Beauty and Art Israel Knox The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 28, No. 18. (Aug. 27, 1931), pp. 484-489. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X%2819310827%2928%3A18%3C484%3ABAA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y The Journal of Philosophy is currently published by Journal of Philosophy, Inc..
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/jphil.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.
The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact
[email protected].
http://www.jstor.org Tue Jul 31 23:43:41 2007
484
JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
thing as to what value or excellence means, but only that the value or excellence whatever it be, may be truly or falsely ascribed to a given subject; and that the affecto-motor attitude of the judge so ascribing it, is irrelevant unless it be embraced within the predicate which he ascribes. Let value be represented by v , its meaning being wholly undetermined. Then u is v, or a has the character v in an eminent degree, or a is not v, or has not v in an eminent degree,-all of these judgments being true or false regardless of my superadded or accompanying inclinations. But the force of this argument does not turn upon the meaning of v,-so that v m a y mean "desired," "felt, " "willed, " etc., without in the least affecting the argument. Professor Laird seems to feel that he has refuted the elective or appreciative view by showing that value may be ascribed to an object, i n such wise as to iinply that it is or is not posssessed by that object, independently of the interest of the judging subject. B u t this does not refute the elective or appreciative view because it is left entirely open to us to suppose that the clzaracter so ascribed c m sists in a relation to interest. It follows that the true gronnd of the author's objection, a ground which he has not, I think, made sufficiently explicit, must be his belief that the character so ascribed does n o t consist in a relation to interest because it consists in something else. He must then exhibit this other meaning to us. His failure to do so may, perhaps, be explained by his supposing that it is not necessary, or that he has made his point withont it. But if his argument is to be completed he illust convince us that there is a simple, irreducible meaning of the term "value" which is left over when all relations to interest are eliminated. A t this point Professor Laird's argument coincides with the positive part of Miss Clarke's. If value be indefinable it must be because, having found it, we discover that it is impossible to define i t ; and not because of any general logical or epistemological difficulties that stand in the way of alternative views. The first step in the argument, then, is to find this alleged indefinable. To this dubious quest we shall return in a later article. RALPHBARTONPERRY. HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
BEAUTY AND ART
HE serious attempt to clarify the meaning of a r t has doubtless been beclouded by the widespread tendency to identify a r t and beauty. It has been generally assumed that all a r t is beautiful, although it has been granted that not all beauty is art. I n this sense, the right to interchange the two terms has seemed to many a eulogy of art, and a challenge to the world to perceive its divine attributes.
BEAUTY AND ART
The conception of beauty was made the final criterion for art, whereby the good a r t might be distinguished from the bad. But the problem was rendered more confused by the fact that the conception of beauty was itself entangled in vague and varied interp r e t a t i o n ~ . ~Tolstoy aptly points out that to the German and French estheticians beauty appeared primarily as one of the mystical manifestations of tlie absolutely Perfect, as an adumbration of the Idea, of the Spirit, of God; ? to the English estheticians beauty seemed essentially a kind of pleasure received by us in the mere contemplation of the ideal or object, not having personal advantage for its goal.? It was inevitable that such inetaphysical explanations of a r t and beauty should lend great dignity to a r t and greater exclusiveness, and should succeed in drawing it out completely from the vortex of poignantly impinging hunian interests. Tolstoy 's lV7hhat Is Art ? glows throughout with a socio-moral passion and it is consequently quite natural that he should immediately dispel the notion that a r t is a means of pleasure and should postulate its value as a truly necessary condition of human life. I3e T V O L I ~sever ~ the inveterate connection between beauty and art, and ~vouldhave us accept a r t as the conimunication of emotions, as the language of the heart. He tells us that in Russian by the 1 The following passage from Roger F r y ' s book Vision and Design is instructive. And the passage assumes more telling force when we note that i t was written by one of the most outstanding contemporary critics of the vtsual nrts where tlle element of sheer beauty is stronger than i n many of tlie other arts: " I n my youth all speculations on esthetic had revolved with wearisome persistence around the question of the nature of beauty. Like our predecessors we sought for the criteria of the beautiful, whether in a r t or n a t u ~ e . And always this search led us to a tangle of contradictions or else to nietapllysical ideas so \ague as to be inapplicable to concrete cases" (p. 292, Brentano Edition). A very sharp cleavage between (natural) beauty and a r t is made by Professor C. J. Ducasse in his recent book T h e Philosophy of Art. H e writes: "The question in the light of which the artist criticizes his own attempts a t creation is not, ' I s this beautiful?' but (1s this exactly what I wanted to do?,' i.e., ' D o r s this adequately objectify what I feel?' " (italics in the text, p. 18). I n this paper I am attempting to mitigate the extremity of such a viewfor, clearly, tlle adequate objectification of a feeling, however unpleasant the feeling may be, presupposes artistic form, and form transforms content, i.e., transmutes t h e chaos of emotional life and the rawness of empirical reality, into the disciplined, sculptured perfection of infectious art, and consequently, all a r t possesses a n element of beauty and a quality of pleasure. But this, of course, does not imply-and here I a m a t one with Professor Ducasse-the identification of beauty and art. The end of a r t is the communication of experience and not the mmifestation of beauty. 2 Tolstoy: W h a t i s Art? and Other Essays on Art, tr. by A. Maude (Vol. 18 i n Tolstog Centenary Ed.).
