THE PROBLEM OF NON-PERCEPTUAL ART

Transcription

1 British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 43, No. 4, October 2003 THE PROBLEM OF NON-PERCEPTUAL ART James Shelley Consider the following three propositions: (R) Artworks necessarily have aesthetic properties that are relevant to their appreciation as artworks. (S) Aesthetic properties necessarily depend, at least in part, on properties perceived by means of the five senses. (X) There exist artworks that need not be perceived by means of the five senses to be appreciated as artworks. The independent plausibility and apparent joint inconsistency of these three propositions give rise to what I refer to as the problem of non-perceptual art. Assuming that the propositions are independently plausible and jointly inconsistent, there will be three ways of solving the problem: you may affirm (R) and (S) while denying (X); you may affirm (S) and (X) while denying (R); or you may affirm (R) and (X) while denying (S). The first of these, once the orthodox solution, has been displaced in recent years by the second. The third has never really been defended. I defend it here. If successful, my defence will have shown that there is reason to deny the existence of non-aesthetic art and no reason to believe that art is not essentially aesthetic. I. INTRODUCTION I took [ordinary objects] out of the earth and [placed them] onto the planet of aesthetics. Marcel Duchamp 1 WHAT will the future regard as the most significant twentieth-century development in the philosophy of art? The acknowledgement of non-aesthetic art must be considered a strong candidate. The existence of such art demonstrates that art is not essentially aesthetic, and that the philosophy of art, therefore, is not merely a branch of the philosophy of aesthetics. The possibility of non-aesthetic art was unthinkable when the twentieth century began. Now its existence has come to seem undeniable you might as well deny the existence of abstract art, some will think. 2 1 From an unpublished interview with Harriet Sidney and Carroll Janis (New York, 1953). Cited in F. Naumann, Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Making Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Ghent: Ludion, 1999), p Aestheticians now appear overwhelmingly to affirm the existence of non-aesthetic art, so much so that they tend not to see the need to argue for its existence. For recent basic-premise appeals to the British Society of Aesthetics

2 364 THE PROBLEM OF NON-PERCEPTUAL ART But I think it is still possible to deny the existence of non-aesthetic art. This paper sketches a way of doing it. Consider the following allegedly non-aesthetic artworks: Duchamp s Fountain, a urinal bearing the signature R. Mutt ; Duchamp s L.H.O.O.Q., a reproduction of the Mona Lisa with a moustache and goatee superimposed and the letters L, H, O, O, and Q inscribed at bottom; 3 and Rauschenberg s Erased DeKooning Drawing, a piece of paper that had been a DeKooning pencil drawing before Rauschenberg erased the pencil markings. What is allegedly novel about such works is that you can appreciate them as artworks without perceiving them with your senses. To appreciate them as artworks, it is claimed, a description will serve just as well as seeing them. To avoid begging the question whether such works are non-aesthetic, let us refer to any artwork that can thus be appreciated as nonperceptual. Now consider the following three propositions: (R) Artworks necessarily have aesthetic properties that are relevant to their appreciation as artworks. (S) Aesthetic properties necessarily depend, at least in part, on properties perceived by means of the five senses. 4 (X) There exist artworks that need not be perceived by means of the five senses to be appreciated as artworks. The independent plausibility and apparent joint inconsistency of these three propositions give rise to what I will refer to as the problem of non-perceptual art. Assuming that the propositions are independently plausible and jointly inconsistent, there will be three ways of solving the problem: you may affirm (R) and (S) while denying (X); you may affirm (S) and (X) while denying (R); or you may affirm (R) and (X) while denying (S). I will refer to the solution that affirms (R) and (S) while denying (X) as the first solution, given that (R) and (S) were entrenched before anyone entertained the possibility that there could be such a thing as non-perceptual art. It should be existence of non-aesthetic art, see T. Gracyk, Valuing and Evaluating Popular Music, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 57 (1999), p. 218, n. 25; I. C. Vaida, The Quest for Objectivity: Secondary Qualities and Aesthetic Qualities, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 56 (1998), p. 291; M. Kieran, Review of Weintraub s Art on the Edge and Over: Searching for Art s Meaning in Contemporary Society, 1970s 1990s, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 56 (1998), p When pronounced in French, this series sounds like a French sentence meaning She has a hot ass. 4 (S) is the claim that the set of properties on which any aesthetic property depends must include some properties perceivable by the five senses. (S) is not the stronger claim that the set of properties on which any aesthetic property depends must include only properties perceivable by the five senses. [I take Kendall Walton to have refuted the stronger claim, but to have left (S) untouched. See his Categories of Art, Philosophical Review, vol. 79 (1970), pp ] Nor does (S) entail that two objects can have the same aesthetic properties only if they have the same sensory properties.

