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Pablo Picasso – Guernica (1937)Oil on canvas (349 x 776cm)

Sociology, Art & Culture(SOCY100012)

Lecture 2: Philosophy and art: the aesthetic, beauty, and the end of art?

Neil McPhersonSchool of Social SciencesRoom: A820Tel: 01698 283100 x8479Email: [email protected] Apr 10, 2023

Philosophy and art

“Art tends to rebel against scientific images of the world, while

sociology tends to thrive on demystifying the enchanting in social

life. Art tends to revolt against materialistic explanations of life, while

sociology tends to exult in exposing singular and unique as socially

constructed and socially reproduced”

(Harrington 2004: 9)

The philosophical understanding of art pre-dates the sociological conception of art that emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

The philosophers constructed ‘metaphysical conceptions’ of art that did not consider the historical and social nature of art

In these conceptions art is seen as timeless and asocial

Metaphysical Conceptions of Art

Art as beauty

From Plato, philosophers have argued that art exists as beauty that elevates the mind, allowing individuals to gain knowledge of the beauty and unchanging nature of the cosmos

Compositions were hierarchised – historical, mythological and biblical

scenes

portraiture & landscape

realistic scenes of ‘daily life’

Plato viewed beauty as eternal, absolute and transcendent – a view that

is not compatible with modern concepts of beauty


Art as the imitation of nature

A conception of art in which nature exists as the image of perfection and

art imitates that perfection – the doctrine of mimesis

Reproduction of reality – trompe d’oeil & the doctrine of illusionism

(influential during the Renaissance)

However, in the same way that ideas of beauty change historically, so to

different cultures represent nature differently

As the Enlightenment grew in influence, the aforementioned doctrines

became less influential and the focus shifted to a humanly subjective

understanding of beauty & engagement with art. (see Harrington 2004)


Art as aesthetic experience

Derived from the Greek aisthesis – the study of pleasure in perfection

Aesthetics – a branch of philosophy focused on the concepts of beauty and

taste

– focused on experiencing pleasure in sensory objects

– concerned with judgements of taste in relation to ‘works of

art’

The Age of Enlightenment and Romanticism – human rationality and

emotion

The external world engaged in the mind rather than directly through sense

perceptions (we know more than the objects around us – value, belief &

tradition)

Ideas & idealism – search for objective, universal knowledge in human

thought

(see Grenfell & Hardy 2007; Harrington 2004)

Kant: Aesthetics & Art

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) – The Critique of Judgement (1790)

Can we have knowledge of art that is prior to experience?

Taste & beauty – part of Kant’s wider philosophical system

Nature is God’s “unfathomably great art” (Kant 1987: 334)

For Kant beauty is a judgment – that is, it is not a fixed concept

Taste – individual’s subjective feeling of pleasure of the object – sensory pleasure – judgments of taste are produced by pleasure, unlike moral judgements or judgments of fact


Where Hume sees the experience of beauty as merely subjective, Kant sees it as a logical judgment (this differs from his early discussions of beauty and taste)

Exercise of rational

judgment

Exercise of rational

judgment

Act of sensuous feelingAct of sensuous feeling

Expression of personal feeling

Expression of personal feeling

Act of the mindAct of the mind

AESTHETIC JUDGEMENT

ART

AESTHETIC JUDGEMENT

ART


“[W]hile it is true that beauty needs to be appreciated subjectively,

when we see beautiful things we are aware that the pleasure we

derive from them is not a function of something peculiar to us, some

‘personal condition to which our subjective self might alone be party’”

(Graham 2005: 18)

“Aesthetic judgment is thus to be distinguished (1) from a judgment of

fact because it is subjective, (2) from the merely subjective because it

commands the assent of others, (3) from a judgement grounded in

practical rationality because the beautiful has no practical purpose,

and (4) from the fanciful or superficially attractive because it has the

mark of purposefulness”

(Graham 2005: 18)

Sensus commnis – common sensitive nature


“[For Kant] a judgement of beauty is a disinterested, universal, and necessary judgment concerning the pleasure that everyone ought to derive from the experience of a form of purpose”

(Dickie 1997: 22)

Disinterestedness – focus solely on appearance of art object itself – no attempt to locate meaning in wider context

