cubist movement that he was able to reduce the theme of any given painting to purely geometric terms.108 He further denied that his work was aimed toward representational realism. In a conversation in 1920, he is reported to have said, “I begin by organizing my picture: then I qualify the objects. My aim is to create new objects, which cannot be compared with any object in reality. The distinction between synthetic and analytical Cubism lies precisely in this. These new objects,

266

chapter seven

therefore, avoid distortion. My Violin, being a creation, need fear no comparison.”109 This suggests that the constructivist facet of cubism is directed not toward cognition, as in Kant and other constructivist epistemologists, but rather toward the creation of entirely new objects. This idea finds favor with other observers. The general theme of the intersection between realism and the geometrical techniques the cubists derived from Cézanne is clearly formulated by Princet. According to André Lhôte, Princet raised that following point against Picasso and Braque: “You represent by means of a trapezoid a table, just as you see it, distorted by perspective, but what would happen if you decided to express the universal table (la table type)? You would have to straighten it up onto the picture plane, and from the trapezoid return to a true rectangle. If that table is covered with objects equally distorted by perspective, the same straightening up process would have to take place with each of them. Thus the oval of a glass would become a perfect circle. But this is not all: this glass and this table seen from another angle are nothing more than the table a horizontal bar a few centimeters thick, the glass a profile whose base and rim are horizontal. Hence the need for another displacement.”110 The problem is also not resolved by turning to the techniques of collage and papier collé. Collage and papier collé are closely related, difficult to distinguish. Some observers believe that the invention of collage in which objects or other materials are literally applied or even glued to the painting surface—an example might be papier collé, which, as the name suggests, is closely related to collage—is a step toward realism. This new technique originated when Picasso glued a piece of oil-cloth, printed to imitate chaircaning, to the canvas of Still Life with Chair-Caning in early 1912. Both collage and papier collé were used differently by different cubists and at different times. Yet it does not follow that because different cubist painters used real objects in whole or in part, they successfully depicted reality. Picasso, for instance, who invented this technique, remarked, “We sought to express reality with materials we did not know how to handle, and which we prized precisely because we knew their help was not indispensable to us, that they were neither the best nor the most adequate.”111 Despite what the cubist painters may have thought, it is clear that they did not direct concerted attention toward the solution of the problem of the faithful representation of reality. The poet Max Jacob, still another observer, is surely closer to the truth than others who attribute realism to cubism. Though he believed in the universal value and objectivity of poetry, he claimed in 1916 that art “is of value for itself and not because

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

267

of any confrontation one can make with reality.”112 If cubism were representational, it could be regarded as an effort to attain the traditional anti-Platonic goal through new, nontraditional means. If cubism turns on the problem of depicting the reality of the object not as it is experienced, but rather as it is within the mind, then it differs on this cardinal point from abstract art, which is not only abstract, as the name suggests, but also at least in principle wholly nonrepresentational. Yet cubism’s tenuous link to the real—for instance, in Braque’s decision to provide a shadow, thereby creating a minimal legibility for the nail painted as a trompe l’oeil in Violin and Palette (1910)—is insufficient to justify a claim that cubism is realist. Hence, the use of words, letters, and figures in a series of paintings by Braque and Picasso following the former’s inclusion of stenciled lettering in The Portuguese (1911) does not support the conclusion that either intends to represent the real as it is. Cooper seems correct to claim that “Braque and Picasso had never intended their paintings to be imitations of any existing reality.”113 It is, then, significant that the purists Ozenfant and Jeanneret, later known as Le Corbusier, emerged at the beginning of the 1920s in revolting against cubism for allegedly bankrupting representational art. Abstract art develops the influence of cubism in a nonrepresentationalist direction. It resembles early German romanticism in that it does not represent objects but rather expresses feelings. Two examples drawn from the Russian art world will suffice to illustrate this point. Kandinsky, like Yeats, revolted against materialism in favor of so-called pure inner experience. In his treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art, he emphasizes the spiritual against the material in a prophetic view of art.114 According to Michel Henry, the French phenomenologist, Kandinsky attained absolute subjectivity, or absolute phenomenological life prior to objective or scientific observation.115 Hence the geometrical elements in his paintings make no claim to objective knowledge. Kazimir Malevitch revolted from inside Russia against socialist theory. In 1915, he invented so-called suprematism, which was supposed to bring art closer to reality in destroying any form of representation. Where Kandinsky rejected pure abstraction, Malevitch embraced it. In his manifesto, From Cubism to Suprematism (Ot kubizma i futurizma k suprematizmu, 1915), Malevitch establishes an absolute boundary between art and nature in denying representation of any kind. “Creation exists only where paintings present shapes that take nothing from what has been created in nature.”116

268

chapter seven

Cubism, which began as a movement within painting, quickly became influential inside and outside France117 within painting in futurism, and in the other arts as well, including literature. The disintegration of the painterly object in the rise of cubism is only one form of a kind of generalized decay manifest elsewhere in Yeats’s wake, in the transition, say, from Proust to Beckett leading to the rise of the nouveau roman. Proust’s novelistic effort, which centers on the search for what he calls lost time, is in fact a kind of representation of social reality transposed into a temporal dimension. This very possibility quickly disappears in Beckett and the so-called new novelists, including Michel Butor, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Nathalie Sarraute. Beckett’s increasingly minimalist work is widely regarded as an attack on the realist tradition. His destruction or deconstruction of the traditional view of reality removes it as an object of representation. En attendant Godot is sometimes regarded as announcing the end of art. This continues in different ways in the nouveau roman, which Beckett strongly influences. The “new novel” emerged in France in the 1950s initially in a series of works published by Editions de Minuit. The term nouveau roman stems from an article by Emile Henriot in Le Monde (May 22, 1957) describing writers who invented a different style for each book. It is incorrect to detect a common aesthetic theory linking together writers as different as Beckett (if he belongs to this loose movement), Robbe-Grillet, Sarraute, Samuel Pinget, and Butor. Yet they clearly share an art of revolt. As in cubism, which turned its back on French academic painting, the nouveau roman breaks with the traditional novel regarding various elements, such as the description of characters, a coherent chronology, and even the logical coherence of the text. Robbe-Grillet later published a collection entitled Pour un nouveau roman (1963). According to Robbe-Grillet, a novel should focus on objects in presenting an individual, hence subjective, view in subordinating plot and character to the world instead of utilizing the world for novelistic purposes. The result is to abandon any velleity of objectivity in favor of subjectivity.

Conclusion: Kant, Hegel, and the Social Uses of Art I will conclude with some remarks about the social utility of art and art objects of all kinds. It is often suggested that art is socially useful.118 By “social utility” I indicate the view that something, for instance art, contrib-

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

269

utes to the human good, such as the good life, however understood. The Greek claim for the unity of the true, the good, and the beautiful cashes out in Plato’s conviction that at least in principle art contributes, through the intervention of philosophers, in bringing about the just state, hence in realizing the social good. Plato’s conception of the social utility of art depends on two premises: an aesthetic premise, which suggests that art requires a viable approach to knowledge; and an epistemological premise in which cognition is understood as the grasp of the mind-independent real as it is. On this basis, Plato rejects artistic imitation and epistemological representationalism in accepting epistemological intuitionism. But today neither intuitionism nor representationalism is considered to be acceptable as an epistemological strategy. Intuitionism is unacceptable since we currently favor intersubjectively verifiable results instead of unverified and unverifiable individual claims to know. This leads to the rejection of any form of epistemological privilege, as in the Platonic suggestion that on grounds of nature and nurture some exceptional individuals, in Plato’s view philosophers, or in Heidegger’s view national poets, are uniquely qualified to grasp reality. Representationalism is also unacceptable since, as the long debate since Plato shows, an acceptable formulation for a representationalist approach to knowledge has never been found. These epistemological consequences speak directly to the theme of the social utility of art after Plato. If we can neither accept Plato’s proposed intuitionist solution of the problem of knowledge, nor overturn his rejection of representationalism, then there seem to be only the following possibilities: either (1) we must be able to make out a different approach to knowledge and, on that basis, a claim for the relation of art and truth, or (2) we must abandon any form of this claim, since in Platonic terms, the beautiful is not true, either (a) in attributing a form of social utility to art in independence of its cognitive contribution, or (b) in giving up any claim for the social utility of art. Claims that art is true or not true are opposing aesthetic extremes. If the beautiful were not true, it would not follow that it is not useful. And it would be an error, if one denied that art must be true, or true in the strong Platonic sense, to maintain that art is socially useless. As concerns art, social utility may, but need not, depend on an associated truth claim. Trivial examples—music evokes a series of emotions, reading good books is interesting, pictures can be decorative, studying philosophy can be enlightening, and so on—suggest that art is socially useful in various ways. It remains to be seen if art is also true, or whether the supposed social utility of art is dependent on its truth claims.

270

chapter seven

Even those committed to the thesis of art for art’s sake (e.g., Nietzsche and Poe) concede its social utility. Since art is a form of culture, a claim that art is socially useless is a restricted form of the claim that culture is socially useless, for instance because it is an end in itself that does not further contribute to the good life. Thus one might also contend that the humanities in general are useless, or at least less useful, say, than the sciences, which provide quantifiable knowledge, which is clearly useful in a wide variety of human endeavors, such as building bridges, and so on. Yet the humanities do provide knowledge, even if it is unquantifiable, since in studying history, language, and the arts, we become familiar with the various products of human history. The extreme claim that to be useful art requires a grasp of reality as it is invokes a Parmenidean, or quasi-Parmenidean, cognitive standard that arguably cannot be met, that is not met in Plato’s theoretical conception of the state as a philosophical art object, and that differs from ordinary forms of art Plato regards as socially pernicious. Yet if we refuse any form of the view that to know is to know mind-independent reality, then ordinary art and art-related activities, such as listening to music, reading poetry or novels, watching movies, and visiting museums, again become socially useful. Few observers now believe art and other forms of culture are wholly without redeeming social value. Perhaps no one now denies that at least some forms of art are pleasing, and at least in that sense socially useful. After Plato, the difficulty in making out a link between art and truth lies in revising our view of knowledge and, as a consequence, our understanding of how art is socially useful. Kant’s critical philosophy is a turning point in the discussion, in denying that aesthetics is concerned with knowledge while at least schematically pointing to the social utility of art. In denying a relation between art and knowledge, or at least knowledge as he understands it according to his very strong, a priori criterion, Kant poses very clearly the question of the relation of art and truth without knowledge of reality. Kant reproduces the Platonic dualism of appearance and reality but, unlike Plato, denies that reality, or in his language noumena (or again things in themselves) could even possibly appear. Kant’s understanding of the relation of art and truth, hence his view of the social utility of aesthetics, is difficult to grasp. His argument for the possibility of aesthetics is intended to provide a bridge between freedom and necessity in finally demonstrating the unity of reason119 and thereby justifying his analysis of morality. In response to the Platonic trio of the

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

271

good, the true, and the beautiful, Kant maintains that art is not true, but that is has a moral function or again is linked to morality. Kant argues for a necessary connection between aesthetics and morality,120 but the argument, as Heinz Cassirer points out, hence the precise claim, is unclear.121 If Kant could make out his claim, he would be able to answer Plato through attributing a moral function to art at the cost of abandoning its cognitive function. Since it is not clear what Kant’s answer is, it is also not clear if he succeeds in this task. Kant’s view features the exceedingly general claim that a theory of aesthetics, and in particular a conception of reflective judgment, justifies the general view that human reason is intrinsically linked to human ends, hence to the good life, in linking aesthetics to morality. Hegel, on the contrary, asserts the intrinsic interest of aesthetics in featuring a twofold relation of art and truth. Hegel’s aesthetic theory is based on a further development of Kantian constructivism, or the insight, which forms the core of Kant’s Copernican revolution, that we “construct” what we know. In his aesthetic theory Kant focuses on bringing single objects under general principles, in shoring up his overall view of reason as linked to the human good, whereas Hegel focuses on the construction and significance of the construction of these objects. Hegel’s account of art in the Encyclopedia is based on the idealist identity thesis122 stated as early as the Differenzschrift as “the identity of subject and object.”123 The Hegelian view of aesthetics focuses on two themes: the relation of the art object to what it represents, and the artist. It is sometimes said that Hegel breaks sharply with preceding aesthetic theories.124 On the contrary, he rather builds on the prior discussion. The originality of his conception of aesthetics lies in taking his predecessors at their word. Hegel’s aesthetic view is both Platonic and non- or even anti-Platonic. It is Platonic in taking seriously the imitative function of the art object, which Plato never abandons, and it is non- or anti-Platonic in stressing the relation between the artist and the art object. Hegel combines Kantian representationalism as well as Kantian constructivism in a single aesthetic theory. The representationalist dimension restates the famous example of a craftsman in book 10 of the Republic. Considered as a representation, an art object expresses an artist’s intuition in the form of a beautiful object, which can be evaluated relative to the idea it illustrates and the ideal to which it approximates. Plato, Kant, and Hegel analyze this relation differently. For Plato, who favors epistemological intuitionism, art, which imitates mere appearance,

272

chapter seven

always, hence necessarily, falls short of the truth. According to Kant, aesthetic judgments are not objective judgments aimed at knowledge, but rather subjective judgments concerning our feelings about an object in which single objects are subsumed under universal, or a priori, concepts. Hegel follows Plato’s view that the craftsman makes a bed that necessarily falls short of the Form of the bed since ideas fall short of ideals. Hegel and Plato both reject representation in offering different remedies. Plato substitutes direct intuition for representation, but Hegel relies on concepts as key to cognition. This point relates to Hegel’s relative preference for philosophy over art (and religion) as well as his view of the death of art. Religion, which falls short of Hegel’s normative conception of knowledge, functions in the sphere in which “a nation defines what it considers to be true,” which is only partially exercised in what Hegel calls religion in the form of art.125 The increasing secularization of modern society results in the gradual loss of the transcendent religious dimension. Art has not been and is not in the process of dying. But a certain form of art is dying or already dead in virtue of the end of a certain social function of art in an increasingly secular society, which no longer relies on religion in the same way as in the past. Kant presupposes freedom as a necessary condition of morality. Hegel further presupposes the progressive historical realization of the idea of freedom, on the political level, for instance, through a social movement beginning perhaps in the French Revolution, including various forms of social pathology,126 hence in a social context. Unlike Kant, Hegel does not subordinate art to morality, nor comprehend aesthetics as a step on the way to the realization of a moral goal. Since aesthetics also does not center on cognizing the mind-independent real world through an objet d’art, art cannot be evaluated through the faithful imitation of nature. Art’s role lies in the free creation of aesthetic, or again beautiful objects in and through which, even if we do not know mind-independent reality, we know ourselves. Hegel assigns art a cognitive role, not in knowing mind-independent reality, which cannot be known, but rather in cognizing the human subject in concrete form. By means of artistic creations, we know ourselves in various ways. Thus cowboy movies can be interpreted as useful in manifesting a certain mythology about frontier life in American West.127 Picasso’s Guernica powerfully transmits the artist’s attitude, shared by many others of his generation as well, toward the Spanish Civil War. The wall paintings in the Lascaux caves near the village of Montignac in Dordogne in

theory and practice of representation in the twentieth century

273

southwestern France provide a visual record of the views of individuals who lived there during the Paleolithic period. And cultural anthropology presupposes that artifacts of all kinds reveal the cultures in which they were created for the most varied reasons. The broader point is that art is a form of self-consciousness, one of the main ways in which we become conscious of ourselves. An objet d’art that may or may not please us does not cognize mindindependent reality but rather helps us to become self-aware. The social function of art, which goes beyond mere pleasure, or even satisfaction, lies in making us aware of ourselves—aware, as Hegel writes, of “the depths and heights of the human heart as such, mankind in its joys and sorrows, its strivings, deeds, and fates.”128 Heidegger notwithstanding, an important lesson of modern times is that claims for knowledge can only be based on finite human beings, whose understanding of the world and of themselves is indexed to time and place, to the historical moment. Hegel’s view of art presupposes his post-Kantian view of knowledge. For Hegel, art, which constructs art objects, belongs to culture in general (Bildung). Human beings “concretize” themselves in cultural objects in the process of knowing the surrounding world and themselves. Hegel teaches us that, despite Plato’s condemnation of art as imitation, there is truth in art, which is one of the salient ways in which we comprehend ourselves according to the criteria that obtain in a given historical moment. The social function of art lies in presenting spirit to itself in an important social form of self-consciousness: “This spirit of a people is a definite spirit and [it] is also determined according to the historical state of development. . . . Thus it is one individuality. Its essence is represented, revered, and enjoyed as God, in religion; presented as image and intuition, in art; apprehended cognitively and conceived as thought, in philosophy.”129

Notes Introduction 1. See E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 66–68. 2. See Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 73. 3. See Richard Eldridge, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 4. See Harold Pinter, Nobel Lecture, “Art, Truth & Politics” (http://www .nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture.html). 5. See Noël Carroll, Art in Three Dimensions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 210. 6. Ibid., 213. 7. See Joseph Margolis, On Aesthetics: An Unforgiving Introduction (Belmont, CA: Wads­worth, 2009), 8 and passim. 8. See Nicholas Rescher, “Realism/Idealism,” chap. 4 in Philosophical Inqui­ ries: An Introduction to Problems of Philosophy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010). 9. See Paul Boghossian, Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructiv­ ism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 10. See, e.g., Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978), esp. 130–40. 11. Friedrich Schiller, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, trans. Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby, in Essays, ed. Walter A. Hinderer and Daniel Dahlstrom (New York: Continuum Press, 2005), 90: “If man is ever to solve that problem of politics in practice he will have to approach it through the problem of the aesthetic, because it is only through beauty that man makes his way to freedom.” 12. See, for recent discussion, Max Statkiewicz, Rhapsody of Philosophy: Dia­ logues with Plato in Contemporary Thought (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press), 2009.

276

notes to chapter one

13. See Paul Oskar Kristeller, “The Modern System of the Arts,” in Renaissance Thought II (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 163–227. Kristeller’s essay originally appeared in 1950, anticipating the analogous contextualization of Kant’s aesthetics by Hans-Georg Gadamer (in Truth and Method) by ten years (both were students of Martin Heidegger). See Larry Shiner, The Invention of Art: A Cultural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 3–16. 14. See Alexander Baumgarten, Meditationes, Reflections on Poetry, trans., with the original text, introduction, and notes, Karl Aschenbrenner and William B. Holther (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954), sec. 116. 15. There is currently a revival of interest in ancient aesthetics. See, for recent discussion of ancient aesthetics, Michael Squire, “The Art of Art History in GrecoRoman Antiquity” Arethusa 43, no.2 (2010): 133–63; Oleg V. Bychkov, Aesthetic Revelation: Reading Ancient and Medieval Texts after Hans Urs von Balthasar (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America, 2010); James I. Porter, The Origins of Aesthetic Thought in Ancient Greece: Matter, Sensation, and Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Anastasia-Erasma Peponi, Frontiers of Pleasure: Models of Aesthetic Response in Archaic and Classical Thought; A Companion to Ancient Aesthetics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); R. M. Rosen and Ineke Sluiter, eds., Aesthetic Value in Classical Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 16. See A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Free Press, 1979), 39. 17. Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz, Ancient Aesthetics, vol. 1 of History of Aesthetics, 3 vols., trans. Adam and Ann Czerniawski (Sterling, VA: Thoemmes Press, 1999), 17. 18. Ibid. 19. See Paul Oskar Kristeller, “The Modern System of the Arts: A Study in the History of Aesthetics,” Journal of the History of Ideas 12, no. 4 (October 1951): 496–527. 20. Ibid., 497. 21. “There is but one way for the moderns to become great, and perhaps unequalled; I mean, by imitating the antients.” Johann W Winckelmann, Reflec­ tions on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks (1765; repr. London: Routledge/ Thommes Press, 1999), 2. 22. See Tatarkiewicz, Ancient Aesthetics, 25–30. 23. “It would show the greatest ineptitude in him [Plato] that he should pick a quarrel with art as a whole on metaphysical grounds when he really only wanted to quarrel with contemporary art on aesthetic grounds.” R. G. Collingwood, “Plato’s Philosophy of Art,” Mind, n.s., 34, no. 134 (April 1925): 154–72.