3 JAMES SHELLEY 365 clear that it does not allow for the possibility of non-aesthetic art. Advocates of the first solution include Clement Greenberg and Monroe Beardsley. 5 I will refer to the solution that affirms (S) and (X) while denying (R) as the second solution, given that it has now largely displaced the first, thanks, in part, to the production of allegedly non-perceptual works such as Fountain and Erased DeKooning Drawing. The second solution alone allows for the possibility of nonaesthetic art. Its advocates include Arthur Danto, Timothy Binkley, and Noël Carroll. 6 I will refer to the solution that affirms (R) and (X) while denying (S) as the third solution. This solution, like the first, disallows the possibility of nonaesthetic art, though this should not blind us to the differences between the two solutions. Agreement that art is essentially aesthetic means little when you disagree both about what it is to be art and what it is to be aesthetic. The third solution has received little by way of support, 7 though you can find suggestions of it in Danto, scattered puzzlingly throughout his more systematic development of the second solution. 8 I will advocate the third solution here. 5 See Clement Greenberg, Avant-Garde Attitudes: New Art in the Sixties, in The Collected Essays and Criticism, vol. 4 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp ; and Monroe Beardsley, An Aesthetic Definition of Art, in H. Curtler (ed.), What is Art? (New York: Haven), pp If any contemporary aesthetician can be said to be working in the tradition of Greenberg and Beardsley, it is Nick Zangwill. Zangwill, however, does not deny the existence of non-aesthetic art, but seeks rather to defend a weakened version of formalism that is compatible with its existence. See his The Metaphysics of Beauty (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U.P., 2001), particularly ch Arthur Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U.P., 1981); The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (New York: Columbia U.P., 1986); After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U.P., 1997); Timothy Binkley, Piece: Contra Aesthetics, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 35 (1970), pp ; and Noël Carroll, Art and Interaction, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 45 (1986), pp Stephen Davies appears to advocate the third solution. See his Definitions of Art (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U.P., 1991), in which he argues, following Danto, that Fountain has aesthetic properties gained as a result of its attaining art status (p. 67), and that to appreciate such pieces as artworks is to appreciate them for such properties (p. 69). But the examples Davies gives of such aesthetic properties are odd: he maintains, for example, that Fountain possesses the aesthetic property of referr[ing] to the history and techniques of sculpture (p. 67). To justify classification of such properties as aesthetic, Davies proposes that we extend the notion of the aesthetic to cover... properties [traditionally] recognized... asimportant to art s appreciation and as not covered by aesthetic as used in its traditional sense (pp ). Davies s proposal, then, is to broaden the notion of the aesthetic to include all of the properties relevant to art s appreciation ranging from complex semantic properties to simple sensuous ones (p. 108). But this proposal requires such a broadening of the notion that one wonders why the label aesthetic should be retained. (For a sharp criticism, see Carroll, Beauty and the Genealogy of Art Theory, Philosophical Forum, vol. 22 [1991], no. 4, p. 334.) My proposal is relatively modest. It is that we allow that aesthetic properties depend on semantic properties just as they depend on sensory properties. If the historical claims made in this paper are correct, this proposal not only does not involve a stipulative redefinition of the notion of the aesthetic, but is in fact demanded by the original notion. 8 Previous to the appearance of After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History, a case could have been made for classifying Danto as an advocate of the third solution. Davies in fact makes

4 366 THE PROBLEM OF NON-PERCEPTUAL ART I will proceed in two stages. I will begin by considering reasons for taking the step from the first solution to the second, the step we have already taken. Then I will present reasons for taking the step from the second solution to the third, the step I propose we now take. II. FIRST TO SECOND Given that advocates of the first and second solutions agree in affirming (S), debate between them will centre on whether to deny (X) or (R). The firstsolution advocate will deny (X), of course, and her denial will take one of two forms: she may deny (X) by denying that allegedly non-perceptual artworks are artworks, or she may deny (X) by denying that allegedly non-perceptual artworks are non-perceptual. Beardsley s denial of (X) takes the first form. Accepting that allegedly nonperceptual artworks are artworks, according to Beardsley, means abandoning common sense... along with philosophical acumen : The fuss that has been made about Duchamp s Fountain has long amazed me. It does not seem that in submitting that object to the art show and getting it more or less hidden from view, Duchamp or anyone else thought of it either as art or as having an aesthetic capacity. He did not establish a new meaning of artwork, nor did he really inaugurate a tradition that led to the acceptance of plumbing figures (or other readymades ) as artworks today. 9 The second-solution advocate will agree with Beardsley on one thing: that Duchamp did not establish a new meaning for artwork. But she will surely disagree with the question-begging implication that the acceptance of Fountain as an artwork would require that artwork be given a new meaning: by showing us what an artwork need not be, Duchamp merely clarified the meaning that artwork already had. But the most significant of Beardsley s claims happens also to be the most obviously false: the claim that Duchamp did not inaugurate a tradition that led to the acceptance of readymades as artworks. That appears to be precisely what Duchamp did, and it is hard to understand how Beardsley could have believed otherwise as late as Second-solution advocates need not maintain that the widespread acceptance of readymades as artworks establishes such a case (Definitions, pp , ). But Danto clarifies his position in After the End, where he not only argues that aesthetic considerations have no essential application to... art produced from the late 1960s on (p. 25), but notes that he sought to demonstrate this philosophically in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace and The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (p. 39, n. 4). Danto s philosophical demonstration largely consists in deriving the existence of non-aesthetic artworks from the existence of artworks that have counterparts that are perceptually indistinguishable but artistically distinct (Transfiguration, pp ; Disenfranchisement, pp ; After the End, p. 91). This argument is roughly the same as Binkley s, which I consider below. 9 Beardsley, An Aesthetic Definition of Art, p. 25.

