The Being of Art According to Plato

Plato's conception of art needs some investigation. I want to explore specifically the aspect concerning the 'double removal' from truth, or being. We start with the concept of something (e.g., "couch", to use Plato's example), and this concept is said to range over all particular couches. So couch A and couch B may be materially constituted in completely different ways (A is made of straw and wool whereas B is made of metal and cloth), but insofar as they both instantiate the function that "couch" calls for (presumabely, being a legged, long piece of furniture for resting), both couches may be fairly designated by that concept. Plato's claim is that an art object participates in an analogous relation as "particular" and "concept", except in its case it is between itself and a particular, respectively. This is where the notion of double removal comes from. Particulars are (singly) 'removed' from their concept just as an art object is removed from its particular, thus in a transitive way the art object is doubly removed from the original concept.

A language which admits of degrees of being and degrees of truth is useful for comprehension. I often personally get frustrated with the idea that something can be more true than another or that something can simply be more than another. My usual notion of being is a function of whether there is a thing in the world which instantiates its concept. The notion of truth too is merely a function of a proposition's correspondence with an objective state of affairs. These notions don't exactly admit of degrees -- something either is or is not, or a statement is either true or false (Just how many details are wrong in the statement doesn't affect how false the statement as a whole is -- it takes only one). But I have to admit that I'm being a little hasty in dismissing the idea that we can speak meaningfully about 'more' truth and 'more' being, and I think a proper modification of the concepts can help us make sense of Plato's taxonomy.

Plato speaks of the forms as having the most truth and the most being. I will be fair to Plato and not take him as meaning to posit some ethereal realm of forms that exists outside space and time; that would be unfairly attributing weighty metaphysical claims to Plato that he may not necessarily have intended. For us, a form will function as a concept without any metaphysical significance. Strictly speaking, a form is itself NOT spatiotemporal, though it may designate things which are. I believe that the most important distinguishing property about all forms is their timeless and eternal character, and I will take this property as equivalent to highest being and highest truth. For example, in our universe's existence, dogs have only inhabited it for a finite, quantifiable length of time. However, in an important sense, "dog" (as form) has always existed because in principle this form is always 'there' for designating (whether or not there are any objects in the world that can satisfy its conditions as a referent) and its existence as form is not conditioned by time or whether or not it has occupied a person's mental content in the guise of a concept. Similarly, eternal truths would be such that they range over all possible worlds. This is the sense of "eternal" Plato invokes in his description of all forms.

Now let's take all dogs that have ever existed as our object. These dogs do not have the eternal character of "dog" that we described above; the existence of dogs is finite and specific to time. Thus, by our new definition, they have 'lesser' being. It appears then that the degree of being that an object has is directly proportional to its approaching timelessness and eternity.

We can make sense of the double removal from being of art since an artwork stands in direct relation not to a form, but to a particular instantiation of the form (at least according to Plato). We've already seen that all beings conditioned by time and only approximate a form have a lesser degree of being, so if the artwork's existence is contingent upon such a being, then the artwork's being necessarily has a lesser degree than both the form itself and its instantiation.

Remarks on science, truths, and lies

In "On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense," Nietzsche insists that we recognize that our claims of truth cannot extend beyond the sphere of metaphor. The truths of science are conditioned by human subjective perception, but this is forgotten by the 'rational' person. Two things struck me while reading this.

First, I'm curious about truth claims expressed by scientific fields like biology. He writes, "If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare 'look, a mammal,' I have indeed brought a truth to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value" (p. 68). It appears then that the biologist's project of taxonomizing the various life forms into hierarchical structures is, in an important sense, a fiction. It is true that the numerous genus-species relations do tell us what properties are inherited by individual classifications of life, but what do we learn from this? The activity appears to be a mere subsuming of perceived nature into these fabricated categories in order to make this nature more digestible to the human. But we shouldn't expect to find a hierarchical structure 'in nature'; things simply are as they are while our human conceptualization merely formalizes what is present to us. A project like this one appears to not be a position to claim 'truth', since nothing is really learned from nature.

