Philosophy and the Arts: Lecture 35:

Philosophy and the Arts:Lecture 35: The Logic of Criticism

The major essay to be discussed today is Arnold Isenberg’s “Critical Communication.” The dogs have nothing to do with it, but seemed a good way to start the day! “Critical Communication”

What’s this all about?? • Consider a moral situation. It would be natural to set forth a norm (N), such as “Stealing is wrong.” Then we could say, “This is an act of stealing,” (call that a reason, R)—and conclude with the verdict (V),” Therefore this is wrong.” • Or we could start with “Honesty is a good thing” (N), go through the same routine, and conclude with “This is a good, morally correct, action” (V). Thus N+R=V. Right? • Does this work in aesthetics?? No? Why not?

Hogarth thought anything beautiful had “unity amidst variety,” and went so far as to formulate a “line of beauty,” the use of which would guarantee aesthetic merit. Some have thought so…

This is the sort of thing Hogarth usually did!

But he could do serious work, too.

Jefferson built the “serpentine wall” at the University of Virginia to save bricks (pressure would be distributed along the curve, so the wall could be one brick thick), but also because it would was to be an example of the “line of beauty”. And Jefferson agreed, regarding the “line..”

The oft-told story has it that Gainsborough painted his “Blue Boy” because Sir Joshua Reynolds had said it was a “rule” of art that no great painting could be done predominately in blue. Thus N+R does not always =V. Gainsborough did not agree..

Consider this el Greco

N + R = V ?? • Isenberg quotes Ludwig Goldscheider on The Burial of Count Orgaz: • “Like the contour of a violently rising and falling wave…The depth of the wave is the optical center…in this lowest depths rests the bluish-grey armor of the knight.” • Well, we can see the wave, and Isenberg claims we could draw a dozen like it in 5 minutes…

Is that all there is?? • Isenberg thinks not; the critic cannot be doing something as simple as that. • He isn’t just pointing to a wavy line that we can all see. In my terms, he is trying to bring about a sameness of vision. He/she sees something we may not see (not just a wavy line), so he is saying “look at it this way; it will mean more to you.” • Part of Isenberg’s point is that the logic of criticism is more complicated than a simple case of N + R = V.

Cave painting, Altamira..

Isenberg might approve… • Isenberg might like a story a friend once told me. She visited Altamira in Spain, where paintings have been on cave walls for at least 15,000 years. Lighted as you see this one, they may not mean much to us. Then the guide had the lights turned out, and he lighted a crude torch, whose flames flickered, flashed, and danced across the walls. Suddenly, someone shouted, “My God!! They’re alive!!”

Read the Elton Volume!! • There is an anthology, Aesthetics and Language, edited by William Elton, with a number of essays that bear on this problem. Isenberg’s essay is in there, but see also “Some Basic Features of Arguments Used in Criticism of the Arts,” by Margaret Macdonald. • Macdonald suggests we take this word, ‘verdict’ more seriously,”…’This is good’ also has the form of the impersonal verdict ‘He is guilty’ with which it may perhaps be more profitably compared. For a verdict does not describe the accused nor express the feelings of judge and jury. It affirms a decision reached by a definite procedure but unlike that of relating evidence to conclusion in deductive and inductive inference.” • Again, she notes that “Verdicts and awards are not true or false. They may be reversed but not disproved.”

Always, there is more… • I find Stuart Hampshire difficult to read, but in his essay, also in the Elton volume, “Logic and Appreciation,” he seems to be arguing that each art works is unique, and thus not subject to general laws. • Let Ms. Macdonald have the last word. I know of no competent aesthetician who would not agree with her when she says, ”No one seriously thinks that all judgments about art are of equal value.” • But, for all that, the logic of art criticism remains elusive.

Philosophy and the Arts: Lecture 35: