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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Danto on "Kant and the Work of Art'

I have been reading Arthur Danto's new book What Art Is.  What you expect from such a book is a theory of the nature of art, and Danto does give us something like this.  Here I will comment specifically on his chapter on Kant and the work of art.  This is just a first pass.  Danto rightly sees that Kant's theory of fine art in his discussion of genius, aesthetic ideas and spirit, is the meat of Kan's theory of art, this contrary to Clement Greenberg who found Kant's theory of art in the analytic of the beautiful.  It took a long time for Danto to figure this out, but he got it as last...although he still has it a bit wrong since he says that Kant had two theories of art, which is not quite right since Kant never claimed that he was defining art in the analytic of the beautiful, and he did claim that he was defining art in the later passages to be found in the analytic of the sublime.  I also have a small problem with Danto's tendency to fetishize periods in history, acting as though these ideas were somehow not quite Kant's, who, on Danto's view, is really an enlightenment philosopher, and thus who is simply accomodating romantic ideas here.  Why not just see this as an important aspect of Kant's own thinking?  After all, the Critique of Judgment was written to bridge the gap between the phenomenal and noumenal realms, and this is how this is to be done, i.e. through the aesthetic ideas provided by in part or in one instance by art.  Danto makes a good point that aesthetic ideas would have seemed a contradiction in terms to the typical enlightenment philosopher of the times, however.  Danto thinks that Kant's idea that fine art is a matter of the genius coming up with aesthetic ideas (what we might well call symbols, for example the eagle symbolizing Zeus) is quite similar to his own idea that art is embodied meaning, which Danto takes to be an eternal unchanging philosophical truth about art.  I do not think that there are any definitions of art that are eternal and unchanging in the way Danto thinks there are and so not not see Danto as solving that problem.  In fact, I think Danto's mistake was in misreading Weitz's anti-essentialism and failing to recognize that honorofic definitions of art are the best things that we can get from art theory or the attempt to define art, and yet honorific definitions will have to come up again and again in art history...there is no end of the process.  And, although Danto thinks he is unlike Greenberg in that he has found the true definition of art, one that is not tied to a particular historical epoch of art itself, in fact his notion that art is embodied meaning is really just tied to the art of his time, or the art that originally inspired him, i.e. in particular the art of Andy Warholl.  The notion that art is embodied meaning, at least that this is a necessary condition for art, is nice and has some power...but notice how different it is from Kant's own notion largely because the purpose of art is left out...there is no evaluative component in this.   Kant of course realized that many things could be called art which are not productive of aesthetic ideas, but the purpose of fine art is to produce aesthetic ideas, ideas which give us access to the supersensible realm of God, immortality and the soul.  (I would like a definition of art that is more Kantian than Danto's but not committed to literal belief in a transcendent God....more Nietzschean in its reading of Kant.)  So Kant, like Aristotle in his definition of tragedy, defines art in such as way that we can tell what art is good.  This is exactly what Weitz meant honorific definitions of art to do.  Danto in just talking about embodied meanings leaves out this evaluative dimension.  For Danto it is enough for a definition of art that it says that there are two sides:  the physical side and the idea side, the idea side making many physically indistinguishable things different works of art.  But for Kant the idea that is embodied is not just any idea:  it is an idea that gives one a sense of self-transcendence, basically an idea that connects us to the supersensible, but not one that is itself an idea of reason, not something for example that could prove the existence of such a realm.  Danto adopts Kant but secularizes him so much that fine art becomes something mundane.  But perhaps a problem with contemporary art is that it does aspire to little more than embodiment of just any meaning, that it lacks courage of convictions.

