APPROVED: David Kaplan, Committee Pete A.Y. Gunter, Committee Member Sarah E. Fredericks, Committee Member Doug Anderson, Chair of the Department of

Philosophy and Religion David Holdeman, Dean of the College of Liberal

Arts and Social Sciences Victor Prybutok, Dean of the Toulouse

Graduate School

ART UNFETTERED: BERGSON AND A FLUID CONCEPTION OF ART

Seth Aaron Thompson, B.A., M.A.

Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS

August 2018

Thompson, Seth Aaron. Art Unfettered: Bergson and a Fluid Conception of Art. Doctor of

Philosophy (Philosophy), August 2018, 141 pp., references, 53 titles.

This dissertation applies philosopher Henri Bergson’s methodology and his ideas of

duration and creativity to the definitional problem of art, particularly as formulated within

analytic aesthetics. In mid-20th century, analytic aesthetics rejected essentialist definitions of

art, but within a decade, two predominant definitions of art emerged as answers to the anti-

essentialism of the decade prior: functionalism and proceduralism. These two definitions define

art, respectively, in terms of the purpose that art serves and in terms of the conventions in

place that confer the status of art onto artifacts. Despite other important definitions (including

historical and intentionalist definitions), much of the literature in the analytic field of aesthetics

center on the functional/procedural dichotomy, and this dichotomy is an exclusive one insofar

as the two definitions appear incompatible with each other when it comes to art. I use

Bergson’s methodology to demonstrate that the tension between functionalism and

proceduralism is an artificial one. In turn, abandoning the strict dichotomy between these two

definitions of art opens the way for a more fluid conception of art. Using Bergson’s application

of duration and creativity to problems of laughter and morality, I draw parallels to what a

Bergsonian characterization would entail.

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Copyright 2018

by

Seth Aaron Thompson

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My doctoral studies at University of North Texas began nearly a decade ago, and in that

time, I’ve met too numerous a mentor, friend, colleague, acquaintance, and student to

adequately account for the rich relationships contributing to my growth. However, I want to

take this opportunity to acknowledge those who have most directly contributed to this project.

My committee deserves my utmost gratitude for their untiring guidance. First, I want to

thank Sarah Fredericks, who served as my initial dissertation chair before taking a professorship

at University of Chicago. Her meticulous feedback helped me sift through an early pile of

loosely-related ideas and find a coherent focus. I would also like to thank David Kaplan, who

stepped in as my chair despite having a significant workload to shoulder. He offered thoughtful

criticisms that will shape the direction of my research for years to come. And of course, I want

to thank Pete A.Y. Gunter. In addition to his being an eminent philosopher in his field, he is also

an uncommonly generous man.

I thank my family for leasing me to academia for the last decade. Additionally, despite

the heavy burdens that come along with a doctoral candidacy, my friends helped me keep it a

labor of love. I thank Hunter Wild for his fascinating conversations about art that led me back to

aesthetics. My arguments were tempered against the thoughtful criticisms and questions from

Douglas Smith, who forced me to draw connections I’d failed to see. At various stages

Alexandria Poole, Jennifer Rowland, Deacon Newhouse, Kelli Barr, and Matt Cooper all talked

me through dilemmas I encountered in my arguments and helped keep me sane.

Lastly, I want to thank Bunny Parker-Thompson for reconnecting to humanity in my

darkest hours.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................... iii

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 1

1.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1

1.2 Bergson and Defining Art ........................................................................................ 7

1.3 Chapter Outlines ................................................................................................... 11

CHAPTER 2. THE CHALLENGE OF CREATIVITY IN DEFINING ART .................................................. 14

2.1 Defining Art within Analytic Aesthetics ................................................................ 14

2.2 Weitz and Beginning of Analytic Aesthetics ......................................................... 16

2.2.1 Conceptual Argument as a Closed Concept of Art ................................... 17

2.2.2 “Family Resemblance” Argument as Open Concept of Art ...................... 19

2.3 Elements of Bergson’s Philosophy ........................................................................ 21

2.3.1 Establishing the Significance of Duration in Bergson’s Philosophy .......... 22

2.3.2 The Nature of Creativity and the Status of the Possible in Bergson ........ 30

2.4 Bergson and Weitz on Defining Art ...................................................................... 34

2.4.1 Distinguishing between Realism and Essentialism ................................... 35

2.4.2 Implications for Defining Art ..................................................................... 39

CHAPTER 3. RELATIONAL DEFINITIONS ........................................................................................ 42

3.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 42

3.2 Relational Definitions and Bergson’s Methodology ............................................. 43

3.2.1 Davies’s Two Theses about Relational Theories ....................................... 45

3.2.2 Procedural/Functional Dualism ................................................................ 47

3.3 Deleuze on Bergson’s Three-Rule Methodology .................................................. 50

3.3.1 Disorder and the Emergence of Two Orders ............................................ 56

3.3.2 The Denial of Disorder in Bergson’s Philosophy ....................................... 57

3.3.3 Emergence of Two Orders follows from the Impossibility of Disorder .... 62

3.4 Application of the Two Orders to Philosophical Dilemmas .................................. 69

3.5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 77

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CHAPTER 4. FUNCTIONALISM, PROCEDURALISM, AND THE ROLE OF TIME ................................ 79

4.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 79

4.2 Beardsley’s Functionalism .................................................................................... 79

4.3 Dickie’s Institutional (Procedural) Theory of Art .................................................. 90

4.4 Historical Considerations ...................................................................................... 97 CHAPTER 5. DURATION IN PRACTICE .......................................................................................... 102

5.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 102

5.2 Defining Laughter as Fluid Concept .................................................................... 105

5.2.1 Precision for Laughter ............................................................................. 105

5.2.2 Recipe for Laughter ................................................................................. 109

5.2.3 From Laughter to Art .............................................................................. 116

5.3 Morality and Religion .......................................................................................... 117

5.3.1 Closed and Open Morality ...................................................................... 117

5.3.2 Lessons to be Drawn ............................................................................... 127

5.4 Closing Comments on a Bergsonian Conception of Art ...................................... 131 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................ 139

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction

In Bohumil Hrabal’s novella, Too Loud a Solitude, the narrator, Hanta, lives in

Czechoslovakia laboring under the dictates of Soviet-imposed communism. Hanta works in a

basement where he compacts paper and books for recycling. His profession forces him to

annihilate printed ideas and philosophies, much the way that – as Hrabal would have his reader

understand – history annihilates peoples and principalities. In the sewer system below his little

basement, Hanta visits with two former professors who, perhaps as punishment, are forced to

clean filth and refuse from the sewers of Prague. Despite their predicament, these two

academics set about their menial tasks while speculating over the motivations of two warring

clans of rats, theorizing about the nature of political animals in the face of war and destruction.

The irony is lost on the two effete intellectuals: a lifetime committed to inert ideas – a parody

on what was meant to save humanity.

Hrabal pairs this satirical episode with Hanta’s drunken hallucinations, in which he sees

Jesus and Lao-tzu joining the recurring struggle of compacting paper and books. While fixating

on Jesus and Lao-tzu alternately climbing and sinking on the bales being compressed, Hanta

claims:

[I] watched Jesus, an ardent young man intent on changing the world, rise up and take Lao-tze’s place at the summit, while the old man looked on submissively, using the return to the sources to line his eternity; I watched Jesus cast a spell of prayer on reality and lead it in the direction of miracle, while Lao-tze followed the laws of nature along the Tao, the only Way to learned ignorance…I kept my eyes glued to young Jesus, all

2

ardor amidst a group of youths and pretty girls, and the lonely Lao-tze, looking only for a worthy grave.”1

In part, Hanta’s comments on the two men imply that the age of great figures should be

considered when contemplating their philosophies. Youthful Jesus, who presumably died at 33,

gives the reader the life principle – the redemptive promise of eternal survival: the miracle. On

the other hand, old Lao-tzu shows the reader entropy and resignation to death.

