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is not a work of art at all and which therefore lacks completely the kind of meaning for which. Works of art are valued hence no poetry is translatable and no critic can do better than to point to the objective features of the poem that most seem to, him to be worthy of attention yet, that. Result too is paradoxical for what does the critic see in those. Objective features and how is his recommendation to be supported why should we attend to poetry at all if nothing can be said about its virtues save only look why look at a poem rather than an advertisement a mirror or a blade of grass everything becomes equally worthy of attention since nothing can be said that will justify attention to anything the role of imagination such paradoxes suggest the need for a more extensive theory of the mind than has been so far assumed we have referred somewhat loosely to the sensory and intellectual components of. Human experience but, have said little about the possible relations and dependencies that exist between them perhaps therefore the paradoxes result only from our impoverished description of the human mind and are not intrinsic to the subject matter of aesthetic interest many modern philosophers have at this point felt the, need to invoke imagination either as a distinct mental faculty kant or as a, distinctive mental operation by virtue of which thought and experience may be united for empiricist philosophers such as david hume joseph. Addison archibald alison and lord kames imagination involves a kind of associative process whereby experiences evoke ideas and so become united with them for kant and hegel imagination is not associative but constitutive—part of the nature of the experience that expresses, it once again it is useful to, begin from kant. Who distinguished two uses. Of the imagination the. First in ordinary thought and perception the second in aesthetic experience when i look before me and see a book my experience according to kant embodies a synthesis it contains, two elements the intuition presented, to the senses and the, concept book contributed by the understanding the two elements are synthesized by an act of the imagination that constitutes them as a single experience—the experience of seeing a book here imagination remains bound by the concepts of the understanding which is to say that how i see the world depends upon my disposition to form determinate. Beliefs? About it—in this case, the belief that there is a book before me in aesthetic experience however imagination, is free from concepts and engages in a kind of free play this free play of the imagination enables me to bring concepts to bear on an experience that is in. Itself free from concepts thus there are two separate ways in which the content black of experience is provided one in ordinary perception the other in aesthetic experience in both cases the operative factor in holding thought and sensation together is the imagination whether such theories can cast light on the mysterious unity between the intellectual and the sensory that we observe in aesthetic experience remains doubtful the argument for saying that there is a single process of imagination involved in all perception imagery. And remembering seems to consist only in the premise, undoubtedly true that in these mental processes thought and experience, are often insep le but to suppose therefore that there is some one faculty involved in forging the connection between them is to fail to take seriously the fact that they are insep le nevertheless even if we find this general invocation of imagination as the synthesizing force within perception. Vacuous or unilluminating we may yet feel. That the imagination has some special role to play in aesthetic experience and that the reference. To imagination has some. Special value in explaining the precise way in which a content. And an experience become fused to use george santayana's term whether or not kant was right to refer to a free play of imagination in aesthetic experience there certainly seems to be a peculiarly creative imagination that human beings may exercise and. Upon which? Aesthetic experience calls it is an exercise of creative imagination to see a face, in, a picture since that involves seeing in defiance of judgment—seeing what one knows not to be there it is not in the same sense an imaginative act to see a face in something that one also judges to be a face this creative capacity is what jean paul sartre, is referring to in l'imaginaire psychologie phénoménologique de l'ima gination the imaginary, the phenomenological psychology of the imagination eng trans the psychology of imagination when he describes imagining as the. Positing of an object as. A nothingness —as not. Being in memory and perception we take our experience for real in imagination we contribute a content that has no reality beyond our disposition to see it and it is clear that this added content is frequently summoned by art when for example we see the face in a picture or hear the emotion in a piece of music recent work in aesthetics to some extent inspired by. The seminal writings of sartre and pictures wittgenstein, has devoted considerable attention to the study of creative erotic paintersimagination the hope has been to provide the extra ingredient in aesthetic experience that bridges the gap between the sensory and the intellectual and at the same. Time shows the relation between aesthetic experience and the experience of everyday life—an enterprise that is in turn of, the first importance for any study that seeks to describe the moral significance. Of beauty consider for example the spectator at shakespeare's, king. Lear he sees before him an, actor, who by speaking certain lines and making certain gestures earns his bread but that is not all that he sees, he also sees a hoary king cast down by age pride and weakness who rages against the depravity of man yet. The spectator knows that in a crucial sense there is no such king before him it is intellectual understanding not psychical distance that prevents him from stepping onto