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Philosophy and the Arts, Lecture 18:. “Art as Expression-II”. O. K. Bouwsma. The essay you were asked to read for today is “The Expression Theory of Art,” by Oets Kolk Bouwsma.
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Philosophy and the Arts,Lecture 18: “Art as Expression-II”
O. K. Bouwsma • The essay you were asked to read for today is “The Expression Theory of Art,” by Oets Kolk Bouwsma. • Most philosophers can’t write. And they are not likely to have a sense of humor. Bouwsma was an unusual man, because he wrote so well, and nobody ever wrote with such marvelous wit and humor! His essays are a pleasure to read!
Back to Bouwsma… • He asks us to imagine two guys, Octave and Verbo, going to a concert together. Both enjoy the music. • Then Octave says something about the music’s being sad, and Verbo is troubled. • We know what it means to say “Cassie is sad…”, but can music (or books, or paintings, etc.,) be sad , in that same, literal, sense, as living things are???
Living? Why not?? • In Areopagitica, Milton wrote: ”For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are;”... • So one possible move is just to take what Verbo says at face value—why not souls in sonnets, or spirits in paintings?? Don’t artists sometimes talk that way? • As Bouwsma says, “Why this prejudice in favor of lungs and livers?”
Zeno of Elea, that is… • Another possible move would be to say we use the words in their usual sense—so music cannot be sad. • I don’t really understand Zeno’s paradoxes, but he seems to say that, by using the science of his day, motion is impossible. • When I was a child, some scientist proved that, by the science of aerodynamics of his day, bumblebees can’t fly—but those stupid bumblebees don’t know that. • And we hate to leave a close horse race, don’t we? Finally, we do sometimes want to insist the music is sad—how can we do that??
So, what then?? • Bouwsma gives us one of the best lines in philosophical literature, “For the sadness is to the music rather like the redness to the apple, than it is like the burp to the cider.” Two points here: • (1)When we say the music is sad, we do not refer to an effect the music has on us. • (2) We are referring to a characteristic of the music.
But why “sad”?? • Bouwsma knows he is not being precise here, “Sad music has some of the characteristics of people who are sad. It will be low, not tinkling. People who are sad move more slowly, and when they speak, they speak softly and low.”
Consider this line from L’Allegro: “Come, and trip it as you go On the light fantastic toe;” Then consider this from Il Pensoroso: “Com pensive Nun, devout and pure, Sober, stedfast, and demure, All in a robe of darkest grain, Flowing with majestick train.” Do we now have to ask, “Which is the sad poem?” Back to Milton…
Alan Tormey • Alan Tormey did not have the wit that O. K. Bouwsma had (who did?), but he knew a great deal about music, and his 1971 book on The Concept of Expression remains worth consulting. I offer two quotations:
Conclusions?? • Much more could be said, as always. • We now know that the Expression Theory is more complicated than Tolstoy had thought. • But we also know we need not blush when we say some music really is sad—and motion really does exist!