However, these two figures represent more than mere attitudes about life, more than

adolescent optimism and hope contrasted with geriatric cynicism and defeat. Jesus represents

what Hrabal calls “progressus ad futurum” and Lao-tzu, “regressus ad originem.”2 These

polarized directions, seen in the hallucinations of the two iconic figures, indicate the struggle

toward the future and the pull of the past, between the exalted glory of a living eternity against

the sinking collapse into a quiet coffin. Hrabal associates with Jesus the idea that the future

holds the hope of an eternal reunion with God, which diminishes the significance of the present

moment. As for Lao-tzu, the Way represents a “return to the sources” of all things,

deemphasizing the present in favor of a return to the earth. Between these two poles is the

current moment, denuded of its meaning and value: a wasteland of spent possibility from the

position of the past, while from the vantage of the future, unrealized potential. Lost in this

account is any hope of recovering the present moment’s relationship to progress – a Janus-

faced gaze into past and future horizons, incapable of introspection.

1 Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude, trans. Michael Henry Heim (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers: San Diego, 1990), 33-34. 2 Ibid., 40.

3

The struggle is to characterize the present in the face of undulating tides of experience:

“regressus ad originem,” receding to the source, and “progressus ad futurum,” the forward

wash of the future. The present is consumed by one or both directions. Hanta understands that

the history of ideas he works at destroying every day in his book compacter depends on two

movements: up and down (or, perhaps, forward and backward). Stasis is the only middle term

imaginable for such a perverse syllogism; it is the only mediate position between, what Thoreau

called, “the meeting of two eternities, past and future.”3 Stasis describes the everyday Czech

world in which Hanta lives apart from his compacting. The menial destruction of time and ideas

consumes his world so completely that Prague becomes a lifeless backdrop – a setting removed

from time and relevance.

These two episodes – the sewer-cleaning emeriti and the vacillating divinities – illustrate

two connections with Henri Bergson’s philosophy. The first involves the very starting point for

Bergson’s project: his recognition that real problems in philosophy are rarely uncovered but are

often invented. He states:

Discovery, or uncovering, has to do with what already exists actually or virtually; it was therefore certain to happen sooner or later. Invention gives being to what did not exist; it might never have happened. Already in mathematics and still more in metaphysics, the effort of invention consists most often in raising the problem, in creating the terms in which it will be stated. The stating and solving of the problem are here very close to being equivalent; the truly great problems are set forth only when they are solved.4 Bergson redirects philosophy’s attention to the uncovering of proper questions (with

answers entailed) and to the analysis of ways in which various invented problems stifle

3 Henry Thoreau, Walden and Civil Disobedience (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1966), 11. 4 Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind, trans. Mabelle Andison (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2007), 37.

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understanding. This capacity to invent and uncover problems is rooted in one of the two

faculties available to humans: the intellect.5 For Bergson, the intellect is applied to the inorganic

world of matter, and its practical and theoretical aims entangle it in instrumental concerns.

That is, people apply the intellect onto the world to solve problems generated from need. If

necessity is the mother of invention (which Bergson might not dispute), then to extend the

familial metaphor, false problems are invention’s illegitimate offspring. Gilles Deleuze

characterizes this aspect of Bergson’s philosophy by stating that “the history of man, from the

theoretical as much as from the practical point of view is that of the construction of problems.

It is here that humanity makes its own history, and the becoming conscious of that activity is

like the conquest of freedom.”6

On Bergson’s account, much of the history of philosophy unfolds as a series of

“nonexistent” and “badly stated problems.”7 Consider trying to convince laypeople that they

never act freely and that their actions are ever and always determined by biological and/or

social necessities. The total denial of freedom conflicts so sharply with most people’s

experience of the world as to seem ridiculous to them. Of course, this alone does not

disconfirm determinism’s legitimacy but highlights an interesting feature about Bergson’s idea

of invention: it is only once someone accepts the primacy of concepts over and above one’s

own lived experience that many philosophical dilemmas become intelligible. The two

professors wasting away in the sewers under Prague illustrate lives committed to ideas and

5 Bergson’s primary dualism contrasts the intellect with intuition, as I explore in the next chapter. 6 Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (New York: Zone Books, 1988), 16. 7 Deleuze characterizes the first step of Bergson’s methodology using these terms. Bergsonism, 17-21.

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philosophies that are removed from the lived world. The former professors are so committed to

the primacy of ideas that they allow abstract philosophies to suspend their reality and to

endow their inane predicament with fictive significance. While their theorizing might save them

from the horror of their daily routine, it does nothing to change the larger world.

Likewise, the hallucinations of Jesus and Lao-tzu also illustrate Bergson’s trouble with

the invention of problems. Hanta compacts ideas and philosophies every day and fixates so

intently on this activity that it becomes his obsession: the living world around him freezes in

stasis. However, Hanta’s occupation points to another pressing feature of Bergson’s philosophy.

The two hallucinations represent two directions, both in time and in comportment toward life.

Bergson frequently discusses two orders from which the problems of philosophy emerge. In his

most celebrated work, Creative Evolution, Bergson identifies two movements in the universe:

ascendance and descendance. After endorsing a metaphysics of becoming, he distances

inorganic matter, which the intellect shapes for its own needs and purposes, from the

continuous flow of becoming, or “duration,” and describes the two movements in the following

way:

Matter, we have said, is weighted with geometry; and matter, the reality which descends, endures only by its connection with that which ascends. But life and consciousness are this very ascension. When once we have grasped them in their essence by adopting their movement, we understand how the rest of reality is derived from them.8 This passage follows from lengthy explorations of Bergson’s metaphysics playing out in

an emergent evolutionary theory. However, even without the elaborate framework preceding

8 Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell, (Mineola, NY: Dover Publishers, 1998), 369.

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this passage, one notices the multidirectional nature of Bergson’s evolutionary schema. He

conceives life without impediment as an ascending, upward movement. Inorganic matter, on

the other hand, descends and becomes an obstacle for life’s ascent.

Here Bergson’s two movements remind the reader of another famous Czech author’s

comment on a similar phenomenon: Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being.9 The

“lightness” in the title refers to the upward ascendancy of consciousness or spirit (or in

Bergson’s case, life), which is weighted by the “unbearable” singularity of every being at every

unrepeatable moment. From these two movements, Kundera grapples with the paradox of

crippling immobility within absolute freedom: what significance can one’s life and actions have

in the face of an ever-changing world that devours time? Within an ever-changing world,

Kundera’s challenge is to explain where one finds guidance over one’s actions without a meter

stick to measure experiences. Where does one find meaning without external reference? How

can one give priority to a life lived with one set of possibilities if all possibilities are ultimately

swallowed into the sand-sinking past? Kundera believes that there is meaning to be had.

Nevertheless, for Bergson, instead of merely existential possibility, his two movements

address the material contingencies of the universe: matter’s descent impedes on life’s ascent.

The material conditions of nature tether life to matter. Hanta’s hallucinations also struggle

against a similar dichotomy, except that the movements are not novel, as is the case in Kundera

and Bergson. Jesus shows the life principle, the ascent to eternity; Lao-tzu shows the return to

the soil, matter extinguishing possibility. For Hrabal, the two directions of the book compacter

9 Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, trans. Michael Henry Heim (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1984).

7

championed by the two religious icons are fixed. The descent brings with it destruction; the

ascent brings rebirth. This cycle repeats itself ad infinitum. One sees something of Nietzsche’s

eternal recurrence in this movement.

Hrabal’s masterful novella illustrates a tendency in the history of philosophy to isolate

the dynamic character of life within static, immobile dualisms. Bergson spends his entire career

rifling through the bales of philosophy and finding that dynamic thread lost within the rigid ups

and downs of philosophical routine. He finds a common antagonist to duration in all his

writings: mechanistic philosophy. Mechanism assumes the universe is a closed system with

isolatable parts whose relation to each explains the workings of the cosmos. Mechanism is the

view that one has when the intellect freezes duration into clock time, which amounts to

measuring differences in kind as differences in degree. For Bergson, mechanistic philosophy

plays a significant role in developing the false problems that philosophers pore over. These two

episodes in Hrabal’s novella (of the professors and the hallucinations) illustrate something

important about dichotomies and dualisms as they unfold in the history of philosophy.

