Philosophy of Art: A Postscript

PIDLOSOPHY OF ART: A POSTSCRIPT An essay of mine entitled " Outline of a Philosophy of Art " was published by The Thomist in January 1940 (Vol. II, No. I). It still seems to me thoroughly valid, and a useful touchstone of literary criticism . But a shortcoming was evident from the beginning: it is readily applicable to literary art, hut not so readily to music or painting or sculpture. It had always seemed to me that an extension of the theory to these arts offered an inviting subject for a doctoral dissertation, although it does not appear that the invitation-or challenge-was ever taken up. But at length it seems possible to propose such an extension : a "unified field" theory. This is the name applied, I believe, by Einstein to an explanation which would account for disparate elementsfor example, space and time-in the same terms. As a preface to the investigation, it should perhaps he suggested that no unified field theory can ever he complete: some aspect of reality must he withheld. This is a presupposition dictated, I think, by religious modesty. The 1940 "Outline" considers the analogy between art and mysti· cism, hut concludes that they are not the same thing; poetic experience is not intuitive vision; immediate knowledge of a whole and singular thing. Nevertheless the analogy provides a key to the nature of beauty. The " Postscript " begins with the definition proposed in the original " Outline ": Beauty is the special quality of concentrated truth; on· tological truth, that is-Being (Ens) as the object of the intellect. This definition is developed in the " Outline " as follows: ."It is not sufficient for beauty ••• that a work of art should he richly charged with truth. The truth must he brought to a focus, and strike on the mind as a simple and luminous unity. Suppose we figure the truths of ordinary knowledge as a sort of daylight, general and diffuse. Poetry, then, would he like the lens which gathers this light to a point. "Note how literally this account of poetry corresponds with the classic definitions of beauty; Plato's splendor veri, and St. Augustine's splendor ordini.s. Order is a kind of unification, a focusing. And where you have rays of light focused on one point, you have a splendor." Let us apply these ideas to an example. Here are a few casual lines from Cardinal Newman: 315 816 ALBERT J. STEISS " No man is given to see his work through. Man goes forth unto his work, to his labor, until the evening, but evening falls before it is done. One Person alone began, and finished, and died." On analysis this passage yields an almost endless content: a rueful philosophy, the theology of the Incarnation, a landscape, Vergil's lacrimae rerum, the biography of the human race. But such analysis is possible only for a work of literary art. This is a representational or discursive art; by definition literature consists of what can be put into words; what can be described and known. We are able to identify the truths which are expressed in words. But what are the cognitive elements in painting and sculpture and music? What do we know when we look at a painting or statue, or hear a symphony? There is of course some representational content in all the arts. Most painting ar.d sculpture has a recognizable subject, and even in music there are passages that imitate the rhythms of life or of our environment. But the specific forms of these arts overshadow and far outweigh the representational or imitative elements. What, then, are the specific forms of these arts? What kind of order do we observe in them? Painting and sculpture are obviously arts of space; and, where color is present, they are arts of time also, since color is determined by the frequencies of light. Music is essentially an art of time, since time measures both the flow and intensity of sound. Our senses observe these forms, but our response is not only sensory; our intellect understands them. But what do we understand? What ontological truths are ordered and focused by the non-literary arts? I would begin by suggesting that...