Kennick, W. Does Traditional Aesthetics Rest on a Mistake

Mind Association

Does Traditional Aesthetics Rest on a Mistake? Author(s): William E. Kennick Source: Mind, New Series, Vol. 67, No. 267 (Jul., 1958), pp. 317-334 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2251530 . Accessed: 27/04/2011 20:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=oup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Oxford University Press and Mind Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Mind.

http://www.jstor.org

III.-DOES

TRADITIONAL REST

AESTHETICS

ON A MISTAKE?

BY WILLIAM E. KENNICK

rests,I think,on at least two ofthem,and the purposeofthis paper is to explorethe claimthat it does. By 'traditionalaesthetics' I mean that familiarphilosophical disciplinewhichconcernsitselfwithtryingto answersuch questionsas thefollowing:What is Art? What is Beauty ? What is theAestheticExperience? Whatis theCreativeAct ? What and Taste ? What is the are thecriteriaofAestheticJudgement functionof Criticism? To be sure,thereare others,like: Are the aestheticobject and the workof art the same ? or,Does art have any cognitivecontent?-but thesequestionsare commonly takento be subordinateto thoseof the firstgroup,whichmight be called the 'basic questions' of traditionalaesthetics. forDefinitions.If someone 1. TheBasic Questionsas Requests asks me ' What is helium? ' I can reply: ' It's a gas ' or ' It's a chemicalelement' or 'It's a gaseous element,inertand colourless, whose atomic numberis 2 and whose atomic weightis 4003'. A numberofreplieswilldo, dependingupon whomI am talkingto, the aim of his question,and so on. It is a pretty business; we get answers to such questions straightforward andtechnicalmanuals. encyclopedias, everyday fromdictionaries, Now someoneasks me ' What is Space ? ' or ' What is Man ? ' or ' What is Religion? ' or ' What is Art? ' His questionis of thesameformas the question' What is helium? ' but howvastly ! There is somethingverypuzzlingabout these quesdifferent tions; theycannotbe answeredreadilyby appealingto dictionaries, encyclopedias,or technical manuals. They are philosophical questions,we say, giving our puzzlementa name, althoughwe should not thinkof calling 'What is helium? ' a philosophicalquestion. Yet we expect somethingof the same sortofanswerto bothofthem. There'sthe rub. We say that questionslike 'What is Space ? ' or 'What is about thenatureor essenceof Art? ' are requestsforinformation Space or of Art. We could say that 'What is helium?' is a about the natureor essenceof helium, requestforinformation but we rarely,if ever, do; althoughwe do use questionslike 'What is helium? ' as analogues of questions like 'What is Space? ' to showthe sortof replywe are lookingfor. What we IT

317

318

w.

E. KENNICK:

want,we say, is a definition of Space or ofArt,foras Plato and Aristotletaughtus long ago, " definition is the formulaof the essence". So, just as the traditional'metaphysicians have long soughtforthenatureor essenceofSpace and ofTime,ofReality and of Change,the traditionalaestheticianhas soughtforthe essenceofArtand ofBeauty,oftheAestheticExperienceand the CreativeAct. Most of the basic questionsof traditionalaestheticsare requestsfordefinitions;hencethe familiarformulae that constitutetheresultsoftraditionalaestheticinquiry: 'Art is Expression' (Croce), ' Art is Significant Form' (Clive Bell), 'Beauty is PleasureObjectified'(Santayana),and so on. Given thesedefinitions we are supposedto knowwhat Art is or what Beauty is, just as we are supposedto know what heliumis if someonetellsus thatit is a chemicalelement,gaseous,inert,and colourless,withan atomicnumberof 2 and an atomicweightof 4 003. F. J. E. Woodbridgeonce remarkedthat metaphysics searchesforthe natureofrealityand findsit by definition.We mightsay that traditionalaestheticssearchesforthe natureof Artor Beauty and findsit by definition. But whyshouldit be so difficult to discernthe essenceof Art or Beauty ? Whyshouldit take so muchargumentto establish or defendsuch formulaeas 'Art is Expression' ? And once we have arrivedat suchformulaeor have been giventhemin answer to our question,whyshouldtheybe so dissatisfying ? To come closerto an answerto thesequestions,we mustlook at what it is the aestheticianexpectsof a definition of Art or Beauty. De Witt Parker has stated with unusual claritythe " assumption" of the aestheticianin askingand answeringsuch questionsas ' What is Art ? '; at the beginningof his essay on "The Natureof Art" (notethe title)he says: Theassumption underlying everyphilosophy ofartis theexistence ofsomecommon naturepresentin all thearts,despitetheirdifferencesin formand content; something the samein paintingand sculpture; in poetryand drama; in music and architecture. Everysingleworkof art,it is admitted,has a uniqueflavour,a je nesais quoiwhichmakesitincomparable witheveryotherwork; thereis somemarkorsetofmarkswhich,ifit applies nevertheless, to any workof art, appliesto all worksof art, and to nothing else-a common denominator,so to say, which constitutesthe definitionof art, and serves to separate . . . the fieldof art from otherfieldsof human culture.1

1 De Witt H. Parker, " The Nature of Art ", Revue Internationalede Philosophie, July 1939, p. 684; reprinted in E. Vivas and M. Krieger, eds., The Problemsof Aesthetics(New York, 1953), p. 90. Italics mine.

DOES

TRADITIONAL

AESTHETICS

REST

ON A MISTAKE?

319

What we are after,it shouldbe clear,is whatthetraditionallogic ' of Art and texts call a ' definitionper genus et differentiam Beauty. 2. The AssumptionQuestioned; the First Mistake. The asall works of art must sumptionthat, despitetheirdifferences, possess some commonnature, some distinctiveset of characelse, a set teristicswhichservesto separateArtfromeverythifig conditionsfortheir being works of of necessaryand sufficient art at all, is both naturaland disquieting,and constituteswhat I considerto be the firstmistakeon whichtraditionalaesthetics rests. It is natural,because,afterall, we do use the word'art ' things-picturesand to referto a largenumberof verydifferent poemsand musicalcompositionsand sculpturesand vases and a hostof otherthings; and yetthe wordis one word. Surely,we are inclinedto say,theremustbe somethingcommonto themall or we shouldnotcall themall by thesamename. Unumnomen; unumnominatum. Yet the assumptionis disquietingwhenwe come to searchfor the commonnaturewhichwe supposeall worksofart to possess. It is so elusive. We oughtto be able to read a poemby Donne or by Keats, a novelby GeorgeEliot or JosephConrad,or a play by and Sophoclesor Shakespeare,to listento Mozartand Stravinsky, to look at the picturesof Giottoand Cezanne and the Chinese mastersand see what Art is. But whenwe look we do not see whatArtis. So we are inclinedto supposethatits essencemust be somethinghidden,somethingthat only an aestheticiancan see, like the soundsthat onlya dog can hear,or else, as Parker, forexample,supposes,that it mustbe somethingverycomplex, (op. ct