Reflection 4

                On first consideration, I was hesitant about how to answer this question. Before beginning this section of reading I thought for a long time on this question, and I was perplexed.  The first hurdle I had to overcome was the idea that artworks can communicate truth, but they do not necessarily communicate truth. This was an important question for me, because my idea was that the communication of truth as a necessity would automatically discount non-representational works of art and even the entire category of music as art. And then I was concerned about how strictly I was to understand this notion of truth. I began to work that fiction writing was at risk, because it is not based in the type of truth that is factual.

                Upon reading the philosophers in this section, I realized many of my worries were misguided. My worries about truth were taking truth to mean the strict true/false factual sense. In reading Aristotle, however, I found that art works could communicate truth. For Aristotle, this truth is not based in historical facts but general ideas. He notes that in art, specifically poetry, we get the universal truths. He also is forced to confront and acknowledge Plato who says that art is necessarily mimetic and therefore twice removed from the truth i.e. the forms. Aristotle confronts this by claiming that yes, artworks are mimetic, but they still hold universal truths. He goes on to explain the particulars of poetry and drama that make them so apt for communicating truth, however I found his one later claim about truth most intriguing. He explains that all of the elements of plot and tragedy, but they all amount to one thing. Our interest is in truth claims that are not 1) actually true, or 2) necessarily true, but possibly true.

                For Nietzsche, art is not at all about the communication of truth. Rather, it is about deceit. He claims that art is an escape, a way to combat the world’s hindrance of our will to power. Indeed, art for Nietzsche is a human’s way of asserting its will to live and exerting its purposed on the world. He claims we delight in the deceptions and illusions of art. While he completely differs from Aristotle in these important and central claims, he also agrees with him in certain places. For example, he agrees that art is imitative by nature. But instead of perfectly displaying the world as it is, Nietzsche believes that art does the opposite. He argues that art distorts and deliberately transforms the world. This is again in an illusory fashion, because we need art in order to make life more agreeable. He goes even further to boldly claim that this is a “higher truth” than the everyday truth of the world.

                With Heidegger, my initial claim about a factual truth is more explicitly addressed. Heidegger, in fact, remarks that this true/false idea of the truth of an art work is a diminished concept of truth. He is not concerned with this or that particular instantiation of the truth. In fact he says that particular, factual truths should make us wary of the existence of the truth he thinks we should look for in artwork. He even claims that this understanding of truth is not only problematic for art considerations, but all philosophical considerations, as “truth” should be applicable in all situations, including art and others left by the wayside. He uses the Greek work for truth “alethia” with can be literally interpreted to mean “not concealing”. To interpret truth as “unconcealing”, Heidegger is defining truth as a happening in artworks, not just a property of them. He argues that true is the concealing and revealing cycle in a work. He also notes that this push and pull between concealment and revealing are obscured in everyday life but highlighted in the work of art.

                The readings and discussions in the section opened my eyes to understand the idea of truth in artwork beyond facticity. I was initially caught up in the idea of facts being relayed by art, but I understand and borrow some understanding from each philosopher. I believe can hold universal / non particular truths, and I believe that the structures and plausibility of how those truths are portrayed are relevant to their truthfulness.

Blog 4

I do not think that artworks communicate a truth. Perhaps it is true that they can communicate various truths that people can agree upon, but there is no objective truth in artworks. Plato's account of mimesis lends itself to two different kinds of truth; both of those truths are not the kind that I think artworks communicate. In Aristotle's analysis of Tragedy, I think he points us closer to the point at which artworks can communicate truths. Nietzsche, on the other hand, argues that Tragedy does not in fact lead the audience on a quest towards truth, but rather that it serves as a distraction from the harsh realities of life. I believe that some people may use artwork as a means for distraction, but most people ask questions and pursue knowledge. It is the pursuit of this knowledge that leads spectators towards truths.

Much like Heidegger does in the "Origin of the Work of Art," I think that it is important to search for an understanding of what I mean by truth. While some may still believe in Plato's account of artwork, I do not agree with him. I think that there are two possible understandings of truth from artworks that Aristotle's idea of mimesis permits. On the one hand, there is Plato's sense of truth that sits at the top of his chart of objects. At the top is the idea, form, or truth, below that is the particular or instantiated object of the form, and at the bottom is the imitation of the object. From this perspective, art does contain truth but a lesser version of truth that is twice removed from the actual form of truth.

The other form of truth that I think one can pull from Plato comes out if one does not take his understanding of mimesis as strictly as he does. If one thinks that artworks are simply trying to imitate an image then they have a sense of truth that is relatively straightforward. Artworks contain truth if they accurately represent the object of the painting. This accuracy could come as a simple representation of an image like a painting of a landscape or it could be a painting that has some metaphorical or hidden meaning that may critique some aspect of society. Both of these interpretations do not capture my understanding of either artwork or of truth in artworks, however.