An Open Letter to Professor Michael Sandel from the Philosophy Department at San José State University April 29, 2013

This is so important, re the future of higher education, that I decided to post our department's letter in my aesthetics blog.  Discussion of it can be found in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

An Open Letter to Professor Michael Sandel from the Philosophy Department at San José State University
April 29, 2013

Dear Professor Sandel,


San José State University recently announced a contract with edX (a company associated with MIT and Harvard) to expand the use of online blended courses. The SJSU Philosophy Department was asked to pilot your JusticeX course, and we refused. We decided to express to you our reasons for refusing to be involved with this course, and, because we believe that other departments and universities will sooner or later face the same predicament, we have decided to share our reasons with you publicly.
There is no pedagogical problem in our department that JusticeX solves, nor do we have a shortage of faculty capable of teaching our equivalent course. We believe that long-term financial considerations motivate the call for massively open online courses (MOOCs) at public universities such as ours. Unfortunately, the move to MOOCs comes at great peril to our university. We regard such courses as a serious compromise of quality of education and, ironically for a social justice course, a case of social injustice.
WHAT ARE THE ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS OF A GOOD QUALITY EDUCATION IN A UNIVERSITY?
First, one of the most important aspects of being a university professor is scholarship in one’s specialization. Students benefit enormously from interaction with professors engaged in such research. The students not only have a teacher who is passionate, engaged and current on the topic, but, in classes, independent studies, and informal interaction, they are provided the opportunity to engage a topic deeply, thoroughly, and analytically in a dynamic and up-to-date fashion.
A social justice course needs to be current since part of its mission is the application of conceptions of justice to existing social issues. In addition to providing students with an opportunity to engage with active scholars , expertise in the physical classroom, sensitivity to its diversity, and familiarity with one’s own students are simply not available in a one-size-fits-all blended course produced by an outside vendor.
Second, of late we have been hearing quite a bit of criticism of the traditional lecture model as a mismatch for today's digital generation. Anat Agarwal, edX President, has described the standard professor as basically just “pontificating” and “spouting content,” a description he used ten times in a recent press conference here at SJSU. Of course, since philosophy has traditionally been taught using the Socratic method, we are largely in agreement as to the inadequacy of lecture alone. But, after all the
rhetoric questioning the effectiveness of the antiquated method of lecturing and note taking, it is telling to discover that the core of edX’s JusticeX is a series of video-taped lectures that include excerpts of Harvard students making comments and taking notes. In spite of our admiration for your ability to lecture in such an engaging way to such a large audience, we believe that having a scholar teach and engage his or her own students in person is far superior to having those students watch a video of another scholar engaging his or her students. Indeed, the videos of you lecturing to and interacting with your students is itself a compelling testament to the value of the in-person lecture/discussion.
In addition, purchasing a series of lectures does not provide anything over and above assigning a book to read. We do, of course, respect your work in political philosophy; nevertheless, having our students read a variety of texts, perhaps including your own, is far superior to having them listen to your lectures. This is especially important for a digital generation that reads far too little. If we can do something as educators we would like to increase literacy, not decrease it.
Third, the thought of the exact same social justice course being taught in various philosophy departments across the country is downright scary – something out of a dystopian novel. Departments across the country possess unique specializations and character, and should stay that way. Universities tend not to hire their own graduates for a reason. They seek different influences. Diversity in schools of thought and plurality of points of view are at the heart of liberal education.
WHAT WOULD OUR STUDENTS LEARN ABOUT JUSTICE THROUGH A PURCHASED BLENDED COURSE FROM A PRIVATE VENDOR?
First, what kind of message are we sending our students if we tell them that they should best learn what justice is by listening to the reflections of the largely white student population from a privileged institution like Harvard? Our very diverse students gain far more when their own experience is central to the course and when they are learning from our own very diverse faculty, who bring their varied perspectives to the content of courses that bear on social justice.
Second, should one-size-fits-all vendor-designed blended courses become the norm, we fear that two classes of universities will be created: one, well- funded colleges and universities in which privileged students get their own real professor; the other, financially stressed private and public universities in which students watch a bunch of video-taped lectures and interact, if indeed any interaction is available on their home campuses, with a professor that this model of education has turned into a glorified teaching assistant. Public universities will no longer provide the same quality of education and will not remain on par with well-funded private ones. Teaching justice through an educational model that is spearheading the creation of two social classes in academia thus amounts to a cruel joke.
