Class Notes

Class 3

- Some philosphers do claim that the mere question of what is art assumes that art has an
essence
- Others don’t, anti-essentialist
- When speaking of art we currently speak of works of art such as painting, music, drama,
sculpture, film photo (reproduciable art forms highly technical art forms)

- Art as representation
o 1. Art as representing as in copying intimidating
o 2. Art is connected to representation but representation does not necessarily only
mean copying or intimidating
- Art as expression
o 1. Some think that the recipient does not matter
o 2. Some think it must reach the recipient
o 3. Some think that it is only important that one expresses something
o Kandinski: necessity, inner need, notwendigkeit
o
- Formalism
o Only the formal features matter (form: colour, texture ) (independent of experience
(doubt))
- Aesthetic attitude
o How does the work affect the recipient?
o How does it relate to the recipient?
- Historicists
o Historical continuity/discontinuity with a historical narrative
o
- There are hybrid theories

- Major exclusions:
o Asian philosophy
o Continental Philosophy

- Reading suggestions
o Yuriko Saito (Asian aesthetics)
o Derrida (meaning, semantics)
 o Adorno (Frankfurt school, aesthetics) ()
o What is Philsophy by Deluse Book
o Argument of conceivability
o Schopenhauer

Class 4 Plato Republic

- Plato: art cannot contribute to knowledge
- Plato think art is trash, it plays on the bad parts of the soul satifying lower desires
- In the time of Plato there was no unified sense of the arts
- Instead one talked of technes: three forms:
o Utility
o production
o Imitation
- Platos diffintion of art
o Art always includes mimesis, imitation.
o To Plato all art is imitative
o Platonic realism
 Eidos, idea, universal, form, definition, what is
 Realm of Ideas more real than reality
 Reality just a realm of shadows and imitations of the eternal ideas
o Art in that context is an imitation of an imitation
o Where object in the world are imitation of their ideas, art is by definition an
imitation of the many imitations of the ideas. They further abstract and are even less
real
o Thus cognitively worthless
o
- In the Republic plato generally speaks about the ideal city and as such also talks about the
place of art in that city
- Eastern response to Plato’s metaphysics: Nagarjuna
- Every definition one can encounter runs risk or is necessarily so be to broad or to narrow
- From urban planning entrepreneurialism causes monuments and shifts money from the
people to luxury building for the rich. In that sense one could agree that art as imitation
and representation is bad as it diverges attention and we become charmed by works that
truly don’t benefit society.
-

Class 5 Aristotle Poetics

- Agrees with Plato that art is imitative
- But differentiates the qualities of artworks and goes into the criteria that allow us to identify
what kind of an artwork it is and if it is good or bad artwork
- For Plato there is not looking at an artwork only looking through it, looking at what it
attempts to imitate
- Aristotle differs in that regard and allows to differentiate by looking at the artwork
- (Baudrillard: there are instable structures that dictate the conception that it is impossible to
arrive at the substances essences of things. The world of imitations and representations
undermine our conception of reality)
- Systematize, categories, differentiate
- Humans are imitative creatures by nature
- While the real thing gives us discomfort we enjoy it as an imitation
o Middle ground: emotionally involved, but don’t identfy with the action on screen
- Components of Poetry and the Tragedy in particular
o Plot (series of incidents that make up the story; for Aristotle the most important
attribute; A good Plot: Magnitude, Order and proportion must fit the purpose of the
work)
o Character (character is determined by plot for Aristotle; Characters are the cause of
the plot and action)
o Thought (also determined by Plot; what the characters think)
o Diction (the writing)
o Spectacle ()
o Music
- What is an action in a Tragedy
o To a slightly better person than the commoner
o The action is the unfair event that hits the person
o Showing of his suffering
o And creating pity and suffering in us
- What is a good Plot for poetry?
o The plot must be work well in regards of Magnitude, order and proportion
o It must be a Unified complete whole
- “Having magnitude in being complete in itself”
- His criteria of Cathersis of emtions is not quite clear
o It could meant that
- Differentiates artforms on the basis of what their imitate
o Painting imitates and impression?
o A tragedy imitates an action
- Manner of imitation differentiates between subforms of one artfrom (such as tragedy and
comedy or epos)
- Good and bad art on the basis of its functionality. What function is it meant to fulfil
- First functional focused perspective on art
- Functionalism
o Nothing to do with the intention of the artist
o Nothing to do with how the reciepent experience it
o Only about if the artform by itself formaly fulfils its purpose
- Formalism (functionalism can be a form of formalism)
o Formal characteristics
o And their relations
o Arising in complete artwork?
- Catharsis is important to a work of tragedy
o No trauma
o Not troubled with the story forever
o The tragedy emotional catches you and then lets you go
 - Catharsis
o Many interpretation of how Aristotle used the word
o Either an state or experience of relieve of an intense affecting emotional experience
that preceded it
- Good art plays a crucial role in education society
- Even though his conception of art was limited in the same way as the one of Plato, his
criteria allows to identify and analyse other works of art that were not present when these
criteria were formulated.
- Thomas Liqotti horror short stories where the characters sought knowledge but survived.
The true doom was the knowledge, getting what they wanted.