In the Poetics, Aristotle suggests that Tragedy might have some notion of truth, although he does not use that language himself. He claims that Tragedy teaches us the surprising but necessary consequences of our moral actions. Through the process of catharsis we are able to involve ourselves in the Tragedy but hold ourselves at a distance simultaneously. Once we have cleansed ourselves of the emotions attached to the Tragedy we are left with thought. This thought can provide us with some notion of truth. Here again I would like to differentiate from the Platonic sense of truth that I derived earlier. It is not that a Tragedy teaches you something obvious like not to marry your mother and kill your father in the case of Oedipus, but rather that it is supposed to get you to reflect on fate, moral action, and many other such topics. In this reflection it might be possible to find some truths.

Nietzsche takes a rather similar argument to that of Aristotle in his analysis of Tragedy, but he ultimately argues that Tragedy is a way of finding meaning in the absence of truth. For Nietzsche, art does not serve a willed truth because there is no original will to truth. Humans actually want illusion. The desire to know the truth, although not every time, gets in the way of enjoying and living life. Tragedy allows us be deceived and to escape from the harsh realities and truth of life. If Nietzsche's assessment of Tragedy is correct, then there is no truth in artworks. Artwork is just a mere diversion from life and it expresses our vital forces towards the will to power. While this maybe true for some people, I am not sure that it works for everyone. From my own experience, I have found much joy in asking questions in life and learning from those questions, and I am fairly certain that I am not alone.

It is my belief that there are a fair number of people in the world who are interested in finding the truth and are not some crazed individuals who go against the natural order. Of course there are individuals who do enjoy art solely to escape reality, but often those people do not appreciate art properly whether because of educational background or lack of necessary knowledge. If you can read Oedipus and not think about different meanings of fate and moral action, then you either did not understand the Tragedy properly or you somehow acted merely as a spectator. The questions you ask and the answers you give may be different per person, but they will generally fall in the same categories. This is where artworks communicate truth, if at all. While there may be different responses to an artwork, it is likely that if someone were in the same position as you they too would feel the same way as you. They are not the truths of Plato's account of mimesis, but all those different positions represent the possible truths that an artwork might communicate.

Response 4

Identifying what we mean by ‘truth’ is crucial to answering the question of whether or not artworks communicate truth. For Aristotle, the best art is a kind that is well constructed. In his discussion of tragedy, he highlights the importance of plot and character—that the events, actions, and thoughts included in the play be ‘realistic’—and coherent with some kind of order in the play. By realistic, I do not mean that plays depict something as mundane and probabilistic as ordinary life; rather, I mean that the goings-on in a play should fit the tone of the work (indeed, one of the challenges of the playwright is to create something that has a tone first and foremost, and secondly to ensure that its tone is consistent). Thus plays, like other forms of art, need to fit within certain rules; they must have a universe of their own, and must make sense within it. Part of that sensibility is moral; thus Oedipus is an appealing character because his decisions make sense to us—he tries to follow the ‘rules’ of being a good person—but his failings are also understandable to us. They do not seem unnaturally contrived, nor do we find ourselves frustrated from engaging with the play by Sophocles artifice. Instead, Sophocles inspires horror and revulsion in us at the same time as he evokes pity; we are able to identify with Oedipus because we are able to apprehend the rules of his universe and how they might be modified to fit our own lives. Yet at the same time that we recognize this truth, we are intended to experience relief, a catharsis: the reality of our lives is (it is to be hoped) far better than that of Oedipus. We recognize the ‘truth’ of his situation—it is understandable within its rules, and it can be understood in terms of principles we derive and recognize from our own lives and experiences—but we also recognize a truth about our own lives: they are not that, but they could be. It is the fact that they are not that is so freeing.

            Nietzsche views art differently. For Nietzsche, art is an escape from truth to terrible for us to grapple with. We want to be alive, he realizes, in a fundamental way that we cannot escape from. But an essential part of being alive is wanting more. Pain and suffering are inevitable; but we live for the joyous moments, holding out hope against whatever mathematical odds, and never quite weighing in the real calculations of how much of our live we spend in pleasure and how much in pain. Art is a distraction; it is a manifestation of our will to truth, to power, but it is a diverting one. It diverts us by channeling out desires and changing the world, so to speak, so that what we desire is no longer inaccessible. In a Nietzschean sense, art is about blending an intelligible order with unbridled feeling and changing our experience of the world—or perhaps more accurately, opening the possibility of different experiences that will satisfy our appetites in illusory yet meaningful ways