CAN TECHNOLOGY BE USED TO IMPROVE EDUCATION?
Absolutely. Blended courses provide the opportunity to listen to lectures for a second or third time and enable class discussion sessions outside the usual constraints of time and space. For these very reasons many of the faculty in our department offer very high quality online and blended versions of a number of our offerings, including video-taped material we ourselves have developed. All of these offerings are continuously updated and their use includes extensive interaction among students. In addition, they also involve extensive interaction with the professor teaching the course, something that is not available in MOOCs, which rely on videotaped lectures, canned exercises, and automated and peer grading.
When a university such as ours purchases a course from an outside vendor, the faculty cannot control the design or content of the course; therefore we cannot develop and teach content that fits with our overall curriculum and is based on both our own highly developed and continuously renewed competence and our direct experience of our students’ needs and abilities. In the short term, we might be able to preserve our close contact with our students, but, given the financial motivations driving the move to MOOCs, the prognosis for the long term is grim.
The use of technology, as history shows, can improve or worsen the quality of education -- but in a high quality course, the professor teaching it must be able both to design the course and to choose its materials, and to interact closely with the students. The first option is not available in a pre-packaged course, and the second option is at grave risk if we move toward MOOCs.
IT IS TIME TO CALL IT LIKE IT IS
We believe the purchasing of online and blended courses is not driven by concerns about pedagogy, but by an effort to restructure the U.S. university system in general, and our own California State University system in particular. If the concern were pedagogically motivated, we would expect faculty to be consulted and to monitor quality control. On the other hand, when change is financially driven and involves a compromise of quality it is done quickly, without consulting faculty or curriculum committees, and behind closed doors. This is essentially what happened with SJSU’s contract with edX. At a press conference (April 10, 2013 at SJSU) announcing the signing of the contract with edX, California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom acknowledged as much: “The old education financing model, frankly, is no longer sustainable.” This is the crux of the problem. It is time to stop masking the real issue of MOOCs and blended courses behind empty rhetoric about a new generation and a new world. The purchasing of MOOCs and blended courses from outside vendors is the first step toward restructuring the CSU.
Good quality online courses and blended courses (to which we have no objections) do not save money, but purchased-pre-packaged ones do, and a lot. With pre-packaged MOOCs and blended courses, faculty are ultimately not needed. A teaching assistant would suffice to facilitate a blended course, and one might argue, paying a university professor just to monitor someone else’s material would be a waste of resources. Public universities that have so long and successfully served the students and citizens of California will be dismantled, and what remains of them will become a hodgepodge branch of private companies.
Administrators of the CSU say they do not see a choice; they are trying to admit and graduate as many students as they can with insufficient funds. Whether they are right in complying with rather than resisting this, the discussion has to be honest and to the point. Let's not kid ourselves; administrators at the CSU are beginning a process of replacing faculty with cheap online education. In our case, we had better be sure that this is what we want to do because once the CSU or any university system is restructured in this way it will never recover.
Industry is demanding that public universities devote their resources to providing ready-made employees, while at the same time they are resisting paying the taxes that support public education. (California is the ninth largest economy in the world, yet has one of the most poorly supported public education systems in the nation.) Given these twin threats, the liberal arts are under renewed attack in public universities. We believe that education in a democracy must be focused on responsible citizenship, and general education courses in the liberal arts are crucial to such education. The move to outside vendor MOOCs is especially troubling in light of this--it is hard to see how they can nourish the complex mix of information, attitudes, solidarity and moral commitment that are crucial to flourishing democracies.
We respect your desire to expand opportunities for higher education to audiences that do not now have the chance to interact with new ideas. We are very cognizant of your long and distinguished record of scholarship and teaching in the areas of political philosophy and ethics. It is in a spirit of respect and collegiality that we are urging you, and all professors involved with the sale and promotion of edX-style courses, not to take away from students in public universities the opportunity for an education beyond mere jobs training. Professors who care about public education should not produce products that will replace professors, dismantle departments, and provide a diminished education for students in public universities.
Sincerely and in solidarity,
The Department of Philosophy
San José State University