Class 6: Representation: Nelson Goodman “Languages of Art”

- Note for myself to touch upon in class
o With all these denotations and referents, words, sayings, that are connected to
ways, paths , treading, engraining, inculcating one could probably easily speak of
geographic interpretation of art/language or just any semantic, symbolic,
representational stuff. The art of looking at art as a map/maps that adapt regarding
the very art that try to grasp and make itengiable to be traversed (understood). In
that sense if alla deridda there are only networks of signifiers of signifiers, of which
we paint maps to orientate ourselves. Semantic map making? The art of geographic
art interpretation.

- Nelson Goodman:
- Representation is not imitation/copying
- Represents, denote, reference, stands in for a something (
- Representation is not resemblance or similarity, Something does not need be similar to the
thing it represents.
o Representation is not symmetrical like resemblance
 A painting of an apple represents and apple but an apple does not represent
the painting of it
o Representation is not reflexive (applying to itself) like resemblance
 You do always resemble yourself but you do not always represent yourself
 X resembles itself being x but x does not necessary represent x
- Copying does not work cause the there is no “world as it is “only ways of how the world is”
- There is not only one way of how a thing is (is that a empirical? Relativistic position? A
subjective one? One that says that there is not such thing as itself outside oneself? So as
such even perhaps an internalist?)
- I can copy things as they are because I don’t have access to how things are in themselves
- Perception is actively constructed (no innocent eye) (theory ladens)
- No passive perception of reality, not receptive
- Perception is creative act, constructing wards.
- Analogy isues tie directly into the arguments of what representational art is to Goodman
-

- Representaion in art for Goodman is

o Like derrida
 o Representations produces refercences meanings and new structures yes organize
the existing structure of meaning like a dynamic semantic map
o Perception is a creative act
o A posteriori, inductive, relativist position: Context, relativity and interdependency
determine our semantic horizion. Semantics, meanin is no apriori thing to be
discovered but has happened, has been done, inductively generalized through
history and the resulting network/s of signifiers of signifiers have/has been
established and transformed by habit.
o When is art realistic?
 An artwork is realistic if it conforms to the standard association of the
environment, the social-cultural environment, that it is conceived in.
 Realism for his a matter of habit and not an externalist interpretation
 (postmodern) perspective on reality that argues that reality is a relativistic
subjective matter

- Expressive works do more than representation

o It in fact it can express more than feeling
o And it the object can reference the artwork as the artwork can reference the object
since the expression owns the aiaia essence(?)
- Art by playing the game of association by either serving or contrasting habits/convention can
contribute to knowledge
o In the sense of quantitatively contributing
o And contributing as in transforming knowledge
o (provi
- Exemplification
- Goodman is a relativistic pragmatist, constructivist
- Usual idea of knowledge: discovery of truth
- For Goodman: lack of access and our creative involvement in our reality means knowledge is
constructed. We assign properties, knowledge as invention, how useful is it, how simplistic
- How does art contribute to knowledge: it transforms our knowledge horizon, knowledge
horizon as in our network of signifiers of signifiers. Modifies our perception of the world.

Class 7: Expression: Tolstoys expressionist, communicative,

impressionist approach but as conceived in art history (???) “What is
Art”
- “To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself,
then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to
transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling – this is the activity of art”
(Tolstoy page 305)
- “Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain
external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are
infected by these feelings and also experience them.” (Tolstoy page 305- 306)
- It should be effortless for the recipient to be affected by the work. He should not need to
change his position to the artwork.
- Lot of money put into art
- But more people suffer from it then enjoy it
- Art is there for producing beauty
- Beauty is what ever pleases
- Interpretations of according to him until here are focusing only pleasure
- Art being valuable for being art
- Pleasurable for being pleasurable
- Circular reasoning
- If one would define it so than it would be as if one would define pleasure to be the key
aspect of food, which would be a hedonist perspective
- Then we would assert to the lowest drives of “the human soul”

- What pleases can vary

- Thus the taste of the powerful predominates what art is
- The rich make art for their pleasure
- The people must suffer to please the rich

- Most interpreters focuses on specific aspects of art and miss the big picture
- Instead art is a condition of human life
- Language transmits thought
- Art transmits feelings
- We build upon the art and language, the thought and feelings of previous generations. It
communicates it through the generations.