Chapter One 1. Collingwood, “Plato’s Philosophy of Art,” 154–72. 2. See Gail Fine, On Ideas: Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato’s Theory of Forms (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 49–54.

notes to chapter one

277

3. See Richard McKeon, “Literary Criticism and the Concept of Imitation in Antiquity,” Modern Philology 34, no. 1: 1–36. 4. See Michelle Puetz, “Mimesis,” in The Keywords of Media Theory, http:// csmt.uchicago.edu /glossary2004/mimesis.htm. 5. See Eric Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Litera­ ture, trans. Willard Trask (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). 6. See Auerbach, Mimesis, xxxii. 7. See Republic 597D, in Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1997), 1202. 8. See Plato, Laws 798D, in Plato: Complete Works, 1467. 9. See Tatarkiewicz, Ancient Aesthetics, 12–15. 10. See Republic 607B–C. 11. See Xenophanes fr. 11. 12. See Heraclitus fr. 42. 13. Birds 787, 1444; Clouds 1091; Plutus 423–24. 14. I will be following here the distinctions drawn in Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel, Le Concept et le lieu. Figures de la relation entre art et philosophie (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2008), 296–300. She in turn follows Marin. See Louis Marin, Sublime Poussin (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1995). 15. See Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); and Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974). 16. Charles S. Peirce, The New Elements of Mathematics (NEM), vol. 4, Mathematical Philosophy, ed. Carolyn Eisele (The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1976), 20–21. 17. Immanuel Kant, Reflexionen in Königlichen Preußischen (later Deutschen) Akademie der Wissenschaften (ed.), 1900–, Kants gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Georg Reimer [later Walter De Gruyter]), vol. 15, part 1, note 2836. 18. Marin writes, “Le monde cartésien est bien le monde de la representation. Mais que le représentant signifie visiblement le représenté signifie nullement que le représentant soit la copie du représenté.” “De la curiosité à la méthode,” in De la representation (Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 1994), 89. 19. “La diversité infinie des figures suffit à exprimer toutes les differences des choses sensibles, figures qui expriment le plus facilement toutes les differences des choses sensibles, figures qui expriment le plus facilement toutes les differences de rapport et de propositions ‘figurae nudae’ schématiques, dépouillées de toute iregularité, confusion et obscurité, figures simples, claires et distinctes, figures-schèmes ou signes, et non images; projections géométriques de rapports arithmétiques, elles n’on aucun rapport mimetique aux choses que nous percevons par les sens.” Marin, De la representation, 91. 20. “The figure of the tempest in its pathetic effect presents nature’s sublime, and the painting, the representation in paint, aims to be that presentation as real presence, but at the same time, the unrepresentable sublime, withdrawing from the

278

notes to chapter one

figure, which can only represent it, opens up a difference or a variation that is the very condition of its presentation.” Louis Marin, On Representation [De la representation], trans. Catherine Porter (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 295–96. 21. See Herodotus 2.53. 22. See Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Le monde d’Homère (Paris: Editions Perrin, 2000), 19. 23. Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989), 3. 24. See Alfred Heubeck, Stephanie West, Stephanie Hainsworth, and J. B. Hainsworth, eds., A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 3. 25. Xenophanes, fr. 2. 26. See Diels-Kranz, B42, in Kathleen Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978). 27. See Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, ix. 28. Stephen Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), vii. 29. See Tatarkiewicz, Ancient Aesthetics, 96–98. 30. Ibid., 100–104. 31. See Xenophon, Memorabilia, trans. John Marshall, 3.9–10. 32. This difference has attracted attention. See, e.g., Karol Berger, “Diegesis and Mimesis: The Poetic Modes and the Matter of Artistic Presentation,”chap. 4 in A Theory of Art (New York: Oxford University Press), 165–89. 33. See especially Elizabeth Belfiore, “A Theory of Imitation in Plato’s Republic,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 114 (1984): 121–46; Stephen Halliwell, Plato’s Republic 10, with an Introduction, Translation, and Com­ mentary (Oxford: Aris and Phillips, 1988); Alexander Nehamas, “Plato on Imitation and Poetry in Republic 10,” In Plato on Beauty, Wisdom, and the Arts, ed. J. M. E. Moravcsik and Philip Temko (Rowman and Littlefield, 1982); and, more recently, for summary of the main proposals, Ramona Naddaff, Exiling the Poets: The Production of Censorship in Plato’s Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 136n8. 34. See Republic 476–80. 35. See Republic 504–11. 36. See Republic 514–21. 37. See On the Soul 3.2.8.431b20–23, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, vol 1 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 686. 38. See, e.g., G. W. F. Hegel, The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s Systems of Philosophy, trans. H. S. Harris and Walter Cerf (Albany: SUNY Press, 1977), 80: “The principle of speculation is the identity of subject and object . . .” This work will be cited in the text as DF followed by page number.

notes to chapter one

279

39. Posterior Analytics 1.3.72b5–25, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 1, p. 117. 40. See G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood, trans. H. B. Nisbet (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 30. 41. See John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). 42. See Nicomachean Ethics 2.1.103a32–35, in The Complete Works of Aris­totle, vol. 2, p. 1743. 43. See, for recent discussion, Raymond Barfield, The Ancient Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 44. See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, sec. 7, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 49–62. 45. Scholars disagree about whether Plato considers the etymological approach to semantic reference as serious. For a recent claim that he does, see David Sedley, Plato’s Cratylus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 46. See Cratylus 391C, in Plato: Complete Works, 110. 47. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, ed. and trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1966). 48. See “Plato” in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, trans. Robert Drew Hicks, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925), 5 vols., book 3, para. 15. 49. See Gail Fine, “Separation,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 2 (1984): 31–87; and R. M. Dancy, “Immanence,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 4 (1986): 71–97. 50. See Daniel T. Devereux, “Separation and Immanence in Plato’s Theory of Forms,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 12 (1994): 63–90, reprinted in Plato: Metaphysics and Epistemology, ed. G. Fine (New York: Oxford, 1999), 192–214. 51. See, e.g., Fine, On Ideas, 49–54. 52. R. M. Dancy, Plato’s Introduction of the Theory of Forms (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 4. 53. I leave to one side the difficult question of whether Kant is a partisan of transcendental argument as it has been discussed since Strawson. See Peter Strawson, The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966). 54. For Noam Chomsky’s tacit concession that there are no identifiable linguistic universals, see “New Horizons in the Study of Language,” in New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 3–18. 55. See Noam Chomsky, Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1986), 44. See, further, Noam Chomsky, Language and Problems of Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), passim. 56. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), para. 150, 91–92.

280

notes to chapter two

57. See Phaedo 100A–B, in Plato: Complete Works, p. 86. 58. See ibid., 101C, p. 87. 59. See the chapter entitled “Sense Certainty” in the Phenomenology of Spirit, 58–67. 60. Symposium 210e–211b, in Plato: Complete Works, p. 493. 61. See Protagoras 330c–d, in Plato: Complete Works, p. 763. 62. See, for recent discussion, Jessica Moss, “What Is Imitative Poetry and Why Is It Bad?,” in Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic, ed. G. R. F. Ferrari (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 414–444. Moss points out that Plato emphasizes the morally corrupting effect of poetry. She notes that he does not condemn all poetry but rather restricts his fire to its imitative form (559A). She claims there is a major interpretative difficulty in book 10 since it is not clear how the ethical charge that works corrupt depends on the metaphysical charge that these works are imitative (p. 416). She finds the solution to the puzzle that Plato allows imitation of virtuous characters in book 3, but condemns all imitative poetry in book 10, in the fact that poetry is imitative, or realistic, but it imitates or copies only the appearance, but not the real. Poetry that is allowed into the city (see 607A), which consists in hymns to the gods and eulogies of good men, is not imitative since it copies things as they are and not as they appear (see p. 437). Imitative poetry is so dangerous because, in copying the appearances of human affairs, but not reality, it appeals to the nonrational part of the soul (see p. 441).

Chapter Two 1. See David Ross, Plato’s Theory of Forms (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951). 2. See Harold Cherniss, Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato and the Academy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1944). 3. See Léon Robin, La Théorie platonicienne des idées et des nombres d’après Aristote (Paris: F. Alcan, 1908). 4. See G. E. L. Owen, “The Place of the Timaeus in Plato’s Dialogues,” in Clas­ sical Quarterly, n.s., 3: 79–85. 5. See Fine, On Ideas. See, for a review, Lloyd P. Gerson, “Gail Fine, On Ideas: Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato’s Theory of Forms,” Bryn Mawr Classical Review 04.05.25. 6. See Fine, On Ideas, 202. 7. See Fine, “Separation,” 31–87; see also “Immanence,” in OSAP 4 (1986): 71–97. 8. See Daniel Devereux, “Separation and Immanence in Plato’s Theory of Forms,” Oxford Studies of Ancient Philosophy 12 (1994): 82. 9. See Ronald Polansky and Patrick Macfarlane, “The Enduring Charm of Plato’s Unwritten Doctrines,” in Philosophy, Competition and the Good Life, vol. 2, ed. K. Boudouris and Kostas Kalimtzis (Ionia Publications: Athens, 2005), 262–71.

notes to chapter two

281

10. See “Plato on God and the Forms,” in L. P. Gerson, God and Greek Philoso­ phy: Studies in the Early History of Natural Theology (London: Routledge, 1990). 11. See Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Richard Taft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997). 12. See H. Gomperz, “Plato’s System of Philosophy,” in Proceedings of the Sev­ enth International Congress of Philosophy, ed. G. Ryle (London, 1931), 426–31, repr. in H. Gomperz, Philosophical Studies (Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1953), 119–24. All the sources related to the α ’΄γραφα δόγματα have been collected by Konrad Gaiser and published as Testimonia Platonica. K. Gaiser, Testimonia Pla­ tonica. Le antiche testimonianze sulle dottrine non scritte di Platone (Milan, 1998). First published as Testimonia Platonica. Quellentexte zur Schule und mündlichen Lehre Platons as an appendix to Gaiser’s Platons Ungeschriebene Lehre (Stuttgart, 1963). These sources have subsequently been interpreted by scholars from the German Tübingen School, such as Hans Joachim Krämer (see Plato and the Foundations of Metaphysics: A Work on the Theory of the Principles and Unwritten Doctrines of Plato with a Collection of the Fundamental Documents, trans. John R. Catan (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990); or Thomas A. Szlezák, Reading Plato (London: Routledge, 1999). 13. See Aristotle, Physics 209B, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 1, pp. 356–57. 14. See Plato, Phaedrus 276C, in Plato: The Complete Works, p. 553. 15. Plato, Seventh Letter 341C, in Plato: The Complete Works, p. 1659. 16. See Plato, Seventh Letter 344C. 17. Plato, Seventh Letter 344D, p. 1661. 18. Plotinus describes this in the last part of his final Ennead (6.9) entitled “On the Good, or the One” (Περι` τάγαθου˜ ’η` του˜ ε‛ός). Jens Halfwassen states in Der Aufstieg zum Einen (München/Leipzig: K. G. Saur, 2006), that “Plotinus’ ontology—which should rather be called Plotinus’ henology—is a rather accurate philosophical renewal and continuation of Plato’s unwritten doctrine, i.e., the doctrine rediscovered by Krämer and Gaiser.” 19. See Hans Joachim Krämer and John R. Catan, Plato and the Foundations of Metaphysics: A Work on the Theory of the Principles and Unwritten Doctrines of Plato with a Collection of the Fundamental Documents, trans. John R. Catan (New York: SUNY Press, 1990). 20. See J. N. Findlay, Plato: The Written and the Unwritten Doctrines (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974). 21. See Metaphysics 1.6, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2, pp. 1561–62. 22. See Metaphysics 1.9. 23. See Metaphysics III. 3–4, 999A–B. 24. See Metaphysics 1.993A. 25. Aristotle’s rejection of Plato’s theory of forms as a solution to the problem of universals by reduplicating particulars has often been studied. See for a

282

notes to chapter two

reconstruction of this criticism Theodore Scaltsas, Substance and Universals in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994). 26. Metaphysics 989B 30f. 27. Metaphysics 990a32–990b1. 28. See Metaphysics 1.9. 29. Metaphysics 991A 9–13; see also Metaphysics 13.5. 30. See Metaphysics XIII.1.1076A. 31. See Metaphysics XIII.1–4. 32. See Metaphysics XIII.4. 33. See Metaphysics XIII.10. 34. Parmenides 130B.1–9, in Plato: Complete Works, p. 364. 35. Parmenides 130E–131A, in Plato: Complete Works, pp. 364–65. 36. Metaphysics A.IX.990b.15. 37. See, e.g., Sophisticated Refutations I78b36 ff., in The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 1, pp. 304–5. 38. For this unusual but very interesting approach, which has the effect of making the problem disappear, see “Plato’s Response to His Critics,” in Gerson, God and Greek Philosophy, 44–52. 39. See Samuel Rickless, Plato’s Forms in Transition: A Reading of the Par­ menides (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 40. See Gregory Vlastos, “The Third Man Argument in the Parmenides,” Philo­ sophical Review 64 (1954): 319–49. 41. See P. T. Geach, “The Third Man Again,” Philosophical Review 65, no. 1 (Jan. 1956): 72–82. 42. See Wilfrid Sellars, “Vlastos and The Third Man,” Philosophical Review 64, no. 3 (July 1955): 405–37. 43. Republic 607D, in Plato, Republic, translated by G. M. A. Grube, revised by C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992), 278–79. 44. See Richard Janko, Poetics with Tractatus Coislinianus, Reconstruction of Poetics II and the Fragments of the On Poets (Cambridge: Hackett, 1987), ix. 45. Poetics 1447A, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, p. 3. 46. Ibid. 47. Poetics 1447B, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, p. 4. 48. Poetics 1448A, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style. 49. G. M. A. Grube, Aristotle on Poetry and Style (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989). 50. Ingram Bywater, Aristotle, On the Art of Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), cited in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, vol. 2 (Prince­ ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 2317. 51. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.7. 52. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.3. 53. Poetics 1449B, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, p. 12.

notes to chapter two

283

54. Poetics 1450A, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, p. 13. 55. Poetics 1450A, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, p. 13. 56. Poetics 1450B, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, p. 16. 57. Poetics 1451A, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, p. 17. 58. Poetics 1451A, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, p. 18. 59. Poetics 1451B, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, p. 18. 60. See Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Use and Abuse of History (repr., New York: Cosimo, 2005). 61. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of History (1832), trans. J. Sibree (New York: American Home Library, 1902), 49. 62. “Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” in Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, ed. Lewis S. Feuer (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor, 1959), 320. 63. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (London: J. M. Dent; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1910), 1.22. 64. Poetics 1451B, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, p. 19. 65. Poetics 1451B, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, p. 20. 66. Poetics 1454B, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, p. 31. 67. Poetics 1459A, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, p. 49. 68. Poetics 1459A, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, p. 49. 69. Poetics 1460A, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, pp. 54–55. 70. Poetics 1460B, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, p. 56. 71. Poetics 1461A, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, p. 56. 72. See Poetics 1461AB, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, p. 59. 73. Poetics 1462B, in Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, p. 62. 74. See Richard D. Boyd, The Function of Mimesis and Its Decline (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), ix. 75. See Gerald Else, Plato and Aristotle on Poetry, ed. Peter Burian (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 74. 76. See Gerald Else, Aristotle’s Poetics: The Argument (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), 322. 77. Ibid., 13. 78. “It becomes in his [Aristotle’s] hands a really new idea, having little more than the name in common with Plato” (Else, Aristotle’s Poetics: The Argument, 13). 79. “A poet, then, is an imitator in so far as he is a maker, viz. of plots. The paradox is obvious. Aristotle has developed and changed the bearing of a concept which originally meant a faithful copying of pre-existent things, to make it a creation of things which have never existed, or whose existence, if they did exist, is accidental to the poetic process. Copying is after the fact; Aristotle’s mimesis creates the fact.

284

notes to chapter three

It is clear that his use of the word in such a way can only be accounted for historically: that is, that such a redefinition of a simple concept can only be understood as the end-product of a long, gradual development. Without Plato especially, and a considerable development of the idea in him, Aristotle’s use of mimesis would be inconceivable” (Else, Aristotle’s Poetics: The Argument, 322). 80. See Else, Aristotle’s Poetics: The Argument, 320. 81. Ibid., 322. 82. Ibid., 322. 83. For the view that Plato is an enemy of the state, see K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 1: Plato (London: Routledge, 1966). 84. This is what is at stake in the infamous rectoral address. See Tom Rockmore, “The Nazi Turning and the Rectoral Address,” chap. 2 in On Heidegger’s Nazism and Philosophy, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 28–72. 85. “To speak of Classical art as ‘cognitive,’ then, is to say that it is objectcentered, oriented in its inspiration to the world of nature, and of human nature in particular. The Classical poet’s lodestar is reality itself; his sensibility is ‘objective’” (Boyd, The Function of Mimesis and Its Decline, 52). 86. There is extensive discussion of the concept of mimesis in eighteenthcentury British aesthetics. For a single, representative sample, see J. W. Draper, “Aristotelian Mimesis in Eighteenth Century England,” PMLA XXXVI (1921): 372–400. 87. Edmund Burke, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (chapter 5, section 6). According to Burke, “nothing is an imitation further than as it resembles some other thing, and words undoubtedly have no sort of resemblance to the ideas for which they stand.” 88. Burke, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (chapter 5, section 6).

Chapter Three 1. See, e.g., D. Perler, Zweifel und Gewissheit. Skeptische Debatten im Mittelal­ ter (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2006). 2. In a recent volume on medieval skepticism, two views about why Aquinas’s theory is not subject to skepticism are in evidence. One, which is due to Gilson, is the general claim that the formal identity of thought and object precludes skepticism. The other is Perler’s view about Aquinas’s reliance on the “teleological design” of the cognitive capacities of human beings created in God’s image. See Re­ thinking the History of Skepticism: The Missing Medieval Background, ed. Henrik Lagerlund (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 177–78. 3. See William Paley, Natural Theology, with an introduction and notes by Matthew D. Eddy and David M. Knight (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

notes to chapter three

285

4. David Hume, Enquiry on Human Understanding, section 5, part 2. 5. See, for recent discussion, Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). 6. See Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot (New York: Harper, 1957). 7. John Hammond Taylor, SJ, in “St. Augustine: The Literal Meaning of Gene­ sis,” in Ancient Christian Writers, (New York: Newman Press, 1982), vol. 2, no. 42, p. 45. 8. See, e.g., Georges Duby, Saint Bernard, L’Art cistercien (Paris: Flammarion, 1979), 16–19. 9. Plotinus, Ennead V, with an English translation by A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 239. 10. See Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill, OP; The Works of Saint Augustine: A New Translation for the 21st Century, vol. 1, part 5 (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1991); Augustine, vol. 1, part 1. 11. See J. G. Gracia and T. B. Noone, A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages (London: Blackwell, 2005), 35. 12. Robert J. O’Connell, Art and the Christian Intelligence in St. Augustine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 29. 13. See John Maren, “Medieval and Renaissance Aesthetics,” in A Compan­ ion to Aesthetics, ed. Stephen Davies, Kathleen Higgins, Rob Hopkins, and Bob Stecker (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009), 22–32. 14. See Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. Edmond Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 15. See Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian Materialiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (Brooklyn, NY: Zone, 2011). 16. See Edgar De Bruyne, Études d’esthétique medievale. 17. Umberto Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, trans. Hugh Bredin (Cam­ bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), xi. 18. Carol Harrison, Beauty and Revelation in the Thought of St. Augustine, Oxford Theological Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1–3. “I think that we can speak of a Christian aesthetic, a new Christian literary culture; one in which rhetoric holds as central a place as it did in classical culture, but where it is transformed from a practice which primarily aims to please and persuade, to one which aims to inspire love of, and the practice of, the truth.” 19. See Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, 2. 20. See Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, 3. 21. See Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz, History of Aesthetics, 3 vols., vol. 2, Medieval Aesthetics, ed. Cyril Barret, trans. R. M. Montgomery (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1999).

286

notes to chapter three

22. Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, ed. and trans. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), book 15, chapter 13, 656–659. 23. Ibid., 880. 24. Ibid., 883. 25. Ibid., 884. 26. See Sermones 266.2, and Enarrationes in Psalmos 103.3.5. 27. See “Beauty,” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary, vol. 1, ed. George A. Buttrick (New York: Abingdon Press, 1962). 28. See Peter Taylor Forsyth, Christ on Parnassus (London: Independent Press, 1959), 43. 29. Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, vol. 1 (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 364. 30. See i. A. Is 64:8, Jer 18:6, Rom 9:20–24. 31. See J. Hempel, “Göttliches Schöpferentum und menschliches Schöpferentum,” in Forschungen zur Kunstgeschichte und christlichen Archäologie, vol. 2 (Mainz: Johannes Gütenberg Universität, Kunstgeschichtliches Institut, 1953), 18. 32. See Luke Ferretter, “The Power and the Glory: The Aesthetics of the Hebrew Bible,” Literature and Theology 18, no. 2 (June 2004): 123–38. 33. See Thorleif Boman, Das hebräische Denken im Vergleich mit dem grie­ schischen (Göttingen, Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1954), esp. 60–103. 34. See Tatarkiewicz, History of Aesthetics, vol. 2, pp. 8–12. 35. See Tatarkiewicz, History of Aesthetics, vol. 2, p. 6. 36. See Anthony Kenny and Jan Pinborg, “Medieval Philosophical Literature,” in Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism, 1100–1600, ed. Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, Jan Pinborg, and Eleonore Stump (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 48. 37. See A. H. Armstrong, ed., The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967). 38. See “From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism, 1100–1600,” in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy. 39. See Raymond Klibansky, The Continuity of the Platonic Tradition during the Middle Ages (London: Warburg Institute, 1939). 40. See Stephen Gersh, Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism: The Latin Tradi­ tion, 2 vols. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986). 41. See Plato, Republic 508E. 42. See ibid., 509B. 43. See ibid., 509D. 44. Ibid., 509E–510D, pp. 1129–30. 45. See F. W. J. Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism, trans. Peter Heath (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993).

notes to chapter three

287

46. “We must first distinguish two modes of Likeness. There is the likeness demanding an identical nature in the objects which, further, must draw their likeness from a common principle: and there is the case in which B resembles A, but A is a Primal, not concerned about B and not said to resemble B. In this second case, like­ ness is understood in a distinct sense: we no longer look for identity of nature, but, on the contrary, for divergence since the likeness has come about by the mode of difference.” Plotinus, Enneads, trans. MacKenna (Penguin, 1991), 1.2.2.4–10, p. 17. 47. See Theaetetus 176A, in Plato, The Complete Works, p. 195. 48. See NE 6.2.1139A., in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, vol. 2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1798. 49. Plotinus, Enneads 1.6, pp. 45–56. 50. See, for the medieval interpretation of Aristotle, Bernard G. Dod, “Aristoteles latinus,” in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, 80–98. 51. See Dod, “Aristotle in the Middle Ages,” in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, 62–63. 52. See ibid., 66. 53. See Lohr, “The Medieval Interpretation of Aristotle,” in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, 94. 54. See Rhabanus Maurus, De institutione clericorum, cited in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, 80. 55. See Henri Tincq, Catholicisme. Le retour des intégristes (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2009), 12. 56. The Pseudo-Siger of Brabant, Quaestiones super libros Physicorum vm, q. 6; in Siger of Brabant, 1941, p. 199: “Aristoteles autem, ut manifestum est, probat motum esse aeternum, et hoc apparet ex rationibus quas ponit. Quidam tamen volentes concordare intentionem Aristotelis fidei dicunt quod Aristoteles non fuit opinatus ex istis rationibus mundum esse aeternum, nec tenuit eas demonstrationes concludentes verum de necessitate sed solum adduxit istas rationes propter dubitare et non propter aliquid aliud. Istud tamen est manifeste falsum, quia sic sequeretur quod Aristoteles dubitaret in maiori partc philosophiae suae, et maxime ubi loquitur de substantiis separatist ex aeternitate enim motus probat quod sunt substantiae separatae, sicut patet Libro ‘caeli et mundi.’ ” Cited by Lohr, in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, ed. Philippe Delhaye, published in Louvain104. 57. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, part 1, question 1, answer 1. Summa Theologica is abbreviated as ST in this text. 58. Thomas Aquinas writes, “Illorum autem suppositions quasadinvenerunt, non est necessarium esse veras; licet enim, talibus suppositionibus factis, apparentia salvarentur, non tamen oportet dicere has suppositiones esse veras, quia forte secundum aliquem alium modum, nondum ab hominibus comprehensum, apparentia circa Stellas salvantur. Aristoteles tamen utitur huiusmodi suppositionibus