Can We Talk About the Proper Function or Functions of Art and What would that Mean?

Given that artists often have views about the function(s) of art and often intend their artworks to have that function, I wonder whether we can just dismiss the approach of determining the function of art through looking at artists’ intentions concerning that function.[This paper is based on comments delivered at the ASA Pacific Division conference in 2013 in response to Justine Kingsbury’s paper “Function Claims About Art:What (If Anything) Makes Them True.”]
 

Here is one possible solution to the problem of how to determine the proper function of art while focusing on artists’ intentions.  We begin with three plausible propositions.  (1)  The proper functions of any one artwork include minimally the function or functions intended by the creator.  (2) The proper functions of any particular type of artwork, at any particular time, are whatever functions most art makers attribute to their artworks in that  genre at that time.  (3) The proper functions of art in general consist of the various functions listed in the previous group. (I will not, in the end, advocate this approach:  but it is a nice starting point.)  Carlson and Parsons in their book Functional Beauty do not talk about the function of art.   However, they do talk about the function of a pipe cleaner.  They comment that a pipe cleaner may have some functions today which were not intended by its original designer.   Art works too may have new functions.  We  might then say that the functions of any particular artefact (artworks included) can also include (in addition to the intended function) whatever fits what the user intends its function to be, as long as it serves that function well.  A pipe cleaner serves the function of material for children’s crafts quite well, and is intended to serve that function by some of its users, and so we can say that this is one of its current functions even though it was originally intended just for cleaning pipes.

 

 

But what of the distinction between proper and accidental function?  A belt buckle might accidentally function as a shield when it deflects a bullet.  However, a proper function has to be more than accidental:  it has to be at least part of a practice.  This does not mean that the class-room pipe cleaner usage is not a proper function.  When pipe cleaners function as play-room tools this is part of a regular practice and not merely accidental.  We could also say that a function of art is to support a repressive regime.  But is that its proper function or is this function merely accidental?   This is a hard question since art works may function in this way systematically in particular societies, which seems to make it a proper function.  I will return to this question later.

 

 

Some people believe that the best way to talk about art’s proper function is to talk about it as something biological, for example on the analogy to a heart.  A heart’s proper function is to pump blood.  But how far does the analogy go?  Isn’t interesting that although there is nearly universal agreement concerning the proper function of the heart (although there may be debates in the margins) there is practically none concerning the proper function of art.  We cannot get much help from biological analogies in trying to determine whether the proper function of art is, for example, to support a repressive regime.   The say that this is not part of art’s proper function to to go beyond scientific knowledge and beyond analogies to proper functions in biology.   Some might think (as Kingsbury has suggested to me in a letter) that supporting a regime, although a function of art, is not a function of art qua art.  However, this then moves us away from just talking about biology-like functions to the question of defining art, which I think is the real question at issue here anyway.  That is, questions about the proper function of art are really, despite their science-like look, philosophical questions about the essence or proper definition of art.

 

 

On my view, when we think of the proper function of a thing qua that thing we are thinking about what should be.  That is, when people ask “what is the function of art qua art” they are asking what should art (and thus artists) be trying to do.  This is very much unlike asking about the function of something biological, like a heart.  Function questions in regards to social institutions and the concepts tied to them look to the future, i.e. look to possible reform or possible activity.  Claims about the proper function of art are normative claims about the direction of art.  Dennis Dutton in his book The Art Instinct famously argued that art took a wrong turn in the 20^th century, away from its proper function, a function established in Pleistocene times.  However, the proper function of art is much more flexible and changeable than that.  There can even be many competing proper functions of art.  It is because Dutton had a vision of the essence of art, and therefore about where art should be going, and not because of any knowledge he had about prehistoric practices, that he could comfortably speak of art as taking a wrong turn.  Following Plato (which of course is an unusual thing to do these days…but it works here), we could say that the proper function is the function that allows the object or genre in question best to participate in the good (where that is taken to be the sum good for a cultural unit, a society, humanity in general, or even some larger unit).  That’s why we would reject saying that supporting a repressive regime is part of the function of art qua art.

 

 