- Immediate expression of feelings are no art

- It was immediate and unvoluntary
- Art as in artificial so created, intentionally

- Art is transmitting for Tolstoy

- Communicative
- Thus art is not solitary act (what about an internal conversation with oneself? Understanding
oneself through art?)
- Les separated les isolated
- Social cohesion  religious art did that, that’s why it was banned sometimes due to its
political power
- (critique: it posses you, it does not produce social cohesion, people don’t think of the painter
when the get affected by a picture)

- Criteria for determining a good artwork

o Needs to be affecting the recipient
o Genuity/sincerity
o Individuation
o Clarity

- In previous ages art was limited, controlled, or even banned

- Now days we are overly admissive of art
- Why did this happen?
 o Religion used art to transmit meaning and thus it was important that the right
meaning the right values the right ethics was transmitted (good and evil) (judge)
o That changed with religious institutions loosing their power and the nobles, the rich
people gained control over art and changed its purpose of serving their pleasure
instead of transmitting meaning, transmitting an ethical system (?).
- He does not mean that religious art as in the classical sense of religion is outright better.
- Instead he says the way religion dealt with art, art progressed, religion progresses.
- Transmitting for example “universal brotherhood”. That is something valuable, something
valuable, something good to be transmitted by art.
- Art should make us better gradually

- Art is about transmitting emotions

Class 8, Expression: Collingwood “The Principles of art”

- Key Notes: What is art?:
- His strategy?
o Define art
o To define art we must also speak of the definitions by which we intend to define art
o Thus he starts of with covering different ways of talking about art
o
- Art as amusement?
o Nope
o Sets up an make believe situation
o Stimulates and emotion
o And the discharges it by Cathartic
o Technical craftsmanship
o Comes up with a plan and then executes that plan
o Works with raw material and produces a finished product
o Practical value (magic), outside the moment of experiencing it (?)
- Art Proper:
o Has no external exterior motives
o Not technical art
o Expression of the sincere unique feelings of the artists,
 cannot know what the emotion will be before the work cause otherwise
insincere due to not felt, thus work of art a process, recording of feelings
while they are felt over a span of time(?), immediacy (no planning, if you are
clear about the feeling already than there is no need for artwork, no room
for means or thinking when the emotion emerges)
o no transmission as in accurate truthful unambiguous transmission of knowledge
 art is no act of communication
 but getting clear about our feelings (disturbance. We feel but we don’t know
what we feel. Language does not help due to generalization),
disambiguating them, processing them
 transmission as in collaboration: success when the artwork affects
 describing is against the artistic endeavour: describing generalizes instead of
clarifying the feeling
 o No feeling selection, no degree of good and bad feelings like with Tolstoy
o Highly individualized and cannot as such be reproduced
- The work of Art as an Imaginative object:
o (inverted Platonism) start of with felling sand sensations
o The artwork is not the physical material object
 Cannot be reduced to be what is sensed or felt
o It is the idea in the artists head + the sensation feelings from which it acends
through the act of expression.
o Intersubjective in so far as the ideas are not transmitted but reproduced by the
recipient
o Creative imagination
o The art is a imaginative process of becoming clear, becoming conscious, of our
feelings: feelings transferred to thought
o Collaboration in the ideas? In becoming clear about ones feelings? Are we feeling
together? Going together on a journey of self discovery
o Real artwork is imagined
 Cause if the sensation of art alone would to be enough to experience, to be
affected and understand, to participate in, reproduce the feelings and
insights of the artists through, the artwork
- collaborative nature of art. (Intersubjectivity)
o Collaboration between the artists and other artists:
 And historical discourse appropriating ideas from the past and eing
appropriated y future artists -> Art is relative/relational. There is no such
thing like perfect originality. The tools to make art are given to us by the
world, the people, before him
o Collaboration between the author and the Performer.
 There is creative participation of the performer in interpreting and the
authors work.
o Collaboration between the artists and the audience.
 The goodness, the properness of the artwork is not merely determined by
the artist. Only by giving consideration to the perspective of the recipient
can he make sure that the emotion that shall be transmitted actually is
similar to the one he feels. Communication demands that the artists must
consider the habits/rules currently in place by which is communicated.
Especiall performed infront of the audience, its reactions participate in the
creation of the artwork
- Against the individualistic originality focused perception of art