288

notes to chapter three

quantum ad qualitatem motuum tamquam veris.” See ST, part 1, question 32, answer 1, addition 2. 59. See, for an account, Giorgio di Santillana, The Crime of Galileo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955). 60. See De Bruyne, Études d’esthétique medievale, I, 636. 61. See De Bruyne, Études d’esthétique medievale, I, 626. 62. See John of Salisbury, Metalogicon 1.11, cited in Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 94. 63. According to De Bruyne (Études d’esthétique medievale, vol. 1, 741): “Toutes les définitions médiévales de l’art se ramènent au même type: l’art est un savoir faire.” 64. See De Bruyne, Études d’esthétique medievale, I, 626. 65. First letter to Serenus, book 9, letter 105. 66. John Damascene, Apologia of St. John Damascene against those who decry holy images, part 1. 67. Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, 2. 68. See Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, 3. 69. See Suger, cited in Erwin Panofsky, Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St. Denis and Its Art Treasures (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1946), 63, 65. 70. Honorius of Autun, Gemma Animae, chap. 132, (PL, 172, col. 586), cited in Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, 16. 71. See Tatarkiewicz, History of Aesthetics, vol. 1, p. 8. 72. For older works, see especially Emmanuel Chapman, St. Augustine’s Philoso­ phy of Beauty (New York, Sheed and Ward, 1939); and Karel Svoboda, L’esthétique de Saint Augustin et ses sources (Paris-Brno: Opera Faultatis Philosophicae Universitatis Masarykianae Brunensis 35, 1933). 73. See Karol Svoboda, L’Esthétique de Saint Augustin et ses sources (Brno: Opera Facultatis philosophicae Universitatis Masarykianae Brunensis, 1933). 74. See Robert J. O’Connell, Art and the Christian Intelligence in St. Augustine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978). 75. For instance, Marrou believes there is an Augustinian aesthetics whose role lies in indicating the need to go from aesthetics to science. See Henri-Irenée Marrou, Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique (Paris, 1938), cited in O’Connell, Art and the Christian Intelligence in St. Augustine, 2. 76. See Harrison, Beauty and Revelation in the Thought of Saint Augustine, 33–37. 77. See ibid., 36–39. 78. See, on the relation of Augustine to Platonism, John Marenbon, Early Me­ dieval Philosophy, 480–1150 (London: Routledge, 1983), 14 ff. 79. See Carol Harrison, Beauty and Revelation in the Thought of Saint Augus­ tine.

notes to chapter three

289

80. Augustine, Civ. Dei 8.13. 81. See Augustine, Civ. Dei 8.5. 82. See Augustine, Civ. Dei 8.6. 83. See Augustine, Civ. Dei 8.6. 84. See Harrison, Beauty and Revelation in the Thought of Saint Augustine, 274. 85. See De divinis nominibus 4.7. 86. See Augustine, Confessions 4.15. “Pulchrum esse, quod per se ipsum: aptum, autem, quod ad aliquid accomadatum deceret.” See also Confessions 4.13, cited by Tatarkiewicz, History of Aesthetics, vol. 2, p. 62. 87. See Augustine, Confessions 4.13.20–15.24. 88. See O’Connell, Art and the Christian Intelligence in St. Augustine, chap­­ ters 3–4, pp. 50–90. 89. See Maarten Wisse, “Augustine’s Trinitarian Aesthetics in De Trinitate,” in Aesthetics as a Religious Factor in Eastern and Western Christianity (Amsterdam: Leuven: Peeters, 2005), 405–15. 90. See Augustine, De musica, 4.12, 4.38. 91. See Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, 15 92. O’Connell, Art and the Christian Intelligence in St. Augustine, 29. 93. “When the Scholastics spoke about beauty they meant by this an attribute of God.” E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Pantheon, 1953), 224n20. 94. “Material things do not of themselves deserve veneration, but if they portray someone who is full of grace, it is in accordance with the faith to hold that they partake of that grace.” John Damascene, De imaginibus oratio (PG, vol. 94, c. 1294). 95. According to Tartarkiewicz, this is the single most remarkable theory in the history of aesthetics. See Tartarkiewicz, Medieval Aesthetics, 42. 96. Theodorus Studites, Antirrheticus 3.3 (PG 99, c. 425). 97. Maarten Wisse, “Augustine’s Trinitarian Aesthetics in De Trinitate,” 4. 98. See Augustine, De vera religione 32.59. 99. Augustine, De ordine 2.15, 2.42. 100. See M. Grabmann, “Des Ulrich Engelberti von Strassburg O. P. Abhand­ lung ‘De Pulchro,’ ” in Sitzungsberichte der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philos.-philol. Klasse, Jahrg. 1925 (Munich, 1926). 101. Tatarkiewicz, Medieval Aesthetics, 213. 102. Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, xi. 103. See Tatarikiewicz, Medieval Aesthetics, 235–36. 104. See Tatarkiewicz, Medieval Aesthetics, 245. 105. “The beautiful is not for Thomas, as modern scholars suggest, a forgotten transcendental effecting a synthesis of the true and the good. The real situation is rather the reverse: the beautiful must be understood from the inclusion of the true

290

notes to chapter four

in the good. The aesthetic is not in the Middle Ages an autonomous domain alongside the true and the good.” Jan Aertsen, “Beauty in the Middle Ages: A Forgotten Transcendental?,” in Medieval Philosophy and Theology 1 (1991): 97. 106. See Tatarkiewicz, Medieval Aesthetics, 256. 107. Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, 188. 108. ST, I–II, 57, 4C. 109. For the view that beauty is not a transcendental, see Marc de Munnynck, “L’esthétique de St. Thomas D’Aquin,” in San Tommaso d’Aquino (Milan: Società Editrice “Vita e Pensiero,” 1923), and Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, trans. J. F. Scanlan (New York: Scribners, 1937), chap. 5, notes 56, 63b, and 65. 110. See “Beauty as a Transcendental,” chap. 2 in Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, 20–48. 111. See PL 146, cols. 29–58. See EEM, II, 109. 112. See Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas 40. 113. See Thomas Aquinas, Commentarium in Dionysii De Divinis Nominibus 4.8. 114. See Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, 32. 115. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1.5.4. 116. See Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, 47. 117. ST, I, q. 5 a4 ad 1. 118. ST, I–aII–ae, q. 27. 119. See ST, I, q. 67 a. 1 c. 120. See ST, II–a II-ae q. 141 a. 4 ad 3. 121. See Ethica Nicomachus 1.3., lect.19, n. 600. 122. See Plato, Sophist 235E–236C. 123. See Commentarium in Aristotelis Librum De Anima, ed. P. F. Angeli and M. Pirotta (Taurini and Rome, 1948), 3.2.597. 124. See ST, I, 39, 8c. 125. See Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, 99. 126. Eco indicates four possible interpretations of claritas. See Eco, The Aes­ thetics of Thomas Aquinas, 104. 127. See Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, 119. 128. See ST, I, 39, 8c. 129. See De Principiis Naturae, part 1, in Opuscula Omnia necnon Opera Mi­ nora, ed. R. P. Joanne Perrier (Paris: Lethiellieux, 1949), vol. 1. 130. Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, 205.

Chapter Four 1. Kant’s theory of knowledge, which is based on a transcendental logic, hence on logic, could be called a logic of the rational. It is sometimes claimed, by analogy, that his theory of aesthetics is a kind of logic of the irrational. See Marco Sgarbi,

notes to chapter four

291

La Logica dell’Irrazionale. Studio sul significato e sui problemi della Kritik der Ur­ teilskraft (Milan: Mimesis, 2010). 2. Not enough attention is devoted to the accuracy of Kant’s reading of and reaction to other theories. For study of this dimension of Kant’s aesthetics, see Frederick Beiser, Diotima’s Children (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 3. Scholars differ about the importance of Hume for the formulation of Kant’s critical philosophy. Guyer has recently argued that Hume’s influence is paramount not only for the epistemological but also for the other writings. See Paul Guyer, Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant’s Response to Hume (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). 4. See e.g., Giorgio Tonelli, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason within the Tradition of Modern Logic: A Commentary on Its History (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1994). 5. For instance, Kant accuses Plato of abandoning the limits of experience in the theory of ideas. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), B 9, p. 140. 6. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 370, p. 396. 7. Rebecca Kukla, ed., Aesthetics and Cognition in Kant’s Critical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1. 8. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B xxxviii, p. 118. 9. See, for discussion, Angelica Nuzzo, Kant and the Unity of Reason (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2005). 10. Immanuel Kant, “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in Practical Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 47. 11. See Alfred Baeumler, Das Irrationalitätsproblem in der Äesthetik und Logik des 18. Jahrhunderts bis zur Kritik der Urteilskraft (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975). 12. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 75, pp. 194–15. 13. See, for discussion of this concept, Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Polit­ ical Philosophy, edited and with an interpretive essay by Ronald Beiner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 14. Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 268–69; Kant’s emphases. All further citations of the third Critique are from this translation, which will be cited by paragraph and page number. 15. See Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. 1 (New York: Dover Publications, 1969), Appendix, p. 531. 16. Guyer stresses Hume as key not only to Kant’s theoretical philosophy but also to his aesthetics. See, on this point, Paul Guyer, Kant and the Experience of Freedom (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), chap. 2. 17. Zammito argues that the third Critique can be understood as Kant’s response to his former student Herder. See John Zammito, The Genesis of Kant’s Critique of Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). For a rejection of this way

292

notes to chapter four

of reading Kant, see Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 345. 18. John Addison and R. Steele, “The Spectator,” no. 409, ed. A. Chalmers (New York: D. Appleton, 1879). 19. See, for this interpretation, David Paxman, “Aesthetics as Epistemology, or Knowledge Without Certainty,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 26, no. 2 (Winter, 1992–93): 285–306. Paxman’s thesis is that Addison, Burke, and others invited British aesthetics in writing about beauty in a way that addressed problems of epistemology and that these problems were resolved in Hutcheson’s An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725). 20. See Kant, Prolegomena, 12. 21. Moses Mendelssohn et al., Gesammelte Schriften Jubiläumsausgabe, 19 vols. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog; continuation of edition by Fritz Bamberger et al., Berlin, 1929–1938), vol. 3, part 2, p. 61. 22. See Moses Mendelssohn, “Review of Meier,” in Die Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und der freyen Künste, vol. 3, part 1, 1758, pp. 130–38. Repr., Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, begun by J. Elbogen, J. Guttmann, and E. Mittwoch, continued by Alexander Altmann (Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Frommann Holzboog, 1929–), vol. 4, ed. Eva J. Engel (1977), pp. 196–201. 23. “Vollkommenheit” (“Perfection”) in J. G. Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste, (Frankfürt and Leipzig, 1798), vol. 4, 688–89. 24. See Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Meditationes philosophicae de non­ nullis ad poema pertinentibus (Halle: Grunert, 1735; repr., Metaphysics, Christian Kleyb, 1750). 25. See Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Aesthetica (Frankfurt: Kleyb, 1750, 1758). 26. See Giorgio Tonelli, “Zabarella inspirateur de Baumgarten ou l’origine de la connexion entre esthétique et logique,” Revue d’Esthétique, 9 (1956): 182–92. 27. See Baumgarten, Aesthetica (1750 edition), 289. 28. See Baumgarten, Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema perti­ nentibus. 29. See Baumgarten, Metaphysics (Christian Kleyb, 1750), para. 451, p. 300. 30. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 81, 196. 31. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 171, 268. 32. See Baumgarten, Metaphysica (Halle: Hemmerde, 1739, 1779), 43: “ENS universale spectatum in suo inferiori, et singulare spectatum, qua alia etiam sua predicata praeter certum universale, spectatur in concreto et tum CONCRETUM dicitur. ENS universale quod attenditur quidem, non tamen inferiori suo, et singulare, in quo tamen certum tantum eius superius attenditur, SPECTATUR IN ABSTRACTO, et tunc ABSTRATUM dicitur. Universale in concreto est UNIVERSALE PHYSICUM (in multis, in re), universale in abstracto est univerale LOGICUM (post multa, post rem).”

notes to chapter four

293

33. See Baumgarten, Metaphysica, (219–20): “perfectinem inperfectionemque rerum percipio, i.e., DIIUDICO. Ergo habeo facultatem diiudicandi [. . .] Habitus res diiudicandi est IUDICIUM (das Vermögen zu beurtheilen), idque de praevisis, PRACTICUM, de aliis, THEORETICUM vocatur, et quatenus obscurius etiam percpetorum plures tamen perfections imperfectionesue detegit, est PENETRANS (durchdringend).” 34. Baumgarten, Metaphysica, 220: “iudicium sensitivum est GUSTUS SIGNIFI­ CATU LATIORI (der Geschmack in weiterer Bedeutung) (sapor, palatum, nasus).” 35. See Baumgarten, Metaphysica, 220–21. “iudicio intellectuali gaudens est CRITICUS SIGNIFICATU LATIORI, et CRITICA SIGNIFICATU GENE­RALI est scientia regularum de perfectione vel imperfectione distincte diudicandi.” 36. See Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to any future Metaphysics, with selections from the Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and ed. Gary Hatfield (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 10. 37. Kant’s receptivity to Hume’s influence clearly extends to aesthetics. It is sometimes noted that Kant’s view of aesthetic judgments as independent in the third Critique is influenced by his reading of Hume’s essays on aesthetics as well as his An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. 38. For Hume’s influence on Kant’s aesthetics, see chapter 5 in Paul Guyer, Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant’s Response to Hume (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). 39. David Hume, Of the Standard of Taste/Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics: From Plato to Wittgenstein, ed. Frank Tullman and Steven Cahn, (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 117. 40. David Hume, Selected Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 133. 41. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 522, 512–13. 42. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 522, pp. 512–513. 43. “Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime,” in Kant, An­ thropology, History, and Education, ed. Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 62. 44. To K. L. Reinhold, December 28 and 31, 1787, in Immanuel Kant, Philo­ sophical Correspondence 1759–99, trans. Arnulf Zweig (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 127–28. 45. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (Oxford: Clarendon, 2011), 4. 46. Johann Gottfried Herder, “Wie die Philosophie,” in Werke in zehn Bänden (Frankfurt: Deuter Klassiker Verlag, 1985), vol. 1, 134. 47. See Allen Wood, “Unsociable Sociability: The Anthropological Basis for Kant’s Ethics,” in Philosophical Topics 19 (1991): 325–52. 48. See John Zammito, Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 348. 49. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, paras. 16–17, pp. 246–50.

294

notes to chapter four

50. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 134n, p. 247. 51. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary J. Gregor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 45. 52. See Reinhard Brandt, “Kants pragmatische Anthropologie: Die Vorlesung,” in Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie 19 (1994): 42. 53. For definitions, see Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Robert B. Louden (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), para. 40, p. 90. 54. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 833, p. 677. 55. Immanuel Kant, Kant’s Introduction to Logic, trans. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (1885; repr., New York: Philosophical Library), 15. 56. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 14–19, 143–46. 57. Aristotle, Poetics, trans. with an introduction by G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989), 7.1450B–1451A, p. 16. 58. Republic 10.607D. 59. See Jules Brody, Boileau and Longinus (Paris: E. Droz, 1958). 60. See Vincent B. Leitch, The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (New York: Norton, 2001), 135–54. 61. See M. Mendelssohn, “E. Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry . . . ,” in Jubiläum Ausgabe 4, pp. 216–36. 62. See, for an account of Mendelssohn’s reaction to Burke’s book, Tomáš Hlobil, “Two Concepts of Language and Poetry: Edmund Burke and Moses Mendelssohn,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 8, no. 3 (2000): 447–58. 63. See Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (New York: Oxford, 1998), part I, section 7, p. 36: “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.” 64. Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, part 2, section 2, p. 54: “terror is in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently, the ruling principle of the sublime.” 65. “Nor is it, either in real or fictitious distresses, our immunity from them which produces our delight . . . it is absolutely necessary that my life should be out of any imminent hazard, before I can take a delight in the sufferings of others, real or imaginary . . . it is a sophism to argue from thence, that this immunity is the cause of my delight.” Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, part I, section 15, p. 44. 66. See Edmund Burke, Philosophische Unteruschungen über den Ursprung unserer Begriffe vom Schönen und Erhabenen, trans. Christian Garve (Riga: Hartknoch, 1773).

notes to chapter four

295

67. Kant, Anthropology, History and Education, 18–62. 68. “Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime,” in Kant, An­ thropology, History, and Education, 25. 69. Ibid., 26. 70. Immanuel Kant, Logic, trans. Robert S. Hartman and Wolfgang Schwarz (New York: Dover Publications, 1988), 17–18. 71. See Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955). 72. For a strong defense of the cogency of Kant’s procedure in depicting these four moments, see Béatrice Longuenesse, “Kant’s Leading Thread in the Analytic of the Beautiful,” in Aesthetics and Cognition in Kant’s Critical Philosophy, ed. Rebecca Kulka (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 194–222. 73. See, on this point, Giorgio Tonelli, “La formazione del testo della Kritik der Urteilskraft,” Revue internationale de Philosophie 30 (1954): 423–48. 74. See Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 400. 75. See Paul Crowther, The Kantian Sublime: From Morality to Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 4. 76. See Kant, Anthropologie, para. 39. 77. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 35, 156. 78. Descartes writes, “Good sense is of all things in the world the most equally distributed, for everybody thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that even those most difficult to please in all other matters do not commonly desire more of it than they already possess.” “Discourse on Method,” in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 83. 79. In a widely known passage in the first Critique he labels the lack of the power of judgment as stupidity in indicating it cannot be remedied. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 172, 268. 80. See for the initial occurrence Aristotle, De Anima 425A.27–30, in The Com­ plete Works of Aristotle, vol. 1, p. 676. 81. See Ronald Polansky, Aristotle’s De Anima: A Critical Commentary (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 375, 401–2. 82. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a, 1.4.2. 83. See Thomas Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, ed. Derek R. Brookes (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, [1764] 1997). 84. See Isaac Newton, The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Phi­ losophy, trans. I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1999), 940. 85. See Newton, The Principia, 940–43. 86. Already prior to the critical period, in an analysis of the ontological argument young Kant argues that this approach was unacceptable but that if God’s

296

notes to chapter four

existence could otherwise be demonstrated one could infer that natural science could elucidate the workings of God in nature. See The One Possible Basis for a Proof of the Existence of God (Der einzig mogliche Beweisgrund, 1763), trans. Gordon Treash (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994). 87. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B xxx, p. 117. 88. Ibid., B 648, p. 578. 89. Ibid., B 649, p. 578. 90. Ibid., B 653, p. 580. 91. Ibid., B 654, p. 581. 92. See Plato, Timaeus, e.g., 48A, in Complete Works, p. 1250. 93. See, for this suggestion, R. A. C. Macmillan, The Crowning Phase of the Criti­ cal Philosophy: A Study in Kant’s Critique of Judgment (London: Macmillan, 1912). 94. See Hans Schwartz, “Darwinism between Kant and Haeckel,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 48, no. 4 (1980): 581–602. 95. See Arthur O. Lovejoy, “Kant and Evolution I,” in Popular Science Monthly 77 (1910): 538–53; and Arthur O. Lovejoy, “Kant and Evolution II,” in Popular Sci­ ence Monthly 78 (1911): 36–51. 96. See “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals,” in Kant, Practical Phi­ losophy, 49. 97. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B xxx, p. 117. 98. See D. W. Gotshalk, “Form and Expression in Kant’s Aesthetics,” British Journal of Aesthetics 7, no. 3 (1967): 250–60. “But the view we have set forth has been only that Kant holds a formalist theory of Natural Beauty and an expression­ ist theory of Fine Art. I believe also that these theories can be taken in their own terms within their own fields, and that each theory within its field will be found to make important contributions to the understanding of Natural Beauty and Fine Art. Our concern in this essay has been with a different question from the overall class character and intrinsic merit of Kant’s aesthetical theories. To a purely disinterested observer there is considerable difference between a formalist and an expressionist aesthetical theory, and in Kant’s third Critique there is clearly a change from the first type to the second when we proceed after some delay (over the Sublime) from his theory of Natural Beauty to his theory of Fine Art.” 99. See Longuenesse, “Kant’s Leading Thread in the Analytic of the Beautiful,” in Kulka, Aesthetics and Cognition in Kant’s Critical Philosophy, 222. 100. See Rudolf Makkreel, “Reflection, Reflective Judgment, and Aesthetic Exemplarity,” in Kulka, Aesthetics and Cognition in Kant’s Critical Philosophy, 223–244. 101. “Though they are textually grounded, they render Kant’s account unsatisfactory as a description of aesthetic experience: [They hold, in effect, that] aesthetic judgment and pleasure are purely self-referential (about themselves /each other/their own universal communicability) and thus peculiarly empty. It is difficult to see why we should believe this is what we’re experiencing, claiming, or feeling in

notes to chapter five

297

aesthetic experience.” Rachel Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 189. 102. See Paul Crowther, The Kantian Aesthetic: From Knowledge to the AvantGarde (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 103. See Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. W. Glen-Doepel (London: Sheed and Ward, 1975), 146. 104. See Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Es­ says, trans. Nicholas Walker, ed. Robert Bernasconi (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 105. See, for recent discussion of Kant’s view of representation, Béatrice Longuenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge: Sensibility and Discursivity in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Charles T. Wolfe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 18–26. 106. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B xliv, p. 123. 107. See Kant, Kants gesammelte Schriften, vol 25, p. 175: “Die Urteilskraft hat den grössten Werth. Der schlechte und gute Gebrauch des Verstandes beruht auf den Urteilskraft.” 108. See, on this point, Rudolf Makkreel, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant: The Hermeneutical Import of the Critique of Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 1. 109. Beiser, who is committed to aesthetic rationalism, attacks the rationalist Kant as advancing a conception of aesthetics that is insufficiently rationalist. See Frederick Beiser, Diotima’s Children: German Aesthetic Rationalism from Leibniz to Lessing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 110. “Urtheilskraft ist wichtiger, weil sie praktisch ist.” Kants gesammelte Schriften, vol. 25, p. 171. See also KGS 25, p. 175, already cited.