            Heidegger’s conception of truth is similar to Nietzsche’s in that it deals with getting closer to ‘truth’ through experience. In Heidegger’s conception, we lose sight of truth when we over-examine an object and take it outside of its original purpose. Equipment thus loses its ‘equipment-ness’ when we begin asking ‘what makes this equipment?’ Yet art gets us to truth, and art asks us to examine something to the precise extent that is required to get a picture (so to speak) of the art. I see this unfolding as follows: when viewing art we do not, at first, ask ‘what makes this art?’ Not if we are approaching it in the right way, at any rate. Instead, we simply experience it. We apprehend it. We consider it, but only in a way of taking in what is there to be offered. That is how we are to interact with art. If an object, like a tool, or a pair of shoes, is represented, then we may consider meaning behind it—truth, if you will. But the truth itself is simply in recognizing those objects for what they are; after that, individual thoughts will differ based on a variety of factors, but so long as they are reasonably relevant (prompted by something that actually has to do with what’s being represented, and not simply being wrong, like calling a pair of shoes an elephant), they are part of the truth of our experience of that object. But we are not examining the object in that case; we are examining the work of art, whose purpose is to be examined. We thus protect ourselves from overstepping the boundaries—our understanding of tools themselves is not broken by our considering what makes them tools. We do not prevent the object from being itself in its fullest sense by being too aware of it. Instead, we examine the artwork, and are aware of what it is, and recognize the object within it. This in turn gives rise to associations. The ‘truth’ of this kind of artwork then is in a movement between concealing and revealing, as dictated by the concept of aletheia. What is concealed is the construction of the art, the real story of the object in the painting, a hyper-awareness of the object. What is revealed is an intuitive understanding of the object and the myriad connections and inferences we have been led by our experience to make about it.

            If art reveals truth—and I think it does—it does so by evoking reasonably well informed responses in the proper mindset. This may consist of apprehending certain rules governing the ‘game’ or ‘craft’ of art—Aristotle, Plato, Gadamer, Dickie, and Kant all deal with this concept—or in getting us to take a certain vantage point from which our thought’s direction is guided. In the latter case, I think of Hume, Kant, Aristotle, and Nietzsche in particular. The shaping of thought—not directly by the artist, but intentionally indirectly through the evocation of personally relevant mental connections, is where the experience of truth comes in relation to art.

Truth: Reflection 4

The question of whether or not artworks communicate truth is a difficult one to answer and depends entirely on how one defines truth. Truth isn’t an easy thing to define though and can be described on so many different levels. I tend to agree with Aristotle when he defines truth or the experience of truth in poetry through the “possible when he talks about tragedies and how they communicate truth. 

Aristotle argues that poetry gives us universal truths over particular truths, and he is particularly interested in the possible. Aristotle states that all truth claims fall into one of 3 categories, either the actual, the possible or the necessary. He argues that the possible is what truth claims about art should be because when something is possible and probable without being necessary, it becomes interesting. I fully agree with this statement. If a work is too plausible, can it really be truth telling or is just something that we already knew and that no artwork had to give us?

Aristotle also focuses on the causal relationship of events in poems. If A then B. But he argues that poetry does this best and communicates the most truth when B seems to be a necessary consequence of A but a surprising one. Afterwards, we feel as if it should have always been that way. Perhaps this is why artworks seem to create truth for Aristotle because if the consequence was likely or guessable, we wouldn’t need the poem at all, we would already have the truth. So artworks communicate truths that we wouldn’t have ever concluded by any other experience.  I think some of the best truths are those that you experience after the truth is revealed to you. It was like it was always floating somewhere under the surface, you just had to experience it or be exposed to the story for it to show itself. I think that art can evoke this kind of truth finding or that “aha” moment when everything is put into better clarity. 

However unlike Aristotle, I don’t really see art as giving us general truths or for art’s purpose to be the communication of truth, rather that we sometimes find truth in art and that it isn’t something found in all artworks and that it isn’t the same for every person who views them. I tend to see art as something that says here I am, use me however you please, and perhaps this is what Nietzsche is getting at when he says art is an escape.  There is a line in a song called “Breathe” that was popular a few years ago that talks about the song writer and the purpose of the song that I think puts this into more perspective. She sings: “And I feel like i’m naked in front of a crowd cause these words are my diary screaming out loud, and I know that you’ll use them however you want to.” This line really speaks volumes to me, and I think is applicable to this question. One can argue that the truth in her song takes shape in the events that are described in the song and that those are the song-writers or singer’s truths that she’s trying to express to her audience. However, she says while this may be my purpose or the truth that i’m trying to get across, I know my audience is going to take my words and what i’m singing about and apply them to whatever is going on in there life or in the way that is going to make them feel the best about themselves, etc. 