5 JAMES SHELLEY 367 that readymades are or can be artworks. They need only maintain that the widespread acceptance of readymades as artworks shifts the burden of proof onto the first-solution advocate. As Carroll argues: It seems that the existence of anti-aesthetic art is a fact of the artworld and has been for some time. The aesthetic theorist of art cannot define it away. If that is a consequence of the aesthetic definition of art, then it seems that the definition s proponent, not the critic, is begging the question.... The aesthetic theorist cannot stipulate what she will count as facts in the face of massive amounts of countervailing evidence, which continues to grow daily. 10 Given our practice of acknowledging readymades and other non-perceptual works as artworks, Beardsley s rejection of them as artworks is legislative rather than descriptive: it is he who apparently wishes to establish a new meaning for artwork. The burden therefore falls to him to prove that readymades are not artworks after all, and that is something he seems never to have attempted, at least in a non-question-begging way. Butitisnotdifficulttocomeupwithaninitiallyplausiblepremisefor Beardsley s conclusion. It might be argued that readymades and other nonperceptual works ought not be accepted as artworks because they are not sufficiently continuous with past artworks to go by the same name. Given that all pre-duchampian artworks were designed to be perceptually satisfying, it makes no sense to refer to anything as an artwork not designed for that function, whether or not it becomes common practice to do so. To refer to readymades as artworks is to miss the point of what we have always been trying to get at by means of the concept of art. But against such a line of reasoning, Carroll observes that to represent the provision of aesthetic satisfaction as the sole or even the central function of pre- Duchampian artwork is to oversimplify our interactions with it. The activity of interpreting artworks, which includes assessing their art-historical importance, has always also been a central way of interacting with them: Now my point against aesthetic theorists of art is that even if Fountain does not promote an aesthetic interaction, it does promote an interpretive interaction. Moreover, an interpretive interaction, including one of identifying the dialectical significance of a work in the evolution of art history, is as appropriate and as characteristic a response to art as an aesthetic response. Thus, since Fountain encourages an appropriate and characteristic art response, we have an important reason to consider it to be a work of art even if it promotes no aesthetic experience Carroll, Philosophy of Art: A Contemporary Introduction (London: Routledge, 1999), p See also Binkley, Piece: Contra Aesthetics, p Carroll, Art and Interaction, p. 66.

6 368 THE PROBLEM OF NON-PERCEPTUAL ART George Dickie provides a way of denying (X) that is an instance of the second of the two forms distinguished above that is, he denies that Fountain and other allegedly non-perceptual artworks are non-perceptual artworks not by denying that they are artworks, but by denying that they are non-perceptual. To appreciate Fountain as artwork, he claims, is to appreciate it precisely for its perceptual properties: Why cannot the ordinary qualities of Fountain its gleaming white surface, the depth revealed when it reflects images of surrounding objects, its pleasing oval shape be appreciated? It has qualities similar to those of works of Brancusi and Moore which many do not balk at saying they appreciate. 12 There is no disputing that Fountain has these properties, or that they can be appreciated. But the question is whether to appreciate Fountain as an artwork is to appreciate it for these and presumably other perceptual properties. The secondsolution advocate will contend that to appreciate Fountain for its perceptual properties is to miss its point, which is to demonstrate that there can be artworks whose appreciation as artworks does not thus depend on their perceptual properties. Danto, for example, maintains that because Fountain is an artwork, it necessarily possesses properties that perceptually indistinguishable urinals lack, and that to appreciation Fountain as an artwork is to appreciate Fountain for precisely these properties: But certainly Fountain has properties that urinals themselves lack: it is daring, impudent, irreverent, witty, and clever. What would have provoked Duchamp to madness or murder, I should think, would be the sight of aesthetes mooning over gleaming surfaces of the porcelain object he had manhandled into exhibition space: How like Kilimanjaro! How like the white radiance of eternity! How arctically sublime! 13 I find Danto s interpretation of Fountain more compelling than Dickie s. But Dickie s is not incoherent, and the fact of an opposing interpretation does not show that Dickie s is wrong, nor, therefore, that Fountain is non-perceptual. But the limits of Dickie s kind of interpretation, at least as a means of preserving the thesis that artworks are essentially perceptual, becomes apparent as soon as you attempt to extend it to other allegedly non-perceptual artworks. How might you extend a Dickie-type interpretation to L.H.O.O.Q., for example? You may begin by remarking that L.H.O.O.Q. shares many perceptual properties with the works of Leonardo, particularly with the Mona Lisa. But if to appreciate L.H.O.O.Q as an artwork is to appreciate it for its perceptual properties, then it seems you must say something about the beauty (or lack thereof) with which Duchamp has rendered the moustache and goatee. Binkley is surely right when he observes: 12 Dickie, Art and the Aesthetic, p. 42. It should be noted that I have not claimed that Dickie himself advocates the first-solution, only that he provides an argument useful to the first-solution cause. 13 Danto, Transfiguration, pp