However, although I am attracted to the Platonic approach mentioned I would relativize it and situate it within a historical, rather than an ahistorical (i.e. Platonic), dialectic.  The proper function of architecture would be the function that best realizes the good (in society, say) at that time in history, i.e. as response to the previous best understandings of the essence of architecture. When Robert Venturi defined architecture as a decorated shed he was saying that this is the proper function of architecture relativized to his own cultural context (he even says that this is the definition his firm is working with now).  Call this the relativized idealist view of proper function.  The proper function, on this view, might be quite different from the standard function.  One evokes the proper function when one wants to make the world better.  It might also be quite different from the intended function although it would be the intended function for anyone who held this theory of the proper function, for example Venturi himself.  This of course would be very different from looking at whether art promotes gene survival, causes women to be sexually attracted to male artists, or confers advantages on social groups. All of these things can be functions of art, but not necessarily the or even a proper function since, for example, whatever confers advantage on a gene or social group may not be good in a broader scheme of things or may not be good for us now.  Why should we assume that the or a proper function of art should be whatever function one of the ancestors of art had insofar as it promoted survival amongst hominids at some time in the past?  Moreover, limiting discussion of proper function to the relativized idealist model focuses on what is actually of concern to artists.  Those who understand the proper function of art in biological terms generally understand it in terms of how it will promote certain genes.  Yet, artists are not concerned (consciously at least) about promoting their genes.  Function claims about concepts like art, democracy, knowledge, and so forth (that is, all the things we like to debate about in philosophy) are grounded in overall visions about what makes a society, or human existence generally, good.  A function claim about art tells us how we can use art to fully realize our ideals for society or human existence.  Function claims about art are deeply normative.

 

 

How, then, does one decide between two function claims about art?   If one is normative and the other is merely descriptive then both can be true and we do not have to worry about deciding between then.  They are just two different kinds of claims about two different kinds of things.  However, we should bear in mind that many supposed descriptive claims are actually secretly normative.  For example, if someone says, like Clive Bell, that all things correctly called art give aesthetic ecstasy in response to significant form, one could say that this is really a normative rather than a descriptive claim about the function of art.

 

 

When both of the competing claims are normative, then, since we are talking about competing ideals, and systems of ideals at that, there does not seem to be any way to resolve the debate by way of a correspondence theory of truth.  However, a pragmatist theory of truth would simply ask us to look at which theory works best:  i.e. which reverberates most strongly in the culture, which has the power to generate new valuable work in that art-form, and so forth.  Robert Venturi’s definition of architecture in which he gave the function of architecture in a normative way as “a work of architecture is a decorated shed,” was extremely powerful in that it contributed to the founding of a new school of architecture which is still influential today.  One could say that it therefore fit the pragmatist criterion for truth.  Remember that, on this view, truth is relativized to context, so that Venturi’s account of architecture was more successful than that of Gideon during the 1970s, but it would have been less successful in another social context, for example in the context in which Gideon’s definition was successful.  When it comes to functionalist definitions, not everything is possible at every time.  Choosing between different functionalist claims is a matter of choosing what future one wishes to project for one’s group, society or for humanity itself. The definitions that work best are the ones that work over the long run. Those who chose a Stalinist ideal of socialism found that this choice did not work over the long run in their functionalist definition of democracy, or of socialism for that matter, and so the related functionalist definition of art (e.g. social realism) also failed over the long run, although admittedly it had some limited success in the short run. “The long run” however can be defined in different ways, and even the longest runs are small when looked at from a grander perspective.  Perhaps the best that we can hope for from a functionalist definition of art is that it captures what is living and has real potential in the best art of today, projecting out to some sort of “long run.” 

 

 

Functionalist definitions of art, on this account, are pretty much the same as what Morris Weitz referred to as honorific definitions, which are significantly more important, at least for artists, than debates over what George Dickie referred to as descriptive definitions. (Treating functionalist definitions as honorific definitions resolves one of the problems Justine mentioned about functionalist definitions since honorific definitions are not intended to cover all things called art, and thus resist refutation by counterexample.) In any case, we need to bear in mind that debates over the proper function of art are quite a bit different from debates over the proper function of a can-opener, and certainly than debates over the proper function of a heart. “Art” is what W. B. Gallie referred to as an essentially contested concept.  When we debate over the essence of art we are debating over its function in a normative sense. As I have suggested, debates over the function of art, are ultimately aspects of larger normative debates over what it is to be human or even what it is to be, i.e. debates between worldviews.  By contrast, debates over the proper function of a can-opener are usually short and philosophically uninteresting.

 

 

In sum, whether there is a logic of proper functions with regard to essentially contested concepts such as “art” (as opposed to say bodily organs such as the heart) is an open question which may only be resolved by not limiting ourselves to strictly science-centered notions of functionality and incorporating philosophical notions, such as for example that of honorific definition.