Chapter Five 1. See G. W. F. Hegel, The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s Systems of Philosophy, trans. H. S. Harris and Walter Cerf (Albany: SUNY Press, 1977), 92. This work will be cited in the text as DF followed by page number. 2. See “Der geheime Kantianismus in Hegels Geschichtsphilosophie,” in RolfPeter Horstmann, Die Grenzen der Vernunft: Eine Untersuchung zu Zielen und Motiven des Deutschen Idealismus (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2004), 171. 3. See, e.g., Benjamin Rutter, Hegel on the Modern Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Rutter is especially influenced by Dieter Henrich’s reading of Hegel as well as by Arthur Danto’s reading of Hegel in the context of his view of the end of art. See, e.g., Dieter Henrich, Fixpunkte. Abhandlungen und Essays zur Theorie der Kunst (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2003).

298

notes to chapter five

4. Kai Hammermeister, The German Aesthetic Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 24. 5. “There is but one way for the moderns to become great, and perhaps unequalled; I mean, by imitating the antients.” Johann W Winckelmann, Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks (1765, repr., London: Routledge / Thommes Press), 2. 6. See Hegel’s Aesthetics, vol. 1, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, 1988), 172. 7. Ibid., 611. 8. In recent years, Hegel’s account of Antigone has been regularly attacked by feminists. See, e.g., Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim: Kinship between Life and Death (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000). 9. See “Conscience: The ‘Beautiful Soul,’ Evil, and Its Forgiveness,” in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, 383–409. 10. References in the text are to the Phenomenology of Spirit, using the abbreviation P followed by paragraph number and page number. 11. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, para. 67. 12. See “From the First Manuscript: ‘Alienated Labour,’ ” in The Portable Karl Marx, ed. Eugene Kamenka (New York: Viking Penguin, 1983), 131–46. 13. See, for the term “βάρβαροΦώνος,,” Homer, Iliad 2.867. 14. See Plato, Statesman 262d– e., in Plato: Complete Works, 302. 15. Hegel, Philosophy of History, 66. 16. See Hegel, Phenomenology, para. 590, pp. 359–60. 17. Hegel, Philosophy of History, 32, 34, 62, 111. 18. See Hegel’s letter to Victor Cousin of 1 July 1827 in Hegel: The Letters, trans. Clark Butler and Christine Seiler (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 640. 19. See G. W. F. Hegel, The Encyclopedia Logic, part 1 of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences with the Zusätze, trans. T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and H. S. Harris (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991), para. 25, p. 64. Cited in the text as E followed by numbered paragraph and page number. 20. See Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, part 3 of the Encyclopedia of the Philo­ sophical Sciences (1830), trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), para. 381, p. 8. This text will be cited in the text as PM followed by numbered paragraph and page number. 21. See Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, para. 384, p. 18. 22. G. W. F. Hegel, The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s Systems of Philosophy, trans. H. S. Harris and Walter Cerf (Albany: SUNY Press, 1977), 80. 23. Eliot influenced the so-called New Criticism developed between roughly 1920–50 by Ransom, Beardsley, Wimsatt, and others. For instance, in a wellknown essay, “The Intentional Fallacy,” Wimsatt and Beardsley argue that the author’s intention is irrelevant since the only things that matter are the words

notes to chapter five

299

on the page. See W. K.Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley, The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry (Lexington: Universityof Kentucky Press, 1954), 3–20. 24. See J. G. Fichte, The Vocation of Man, trans. Roderick M. Chisholm (India­ n­apolis: LLA, 1950). 25. According to Gethmann-Siefert, the redacted version prepared by Hegel’s editor Hotho is not reliable and we should rely on the available transcripts. See Phi­ losophie der Kunst oder Ästhetik. Nach Hegel. Im Sommer 1826. Mitschrift Friedrich Carl Hermann Victor von Kehler, ed. A. Gethmann-Siefert and B. CollenbergPlotnikov (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2004), pp. iii–xv. 26. As concerns the term “fine art,” Hegel follows Kant. In his treatment of aesthetics, Kant uses the expression “von der schönen Künste” which is often translated as beautiful arts but could also be rendered as fine arts. See Critique of the Power of Judgment, para. 44, p.184n. 27. Holzwege, in Martin Heidegger-Gesamtausgabe, vol. 5 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2003), 68. 28. See E. H. Gombrich, “The Father of Art History: A Reading of the Lectures on Aesthetics of G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831),” in Tributes: Interpreters of Our Cul­ tural Tradition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), 51–69. 29. One might perhaps justify this translation by pointing to the first sentence of the German text. “Diese Vorlesungen sind der Ästhetik gewidmet; ihr Gegenstand ist das weite Reich des Schönen, und näher ist die Kunst, und zwar die schöne Kunst ihr Gebiet.” G. W. F. Hegel, “Vorlesungen über die Äesthetik,” in G. W. F. Hegel, Werke in zwanzig Bänden, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and K.R. Michel (Frankfurt a.M., 1971), vol. 13, p. 13. 30. G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. H. B. Nisbet (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 20. 31. See “Spirit,” in Michael Inwood, A Hegel Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 128–31. 32. See, e.g., Jean Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Samuel Cherniak and John Heckman (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 321–33. 33. See Alan M. Olson, Hegel and the Spirit: Philosophy as Pneumatology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). 34. See “Doctrine of the Holy Ghost and of the Trinity,” in Adolph Harnack, History of Dogma, trans. E. B. Speirs and James Millar (London: Williams and Norgate, 1898), vol. 4, 108–37. 35. See “The Three and the One,” in Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 211–18. 36. See Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. 4, p. 110.

300

notes to chapter five

37. Gregory of Nazianus, Or. 21.33 (PG 35: 1121), cited in Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600), 213. 38. See Olson, Hegel and the Spirit: Philosophy as Pneumatology, 16. 39. See Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, trans. David Wallace Carrithers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 289. 40. See “Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit,” in J. G. Herder, Ideen zur Kulturphilosophie, ed. Otto Braun and Nora Braun (Leipzig: InselVerlag, 1911), 260. 41. See Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Heterogeneity of Language and Its Influ­ ence on the Intellectual Development of Mankind (orig. Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaus und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts), 1836. New edition: On Language: On the Diversity of Hu­ man Language Construction and Its Influence on the Mental Development of the Human Species, 2nd ed. rev. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 42. “Das bildende Organ des Gedankens,” in Wilhelm von Humboldt, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6, 152. Referred to in this text as GS. 43. “Verschiedenheit der Weltansichten,” GS vol. 4, 27. 44. See book 3, “Faith,” in Fichte, The Vocation of Man, 83–154. 45. See the Seventh and Eighth Addresses in Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation, trans. George A. Kelly (New York: Harper, 1968), 92–130. 46. See G. W. F. Hegel, Early Theological Writings, trans. T. M. Knox, with an Introduction and Fragments trans. Richard Kroner (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), 182–301. 47. See G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel-Werke, Berliner Schriften, vol. 11, p. 69. 48. See Hegel-Werke, vol. 17, p. 327. 49. See ibid., vol. 20, p. 49. 50. See ibid., vol. 20, p. 50. 51. See ibid., vol. 20, p. 50. 52. Ibid., vol. 20, p. 123. 53. See ibid., vol. 20, p. 48. 54. Ibid., vol. 20, p. 123. 55. Ibid., vol. 20, p. 127. 56. See, e.g., Quentin Lauer, Hegel’s Concept of God (Albany: SUNY Press, 1982). 57. See, e.g., Engels’s reading of Feuerbach’s relation to religion in Friedrich Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy, ed. C. P. Dutt (New York: International Publishers, 1996), 33–41. 58. Hegel, Faith and Reason, 191. Hereafter cited as FR followed by the page number. 59. Writing under Hegel’s influence, Heidegger typically claims that “the great art and also the great philosophy which flourished along with it” comes to an end in

notes to chapter five

301

Plato and Aristotle. Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche I: The Will to Power as Art, trans. D. F. Krell (New York, Harper and Row, 1979), 80. 60. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, para. 67, p. 97. 61. See Quentin Lauer, Hegel’s Idea of Philosophy (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 1983). 62. In China, a country largely untouched by religion in the specific sense of the Abrahamic religions, art is basically secular, hence nonreligious. This is arguably true for Buddhist art, since Buddhism is unlike Western monotheism. 63. See Hegel, Phenomenology, para. 217, p. 131. 64. See Hegel, Phenomenology, “Virtue and the Way of the World,” paras. 381–93, pp. 228–35. 65. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Introduction: Reason in History, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 105. 66. See Aristotle, Pol. 1252 a–1253 a. 67. Anthony Cascardi, Consequences of Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 117. 68. Rutter, Hegel on the Modern Arts, 6. 69. Dieter Henrich, “The Contemporary Relevance of Hegel’s Aesthetics,” in D. Henrich, “Art and Philosophy of Art Today, Reflexions with Reference to Hegel,” in New Perspectives in German Literary Criticism: A Collection of Es­ says, ed. Richard Amacher and Victor Lange (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979). See also Dieter Henrich, Fixpunkte. Abhandlungen und Essays zur Theorie der Kunst (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2003). 70. Lydia L. Moland, Hegel on Political Identity: Patriotism, Nationality, Cosmo­ politanism (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2011), 200n6. 71. See Moland, Hegel on Political Identity, 132. 72. See John Barber, The Road from Eden: Studies in Christianity and Culture (Palo Alto, CA: Academic Press, 2008), 407. 73. Rutter responds to Henrich’s pessimistic claims that in the modern world art can no longer address all of our most important concerns and is superfluous since whatever insight a work of art might offer is presumably better comprehended philosophically. He argues that modern art can be both superfluous as a well as indispensable in affording partial satisfaction. 74. See Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1989). 75. See Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, paras. 208–9, pp. 126–27. 76. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Kunst, ed. A. GethmannSiefert (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2003), 6 77. For a recent philosophical account, see Frederick Beiser, Hegel (London: Routledge, 2005), 298–306.

302

notes to chapter five

78. See G. W. F. Hegel, Jenaer Realphilosophie, ed. Hoffmeister (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1931), 268n3. 79. See Alexander Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1969). 80. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press), 192. 81. This idea goes back in his writings to Faith and Knowledge. In the last section, he remarks, “Formerly, the infinite grief existed historically in the formative process of culture. It existed in the feeling that “God Himself is dead.” G. W. F. Hegel, Faith and Knowledge (Albany: SUNY Press, 1977), 190. 82. See Eva Geulen, ed., The End of Art: Readings in a Rumor after Hegel, trans. James McFarland (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006). 83. See, e.g., Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image be­ fore the End of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. 84. Arthur Danto, “The End of Art,” in The Death of Art, ed. Berel Lang (New York: Haven, 1984). 85. Arthur Danto, “Hegel’s End-of-Art Thesis,” unpublished manuscript, 1999. 86. Arthur Danto, After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of His­ tory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). 87. Greenberg’s Kantianism is well known and much discussed. See, e.g., Thierry de Duve, Kant after Duchamp (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997). 88. Danto, After the End of Art. 89. See Danto, After the End of Art, 77. 90. See for discussion Robert Perkins, Hegel and Danto on the End of Art (Albany: SUNY Press, 1984). 91. See Arthur C. Danto, “The End of Art: A Philosophical Defense,” in “Danto and His Critics: Art History, Historiography, and After the End of Art,” special issue, History and Theory 37, no. 4 (Dec. 1998): 127–43. 92. See Arthur C. Danto, “The Art World,” Journal of Philosophy 6, no. 1 (1964): 571–84. 93. Danto believes, somewhat like Lyotard’s view of modernity in The Post­ modern Condition, that in virtue of the multiplicity of styles there cannot be any overarching, or general theory of art. His refers to this theory as “a somewhat dramatic way of declaring that the great master narratives which first defined traditional art, and then modernist art, have not only come to an end, but that contemporary art no longer allows itself to be represented by master narratives at all.” Danto, After the End of Art, xiii. 94. See Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowl­ edge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979). 95. Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, 167.

notes to chapter six

303

Chapter Six 1. See “aesthetics,” in A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, ed. Tom Bottomore et al. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 6–9. 2. See Lee Baxandall, ed., Marx and Engels on Literature and Art (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976). 3. See, e.g., Peter Demetz, Marx, Engels and the Poets: Origins of Marxist Lit­ erary Criticism, trans. Jeffrey Sammons (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967). 4. Morawski believes that the aesthetic views of Marx and Engels, despite their different emphases, converge. See Stefan Morawski, “The Aesthetic Views of Marx and Engels,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 28, no. 3 (Spring 1970): 301–14. 5. Karl Marx, “Preface to a Critique of Political Economy,” in Karl Marx: Se­ lected Writings, ed. David McLellan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 426. 6. Friedrich Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy, 42n. Hereafter cited as LF, followed by page number. 7. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, ed. Frederick Engels, trans. from the third German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 20. 8. See “First Introduction to the Science of Knowledge,” in J. G. Fichte, The Sci­ ence of Knowledge, ed. and trans. Peter Heath and John Lachs (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 3–28. 9. See G. W. F. Hegel, “Who thinks abstractly?,” in Hegel: Texts and Commen­ tary, ed. Walter Kaufmann (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1966), 113–18. 10. See Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and the Communist Manifesto, trans. Martin Milligan (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1988), 14. 11. See “The Method of Political Economy,” part 3 in Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft), trans. Martin Nicolaus, 100–108. 12. The central text is Augustine’s De libero arbitrio, which formulates the basis of the view later worked out by Descartes. See Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, On Grace and Free Choice, and Other Writings, ed. and trans. Peter King (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 13. See Richard Rorty, The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967). 14. See Agnes Heller, A Theory of Need in Marx (London: Allison and Busby), 1976. 15. See Aristotle, The Politics, trans. T. A. Sinclair (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970), 1.2.28: “It follows that the state belongs to the class of objects which

304

notes to chapter six

exist in nature and that man is by nature a political animal; it is his nature to live in the state.” 16. See, for his critique of Proudhon, Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, trans. H. Quelch (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995). 17. See, e.g., Terrell Carver, “The German Ideology Never Took Place,” History of Political Thought 31, no. 1 (2010): 107–27. 18. See Jürgen Habermas, “Between Philosophy and Science: Marxism as Critique,” in Theory and Practice, trans. John Viertel (Boston: Beacon Press, 1974), 15–25. 19. See Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, para. 16, p. 9. 20. See Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Phi­ losophy. Hereafter cited as LF, followed by page number. 21. See afterword to the second German edition, in Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ed. Frederick Engels, trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 20. 22. See David McLellan, Marx before Marxism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), 243f. McLellan refers to Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. 23. Stefan Morawski is especially interested in this link. See Morawski, “The Aesthetic Views of Marx and Engels,” 305–7. 24. See “The Trinity Formula,” chap. 48 in Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 3, ed. Fredrick Engels (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 814–31. 25. Karl Marx, “The Trinitarian Formula,” chap. 48 in Capital, vol. 3, ed. Frederick Engels (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 820. 26. Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundatons of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft), trans. Martin Nicolaus (Baltimore: Penguin, 1973), 109. 27. See, e.g., Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, trans. Max Eastman (London: Pluto Press, 1977), 26–27. 28. See Leon Trotsky, “The Curve of Capitalist Development (A Letter to the Editors in Place of the Promised Article) (April 1923),” Fourth International 2, no. 4 (May 1941): 111–14. 29. Marx, Grundrisse, 110. 30. He writes that “not everything is possible at all times, and certain thoughts can only be thought at certain stages of the development.” Heinrich Wölfflin, Prin­ ciples of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art, trans. M. D. Hottinger (New York: Dover Publications, 1950), ix. 31. See Christopher Caudwell, Illusion and Reality (New York: International Publishers, 1937). 32. Marx, Grundrisse, 111. 33. Ibid., 110. 34. Ibid., 111.

notes to chapter six

305

35. See, for the Hegelian precedent to Marx’s view that Greek art, which continues to fascinate us, is no longer possible, Hegel’s Aesthetics, book 1, 608. 36. See Henri de Saint-Simon, “Literary, Philosophical and Industrial Opinions,” repr. in Art in Theory 1815–1900: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 40. 37. See Margaret A. Rose, Marx’s Lost Aesthetic: Karl Marx and the Visual Arts (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), esp. chap. 7, “The Constructivists of the 1920s and the Concept of Avant-Garde,” 123–35. 38. See Friedrich Engels, “Rapid Progress of Communism in Germany,” New Moral World, nos. 25, 37, 46 (13 December 1844, 8 March 1845, 10 May 1845). 39. See Engels to Ferdinand Lassalle in Berlin, in Marx-Engels Collected Works, vol. 40 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975–2005), 441; first published in Die Neue Zeit, no. 18, 1922. Marx-Engels Collected Works hereafter referred to as CW. 40. See Engels to Conrad Schmidt, London, 5 August 1890, in Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philsophy, ed. Lewis S. Feuer (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1959), 396. 41. Engels to Conrad Schmidt, London, 27 October 1890, in Marx and Engels: Basic Writings, 404. 42. Marx and Engels: Basic Writings, 398. 43. Marx and Engels: Basic Writings, 407–08. 44. Marx and Engels: Basic Writings, 411–12. 45. Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 817. 46. Bhaskar has tried to work out a conception of scientific realism he ascribes to Marx. See, e.g., Roy Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science (Brighton/Atlantic Highlands: Harvester/Humanities Press, 1978). 47. Engels to Minna Kautsky, 26 November 1885, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Literature and Art (New York: International Publishers, 1947), 45. 48. Engels to Margaret Harkness, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Literature and Art, 41. 49. Engels to Margaret Harkness, in Marx and Engels, Literature and Art, 42. 50. Engels to Margaret Harkness, in Marx and Engels, Literature and Art, 43. 51. In “Art and Social Life,” in responding to Lunacharsky, Plekhanov defends the idea that beauty is subjective but, say, a painting is objectively good when it resembles what it depicts. See G. V. Plekhanov, Art and Social Life (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1953). 52. See David Joravsky, “Lenin and the Partyness of Philosophy,” chap. 2 in Soviet Marxism and Natural Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), 24–43. 53. See P. N. Siegel, ed., Leon Trotsky on Literature and Art (New York: Pathfinder, 1970).

306

notes to chapter six

54. See Leon Trotsky, “The Social Roots and the Social Function of Literature” (1923), in Art and Revolution: Writings on Literture, Politics, and Culture (Atlanta: Pathfinder Press, 1992). 55. See Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (1923; repr., New York: Russell and Russell, 1957). 56. See Leon Trotsky, André Breton, and Diego Rivera, “Pour un Art révolutionnaire,” in Tracts surréalistes, ed. Eric Losfeld (Paris: Editions Losfeld, 1980), vol. 1. 57. See Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 111–19. 58. See Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dia­ lectics, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971), esp. “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat,” 83–222. 59. See, e.g., Bela Kiralyfalvi, “Georg Lukács or Bertolt Lukács?,” British Jour­ nal of Aesthetics 25, no. 4: 340–48. 60. See Die Expressionismus-Debatte. Materialien zu einer marxistischer Realis­ muskonzeption, ed. Hans-Jürgen Schmitt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973); and Aesthetics and Politics, ed. Ronald Taylor et. al. (London: New Left Books, 1979). 61. See Georg Lukács, The Destruction of Reason, 2 vols., trans. Peter Palmer (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1981). 62. Georg Lukács, “Grösse und Verfall des Expressionismus,” Internationale Literatur 1 (1934): 153–73. 63. See Hans-Jürgen Schmitt, ed., Die Expressionismusdebatte. Materialien zu einer marxistischen Realismuskonzeption (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973). See further Fritz J. Raddatz, ed., Marxismus und Literatur. Eine Dokumentation in drei Bänden, vol. 2 (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowolt, 1969). 64. See Georg Lukács, “Realism in the Balance,” in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. Vincent B. Leitch (New York: Norton, 2001), 1033–58. 65. See Bertolt Brecht, “Against Georg Lukács,” in Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukács, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno, Aesthetics and Politics (London: Verso, 1980), 68–85. See also Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimen­ sion: Towards A Critique of Marxist Aesthetics (Boston: Beacon, 1978). 66. Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (1903), trans. Kurt Wolff, in The Sociology of Georg Simmel (New York: Free Press, 1950), 409. 67. See Victorino Tejera, Art and Human Intelligence (London: Vision Press Limited, 1966), 85, 140. 68. See Lukács, “Realism in the Balance,” in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 1035. 69. Ibid., 1037. 70. Ibid., 1039–40. 71. See Ernst Bloch, “Discussing Expressionism,” in Aesthetics and Politics, ed. Ronald Taylor (London: New Left Books, 1977), 16–27. 72. Ibid., 22.

notes to chapter six

307

73. See ibid. 74. See ibid., 27. 75. Cited in Terry Lovell, Pictures of Reality: Aesthetics, Politics, Pleasure (London: BFI Publishing, 1980). 76. John Roberts, “Montage, Dialectics and Empowerment,” Domini Public, Centre D’Art, Santa Monica, Barcelona, Spain (1994): 200. 77. For a well-known instance, see Theodor Adorno, “Extorted Reconciliation: On Georg Lukács’ Realism in Our Time,” in Notes to Literature, trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 200–215. 78. Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (New York: Continuum, 2001). 79. Three volumes of his collected writings are devoted to this topic. See Georg Lukács, Probleme des Realismus I: Essays über den Realismus, in Georg LukácsWerke, vol. 4 (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1971); Probleme des Realismus II: Der Rus­ sische Realismus in der Weltliteratur, in Georg Lukács Werke, vol. 5 (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1964); and Probleme des Realismus III: Der historische Roman, in Georg Lukács-Werke, vol. 6 (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1965). 80. See Georg Lukács, “Critical Realism and Socialist Realism,” in The Mean­ ing of Contemporary Realism, trans. John and Necke Mander (London: Merlin Press, 1962), 93–136. See also “Die Gegenwartsbedeutung des kritischen Realismus,” in Lukács, Essays über Realismus, 457–650. 81. See Lukács, The Meaning of Contemporary Realism, 48. 82. See Georg Lukács, Studies in European Realism (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964), 6. 83. See ibid. 84. See ibid., 7. 85. His most important Marxist philosophical work, History and Class Con­ sciousness, which appeared in 1923, was quickly renounced in 1924, when it became clear that his critical attitude toward Engels’s simplistic form of Marxism conflicted with Lenin’s view in Materialism and Empiriocriticism, which was just becoming known in the West. 86. See “Vorwort” in Die Gegenwartsbedeutung des kritischen Realismus, in Lukács, Essays über Realismus (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1948), 459–61; reprinted in Georg Lukács-Werke, vol. 4. 87. See Lukács, Essays über Realismus. 88. “Wenn die Literatur tatsächlich eine besondere Form der Spiegelung der objektiven Wirklichkeit ist, so kommt es für sie sehr darauf an, diese Wirklichkeit so zu erfassen, wie sie tatsächlich beschaffen ist, und sich darauf zu beschränken, das wiederzugeben, was unmittelbar erscheint. Strebt der Schriftsteller nach einer Erfassung und Darstellung der Wirklichkeit, wie sie tatsächlich ist, das heißt, ist er wirklich ein Realist, so spielt das Problem der objektiven Totalität der Wirklichkeit eine entscheidende Rolle—ganz einerlei, wie sie vom Schriftsteller gedanklich formuliert wird.” Georg-Lukács-Werke, vol. 4, p. 318.