7 JAMES SHELLEY 369 Excursions into the beauty with which the moustache was drawn or the delicacy with which the goatee was made to fit the contours of the face are fatuous attempts to say something meaningful about the work of art. If we do look at the piece, what is important to notice is that there is a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, that a moustache had been added, etc. It hardly matters exactly how this was done, how it looks. 14 Maintaining Dickie s line becomes still more difficult with respect to Erased DeKooning Drawing. On a Dickie-type interpretation, what point can Rauschenberg have in exhibiting the smudged paper that had been a DeKooning drawing? To focus our attention on the ordinary perceptual properties of smudged paper? Surely there are less costly ways of doing that. III. SECOND TO THIRD Given that advocates of the second and third solutions agree in affirming (X), debate between them will centre on whether to deny (R) or (S). The secondsolution advocate s denial of (R) will follow from the premise that non-aesthetic art exists, that is, that there is art whose appreciation does not depend on the perception of any of its aesthetic properties. But here a question arises for the second-solution advocate. If the appreciation of non-aesthetic art does not depend on the perception of aesthetic properties, on what does its appreciation depend? Does it depend instead on the detection of some class of non-aesthetic properties that play a role corresponding to the role played by aesthetic properties in the appreciation of aesthetic art? Or does the appreciation of non-aesthetic art depend on nothing corresponding to the perception of aesthetic properties in the appreciation of aesthetic art? Settling on an answer may prove difficult for the second-solution advocate. To answer that the appreciation of non-aesthetic art depends on nothing corresponding to aesthetic properties is to make a dangerous concession to the first-solution advocate. If the appreciation of non-aesthetic art should turn out to be radically unlike the appreciation of aesthetic art, the first-solution advocate would have a new reason for asserting the discontinuity of allegedly non-aesthetic art with aesthetic art, and hence for rejecting the former s claim to the status of art. To answer, on the other hand, that the appreciation of non-aesthetic art depends on properties analogous to aesthetic properties is to make a dangerous concession to the third-solution advocate. For the third-solution advocate will surely take a keen interest in these non-aesthetic-yet-analogous-to-aesthetic properties: she will want to know how they manage to play a role corresponding to the one played by aesthetic properties without being aesthetic properties. None of our second-solution advocates gives a direct answer to the question of whether the appreciation of non-perceptual art depends on aesthetic-property analogues. Nevertheless, they do tend to attribute to non-perceptual artworks 14 Binkley, Piece: Contra Aesthetics, pp

8 370 THE PROBLEM OF NON-PERCEPTUAL ART properties that appear to stand to those works as standard aesthetic properties stand to perceptual works. Danto, for example, attributes daring, impudence, irreverence, wit, and cleverness to Fountain, 15 and Binkley attributes wit and humour to Duchamp s non-perceptual work in general. 16 That these properties stand to their possessors as standard aesthetic properties stand to theirs seems clear: to fail to perceive the elegance and grace of the slow movement of Mozart s 39th Symphony is to fail fully to appreciate it; equally, to fail to perceive the daring and wit of Fountain is to fail fully to appreciate it. If daring, impudence, wit, and their kind play a role that (at the very least) corresponds to the role traditionally played by standard aesthetic properties, on what grounds might we deny them aesthetic status? Some claim that aesthetic properties are necessarily relevant as reasons for judgements of overall artistic merit. 17 But this picks out wit and cleverness as easily as it does grace and elegance: the claim that Fountain is good because witty makes no less sense than the claim that the Mozart movement is good because graceful. Some claim that aesthetic properties are properties we take pleasure in simply for their own sakes. 18 But to the degree we take pleasure in the Mozart movement simply because it is graceful (and not because its gracefulness makes some further promise), we also take pleasure in Fountain simply because it is witty (and not because its wit makes some further promise). Finally, some claim that aesthetic properties are response-dependent, and that they ultimately depend on nonresponse-dependent properties. 19 But, again, wit seems no less responsedependent, no less ultimately dependent on non-response-dependent properties, than do gracefulness or elegance. More could be said on behalf of each of these alleged similarities and others could be adduced. But I think it unnecessary to go on here, because the second-solution advocate, I suspect, will be willing to concede these similarities 15 Danto, Transfiguration, pp Binkley, Piece, p Carroll, meanwhile, attributes impishness to Paris Air (a vial of fifty cubic centimetres of Parisian air) and humour to In Advance of a Broken Arm (an ordinary snow shovel). But he classifies these properties and works as aesthetic (Philosophy of Art, pp. 181, 223). That Carroll makes these attributions and classifications in his recent Philosophy of Art appears to suggest that he is moving away from the second solution toward the third. However, he continues to hold the line on Fountain, citing it as an example of non-aesthetic art (p. 181). This appears to commit him to the following implausibilities: (i) that Fountain is different in kind from Paris Air and In Advance of a Broken Arm, (ii) that the property of being amusing, which he attributes to Fountain, is different in kind from the properties of being humorous and of being impish, and (iii) that either Fountain does not possess impishness or humour, or that their presence is irrelevant to its appreciation as art. 17 See Monroe Beardsley, What Is an Aesthetic Quality?, in The Aesthetic Point of View (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U.P., 1982), pp See Peter Kivy, What Makes Aesthetic Terms Aesthetic, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 36 (1975), no. 2, pp Carroll, Philosophy of Art, pp