Perhaps it’s those words that make me see Nietzsche’s point best over any of the other authors. While I do think that art in some ways points us towards truth or gives us a slice of our own truth, I think the purpose is to be a release or the purpose is to let us find our own kind of truth in a surprising way. Art isn’t trying to shove reality down your throat. It doesn’t ask you to analyze it from every angle in order to find the answers but almost releases you from feeling the need to find the answers or to figure out the world. Can’t there be truth in that release as well? I like that Nietzsche sees art as the attempt to find meaning in the absence of truth, but I want to push his argument further and say that the meaning you find when you disregard truth in the realistic, worldly sense can be a form of truth in itself. We discussed in class how Nietzsche believes that art is a way for us to remake the world to follow our aims in life or to make our lack of aims and misery more palatable. What we really want, in his opinion, is to live not to know everything at the end of the day, and we need art to go on living. He says that art is successful when it recognizes the nature of the obstacles the world shoves at us and overcomes then. It’s not an outlet but it changes the world so that it’s not an obstacle. We have to refigure ourselves and the world so that there is no opposition between us and the world. This refiguring while not based in reality becomes it’s own kind of truth. 

Nietzsche says that we create this new world where Earth and being is no longer an obstacle to us through two impulses either Apollonian or Dionysian. Apollonian truth is based in dreams where we still see a tiny undercurrent of lucidity or when one can fully enjoy the dream but know it’s a dream at the same time. To me, this isn’t truth. This is just covering up reality for the time being. However, I think when art doesn’t have any lucidity and when you are motivated by Dionysian impulses, you fully absorb yourself into something else and completely forgo reality. This kind of experience tears away the veil of illusion and reveals to us a deeper truth of the world. I think that tearing away of the veil can be related to the aha moment in Aristotle’s tragedy. The moment when you see what was possible but highly impossible at the same time, and the thing that surprises you that you always knew was there but that you just needed to be shown. That’s the truth that art shows you in my opinion and the truth it communicates. 

Unit 4: Truth

Do artworks communicate truth?

            I think the answer to this question is yes, but must be qualified with a certain definition of truth and also with a description of what qualifies an artwork as an artwork. I think the kind of truth that artwork communicates is something that gives one a sense of being enlightened—of seeing something or making some connection one had never considered before, of developing understanding, of disclosing something about the experience of life, of directing thoughts towards something people generally miss or avoid, of revealing meaning in a place where one hadn’t looked before or where one had looked before but had come out empty-handed. Perhaps this is too many ways to rephrase “being enlightened,” but perhaps they can all be grouped under the concept of “understanding”. Understanding is more than just knowledge, it is knowledge about how different pieces of information relate to each other. It connects basic “facts” to one another by some sort of rule that can be universal (reveal something about how things typically/always relate) or particular (reveal something about a specific situation of relation). There are a few qualities of different types of works of art that, according to our authors, cause people to gain some sort of understanding from them.

            Aristotle talks about the imitative quality of artwork and how we as humans use imitation to learn and gain understanding. Imitation, then, in plotline or subject matter, is not inferior to experience because it is in a way “fake”; instead, imitation in art supplements experience. When Aristotle goes over what he thinks makes a particularly good tragedy (or, perhaps, a tragedy most effective in enlightening viewers in some way), he lists order and unity, which draw us in because they mean that the story in intelligible. But he also says that good tragedies produce pity and fear, which stretch our emotions in a way that we would not want in regular circumstances. Finally, good tragedies embody possibility, as opposed to what is actual or what is necessary. In this final point, we can see that what makes tragedy good art is that it draws you into it and makes itself relevant to you, then forces you to think differently about the ideas it presents by stretching your imagination and surprising you. Similarly, the ideal main character is one who strives to be good and is easy to identify with, but then must err in judgment. This motif of being able to identify with a part of an artwork at the same time as being pulled down a path of mere possibility by the art continues in Nietzsche and Heidegger.

            Nietzsche says explicitly that he thinks that art is about relieving people of the burden of “truth”, but here I think that the truth he refers to which we can never acquire is a kind of definitive version of truth instead of a constantly-reaching-for-understanding kind of truth. He says that art imitates the world in a particular way: a way that distorts the incoherent and meaningless world and makes it palatable to people. But his praise of Greek tragedies actually suggests that they uncover the tension between the desire to live, experience, find meaning, and the constant resistance in the world that continuously suggests that death always conquers life, that experience is only ever relative and insignificant, and that any meaning that might be found is artificial. I would like to suggest here, though, that while these devastating “truths” may or may not be objectively true, the very basic fact that life itself consists of this tension can be brought to our attention through art, perhaps particularly in Greek tragedy, and this seems to me to be a kind of revealed understanding of such opposition, though not a solution to it. The revealed opposition that art has the power to convey could also be discussed in the Nietzschean terms of the Apollonian desire to distance ourselves from the world and the Dionysian desire to be included in the world.