308

notes to chapter seven

89. “Denn eine wirkliche Fabel treibt das Wesentliche, die wesentlichen und sehr komplizierten Zusammenhänge eines Menschen mit seiner Welt, ans Tages­ licht. Die bloße Beobachtung eines Menschen, und sei sie artistisch noch so feinsinnig, reicht dazu nicht aus. Jede Fabel zwingt den Schriftsteller dazu, seine Gestalten in Situationen zu bringen, die er unmöglich selbst beobachtet hat.” Letter to Anna Seghers, dated 28 July 1938, in Georg Lukács-Werke, vol. 4, 358. 90. For a collection of materials critical of empiricism, see Harold Morick, ed., Challenges to Empiricism (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1972). 91. For discussion, see “Reality remade,” in Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976), 3–43. 92. See, e.g., Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 56–69, 72–74. Putnam concludes that the correspondence theory of truth must simply be abandoned. 93. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philoso­ phy, 12. 94. Ibid., 21. 95. See Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979). 96. See “Abbildtheorie,” vol. 1 in Das philosophische Wörterbuch, ed. Georg Klaus and Manfred Buhr (Hamburg: Rowolt, 1972). 97. For this argument, see, e.g., Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy. 98. Even Putnam, arguably the main realist in our time, sees this point. See Hilary Putnam, “Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses: An Inquiry into the Powers of the Human Mind,” Journal of Philosophy 91, no. 9 (September 1994): 352. 99. See Tom Rockmore, Cognition: An Introduction to Hegel’s “Phenomenol­ ogy of Spirit” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 100. See Emil Lask, Fichtes Idealismus und die Geschichte, vol. 1 in Emil LaskGesammelte Schriften, ed. Eugen Herriegel (Tübingen: J. C. B.Mohr, 1923). 101. See Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971). 102. Lukács, Studies in European Realism, 6. 103. See, e.g., Georg Lukács, “Realism in the Balance,” in The Norton Anthol­ ogy of Theory and Critics, ed. Vincent B. Leitch (New York: Norton, 2001), 1033– 58. See further Lukács, Studies in European Realism.

Chapter Seven 1. See Mark C. Taylor, Refiguring the Spiritual: Beuys, Barney, Turrell, and Goldsworthy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).

notes to chapter seven

309

2. Cézanne wrote to the French artist Emile Bernard in a letter dated October 23, 1905. 3. Pablo Picasso, cited in Herschel B. Chipp, Theories of Modern Art: A Source­ book by Artists and Critics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 264. 4. See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, in “The Birth of Tragedy” and “The Genealogy of Morals,” trans. Francis Golfing (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1956). 5. See Charles O. Nussbaum, The Musical Representation: Meaning, Ontology, and Emotion (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007). 6. See Robert Brandom, Articulating Reasons (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 7. 7. See Henrik Lagerlund, Representation and Objects of Thought in Medieval Philosophy (London: Ashgate, 2007). 8. “Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction towards an object (which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself, although they do not all do so in the same way. In presentation something is presented, in judg[e]ment something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on. This intentional in-existence is characteristic exclusively of mental phenomena. No physical phenomenon exhibits anything like it. We could, therefore, define mental phenomena by saying that they are those phenomena which contain an object intentionally within themselves.” Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Em­ pirical Standpoint, ed. Linda L. McAlister (London: Routledge, 1995), 88–89. 9. McDowell has often written about intentionality. See, e.g., John McDowell, “Intentionality de re,” in John Searle and His Critics, ed. Ernest Lepore and Robert van Gulick (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 215–25. 10. See Aristotle, De Anima 3.2, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, vol. 2, 677–79. 11. See his praise of the Mona Lisa in his Lives of the Most Eminent Paint­ ers, trans. Foster (London: Bell and Daldy, 1868), vol. 2, 384; and his remarks on Giotto, vol. 1, 98. 12. See further Piero’s treatise on geometrical perspective, De prospectiva pin­ gendi (Reggio Emilia: Biblioteca Panizzi, [1472–75] 2011). 13. See Gary Shapiro, Archaeologies of Vision: Foucault and Nietzsche on See­ ing and Saying (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). 14. See Joseph J. Tanke, Foucault’s Philosophy of Art: A Genealogy of Moder­ nity (New York: Continuum, 2009). 15. See Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 87. 16. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, trans. and ed. Richard Bett, vol. 2 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 48–51.

310

notes to chapter seven

17. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 69, p. 190; Kant’s emphases: “Then this object in appearance is to be distinguished from itself as object in itself.” 18. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 566, p. 535. 19. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 83, p. 197. 20. See Phaedo 96A, in Plato, Collected Works, ed. John Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997). 21. See M. F. Burnyeat, “Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed,” Philosophical Review 91 no. 1 (January 1982): 3–40. 22. “Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous,” in George Berkeley, Prin­ ciples of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, ed. R. S. Woodhouse (London: Penguin, 2004), 192. 23. See, for discussion, John Hyman, “The Causal Theory of Perception,” Phil­ osophical Quarterly 42, no. 168 (July 1992): 277–96. 24. See Moss, “What Is Imitative Poetry and Why Is It Bad?,” in Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic, 422. 25. Goodman considers views that a representation must correctly depict or must make a true statement. See Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978), 130–40. 26. See, e.g., Mihai Spariosu, Mimesis in Contemporary Theory: An Interdisci­ plinary Approach (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1984). 27. See Kendall L. Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990). 28. See Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (London: Oxford, 1968). 29. Ibid., 225. 30. See Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Rep­ resentation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 297–98. 31. See Wilfrid Sellars, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” in Science, Perception and Reality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 127–96. 32. See Goodman, Languages of Art, p. 233. 33. See ibid., 258. 34. See Paul A. Boghossian, Fear of Knowledge: Against Constructivism and Relativism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 35. See Hilary Putnam, “Two Philosophical Perspectives,” in Reason, Truth, and History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 49. 36. In the appendix (Nachwort) to “Origin of the Work of Art,” Heidegger cites three passages from Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics that focus on the role of art in the modern world: “Art no longer counts as the highest way in which truth finds existence for itself”; “One may well hope that art will continue to advance and perfect itself, but its form has ceased to be the highest need of the spirit”; and finally, “In all these connections art is, and remains, with regard to its highest vocation, a thing of the past.” In common with all three sentences is the repeated use of the word “highest,” or höchste, to describe what once art was, and what it is no longer.

notes to chapter seven

311

Along with this adjective are three different nouns and noun phrases in each sentence: “die höchste Weise,” “das höchste Bedürfnis des Geistes zu sein,” and “der höchsten Bestimmung,” respectively. 37. For a study of Schelling focusing on his aesthetics, see Karl Jaspers, Schelling: Größe und Verhängnis (Munich: Piper, 1955). See also, for a more recent study, Devin Zane Shaw, Freedom and Nature in Schelling’s Philosophy of Art (New York: Continuum, 2010). 38. See, for recent discussion, Barbara Hannan, The Riddle of the World: A Re­ consideration of Schopenhauer’s Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 39. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 382, p. 401. 40. See F. W. J. Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism, trans. Peter Heath, with an introduction by Michael Vater (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, [1800] 1978), 5. 41. See ibid., 4. 42. Ibid., 209. 43. Ibid., 217. 44. Ibid., p. 231. 45. Ibid., 233. 46. See Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals. 47. Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. with introduction by Alfred Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 177–78. 48. Ibid. 49. Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Heidegger, Basic Writings, ed. D. F. Krell (New York: Harper and Row, 1977). 50. Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, 180. 51. Ibid., 183. 52. Ibid., 164. 53. Ibid., 165. 54. Ibid., 164. 55. See ibid., 177–78. 56. Ibid., 79. 57. See Karsten Harries, “A Pair of Shoes,” chap. 6 in Art Matters: A Critical Commentary on Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art” (Dordrecht:Springer, 2009), 83–95. 58. See Meyer Schapiro, “The Still Life as a Personal Object: A Note on Heidegger and van Gogh,” in Theory and Philosophy of Art: Style, Artist, and Society; Selected Papers (New York: George Braziller, 1994). 59. See Jacques Derrida, La Vérité en peinture (Paris: Flammarion, 1978). 60. Ibid.

312

notes to chapter seven

61. Heidegger has been followed on this point by Richard Rorty. See Tom Rockmore, “Philosophy, Literature, and Intellectual Responsibility,” American Philosophical Quarterly 30, no. 2 (April 1993): 109–22. 62. See note 12 above. 63. See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), para. 44: “Dasein, disclosedness and truth,” 256–73. 64. See Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, 81. 65. See ibid., 41. 66. See ibid., 42 67. See ibid., 43. 68. See ibid., 61. 69. See ibid., 77. 70. See ibid., 36, 56. 71. See Heidegger, Being and Time, para. 7, pp. 49–62. 72. See ibid., 62. 73. See F. W. J. Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism, trans. Peter Heath (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1978). 74. See, for a recent helpful exposition of Heidegger’s view of art, Iain D. Thomson, Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 75. John Sallis, Transfigurements: On the True Sense of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). 76. See Arthur Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981). 77. See Maurice Ponty, “The Visible and the Invisible,” in The Visible and the Invisible, Followed by Working Notes, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968). 78. See Sallis, Transfigurements, 15. 79. Ibid., 7. 80. See ibid., 183. 81. Ibid., 5–6. 82. See John Golding, Cubism: A History and an Analysis, 1907–1914 (London: Faber and Faber, 1968), 59–62. 83. See an entry in his diary (Journal intime) for the date February 11, 1804, in Benjamin Constant, Œuvres, vol. 6, Journaux intimes (1804–1807) suivis de Af­ faire de mon père (1811), ed. Paul Delbouille and Kurt Kloocke (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002). 84. See Irving Singer, “Art for Art’s Sake,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criti­ cism 12, no. 3 (March 1954): 343–59. 85. See M. A. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), 3.

notes to chapter seven

313

86. The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 3, ed. Rufus Wilmot Griswold (New York: J. S. Redfield, 1850), 5. 87. See Colleen Denney, “At the Temple of Art: The Grosvenor Gallery, 1877– 1890,” no. 1165 (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000), 38. 88. Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (London: Macmillan, 1873). 89. Golding, Cubism, 15. 90. Douglas Cooper, The Cubist Epoch (London: Phaidon, 1970), 14. 91. According to Apollinaire, the basic idea of cubism was invented by André Derain. See Guillaume Apollinaire, Les Peintres cubistes, Méditations esthétiques (Paris: Eugène Figuière, 1913). 92. Léon Gard, “A propos de Pétunias peint par Cézanne,” Apollo (1948). 93. “Il faut se méfier de l’esprit littérateur qui fait si souvent le peintre s’écarter de sa vraie voie—l’étude concrète de la nature—pour se perdre trop longtemps dans des spéculations intangibles. ” Cézanne to Emile Bernard, 12 May 1904. 94. Paul Cézanne, Letters, ed. John Rewald, rev. ed., trans. Seymour Hacker (New York: Hacker Art Books, 1984). 95. “Traitez la nature par le cylindre, la sphère, le cône, le tout mis en perspective, soit que chaque côté d’un objet, d’un plan, se dirige vers un point central.” Cependant la suite de cette phrase est souvent occultée: “Les lignes parallèles à l’horizon donnent l’étendue, soit une section de la nature ou, si vous aimez mieux, du spectacle que le Pater Omnipotens Aeterne Deus étale devant nos yeux. Les lignes perpendiculaires à cet horizon donnent la profondeur. Or, la nature, pour nous hommes, est plus en profondeur qu’en surface, d’où la nécessité d’introduire dans nos vibrations de lumière, représentées par les rouges et les jaunes, une somme suffisante de bleutés, pour faire sentir l’air.” 96. See D. H. Kahnweiler, Der Weg zum Kubismus (Munich: Delphin Verlag, 1920), 34. 97. See Cooper, The Cubist Epoch. 98. See Golding, Cubism, 21n1. 99. See Gil Blas, 14 November 1908. 100. See Gil Blas, 25 May 1909. 101.  It is at this point, the beginning of 1907, that I propose to bring this first volume to an end. The 25-year-old Picasso is about to conjure up a quintet of Dionysiac Demoiselles on his huge new canvas. The execution of this painting would make a dramatic climax to these pages. However, it would imply that Picasso’s great revolutionary work constitutes a conclusion to all that has gone before. It does not. For all that the Demoiselles is rooted in Picasso’s past, not to speak of such precursors as the Iron Age Iberians, El Greco, Gauguin and Cézanne, it is essentially a beginning: the most innovative painting since Giotto. As we will see in the next volume,

314

notes to chapter seven

it established a new pictorial syntax; it enabled people to perceive things with new eyes, new minds, new awareness. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is the first unequivocally 20th century masterpiece, a principal detonator of the modern movement, the cornerstone of 20th century art. For Picasso it would also be a rite of passage: what he called an “exorcism.” It cleared the way for cubism. It likewise banished the artist’s demons. Later, these demons would return and require further exorcism. For the next decade, however, Picasso would feel as free and creative and “as overworked” as God. (John Richardston, A Life Of Picasso; vol. 1, The Prodigy, 1881–1906, Dionysos [New York: Knopf, 1991], 475.) 102. R. Gomez de la Serna, “Completa y Veridica Historia de Picasso y el Cubismo,” Rivista de Occidente, Madrid (July/August 1929); repr., Picasso (Turin: Chiantore, 1945), 31. 103. Roger de la Fresnaye, “Paul Cézanne,” in Poème et Drame (Paris, January 1913), cited in Golding, Cubism: A History and An Analysis, 79. 104. Arthur Jerome Eddy, Cubists and Post-Impressionism (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1914), 101. 105. Maurice Raynal, “Qu’est-ce que . . . le Cubisme,” Comoedia Illustré (December 1913), cited in Golding, Cubism: A History and An Analysis, 88. 106. Braque, La Peinture et Nous, 16, cited in Golding, Cubism: A History and An Analysis, 88. 107. See Golding, Cubism: A History and An Analysis, 90. 108. See letter of March 1921 to Ozenfant, in The Letters of Juan Gris, comp. D. H. Kahnweiler, ed. D. Cooper (London, 1956), 105–6. 109. D. H. Kahnweiler, Juan Gris, trans. D. Cooper (London, 1947), 104. 110. “La Naissance du Cubisme,” in R. Huyghe, Histoire de l’Art contempo­ rain (Paris: Editions Alcan, 1935), 80, cited in Golding, Cubism: A History and An Analysis, 102. 111. Jaime Sabartés, Picasso (London: Allen, 1949), 241. 112. Max Jacob, Le Cornet à Dés, 1917, p. 21, cited in Golding, Cubism: A His­ tory and an Analysis, 95. 113. Cooper, The Cubist Epoch, 183. 114. “Painting today is almost exclusively concerned with the reproduction of natural forms and phenomena. Her business is now to test her strength and methods, to know herself as music has done for a long time, and then to use her powers to a truly artistic end. And so the arts are encroaching one upon another, and from a proper use of this encroachment will rise the art that is truly monumental. Every man who steeps himself in the spiritual possibilities of his art is a valuable helper in the building of the spiritual pyramid which will some day reach to heaven.” W. Kandinsky, The Spiritual in Art, trans. Michael T. H. Sadler (New York: Dover, 1977), 20.

notes to chapter seven

315

115. See Michel Henry, Seeing the Invisible, trans. Scott Davidson (London: Continuum, 2009). 116. The Search for the Absolute (1915 Manifesto), cited in Jean-Louis Ferrier and Yann le Pichon, Art of Our Century: The Chronicle of Western Art, 1900 to the Present, trans. Walter D. Glanze (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1988). 117. For a broad account of the influence of cubism outside France, see Cooper, The Cubist Epoch, chap. 3, 137–82. 118. According to Lehrer, it is mistake to isolate art from the rest of experience, with which it is connected through how we think and feel, represent and react. See Keith Lehrer, Art, Self, and Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 119. For a recent discussion of Kant’s view of reason, see Susan Neiman, The Unity of Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). Neiman stresses the subordination of the theoretical to the practical in claiming that Kant’s critical philosophy centers not on cognition but on reason. 120. See Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, para. 42, 59. 121. See Heinz Cassirer, A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Judgment (London: Methuen, 1937), vii–viii. 122. See Hegel, Encyclopedia, §556. 123. Hegel, Difference, 80. 124. See, e.g., Werner Jung, Von der Mimesis zur Simulation. Eine Einführung in die Geschichte der Äesthetik (Hamburg: Junius, 1995), 88. 125. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History; Introduction: Reason in History, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 105. 126. See Axel Honneth, The Pathologies of Individual Freedom: Hegel’s Social Theory, trans. L. Lob (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). 127. See, e.g., Robert B. Pippin, Hollywood Westerns and American Myth: The Importance of Howard Hawks and John Ford for Political Philosophy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). 128. Hegel, Lectures on Aesthetics, I, 607. 129. G. W. F. Hegel, Reason in History, trans. R. S. Hartman (Indianapolis: LLA, 1953), 66–67.

Index Abelard, Peter, 74 absolute, the, 96, 150, 158, 244–46 abstract art, 267 Addison, Joseph, 110–11, 291–92n19 Adeimantus, 22–23, 27 Adorno, Theodor, 189, 217, 219, 221, 244 Aertsen, Jan, 100 Aeschylus, 194 aesthetics: aestheticism and, 255; versus anticontextualism, 216; British ap­ proaches to, 111–13, 284n86, 291– 92n19; British eighteenth-century approaches to, 255–56; Byzantine view of, 97–98; Christian, 285n18; color in, 109; epistemology and, 94, 110; ethnocentrism in, 172–73, 263; intuitionist versus analytic, 112–13; judgment in, 108, 127–28, 130–32; Marxist, 216–18; mature, 121–24; meaning of term, 3–4, 76, 107–8, 113; origins of, 3–4, 14, 56, 78, 113; of play, 112; a priori approach to, 116; realism and, 222–23, 230; revival of interest in, 276n15; richness of Plato’s view on, 3; sublimity and, 124–27; taste versus imitation in, 110–11; teleology and, 107; trinitarian, 96–97; of truth, 112. See also beauty; medieval aesthetics; specific philosophers Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art (Hegel): art and consciousness in, 178; art and ideals in, 172–73; art as source of knowledge in, 184; art in modern world and, 310n36; art within religion

in, 174; comprehensiveness of, 165; end of art in, 164; fine art in, 165–69; Hegel’s developing thought and, 147– 48; historical context and, 166–67; on individuals in modern state, 181; philosophy of art and, 245 African art, 93, 254, 260, 263 Albert the Great, 100 Alexander the Great, 62 al-Ghazali, 72 alienation, theory of, 150 Allison, Archibald, 111 Ammonius Saccas, 85 Anaxagoras, 43, 51 Anselm, 75 anthropology: Kant and, 116–18, 142; philo­ sophical, 200; religion and, 186; soul in, 32 Antigone, 148, 298n8 anti-Platonism: art and truth and, 146; art as imitation and, 74; art for art’s sake and, 254–56; beauty and sublimity and, 120; cubism and, 267; God as cause and, 72; Hegel’s, 251; Heidegger’s, 248, 250, 252; Marxist aesthetics and, 217; medieval aesthetics and, 91–93; rep­ resentationalism and, 76, 222, 236–37, 243–44 Aphraates, 169 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 265, 313n91 Aquinas. See Thomas Aquinas and Thomism Archagathus. See Caecilius Archilochus, 18