9 JAMES SHELLEY 371 and others I might allege. She will be willing in part, I think, because nothing I have said takes us to the heart of the matter, namely perception. The secondsolution advocate may maintain that, whatever else we say about them, aesthetic properties are essentially perceptual. And I agree. My disagreement with the second-solution advocate concerns only what we mean, or perhaps ought to mean, when we say that aesthetic properties are essentially perceptual. What do we mean? Do we mean that aesthetic properties themselves necessarily are perceptible, that is, that they can be perceived? Or do we mean that the properties on which aesthetic properties depend (at least in part) are necessarily perceptible that aesthetic properties necessarily depend (at least in part) on the looks and sounds of things, for example? The second-solution advocate is obviously committed to the latter, which is simply a restatement of (S). What do second-solution advocates offer in defence of (S)? Second-solution advocates appear to believe that (S) has never been seriously challenged, and that there is therefore little, if anything, to defend (S) against. Nevertheless, Binkley and Carroll both do offer historical narratives of the concept of the aesthetic that support the view that a number of notable aestheticians, at least, maintain some version of (S). To show that aesthetics has always accepted its raison d etre to be a perceptual entity an appearance, Binkley constructs a narrative that begins with Baumgarten, extends through Bell, Langer, and Beardsley, and concludes with Sibley. From Sibley, Binkley cites the following: It is important to note first that, broadly speaking, aesthetics deals with a kind of perception. People have to see the grace and unity of a work, hear the plaintiveness or frenzy in the music, notice the gaudiness of a color scheme, feel the power of a novel, its mood, or its uncertainty of tone... the crucial thing is to see, hear, or feel. To suppose that one can make aesthetic judgments without aesthetic perception... is to misunderstand aesthetic judgment. 20 It should be clear that Sibley is not making the point that Binkley needs him to make. Sibley does not claim here that aesthetic properties necessarily depend on perceptual entities or appearances. His main point is merely that aesthetic properties are perceived. But Binkley asserts a logical relation between Sibley s view and the view that aesthetic properties depend on sensory properties: The reason that aesthetic properties must be perceived to be judged is that they inhere in what Monroe Beardsley has called the perceptual object : A perceptual object is an object some of whose qualities, at least, are open to direct sensory awareness Frank Sibley, Aesthetic and Non-aesthetic, Philosophical Review, 74, (1957), no. 2, p. 137; cited in Binkley, Piece, p Binkley, Piece, p Beardsley s definition of perceptual object, here cited by Binkley, can be found in his Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), p. 31.

10 372 THE PROBLEM OF NON-PERCEPTUAL ART I concede that Beardsley does make the point that Binkley needs him to make. 22 What I will not concede is that Sibley s claim that aesthetic properties are necessarily perceptible entails Beardsley s claim that the properties on which aesthetic properties depend are necessarily perceptible. Consideration of Sibley s comment in a wider context bears this out:... People have to see the grace and unity of a work,... feel the power of a novel, its mood, or its uncertainty of tone. They may be struck by these qualities at once, or they may come to perceive them only after repeated viewings, hearings, or readings, and with the help of critics. But unless they do perceive them for themselves, aesthetic enjoyment, appreciation, and judgment are beyond them. Merely to learn from others, on good authority, that the music is serene, the play moving, or the picture unbalanced is of little aesthetic value; the crucial thing is to see, hear, or feel. To suppose that one can make aesthetic judgments without aesthetic perception, say, by following rules of some kind, is to misunderstand aesthetic judgment. This therefore is how I shall use aesthetic judgment throughout. Where there is no question of aesthetic perception, I shall use some other expression like attribution of aesthetic quality or aesthetic statement. Thus, rather as a color-blind man may infer that something is green without seeing that it is, and rather as a man, without seeing a joke himself, may say something is funny because others laugh, so someone may attribute balance or gaudiness to a painting, or say that it is too pale, without himself having judged it so. 23 I propose that the best way to gain purchase on Sibley s notion of perception is to fasten on the notion that opposes it. As opposed to what do we perceive the presence of aesthetic properties, according to Sibley? The answer seems to be that we perceive aesthetic properties as opposed to inferring their presence: we perceive their presence as opposed to inferring it on the authority of others; we perceive their presence as opposed to inferring it from rules. This is not to say that the presence of aesthetic properties cannot be inferred (though Sibley does famously say that elsewhere). As a colour-blind man may infer that something is green without seeing that it is, as a man may infer that something is funny without seeing the joke himself, so we may conceivably infer that the music is serene without hearing that it is. But what we will have inferred, in all such cases, is the presence of an essentially perceptual property. If aesthetic properties did not strike us with their presence, they would have no presence for us to infer. Binkley s mistake, then, in claiming that Beardsley s point follows from Sibley s, results from his failure to note the different notions of perception operating in each. Sibley s notion is a broad one: when he says that aesthetic properties are essentially perceptual he means merely that we do not infer them, but that they strike us. Beardsley s notion is narrow, by contrast: when he says that 22 And I am also willing to concede that Binkley finds that point in Bell and in Langer as well. It is worth noting, however, Binkley finds this point only in philosophers with broad formalist commitments. 23 Sibley, Aesthetic and Non-aesthetic, p. 137.