the. Stage to. Offer his assistance he knows that the scene he enjoys is one that he contributes albeit under the overwhelming compulsion induced by the actor and his lines the spectator is being shown something that is outside the normal commerce of theoretical and practical understanding and he is responding to a scene that bears no spatial temporal or, causal relation to his own experience his response is quintessentially aesthetic. For what interest could he, have in this scene other than, an interest in it for its own sake for what it is in itself at, the same time what it is in itself involves what it shows in general in imaginatively conjuring this scene the spectator draws upon a wealth of experience which is brought to mind and as it were condensed for him into. The imaginative perception of the play hence aristotle believed poetry is more general than history, since its concreteness is not that of real events but rather of imaginary episodes constructed so as to typify human destiny in exemplary representations such an exercise of the imagination clearly has, much to tell us about the nature of aesthetic french experience whether or not it could found a. Theory of the missing link between neo-romanticism sensory enjoyment and intellectual understanding it at least provides a paradigm arts and crafts of the relation between aesthetic experience and the experience of everyday life the former is an imaginative reconstruction of the latter which becomes interesting for its own sake precisely because—however realistic—it is not real emotion response, and enjoyment it is natural to suppose. That, a spectator's response to king lear is at least in part emotional and that emotion plays a crucial role both in the enjoyment of art and in establishing the value of art moreover it is not only art that stirs our emotions, in the act of aesthetic attention the same is or may be true of natural beauty whether that of a face or of a landscape these things hold our attention partly because they address themselves to our feelings and call forth a response which we value both for itself and for the consolation that we may attain through it thus we find an. Important philosophical tradition according to which the distinctive character of aesthetic experience is to be found in distinctively aesthetic emotions this tradition has ancient origins plato banished the poets from his ideal republic partly because of their capacity to arouse futile and destructive. Emotions and in his answer to plato aristotle argued that poetry. In particular tragic poetry was valuable precisely because of its emotional effect this idea enabled aristotle to pose one of the most puzzling problems in aesthetics—the problem of tragedy—and to offer a solution how can i willingly offer. Myself to witness scenes of terror and destruction and how can i be said to enjoy the result set store by it or accord to, it a positive value aristotle's answer is brief he explains that by evoking pity and fear a tragedy also purges those emotions and that is what. We enjoy and value? Tragedy then is an imitation, of. An action that is serious complete and of. A certain magnitude in language embellished with each kind. Of artistic ornament the several kinds being, found in separate parts of the play in the form of action not of narrative through pity, and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions aristotle implies that this purgation katharsis is not unpleasant to us precisely because the fictional and formalized nature of the action sets it at a distance from us, we can allow ourselves to feel what, we normally shun to feel precisely because. No one is really threatened or at least no one real, is threatened attractive though. That explanation may seem it, immediately encounters a serious philosophical problem, it is a plausible tenet of philosophical psychology that emotions are founded on beliefs fear on. The belief that one is threatened pity on the belief that someone. Is miserable jealousy on the belief that. One has a rival and so forth in the nature of things however these beliefs do not exist in the theatre confronted by fiction i am relieved precisely of the pressure of belief and. It is this condition that permits the aristotelian katharsis how then can i be said to experience pity and fear when the beliefs requisite to those very emotions are not present more generally how can my responses to the fictions presented by works of art share the structure of my everyday emotions and how can they impart to those emotions a new meaning force or resolution various answers have been proposed to that question samuel taylor coleridge for example argued that our response to drama is characterized by a willing suspension of disbelief and thus involves the very same ingredient of belief that is essential to everyday emotion biographia literaria coleridge's phrase however is consciously paradoxical belief is characterized precisely by the fact that it, lies outside the will i. Can therapy command you to imagine something but not to believe it for this reason a suspension. Of disbelief that is achieved willingly is at best a highly dubious example of belief in fact the description, seems to imply not belief, but rather imagination thus returning us to our problem of the relation between emotions directed to reality and those directed to merely imaginary scenes this is part of a much larger problem—namely that of, the relation between aesthetic and, everyday experience two extreme positions serve to illustrate this problem according to one art and nature appeal primarily to our emotions they awaken within us. Feelings of sympathy or emotional associations which are, both pleasant in themselves and also instructive we are made familiar with emotional possibilities and. Through this imaginative exercise our responses to the world become illuminated and refined this view which provides an immediate and satisfying theory of the value of aesthetic experience has been espoused in some form or other by many of the fine classical british empiricists shaftesbury hume addison lord kames alison and burke to cite