Philosophy of Art

The only philosophy of art that has a chance will dwell upon and among the perceptible phenomena of art without tearing and eventually annihilating their delicate tissues. Let us turn to the phenomenology of art-a sort of descriptive metaphysics that will avoid reducing or elevating art to something it is not, and will avoid replacing it by something that more properly goes under another category. Of course, art has relations to all of these, but the fair philosopher of art will prevent such relatedness from too omnivorously devouring art and denaturing it in a sort of digestive metamorphosis that is sometimes honorifically called a rational reconstruction. Art has already suffered enough from such alleged explanations, as so many other delicate phenomena have, such as the impressions of common sense.

The skeletal model responsible for these impasses has been in the closet of the philosophy of art too long. An adequate philosophy that will bury its ghost is suggested in this book, but our primary aim is to show the reader some philosophies of art and to equip him to be more conversant with, and about, the arts themselves. Still, this task will be undertaken in a framework of corrective and constructive suggestions that themselves jell into a philosophy-better, the phenomenology-of art.

Subjectivism is common in the philosophy of art. It has liabilities, especially when introverted by the pressure of a scientific worldview, as in this case. It then fails to do justice to the notion of aesthetic perception, replacing this with the notion of some subjective condition. This tends to undercut objective criticism of works of art, or to embarrass it by requiring devious psychological considerations whose relevance to the question is controversial. And one wonders, in the theory's own terms, whether the impact of great art on the patient is to integrate him, inwardly or any other way, or instead to undo him in some sense. The greatest compositions tend to convey staggering realizations that many people simply cannot stand. One would be left wondering what the evidence is for the possible counter suggestion that, in such cases, an inferior inner organization is broken up in favor of a superior or healthier one. Is this still an empirical hypothesis? If so, then there must be evidence to support it. Is there?

Subjectivism in the philosophy of art has considerable use for the notion of illusion. Subjectivism and illusionism tend to go together. There are degrees of subjectivism. I. A. Richards' theory is a fairly clear-cut case. Let us turn to some others that are not so clear cut, because they introduce the notion of objectification in some form or other-an objectifying of something that ordinarily is subjective but which, in the aesthetic case at least, seems to confront the experiencer as an object of perception.

Most accounts of art are only confused by introducing it. This insight must be developed later, for there is use for the subject-object relation even in philosophy of art, but under a special set of controls. Meanwhile, let it be conceded that when, on the strength of a scientific observation, the report of an aesthetic perception of certain characteristics of, say, a Barlach sculpted figure for a German cathedral is called subjective, something has gone wrong even though the report of such aesthetically perceived characteristics might well be subjective on grounds other than the scientific observation.