Bergson’s own attention to the problems epitomized in Hrabal’s work will be the starting point

of this dissertation’s preoccupation: the definition of art.

1.2 Bergson and Defining Art

Bergson makes frequent use of artistic analogies to illustrate that nature is in

continuous flux and emerging as constant, novel creation. The artist’s relationship to her

creation represents that dynamic, unpredictable creativity at the heart of Bergson’s

metaphysics. Life unfolds as unpredictable developments or movements through durations –

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unpredictable because continuous becoming amounts to unrepeatable experience. While

scientists imagine a strict mechanistic explanation of nature, one sees how such an

unpredictable, vital order is possible much more clearly in the artworld. Does an artist perfectly

predict what she is creating before she has finished? Bergson believes that seemingly well-

planned artworks only become what they are in their creation.10

Despite Bergson’s frequent employment of artistic examples, he never delves

extensively into aesthetics. His primary philosophic interests throughout his lifetime were

epistemological and metaphysical.11 Nevertheless, that Bergson uses art as his primary and

most frequent analogy for his metaphysical conclusions should alert the reader of Bergson’s

belief in art’s distinctive character. He sees in art a process of creation contrary to mechanistic

order. Querulous debates concerning the importance of technique over and above inspiration

in artistic production highlight the difference between mechanism and Bergson’s creativity,

with mechanism aligning with rote technique and Bergson’s emergent, vital order aligning with

inspiration. The compatibility of Bergson’s philosophy with the nature of art leads me to an

important problem in aesthetics: the definitional problem of art.

Art is a malleable concept, which is one of its strengths: it allows for progression and

unanticipated directions in what counts as art. However, art’s malleability also renders the

concept vague and open-ended, allowing for complete lack of boundary between art and non-

art. Avant-garde movements in the mid-twentieth century celebrated many artworks that were

10 This contrasts with Michelangelo’s famous statement: “Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” According to this sentiment, great artworks precede their creation and are awaiting realization from the artist’s work. I compare Bergson’s vital order with mechanistic and teleological explanations in future chapters. 11 I investigate a notable exception on the topic of laughter in the last chapter.

9

indecipherable from ordinary objects and experiences. Traditional definitions of art could not

keep up with the artworld, and several philosophers began denying the possibility of locating

intrinsic, aesthetic properties that all artworks must have. These philosophers denied that art

had any essential qualities by which to define it.

Since then, several philosophers have revisited the definitional problem looking instead

for extrinsic relations by which to define art. The two theories I explore in this dissertation are

procedural and functional definitions: the former define art in terms of the conventions in place

for conferring art status onto artifacts, while the latter defines art in terms of the purpose that

the concept of art serves, or the point of art. I limit the scope of my examination to these two

theories because they establish a dichotomy that plays out in much of the literature and

because, as I will demonstrate in the coming chapters, they provide an entry point for applying

Bergson’s philosophy to problems in aesthetics.12

Just as in Hrabal’s hallucinatory account of Jesus and Lao-Tzu, a dualism emerges

between procedural and functional definitions. Procedural definitions look to the conventions

that go into calling something art. They are, in some respects, a mechanistic account of the

ingredients of art-making, not in any formal properties within the artifact or in the procedures

behind making the physical object (necessarily), but in the procedures and actors that have

been in place in order to finally call something a work of art. This view shares something with

Lao-Tzu’s regressus ad originem, or his return to sources – sources that tell, not just what the

12 In Chapter 3, I elaborate on Stephen Davies’s argument that most tenable definitions of art collapse into one of these types of definition.

10

beginning is, but how movement proceeded from the beginning.13 Conversely, functionalism

looks for the purpose that art serves. These definitions depend on a teleological aim for art. I

align this definition with Jesus’ progressus ad futurum, or the forward movement into the

future. Functional definitions of art conceive of art as having some end toward which the

collective means of art generation lead.

Bergson’s analysis of mechanistic and teleological evolutionary theories informs the

issues arising within the functional and procedural dichotomy. Additionally, just as Hrabal’s rat-

speculating professors pore over false problems in the sewers of Prague, the dualism between

these two definitions of art issues from a badly stated problem. Nevertheless, there is another

feature in the Jesus/Lao-Tzu dualism conspicuously missing in traditional versions of

functionalism and proceduralism: an emphasis on time. In later decades, one finds that more

contemporary versions of both theories develop into historical hybrids, attaching art-historical

significance to either functionalism or proceduralism. The problem with these hybrid versions is

similar to the problem with the two hallucinations: art history either explains the present from

the vantage of past mechanisms and procedures or from the vantage of future ends and

purposes. No room remains for the emergent possibility of art from the vantage of the dynamic

present, which for Bergson, violates something fundamental about art’s character. Present art

freezes in time, loses its dynamic, creative character, and makes sense only in terms of an

externally related past and future: either by the conventions preceding present art or by the

ends to which art aims.

13 In chapters three and four, I discuss historical definitions of art in context with the two primary definitions I treat: functional and procedural.

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1.3 Chapter Outlines

In the remainder of this dissertation, I develop my argument in four steps: 1) I outline

the genesis of analytic philosophy’s fixation on defining art and introduce the relevant concepts

in Bergson’s philosophy, 2) establish Bergson’s methodology in relation to two contemporary

definitions of art, functionalism and proceduralism, 3) apply Bergson’s method to the

paradigmatic versions of these two definitions of art, and 4) anticipate what a Bergsonian

theory of art might look like by examining Bergson’s own approach to defining laughter and

morality. As I mentioned earlier (and will demonstrate in more detail below), Bergson’s

methodology is particularly helpful at identifying false problems. My argument aims at applying

Bergson’s method to the problem of defining art in much the same way as Bergson applied it to

a wide range of philosophical problems.

In Chapter 2, I introduce the definitional problem in analytic aesthetics. I begin with

Morris Weitz’s influential paper on analytic aesthetics and present the two main arguments

that he supplies: conceptual and family resemblance arguments. At its core, Weitz’s concern is

that essential definitions of art render impotent its creative capacities. He rejects essential

definitions of art in favor of a nominal, resemblance theory. Weitz’s anti-essentialism offers a

suitable opening to introduce Henri Bergson’s philosophy. While Bergson never explicitly

addresses the definition of art, his view of creativity as “ceaseless novelty” and his rejection of

“fixed concepts” gives evidence that he would not support an essential definition of art, at least

as a set of necessary and sufficient conditions.14 I spend the remainder of the chapter

14 While I argue that Bergson rejects rigid definitions for mobile concepts, he might very well support the idea that art has an essence.

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introducing the reader to key notions in Bergson’s philosophy and highlighting points of entry

with his philosophy and the problem of defining art.

In Chapter 3, I explore relational definitions of art, which developed in response to the

anti-essentialism of the 1950s. I focus my attention on two theories: functionalism and

proceduralism, the former defining art in terms of the purpose that art serves and the latter

defining art in terms of the conventions for art being granted that status. I cite Stephen Davies’s

argument that these two definitions form a kind of incompatible dualism. While there are other

definitions beyond these two, Davies argues that they either fail as stand-alone definitions, or

collapse into a version of functionalism or proceduralism. It is in the context of this dualism that

I introduce Bergson’s methodology. Both Gilles Deleuze and Pete A.Y. Gunter offer approaches

which made it possible to apply Bergson’s philosophy to problems. I draw most heavily on

Deleuze’s method for the most part because of his thoroughgoing and articulate explication of

Bergson’s methodology. I cite Gunter’s verificationist approach as a compatible and helpful

means of addressing the dualism of functionalism and proceduralism in aesthetics.

In Chapter 4, equipped with two explanations of Bergson’s methodology, I explore the

various problems that emerge within the functionalism/proceduralism dualism. I argue, in line

with Deleuze’s methodological outline, that the dualism observed by Davies emerges as a

“badly stated problem.” To demonstrate this, I consider the two most paradigmatic versions of

both theories: Monroe Beardsley’s functional definition and George Dickie’s institutional

(procedural) theory. I apply Bergson’s methodology to both to illustrate the drawbacks of

insisting art have necessary and sufficient conditions. These traditional versions (functional and

procedural definitions) make evident the lack of historical context in either. In fact, they

13

facilitate the deficit. I introduce Arthur Danto’s posthistorical theory as an example of a position

which emerged, in part, as a reaction to the tensions between and deficits within the

functional/procedural dualism.

In Chapter 5, I explore what kinds of characteristics a fluid concept of art might have, on

Bergsonian grounds. Using two of Bergson’s own examples, I trace what his strategy looks like

in practice. In his essay on laughter, Bergson approaches the definition of laughter

methodically, and in his characterization, he leaves a key to conceiving art. Additionally, in his

The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, Bergson explores the nature of morality. He raises

similar concerns about defining morality and finds malleable concepts rooted in his philosophy

of becoming. I apply the methods and insights of both examples to art and anticipate the

beginnings of a Bergonsian characterization of art.

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CHAPTER 2

THE CHALLENGE OF CREATIVITY IN DEFINING ART

2.1 Defining Art within Analytic Aesthetics

The story of contemporary analytic aesthetics begins with a peculiar context for defining

terms. Various movements in the 19th century inclined toward grandiose metaphysical

speculation. Whether one is looking at Hegel’s metaphysical dialectics, the rise of German

Idealism, Marxism, or the speculative philosophy of F.H. Bradley in the wake of British

Romanticism, thinkers from all over Europe constructed holistic philosophies and systems in

response to the empirical emphasis of Enlightenment thinking. By the turn of the 20th century,

philosophy’s tendency toward speculative theorizing reached its flash point, and philosophers

ignited by their frustrations with the phantasms of speculative philosophical programs sought

clarity and conciseness. G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell are two of the prominent

philosophers who gave voice to an approach that aimed at analyzing concepts rather than

building philosophical systems. This shift from speculation to conceptual analysis emphasized

the importance of language. The linguistic turn offered the ability “to criticize and clarify”15

concepts while denying philosophers the metaphysical license characteristic of much of 19th

century philosophy.

Richard Shusterman identifies two primary “modes of analysis” in analytic philosophy.

The first reduces concepts to their simplest parts – a concept’s necessary and sufficient

conditions. The other mode of analysis clears up muddled or ambiguous concepts.16 This

15 Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, ed. David Pears (New York: Routledge Classics, 2010), 147. 16 Richard Shusterman, Analytic Aesthetics (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1989) 4.

15

secondary role finds its most explicit voice in Wittgenstein’s later work. Shusterman suggests

that analytic aesthetics emerges from this second type of analysis.17 If this is the case, then the

contemporary problem of defining art develops out of clarifying our ordinary and technical uses

of the term. Philosophers like Morris Weitz and Paul Ziff set the definitional task of art as a

problem of conceptual clarification, explicitly rejecting the first mode of analysis as an unfruitful

goal for aesthetics.18 However, both modes of analysis remained important for defining art

within this tradition, as the next wave of philosophers picked up the primary task of analysis,

seeking, if only cautiously, necessary conditions for the concept of art.19

In this chapter, I introduce the definitional problem of art as articulated by Morris Weitz.

Weitz defends a version of anti-essentialism regarding the concept of art. I present his

arguments in two main parts: a conceptual argument and a resemblance theory. While several

of Weitz’s contemporaries made similar arguments, Weitz’s argument stresses the fundamental

disagreement between him and his successors who take up the task of defining art. This

disagreement opens a middle course in which I place Bergson, which means I must introduce

some of Bergson’s ideas. Once introduced, I argue that Bergson’s metaphysics agrees with the

conclusion of the conceptual argument (that there are no necessary and sufficient conditions of

art) and that they agree for the same reason (to preserve creativity, even if in different senses).

However, Bergson’s metaphysics contrasts with the Weitz’s resemblance theory. I intend to

make this disagreement obvious by casting the discussion in terms of nominalism and realism

17 Ibid., 4-5. 18 See Morris Weitz, “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15, no. 1 (September 1956): 27-35 and Paul Ziff, “The Task of Defining a Work of Art,” The Philosophical Review, 62 (1953): 58-78. 19 In the next chapter, I outline several of these attempts.

16

and by comparing Weitz’s “closed” and “open” concepts to Bergson’s own use of the same

terms in relation to morality and religion.

2.2 Weitz and Beginning of Analytic Aesthetics

The direction of the contemporary definitional problem owes a great deal to several

Wittgenstein-inspired philosophers writing around the middle of the 20th century, including

Morris Weitz. Weitz’s role in this history is perhaps overstated especially considering other of

his contemporaries supplying similar types of arguments.20 However, starting an account of

analytic aesthetics anywhere other than with Weitz would be inappropriate given how

important his arguments have been. He argues that an essentialist definition of art – which

endeavors after the first mode of analysis in seeking necessary and sufficient properties of art –

is ultimately flawed.21 He begins with a brief overview of various definitions of art, as well as

some criticisms of each (circular reasoning, “untestable”, excluding too much of what should be

included as art, etc.).22 However, Weitz wants to go further than simply cataloguing the failures

of existing definitions; he argues that the project is flawed because it fails to ask the right

questions. Instead of asking “what is art” (a peculiarly realist preoccupation), one should ask

“What sort of concept is ‘art’”.23

20 In addition to Paul Ziff (see note 18), see W.B. Gallie, “Art as an Essentially Contested Concept,” The Philosophical Quarterly, 6 (1956): 97-114 and William Kennick, “Does Traditional Aesthetics Rest on a Mistake?,” Mind, 67 (1958): 317-334. 21 Weitz, “The Role of Theory,” 28. 22 Weitz, 30. 23 Ibid.

17

Weitz’s original argument has two main components: a conceptual argument, which

rejects the possibility of defining art in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions; and a

“family resemblance” argument, which explains how to understand categorical criteria within

the arts. After all, if his first argument holds and there are no necessary and sufficient

conditions, Weitz must explain how it is that artists and the wider artworld still meaningfully

classify, employ, and recognize artworks in terms of various genres and sub-genres. He believes

this task can be accomplished by appealing to some version of Wittgenstein’s “family

resemblances.”24

2.2.1 Conceptual Argument as a Closed Concept of Art

Weitz summarizes the conclusion of, what Stephen Davies identifies as, his conceptual

argument by stating the following:

[T]he very expansive, adventurous character of art, its ever-present changes and novel creations, makes it logically impossible to ensure any set of defining properties. We can, of course, choose to close the concept. But to do this with “art” or “tragedy” or “portraiture,” etc., is ludicrous since it forecloses on the very conditions of creativity in the arts.25

What Weitz associates with the foreclosure of the “conditions of creativity” is the apparent

novelty of the arts. That artistic conventions, practices, purposes, products, etc., evolve in the

arts is what characterizes its creativity, and the absence of this creative capacity denudes art of

its own dynamic character. Weitz is certainly not the first to comment on this feature of novelty

in art, but, significantly, Weitz commends novelty not simply as a feature of good art. That is, he

24 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, $66. 25 Weitz, “Role of Theory”. P. 32 (emphasis added).

18

is not concerned here with the evaluative task of differentiating between good and bad art

through a criterion of novelty. Weitz’s claim is more radical. He argues that the expectation that

art be a vehicle for novel constructions and creations is a comment on the classificatory task of

defining art and, further, an indictment of any closed definition of art where radical novelty is

impossible. Newness in this sense does not simply serve as a gauge for good or appropriate

aesthetic judgments; rather, it is the fundamental quality necessary for artworks to be artworks

in the first place.