JOURNAL O F P H I L O S O P H Y
word krasotri (beauty)? is meant only that which pleases the sight, and that the adjective "beautiful" may relate to a man, a horse, a house, or a movement; as for actions, thoughts, character, or music, we may say that they are good or not good. The conception "Good" is the higher of the two; it includes the conception of the beautiful. The word "beautiful" refers to surface appearances, to that which merely and solely impresses and pleases the senses; the word "good" comprises all this, but also that inextinguishable spiritual light which resides in every higher human activity. In terms of logic, the word "beautiful" may provoke our attention to the perceptual denotation of a n artistic object; the word "good" may stir us to comprehend its wider range of significant connotation as an expression and communication of human experience.* This distinction is apparent in Russian. It is not quite clear in the other European languages in which the term "beautiful" is indiscriminately used to signify a large number of really different concepts. It is one of Tolstoy's most fruitful achievements that he makes this distinction very vivid and compels us to view the felicity of a r t a s not merely a manifestation of the beautiful or a form of pleasure, but as the expression of a very cogent and efficacious human activity whose function it is to enrich and to intensify our comprehension of life through the infectious communication of emotions. Some objects of a r t may be ineffably beautiful, such as ornaments or the portrait of a lovely girl; if so, they too convey a feeling, the feeling of delight and blitheness, and are beautiful in their own right and not as a shadowing forth of some mystical beauty already existent elsewhere. How are we to explain the profound and complicated spiritual experiences involved in the process of contemplating and appreciating Dostoievsky 's The Brothers K~ra~mazov,Ibsen 's Ghosts, 3 W h a t I s A r t ? p. 87. 4Roger F r y took his clew from Tolstoy when he made his famous distinction between the two uses of the word "beauty." . . "This explains the apparent contradiction between two distinct uses of the word beauty, one for t h a t which has sensuous charm, and one f o r the esthetic approval of works of imaginative a r t where the objects presented to us a r e often of extreme ugliness. Beauty in the former sense belongs to works of arts where only the perceptual aspect of the imaginative life is exercised, beauty in the second sense becomes as i t were supersensual, and is concerned with the appropriateness and intensity of the emotions aroused. When these emotions a r e aroused in a way t h a t satisfies fully the needs of t h e imaginative life me approve and delight in the sensations through which we enjoy that heightened experience, because they possess purposeful order and variety i n relation to these emotions" ( V i s i o n and Design, pp. 30-31, Brelltano Edition). And, of course, this conception of a r t as the appropriate and infectious communication of emotions is the very essence of Tolstoy's esthetic definition of art.
.
BEAUTY AND ART
487
and Rodin's "Courtesan," in terms of sensuous beauty? These works of art deal with mighty problems and are concerned with what is most elemental and tempestuous in the human breast. Surely their excellence can not be measured merely in terms of immediate sensuous appeal, but must be found in their unique and coherent rendition of experience, and in the stimulus and inspiration that they give the imagination to behold, to comprehend and to feel vicariously the very same experience in its emotional aspects. Rodin's "Courtesan" can not please in the mere contemplation; it is as gruesome and terrible as a dirge of death; the first response is one of positive anguish. It is lifted out of the world of unpleasant associations and becomes a thing of surpassing loveliness and rapture only when it is perceived as the most perfect and inimitable expression of a n intense emotional experience. I n the turmoil of daily reality the sight of a n ugly, withered courtesan is f a r from delightf u l ; i n art, in the realm of the imagination, her ugliness melts in the vision of her essential humanity and she emerges as the concrete crystallization of the tragedy of the spirit. This is achieved in the miracle of form. And, indeed, it is held by many that the beauty of a r t is congealed in its form and is completely dissociated from its content. The substance of A n n a Karenina may be a spiritual tempest in a human bosom ; but its form is held to be limpid, lucid, and lovely; i t is therefore a manifestation of beauty. Croce tells us that the esthetic fact is form,5 t h a t content becomes esthetic after it has been wrought into form. And form is identical with beauty which, in turn, is the same as expression and intuition. That form is the esthetic fact is clearly t r u e ; that formal beauty on the one hand,6 and mystical beauty as well as the beauty of natural objects on the other, may all be considered synonymous, is a contention that requires consideration. The stuff of art is discoverable in life ; it is the entire panorama of human experience. The s t u g of a r t is crude, raw, chaotic; it may be a passion, a longing, a n ideal, a frustration, a tear. I t is the soul in all its nuances, in all its harmonies, in all its dissonances. The product and fruition of a r t is experience heightened, clarified, and codrdinated. It is in the vision of Santayana "A richer dream T h e prodz~ct of art of experience meant to outshine the reality." possesses a n architectural qualily whereby it really becomes a logic of experience. T h e subject o f art i s life. T h e consummation of a.rt is a deeper conzprehension o f l i f e in i l s roots, i n the unanswerable concretelzess of i t s tragedy and exz~ltation. 5 Croce: Esthetic. English translation by Ainslee, p. 6. 6 i.e., the beauty of art, created beauty. 7 George Santayana: Reason in Art, p. 159.