- At the most basic level we experience expressions and feelings

- Consciousness is an attentive activity, and an creative activity that postulates from limited
set of sensory data (transforming, imagining a 2d plane into a 3d object)
o Also observes its feelings and understands and tries to clrify them by discriminating
it from other feelings experiences
o Art a representation is uncreative and thus misses a big point of art

- Art is a creation of imagined object through the expression of impressions and feelings
 - Imagination is an intermediate here and now state that processes the raw data of feelings
and impressions its product being ideas that can in contrast be compared with each other
- Through this process we also gain a sense of self throught temporal and spatial difference
that grows between the uncouncious raw feeling and the made aware clarified idea of it.
(Hume inspired)
- You become conscious of yourself by being conscious to other people
o The I that is a We and the We that is an I

- This bridges the individual level of art and its collaborative nature
o We become conscious of a feeling through the feedback loop and contrast with
other and express in context of the limitations that the social space poses
- Bernahrd Stiegler might be very insightful here to be applied/compared

Class 9, Expression: Carrol chapter 2 “Art and Expression”

The Expression Theory of Art:
- Transmission Theory of expressive art:
o “Let us say that something is art only if it is an intended transmission to an audience
of the self-same, individualized feeling that the artist has experienced and clarified.”
(64)
o “x is a work of art if and only if x is (1) an intended (2) transmission to an audience
(3) of the self-same (typeidentical) (4) individualized (5) feeling state (emotion) (6)
that the artist experienced (himself/herself) (7) and clarified (8) by means of lines,
shapes, colors, sounds, actions and/or words.” (65)

- Solo expression theory of Art:

o Differ in regard to point 2: does not have to be expressed to an audience

- “the expression theory of art is not only an impressive theory of Romantic art and its legacy;
it also does as good, if not a better, job of tracking pre-Romantic art” with regards of
explaining its function, defining it.
o Romanticist Art forcefully expressed emotions due to the conception that art should
imitate reality (?)

- “Just in terms of comprehensiveness, expression theories are superior to rival imitation and
representational theories.” (66)
- “If science explores the outer world of nature and human behavior, art, according to the
expression theory, explores the subjective world of feeling. Science makes discoveries about
physics and markets. Art makes discoveries about the emotions. The naturalist identifies
new species; the artist identifies new emotional variations and their timbres. Thus, the
expression theory of art not only explains what makes something art in a more
comprehensive manner than previous rivals did; it also explains why art is important to us.
These are two consequential recommendations in its favor” (66)

Objections to the Expression theory of Art:

- Critique of Solo expressionist against transmissionist
 o It would be rather capricious if art would only be art if it would be perceived by an
audience (that deems it art?)
o Relativistic, conventionalist

- Critique of Transmissionist against solo expressionists

o The work of art an artist makes is usually made through a idiomatic convetional
medium that could be in theory be understood by someone else
o The work is thus in principle made with the intention of communication
o “x is an artwork only if it is intended, at least in principle, to transmit something to
an audience.” (68)

- What if the artists language is private

o 1. If it would be incomprenhesible to everyone that it would be unlikely to be
regarded as art (needs a minimal quotient of public accessibility)
o 2. Could the Poet himself even understand and thus comprehend his work as art?

- “The role of the artist and that of the audience are intimately linked, and every artist is his
own first audience.” (69)
- Thus there does need to be a literal other audience apart from the artists himself
- But therefore there is always an audience involved for the creation of art