Weitz believes that his denial of any jointly necessary and sufficient properties of art

renders logically impossible the goal of providing a definition of art.26 As Stephen Davies shows,

Weitz makes a “conceptual point” against even the possibility of an essential definition of art:

any essential definition of art treats art as a closed concept – or a concept with rigid definition –

which violates the creative nature of art.27 When jointly necessary and sufficient conditions are

posited as definitive of art, the concept of art can no longer be corrected, ratified, or even

simply evolve. Art becomes unable to reach beyond the parameters of its own definition: it

functions as deductive logic does.

Consider transitivity. If A enjoys some relation to B, and B enjoys the same relation to C,

then A must bear said relation to C. The relation that one infers between A and C is closed in the

sense that the conditions in which transitivity applies are fixed, and no other conditions will do.

If one treats artworks as closed concepts, then the conditions for something to be an artwork

would also be fixed. Davies comments that according to Weitz “[a] definition of art would

26 Weitz, “Role of Theory,” 28. 27 Stephen Davies, Definitions of Art (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991), 6.

19

foreclose on future creativity” because it would deny the possibility for art to challenge

preceding artistic developments.28 Weitz points to the history and development of art as

evidence against the idea of art as a closed concept. For Weitz, simply surveying what it is that

artists do illustrates that much, if not most, of art history is a story of reactions against previous

expectations. At very least, this is a feature of art that cannot be accounted for within an

essential definition. As such, art is more accurately described as an open concept – a concept

that is capable of reinterpretation and multiple, (possibly) incompatible definitions.29

2.2.2 “Family Resemblance” Argument as Open Concept of Art

Because Weitz rejects art as a closed concept, he must offer some account of the

artworld’s regular and seemingly meaningful classifications of art. He does this by drawing on

Wittgenstein. Weitz argues that (contra essentialist definitions) a version of Wittgenstein’s

“family resemblance” argument should be adopted when classifying art. Weitz articulates the

“family resemblance” argument as an indication of how people actually adjudicate between

status claims of artifacts as artworks. Instead of appealing to some set of conditions to

determine whether an artwork is an exemplary instance of its kind, one instead judges artifacts

against a backdrop of other artworks of the same kind that are deemed exemplary. Weitz

points to Wittgenstein’s treatment of defining ‘games’ to illustrate that the same method

should be applied to artworks.30 Just as the designation of ‘games’ offers no immutable

28 Davies, Definitions, 6. 29 Weitz, 31-2. 30 Weitz, 31.

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conditions or rules that capture every use of that concept, art also operates as a malleable,

open concept that captures a wide set of highly disparate media and tokens of different media.

With a novel, for example, there is no unchallengeable quality or set of qualities that

any and all novels must have, though a piece of writing earning the designation might

demonstrate any number of recognizable similarities with other novels. However, none of the

qualities serve as necessary and/or sufficient conditions for achieving the status of a novel; they

simply alert the reader to what Wittgenstein calls a ‘family resemblance,’31: some common

trait(s) that need not be present in any and all cases, but which are nevertheless, indicative of

many members of the family of exemplars. Weitz seizes on this distinction to suggest how one

can understand one’s impression that some art is indeed more exemplary than other art while

resisting treating art as a closed, static concept.

According to Weitz, whether X is a novel “is no factual, but rather a decision problem,

where the verdict turns on whether or not we en-large our set of conditions for applying the

concept.”32 In answering such classificatory questions in art, one does not rely on factual data,

or if so, one will be quite disappointed with the lack of conformity between the details and

characteristics within a range of artifacts widely accepted as artworks. Weitz also claims that

the novel, which he terms a “sub-concept of art,” is no different from other sub-concepts of art,

like tragedies, sculptures, impressionist paintings, jazz dance, etc.33 Every sub-concept of art

confronts a similar lack of factual evidence to identify properties that make artifacts artworks

31 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, $66. 32 Weitz, 32. 33 Weitz, 32.

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within that sub-concept. Instead, the designation of an artwork as an artifact amounts to a

decision as to whether or not the observer can find enough similar trademarks in this particular

artifact that resemble other artworks within the sub-concept of art to which it most closely

belongs.

2.3 Elements of Bergson’s Philosophy

Weitz’s anti-essential conclusion regarding art (based on his concerns to preserve

creativity) is compatible with Bergson’s position on defining art. This claim is complicated by the

fact that Bergson never explicitly broached the subject of aesthetics or philosophy of art.

However, Bergson leaves resources in his works to build a coherent Bergsonian position on the

definition of art. Additionally, art and the artist are Bergson’s most frequent examples when

articulating his metaphysics of becoming. Due to the complex nature of Bergson’s philosophy, I

must first address some of the recurring elements of his metaphysics and offer some

explanations on how I interpret and employ Bergson’s ideas. Once I have introduced those of

Bergson’s concepts relevant to present purposes, I will return to Weitz’s anti-essentialism.

I have shown that Weitz opposes essentialism and that one of his arguments claims that

defining art with necessary and sufficient conditions eliminates creativity. While Weitz does not

define creativity, he assumes that it is antagonistic to formulaic practices and that it is important

in novelty-preserving activities. Bergson’s understanding of creativity takes seriously Weitz's

concern about formulaic art. The vehicle for creativity in Bergson's philosophy is the concept of

“durée”, hereafter duration. In his early work, Bergson’s duration is associated with the

psychological experience of the passage of time, which contrasts with a concept of time that

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sees moments as distinct, homogenous units, set side-by-side. Bergson associates the latter

with our tendency to find spatial relations between different times, perhaps in the guise of a

succession of events. It seems natural enough to conceive of time in this way; people chronicle

their own stories with beginnings, middles, and ends, after all. However, Bergson argues this

conception of time (which catalogues moments as external from each other) fails to capture our

actual experience in and through time, as we will see. Moreover, Bergson’s later work extends

its treatment of duration beyond merely the psychical, subjective experience of time, arguing

that duration is a feature of reality – indeed, the key feature.34

Bergson’s notion of duration presents a unique understanding of creativity, which is

duration’s most telling quality (and the most relevant quality for the present endeavor). The

creativity involved within duration is “ceaseless novelty”. Reality, in this view, is ever-emerging

possibility, and it is always unpredictable. I argue that this is compatible with Weitz’s anti-

essential views, while being incompatible with Weitz’s anti-realism.

2.3.1 Establishing the Significance of Duration in Bergson’s Philosophy

Every aspect of Bergson's philosophy begins with his understanding of time as duration.

Bergson defines duration35 as a continuity of experience, as opposed to a unity or a multiplicity

34 Bergson’s notion of duration evolves. The later, more developed notion of time as metaphysical culminates in his collection of essays, The Creative Mind, trans. Mabelle Andison (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2007). 35 Bergson defines “duration” in several ways, sometimes emphasizing the continuity of the past within the present, sometimes the irreversibility of time, and sometimes, still, with the unpredictable creativity of duration. I do not see any good reason to take Bergson’s various emphases of duration as incompatible with one another. For my present purposes, I follow what I take to be Bergson’s strategy and focus on the creativity of duration.

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of identical, homogenous temporal units36 whose aggregate is tallied after their succession.

After comparing conscious states to a point moving on a line Bergson writes:

Pure duration is the form which the succession of our conscious states assumes when our ego lets itself live, when it refrains from separating its present state from its former states. For this purpose it need not be entirely absorbed in the passing sensation or idea; for then, on the contrary, it would no longer endure. Nor need it forget its former states: it is enough that, in recalling these states, it does not set them alongside its actual state as one point alongside another, but forms both the past and the present states into an organic whole, as happens when we recall the notes of a tune melting, so to speak, into one another.37 Duration explains the passage of time, but it also assumes that something of the past

carries into the present. Bergson argues that a point moving on a line is unaware of the line

only once it is removed from its passage. In the quote above, Bergson cites one of his favorite

examples to illustrate this: a melody or “tune melting”. Just as in a continuous melody there are

no clear boundary lines between one note and another, duration interpenetrates other

durations. Conscious states in their enduring, interpenetrating quality only relate externally to

other conscious states when one conceives of the time as spatial; however, when looking into

one’s own experience, one finds that past, present, and future are internally related to each

other: that this moment swells with the previous moment.