            Finally, Heidegger, too sees some sort of dual purpose in art, in that it brings together earth—the mere physicality of things which is important but conclusive—and a world—that which is built from earth but that turns into something above and beyond it in that it is open, unfixed, open to possibilities. Heidegger thinks that a certain unrevealing happens when we view something not as an object, and not as a piece of equipment, but as a work of art. When art is framed as art, it opens up interpretations and ideas unique to that kind of presentation, and when this opening up leads to feelings of enlightenment and understanding, we uphold such works as art. But if the works seem to only appeal to basic sensation or fail at being interesting or meaningful beyond mere physicality, then we just call this cheap entertainment.

Reflection 4

Do Artworks Communicate Truth?

This is a complicated to answer because different people have different interpretations of what “truth” is. If there is no sole definition or even understanding of what one means by “truth” then it is most certainly hard to answer a question that ponders about the relationship between artworks and truth. That being said, I think it wise to first accept that there is more than one kind of truth, both of which involve different sources of information. In Heidegger’s essay he makes a distinction between what is true and false, and what is true and untrue, “By truth is usually meant this or that particular truth. That means: something true. A cognition articulated in a proposition can be of this sort…Truth means the nature of the true. We think this nature in recollecting the Greek word aletheia, the unconcealedness of beings” (Cahn & Meskin 354). I think that, simplified, that propositional sort of truth can be called fact-based truth: the real world/historical truth of an object/being; and knowledge-based truth: a sort of logical understanding about an object/being. Heidegger believes that the nature of art is to show us knowledge-based truth, and it does so by revealing the whole of the object/being, not merely its qualities and functional uses. To use an example that Heidegger uses himself, we can consider the painting of a pair of shows by Van Gogh. The factual truth behind the shows is that he bought the shoes in a market and for some reason could not wear them, so he painted them. This is fact-based truth and it tells us nothing but how the artwork came to be, nothing that is philosophically interesting. It is the case that when one looks at the painting they see more than how they came to be. They may generate ideas about the time period the shoes existed in, the occupation and gender of the owner, the kind of location the shoes are in and much more. This is knowledge-based truth being unconcealed, truth that encapsulates more than the shoes themselves can present. This is the case because if one is presented the real shoes they will merely focus on the qualities the shoes possess and the equipmental uses of the shoes. The presentation of the shoes in a work of art allows one to look past those things and see a broader truth about the shoes that is unconcealed through its presentation as a work of art.

If we are to say that artworks communicate truth then it is such the case that they only communicate knowledge-based truth, even though there is fact-based truths that exists for the work of art. This; however, is not to suggest that the artwork itself contains truth. If this were the case then when people looked at a work of art there would be a great deal of uniformity in what kinds of things are seen in a particular work of art. Artworks reveal truth to the viewer, but what is revealed is potentially different between individuals. This phenomena is addressed by Aristotle and Nietzsche’s treatment of the genre of tragedy. Both philosophers regard tragedy as the full potential of art and, to my belief, come to a similar conclusion about what it is that tragedy does. Nietzsche specifically believes that truth something ugly because humans innately want to express their will to live but the world is a place that suppresses that will and is hostile and inhospitable. Art is the strategy used to distort the way in which the world is presented to us. Tragedy, thus, is the best form of art that accomplishes this. Aristotle believes artworks communicate a diluted truth; however, artworks refer/remind us of the “real” truths. Tragedy does this best because it presents characters that are better than actual humans in such a length that the viewer can consider the entire tragic play (making it better than epic poetry).

The agreement between Aristotle and Nietzsche is here: tragedies present an intelligible order to the viewer which deals with some topic or other. The viewer is then drawn into the events because the tragedy evokes immersive feelings within the viewer. After the events are played out the viewer is then set free from the emotions experienced and able to refer back to truth presented in the tragedy. Aristotle explains this by describing what makes a good tragedy in a play while Nietzsche explains the relationship between the Apollinian and Dionesian aspects within tragedy. In Aristotle’s analysis of good tragedies he says that the plot is presented in a reasonable and believable order while simultaneously producing feelings of pity and fear. Nietzsche’s analysis relates the Apollinian to a feeling of joy which gives way to reflection while the Dionesian is related to a feeling of ecstasy and absorbs the viewer into the object/being. Both philosophers claim that it is the fusion of these elements that make tragedies so great: presenting an object/being in an intelligible order while at the same time immersing us in feeling and emotion. Aristotle says that through catharsis, the release of the feelings, we are able to reflect and think about the truth presented in tragedy. Nietzsche claims that this distortion of the real world allows us to accept the world, or in other words take in the truths while avoiding the hostile nature of the world. What Heidegger, Aristotle, and Nietzsche all show is that it is not the artwork itself that contains the truth, but through art we are reminded and able to contemplate the truths of the world that are revealed to us through the presentation of beings and objects in works of art. 