Second, I am also intrigued as to the extramoral value of truths and lies. This is typical of Nietzsche, especially in works like On the Genealogy of Morals. He takes what appears to have absolute value -- for lack of a better term -- like morals, truths, and lies, and whereas other philosophers take their value as for granted, Nietzsche investigates the values themselves from a sort of historical, naturalistic perspective. Nietzsche writes, "What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth" (p. 66). This is a very interesting remark on the possible origins of the value of truths and lies, and I believe that is is quite plausible but too often overlooked. At the origin, the object of the hatred or pleasure is not the instance of "lie" or "truth" in itself, but rather the very material, tangible results associated with the act of lying or truth. It is the invention of the human that abstracts away from these particular instances to the forms of "lying" and "truth-telling", and somehow the object of scorn or pleasure gets focused on these concepts themselves -- as if they were absolutes -- rather than their material consequences.

Kant's Aesthetic of the Sublime

Francisco Goya, "Saturn Devouring his Son."

      When we read Kant for this class, we focused on Kant's Aesthetics of the beautiful, but Kant also describes, as Dr. Grady mentioned, the sublime in relation to his aesthetic theory. The sublime, like the beautiful, is a kind of feeling that arises when we behold an object of art or nature, but while the beautiful is a wholly positive feeling, the sublime is a mixed bag of pleasure and displeasure. Kant insists that the sublime reminds us of the superiority of reason to nature, and we may see from this that the experience of the sublime is a reminder of the superiority of morality to inclination.

     While Kant's Critique of Judgment is concerned primarily with aesthetic judgments of the beautiful, he also devotes considerable time to an analysis of the sublime, that which we call "absolutely great" (94). The beautiful and the sublime each operate in a similar way. They both are relations of the faculty of the understanding to another faculty of cognition: with the beautiful, the understanding; with the sublime, reason (90-1). But while we can call a certain object or phenomenon beautiful, Kant understands the sublime to be held not in the object, but in the apprehending subject: "true sublimity must be sought in the mind of the judging subject, and not in the Object of nature that occasions this attitude by the estimation formed of it" (104). Furthermore, while Kant's analysis of the aesthetically beautiful starts with the apprehension of the beautiful in nature and moves on to the beautiful in art, his analytic of the sublime considers mostly objects in nature.

     Kant suggests that the sublime reveals to us the limits of our own imagination and, thereby, the superiority of the rational to the natural. We can understand, through reason, the phenomenon of a thunderstorm, but our imagination fails to grasp its enormity, even when it is displayed before us. The feeling of the sublime that arises when we behold a thunderstorm is a feeling of pleasure at the extent of our reason and displeasure at the limits of our imagination (106). This is what Kant calls the "mathematically sublime"  The limits of our imagination, our grasp of the sensible, in comparison with what we may grasp through reason, leads us to the apprehension that we, as rational beings, are superior to the natural, purely sensible world that does not posit ends for itself (91-2). The sublime is a feeling of greatness in ourselves.

     The sublime, however, is not wholly a feeling of pleasure. It is a combination of pleasure and displeasure, for while we are certainly rational beings, we are also bound by the laws of nature. Thus, Kant writes:

The feeling of the sublime is therefore at once a feeling of displeasure, arising from the inadequacy of the imagination in the aesthetic estimation of magnitude to attain to its estimation by reason, and a simultaneously awakened pleasure, arising from this very judgment of the inadequacy of the greatest faculty of sense being in accord with ideas of reason.... (106)

He also describes it the sublime terms of a "vibration," oscillating back and forth between  "repulsion and attraction" (107). The example of the storm is an apt one: we are nonetheless drawn to watch them if we are safely indoors, despite the fact that they are frightening. Our imagination fails to present them in their entirety. We can only conjure up certain details. Storms serve as a reminder to ourselves of our own limitations: if it were not for our houses, we would fear them more. But this is precisely where the pleasure arises. Our rational being allows us to build protection against nature. We are capable of thwarting nature's might (to an extent), in this case, capable of raising up shelters to shield us from storms.

     But what of the sublime we apprehend in art? It would seem to operate the same way as would the sublime we see in nature. The feeling of the sublime operates in the mind the same way as does beauty (purposiveness without purpose). The apprehension of the sublime, the feeling of an interplay between the imagination and reason, is prompted by a given representation or object. For Kant, the moral law is derived from reason, and if the sublime in nature reminds us of the superiority of our rational, lawful selves, then the sublime we behold in art might be a reminder, specifically, of this latter superiority. Because we are rational, lawful, moral, we are superior to that world which is merely sensible, and does not posit its own duties and ends.

