Abstract

Using the resources found in the classical authors he studies, Robert Wood develops his own understanding of art primarily in the conclusion of the book. He distinguishes between the consciousness proper to sensory experience on the one hand, and the intentionality proper to reason on the other, which strives to go beyond the surrounding environment toward a grasp of the whole of things. The former, the response to the sensory field, is an awareness suited to the organic side of human being, and it involves what he calls “dashboard” cognition, knowing what we have to push or pull in order to adjust, survive, and flourish biologically. The latter, the drive to totality, is at first an empty knowledge of the most comprehensive referent, the world as a whole and the best and highest entity in the world. Between these two extremes, between biological sensibility and rational transcendence, there lies what Wood, following many of his authors, calls “the heart.”