- Experience condtion and Identity condition: Artist must have experienced the emotion, and
must transmit it to an audience
o Identity condition unsatisfactory
 “If the actor were as worked up as the audience about Iago’s nastiness, he
would probably forget his lines—or maybe kill himself!”
 “Many (most?) actors are too busy calculating their emotional effect on the
audience to emote genuinely themselves. So the identity condition does not
apply universally”
 Artist and audience do not need to feel the same emotion and most often
do not do so
o Experience condition thus also problematic:
 Artist might feel nothing while creating his work, while the finished work
evokes most vibrant feelings in the audience
 Artist must not know the feeling to evoke the feeling: consider psychopaths
 Thus not necessary condition
 Clarity condition also impeded the experience premise as an artists must not
always be in a emotional state nor dwell on it thus is not clarifying it
- Clrity condtion has also problems of its own
 Some art does not serve its emotions clear and dicern
 Some art has as its stylistic devise to serve the raw (punk stuff)
 Not a necessary condition
 Also: “The transmission theorist assumes that the clarification of emotion is
the aim of all art. But this is not true. Some art is designed to project vague
emotions.”
 Many Historical counter examples to the clarification condition
- Surrealist corpse poetry challenges all three conditions

- Individualist condition not necessary

o There is art that is extremely specfici and indivudalistic unique
o But there is art that pretty much always prodcues the same emotions (routine)
o Critique of mine: to evoke emotion via senses, it needs semantics, habitualiced
pattern. We learn emotion to a degree throu repletion of signs.

- Expression of emotion no necessary

o Art, expectially postmodern and contemporary art transmit ideas and concepts
o Cognitive not emotive

- “The artworld appears to accept this work as art, and that provides at least a prima facie
reason for thinking it so. On the other hand, if the expression theorist invokes her theory to
support her conclusion that it is not art, then she has merely assumed what she is supposed
to prove” (75)
- “Artists, too, have techniques for bracketing their emotions. Aleatoric strategies are one sort
that we’ve already discussed, and there are others. Just as scientists know how to render
their products austerely intellectual, so do many artists. Artists can organize their works in
such a way that the only response a sympathetic spectator can make is to think about it.”
(76)

- Condition of art being embodied in lines, colors, sounds, shapes, actions, words and /or any
other physical medium
o “In this spirit, an artist might declare that her artwork was comprised of all the ideas
that she had about art before breakfast”
o Despite of it being conceived physically the artwork itself is not

- Last condition of completing the list of artworks

o “So adequately framing the last condition of the transmission theory is troublesome.
We do not appear to have a way of completing the list, nor a way of disqualifying
candidates from being added to it. We would like to say that something is an
artwork only if it employs artistic means, but if we knew what comprised all and only
artistic means, we would already have a definition of art at our disposal”

- Conclusion:
o “Scouting various expression theories of art, then, only the requirement that
artworks be intended for audiences looks like it has a fighting chance to succeed as a
necessary condition for art, and this condition need not have anything to do with the
expression of emotion per se. Every other condition of the expression theories of art
canvassed fails to be necessary. Expression theories of art, like the transmission
theory, therefore appear too exclusive. There is too much art that they do not
accommodate. But at the same time, expression theories of art are too inclusive; the
conditions are not jointly sufficient. Together they will count too much everyday
expressive behavior as art when they shouldn’t. Thus, expression theories of art are
not nearly accurate enough. Though superior to representational theories of art,
they fail to track all art satisfactorily in both its richness and its specificity.” (78)
In Class Notes:
- What all can be expressed
o Emotion
o Ideas
o Questions (doubt)
o Perspective
o Expressive properties (of the artwork itself)
 Nelson Goodman thinks that expression is referential and metaphorical
 It points to sadness and metaphorically posses a property of sadness
 Carol says that it can have literally have expressive properties in the way of
“it looks sad” based on habitulised semantic patterns (language)

Class 10, Formalism: Clive Bell “Art”

In text Notes:
- First argument on page one claims that only someone that both has clever mind and has
experience an aestheiric affection/emotion is fit to argue about the “nature” of Aesthetics.
- Bell ask what is the exclusive quality that lets us identify a particular object to belong to the
category of “Art”. What makes Art, Art.
o His answer: its significant form
o “, certain forms and relations of forms, stir our aesthetic emotions. These relations
and combinations of lines and colours, these aesthetically moving forms, I call
“Significant Form”” (332)
o This quality Is apparently not valid for all forms of Art but only for Visual Art

- Concerning potential criticism against his theory, his perspective on art, being highly
subjective he replies than any attempt of identifying art objectively is “ridiculous”.
o He says that only by ones emotion can one perceive art. Only when on feels that
something is art can one speak of art.
o “We have no other means of recognising a work of art than our feeling for it.” (332)

- He adds that for identifying art it is not important to identify and or define the significant
arrangements of forms, try to categorize them, then just the mere emotions that they make
us feel.