11 JAMES SHELLEY 373 the properties on which aesthetic properties depend are essentially perceptual, he means that those properties are essentially perceptible by means of the five senses. Thus the claim that Beardsley s point follows from Sibley s is the claim that properties that strike us necessarily depend only on properties perceptible by means of the five senses. And this claim is false: ordinary urinals do not strike us with daring or wit, but Fountain, which for practical purposes is perceptually indistinguishable from them, does. Of course, Binkley s failure to distinguish the two notions of perception, and his consequent failure to grasp the logical independence of Sibley s point from Beardsley s, do not establish that Sibley s notion of the aesthetic ought to be preferred over Beardsley s. What it does establish, I hope, is that there is a notion of the aesthetic on the table Sibley s according to which daring, impudence, and wit are no less aesthetic than are grace, elegance, and beauty. And if it establishes that, then it also establishes that there is a notion of the aesthetic on the table according to which Fountain, L.H.O.O.Q, and Erased DeKooning Drawing are no less aesthetic than are the Trevi Fountain, the Mona Lisa, and the DeKooning drawing that Rauschenberg erased. Before leaving Binkley, however, I hope to provide some reason for preferring Sibley s notion to Beardsley s. Historically we have considered literature to be both artistic and aesthetic from the inception of the modern concepts of art and the aesthetic, a fact that ought to be embarrassing to the first- and secondsolution advocate alike. For if artworks are aesthetic only if their appreciation depends on a perception of at least some of their aesthetic properties, and if properties are aesthetic only if they depend directly on properties perceived by means of the five senses, it is hard to see how literary works can be aesthetic. Thus it seems that the same considerations that led the first-solution advocate to deny that Fountain is art ought to have led her to deny that War and Peace is, and that the same considerations that led the second-solution advocate to deny that Fountain is aesthetic ought to have led her to deny that The Brothers Karamavoz is. It is to Binkley s credit that he at least confronts this problem: Literature is the one major art form which does not easily accommodate the perceptual model of arthood. Although we perceive the printed words in a book, we do not actually perceive the literary work which is composed with intangible linguistic elements. Yet as Sibley points out, the reader will feel the power of a novel, its mood, or its uncertainty of tone, so that its aesthetic qualities are at least experienced through reading if not actually perceived by one of the senses.... Like an emotion, the power of a novel is felt without its being touched or heard or seen. Thus, although it will not be quite correct to say that one cannot know the aesthetic qualities of a novel without direct perceptual access, it is true that one cannot know them without directly experiencing the novel by reading it.... Hence, although perception is the paradigm of aesthetic experience, an accurate aesthetic theory will locate aesthetic

12 374 THE PROBLEM OF NON-PERCEPTUAL ART qualities more generally in a particular type of experience...so that literature can be included. 24 There is much to be unhappy about here. There is, first, the introduction of a wholly unexplained notion of experience, according to which we can experience the intangible linguistic elements that constitute literary works, but apparently cannot experience the intangible linguistic elements that constitute the comments Duchamp s non-perceptual works make on the artworld. Then there is the concession that aesthetic properties may depend directly on (or inhere in ) intangible linguistic elements, as they do in the case of literature. For to concede this is to deny that aesthetic properties must depend directly on properties perceivable by means of the five senses. It is to deny (S), in other words, the very proposition Binkley set out to defend by means of his historical narrative. It is to abdicate the second solution. Binkley might have taken a different approach. Instead of claiming that literature is intangibly linguistic, he might have tried the opposing strategy of claiming that the perceptual elements of literature its sound, rhythm, and imagery suffice to account for its aesthetic properties. But this strategy would succeed at best with only a limited set of literary works: discussions of sound, rhythm, and imagery will not get you far in explaining the power you feel in reading The Brothers Karamazov. 25 Or Binkley might have chosen to claim that literary artworks are not essentially aesthetic at all. That he does not make this claim stems in part, I suspect, from his wish to celebrate Duchamp as the first non-aesthetic artist. But I suspect that it also stems from a deeper concern. As noted, we have regarded literature as aesthetic as long as we have had a concept of the aesthetic. Explaining the way in which literature is aesthetic, then, would 24 Binkley, Piece, p Nick Zangwill pursues a version of this strategy in the defence of (S) he offers in The Metaphysics of Beauty (though it should be noted that it is not in advocacy of the second solution that he offers it). Zangwill proposes that any ascription of an apparently aesthetic property to a work of literature be classified as either (a) a literal ascription of a genuine aesthetic property that depends in part on sensory properties of the work, or (b) a literal ascription of a nonaesthetic property that is masquerading as an aesthetic property, or (c) a metaphorical ascription of a genuine aesthetic property (pp ). So, for example, ascriptions of power to novels are to be understood as literal ascriptions of a non-aesthetic property (though ascriptions of power to symphonies are to be understood as literal ascriptions of an aesthetic property) (p. 138), while ascriptions of beauty to plots are to be understood as metaphorical ascriptions of an aesthetic property (p. 140). But Zangwill is refreshingly candid about having little by way of argument to back this proposal (p. 144), and even admits to having positive doubts about it, largely because it departs from views expressed by Kant in the third Critique (p. 137, n. 8). It is not merely from Kant that Zangwill s proposal departs, however. To give three further examples: Aristotle betrays no hint that we ought not take literally his ascription of beauty to plots (see ch. 7 of The Poetics, ed. and trans. S. Halliwell [London: Duckworth, 1998]); Hume maintains that the (literal) beauty of literary works depends, in part, on their moral content (see Of the Standard of Taste, in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. E. F. Miller [Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1987], pp ); and Sibley, in the passage cited, apparently regards power in novels as paradigmatically aesthetic.