318 architecture, 73 Ariosto, Ludovico, 181 Aristophanes, 14, 18–19, 59 Aristotle and Aristotelianism: aesthetic theory of, 4, 56; on aim of life, 59; on art and mimesis, 56; on art as imitation, 5, 64; on art’s purpose, 6–7, 68–69, 100; autarchy and, 180; Christian doctrine and, 75; Christian domestication of, 90– 91; conformality view and, 236; contrary readings of, 90–91; critique of theory of forms by, 47–52, 55, 59, 281n25; def­ inition of purpose and, 123–24; versus ecclesiastical dogma, 89–90; on epic versus history, 63–64; first principles and, 51–52; on forms and particulars, 39; on goodness, 256; on happiness, 60; Hegel and, 146, 149–50, 157, 162–63, 182; Heidegger and, 249; Homer and, 17, 56, 58, 61, 69; on human as political animal, 303–4n15; on ideas in the mind, 16; induction and, 113; infinite regress and, 30; Kant and, 105, 129–30, 133, 135; on learning by doing, 32; Marx and, 201; medieval aesthetics and, 75, 83, 88–91, 99, 104; metaphysics and, 50–52, 100; mimesis and, 14, 15, 240; mind-independent reality and, 67; Neo­ platonism and, 86, 87; nonextant writ­ ings of, 57; on object of imitation, 59; versus Plato in use of terms, 57, 58–59, 65–66, 69, 283–84nn78–79; Platonic dualism and, 69; versus Platonism, 90; versus Plato on aesthetics, 67; versus Plato on imitative art and poetry, 58, 64–70, 121; versus Plato on mimesis, 46, 65, 69–70, 283–84n79; versus Plato on theory of forms, 53; Plato’s response to, 48; Plato’s unwritten doctrine and, 49– 50; plot in tragedy and, 63; poetry and, 14, 56–64, 99, 113, 119, 186; Pythagoras and Pythagoreans and, 51–52; on real state, 67; on religion, 95; rhetoric and, 57; on sensus communis, 129; on social structures, 181; on soul, 29; study of prescribed, 89; taste for, 110; teleologi­ cal causality and, 135; theoretical and practical reason and, 107; theory of forms and, 50; theory of knowledge and, 47; theory of proportion in, 102;

index third man argument and, 54; on tragedy, 59–64; translation of works of, 88–89, 91, 99, 104 Arnauld, Antoine, 235–36 Arnold, Matthew, 256 art: the absolute and, 150, 245; anthro­ pomorphism in, 177–78; for art’s sake, 5, 6, 10, 92–93, 254–56, 270; Christian images in, 72–73, 76; classical, 176–78, 180–82, 188, 284n85; classical Greek versus Christian, 172–74, 177–80; cog­ nition and, 148–56, 178, 186, 192, 232, 272–73; as collective memory, 222–23; commodification of, 232; content and form and, 164; of the cult, 163; definition of, 4–5, 190–91, 234, 251; divine image in, 98, 289nn94–95; ecclesiastical, 77; end of, 146, 164, 174–75, 183–93, 243, 247, 254, 297n3, 300n59; ethical role of, 160; experience and, 315n118; expressionism and, 219; fascism and, 219; fine, 164–68, 299n26; found, 189–90; freedom and, 162, 164, 245; function and purpose of, 61, 68–69, 77, 93, 147, 160, 191, 192, 252; function of, 271; general theory of, 302n93; genius and, 130; glorification of God and, 93; God’s presence and, 94; Greek religion and, 151; historical context and, 183–87, 188, 211; idolatry and, 80–81; as imitation, 4, 64, 66, 257; inspiration and, 162; Jewish versus Christian views of, 80–81; knowledge and, 5, 66–67; as luxury, 80; making of, 101; mediation of an ideal and, 161; medieval worldview and, 72–78; as mi­ mesis, 56; mind-independent reality and, 92; modern, 301n73; in modern world, 310n36; morality and, 271, 272; nature and, 74, 103, 130, 160; as organ of philosophy, 244; as path to knowledge, 156–57; Platonic precondition for, 241– 42; prerational, 247; reconciliation and, 162; within religion, 174–75, 187; religion and philosophy and, 156, 164–65, 184; religious versus nonreligious, 179–81, 187, 193, 301n62; representation as cri­terion of, 236; revolutionary, 217; romantic, 163, 174, 180–82, 188; selfawareness and, 150, 192, 193, 251, 273; as sign of an idea, 160; social context

index and, 150–51; as socially pernicious, 3; social utility of, 5, 268–73; as source of knowledge and truth, 67–68, 72, 74, 184; spirit and, 162–63, 193, 273; sub­ jective self-consciousness and, 162; as superstition or entertainment, 146; symbolic, 174–76, 178, 180–82; teaching value of, 93; transfiguration and, 252– 53; type of life required for, 187–88; unchangeableness of, 190; uneven development and, 210–11. See also specific forms of art and truth: aesthetic extremes and, 269; four possibilities for relation between, 9– 10; Hegel on, 146, 184–85; Heidegger on, 249–54; Kant’s undoing of Plato on, 143– 45; lack of resolution about, 1–2; limited expectations of, 192; modern artists on, 232–33; nonrepresentational theories and, 243–54; social utility and, 270 Asclepius, 31 Auerbach, Eric, 13 Augustine: aesthetics of, 7, 77, 94–99, 288n75; on beauty, 76, 95–99, 133, 289n86; Bible translation and, 79–80; on Christian reconciliation, 178; on creation, 92; on God and humans, 73; individual responsibility and, 198; in­ fluence of, 97; medieval philosophy and, 83; Neoplatonism and, 85; original sin and, 150; Platonism of, 95; on reason and faith, 75; skepticism and, 72; trans­ mission of Plato’s works by, 84; trini­ tarian aesthetics and, 96–97 Avicenna, 72, 88 Bacon, Francis, 16, 65, 226, 240 Baeumler, Alfred, 258 Balzac, Honoré de, 216, 221, 224, 229, 260 Barber, John, 183 Barbizon School, 19 Barney, Matthew, 232 Baudelaire, Charles, 256 Bauer, Bruno, 210 Baumgarten, A. G.: influence of, 8; on judgment, 114, 293nn33–35; Kant and, 105, 110, 113–14; origins of aes­thetics and, 3–4, 56; a priori approach of, 111–12; universal in the concrete and, 114, 292n32

319 Baumgarten, T. R., 78, 94 Beardsley, Monroe C., 298n23 beauty: absolute versus relative, 96; aesthetic judgment and, 108; art and idea of, 182; as art object, 161; Augustine on, 95–99, 289n86; biblical view of, 80–82; Christian theory of, 104; cognition and, 41, 102–4; cult of, 256; Cynics’ view of, 82; as divine attribute, 101; enlarged conception of, 20; faith and, 97; formal criteria of, 102– 3; formalist theory and, 296n98; forms and, 43; freedom and, 275n11; free versus adherent, 123; in French impressionism, 259; God as, 7, 104; goodness and, 19–20, 289n105; Greeks versus Hebrews on, 82; harmony and proportion and, 99; imagination and, 122; intuitionists on, 112; in Kantian aesthetics, 98, 107, 119– 21, 135; knowledge and, 44, 98; knowl­ edge of God through, 102; in mature aesthetics, 121–24; meaning of term, 4– 5; in medieval art, 76, 93; men versus women and, 120; morality and, 112; ob­ jective and subjective aspects of, 94, 98, 102–3, 122–23, 305n51; perfection and, 112; philosophers versus nonphiloso­ phers and, 29; versus Platonic good, 101; Plato on, 14; purposiveness and, 123– 25; reason and, 99; scholasticism and, 289n93; sensation versus perception and, 101–2; sign and idea and, 160; source of unknown, 110; sublimity and, 119–21, 125–27, 162, 243, 294nn63–65; taste and, 111, 114; Thomas Aquinas on, 100–102; as transcendental, 101; truth and, 92, 97, 159, 233, 249–51, 289n105; utility and, 123–25, 133. See also aesthetics Beckett, Samuel, 221, 229, 268 beds and bed makers, 30–31, 172, 272 being: versus nonbeing, 36–37; properties of, 100. See also ontology Beiser, Frederick, 297n109 Bellarmine, Robert Cardinal, 91 Belting, Hans, 77, 189 Benjamin, Walter, 189, 217, 219, 221 bereavement, 32–33 Berkeley, George: bad idealism of, 197; refutation of, 199; representation and, 3, 237, 239, 241 Bernard, Emile, 261

320 Beuys, Joseph, 232 Bhaskar, Roy, 305n46 Bible, 78–83 Bloch, Ernst, 219–21 Bloch, J., 213 Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 140 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 99 Boethius, 83–84, 88–89 Bolshevik Revolution. See Russian Revolution Boman, Thorleif, 82 Bonaventure, 75, 100 Borgius, W., 213 Börne, Ludwig, 195 Boyd, Richard, 65, 240 Brandom, Robert, 235, 242 Braque, Georges, 233–34, 261–62, 263–67 Brecht, Bertolt, 217–21 Brentano, Franz, 236 Breton, André, 217 Bruno, Giordano, 86 Bruyne, Edgar de. See De Bruyne, Edgar Büchner, Georg, 195 Buddhist art, 301n62 Burke, Edmund: on beauty and sublimity, 119–21, 127, 294nn63–65; imagination theories and, 111; on imitation, 284n87; influence of, 8; Kant and, 105, 128; on poetry, 70; on reason, 125 Bush, George W., 26 Butor, Michel, 268 Bynum, Caroline, 77 Bywater, Ingram, 59 Byzantine aesthetics, 97–98 Caecilius, 119, 120 Calcidius, 84 Cantor, Georg, 126 Carolingian renaissance, 74 Carroll, Noel, 2 Cascardi, Anthony, 183 Cassirer, Heinz, 271 Caudwell, Christopher, 211, 217 causality: argument from design and, 72; beauty and, 101; causal theory of knowledge and, 218, 235; divine, 72, 74, 94, 133–34; evolution and, 140; freedom and, 106–7; of generation and destruction, 42, 51; representation and, 238; science and, 43, 106; teleology

index and, 134–35, 137–38; theory of forms and, 51–52, 54; World War I and, 240 cave paintings, 272 censorship, 23–26 Cervantes, Miguel de, 181 Cézanne, Paul, 232, 257, 259–66, 313n93, 313n95, 313n101 Charlemagne, 74 Charron, Pierre, 171 Chartres, School of, 84, 92, 93 Chartres, Thierry de, 84 Cherniss, Harold, 48 Chinese art and thought, 150, 172, 175, 301n62 Chomsky, Noam, 42, 279n54 Christianity: anti-Platonism in, 72, 103–4; versus Aristotelianism, 89–90; art and knowledge of God in, 7; artistic glorification of God and, 93; beauty and truth in, 76, 99; biblical sources of aesthetics and, 78–83; Christian versus classical Greek art and, 172–74, 177–79; cognitive limits of art and, 186; conception of spirit in, 169–71; continuity between God and the world in, 104; domestication of Aristotle in, 90–91; ecclesiastical art and, 77; faith and beauty and, 97; Greek philosophy and, 74, 92; Greek religion and, 151–52; Hegel and, 149, 177; Holy Spirit and, 169, 179; honest God in, 24; humans as end of nature in, 140; iconoclasts in, 98; imago dei in, 235; individuality and, 150; individual responsibility in, 198; Jewish versus Christian views of art and, 80–81; kenosis and, 151–52; medieval art and, 5–6, 72–78; Neoplatonism and, 85; original sin in, 150; purpose and, 133; rationalism and, 71; reason and faith in, 75; representational art in, 76; scholasticism and, 89; versus science, 91; second coming in, 257–58; as sole source of truth, 89; theories of aesthetics in, 7–8, 19; trinitarian doctrine in, 169. See also medieval aesthetics Cicero, 84 Cistercians, 71, 73 city-state, ideal: admission to, 27, 28, 280n62; artistic imitation in, 45, 47, 66; as art object, 270; falsehoods and, 25–26; as

index good imitation of justice, 38; guardians of, 23–24; philosophers as kings in, 67; Plato’s protectiveness of, 58; Socrates’s creation of, 23; soul and, 32 cognition: aesthetic judgment and, 109, 122, 124, 132, 272–73; aesthetic repre­ sentation and, 92; and art in Hegel, 148–56, 167, 192; the beautiful and the sublime and, 119, 120; beauty and, 102, 103–4; classical art and, 284n85; consciousness versus selfconsciousness and, 178–79; as dimen­ sion of art, 232; faculties of human mind and, 116; interpretation and, 145; invisible concepts and, 41; Kantian objectivity and, 106; limits of art and, 186; medieval art and, 94; nature and God and, 104; object and subject of, 157; phenomenology and, 9; versus production, 101; realism and, 224; re­ ligion and, 156; representation and, 47, 234, 241; roles of art and religion and, 174; secular versus religions do­ mains and, 158–59. See also knowledge; reason collage, 266 Collingwood, R. G., 6, 11, 236 comedy, origins of, 59–60 Constant, Benjamin, 254 constructivism, 212, 266, 271 contextualism, 198–200, 204, 216 Cooper, Anthony Ashley. See Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper) Cooper, Douglas, 262, 267 Copernican revolution, 16, 131, 227, 254, 271 Corot, Camille, 259 Corot, Jean-Baptiste, 19 Council of Nicea, 169 Courbet, Gustave, 260 craftspeople, essence of names and, 34 Cratylus (philosopher), 50–51 Cratylus (Plato), 6, 20, 33–36 Critique of Judgment (Kant). See Critique of the Power of Judgment (Kant) Critique of Practical Reason (Kant), 107, 116 Critique of Pure Reason (Kant): the absolute in, 244; anti-anthropological approach in, 200; beauty in, 111; categories of judgment in, 108; causality

321 in, 106–7, 134; critical philosophy in, 117; empiricism versus philosophy in, 127; faith in, 141; genius in, 130; God’s existence in, 133–34; hermeneutics in, 144–45; judgment in, 114, 295n79; Kantian epistemology and, 106; knowl­ edge and experience in, 142–43, 146; meaning of aesthetics in, 107–8, 113; mind-independent reality in, 115; moral theology and, 142; a priori principles in, 116; questions of reason in, 118; reason and experience in, 125; the supersensible in, 132; transcendental aesthetic in, 128 Critique of the Power of Judgment (Kant): the absolute in, 244; abstract concepts in, 109; aesthetics in, 3, 106, 108, 122; beautiful and sublime in, 121, 124–25; categories of judgment in, 108; color in, 109; examples in, 120; experience and activity in, 128; faculties of judgment in, 118; formalist versus expressionist theory in, 296n98; genius in, 130; Herder and, 291n17; hermeneutics in, 144–45; as high point of critical philosophy, 136; Hume and, 293n37; influences on Kant and, 105, 113; Kant’s developing thought and, 143; Kant’s motivation for writing, 106; knowledge in, 146; moral theology and, 142; nature and judgment in, 128; objective cognition in, 106; origin of, 116; particularity in, 168; practical reason and, 106–7; prior philosophical traditions and, 110; purposiveness of nature in, 133–34; subject and nature in, 244; teleology in, 131–35 Crowther, Paul, 124 cubism: analytic versus synthetic approach of, 263, 265–66; constructivism and, 266; importance of, 256–57, 261–62; influence of, 267–68; influences on, 260–61, 262–63; as nonimitative art, 5; origins of, 261–62, 313n91, 313–14n101; representationalism and, 233–34, 257, 259, 264–67; rise of, 257–58 Cynics, 82 Damian, Peter, 75 Dancy, R. M., 48 Dante, 99, 229 Danto, Arthur, 189–92, 252, 297n3, 302n93

322 Daoism, 86 dark ages, brightness of, 72 Darwin, Charles, and Darwinian evolution, 135–40 Davidson, Donald, 199, 225, 242 Davies, Henton, 80 Dead Sea Scrolls, 81 De Bruyne, Edgar, 77, 92–93, 101, 288n63 Degas, Edgar, 259 de Munnynck, Marc, 101 Derain, André, 260 Derrida, Jacques, 16, 216, 244, 250 Descartes, René: as anticontextualist, 199; bad idealism of, 197; Cartesian world and, 277n18; on God’s existence, 132; on good sense, 295n78; Heidegger’s interpretation of, 49; on honesty of Christian God, 24; imitation and, 17; individual responsibility and, 198; on judgment, 129; mind-independent world and, 200; modern philosophy and, 170– 71; rationalism and, 240; representation and, 235 design, argument from, 72 Devereux, Daniel, 48 Diderot, Denis, 148 diegesis, 25–27, 59 Differenzschrift (Hegel), 146, 158–59, 171, 271 “Dignitas humanae” (Catholic document), 89 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 199 Dionysos, 246–47 Dod, Bernard G., 88–89 Dorian mode, 59 Douanier Rousseau, le, 260 dualism, 104, 154–55, 207–8 Duby, Georges, 73 Duchamp, Marcel, 108, 189–90, 234, 237 Duns Scotus, John, 72, 74, 104 Eagleton, Terry, 217 Eastern Orthodoxy, 71 Eco, Umberto, 78, 94, 99–103 economy and economics, 202–3, 210–11, 213, 216 Eddy, Arthur Jerome, 264 Egyptian art, 94, 172, 175–76 Eisler, Hans, 219 Eldridge, Richard, 2

index El Greco, 313n101 Eliot, T. S., 161, 250, 298n23 El Lissitzky, 212 Else, Gerald, 65–66 emanational thoery, 7 Empedocles, 51, 58 empiricism, 225, 227, 235–40 Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Hegel): art in, 156–66, 174, 184; Hegel’s developing thought and, 147–48; iden­ tity in, 158, 271; original purpose of, 156–65; spirit in, 158, 159, 174; theory of recognition in, 192 Engels, Friedrich: aesthetics and, 195, 212– 17, 303n4; on continuity between Marx and Marxism, 195–96; copy theory and, 240; dialectic for, 207; direct realism and, 196; on false consciousness, 215; Feuerbach’s importance for, 205, 206; Hegel and, 204–5, 214–15; on idealism versus materialism, 195–96; influences on, 204; Kant misunderstood by, 205–6; literature and, 214–16, 222; versus Marx on aesthetics, 195; on Marx’s legacy, 204, 206; philosophical background of, 204, 205–6; simplistic Marxism of, 307n85; social realism and, 214–16, 218; theory of knowledge of, 203–7, 214–15, 223–24, 226–27; Trotsky and, 210 Epicurus, 133 epistemology: aesthetics and, 11, 56, 94, 110; Hegelian, 157; intuitionism and, 269; Kantian, 106–9; Platonic, 11, 269; poetry and, 113; relativism and, 242; representation and, 235, 269. See also knowledge equality, names of things and, 41 Eriugena, 84 ethics, 20, 149–50, 154, 160 Eucharist, 77, 98, 151–52 Euripedes, 64 Eusebius Hieronymus. See Jerome evolution. See Darwin, Charles, and Darwinian evolution expressionism, 219–21, 296n98 faith, 72, 141–43, 158 fascism, 219–20 Fauvists, 257, 262 feminism, 298n8

index Ferretter, Luke, 81, 82 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 73, 176, 186, 195, 205–6 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb: on absolute self, 244; categorical approach to knowledge and, 201; conception of subject and, 200; Hegel and, 163, 171; idealism and realism and, 197–98; influence of, 148; on moral striving, 108; on spirit, 169–70; theoretical and practical reason and, 107; on theory, 31; theory of activity and, 245 Ficino, Marsilio, 84–85, 88 film, 272 Findlay, J. N., 50 Fine, Gail, 12, 48 forms: acquisition of, 42; as changeless, 25; and content, 162–63; intuitive grasp of, 144; knowledge and, 42; nature versus art and, 103; one versus many, 29, 54; participation in, 29–30; versus particulars, 39; perspectives and, 30; philosophers’ exclusive grasp of, 3; versus things, 53; visibility of, 28–29. See also forms, theory of forms, theory of: as absent from Plato’s writings, 11, 39, 49; anti-Heraclitean, 36; anti-nominalistic formula and, 40; Aristotle’s critique of, 47–53, 55, 281n25; art, truth, and representation in, 233; bed making and, 272; bed making in, 30–31, 172; causality and, 6–7, 51–52, 54; centrality of to Platonism, 27–28; cognitive representationalism and, 47; conceptual difficulties with, 39; knowledge solely available through, 36; lack of agreement about, 49–50; mimesis and, 15; names of things and, 35–37; in Neoplatonism, 86; origins of, 40, 50–52; philosophers versus non­ philosophers and, 29; Plato’s attack on art and, 6, 22; Plato’s contemporaries and, 39–40; Plato’s developing thought and, 12, 22, 28, 31, 44, 48, 53; possibility of knowledge and, 42; Pythagoreanism and, 51–52; relation of art and truth and, 2, 3; Socrates and, 12, 28–29, 44, 53–54; theory of recollection and, 41; theory versus practice and, 31. See also forms Foucault, Michel, 216, 236 Frankfurt School, 217

323 freedom: art and, 164, 245; art and truth, 162; beauty and, 275n11; causality and, 106–7; ethical, 160; French Revolution and, 153; Hegel on, 171–72; in history, 151; morality and, 106–7, 141, 272; of spirit, 170 Frege, Gottlob, 34, 199, 254 French impressionism, 259–61 French Revolution: freedom and, 153; transition and, 188 French symbolists, 256 friendship, 25 Fry, Edward, 265 Fukuyama, Francis, 189 Gadamer, Hans-Georg: art and truth and, 244; graecophilia and, 246, 248; on humanity’s self-encounter, 192; on Kantian aesthetics, 144; non­ representational approach and, 234; representation and, 237 Gaiser, Konrad, 281n18 Galileo, 91 Gard, Léon, 260 Garve, Christian, 120 Gaugin, Paul, 260, 313n101 Gautier, Théophile, 254, 255 Geach, Peter, 55 Gerard, Alexander, 111 German idealism: the absolute in, 244; British aesthetic emphasis in, 111; cat­ egorical approach to knowledge and, 200–201; contextualism and, 199; grae­ cophilia in, 149, 173, 177, 246–49; Hegel as zenith of, 166; Kant’s omissions and, 109–10; Marx and, 198, 204; materialism versus, 195–98, 205–7; Platonic influence on, 105–6; romantic art and, 178–83; spirit as theme in, 169–70; theory of identity in, 244–45; types of idealism and, 29 Gerson, L. P., 48, 54 Gilson, Étienne, 284n2 Glaucon, 22–23 God: artistic representation of, 163; beauty and, 7, 104, 289n93; belief in, 142; con­ tinuity between world and, 7–8, 104; death of, 189; existence of, 132–35, 138, 141–42, 295n86; humans in image of, 235; knowledge of, 110–11; sublimity of, 176