- He considers the difference between colour and form to be arbitrary. Forms cannot be
perceived without colour and colours cannot be perceived when they aren’t differentiated
by form. Colour is Form and Form is Colour. How else should visual perception work
o “The distinction between form and colour is an unreal one; you cannot conceive a
colourless line or a colourless space; neither can you conceive a formless relation of
colours.” (333)

- Concerning the popular interpretation of art that which is beautiful, Bell says that thos that
use it as a replacement for his conception of Art shall very well do so, but he for himself
thinks that the term beautiful is to ambiguously used in a variety of context and referring to
a number of different things that can surely be said to not produce an aesthetics emotion.
 o Example being women being called beautiful not necessarily for being aesthetically
pleasing but for being “desirable”

- But generally speaking Bell does not bet an eye for people calling it by different names if
they mean the same thing as him, being: “[…]arrangements and combinations that move us
in a particular way[…]” (334)
o He speaks in that relation of people identifying those things as art which have
Rhythm

- To those picture that we admire but don’t feel aesthetically affected by Bell annotates the
Term of “Descriptive Painting”
o Works in which forms are not used as an object of Emotion but…
o Which suggest emotion and convey information
o “Portraits of psychological and historical value, topographical works, pictures that
tell stories and suggest situations, illustrations of all sorts, belong to this class.” (334)

- Adjacent to that, he states “Art is above Morals or, rather, all art is moral because, as I
hope to show presently, works of art are immediate means to good.” (335)
- The very emotion that marks a work as a work of art validates its basic ethically correctness,
its “Good”-ness
- Not so descriptive painting which only “suggests a complacency” (335) in an
emotion/emotions, it is “sentimental”. As such then I presume that such painting only points
towards goodness than being an object of goodness, being good.
- Particular kind of works associated with this symptom by Bell are those form The Firth
Tradition

- In the case of descriptive painting that conveys information, there can be works of art
when they “would succeed as a good piece of psychology succeeds; it would reveal, through
line and colour, the complexities of an interesting state of mind.” (335)

- According to his Hypothesis Primitive art Is good because it is “free from descriptive
qualities”:
o No accurate representations.
o Only significant Form.
o “no other art moves us so profoundly.” (336)
o “in every case we observe three common characteristics –
 absence of representation,
 absence of technical swagger,
 sublimely impressive form.” (336)
o “the point is that, either from want of skill or want of will, primitives neither create
illusions, nor make display of extravagant accomplishment, but concentrate their
energies on the one thing needful – the creation of form. Thus have they created the
finest works of art that we possess.” (336)

- Art with a high degree of Representation can be artistic but not due to its representory
power but is formal power.
- “[…]to appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of
its ideas and affairs, no familiarity with its emotions. Art transports us from the world of
man’s activity to a world of aesthetic exaltation. For a moment we are shut off from
human interests; our anticipations and memories are arrested; we are lifted above the
stream of life.” (336)
o First sentence refers to the qualities of descriptive art
o Aesthetic exaltation I believe in its contrast to activities of man are to be understood
as that aesthetic ecstasy is a separate uniwue experience that only art can provoke
and that defines it as such. Art is the object of emotion Bell says, it is inherent to it, it
carries that emotion instead of referring to outside of itself one that is to found in
“man`s activities”
o He draws the comparison between Mathematicians and their experience in their
work as we do in art
 “He feels an emotion for his speculations which arises from no perceived
relation between them and the lives of men, but springs, inhuman or super-
human, from the heart of an abstract science.” (336)
 “Before we feel an aesthetic emotion for a combination of forms, do we not
perceive intellectually the rightness and necessity of the combination? If we
do, it would explain the fact that passing rapidly through a room we
recognise a picture to be good, although we cannot say that it has provoked
much emotion. We seem to have recognised intellectually the rightness of
its forms without staying to fix our attention, and collect, as it were, their
emotional signifi cance. If this were so, it would be permissible to inquire
whether it was the forms themselves or our perception of their rightness
and necessity that caused aesthetic emotion.” (336)
 To be honest I don’t not fully understand this argument but it seems to be
not to relevant for his frther discussion as he himself states a few lines later
- He closes this section with the following:
o “What I have to say is this: the rapt philosopher, and he who contemplates a work of
art, inhabit a world with an intense and peculiar significance of its own; that signifi
cance is unrelated to the significance of life. In this world the emotions of life find
no place. It is a world with emotions of its own” (336)