Bergson directs his readers toward introspection for immediate evidence of duration.

He identifies the faculty by which one comes to know duration as “intuition.” Intuition gives

36 I do not investigate the debates between perdurantism and endurantism because both conceive time as geometric, the former maintaining that something goes through a series of discontinuous temporal states (multiplicity) while the latter maintains that an object is present in the totality of its temporal existence (unity). Bergson's continuity of duration is neither, but it is the understanding's operating on duration that enables both positions. 37 Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will, in Key Writings, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson and John Mularkey (New York: Continuum 2002), 60 (his emphasis).

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one access to one’s own duration – one’s own continuous fluidity of consciousness. It is by

analogy that Bergson moves from introspective, psychological intuition to the metaphysical

access of other durations. Intuition is immediately given in experience, and an intuition resists

symbolic representation. The moment one tries to describe an intuition in words, one fixes

something that is characterized by immobility and which lacks fixity. The endurance of duration

as well as the inter-connectivity of past and present leads Bergson to distinguish duration from

spatial time. Spatial time develops from our discursive tendency to conceptualize duration and

to describe it.

To illustrate Bergson’s notion of duration, I draw on an example from Sartre.38 Sartre

has his reader imagine writing the word “independent.” He argues that, halfway through

writing “independent,” a kind of certainty is associated with the completion of the word, even

though the word has not been produced yet, and even though something might change to

thwart the writer in his or her task. This example can be used to illustrate what Bergson has in

mind with duration. When one sees time as homogeneous, externally related events, each

individual letter in the act of writing is only related in a kind of sequence. However, when

someone is writing the first ‘d’ in the word, surely this activity is related to the past and future

letters as more than simply external events on a timeline. There is an evident internal relation

between which letters one has already written and which letters will follow. For Bergson, this is

because duration involves an interrelationship between past, present, and future, and this

38 F.C.T. Moore first uses this example in relation to Bergson’s philosophy in Bergson: Thinking Backwards (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), 57-8. The original citation comes from Jean-Paul Sartre, Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, trans. P. Mairet (London: Methuen, 1962), 59-60.

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“certitude” as Sartre calls it, is accessible through intuition. The anticipation of the future is

bound up in the present, and the task set about in the past is caught up in the present.

Duration is characterized as a continuity complete in itself, and it is in contrast with

spatial time. As opposed to a totality, spatial time assumes that time is: (1) homogenous:

conceived as qualitatively identical units capable of measurement, like seconds and minutes; (2)

externally related: units of time are distinctly separate from other units of time, which allows

for spatial relations, including causal relations; and (3) discontinuous: the arrangement of the

units of time are separate from each other along a timeline of moments that are broken by

moments side-by-side one another. The features of spatial time are products of the intellect,

which analyzes duration. These three features of spatial time, taken together, have important

implications for how one conceives time.

Assumption (1) obscures the quality of duration. The homogeneity of time transforms

the qualitative diversity of the psychological experience of duration – which accounts for our

only actual, direct temporal experience – into units of exact measurement. This artificial act of

the understanding defies one's experience of time, but it makes possible various fruitful

operations. With (1), Bergson recognizes that the continuity of duration or becoming, once

conceived, is capable of being thought of as a unity or a multiplicity of prior homogenous units

of time. Bergson points to people's ability to spatialize time in this way as their imposing a

geometric order onto an aspect of experience that is fundamentally not spatial at all. This leads

philosophers throughout the history of philosophy to confuse succession with duration.

That people can (and do) view this unified duration as the denial, or aggregate, of

composite spatial units of time (unity and multiplicity, respectively) leads to their ability to infer

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external relations regarding experience, as indicated in assumption (2) of spatial time. An

example of a kind of relation between two events is a causal claim. With causal claims, two

events are extrapolated and reduced from their durational mobility. The two events are, in

effect, immobilized for the purpose of viewing them as a totality, without succession. Bergson

argues that determinism itself arises from this analysis. While often meaningful and elucidating,

this habit of analysis slices the continuity of becoming in arbitrary and self-validating ways.

Taken together, assumptions (1) and (2) represent a notion of time that fails to describe the

passage of duration, meaning that the fragments between the homogenous units being related

are seen as external to each other, or they render time as discontinuous, as seen in assumption

(3).

Collectively, these three features of spatial time are responsible for various philosophical

problems from those illustrated in Zeno's paradoxes through the many debates of the Modern

philosophers regarding the nature of time and space,39 but Bergson is clear that he does not

dismiss the products of spatial time. Analysis is an operation of the intellect, and while analysis

introduces many philosophical dilemmas, Bergson recognizes its necessity when he remarks

that “[our mind] substitutes for the continuous the discontinuous, for mobility stability […] This

substitution is necessary to common sense, to language, to practical life, and […] to positive

science.”40 Analysis disrupts the mobility and process of change given in duration, but it also

affords one the ability to understand any insight given intuitively.

39 Bergson develops his treatment of duration in response to Kant's forms of the intuition, arguing that Kant confuses time as an aspect of space. The germination of Bergson's discussion is traceable throughout the Modern philosophical era, finding voice in Hobbes's definition of reason as a “rendering” or and adding and subtracting of notions or concepts, and in Hume's principles of association as applied to personal identity. 40 Bergson, Creative Mind, 188.

27

While he allows for the benefits of predictability afforded by deterministic thinking,

Bergson gives priority to the qualitative, heterogeneous experience given through duration. One

might minimize the distinction between duration and spatial time by simply claiming that the

latter distinguishes arbitrary blocks of time to categorize the objects of experience in duration.

Such a strategy might work if one consistently acknowledges the treatment of time under

spatial time as merely practical or symbolic, rather than metaphysical. However, the real error

arises when one confuses the function of analyzing spatial time with the intuitive experience of

duration. As opposed to being acted on externally and indifferently, Bergson claims that

“[d]uration is the continuous progress of the past which gnaws into the future and which swells

as it advances.”41 Duration is continuous, meaning that the present is inseparable from the

past; what is more, duration “swells” in that the present “is impregnated with our past.”42

Because the memory of the past is embedded in the present, no two moments can be identical

or repeatable.

James Felt uses an example to underscore the distinction between both times. Felt asks

his reader to consider two propositions: “‘There will be a collision at this intersection before

midnight,” and “There is a boulder on the highway around the next bend.”43 Felt points out that

most would concede that both propositions admit of truth value: they can both be either true

or false. However, the conditions which would verify or dis-verify the claims are illuminating. To

verify the truth value of the second proposition, one would have to physically travel around the

41 Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell (New York: Camelot Press, 1911), 4. 42 Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, in Key Writings, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson and John Mularkey (New York: Continuum 2002), 96. 43 James Felt, Adventures in Unfashionable Philosophy (Notre Dame: Notre Dame UP, 2010), 40.

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bend and observe, but the proposition is either true or false even before verification. In the

other hand, when one treats the truth value of the first statement in the same fashion, one runs

into a dilemma. To verify the proposition, one must wait until midnight, but to say that the

proposition is either true or false absent this verification is to suppose that the future is already

set.44 Felt makes more than a simple comment on indexicals here; both propositions require

different conceptions of time.