     Artwork has the capacity to remind us of our moral selves, often, paradoxically, through the representation of immorality. Think of our response to tragedy, or to a play like Merchant of Venice. It's a difficult comedy, We are entertained, drawn in by the language, the plot, and the characters: foolish, cruel Antonio, petty Bassanio, the vengeful Shylock. Our reaction is a moral one, or, at least, the feeling inspired by the play is evidence of our moral considerations. Any experience of the sublime in a work such as this is a reminder that it is better to treat others with dignity, as Kant might say, as opposed to treating others as prices. We are reminded of how it is better to act out of respect for the law and from reason, and of the horrors and limitations of acting purely on impulse.

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Kant, Immanuel. Critique Of Judgment. Trans. James C. Meredith. London: Oxford University Press, 1964.

Classifying video games as art...

http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/are-video-games-art/Content?oid=2282684

The Paradoxical Aesthetic Regime 

Jacques Rancière begins "Aesthetics as Politics" by questioning the many artists and philosophers singing a euphoric dirge to commemorate the death of a 'utopian' emancipatory artistic movement. In the wake of utopia's death, artists and philosophers moved on to what Rancière identifies as two distinctly new conceptions, or attitudes, of art. The first conception identifies art's potential to identify and exult a communal space by emphasizing the inseparability of art and being in the world. The second conception extricates art from the immediacy of the context in order to reorient perspectives toward the collective environment. As Rancière points out, both of these attitudes emerge from a divorce between art and politics; in other words, the dissolution of Aesthetics. Undoubtedly, this dissolution followed from fears about propaganda, realized in the manifestation of mass conformity, which resulted in mass death. However, Rancière wants to show that this dissolution stems from a faulty premise; namely, that there can be art without it being political: "there is no art without a specific form of visibility and discursivity which identifies it as such. There is no art without a specific distribution of the sensible tying it to a certain form of politics" (715).  Furthermore, the belief that art can avoid being political only liberates the viewer from responsibility of reflection, placing her in a dangerously vulnerable position to be swept inadvertently away by the politics of a piece. Optimistically, though, Rancière claims that there is nothing intrinsically pestilent about the relationship between art and politics. Fundamentally, there requires a reorientation of expectation for aesthetics. First off, art and politics perform the same task: they create a space in which certain individuals have the right to speak and be listened to. Good political art elevates those who have traditionally been denied recognition to a platform on which they can be heard. Second, there must be a consideration for what emancipation actually entails. For a long time, revolution simply meant an inversion of those out of power and those in power. The consequences of this inversion is clear: an abusive of power by the new hegemony towards the old. Result: same inherent problems of exclusion and denial of recognition--the victim simply gets revenge and replicates the same violent abuses inflicted upon them. Rancière offers an alternative analogous to a Marxist revolution. Rather than continuing the hold the State and Populace  at a distance, just as theory and practice are held at a distance, why not focuses on the concrete nature of existence? In art, you find these dichotomies represented: “As a sensory form, it is heterogeneous to the ordinary forms of sensory experience that these dualities inform. It is given in a specific experience which suspends the ordinary connections not only between appearance and reality, but also between form and matter, activity and passivity, understanding and sensibility” (708). A specific art piece has the potential to alter a particular sensorium while that sensorium simultaneously affirms the piece as art. These reflexive relationships highlight the ambiguity, contingency, and antimony present in Aesthetics. It is in these contradictions, too, that one finds the political potential of art. 

Ranciere

In “Aesthetics as Politics,” Ranciere, like other authors we have read before, concentrates on the distinction between “aesthetics of politcs” and “politics of aesthetics.” Ranciere’s most interesting point, to me, however, is his discussion on the nature of politics alone apart from aesthetics. Ranciere says that politics “it not the exercise of, or struggle for, power. It is the configuration of a specific space, the framing of a particular sphere of experience, of objects posited as common and as pertaining to a common decision, of subjects recognized as capable of designating these objects and putting forward arguments about them.” While this may be true for certain democratic societies where the people do have a choice about who is governing and it is not necessarily a struggle for power amongst politicians (but rather a struggle for votes and alliance among other politicians), I think that politics, in any sort of despotic or totalitarian regime is all about power. The Nazis for example, were a political society based entirely on the hierarchal organization of the power, and had to be completely subservient to a higher power. While the Nazis did partake in the other political activities (partitioning of resources, configuration of space, etc), it certainly was a political existence based on power.