488
JOURNAL OB PHILOSOPHY
This transmutation of life into art is made possible by that incommunicable and elusive thing we call form. I t is tlle amalgamating power of the imagination. How are we to explain this miracle of form? Hou- are we to analyze a work of art into its constituent parts? Will i t solve the problem to subsuine a r t under the category of mystical beauty, or to sep in i t a source of disinterested pleasure? A r t is the truth of human life objectively expressed; and the efficacy and splendor of its form may be measured by the intensity of t,he communication of this truth to humanity. This truth is not an abstract thought; it is not a speculative theory. I t is an experience. It may be an idea in the sense that ideas too are e~notional experiences. The Brothers l i a r a m a z o v is an objective expression of this truth of life ; this truth is inviolable and supremely tragic ; its tragedy is made bearable by that quality in art we call form. But this quality, this element in The Brothers Kararnazov, is not to be construed as an effluence of beauty, but rather as that power in the poet's a r t that enabled Dostoievsky to render a conlmunicable expression of a conlplicated human experience. Does this offer us a definition of form? I t does not. I t does, however, permit us to look upon the vast world depicted and chronicled in this mighty novel as moving not under the heaven of beauty, but in the wider realm of spiritual activity. I t is a shifting of emphasis; it brings art into a more intimate alliance with the social and the moral in the confluence of spiritual value^.^ Once this is perceived it may be readily conceded that there is an element of sheer beauty in a11 art, and that there is an element of sheer beauty in Rodin's "Courtesan." F o r Rodin's statue is a studiecl, an imagined, a wncle thing; its very ugliness was froze?% i n t o stone in a c c o r d a n c e with the laws of a most delicate and severe h a r m o n y . But it is necessary to realize that its function is not confined nierely to the manifestation of beauty; if that were so, Rodin could have selected so many lovelier and sweeter objects. Its end 8 And despite the identication of beauty and art which characterizes so much of contemporary esthetic in America, it appears that most thinkers on the philosophy of art do weave art into the socio-spiritual context of life. From this point of view Professor DeWitt H. Parker's The Principles of Bsthetics must be ranked first. And he achieves this in the most salutary, unobtrusive, and non-moralistic fashion, and without denying the intrinsic significance and autonomous value of art. I n truth, he insistently stresses and emphasizes this. I t is in the sympathetic vision immanent in the artist'e revelation of life, that one may discover the moral good of art. Professor and Parker makes a rery useful distinction between the terms "moral" 'cethical'7: "From the ethical view-the good belongs to all free, creative . From the acts that look toward the growth and happiness of individuals. moral view-it consists in conformity to law, convention, custom" (p. 333). Consequently, every true and genuiue work of art is ethical in a very profound and real sense, and does find its way into the confluence of spiritual values.
..
BOOK REVIEWS
489
is the inimitable rendition of a human experience. The sign that this has been accomplished is form, and all form possesses a gleam of beauty and a quality of pleasure. There is an element of beauty in all good and great art, better felt than defined. But art is not good and great because it is beautiful; it is beautiful because it is good and great, and communicates profoundly felt emotions. Aristotle had already observed that there is a difference between the Beautiful and beautiful art.g ISRAEL KNOX. NET YORKCITY.
BOOK REVIEWS
An Introduction t o Abnormal Psyclzology. V . E. FISHER.New York : The Macmillan Co. 1929. x 512 pp.
+
A History of Experimental Psychology. EDWING. BORING. New York: The Century Co. 1929. m i 699 pp.
+
The Poundat ions of Experimental Psychology. Edited by CARL MURCHISON.Worcester, Mass. : Clark University Press. London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press. 1929. x 907 pp.
+
Many psychologies have escaped the Wundtian tradition and joined one or another of the rapidly growing new aristocracies. No one of these has become less nouveau riche and more a part of the accepted social order than abnormal psychology. With its French ancestry to furnish the blue blood, the American mental-hygiene movement to provide it with red corpuscles, and the Austrian black sheep, psychoanalysis, to serve as the skeleton in the closet and provide just the proper amount of internal dissension, i t has become class conscious and respectable. I t can easily live down its more dubious practitioners who have built up a remunerative business on the strength of a technical vocabulary and artistic salesmanship and who, as alienists, vote five to five a t criminal trials that the accused is (or is not) insane. 9 Some perspicuous comments upon this point in Aristotle's Theory of A r t may be found in Butcher's Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art. He writes : "Aristotlels conception of fine a r t is entirely detached from any theory of the beautiful. " H e llmkes beauty a regulatiee principle of art, but he neeer says or implies that the manifestation of the beautiful i s the end of art. The objective laws of a r t are deduced not from an inquiry into the beautiful, but from a n observation of a r t as i t is and of the effects which i t produces" (italics mine, pp. 161-162, fourth edition).
...
...