Response 4 - Art as a Means to Truth

Do artworks communicate truth?

            On this subject, there is no question that artworks do not communicate truth in the sense of communicating facts. Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Heidegger all agree with Plato that what is presented in a work of art is not factually true. However, as Heidegger notes, this is a very limited (and perhaps even almost trivial) notion of what truth is. To this extent then, before we can try and determine whether or not artworks communicate truth, we have to ascertain a definition of truth robust enough to try and accommodate what is shown in artworks.

            Under the Aristotelian account of artworks (or at least of tragedy), artworks do communicate truth, and they do so in a way that is much more palatable for humanity than history. History only lists events of the past; tragedy allows the viewer to witness the events in their entirety. Aristotle grants that the actions performed on the stage are not true, both because the characters are not historically real and because they are not really there on the stage, only actors are. However, in the presentation of the tragedy, these factical concerns are not important. Aristotle stresses that the best tragedies are plausible; within the framework of the tragedy, the characters act in a manner that make sense, and the plot proceeds according to circumstances which are internally coherent, even if they are only fantasy in reality. Behind the effect of plausibility, Aristotle sees a profound teaching tool in tragedy. In present plausible persons performing plausible actions with plausible consequences, tragedy provides us with lessons concerning morality. The truth of the tragedy is not what is represented, but the notion of causality and the moral repercussions of actions which underpin these representations.

            Heidegger, through his analysis of the varying degrees of thing-being, comes to a similar though more general notion of what artistic truth is. For Heidegger, the truth in artwork is ἀλήθεια, an “unconcealedness” of being. In interacting with an artwork, we become aware of the being of things in a new and profound way which is unavailable by other means. For example, in using a basket, we are unaware of what it is that makes it a basket, for this is only unconsciously supplied since we are using it. When we look at a basket, we cease to see it as a basket and approach it as a brute thing which holds physical properties, but nothing which denotes “basket-ness”. However, in looking at a painting of a basket, we become aware of the nature of the basket and what it means for that thing to be a basket. In the work of art, the construct of the world is held together with the brute matter of earth for both to be examined together at the same time. This duality of nature, the one transcendent and the other factical, is the unconcealedness that art reveals.

            Nietzsche’s analysis of art has a similar dichotomy of a constructed, virtual reality and an unveiled reality, which he places under the headings of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The Apollonian, on the one hand, is the joyous expression of dreams; it creates a world on top of reality. The Dionysian is ecstasy in the most literal sense, for it allows one to step outside of one’s self and become part of the world once again. The conjunction of these tendencies are what constitutes art for Nietzsche, but these are not tendencies towards truth. Rather, these impulses seek to conceal the brutal fact of humanity’s homelessness in the world. Through the Apollonian, the individual seeks to create a pleasant, illusory order in place of the hostile natural one, and through the Dionysian she seeks to lose herself in the greater unity of the world. In this sense, Nietzsche’s conception of art is the opposite of Heidegger’s: rather than revealing the truth of being, it seeks to hide it.

            However, Nietzsche’s notion of the artwork concealing truth seems to be more of a statement of how the artwork creates a unity in itself. The artwork does provide an order beyond that of the actual world, but the recognition of the artwork as an artwork seems to justify Heidegger’s point. The nature of the artwork, as having some sort of internal structure to itself, presents a dichotomy between the mere matter that composes the artwork and the constructed world which the artwork invites the perceiver into. Nietzsche’s distinction of the artwork as untrue falls more on the side of facts about the world at large, since he views the artwork as an attempt to insulate humanity from the meaningless of the world. In as much as truth is ἀλήθεια, however, the artwork still serves to expose the transcendent world and the factical earth and is thus still capable of communicating truth. In any case, art has the power to communicate the nature of the being of the world in a way which is inaccessible to our day-to-day lives. 

2.2Reflection Paper (L) && 3.0Reflection Paper (SL)

Nancun Yu

PR. Kyle Grady

PHIL 330: Aesthetics

23^th, Sept. 2014

2.2Reflection Paper (L)

     As I had mentioned in the previous short reflection paper, I had objected both claim that beauty is a real property of objects and beauty is “in the eye of the beholder.” I made my claim that there must be a form of beauty according to the fact that people always tend to argue or discuss what they think are beautiful. From my understanding, people can only discuss if both sides share basic similar understanding on the subject they discuss. In example, people who think sunshine is orange can hardly discuss the use of sunshine with other who think the sunshine is red. The basic understanding is required as the bridges connect words’ meaning. Thus, its appeal can only be logical if there is a “form of beauty” that people shared understanding of. However, after reading several essays I found Kant’s theory in his Critiques of Judgments have a better explanation that perfect fit with my view.  (Even know I might misunderstand him)

            Kant’s system perfectly answers several question that what make people feel beautiful and how people determines one work is beautiful or not. Instead of saying there is a form of “Beauty”. Kant argues that there is subjective universality when people make their judgment. And instead of saying beauty is “In the eye of the beholders” Kant argues beauty is a matter of taste, it is nothing else than a subjective judgment people make based on the pleasure and the displeasure people (the subject) immediate feels that are affected by the artworks.