13 JAMES SHELLEY 375 appear to be one of the things that an account of the aesthetic is for. That a particular account should prove inconsistent with the aesthetic status of literature, therefore, must be among the strongest objections there can be against such an account especially when there is an alternative account, Sibley s, that is consistent with that status. Carroll s narrative includes Hutcheson, Kant, Bell, and Beardsley, but I will confine my consideration of it to Carroll s consideration of Hutcheson, since it is with respect to Hutcheson, Carroll and I agree, that the trouble begins. Carroll and I disagree, however, whether the blame lies with Hutcheson himself or with his interpreters. Hutcheson s Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design is widely considered to be the first philosophically sophisticated treatment of the concept of the aesthetic, and therefore a founding text of modern aesthetics. 26 It is also the first text in which the apprehension of what we would now call an aesthetic property beauty, in this case is explicitly assimilated to sensation. Hutcheson s principle thesis, perhaps, is that the idea of beauty is a pleasurable sensation, received by means of a sense of beauty. Central to Hutcheson s argument is the claim that the idea of beauty, like all sensations, is immediate and therefore disinterested. Carroll quotes the crucial passage: This superior power of perception [the sense of beauty] is justly called a sense because of its affinity to other senses in this, that the pleasure does not arise from any knowledge of principles, proportions, causes or of the usefulness of the object, but strikes us first with the idea of beauty. 27 Carroll regards Hutcheson s advancing of this argument as a momentous event in the history of philosophical aesthetics, as it constitutes the banishing [of] knowledge from the experience of beauty. 28 Carroll comments: Clearly, Hutcheson wants to contrast the feeling of beauty with knowledge, a contrast that portends subsequent contrasts, within the tradition, between the aesthetic and the cognitive. 29 Once knowledge has been divorced from the experience of beauty, once the cognitive has been excluded from the realm of the aesthetic, Carroll argues, nothing remains but the look or sound or pattern of thing[s]. 30 Thus, implicit in Hutcheson s claim that the pleasure of beauty is immediate and disinterested, Carroll finds the notion of the aesthetic that he will go on to find more fully 26 Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design, ed. P. Kivy (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973). 27 Ibid., I, art. XII, cited in Carroll, Beauty and the Genealogy of Art Theory, p Carroll, Beauty, p Ibid., p Ibid., p. 314.

14 376 THE PROBLEM OF NON-PERCEPTUAL ART developed in twentieth-century formalists, such as Bell and Beardsley. In other words, implicit in Hutcheson s claim that the pleasure of beauty is immediate and disinterested, Carroll finds an early version of (S). This suggests that (S) should be recognized as the original notion of the aesthetic. While I am generally sympathetic to Carroll s reading of Hutcheson, it seems to me that it gets one crucial point backwards. Hutcheson does not exclude the cognitive from the aesthetic, but rather goes to lengths to ensure its inclusion. He maintains that although the idea of beauty is a sensation, it is importantly unlike sensations received by means of the five senses. The latter he regards as external or bodily sensations, whereas the idea of beauty, he claims, is an internal or mental sensation, received by means of an internal or mental sense. One of his arguments for this view is that not all objects of beauty are objects of external sense: he observes, for example, that we sometimes find ourselves struck by the beauty of powerful yet economical theorems or demonstrated universal truths, such as propositions of Euclid s geometry or Newton s gravitational principle. 31 Indeed, so important does Hutcheson regard the fact of our finding beauty in theorems that he devotes an entire section of his Inquiry to its discussion. 32 In Hutcheson, then, we find not an advocate but a repudiator of the notion of the aesthetic that will later surface in Bell and Beardsley: Hutcheson emphatically denies that the property of beauty arises only from objects perceived by means of the five senses, and emphatically includes the cognitive in the category we now refer to as the aesthetic. But how are we to reconcile Hutcheson s acknowledgement of Euclid s propositions and Newton s principle as objects of beauty, with the earlier remark, cited by Carroll, in which he claims that the pleasure [of beauty] does not arise from any knowledge of principles, proportions, causes? Hutcheson divides all pleasures into the jointly exhaustive categories of the rational and the sensible ; he maintains, in other words, that all pleasures necessarily arise either from the operation of reason or from the operation of some sense. In the passage in question, Hutcheson argues that because the pleasure of beauty is immediate, it must be classified as sensible as opposed to rational. His point is that we do not reason our way to the experience of beauty from any knowledge of principles, proportions, causes or of the usefulness of the object, but that that experience, rather, strikes us, and so is sensible as opposed to rational. Hutcheson s point, then, is not that knowledge cannot be the object of an experience of beauty; his point, rather, is that knowledge cannot be the means to such an experience. That you cannot reason your way to the experience of beauty by means of principles does not imply that principles (or other cognitive entities) cannot strike you with their beauty. 31 Hutcheson, Inquiry, I, art. XI; III, arts I, II, V. 32 Ibid., III.

