Philosophy and the Arts, Lecture 36:

1
Philosophy and the Arts,Lecture 36

• One Last Look Around.

2
Is this art??
3
How about this?? Or this??
4
This certainly is art!

• One point needs to be clear at the outset.
• We need to recall that just as the Philosophy of
  Science is nothing without Science, the
  Philosophy of Art is nothing without the Arts (no
  matter what John Wisdom said!!).

5
Have we lost our way??

• I have been told this lecture should have been
  given at the start of the course. Perhaps so.
• An attempt is made here to say where weve been,
  where we are today, and look at some guesses as
  to where were going in the discipline of
  Aesthetics.
• If nothing else, I want my students to remember 2
  names Max Dessoir and Thomas Munro.

6
We have to start somewhere!

• Max Dessoir was editor of the Zeitschrift fur
  Aesthetik und Allegemeine Kunstwissenschaft from
  1906 until to onset of WWII.

7
Dessoir in Bigaku

• This may be unusual, but permit a quote from the
  Japanese Journal of Aesthetics (from 2004).
• Max Dessoir's allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft and
  The 1st International Congress of
  AestheticsKATAYAMA ManabuMax Dessoir, German
  aesthetician, played an important role in the
  idea and the movement of allgemeine
  Kunstwissenschaft (general science of art) which
  occurred in Germany at the beginning of the
  twentieth century. His merits consists of
  publishing the first journal concerning
  aesthetics and studies of arts, establishing the
  organization of studies, and holding the
  congress. Particularly the congress in Berlin in
  1913 which was recognized as the 1st
  International Congress of Aesthetics in 1937 is
  the climax in the activities of allgemeine
  Kunstwissenschaft and reflected Dessoir's idea
  clearly.Dessoir's idea about allgemeine
  Kunstwissenschaft is to make aesthetics and
  studies of art autonomous studies separated from
  philosophy and historical studies by uniting the
  various studies concerning arts. Dessoir's idea
  spread to other countries and contributed to the
  organization of aesthetics and studies of arts
  there.Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft was weakened
  by two world wars and at present is seldom
  reviewed. But Dessoir's idea about allgemeine
  Kunstwissenschaft is the origin of aesthetics and
  studies of arts of today.

8
Thomas Munro

• During the 1940-1970 period, Munro was the
  dominant force in American Aesthetics.
• He controlled the ASA, and, through it, the
  JAAC.
• Under his direction, Aesthetics was defined
  very broadly, to include historical,
  sociological, psychological (etc) studies, as
  well as Philosophical.

9
John Fisher

• John Fisher was the editor of the JAAC from
  1973-1988. One of his first acts as editor was
  canceling the journals bibliography of
  Aesthetics and Related Fields, citing high
  printing costs.
• Members of the ASA took this move to mean that
  the journal was to be now devoted simply to
  Aesthetics, narrowly defined philosophically.
• Further, the only acceptable Philosophy was taken
  to be British Analytic Philosophy.
• Fisher announced editorially that the journal
  would no longer accept bibliographies (such as
  the one I did on S. C. Pepper), or studies that
  were purely historical.

10
British Analytic Philosophy

• The 20th century produced some great British
  Analytic philosophers Wittgenstein (who was
  really Austrian), Russell, Moore, Ryle, Austin,
  etc.
• It is a philosophy with certain advantagesit
  actually seems to solve problems. Further, it is
  usually done one problem at a time, in short
  essays, convenient for teachers.

11
More on Analysis , and problems

• My course is largely devoted to this type of
  Philosophy it was in vogue when I was a student.
• But it tended to neglect the history of
  Philosophyin favor of doing Philosophy.
• And it was opposed to Metaphysics, and thus to
  system-building.

12
Phenomenology??

• You can find some good accounts of what we did in
  the 20th century, nicely summarized by Joseph
  Margolis.
• But some good work was done in Europeby authors
  such as Roman Ingarden which would have involved
  us in too much system-building.

13
Is that all bad??

• Wouldnt it have been good to throw in a bit of
  Kant, for example??
• Maybe. But I would contend that we cannot just
  read a dozen pages from Kant, and be done.
• To understand those pages, we need to understand
  Kants whole philosophical system, which requires
  at least a semester.
• And the same could be said of Aristotle, or of
  Hegel.

14
How the future will look from Margolis Radical
Changes

• i.a preference for ontologies of flux over
  ontologies of invariance
• ii. the replacement of assuredly rigorous
  methodologies by open-ended critical and
  explanatory practices opposed to a priori
  constraints on relevance and validity
• iii.the denial that we can legitimate any form of
  objectivity or epistemic neutrality suited to the
  sciences or critical disciplines that is not an
  artifact of our habitual practices or that claims
  cognitive access to an order of reality not
  itself constituted in accord with the categories
  of human understanding
• iv. the admission that human selves--human
  agents, human cognizers--are themselves emergent
  and similarly constituted by the enabling
  processes of history and enculturation
• v.the further admission that human thinking is
  profoundly historicized, formed under the
  conditions of changing history and subject,
  through its own exercise, to further variable and
  divergent transformation and
• vi. the recognition that a bivalent logic is not
  likely to be best placed to service the rigor and
  objectivity of truth-claims in accord with (i) -
  (v) and that it must be replaced or supplemented
  by some accommodation of relativism.

15
One mans view

• Well, thats one view of where we are going.
• How about feminist Aesthetics or Environmental
  Studies? Again, maybe. But I remain to be
  convinced that such things add much to the
  discipline.
• It is clear that we are getting more studies of
  particular art forms music, film, the novel,
  etc.
• We are also, now that Analytic Philosophys
  influence has waned somewhat, seeing more
  historical studies.

16
But we dont do it that way!!...

• AS might have been expected, in Europe and Latin
  America, different traditions mean other ways of
  doing things.
• And we are largely ignorant of these traditions
  and ways.
• Books such as this one, available online, can
  help remedy this problem.

17
Two final (almost) remarks

• I add one negative and one positive reflection,
  both too personal.
• First, as I once wrote in Leonardo, when I was a
  student, there were some great names in
  Aesthetics. Dewey had just died, Pepper was doing
  great work, Ames was busy, Beardsley and Margolis
  were coming into their own. Dickie, Kivy, and
  Marcia Eaton were just beginning their
  careersTruly, There were giants in the Earth
  in those days. I see no such on the horizon
  today.
• But these may just be the ravings of a tired old
  man. Ignore them.

18
On the positive side

• When I met this girl in 1951, I confess I was
  smitten. So I did the natural thing I went to
  the Registrars office, and had a secretary I
  knew pull (that means steal) her file. I wanted
  to know who she was, where she lived, her high
  school record all that I could find out!!
• The point iswhen we care about someone or
  something (the Arts, perhaps), we ask questions.
• In the end, thats what Aesthetics is all about,
  and why its so important.

19
In the end, once more, Philosophies change,
people die, but the questions remain, always