- “To appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing but a sense of form and colour
and a knowledge of three-dimensional space.” (337)
o To fully appreciate the significance of most artworks we must perceive them in a
three dimensional space
o This criteria is “is neither irrelevant nor essential to all art” (337)
o He also says that if the understanding of 3 dimensions would be called
representational then he would admit that there is one representative quality that is
not irrelevant

- Artists that seek to represent and emotion from life instead of the Aesthetic emotion itself
and those deaf/blind to that emotion “treat created form as though it were imitated form, a
picture as though it were a photograph.” (337)
 - “A good work of visual art carries a person who is capable of appreciating it out of life into
ecstasy: to use art as a means to the emotions of life is to use a telescope for reading the
news.” (337)
- “You will notice that people who cannot feel pure aesthetic emotions remember pictures by
their subjects; whereas people who can, as often as not, have no idea what the subject of a
picture is. They have never noticed the representative element, and so when they discuss
pictures they talk about the shapes of forms and the relations and quantities of colours.
Often they can tell by the quality of a single line whether or no a man is a good artist. They
are concerned only with lines and colours, their relations and quantities and qualities; but
from these they win an emotion more profound and far more sublime than any that can be
given by the description of facts and ideas.”

- To back up this former argument he tells an anecdote of his experience with music and how
he is not very well versed in the significant forms of music and thus constantly slips from the
pure aesthetics ecstasy into interpreting human emotions into it.
- He does “not say that they cannot understand art; rather I say that they cannot understand
the state of mind of those who understand it best. I do not say that art means nothing or
little to them; I say they miss its full significance” cause they lack that state of mind the tools
needed to appreciate its full significance
- This also means that his theory is not necessarily meant only for visual art but that he
himself only applies it on his filed of expertise

- “To a man of a later age, Greek sculpture meant much and Mexican nothing, for only to the
former could he bring a crowd of associated ideas to be the objects of familiar emotions. But
the perfect lover, he who can feel the profound significance of form, is raised above the
accidents of time and place.” (339)
- “Great art remains stable and unobscure because the feelings that it awakens are
independent of time and place, because its kingdom is not of this world.” (339)
- “The forms of art are inexhaustible; but all lead by the same road of aesthetic emotion to
the same world of aesthetic ecstasy” (339)

In Class Notes:
- Artworks produce/evoke in us “Aesthetics Emotions”
o This kind of emotion there might be variance within that kind of emotion
o But it is different from Human, lived experienced emotions
o Unique to art
- What do all the works that evoke such “Aesthetic emotions, what do they share in? =
o “Significant Form”
 Combinations of Lines and Colours
o When the parts of an artwork relate to eacth other in a way that they form a
coherent whole
- Objection addresses: Subjectivist perspective
o How can the artwork itself hold the aesthetic emotion if one can see an aesthetics
emotion and the next cannot
o How can Significant Form be essentialist ?
- His response: One can only know of the artistic nature of a work by feeling it thus it must be
subjective.
o Sooooo…: Subjective Objectivism?
 - Aesthetic emotion is an emotion that take you out into another world

- Art is beyond morals and ethics cause morals and ethics is human lively emotions and
experience

- In so far expressive of the artists emotion as that it expresses a significant form that the
artists found beautiful himself (in nature)
o Might be that beauty in nature might come close to evoking aesthetics emotions
o So it could be that it is that what the artist experience and which he transformed
fully into an aesthetic emotion.
o Enjoying the thing in itself, reality in itself
- Bells theory is, as he says himself, speculative

Class 11, Formalism: Hanslick's "The Beautiful in Music”

In text notes:
- Main Question of the test:
o “Has Music any subject?”

- There are two camps

o One that believes it does not
 Many prominent thinkers that hold that view
 Composed of Philosophers:
 “Many prominent men, almost exclusively philosophers, among
whom we may mention Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Herbart, Kahlert,
&c., hold that music has no subject.” (281)
 Composed of Physiologists:
 “include such eminent thinkers as Lotze and Helmholtz, whose
opinions, strengthened as they are by musical knowledge, carry
great weight and authority.” (281)
o And one that does
 Numerically larger amount of people that defend this position
 Composed of “trained musicians of the literary profession”
 And shared by the majority of the public
 The technical side of the job of musicians seems at odds with the
perspective that music has a subject but nonetheless continue to defend it
less for the sake of truth but for the “honour” of their profession
 Any argument against that is viewed often as a “degrading error and a form
of crude and heinous materialism”