Bergson extends this view beyond the level of subjective experience. He intends a

metaphysical meaning of duration as describing nature in general. As Pete A.Y. Gunter notes,

“[n]ot only do we perceive the external world around us, we perceive the inner flux of our own

consciousness: and both perceptibles are data.”45 Subjective experience of duration provides a

model for conceiving duration in nature, and the material world also seems to unfurl in

succession. For Bergson, all living things exhibit this kind of durational quality in varying

degrees, and this suggests that there is an order emerging out of duration that extends beyond

an individual’s experience. Bergson also extends duration to matter, claiming that matter is a

series of rhythms of duration. One’s own experience of the passage of time involves the

coincidence of matter, and one “extends this duration to the whole physical world, because

[one sees] no reason to limit it to the immediate vicinity of [one’s] body.”46 Durations belong to

living organisms – a kind of biological time, while spatial time belongs to the immobile world of

44 Ibid., 40 45 Pete A.Y. Gunter, “The Bridge between Intuition and the Understanding in Bergson” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1962), 3. 46 Henri Bergson, Duration and Simultaneity, in Key Writings, ed. by Keith Ansell-Pearson and John Mularkey (New York: Continuum 2002), 205.

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analysis and concepts. When one conceives of time as spatial, one freezes and fixes the

continuity that belongs to living things. A realistic scientific standpoint argues for the objectivity

of external laws operating mechanistically within the process, while reducing to a mere

psychological explanation the subjective experience of living through the process. In contrast,

Bergson argues that the former develops out of the latter. Isolating an experience in an idealized

state transforms it into “something thought” rather than “something lived,” which can never

sufficiently explain nature, much less ordinary experience.47

Moreover, the homogeneity that spatial time emphasizes imposes certain kinds of

external relations onto these entities, like that of causation. These external relations are what

allow for a deterministic explanation of nature. However, in explaining nature in this way,

Bergson argues that spatial time fails to account for living organisms and treats all of nature as

inorganic in part because of its emphasis on quantifying even qualitatively distinct objects. He

claims:

Philosophical systems are not cut to the measure of the reality in which we live […] any one of them […] could apply equally well to a world in which neither plants nor animals have existence […] and in which men would quite possibly do without eating and drinking […] where, born decrepit, they would end as babies-in-arms.48

Bergson's primary objection to “philosophical systems” is that they confuse duration with

spatial time, reducing time to a feature of space. Such a view necessarily denies the qualitative

nature of living things and their unique characteristics because it is in the mobile continuity of

life that one finds the only plausible explanation for durational experience. His criticism is

47 Ibid., 10 (his emphasis) 48 Henri Bergson, Creative Mind. New Jersey: Littlefield, Adams & Co, 9.

30

expansive. This tendency is not merely a product of a single philosophical school; Bergson

claims that the history of philosophical problems develops out of this confusion, and many of

the most perennial philosophical debates arise from this tendency. Philosophy, including the

Modern European philosophy from which Bergson draws, tends to codify a neglect of duration

and develop systems devoid of connection with one's actual experience of the world.

Consider one such “philosophical system.” René Descartes' metaphysical dualism treats

all non-mental entities as belonging to the same physical substance. On his terms, things as

disparate as wax (to use his famous example), arms, ponds, ducks, chalkboards, rocks, planets,

as well as entities too small for direct observation like atoms, all fall under the same class of

things, ontologically. There is no difference in kind between these entities. A practical

consequence of Descartes' ontology is that one need not be confused by the distinct qualities

offered to experience from the multitude of things in the world; sheer extension threads the

disparate entities in the physical world together while distinguishing thought and ideas as

distinct from objects of experience. Descartes' unification of all physical things allows for

mathematical operations to construe all entities without regard for their peculiarities. Bergson's

general criticism of this mechanistic conception of nature is that it fails to explain organic life,49

the role of the will, and other aspects of experience that follow from duration.

2.3.2 The Nature of Creativity and the Status of the Possible in Bergson

The “ceaseless novelty” of Bergson’s duration demonstrates the creative unpredictability

49 Bergson claims that even physical matter has very brief duration, which I elaborate on in chapter 5.

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of the continuity of becoming. Bergson insists that novelty is a prerequisite for creativity,

arguing that the duration is “unceasing creation, the uninterrupted up-surge of novelty.”50 As

opposed to the understanding of change as complex reconfigurations of old materials (including

feelings or ideas), creation requires that new characteristics emerge in the universe. Bergson

argues that evolutionary observations suggest just this ever-novel aspect of the world in the

adaptation of species and the emergence of new life forms, but the mathematical nature of the

physico-chemical model of science tends to frame reality in terms of the inorganic.51 According

to Bergson, physics and chemistry require that all data of a system be given beforehand, and

afterward operations of the understanding might act on that data.52 This approach to studying

nature fails to take account of new developments in the living world.

Bergson emphasizes the necessity for an order that preserves novelty: this order is a

vital order,53 and creativity is the concept which achieves this novelty. That creativity

perpetually unfurls through duration allows Bergson to account for the evolution of life beyond

a series of causal mechanisms acting on bodies (the way that pool cues act on billiard balls) and

beyond a final end or function toward which life leads. This sense of creativity, in which time is

characterized by constantly new developments, implies that the future resists prediction. The

heterogeneous feature of duration renders the present unique – and thereby distinct – from all

prior durations. The emergence of ever-novel durations which have never existed before, and

will never again exist, shows that life swells and is more than a rearrangement of materials. In

50 Bergson, Creative Mind, 18. 51 Bergson, Creative Evolution, 32. 52 Ibid., 32. 53 I have more to say about the vital and geometric orders in Chapter 3.

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fact, Bergson repeatedly points to the act of creation of the artist as evidence that

unpredictable creation is possible. He cites Beethoven’s symphonies to illustrate order without

predictability:

Common sense instinctively distinguishes between the two kinds of order, at least in the extreme cases; instinctively, also, it brings them together. We say of astronomical phenomena that they manifest an admirable order, meaning by this that they can be foreseen mathematically. And we find an order no less admirable in a symphony of Beethoven, which is genius, originality, and therefore unforeseeability itself.54 Even a perfectly rational entity could never predict the symphony before it had been

written regardless of knowing everything that entity could know about the composer, including

biographical data, thematic influences, and all previous work. Even if the composer were to

explain her plan or outline for the symphony before creating it, something in the actual creation

would resist articulation beforehand, yet for Bergson there is clearly order and genius in a work

by a composer like Beethoven.55

Because creativity resists predictability on Bergson’s account, Bergson also asserts the

alarming thesis that creation only becomes possible once it is real;56 that is, barring

impediments to something’s creation, possibility is an emergent property for Bergson. It does

not exist prior to creation; it only issues forth afterward. His thesis is shocking because common

sensibility assumes that possibility exists for creation before its actualization. One assumes that

an idea must precede its actualization, much the same way that a blueprint precedes the

building it designs or the way a chess strategy precedes its implementation in a game, or to cite

54 Bergson, Creative Evolution, 224 (emphasis added). 55 This point leads me to reject intentional definitions of art in Chapter 6. 56 Bergson, The Creative Mind, 100.

33

Aristotle’s classic example, the way that an acorn precedes an oak tree in possibility moving

toward actuality. Likewise, it seems perfectly acceptable – even intuitive – to assume that the

emergence of a new species, for example, is logically possible before it is real.

However, Bergson insists that this is not the case. He points again to the artist creating

an artwork to show that in creation something novel always develops, despite the detail of the

artist’s intentions. He argues that any lingering impression of a creation’s possibility before its

being created is merely a habit of thought. The habit is that of retroactively connecting the

actualization of a creation to prior events, rendering the creation more plausible. He claims that

traces of Romanticism are easily identifiable in earlier classicists only because Romantic writers

emerged after classical writers. Had Romanticism never developed, and some other movement

developed in its place, one would find no traces of Romanticism in earlier movements, despite

the movements preceding Romanticism remaining the same. This also indicates that, for

Bergson, there is nothing necessary about one change following another.