Zarathustra "On Those Who Are Sublime"

In “On Those Who are Sublime” Zarathustra notes that, although his own depths are still, they contain “sportive monsters” - which is to say riddles and laughter.  He then laughs at the ugliness of those ascetic, solemn types who are sublime.  (The chapter is a meditation on two aesthetic concepts:  the beautiful and the sublime, but with a Nietzschean twist).  The sublime person he observes has not learned either laughter or beauty.  Although he claims to fight savagery, his own seriousness shows that he himself is a savage beast.  He has not been “overcome” or “gone under” in the way Zarathustra has.  He is not, then, to Zarathustra’s taste. (Joke, joke:  the sublime is not tasteful.)  He then says:  “And you tell me, friends, there is no disputing of taste and tasting?”  Aestheticians tend to see taste as just a matter of art, or perhaps art and nature.  But, for Nietzsche, it concerns all of life.  Like most aestheticians he denies the so-called common sense view that there is no disputing about taste, but he also believes that “all of life is a dispute over taste and tasting” a point that seems right to me, although this would reduce morality and even science to aesthetics.  Nietzsche also has a broader view of taste in another way.  Taste is not just the thing tasted but the scales that weigh it and  the person who uses the scale.  We can say that the thing (e.g. the living room) has taste, that there are rules of taste, and that the person has taste (in a different sense).  Disputes about taste are about all three, and Zarathustra says “woe unto all the living that would live without” such disputes.  Back to the sublime person, we find that he will only begin to be beautiful if he can become tired of sublimity.  Kant treated the sublime as the higher of the two aesthetic qualities since it involved a kind of contact with the supersensible,  But Nietzsche does not believe in such a realm.  Zarathustra, then, will only taste the sublime person and find him tasteful when he or she has grown tired of sublimity.  The sublime person will have to jump over “his own shadow” i.e. the myth of the supersensible, and into his own sun, i.e. his own will to power.  This shadow is the shadow in which the ascetic has sat, out of the sun, growing pale as he expects God and the afterlife.  Zarathustra urges him to reject his contempt for the earth and his nausea and to gain a happiness that comes from saying yes to the earth, in essence being bullish about the earth.  (It is interesting that Zarathustra has some confidence in the ability of the sublime person to transcend himself).   Various things about him are dark and in the shadow:  his face, his sense of sight, and most important his very deeds:  he needs to overcome his deeds.  He has the neck of a bull, which Zarathustra admires, but not “the eyes of the angel.”  He will go beyond the mere sublime when he gets rid of his heroic will and becomes will-less (an interesting line coming from a teacher of will to power!)   Even though the sublime one subdued some monsters and solved some riddles he has not yet subdued and solved his own.  When he does, he will change them “into heavenly children.”  Only then will his knowledge smile and his passion become “still in beauty.”  Even in resting, the hero (Nietzsche’s new term for the sublime one) should have his arm over his head.  For him, the “beautiful is the most difficult thing”…something that cannot be attained by efforts of a “violent will.”  Rather, the effort should be subtle:  “a little more, a little less.”  In sum “To stand with relaxed muscles and unharnessed will:  that is most difficult for all of you who are sublime.”  (The injunction seems a call to Buddhism!  I wonder how far Nietzsche really is from Buddha:  sometimes very far, sometimes not far at all.) Zarathustra wants beauty most from the powerful (another word for the sublime hero).  They, in conquering themselves will become, paradoxically, kind.  Although capable of every evil, he wants good from them.  They are unlike the weak who think themselves good because they have no power.  Like a column, they will grow more beautiful and gentle but also harder as they ascend.  They will become beautiful someday and in seeing their own beauty they will have “godlike desires.”  Only when the hero has abandoned the soul will he be approached “in a dream by the overhero” i.e. the superman.  