- The authors intends to answer that question in hindsight of arriving at truth not to safe
some kind of “Honour”
- Thus I presume that the author is for now in line with the anti subjectivity of music
- Argues that the indiscriminate use of terms and their meanings regarding the question are at
fault for the answers ambiguity
o Contents
o Subject
o Matter

- Content means originally that which is contained in something

- Contents is mistaken for “object” (subject-matter; topic)
- Is in that sense often then this idealist interpretation actually is often seen at odds with the
material parts of a musical piece
- Followers of this idealist perception of music also say that this subject cannot be translated
into words
- The Author argue that if we speak of ““indefinite subject” upon which everyone puts a
different construction, which can only be felt and not translated into words”(282), then we
are not talking of a subject as we have defined it

- “Music consists of successions and forms of sound, and these alone constitute the
subject.” (282)
- AS architecture and dancing it has form and motion and lacks a definite subject
- “music does not only speak by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.” (282)

- Krüger Argument for music showing a different side of the subject:

o Music shows a different side of the subject
o Whereas plastic figures exhibit past action (anger, love, courage, sorrow…)
o Music supplies the motive force so that we may know the subject in motion (loving,
rushing, heaving, storming, fuming)
- Hanslick objects that that a piece of music might “rush, heave, and storm”, it can surely not
feel itself emotions. Music cannot love nor be angry
- Emotion is imported by the reader

- Krügers argument for representational force of music

o Where the painting (the plastic figure?) represent the subject by giving an account of
his “outward experience” giving us an outlines the features and attitudes…
o Music can represent the inmost feelings of the subject
- Hanslick says that this is entirely false
o Music cannot represent at all
o Plastic art can represent definite features of a subject
o Music is ambiguous as its chords, rhythms and melodies can stand for many things
and don’t resemble any subject definitely

- Music has no representation in nature, in lived experience, and thus music cannot represent
anything from nature and form lived experience and thus has no subject

- Subject as in substance can only properly applied to an art-product if it correlates with what
Form. Substance gives matter form thus the subject of a thing is what it gives it its form.
- In Music Subject, substance, and form are an “undecomposable” whole
- Other arts can represent the same subject in different forms
 - Not so music. It has no form that is independent from substance
- Example: Beethoven’s Symphony in B flat major
o What is the subject? What the form?
o Group of sounds is both subject and form
o What if is played by another instrument in a different octave?
 If it is said that the form changed and not the subject
 Then only the interval “the sekelton frame for the musical annotation
remains”
o This is not musical definiteness
 In that example the neither the substance nor the form of the piece does
not really change
 It is only experience through a different lens like coloured glass
 The piece is just coloured different

- There is the musical aesthetic use of form and subject which speaks of them in a rather
technical manner
- And the “strictly logical”
o To speak of it as such one need to see the musical piece as inseparable fusion of
form and subject (substance)
o The subject cannot come from a external object
o It can only be understood as something “intrinsically musical; in other words , as
the concrete group of sounds in a piece of music.” (284)
o “The Principal theme”

- Despite the fusion of form and subject musical piece have apart from that intrinsic value
nonthless originality
- The Author want to emphasise the individuality of works of music
- “The independent musical thoughts (themes) possess the identity of a quotation and the
distinctness of a painting; they are individual, personal, eternal.” (285)

- While being for most part in line with Hegel he disagrees on the point that “the sole function
of music is the expressing of an ‘inner non-individuality’”

- “The stigma that music has no subject is, therefore, quite unmerited. Music has a subject –
i.e., a musical subject, which is no less a vital spark of the divine fire than the beautiful of
any other art.” (285)

In Class Notes:
- The message of art cannot be tanslated into any other language
- Music is its own language(?)
- Music evokes indefinite conception: people think, imagine, feel different thinks while
listening to a piece, even one person can feel different things each time it listens to a piece.
- The only right way to think of music is in terms of music
- Feeling does not lie isolated from other mental activities in ones mind
o Feelings are cognitively informed thus
o Music cannot suggest any concrete feelings cause music does not hold inherently
any thoughts, any believes, truths, narratives, that go beyond the musical subject
- Music isn’t about anything
- Music is music
- If change the form of another work of art it can still represent or evoke the same throught
emotion or narraitive. The subject does not need to change
- In case of a musical piece when you change the form, the melody for example, the subject
immediately change cause the form is the subject

- On the logical level no distinction between form and subject: it is both the melody

- On the musical level the content and form can be intrinsically differentiated
o The different parts of a musical piece and the overall theme or themes?
o The Principal Theme in case of a full composition