only a few it is also related to the critical theories of writers such as coleridge matthew arnold and f r leavis whose criticism would make little, or no sense without the, supposition that works of art have the power to correct and corrupt our, emotions according to the opposite view aesthetic interest because it focusses on, an object for its own sake can involve no interest in affect to be interested in a work of art for the. Sake of emotion is to be interested in it as a. Means and therefore not aesthetically in other words true aesthetic interest is autonomous standing outside the current of ordinary human feeling—an attitude of pure contemplation or pure intuition that isolates its object from the stream of common events and perceives it in its uniqueness detached unexplained and inexplicable this position has been taken, in modern times by benedetto croce and. Following him by r g collingwood whose resolute defense of, the autonomy of aesthetic experience was also associated. With a theory of the autonomy of art art is not only seen as an end in itself but, it is an end. In itself in, a profound and, significant sense that distinguishes art from all its false substitutes and in particular from craft which for collingwood is not an end but merely a means between those two poles, a variety of intermediate positions might be adopted it is clear in any case that many questions have been begged by both sides the aesthetic of sympathy as croce called it has enormous difficulties in describing the. Emotions that are awakened in aesthetic, experience particularly the emotions that we are supposed to feel in response to such abstract arts as music with what am i sympathizing when i listen to a string quartet or a symphony what emotion do i feel. Moreover the position encounters all the difficulties already noted in forging a link between the imaginary and the real the aesthetic of autonomy as we may call it encounters complementary difficulties and in particular the difficulty of showing why we should value either aesthetic experience itself, or the art that is its characteristic object moreover it assumes that whenever i take an emotional interest in something i am interested in it for the. Sake of emotion a false inference that would imply equally that the lover is interested only in his love or the angry man only, in his anger collingwood thus dismisses amusement art on the spurious ground that to be interested in a work of art for the sake of amusement is to be, interested not in the work but only in the amusement that it inspires that is to say it is to treat the work as a means to photography feeling rather than as an end in itself such a conclusion is entirely unwarranted amusement. Is in fact a species of interest in something for its. Own sake, i laugh not for the sake of laughter but for the sake of the joke while i may be interested in an object for print the sake of the emotion that it arouses the case is peculiar—the case in fact of sentimentality often dismissed by moralists as a spiritual corruption and equally by critics as a corruption of the, aims of art the difficulties for both views are brought out by a fundamental aesthetic category that of enjoyment whatever the ultimate value of, aesthetic experience we pursue it in the first instance for, galleries enjoyment's sake aesthetic experience includes as its central instance a certain kind of pleasure but what. Kind! Of pleasure while our emotions and sympathies are sometimes pleasurable this is by no means their essential feature they may equally be painful or neutral how then does the aesthetic of sympathy explain the pleasure that we take and must take in the object of aesthetic experience and. How does the aesthetic of autonomy avoid the conclusion that all such pleasure is a violation of its strict requirement that. We should be interested in the aesthetic object for its own sake basel alone neither theory seems, to be equipped as it stands either to describe this pleasure or to show its place in the appreciation of art the work of art as the above discussion illustrates it is impossible to advance far into the theory of aesthetic experience without encountering the specific problems posed by the experience of art whether or not we think of art as the central or defining example of the aesthetic object there is no doubt that it provides the most distinctive illustration both of the elusive nature and the importance of aesthetic interest with the increasing attention paid to art in a corrupted world where little else is commonly held to be spiritually significant. It is not surprising that the philosophy of art has increasingly begun to displace the philosophy of natural beauty from the central position accorded to the latter by the philosophers and critics of the th century nor is this shift in emphasis to place des be regretted for the existence of art, as a major human institution reminds us of the need for a theory that will attribute more to aesthetic experience than enjoyment and that? Will explain the profundity of the impressions that we receive from beauty—impressions that may provide both meaning and solace, to those who experience them it is thus worth reviewing some of the special problems in the philosophy, of art that have most influenced contemporary aesthetics, understanding art the use of the concept of understanding in describing the appreciation of art marks out an interesting distinction between. Art and natural beauty a person may understand or fail to understand t. S eliot's four quartets michelangelo's david or beethoven's ninth symphony but he cannot understand or fail to understand the highlands of scotland even when he finds them beautiful or ugly, understanding seems to be a prerequisite to the full experience of art and this has suggested to many critics and philosophers that art is not reproduction so much an object of sensory experience as an instrument of, knowledge in particular art seems to have the power both to represent reality, and to. Express emotion and some argue that it is through appreciating the properties of representation and expression