In my opinion, if we admit beauty serve as a property of an object, people should eventually come to an equal conclusion, what appeal to be not correct. Moreover, if we think about the process of creating an artwork. Although artists express their emotions into a physical subject, however, emotional expression is not the process, assign “beautiful” into the artworks. I would rather say that the artist hardly created beautiful since they usually tend to be objectively interested about their own work. The quality of “beautiful” can only be judged by the viewer base on their immediate reaction.

In Kant’s system, even know him describe the aesthetic judgment as subjective judgment, Kant adds specific promises that people can only make judgments on their dis-interest subject. Moreover, people should not involve any emotion or background information other than the work itself appeals. It seems little odd that why people want to make judgments toward an object they are not interested about.  It relevantly reflects many situations when people misused the term beautiful.  For example, people tend to think the natural world is beautiful without making judgment. There is a difference between natural beauty and artificial beauty. Although it seems to recommend a fact that the natural world contains a property of beautiful. However, the “good” people receive from the natural world are more of a moderately good. Many things in the natural world are “good” by being useful, i.e. woods, sun (heat), ground (farmland), etc. What I am saying is not natural world are not appreciable and cannot be beautiful. Granted, that natural world can affect human emotions in many ways. However, there are many reasons why people can easily miscalled natural world beautiful without going through the process of judgment. One the one hand, people tend to live closer to the natural environment (what I mean here is not the forest kind of total natural theme but sunshine, cloud, sky). On the other hand, believe on natural world being “Beautiful” had been highly built in with our common values. Therefore, when a theme become common it can easily causing ignorance.

            In addition, Kant’s system have hand over a great power to the viewer by let them making their own judgment. It so allows people called anything to be art by saying they are pleased what can hardly prove. In this light, Kant proposed subjective universality. By that, Kant had not only complete the whole system but also protected the radical strange work become art. The subjective universality allows people to share their different teste and by share it will automatic average the contemporary view and reflect it back to the universality believes.

               

Nancun Yu

PR. Kyle Grady

PHIL 330: Aesthetics

08^th, Oct. 2014

3.0Reflection Paper (SL)

In previous papers I had classifies that beauty is simply a subjective judgment people make based upon their first reactions. Granted by Hume, Kant had also described the Aesthetic judgments as a test. However, just like Mothersill said, if we accept the regular consequence of taste, (that can only be individually judged) the art become meaningless that does not worth to have any discussion. Because without a “standard”, a prior guiding principles, the discussion about beauty will totally about individual taste, the question will shift to self-preference but left none aesthetically knowledge. Furthermore, if “taste” are totally independently without any concept, the argument about taste can kept going forever about both side convincing each other. Overall, we can make a conclusion that if there are no prior – concept people should not spend time practice discussion beautiful. Identically, in reality, people discussing beautiful things and sharing their taste, therefore, it seems there are already some prior “quality” that people had already admitted.  

Albeit, Hume stated that there are neither good taste nor bad taste about any particular taste if it only stand for itself. He also claimed that there cannot be any standard or prior quality because aesthetic judgment can only be subjective. Granted that taste is only a personal matter, but being subjective does not deny the possibility for people to have a compromised agreement on taste. My idea about having a “good taste” does not mean to have a measurement that separate text into different categories (good or bad). It means to learn what is the majority accepted beautiful. It mendaciously fulfil Kant’s claimed subjective universality. However, in difference with “taste”, the subjective judgment people made. To learn the “good taste” do not involve in the process of making aesthetic judgments, because it does not distinctly any personal taste at all. It is simply a knowledge people should be learning, but does not have to pay attention when they making their own judgment about taste. From my sight, that is how taste actually functions. There definitely are some pre-existed universality agreements people had already subconsciously learned.

Many people might like to ask the question that if there truly is such universal agreement, why people still easily run into disagreement when they discuss their taste with one another. Granted that the unanimity of taste is real, But, as Hume wrote in his essay that people usually misunderstand because the nature of language. It is likely that people end up misunderstand each other and that become the distinction when we communicate. By Kant, in chapter XIII of his “critique of judgment” that “judgments so influenced can either lay no claim at all to any universally valid delight.” Thus, it is understandable that people who got influenced so much by their taste’s substance emotions and denied their agreement on society’s “good taste”. For me, the problem of good people cannot control their emotion have no intention to question whether there is a knowledge about taste. Is just like the fact that people might learned some fact, but they might not remember and practice it all the time. On the other hand it is also allowed that people can always critique the pre-learned knowledge, it also applies to the knowledge about “good taste”.