Universality – since the experience of beauty is not subjective beauty is evident to all

Necessity – when we identify something as beautiful we demand that everyone agrees as its beauty is identifiable to all – although not everyone will agree

Form of purpose – focuses on the object – purposiviness without purpose


What is important is form not content – this avoids criticisms of subjectivity – therefore the aesthetic beauty of the art work is ahistorical (timeless) and asocial

For Kant the art object is an end in itself and is without purpose – its aesthetic beauty is inherent in the form of the work itself and evident through judgments of taste

The possession of true ‘genius’ allows the exhibition of ‘aesthetic ideas’ – innate ideas of imagination and understanding not constrained by other thoughts or concepts – the capacity to create new rules and not follow existing ones – to create art outside of external determination and constraint

(see Gaiger 2002)


Kant argued that in affirming ‘a judgement of taste’, the individual making

the judgement was not making any claim as to the objects value, or its

moral worth or practical use

He was simply referring to the pleasure it brought to the senses through

‘disinterested contemplation’

Building on Kant, Clive Bell (1914) argues that artistic quality is located in the

‘significant form’ of the art work, rather than any narrative or

representational content

Greenberg (1986-93) adds historical concept – he states that by continually

removing and excluding all links to external conditions and concerns, art

can be ‘purified’ – only accessible through the aesthetic beauty of its form

Philosophy and Art: Kant

Kant has been used to explain the aesthetic value of post-impressionist art,

such as the work of Cezanne and Gauguin, where form is emphasised over

representational depiction (Bell 1914; Fry 1920)

Paul Cezanne - Château Noir

(1900-04) Oil on canvas

(73.7 x 96.6 cm)

Kasimir Malevich – Black Square and Red Square (1915)

Oil on canvas (71.4 x 44.4cm) Georges Braque – Woman with a Guitar (1913) Oil and charcoal on canvas (130 x 73 cm)

Hegel: The Aesthetic and the End of Art

Georg W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) – Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Encyclopedia

of the Philosophical Sciences (1817)

Rather than individual’s response to beauty (Kant), Hegel focused on

content and meaning of art works

Art operates on the level of sensuous experience and reveals

comprehensive truth of position of humanity – like religion & philosophy

Art is externalised human self consciousness

Focuses on artistic beauty as above natural beauty – it can be philosophised

Hegel’s aesthetics provide the ‘cornerstone of the discipline of art history’ (Geczy 2008: 107)


For Hegel, the human spirit manifested in art in an evolutionary manner

The history of art represented of the history of man

Art identified the progression of the human spirit towards self-awareness

Art, therefore, was teleologically progressive – working towards an endpoint

where man would fully know himself as the true nature of the spirit was

revealed

Productive tension in the idea and form of the art work –– each can be

inadequate in themselves and in relation to each other


Early civilisations – symbolic art – tension between idea

and form (distorted representations of God) – form did

not fulfil idea

Classical (Greek) – unity of idea and form – the idea

represented through the idealised human form – unity

of religious awareness and artistic expression

– highest level of art


Romantic (all art since Greek times)

growing tension between religious awareness and

artistic expression (idea and form)

growing inwardness and self reflection (understanding

of humanity’s relationship with God located in realm of

thought rather than physical expression)

the image can no longer truly represent the idea

Art can no longer articulate the content it aspires to

Carl Gustav Carus (1869) Das Kolosseum in einer Mondnach

Caspar David Friedrich (1818) Chalk Cliffs on Rügen


For Hegel, art has been overtaken by religion and philosophy in terms of

being able to articulate and examine human existence – art is no longer

seen as divine revelation

Art now something that philosophy can examine and explain

(see Cheetham 2001; Gaiger 2002)


Art is seen as a representation of human self understanding – it is a stage prior to philosophy

Art is the product of its age and the ideas of that age

Hegel linked art to historical context for the first time through philosophical discussion

Showed the historically located nature of the production and appreciation of art works

In contrast to Kant, Hegel identifies the importance of content and form (rather than just form) and identifies the historically located nature of art (against the concept of historical aesthetic beauty)

Both influential in the emergence of art history as a discipline and also in sociology’s engagement with art