15 JAMES SHELLEY 377 So when Hutcheson claims that beauty is sensible, he claims roughly what Sibley does when Sibley claims that aesthetic properties are perceptual. It is this view and not (S), I think, that ought to be recognized as the original notion of the aesthetic. Of course, that (S) represents a departure from Hutcheson s notion does not show that (S) is false. But it should cast doubt on Carroll s suggestion that notions of the aesthetic that fail to delimit attention... to form and appearance necessarily constitute exercise(s) in stipulative redefinition, if not a downright misuse(s) of language. 33 If either of the two notions of the aesthetic here disentangled constitutes a redefinition or misuse of language, the narrower of the two, (S), seems the better candidate. We have noted the difficulty that the aesthetic status of literature poses for the second-solution advocate. Following Hutcheson s lead, let us now note the parallel difficulty posed by the aesthetic status of theorems and proofs: we have an equally long history of according them aesthetic status, and this too is a fact that an acceptable account of the aesthetic should explain. The discussion of Hutcheson, however, positions us to appreciate a further and, I think, more serious difficulty facing the second solution. In his criticism of what I have been calling the first solution, Carroll notes that it forces on us a distorted picture of our dealings with artworks: it asks us to pretend that those dealings are not cognitive in ways we know they are. Carroll describes that picture as one in which the spectator responds to each work of art monadically, savoring each aesthetic experience as a unitary event and not linking that event to a history of previous interactions with artworks. Such an artgoer would be as curious as the dedicated baseball spectator who attends games for whatever excitement he can derive from the contest before him and who does not contemplate the significance of this game in terms of the past and future of the practice of baseball. 34 I think that Carroll s portrayal of the caricature forced on us by the first solution is apt. Moreover, I think it may constitute the gravest indictment there is to be made against the first solution. We know that our caring for artworks is more than a caring for their appearances or forms. We know that we care about what they mean, and that what they mean is, in part, a function of their place in the 33 Carroll, Beauty, p I am not disputing that Hutcheson is a kind of formalist with respect to beauty. He claims that beauty arises only from the compound quality of uniformity amidst variety, which does appear to be a formal feature (albeit one that applies no less to cognition than to sensation). But Hutcheson regards this claim as contingent, and advances it only after he has defined beauty in terms of its immediacy, disinterestedness, necessity, and naturalness. Hutcheson s empirical investigation into the source of beauty in objects, then, might have (and should have, in my view) yielded the result that we take the pleasure of beauty in content no less than in form. 34 Carroll, Art and Interaction, p. 67.

16 378 THE PROBLEM OF NON-PERCEPTUAL ART practice of art, past and future. We know, in short, that our dealings with artworks are perhaps as cognitive as they are sensory. But Carroll s description of the picture forced on us by the first solution reveals the distorting picture that is forced on us by the second. Carroll likens the first solution s artgoer to a baseball spectator who merely takes excitement in the spectacle before him but does not contemplate the significance of the game. To whom shall we liken the second-solution s artgoer? She is as curious as the baseball spectator who takes excitement in the spectacle and who contemplates the significance, but who takes no excitement in the significance. The second-solution s artgoer sharply distinguishes between sensory form and cognitive content in artworks, for she has a separate operation to perform on each: on one hand she responds affectively to forms; on the other she contemplates contents. What she does not do is respond affectively to contents. This same picture surfaces whenever the second solution advocate opposes the cognitive to the aesthetic, as Carroll does in the following remark, in which he expresses approval of the work of a fellow second-solution advocate: Danto s tendency [is] to regard the response to art as cognitive, rather than aesthetic (in the traditional sense) a matter primarily of thought rather than simply feeling. 35 In asking us to accept that the cognitive opposes the aesthetic, or, more broadly, that thought opposes feeling, the second-solution advocate asks us to pretend that our engagement with thought is not affecting in ways we know it is. Thoughts move us, perhaps as much as sensuous forms do. They strike us with daring and wit, and with power and beauty. That the second-solution advocate asks us to pretend otherwise may constitute the gravest indictment there is to be made against her solution. I think that we have reason to deny the existence of non-aesthetic art, and no reason to deny that art is essentially aesthetic. Danto famously says that to see something as art requires something that the eye cannot descry. 36 But I think the aesthetic is no more essentially eye-descriable than art is. If I am right, then the artworld is really just a colony on what Duchamp called the planet of aesthetics. To place something in the former necessarily is to place it on the latter. 37 James Shelley, Department of Philosophy, 6080 Haley Center, Auburn University, AL 36849, USA. shelljr@auburn.edu 35 Carroll, Beauty, p Arthur Danto, The Artworld, Journal of Philosophy, vol. 61 (1964), p I thank Roman Bonzon, both for the conversations that gave rise to this paper, and for insightful comments on early versions. I also thank Ram Neta, Kelly Jolley, and Michael Watkins for comments on later versions. This paper was read to audiences at a meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Society for Aesthetics, a meeting of the Auburn Philosophical Society, and at a Philosophy of Art Conference at Beloit College.