324 gods, 24–26 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 229 Golding, John, 256, 263, 265 Goldsworthy, Andy, 232 Gombrich, E. H., 1–2, 165, 241 Gomez de la Serna, Ramón, 263 Goodman, Nelson, 3, 15, 237, 239–41, 310n25 goodness: art and truth and, 67–68; ver­ sus beauty, 101; cognition and, 41; of gods, 24–25; human activity directed toward, 256; knowledge and, 85–86; Neoplatonism and, 85; three concep­ tions of good and, 22; truth and, 67, 68, 85–86 Gorki, Maxim, 217, 224 Gotshalk, D. W., 143, 296n98 Gramsci, Antonio, 217 Greek literature, 63–64, 153–55, 246–47 Greek philosophy: art as imitation and, 4; beauty and, 2, 4–5; Christianity and, 74, 81, 92; Greek religion and, 155; individuality and, 150; medieval aesthetics and, 83–91, 92; poetry and, 4, 5; recovery of in Middle Ages, 75 Greek religion, 149–52, 155, 177 Greenberg, Clemen, 190, 236 Greenblatt, Stephen, 216 Gregory of Nazianzus, 169 Gregory the Great (pope), 93 Grice, Paul, 239 Gris, Juan, 233–34, 261–63, 265 Grosseteste, Robert, 89 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Kant), 106–8, 117–18, 141 Grube, G. M. A., 18, 19, 59 Grundrisse (Marx), 198, 201, 209–10 Gutzkow, Karl, 195 Guyer, Paul, 124, 290–91n3, 291n16 Habermas, Jürgen, 74, 198, 203 Haeckel, Ernst, 139 Halfwassen, Jens, 281n18 Halliwell, Stephen, 19 happiness, 31, 60, 72, 142 Harkness, Margaret, 215 Harrison, Carol, 78, 95, 285n18 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, and Hegelianism: on the absolute, 158, 163; aesthetic ethnocentrism of, 172–73;

index on Antigone, 298n8; Aristotle and, 146, 149–50, 162–63; on art and ideals, 172–74, 181–82; on art and nature, 234; on art and religion, 164–65, 174–75; on art and truth, 184–85; artistic standard of, 177; on bad infinity, 55; on beauty, 182–83; beauty and sublimity and, 162; being versus essence in, 215; categor­ ical approach to knowledge and, 201; Christianity and, 178, 180, 188; claims erroneously attributed to, 188–89; on classical art, 176–78, 180, 188; con­ ceptual exhaustion following, 192; con­ s­tructivist theory of knowledge, 192; on context of art, 161–62; on death of God, 189, 302n81; dialectic of, 207; educational background of, 149; on empiricism, 225; on end of art, 146, 175, 183–93, 243, 247, 254, 297n3, 300n59; on end of history, 189; end of philosophy and, 189, 195, 204–5; Engels on, 212; on ethics, 149–50; as father of art history, 165; Feuerbach’s reformulation of, 206; on fine art, 299n26; on freedom, 151, 272; on free intelligence, 165; grasp of aesthetic tradition by, 8; on Greek ethics, 31; on Greek literature, 153–55; Greek religion and, 152; Heidegger and, 251–52; on hierachy of religions, 149; historical context and, 167, 211; historical relativism and, 200; holistic model of, 227; on human realization in modern world, 181; on human shape, 161; on identity, 158, 159, 218, 271; on imitation of nature, 161; importance of to Marx, 197–98; influence of, 197; influences on, 148–49, 157, 163; versus Kant on aesthetics, 8–9, 148; versus Kant on art, 159, 168; versus Kant on morality, 155; versus Kant on reason, 171–72; versus Kant on representation, 271–72; versus Kant on self-knowledge, 157; Kant’s importance to, 197; on learning from history, 61–62; Lukács’s realism and, 222; Marx and, 195–97, 202–3, 206–7, 210; master-slave analysis of, 178, 217; on names of things, 44; phenomenology and, 9, 251; philosophy and natural science and, 196–97, 205; Platonic arguments of, 155, 159, 161,

index 172–73, 182, 271; Platonism rejected by, 167–68, 184, 271; on principle of speculation, 278n38; range of aesthetic knowledge of, 146–48, 155, 175; readings of Kant and, 144; realism and, 230–31; on reality and rationality, 204; reception to, 146; on religion and knowledge, 158– 59; on religion versus philosophy, 156; as religious thinker, 171, 179; on repetition of history, 283n62; representation and, 13, 237; on romantic art, 180–82, 188; roots of Marxism and, 204; on Schiller, 168; on scientific laws, 43; on selfawareness, 150, 273; social knowledge and, 223; on social structures, 163; on spirit, 157–60, 168–74, 177, 182–83, 193; on symbolic art, 174–76; systematic con­ ception of aesthetics of, 166–67; on taste formation, 152–53; theory of cognition and, 178–79; theory of knowledge of, 215; theory of recognition of, 192; true and false appearance in, 230; on truth and beauty, 159; on virtues, 180–81; Young Hegelians and, 204. See also Differenzschrift (Hegel); Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Hegel); Phenomenology of Spirit (Hegel); Philos­ ophy of Right (Hegel); Heidegger, Martin: on art in modern world, 310n36; on beauty and truth, 249–51; contextualism and, 199; emphasis on tradition and, 258; on end of art, 189, 243, 247, 300n59; etymologies and, 34, 36; graecophilia and, 246–49, 251; Hegel and, 165, 251–52; Kant and, 252; metaphysics of presence and, 16; mindindependent reality and, 242; National Socialism and, 66, 247–48, 250, 258; Neoplatonism and, 98; nonrepresenta­ tional approach and, 234, 243–44, 249– 50, 253; ontology of, 247–48, 251–52; phenomenology and, 248–51; representa­ tion and, 237; theory of truth of, 248–49; Van Gogh and, 249–51; violent readings by, 49 Heine, Heinrich, 195 Hempel, J., 81 Henrich, Dieter, 183, 297n3, 301n73 Henriot, Emile, 268 Henry, Michel, 267

325 Henry of Ghent, 72 Heraclitus, 2, 14, 18, 36, 50–51 Herder, Johan Gottfried, 110, 117, 163–64, 169–70, 291n17 hermeneutics, Kantian, 144–45 Hermogenes, 34 Herodotus, 17, 62 Herz, Marcus, 140 Hesiod, 14, 17–18, 20–21, 23–24 Hinduism, 86, 175 history: art’s evolution through, 173–74; end of, 189; epic versus, 63–64; human freedom in, 151; learning from, 61–62; new historicism and, 216; origins of study of, 62; versus poetry, 61, 113; relativism and, 200; of religion and world, 164; repetition of, 283n62; spirit in context of, 157; Tolstoy’s theory of, 62; as tragic, 153; uses of, 61 Hitler, Adolf, 220–21, 250 Hogarth, William, 112 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 248, 250 Homer: aesthetics and, 14; Aristotle on, 56, 58, 61, 69; censorship of, 23–25; critics of poetry and, 14; dramas of, 59; existence of, 17–18; Hegel on, 173; Iliad and, 17, 26–27, 61, 152, 153; Ion the Ephesian and, 20–22; names of things and, 35; Plato and, 38, 56–57; on poetry, 119; Socrates’ objections to, 31–33; taste for, 110 Homes, Henry, 111 Honarius of Autun, 94 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 170 Hume, David: causality and, 104, 134, 238; on Christian art, 73; influence of, 8; influences on, 111; Kant and, 105, 110, 114–15, 117, 205, 238–39, 290–91n3, 291n16, 293n37; on limits of knowledge, 115; taste and, 111, 114 Husserl, Edmund, 30, 118, 199–200, 248–49, 262 Hutcheson, Francis, 110–13, 291–92n19 iconoclasts, 98 idealism. See German idealism ideas, theory of, 51–52, 95 identity, 29, 218, 244–45, 271 ideology, Marx’s theory of, 215 imagination, 111–12, 121–22

326 imitation: appearances and, 68; Aristotle’s three kinds of, 58; copy theory and, 239–40; correctness and, 34; cubism and, 257; Descartes’s abandonment of, 17; versus diegesis, 25, 26–27, 59; failure of as source of truth, 28, 30–31; good versus bad, 38; greatness and, 297n3; irrational part of the soul and, 33; versus knowledge, 32; language as, 34; of life versus mind-independent reality, 66–67; likeness making and, 37–38; meaning of term, 59; names of things and, 34–35; object of, 59; permissible forms of, 26– 27; as perspectival, 30; philosophical, 45; in religion, 234–35; representation and, 233, 234–37; resemblance and, 284n87; in the Sophist (Plato), 36; of virtue, 34 impressionism, 259–61 Indian art, 172, 175 individualism, radical, 219–20 individuality, 150–51, 207–8, 221 induction, 108, 113 infinite regress, 44, 52–56, 282n38, 283n62 Inness, George, 1 innocent eye, 241 integrity, beauty and, 102 intentionality, representational theories of, 15 Ion (Plato), 6, 18, 20–22, 26–27 Iraq War, 26 Islam: depictions of transcendent reality and, 6; limits of art and, 186; medieval philosophy and, 83; Proclus’s influence on, 88; representation forbidden in, 93, 176; skepticism and, 72 Jacob, Max, 266–67 Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, 171 James of Venice, 89 Jameson, Fredric, 217, 219 Janko, Richard, 57 Jerome, 79–80, 99 John Damascene, 93, 97, 98, 289n94 John of Salisbury, 93 Josephus, 79 Joyce, James, 220, 234 Judaism: arts and, 83; depictions of transcendent reality and, 6; imitatio dei in, 235; Jewish art and, 175, 176; Jewish versus Christian views of art and, 80–81; limits of art and, 186; representation

index forbidden in, 93, 176; scripture copying and, 81; scripture translation and, 79 judgment: categories of, 108, 114; cognition and, 122, 124; definition of, 127; factors in, 108; A. G. Baumgarten on, 293nn33– 35; in Kant’s developing thought, 118; as orientational, 144; the super­sensible and, 130–32; of taste, 124; tel­eological power of, 137, 139–43; univer­sality of, 128–30, 131 Jünger, Ernst, 258 justice, 22–23, 41 Kafka, Franz, 220, 221 Kahnweiler, D. H., 261 kallipolis, 6, 31–32, 33, 64. See also city-state, ideal Kandinsky, Wassily, 267, 314n114 Kant, Immanuel, and Kantianism: on the absolute, 244; on aesthetic experience, 296n101; on aesthetic judgment, 108– 10; aesthetics and epistemology and, 110; aesthetics and morality and, 271; aesthetic subjects and, 143–44; on aesthetic sublime, 124–27; analytic versus synthetic approach of, 227; anthropological shift of, 116–18; as anticontextualist, 199; on art and knowledge, 2; on art and nature, 130; on art and pleasure, 255; on art and truth, 143–45; art’s social utility and, 270; on beauty, 98, 107, 119–27, 133, 135, 159, 243, 296n98; categorical approach to knowledge and, 201; on causality, 134–35, 137; causality and, 238–39; constructivism and, 266; on Copernican revolution, 227; critical philosophy and, 105, 315n119; on disinterested aesthetic pleasure, 112; Engels’s misunderstanding of, 205–6; epistemology and aesthetics of, 106–9; evolution and, 135, 136–37, 140; expressionism and, 296n98; on fine art, 299n26; as founder of Western aesthetics, 105; on freedom, 272; on genius, 130, 245; God’s existence and, 132–34, 135, 295n86; versus Hegel on aesthetics, 8–9, 148; versus Hegel on art, 159, 168; versus Hegel on morality, 155; versus Hegel on reason, 171–72; versus Hegel on representation, 271–72; versus Hegel on self-knowledge, 157;

index Heidegger and, 49, 252; on hermeneu­ tics, 144; Herz letter and, 140; Hume and, 105, 110, 114–15, 117, 205, 238–39, 290–91n3, 291n16, 293n37; on idealism, 197; ideal­ization of nature and, 19; imagination and, 112, 121–22; on im­ itation of nature, 161; importance of to Hegel, 197; influences on, 8, 105, 113–15, 117; lack of exposure of to art, 8; on limits of knowledge, 115; Lukács’s realism and, 222–23; versus Marx, 196; on moral inport of aesthetics, 112; on morality, 141–42; on nature’s purposiveness, 133–34, 136–37; omis­ sions of, 109–10; origins of aesthetics and, 3, 56; particular and general in, 187; phenomenology and, 9; philosophy and natural science and, 196; philosophy of identity and, 29; Platonic views of art and, 270–71; on power of judgment, 114; on pure reason, 74; on rational human capacities, 127–28; readings of other theories by, 291n2; refutation of, 199; rejection of represen­tationalism by, 3; relation of to Plato­nism, 8; relation of to predecessors, 109–15; representation and, 15, 17, 37, 235, 237–39, 241; on selfreferential pleasure, 144; on sensation and experience, 145; on sensus com­ munis, 129; on taste, 114–16, 122–23, 127–29, 131; on teleology, 131–43; theology and, 140–43; theory of knowl­ edge of, 290n1; theory of representation and, 16; on things and appearances, 252; three antinomies and, 106–7; tran­ scendental argument and, 279n53; on truth as universal, 113; view of taste and, 110. See also Critique of the Power of Judgment (Kant); Critique of Practical Reason (Kant); Critique of Pure Reason (Kant); Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Kant) Karkness, Margaret, 214 Kautsky, Minna, 214 Keats, John, 233 Kierkegaard, Søren, 204 knowledge: acquaintance versus discussion and, 32; Aristotle’s theory of, 47; art and, 5, 7, 66–67, 72, 74, 184; beauty and, 44, 98; categorical approach to, 200– 201; causal theory of, 218, 235; con­

327 structivist theory of, 192; Engels’s theory of, 203–7, 214–15, 223–24, 226– 27; faith and, 142–43, 158; forms and, 42; of God, 110–11, 132–33; goodness and, 85–86; Hegel’s theory of, 215; idealist theory of, 146; versus imitation, 32; versus interpretation, 144; Kant and, 146, 290n1; limits of, 115; Marx’s theory of, 198–203; meaning of, 49; mind-independent reality and, 2, 241– 43; versus opinion, 28; philosophers as sole possessors of, 68–69; Plato’s attack on art and, 6; poetry and poets and, 21, 31; politicians and, 26; possibility of, 86–87; of probable rather than truth, 69; psychological and logical aspects of, 118; reflection theory of, 16, 206–7, 225–27, 230; seeing the invisible and, 66; of self, 157; sophists and, 37; truth and, 85–86. See also cognition; epistemology Knox, T. M., 166 Kojève, Alexandre, 189 Krämer, Hans Joachim, 281n18 Krauss, Rosalind, 236 Kristeller, Paul Oskar, 3, 4 Kuhn, Thomas, 199 Kurella, Alfred, 219 labor, division of, 31 Laertius, Diogenes, 39 La Fresnaye, Roger de, 263–64 Lagerlund, Henrik, 236 lamentation, 33 language: Bible translation and, 78–82; Chinese ideograms and, 35; contextual­ ism and, 199–200; etymologies and, 34, 35; function of religion and, 152; Greek pride in, 152; as imitation, 34; linguistic correctness and, 34; linguistic universals and, 42; meaning and use and, 36; medie­ val philosophy and, 83–84; picture the­ ory of, 16; semantic role of, 34, 36. See also names of things Lask, Emil, 227 Lassalle, Ferdinand, 212 Laube, Heinrich, 195 Leclerc, G.-L., 139 Le Corbusier, 267 Lectures on Fine Art (Hegel). See Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art (Hegel)

328 Lehrer, Keith, 315n118 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 132, 134, 141, 191 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich: on continuity between Marx and Marxism, 196; copy theory and, 240; Marxist aesthetics and, 217; Marxist view of truth and, 16; realism and, 220; reflection theory and, 65, 206–7; view of Marxism of, 307n85 Lhôte, André, 266 Liddell, Henry George, 59 lies: permissibility of, 25–26; true and mere, 24 linguistics, 170, 279n54 literature: Christian, 285n18; copying versus creating facts in, 66; fables and, 224–25; Greek, 153–55; imitation in, 234; literary criticism and, 13, 18, 250, 298n23; new novel and, 268; realism in, 215–16, 222– 26; social function of, 214–16 Locke, John, 15, 200, 235, 240 Longinus, 119–20 Longuenesse, Béatrice, 143–44 Lovejoy, A. O., 139 Lukács, Georg: on aesthetic realism, 222–23; aesthetics of, 230–31; on expressionism, 219–21; on literary realism, 222–31; Marxist aesthetics and, 216–17, 307n88, 308n89; Marxist orthodoxy and, 230; on particularity, 227–28; reflection theory of knowledge and, 226; renunciation of own ideas by, 223–24, 307n85; socialist realism and, 6, 218–21, 223–30 Lunacharsky, Anatoly, 217, 305n51 Lyotard, Jean-François, 192, 302n93 Macfarlane, Patrick, 48 Machiavelli, 171 Macpherson, James, 234 Magnus, Albertus, 74, 101 Makkreel, Rudolph, 144 Malevitch, Kazimir, 267 Manet, Édouard, 259 Mann, Thomas, 220, 224 Marcuse, Herbert, 217, 219 Margolis, Joseph, 2 Marin, Louis, 16, 17, 277nn18–19 Maritain, Jacques, 101 Marrou, H.-I., 95, 288n75 Marx, Karl: aesthetics of, 207, 210–12, 231, 303n4; conception of human individuality of, 207–8; contextualism

index and, 198, 200–202; death and legacy of, 204; economics as primary explanatory factor for, 202–3; education of, 196–97; Engels and, 195, 204, 206, 213; German idealism and, 204; on Greek art, 211; Hegel and, 171, 189, 197–98, 202–3, 206–7; history of aesthetics in, 194–95; on human realization in modern world, 181; idealism and, 227; influences on, 194–95, 207, 212; versus Kant, 196; on learning from history, 62; life beyond capitalism and, 208–10; versus Marxism, 195–96, 230; on material production, 201; opposition to religion and, 195–96; postreligious political faith and, 194; on practice versus theory, 31; on rational core of dialectic, 206; realism and, 214, 220, 225–26, 230; reflection theory of knowledge and, 226; religion and, 25–26, 171; representation and, 237; scientific realism and, 305n46; on superstructure and base, 210–11; theoretical and practical reason and, 107; theory of alienation of, 150; theory of knowledge of, 198–203; view of truth and, 16. See also Grundrisse (Marx); Paris Manuscripts (Marx) Marxism: aesthetics of, 5, 6, 216–19, 222, 230; causal theory of knowledge and, 218; Engels and, 204, 307n85; false consciousness in, 215; Hegel and, 189; literary realism and, 223–24, 230–31; as main philosophical tendency, 9; versus Marx, 195–96, 230; mind-independent reality and, 242; opposition to religion in, 6; realism and, 220; reflection theory of knowledge and, 206–7, 226, 230; religion and, 171; representation by reflection and, 16; socialist realism and, 229–30; theory of ideology and, 215; true and false appearance in, 230; uneven development and, 210 Masoretes, 81 materialism, 195–98, 205–7 Matisse, Henri, 260, 262 Maupertuis, P. L. M., 139 Maurus, Rhabanus, 89 McKeon, Richard, 12 medieval aesthetics: absence of philosophy in, 194; analogy and allegory in, 93– 94; anti-Platonism and, 91–93, 103–4;

index Aristotle and, 83, 88–91, 99; Augus­ tinian, 94–99; beauty in, 97, 172; biblical sources of, 78–83; cognition and, 94; existence of, 76–78; Greek sources of, 83–91; limits of art and, 186–87; mimesis in, 94; Neoplatonism and, 103–4; philos­ ophers and theologians in, 92; Plato and, 83–88, 99; representation and, 92–94; scholasticism and, 99–103; Thomas Aquinas and, 99–103; threefold aesthetic attitude and, 83 Mehring, Franz, 213 Meier, George Friedrich, 111–12 Melians, massacre of, 62 Mendelssohn, Moses, 111–12, 120 metaphysics: Kantian, 106–9; of presence, 16; realist claims and, 242; Royal Prussian Academy contest and, 111 methexis, 51 Middle Ages. See medieval aesthetics Mill, John Stuart, 108 Milton, John, 229 mimesis: aesthetic realism and, 222, 223; for Aristotle versus Plato, 46; in British aesthetics, 284n86; as copying, 14; at core of Western thought, 19; in Cratylus (Plato), 33–36; Greek plays on, 18; historical context and, 13; versus imagination, 121–22; in Ion (Plato), 20–22; in Laws (Plato), 33–34; in literary criticism, 13; meaning of term, 4, 12–13, 14–15, 59; in medieval art, 94; medieval art and, 76; in Menexenus (Plato), 33–34; versus methexis, 51; origins of concept, 14; Platonic view of, 6–7; in Plato’s Re­ public, 22–33, 28, 39; Plato’s softening on, 33–34; Plato’s theory of art and, 17; Plato’s use of term, 13–14; Plato versus Aristotle on, 65; in Poetics (Aristotle), 56–64; representation and, 240; showing versus telling and, 25, 26–27; in Sophist (Plato), 33–34; in Statesman (Plato), 33–34; theory of forms and, 15; in Timaeus (Plato), 33–34 mind, as mirror of reality, 65 mind-independent reality: the absolute and, 158; art and, 3, 5–6, 92, 193, 270; beyond appearance, 242; categorical approach to knowledge and, 200–201; claims to know and, 241–43; cognition and, 47, 272–73; cubism and, 265; effort

