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Philosophy of Art I: Plato to Marx

Central questions:

What is art? what is beauty?
Is there something distinctively human about art?
What is the relation between art and reality?

1. Plato: Artistic expression and enjoyment are unacceptable human activities for several reasons:

ontological: art is an imitation of things in the world. But things in the world are not real things (remember: real things, for Plato, are the Forms); they are copies of the Forms. Unlike philosophy, art does not provide us with any truth; in fact, it draws attention away from the truth insofar as its purpose is to make us pay attention to appearances rather than reality

epistemological: we attain no knowledge through art because art is false, and artists do not provide us with the logos or meaning of what we experience

moral: to be distracted from the pursuit of the good--that is, to be distracted from developing a proper, harmonious inner psychic order--is immoral. Insofar as art depicts heroes and gods doing immoral things, it does not inspire us to be great; and insofar as art is illusion, it encourages us only to pretend to be good. Besides, art does not appeal to the highest faculty of the soul, reason, because it relies on images. Instead it appeals to the emotions which are antisocial and personally destructive

2. Freud: if rationality and society are to survive, irrational and antisocial drives (sexuality and aggression) must be controlled. They can be channelled ("sublimated") in socially acceptable forms of creativity and higher culture (art, religion, philosophy, law, science, morality); even so, they still threaten rationality and society. Some people ("neurotics") deal with the world by pretending that it is other than what they really experience, but they do not deny that there is a reality that might be different from what they experience. Art tries not only to deny reality but also to replace it, and in this respect art is close to insanity. Art is thus the means by which we experience the pleasure of unresolved (repressed) irrational, antisocial impulses. But like Plato, Freud thinks that art is not a rational response to the demands of reality; it is only a way of avoiding violence or other socially disruptive activity.

3. Aristotle: art imitates not what is the case but theorizes what could be the case: in this sense, it focuses on what Aristotle calls "universals." (History recounts particular events, art portrays particular events in terms of how well they embody universal ideals and values, and philosophy theorizes about theorizing itself.) Instead of encouraging the passions to take control of reason, art is a means by which we cleanse or purge the passions (catharsis). Art thus replaces erotic and aggressive passions rather than causing them: that is its social function.

4. Between Aristotle and the Nineteenth Century:

Neo-Platonism: art expresses higher truths of beauty and sensuality
Classicism/Formalism: art and the experience of beauty capture the harmony between the ways in which things in reality are structured (their "forms") and the structure and activities of the mind
Romanticism: through artistic imagination (which is subjective and emotional) we are put in touch with what is eternally real and creative. Classicism's emphasis on order and proportion, like philosophic reason or science in general, provides information merely about the temporal world, not reality as it is eternally; it subordinates creativity to objective principles of aesthetic taste. The particular individual (the subjective) is the locus of the intense contact with and feeling of eternal truth. Science or philosophy may be objectively true, but objective truth is not ultimate. Plato is wrong in saying that the irrationality of art removes us from the eternal; instead, art's ecstatic, subjective, and emotionally intense character puts us in touch with the real and creative
Tolstoy's Religious Defense of Art: art brings us together as children of God through shared feelings; great art will be sincere and universal, not affected or accessible only to the cultural elite
Art for Art's Sake: whereas Plato and Aristotle agree that art should be judged based on its effect on us, some theorists claim that art is intrinsically valuable, needing no justification other than itself. Art should not be considered a means to some end other than itself: its value is not determined instrumentally. It does not express anything about anything other than itself; it does not try to imitate nature or life. In fact, life and nature find expression through the energy that art provides. Since the task of art is not to capture or repeat the way things are, lying is the proper aim of art

5. Marx: artistic expression and aesthetic enjoyment are essential human characteristics, but the ways in which human productions are manipulated and understood are always ideological. The creative, artistic productions of human labor define the nature of human existence, but when their work is alienated from human beings (e.g., in capitalism), human beings are alienated from themselves. Art, like religion, morality, and philosophy, is the expression of the socioeconomic system of the ruling class (the status quo). The conflict of classes generates counter-culture or revolutionary art (e.g., parody).

Capitalism undermines real artistic expression: it makes the artist a productive laborer and treats art as a commodity, something that can be marketed and produced in quantity so that the artist can survive, not something produced as an activity of the artist's nature. In addition, in capitalism the division of labor requires that artistic creativity be restricted only to "artists"--despite the fact that the artistic impulse is essentially human and should be available to all. Nonetheless, it is possible for great works of art to challenge a culture's ideology or to exceed the restrictions of a culture's ideology when the values of that culture are in flux. In such instances (e.g., Shakespeare's writings), the artist is generally not understood or appreciated in that culture.