Creativity in this sense underscores Bergson’s insistence in the continuous, ever-novel

unfolding of duration. The challenge for Bergson is to demonstrate that the creative quality of

duration manages to interact with the discontinuous structure of the intellect. Bergson notices

creativity in the adaptation of life, and he infers that it stems from that vital impetus that

characterizes the continuity of living things – the vital, durational order. The various

formulations of evolution, such as the theories of Darwin and Lamarck, issue when one isolates

life from its durational continuity and identifies relations that hold within species throughout

discontinuous times (through geometric analysis). The negotiation between both orders offers

insight into the contributions Bergson’s philosophy promises to understanding nature and, more

34

specific to present purposes, for defining art, but this requires a methodology, as I will outline

next chapter.

2.4 Bergson and Weitz on Defining Art

Bergson’s emphasis on creativity as the fundamental feature of duration aligns him with

Weitz and the concern about essential definitions eliminating the creativity indicative of artistic

production. Bergson agrees with Weitz that essential definitions fail to describe the living,

creative movement of artworks. For Bergson, essential definitions impose a fixed concept onto

the durational unfolding of reality. That is, they freeze the creative “ceaseless novelty” of

duration into prefabricated concepts. According to Bergson, this is precisely why Darwinian and

Lamarckian evolution fail, why certain dualisms arise in the history of philosophy, and why the

definition of art could never be captured in concepts cast outside the creative flux of duration.

Both Bergson and Weitz agree that creativity is the trademark of art, but Bergson

disagrees with Weitz’s conclusion against a “real definition of art.” Essentially, the problem

Weitz identifies with defining artworks in necessary and sufficient conditions is similar to the

problem of identity in process philosophy. How can a fixed, meaningful identity be possible in

processual metaphysics of flux? For Weitz, that process or flux is art history, and it is what

makes a fixed, essential definition of art impossible. He believes he is rejecting realism and

essentialism in the same sweep, while Bergson argues that the continuity of becoming is the

actual condition of reality – one that the philosopher must place herself back into if she hopes

to escape the antinomies generated by non-durational reasoning. In this section, I will explain

how Bergson’s anti-essential, realist metaphysics traces onto the definitional problem of art.

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2.4.1 Distinguishing between Realism and Essentialism

The distinctions between realism/nominalism and essentialism/anti-essentialism are

worth exploring here as their relationship affects where Weitz and Bergson stray. Stephen

Davies demonstrates that nominal concepts concerned with human interests can still have

necessary and sufficient conditions.57 He outlines two predominant definitional strategies

which point to internal, rather than external, relations to show that how people employ the

concept of art (as a nominal concept) can, indeed, still have essential definitions. If this is the

case, the two kinds of dualisms do not relate as closely as Weitz’s treatment would seem to

suggest. Additionally, one might very well accept the idea of real entities and natural kinds

independent of human interests, while rejecting as epistemologically flawed the articulation of

real concepts in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. Bergson falls into this latter camp.

Bergson’s duration is intuitively known, so necessary and sufficient concepts would, at most, be

products of analysis (our act of freezing an intuition by the capacity of the intellect). What is

real, however, is the continuity of becoming, which resists fixed conceptual analysis.

This contrasts with Weitz’s employment of realism and essentialism. Weitz refutes

essential definitions of art, in part, because they are conceived as independent of human

choices and contexts. For Weitz, to reject essentialism is to reject realism, which might be a

reasonable inference on the face of it. After all, to catalogue the necessary and sufficient

conditions of art (as the essentialist does) is to sort out the characteristics that art must have

and to ensure one is dealing with art when those characteristics are present. It seems intuitive

57 Davies, Definitions, 23-4.

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enough for Weitz to refer to essential definitions as “real definitions” because essentialism is

attempting to explain something definitive about the nature of art. Consider the following

passage: “The nature of art, what it really is, so [the formalist’s version of an essentialist] theory

goes, is a unique combination of certain elements (the specifiable plastic ones) in their

relations.”58 Here, Weitz criticizes the formalist theory of Bell and Fry. Further, he critiques

various essential definitions of art, and in most cases, he explicitly employs language that

evokes a connection to realism, as seen above.

Weitz comments that essential definitions disregard what artists and the art community

mean by “art” in practice. This establishes the root of the analytic problem of defining art in

terms of realism and nominalism. Simply put, the realist argues that certain properties,

characteristics, or relations may be shared by all instances of a type and are independent of

human concerns or aims. Conversely, the nominalist rejects the idea that there are any

common features that underlie all particulars and focuses instead on the context of the

language and terms involved.59 The designations we use to describe perceived commonalities

are merely linguistic or social conventions, not real things; they announce how people use

language and concepts rather than tell anything about the universal nature of things,

independent of human interests.

So, we say of a basket of oranges that the oranges share several common properties:

they are all orange, spherical, fruit, citrus, tart, etc. The realist might describe at least some

58 Weitz, 28 (emphasis added). 59 For present purposes, the relevant disagreement between realism and nominalism that I want to discuss concerns how they treat universals and particulars.

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properties as universals that are instantiated by particular oranges: the definition of an orange

will include things that any and all oranges have in common and will use concepts to describe

the natural kinds. On the other hand, the nominalist emphasizes particular oranges and,

depending on the version of nominalism, might explain commonalities between oranges in

reference merely to linguistic explanation (one property might be predicated in Orange A and

Orange B, but that property does not exist outside the linguistic reconstruction), or by

reference to resemblances, as we see in Weitz.

As I mention earlier, Weitz hinges his argument on whether we can meaningfully ask

either of the two questions: 1) “What is art?”, or 2) “What sort of concept is art?”. This

distinction indicates that Weitz frames his criticism of essentialism in terms of anti-realism. The

first question, asked by the realist, is the wrong kind of question, according to Weitz. While the

realist and nominalist debates are only ever implicitly mentioned in Weitz’s article, it seems

that Weitz conflates talk of necessary and sufficient conditions and “closed concepts” with

realism. Further evidence is that Weitz frequently refers to essential definitions explicitly as

“real definitions,” and his solution to the classificatory problem is a kind of resemblance theory,

which is often a version of nominalism.

The association of realism with essentialism complicates matters when defining art. In

exploring the nature of different types of concepts, Stephen Davies parses out the

realism/nominalism debate within art in an interesting fashion, and it is worth exploring. Davies

states that all concepts are human representations, but some concepts are intended to “latch

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on to natural structures that exist independently of human thought.”60 Conversely, other

concepts “latch on to artificial structures, functions, intentions, institutions, or practices.”61

Davies offers several examples for both types of concept. His favorite examples for real, natural

kinds are elements from the periodic table. This is because the chemist can point to discernibly

unique properties that guarantee one is dealing with an element (atomic number, atomic mass,

etc.) rather than an imposter.62

His examples for nominal concepts that are tied to human interests are varied. Davies

mentions “weeds” and “parking tickets” as concepts that do not stipulate natural kinds.63

Weeds certainly refer to biological specimen, but the category is one that derives its meaning

exclusively from human concerns (more efficient agricultural practices, say). The idea of parking

tickets makes the case even more obviously. Davies observes that “What is a parking ticket” is

not concerned with any particular token: that is, when one asks this question, one is not

interested in knowing about the particular materials that constitute the ticket; instead, one is

asking about what people mean by “parking ticket” – an obviously nominal concern. In an

earlier work, Davies uses other similar concepts like “knighthood,” “poison,” and “property,”64

and while none of these concepts have natural kinds, he implies that definitions might be

forthcoming when examining relational properties (the point the concept serves or the

conventions in place, for instance).

60 Stephen Davies, Philosophical Perspectives on Art (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007), 25. 61 Ibid., 25 62 Davies, Definitions, 23-6. 63 Davies, Philosophical Perspectives, 25-6. 64 Davies, Definitions, 27-36.

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If Davies is correct, then an essential definition is possible even of nominal concepts, not

in the sense that the essential definition would uncover natural kinds; instead, the definition

would describe the necessary and sufficient conditions for a concept to be employed in the

meaningful ways in which human conventions and practice use the term. This contrasts with

the way Weitz seems to understand essentialism. The point is worth making because, although

one might agree with Weitz that the concept of art does not demar