It is also likely that people would want to ask why they should spend time study the majority people’s taste. There are many reasons for that, first of all, the individuals can use the “good taste” as a fiduciary object to identify how difference is their own taste in comparison with what the society been most accepted. And by aware their own difference it helps each individual when they critique their own taste and others. Secondly, the society standard of taste created a universal similarity in taste that allow people to discuss what they think is beautiful. It allows people other than artist to involve more with art. Thirdly, to learn the “good taste” help people live better. It is a common knowledge that human beings must live in a very close community to survive. Thus, there are many common agreement people must agree to in order to keep the community system running. Identically disagreement can usually end up with violence, whereas to have a “good taste” decrease the chance to have a disagreement with others. Last, by admitted to the standard called “good taste”. The society has partially declared a guideline that prevents artist create an extreme strange art work. Just like Socrates had mentioned, art can be dangerous. Thus, by present a society standard, it limited the path of the artist and keeps art in a safe position.

Objections to Kant's Undue Restriction of the Aesthetic Experience

Prior to these readings, I’d never given much thought to what makes taste “good” or “bad,” instead believing, like Mothersill seems to, that if judgements of beauty don’t adhere to a priori principles, there being no such principles, taste would be a wildly subjective concept and not worth much to anyone. Presumably, what is good or what is beautiful would not be discernible through the lens of taste, taste being only a matter of preference, tied more to considerations of pleasure than of appreciation (however linked these may in fact be). I likewise was of the opinion, like Margolis as cited by Mothersill, that “it is altogether conceivable that one likes what one judges to be artistically poor or fails to appreciate what one knows to be excellent”- that taste was the unimportant matter of me liking “The Room” (which I find to be a terrible work of art), and disliking “Lost in Translation,” (which I found to be quite a strong work of art, all together). But this formulation of the definition of taste it appears was misguided and undeveloped, for after clarification, I’ve come to the conclusion that philosophers critical of some of Kant’s widely accepted aesthetic claims (such as Dickie) have more enlightening and useful ideas to offer.

Dickie’s opposition to the notion of “aesthetic attitude” opens up the realm of meaningful art appreciation to more than just critics or the highly trained, breaking down barriers of elitism which have subjugated ordinary people in their attempts to identify with or come into more respected relations with artwork. If the aesthetic attitude is only a misconception which can only really be called focused attention, then anyone can engage in it. However, this could be seen as devaluing the attention paid to an artwork, since if anyone can engage it, some psychic results will be “lesser” (consider the example of the poem and the rugby forward). Dickie can account for these “lesser” interpretations of artwork while still retaining the egalitarian stance he has adopted by claiming that though anyone can engage an artwork in with focused attention, indubitably there will be those who are distracted without knowledge of their own distraction, leading to subjects who describe their own experience as focused attention incorrectly. Taste to Dickie is then not a sliding scale of bad and good taste, but in its normative identity residing only in the non-distracted judgements of an artwork, and I believe this to be quite hopeful.

Dickie also allows for artwork to encompass a moral element, something which imbues artwork with more meaning, instead of less. While Kant would preclude a fully realized artwork from being seen as art if there is moral interest in it, Dickie makes the compelling case that an artwork can still be evaluated as an artwork even after considerable intellection. According to him,(channelling Pole), the aesthetic experience extends beyond the mere moment of recognition. This is certainly a more tenable idea when considering more thematically complex works such as films or novels. In order to be stricken by the beauty of a well constructed novel, one must contemplate it. When I finished McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, I was not immediately stricken by a sense of beauty- in fact, it ends horrifically with the hero defiled and the villain triumphant- but after days of thinking endlessly of the implications of its plot and themes I have no doubt that it is the most beautiful novel I’ve ever read. According to Kant, this aesthetic experience of mine is illegitimate, and the object of that experience unworthy of being called beautiful. Dickie, by allowing that our initial experience is not complete until full contemplation has occurred, allows for more complex works of art (works which I find incredibly compelling) to be allowed into the artistic fold, and he does this by allowing Kant’s realm of the good to necessarily enter into our considerations. The allowance of considerations of the good also can help us appreciate less complex works, such as paintings of songs. The beauty of Rage Against the Machine’s “On Rodeo” (controversial, I know) can come not only from the form of the song and the relation of its parts, but from the political, social, and ethical messages of the song as well, making our experience of the beautiful all the richer.