329 to imitate, 66, 67; knowledge and, 2, 103, 115, 206–7, 226; literature and, 226; mind as representation of, 235; as object of imitation, 68; Plato on, 92; realism and, 226–27; reflection versus reconstruction of, 227–28; representation and, 156, 225–26; subject’s relation to, 131–32; theory of forms and, 53; truth and, 231 modernism, 219–20 Moland, Lydia L., 183 Monet, Claude, 259 Montaigne, 171, 198 Montesquieu, 169 Moore, G. E., 199 morality: art and, 121, 271, 272; beauty and, 112; deontological view of, 141–42; freedom and, 106–7, 141, 272; Hegel versus Kant on, 155; human rational capacity and, 118; judgment and, 108; poetry’s corrupting effect of, 280n62; teleology and theology and, 140–43 Morawski, Stefan, 303n4 Morisot, Berthe, 259 Moss, Jessica, 239–40, 280n62 Mundt, Theodor, 195 music and music makers, 32, 234 names of things, 34–37, 40–41, 44. See also language Napoleon, 62, 189 Napoleon III, 259 National Socialism, 66, 219–21, 248, 250, 258 nature: versus art, 103, 130; art as imitation of, 234; classical art and, 284n85; con­ crete study of, 260, 313n93, 313n95; dyna­ mic pantheism and, 86; fictitious state of, 151; formalist theory and, 296n98; God and, 104, 132–34; humans as end of, 41, 140; idealist theory of identity and, 245; idealization of, 19; imitation of, 161; in Kant’s works, 109; leading to God, 97, 98; in medieval art, 74, 76, 92–94; painting and, 314n114; philosophy and natural science and, 196–97, 205–6; purposefulness and, 125, 133–34, 136–37; religion and, 151; spirit and, 157, 160, 161; sublimity and, 125–27; teleology and, 134–39; wild versus resembling art, 110–11; as work of art, 99. See also science Nazism. See National Socialism

330 Neiman, Susan, 315n119 Neoplatonism, 84–88, 95, 98, 103–4, 245 Neurath, Otto, 225 Newton, Isaac, 132, 138, 196, 206 Nicholas of Autrecourt, 72, 104 Nicole, Pierre, 235–36 Nietzsche, Friedrich: art for art’s sake and, 270; cult of beauty and, 256; on end of art, 189; Greek culture and, 246; on music, 234; nonrepresentational approach and, 234, 236–37, 243, 246–47; on poetry and poets, 250; representation and, 237; on uses of history, 61 Nussbaum, Charles, 234 Ockham, William, 72 O’Connell, Robert, 76, 95–97 Olson, Alan, 169 ontology: the absolute and, 245; continuity between God and the world and, 104; Heidegger on, 247–48, 251–52; of Plotinus, 281n18 Oresteia (Aeschylus), 154 Otloh of St. Emmeran, 101 Ovid, 234 Owen, G. E. L., 48 Owen, Robert, 215 pain, 32 painting and painters: aims of, 94; appearance making and, 37; versus bed makers, 30–31; naming and, 35; natural forms and, 314n114; as objectively good, 305n51; Socrates on, 21; truth in, 232 Paley, William, 72 pantheism, 86 papier collé, 266 Paris Manuscripts (Marx), 198, 200, 202, 208–9 Parmenides (philosopher), 2, 53–54, 242, 270 Parmenides (Plato): infinite regress and, 52–56; as response to Aristotle, 7; theory of forms and, 39, 48, 52–53; things that do not change and, 42; third man argument and, 52–56 Parthenon, 20 participation, 51, 53–55 Pater, Walter, 255–56 Paxman, David, 291–92n19 Peirce, C. S., 16, 242

index perception, 41, 51, 101–2 perfection, 112 Perler, D., 284n2 Persian art, 175 Petrach, 99 Phaedo (Plato): causality in, 238; mimesis in, 6; participation in forms in, 29; relativity of perception in, 41; theory of forms and, 6–7, 43–44, 50, 52; translation of, 84 phenomenology: art for art’s sake and, 254; French impressionism and, 260; Hegelian, 9, 251; Heidegger and, 248–51; mind-independent reality and, 242; subjectivity and, 267 Phenomenology of Spirit (Hegel): art in, 148–57, 159, 165, 184, 186; blissful life in, 180; constructivism in, 227; death of God in, 189; enigmatic ending of, 179; epistemology in, 157; freedom in, 153, 171–72; French Revolution in, 188; Hegel’s developing thought and, 147–48; heroes in, 154; master-slave analysis in, 178; philosophy and religion in, 155; religion’s role in, 174–76; science and, 156, 163; theory of recognition in, 192 Philip the Chancellor, 101 Philo, 79 philosophy and philosophers: anthropology and, 117; Arab, 100; art as organ of, 244; Copernican revolution in, 227; critical, 105, 136; end of, 189; Engels and, 204, 205–6; medieval, 74; natural science and, 196–97, 205–6; versus nonphilosophers, 45, 49; periods of in Middle Ages, 83; in real versus ideal state, 67; as reliable forces of truth, 227; as sole knowers of truth, 68–69, 245; theology and, 75; as true artists, 232. See also Greek philosophy Philosophy of Right (Hegel): human selfobjectification in, 150; individual in modern state in, 181; personhood in, 177; Plato’s republic in, 167; reality and rationality in, 204–5; self-objectification in, 192 Picasso, Pablo: African art and, 254, 263; cubism and, 233–34, 261–67; influences on, 313n101; as revolutionary, 313n101; Spanish Civil War and, 272; on truth in art, 232

index Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 84–85 picture theory, 16, 65 Piero della Francesca, 236 Pinget, Samuel, 268 Pinter, Harold, 2 Pissarro, Camille, 259 Plato and Platonism: allegories of, 28; antipathy of toward Homer, 38; an­ tipathy of toward sophists, 36–38; appearance versus reality and, 223; versus Aristotle in use of terms, 57, 58–59, 65–66, 69; versus Aristotle on aesthetics, 67; versus Aristotle on art and poetry, 58, 64–70, 121; versus Aristotle on mimesis, 46, 65, 69–70, 283–84n79; versus Aristotle on theory of forms, 53; versus Aristotle on use of terms, 283–84nn78–79; on art as imitation, 234, 241, 257; art in the citystate and, 3, 58; on artists’ lack of knowl­ edge, 5, 7; Augustine and, 95; on beauty, 14, 99, 112; cave analogy of, 28, 249; censorship and, 24; chronology of works of, 20; critical philosophy and, 105–6; cubism and, 257; development in thought of, 12, 22, 28, 31, 44, 48; on dichotomy between Greeks and others, 152; dualism and, 52, 68–69, 270; as enemy of the state, 66, 284n83; epistemology and, 245, 269; on failure of imitation, 30; footnotes to, 4; German idealists and, 105–6; Hegel and, 155, 159, 161, 167–68, 182, 184; on Homer, 56–57; on ideal city-state, 67; as indistinguishable from each other, 4; on infinite regress, 44; invisible reality and, 66; Kant and, 8, 105–6, 243; on knowledge and forms, 42; logical limitations of, 55–56; loss of influence of, 233; medieval aesthetics and, 83–88, 91– 93, 99; medieval Aristotelian challenge to, 90; on mimesis, 10, 14, 33–34; mime­ sis in, 56; mind-independent reality and, 92, 242–43; National Socialism and, 66; Nietzsche’s rejection of, 246–47; partici­ pation and, 51; on philosophers, 1, 227, 250, 252; pleasure and pain in, 120; versus Plotinus, 86–87; on poetry, 5, 34, 64, 280n62; polytheism of, 95; possibility of knowledge and, 86–87; precondition

331 for art and, 241–42; Pseudo-Dionysius and, 96; reaction to predecessors and, 2; representation and, 239–41; response of to Aristotle, 48; richness of view of on aesthetics, 3; self-predication and, 55; on semantic reference, 279n45; so­cial utility and, 32, 269; Socrates and, 19, 20; soph­ ists and, 19; on state as art object, 270; translations of works of, 84; un­written doctrine and, 49–50, 281n18; world as alive in, 102; on writing versus speaking, 49–50. See also anti-Platonism; Cratylus (Plato); Ion (Plato); Neopla­to­nism; Parmenides (Plato); Phaedo (Plato); Republic (Plato); Sophist (Plato); Sympo­ sium (Plato); Timaeus (Plato); specific theories of Platonic influence on, proofs of God’s existence and, 133–34 Plato’s attack on art: appearance versus reality and, 68–69; beauty versus truth in, 97; cognitive representationalism and, 234; conjoined and separated theories and, 46; divergent opinions on, 11; dualism and, 104; epistemological grounds for, 38–39; epistemology and politics and, 56; ideal city-state and, 45, 64; imitative art and, 2–4; influence of, 232; metaphysical versus aesthetic grounds of, 276n23; mimesis and, 17; nature of, 6; Plato’s justification of, 22; poetry and, 17–18; post-Platonic resistance to, 94; representation and, 235–38; responses to, 1; scope of, 44; subjects of, 11; theory of forms and, 27–28, 30–31, 44–45 pleasure, 33, 112, 120, 122, 144 Plekhanov, Georgi, 217, 305n51 Plotinus: on art and nature, 74; on beauty, 98, 99; dynamic pantheism and, 86; emanational theory of, 7, 104; on modes of likeness, 286–87n46; Neoplatonism and, 85, 86, 95, 98; ontology of, 281n18; versus Plato, 86–87; possibility of knowledge and, 87 Poe, Edgar Allen, 254–55, 270 poetry and poets: Aristotle’s appreciation of, 57; classical, 284n85; corrupting effect of, 280n62; exclusion of from city, 28; great poet’s gift and, 248; Greek

332 poetry and poets (cont.) philosophy and, 4, 5; hedonism and, 33; versus history, 61, 113; imitation and, 64, 280n62; inspiration and, 21; irrationality and, 32–33; knowledge and, 21, 31, 32; logic and epistemology and, 113; as making, 57, 65–66, 283–84n79; origins of, 59; permissible forms of imitation and, 26–27; phenomenology and, 252; Plato’s challenge to, 56–57; Plato versus Aristotle on, 64–69; as pleasure-giving muse, 119; poetic principle and, 254–55; poets as vessels and, 250; as a-rational, 21; reality and, 34; social function of, 68; Socratic critique of, 20–21; as threat to state, 32; truth and, 5, 64; types of, 27; utility of, 31, 33 Polansky, Ronald, 48 politics, 3, 26, 56, 275n11 Popper, Karl, 91 Porphyry, 84, 85, 87, 95 Port-Royal Logic, 235–36 postmodernism, 192 Poussin, Nicolas, 17 presence, metaphysics of, 16 Princet, Maurice, 266 Proclus, 84, 87–88 Propertius, 234 proportion, theory of, 102 Protagoras and Protagoreanism, 34–35, 242 Protestant Reformation, 170 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, 201 Proust, Marcel, 229, 255, 268 Pseudo-Dionysius: Byzantine aesthetics and, 98; on divine names, 101; on God and beauty, 7, 96, 99, 104; influence of, 97; influences on, 88; Neoplatonism and, 85, 95 psychology, 32, 118 Ptolemy, 91 Ptolemy II Philadelphus, 79 Puetz, Michelle, 12 purpose, beauty and, 123–24, 133 Pushkin, Alexander, 229 Putnam, Hilary, 242, 243 Pyrrhonism, 237 Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism, 18, 51–52, 82 Quine, W. V. O., 225

index Ransom, John Crowe, 298n23 rationalism: attacks on, 297n109; Christianity and, 71; core of dialectic and, 206; versus empiricism, 240; Kant’s theory of knowledge and, 290n1; reality and, 204–5 Rawls, John, 32 Raynal, Maurice, 265 realism: aesthetics and, 214, 222–23; cognitive virtues of, 224; collage and papier collé and, 266–67; cubism and, 264–65, 266–67; direct, 196, 204; idealism and, 197–98; ideal types and, 228; literary, 215–16, 222–31; versus modernism, 219–20; naïve, 196, 204; reality and, 225; representative, 15; requirement of dropped, 6; scientific, 305n46; socialist, 212–14, 216–21, 223– 30. See also mind-independent reality reality: mind as mirror of, 65; rationality and, 204–5; realism and, 225; truth and, 185–86. See also mind-independent reality reason: as ahistorical, 130; beauty and, 99; deduction and, 127; faith and, 75; human rational capacity and, 118; Kantian objectivity and, 106; pure, 74–75, 106–7. See also cognition recollection, theory of, 41–42 Reid, Thomas, 111, 112, 129, 225 Reinhold, K. L., 116 relativism, 242 religion: anthropology and, 186; art within, 174–75; community and, 158; emergence of art and, 164; Hegel’s hierarchy of, 149; imitation in, 234–35; language and, 152; as opium, 25–26; state formation and, 152–53. See also Greek religion; specific religions Renoir, Pierre Auguste, 259 representation: bed making example and, 271–72; in Christian art, 76; cognition and, 47, 92, 234, 241; as criterion of art, 236; cubism and, 233–34, 257, 264–67; versus denotation, 241; in Egyptian art, 94; empiricism and, 237–39; form and, 17; four views of, 16–17; imitation and, 234–37; judgments of beauty and, 122; loss of favor for, 233; meanings of term, 15–17; in medieval aesthetics, 92–94;

index mimesis and, 240; mind-independent reality and, 225–26; music and, 234; Nelson Goodman on, 239–41; in philoso­ phy, 235–36; Plato’s attack on, 1, 2–3; postKant, 239–41; presence and absence and, 16; realism and, 222–23; religion and, 93, 156; of spirit in human form, 177; sublimity and, 277–78n20; substitution and, 16–17; uses of concept, 15 Republic (Plato): artistic creation and, 5; bed making example in, 271–72; in chronology of Plato’s works, 20; good as highest cause in, 101; goodness in, 85–86; ideal state in, 31; imitation versus diegesis in, 59; as kallipolis, 6; mimesis in, 6, 22–33, 39; names of things in, 40– 41; Plato’s attack on aesthetics and, 4; on poetry and reality, 21; semantic role of language and, 36; Socrates’ mirror and, 16; theory of forms and, 12 Ricardo, David, 201 Rickless, Samuel, 55 Rivera, Diego, 217 Robbe-Grillet, Alain, 268 Roberts, John, 221 Robin, Léon, 48 Rodchenko, Alexander, 212 Rolland, Romain, 224 Rorty, Richard, 16, 200, 225, 226, 240 Rose, Margaret, 212 Ross, David, 48 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 256 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 23, 151, 181, 201 Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, 111 Ruskin, John, 112, 256 Russell’s paradox, 55 Russian Revolution, 210, 212, 217, 218–19 Rutter, Benjamin, 183, 297n109, 301n73 Saïd, Edward, 13 Saint-Simon, Henri de, 212, 215 Sallis, John, 252–53 Sapientia Solomonis, 81 Sapir, Edward, 170 Sarraute, Nathalie, 268 Schapiro, Meyer, 250 Schelling, Friedrich: on the absolute, 245– 46; on art, 251; art and truth and, 243– 44; categorical approach to knowledge and, 201; dynamic pantheism and, 86;

333 idealist theory of identity and, 244–45; influence of, 148, 189; Neoplatonism and, 98, 245; roots of Marxism and, 204 Schiller, Friedrich, 3, 112, 168, 207, 275n11 Schlegel, A. W., 194 Schlegel, Friedrich, 194 Schmidt, C., 212–13 Schmitt, Carl, 258 scholasticism: beauty and, 289n93; Christianity and, 89; faith and reason and, 75; medieval aesthetics and, 99–103; in Middle Ages, 74; objectivity and, 309n8; origins of, 84; trivium and quadrivium and, 90 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 109, 244, 246 science: the absolute and, 245; causality and, 43, 106; Christianity versus, 91; Hegel on laws of, 43; inner necessity and, 163. See also nature Scott, Robert, 59 scripture. See Bible Second Vatican Council, 89 Seghers, Anna, 224 self-referentiality, 54–55 Sellars, Wilfred, 55, 225, 241 semantics, 235, 240–41 sensus communis, 129 Septuagint. See Bible Seurat, Georges, 259–60 Sextus Empiricus, 3, 237–39 Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper), 8, 110–12 Shakespeare, William, 154, 173, 181, 194 Shapiro, Gary, 236 Siger of Brabant, 90–91, 287n56 Signac, Paul, 259–60 Simmel, Georg, 219–20 Singer, Irving, 254 Sisley, Alfred, 259 skepticism, 72 Smith, Adam, 201 Socrates: argument versus assertion and, 74; art versus nature and, 19; beauty and, 20; on bed making, 30; on causality, 42–43, 238; censorship and, 23–25, 26; definitions of virtues and, 40; division of labor and, 31; on etymologies, 34; on falsehoods, 25–26; on friendship, 25; on goodness of gods, 24–25; infinite regress and, 44; influence of, 19; Ion the

334 Socrates (cont.) Ephesian and, 20–21; just and unjust and, 22–23; on lamentation, 33; on language as imitation, 34; mirror and, 16; on names of things, 34–35; objections of to Homer, 31–33; on paintings and painters, 21; Parmenides and on theory of forms, 53–54; on participation in forms, 29–30; on philosophers versus nonphilosophers, 29; on poetry as a-rational, 21; rationality of, 246–47; sophists and, 20; on styles of stories and poems, 26–27; theory of forms and, 12, 28–29, 39–40, 44, 52; theory of recollection and, 42; universal definitions and, 52 Sophist (Plato), 6, 20, 33–34, 36–38, 102 sophists, 19, 21, 36–38, 242 Sophocles, 59, 64 soul, 29, 32–33, 42, 84–85, 160–61 Soviet Union, 212, 218–19 Spinoza, Baruch, 86, 132 spirit: absolute, 161; art and truth and, 162–63; as central Hegelian theme, 157–60, 168–74; in classical Greek art, 177; Holy Spirit and, 169, 179; human form and, 161; nature and, 160, 161; selfknowledge and, 182–83, 273 Stalin, Joseph, and Stalinism, 189, 224 state, ideal. See city-state, ideal; kallipolis Stevenson, Charles, 220 stories, 23–27 Strawson, Peter, 239 subject, modern, 198–99 sublimity: aesthetic, 124–27; beauty and, 119–21, 125–27, 162, 243, 294nn63–65; of God, 176; mathematical versus dynamic, 125–26; men versus women and, 120; in nature, 125–27; purposiveness and, 126; representation and, 15, 277–78n20; terror and fear and, 120, 121, 126 Suger (Abbé), 94 Sulzer, Johann Georg, 111, 112 Svoboda, Karol, 95 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 256 Symposium (Plato), 14, 44, 94, 96 Synod of Arras, 93 taste: antinomy of, 131; beauty and, 114; judgment of, 124, 127, 128–29; in marriage, 116; objective versus

index subjective judgments of, 112, 115–16, 122–23; standard of, 114; wide variation in, 115 Tatarkiewicz, Wladyslaw: on biblical aes­ thetics, 82–83; divine image and, 289n95; on A. G. Baumgarten, 113; on meaning of “beauty,” 4–5; on medieval aesthetics, 78; on scholastic aesthetics, 99–100; on sophists, 19; on Thomas Aquinas, 100, 101; on writings of Pseudo-Dionysius, 96 Tatlin, Vladimir, 212 technology, 71 teleology, 107, 131–35, 137–40, 142–43, 173 Tertulian, 169 Theodorus Studites, 93, 97, 98 theology, 75, 140–43 theory of cognition, 178–83 third man argument, 52–56 Thomas à Kempis, 234–35 Thomas Aquinas and Thomism: aesthetics and, 7, 77, 84–85, 99–103; on beauty, 100– 102, 289n105; Christian domestication of Aristotle and, 90–91, 287n58; on philos­ ophy and theology, 75; scholasticism and, 74; on sensus communis, 129; skep­ ticism and, 72, 284n2; on teleological de­­sign, 284n2 Thomas-Fogiel, Isabelle, 16 Thucydides, 62 Timaeus (Plato): Christian angle of vision and, 95; creation in, 92; demiurge in, 134; in medieval aesthetics, 91–92; mimesis in, 33–34; Pythagorean influence and, 51; translation of, 84; world as alive in, 102 Tolstoy, Leo, 62, 108, 221 Tonelli, Giorgio, 113 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, 260 tragedy, 59–64, 67 transcendentals and transcendentalism, 100–101, 117, 289n105, 290n1 Trotsky, Leon, 210, 212, 217 truth: alethic theory of, 249; art as source for, 67–68, 121; beauty and, 92, 97, 159, 233, 249–51; correspondence theory of, 34–36; goodness and, 67, 68, 85–86; Heidegger’s theory of, 248–49; imita­ tion’s failure as source of, 28, 30–31; invisible concepts and, 41; knowledge and, 85–86; medieval art and, 76; mindindependent reality and, 231; in paint­ ing, 232; Plato’s doctrine of, 249; poetry

index and, 64; reality and, 185–86; reflection theory of, 65; rhetoric and, 78; social, 222–23; as universal, 113 Turrell, James, 232 Tyndale, William, 78 Ulrich of Strasbourg, 100 Upanishads, 86 utility and utilitarianism: of art, 5, 268–73; art and nature and, 151; beauty and, 123–24, 125, 133; importance of for Plato, 32; morality and, 142; poetry and, 31, 33; sublimity and, 126; truth and goodness and, 67 Van Gogh, Vincent, 249–51, 260 Vasari, Giorgio, 190, 236 Vauxcelles, Louis, 262 Verlaine, Paul, 256 Vico, Giambattista, 61 virtue, 34, 40, 86, 180 Vlastos, Gregory, 55 von Rad, Gerhard, 81 von Rumohr, Karl Friedrich, 147 Wagner, Richard, 246 Walton, Kendall, 240 Warhol, Andy, 108, 190, 191, 234, 237 Weber, Max, 227–28 Whistler, James McNeill, 256 Whitehead, Alfred North, 4 Whorf, Benjamin, 170

335 Wienberg, Ludolf, 195 Wilde, Oscar, 256 William of Conches, 84 William of Moerbeke, 75, 88–89, 99 William of Ockham, 74, 104 Williams, Raymond, 217 Wimsatt, W. K., 298n23 Winckelmann, Johann: as father of art history, 165; graecophilia and, 4, 173, 177, 246; on greatness, 276n21; Hegel’s knowledge of, 147; Kant’s omission of, 109 Wisse, Maarten, 96, 98 Wittgenstein, Ludwig: copy theory and, 240; on empiricism, 225; on language games, 199; meaning and use and, 36; picture theory of, 16, 65; reflection theory of knowledge and, 226 Wodeham, Adam, 72 Wöfflin, Heinrich, 211, 304n30 women, 25, 116, 120 World War I, 240, 258 Xenophanes, 14, 18 Xenophon, 18, 19 Yeats, William Butler, 257–58, 267–68 youth, 34 Zabarella, Jacopo, 113 Zammito, John, 291n17 Zoroastrianism, 175 Zuckert, Rachel, 144