            Ignoring these rare types of societies, though, Ranciere brings up interesting aspects on the aesthetics of politics vs. politics of aesthetics dynamic. For Ranciere, the question is not whether art and politics are separate entities, but rather, “to know whether or not they ought to be set in relation.” Both of “forms of distribution of the sensible, both of which are dependent on a specific regime of identification.” Ranciere further says that “art and politics are thereby linked, beneath themselves, as forms of presence of singular bodies in a specific space and time.” I do not think there is a way in which this could be more accurate. Whether it be political satire, subtle messages throughout media and campaigning, or ordinary discourse throughout life and interaction in society as a whole, it is impossible to separate art and politics into two separate entities, since in the way the modern world and society is constructed, the two are permanently and inexplicably linked. It is impossible to escape the effect of one on the other, whether it be politicizing aesthetics or aestheticizing politics. Both exist, and affect the average viewer differently, depending on the situation, and “play” is the property of art and the individual that allows this differential interaction to occur.

Ranciere

Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, James Whistler (1874)

Just like Adorno and Benjamin, Ranciere focuses on the politic nature of art. And like the last two authors he recognizes the successful politics of art as a product of art’s autonomy.

            Art is important because it is political. It is political not because it tries to make a statement on today’s society, its structure, or its class system. Art is political in distancing itself from these societal concerns. Art, though entirely indebted to its specific moment in history, the time and space of its existence, acts as if it is completely independent. It is this apparent, but misleading autonomy that enables art to be political. In distancing itself from the societal concerns of its founding environment, art is able to make us more aware of our specific societal conditions.

            “[T]here is no contradiction between art for art’s sake and political art” (711). Though seemingly opponents, “the politicy of art is tied to its very autonomy” (707). Art that strives to be political tends to be less valuable and less politically powerful than art that exists for its own sake. Art that intends to be politically charged can only function as propaganda; it is what Adorno and Benjamin called the “aestheticizing of politics.” Art for art’s sake however, is political because by avoiding positing a political opinion, it is claiming a transcendence of the cultural context of its creation. It is this assumed transcendence that draws attention to our political reality. Art is political in that it reveals our politics and the role the play within our culture.

            Benjamin claimed that art for the masses is not possible in the modern world, and though he acknowledged film as the medium of the masses, he claims that this is a decay in art, not an advancement. Ranciere agrees to an extent, but disagrees with Benjamin that art can no longer function as universally politically relevant. “This art is not the founding of a common world through the absolute singularity of form; it is a way of redisposing the objects and images that comprise the common world as it is already given, or creating situations apt to modify our gazes and our attitudes with respect to this collective environment” (704).  Art is not creation. It is not the job of the artist to conceive of and make something entirely new from nothing. Instead, it is the role of the artist to recycle his environment, to reference common truths. So that art today is not an act of creation, but a way of making the viewer re-see our collective world. Yes, art can be political on in acting as if it is autonomous, but it must also include ‘play’.

            Ranciere’s insistence on play, which is lifted from Gadamer, is his biggest diversion from Benjamin and Adorno. He claims play is essential in art. He agrees with Schiller’s claim that play is key to our humanity. “Minimally defined, play is any activity that has no end other than itself, that does not intend to gain effective power over things or persons” (708). Play, then, is the means by which art gains its autonomy. Interestingly, it is also how art remains relevant to us. The aspect of play is necessary to each of us, and play in an artwork echoes that need within our selves. So, although play gives art autonomy it also connects it to our collective world. Play is the means by which art for art’s sake is political.

            Ranciere has brought us through the philosophy of aesthetic art. The aesthetic movement in art was not a sort of manifesto-based movement, just a gradual abandoning of the old ideas of art as a moral or political vehicle. Artists began to experiment (play) and to make art that existed only for its own sake. Much of the art of this sensibility was self-referential, the paintings were often about the act of painting itself, or the act of composition. In refraining from any framework for art and denying political art, the aesthetes were actually able to make what Adorno and Benjamin would call political art. It revealed that previous forms of art where often didactic at their base.

            An excellent example of the Aesthetic movement is James Whistler’s painting Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket. It is an abstract cityscape that shocked his contemporaries in his abandonment of traditional form. This painting became political in the literal sense. After a bad review, Whistler took prominent art critic John Ruskin to trial for libel. One note against the painting was its relatively slapdash production. It only took Whistler a day or two to produce this painting, but of course Whistler claimed that his entire lifetime of experience was necessary to his ability to produce this piece. This supports Ranciere’s idea of play and the artists as appropriater not a creator. Although he won the case, he was only awarded a farthing in damages and the court fees plunged him into financial ruin. The purpose of the trial was probably not for Whistler to receive substantial payment, but to bring aestheticism to public attention. Whistler succeeded in revealing painting’s limiting conventions and introducing an alternative.