Katya Mandoki on disinterestedness

Katya Mandoki, a leading exponent of everyday aesthetics, offers a nice argument against Kant’s notion of disinterestedness as necessary for aesthetic experience.  She observes that Paul Crowther (in a work of 1987) had come up with the idea that appreciating a mirage is a perfect example of Kant’s disinterestedness since one does not care whether or not the thing seen actually exists.  Her reply:

 

“Obviously in the mirage there is no objective aspect to detect, regardless of the amount of attention paid to it, because there is no ‘aesthetic object’ as understood by the naïve realism of analytic aesthetics. What, then, are the ‘aesthetic aspects’ that attention detects in this case? In fact, aspects only exist through a perceptive or aspectual activity of the subject… As far as disinterest goes when perceiving that imaginary landscape, find a single spectator who would not prefer the landscape to exist physically in order to enter it and increase the delight it can provide: to smell its aromas, taste the refreshing water, and feel the cool shade of its palm trees,,,. [Crowther] forgets that aesthetic delight in a landscape, as that in architecture, depends also on exploring it from the inside, smelling the wood, brick, leather ....You do not enjoy equally the façade of a building when reproduced by photography as you do the architectonic work in its entirety. ”  Katya Mandoki  Everyday Aesthetics

That seems right to me, although I think it is still possible to appreciate the look of a mirage while bracketing these other concerns.  My view is that disinterested perception is a useful strategy in aesthetic experience but hardly necessary or sufficient.  Lack of concern for the existence of the object seems the weakest aspect of Kant's notion of disinterest.  However, looking at something while bracketing out moral and cognitive concerns can yield various benefits:  it can, for example, allow us to see things independent of our prejudices.  It can also bring our formal qualities we might otherwise miss.  I advocate then the approach of alternating between the disinterested and the interested, between a-contextual and contextual perception, for best results.

Mandoki may be expressing a similar view when she says proposes a concept of aesthetic swinging. 

"I thus propose the concept of aesthetic swinging that Brecht practiced with mastery when he attracted the spectator toward the play by identification, and then distanced him by the Verfremdungseffekt. Painters, sculptors and architects also make use of this swinging when they provide a detailed view of the work seen at a close distance complemented by the overall view seen from afar. This swinging is evident when one observes a painter or a sculptor in action: we continuously move back and forth, away and near the work to better appreciate it. The spectator will later emulate this movement.Without aesthetic swinging it would be impossible to perceive what Monroe C.Beardsley, following Hutcheson, calls 'unity in diversity,' since the first requires distance and the second, nearness."  A similar idea is also found in writings by Peggy Brand and Tom Gracyk when they speak of aesthetic "toggling."

 

Can something fail to be clean and pretty but still be beautiful?

Can something fail to be clean and pretty but still be beautiful?  Perhaps a town can.  A student of mind talks about her home-town of Nipomo which she finds beautiful to her, even though not pretty, and failing to have luxurious buildings or decorations.  She finds "beauty in the mundane nature of Nipomo."  Its beauty is partly a function of its own personality.  She finds it "comforting" and that it has a certain charm, and indeed more aesthetically pleasing, for that reason, than some larger cities.  Often I find that students see beauty as something very personal, contrary to Kant's idea that it involves universality.  Kant insists that we put something on a pedestal for all to appreciate.  Yet this student does not expect everyone to appreciate her little town.  Ironically, Dorothea Lange's famous photograph of a migrant farmworker "Migrant Mother" was taken in Nipomo in 1936. 

Another student discusses a cartoonish poster of the Golden Gate Bridge. He writes:  "The artist makes the drawing multidimensional instead of flat.  In the drawing, the background is a sunset...The color of the sunset and the sky is sherbert-like, not what you would see in a typical sunset.  There are also cars on the bridge, but the colors the artist used are not typical car colors.  The artist used uncharacteristic colors for cars such as green, pink and yellow...When I look at the picture, I think of beauty and it invokes peace within me....more peace than a realistic drawing or painting of the Golden Gate Bridge... [also] the artist's use of her imagination makes me feel happy."  The student concludes "While my thoughts may not be completely rational to some, I enjoy the drawing because it has sentimental value, for it has been around since I was born."  This comment captures some interesting features of kitsch and kitsch appreciation.  Many of my students who enjoy and defend kitsch refer to the evocation of inner peace as well as a feeling of happiness.  Sentimental feelings associated with having grown up with an art object makes this comment similar to the one above about a town that is not pretty but is beautiful.  I doubt that I would experience beauty, peacefulness or sentimentality in response to this work, but it is not clear to me that my response is any more valid than his.