that we recognize the meaning of art at least it might be supposed that supplies if we speak of understanding art. It is because we think. Of art as having content something that must. Be understood by the appropriate audience the most popular approach to arty this concept of understanding is through a theory of art as a. Form of symbolism but what is meant by this is such symbolism one thing or. Many is it a matter of evocation or convention of, personal response or linguistic rule and what does art symbolize—ideas feelings objects or states of affairs representation and expression in art various theories have been proposed in answer to these questions the most popular being that the forms of art are similar to language and are to be understood as language is understood in terms, of conventions and semantic rules a few examples of contemporary, theories that have described art in this way include ernst cassirer's. Philosophy of symbolic forms susanne k langer's theory of presentational symbols, and the works on semiology and semiotics largely inspired by the writings of roland barthes that have been fashionable in continental europe it seems important to review some of the arguments that have been, employed both for and against, the overall conception of art that such theories share. In favour of the view it is undeniable that many works of art are about the world in somewhat the way that language may be about the. World this is evident in the case of literature which is itself an instance of natural language it is no less evident in the case of painting a portrait stands to, its sitter in a relation that is not unlike that which. Obtains between a description and the thing described, even if the majority of. Pictures are of or about entirely imaginary people scenes and episodes this is no different from the case of literature in which language is used to describe purely imaginary. Subjects this relation between a work of art and its subject captured in the, word about is sometimes called representation—a term that owes its currency in aesthetics to croce and collingwood who used it to draw the familiar contrast between representation and expression the concept of expression is variously analyzed its principal function in modern aesthetics however is to describe those aspects and dimensions of artistic meaning that seem not to fall within the bounds of representation either because they involve no clear reference to an independent subject matter or because the connection between the subject and the artistic form is too close and inextricable to admit description in the terms appropriate to representation therefore it is widely recognized that abstract art forms—music abstract painting architecture—may yet, contain meaningful utterances and most frequently philosophers and critics. Use terms such as expression in order to describe these elusive meanings music in particular is often. Said to be an expression of emotion and to gain much of its significance, from that expression in such a case is unlike representation according to many philosophers in that it involves no descriptive component an expression of grief does not. Describe grief but rather presents it as it might be presented by a face or a gesture expression must be distinguished from evocation to say that a piece of music expresses melancholy. Is not to say that it evokes arouses melancholy to describe a piece of music as expressive of melancholy is to give a reason for listening to it to describe it as arousing melancholy, is to give a reason for avoiding it music that is utterly blank expresses nothing but it may arouse melancholy expression where it. Exists is integral to the aesthetic character and merit. Of whatever possesses it for similar reasons expression must not be confused with association in spite of the reliance on the confusion by many th, century empiricists the distinction between representation and expression? Is one of the most important conceptual devices in contemporary philosophy of art croce who introduced it sought to dismiss representation as aesthetically irrelevant. And to elevate expression into. The single true. Aesthetic function the first he argued is descriptive or conceptual concerned with classifying objects according to their common properties and so done to satisfy our curiosity the second by contrast is intuitive concerned with presenting its subject matter an intuition in its immediate concrete reality so that we see it as it is in itself in understanding expression our attitude, passes from mere curiosity to that immediate awareness of the concrete particular that is the core of aesthetic experience symbolism in art later philosophers. Have been content merely to distinguish representation and expression as different modes of artistic meaning characterized perhaps by different formal or semantic properties nelson goodman of the united states, is one such philosopher his languages of art was the first. Work of analytical philosophy to produce a distinct and systematic theory of art goodman's theory has attracted considerable attention the more so in that it is an extension of a general philosophical perspective expounded in works of great rigour and finesse that embraces the entire realm of logic metaphysics and the philosophy, of science goodman like many others seeks the gallery nature portraits of art in symbolism and the nature of symbolism in a general theory of. Signs this second part of goodman's aim is what ferdinand de saussure called semiology the general science of signs cours de linguistique générale course of general linguistics the theory derives from the uncompromising nominalism expounded, in goodman's earlier works a nominalism developed under the influence of two other u s philosophers. Rudolf carnap and w v quine but also showing certain affinities with the later philosophy of wittgenstein according, to goodman's general theory of signs the relation between signs and the world painting can be described like any relation in terms of, its formal structure the basel objects related and its genealogy but apart from that formal and factual |