Abstract
Gottlob Frege’s conception of works of art has received scant notice in the literature. This is a pity since, as this paper undertakes to reveal, his innovative philosophy of language motivated a theoretically and historically consequential, yet unaccountably marginalized Wittgenstinian line of inquiry in the domain of aesthetics. The element of Frege’s approach that most clearly inspired this development is the idea that only complete sentences articulate thoughts and that what sentences in works of drama and literary art express are ‘mock thoughts’ (Schiengedanken). The early Wittgenstein closely followed Frege’s lead on this theme. One sees this, for example, in the Tractatus, where Wittgenstein announces that only sentential propositions model (‘picture’) states of affairs whereas works of art are objects we perceive sub specie aeternitatis (1961, 83). By the early 1930s, however, Wittgenstein began to revise his view beyond his initial Frege-inspired standpoint. He came to insist that works of art can convey thoughts as well, but that thoughts do not model (picture) the world of facts and hence do not convey information about measurable objects and events. Rather, his contention was that aesthetically configured thoughts that artworks communicate impart information about our perspective on reality and reconfigure our view of life. To be more explicit, successful (gelungene) or ‘good’ works of art (ibid.), in Wittgenstein’s view, can supply aesthetically instructive ‘gestures’ that open to living experience promising new ways of being. It is in this respect, he held, that artists ‘have something to teach’ (1980, 36).
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
A similar conception was developed a century later by Walton (1990), without any reference to Frege, though, and apparently independently of him.
- 3.
See Tolstoy (1897). We are going to say more about Tolstoy’s philosophy of art in § 27.6, below.
- 4.
Cf, § 27.4, below.
- 5.
Some authors today hold that works of art have cognitive import. They discriminate two types of cognition: knowledge (Erkenntnis) and acquaintance (Kenntnis). The acquaintance is an immediate type of cognition and can be conveyed by works of art. Knowledge, in contest, can be conveyed by science and also by facts and events of ordinary life. Cf. e.g. Gabriel (2015), p. 68. That emotions have cognitive import was clearly understood by Max Scheler. To be more exact, according to him emotions are not really acts of knowing but rather cognitive acts of grasping values of, among other things, works of arts (Scheler 1979).
- 6.
- 7.
Similar processes take place by falling in love. We have several acquaintances for whom we feel sympathy. Then all of a sudden, and for unclear reasons, we fall in love with one of them (Cf. Eastwick and Hunt 2014). This similarity is, of course, not surprising: falling in love is a paradigm cause of changing lifestyle. It is also noteworthy that decisive changes in the way of life take place only a couple of times in life.
- 8.
According to Wittgenstein, the role of religion is similar. ‘One of the things Christianity says is that sound doctrines are all useless. That you have to change your life. (Or the direction of your life.)’ (1980, 53).
- 9.
Semantically, Frege’s German term Wink(e) is closely related to the extension of the word Gebärde.
- 10.
- 11.
In his Notebooks 1914–1916 Wittgenstein asks: ‘Art is a kind of expression.’ (1961, p. 83).
- 12.
We have already referred to Wittgenstein’s thought that there are qualitatively different musical phrases: ‘music, some music at least, makes us want to call it language; but some music of course doesn’t’ (1980, 62).
- 13.
Cf. Wittgenstein (1961), p. 83. In a similar key, in his Aesthetics (1835), Hegel maintained that the successful work of art ‘touches’ the Absolute. Unfortunately, maintains Hegel further, it cannot fuse with the Absolute since art is not the appropriate form to this purpose in principle: art only works in the field of appearances. We can reach fusion with the Absolute only in philosophy.
- 14.
See Freud 1916/17, 410.
- 15.
On this score Wittgenstein wrote: ‘Is it the essence of the artistic way of looking at things, that it looks the world with a happy eye?’ (1961, p. 86).
- 16.
Similarly, Kant maintained that there are works of art with spirit (Geist) and works of art that only entertain. Works of art with spirit possess the ‘living up principle of the soul (Gemüt)’ (AA. 5. 303).
- 17.
Merleau-Ponty, in contrast, meant (1964, 131) that style also characterizes the way we perceive the world.
- 18.
Cf. n. 11.
- 19.
We are going to develop our conception of the freedom of the will in another paper.
- 20.
Nelson Goodman extensively discussed the problem of the relations between the original work of art, which works following a priori laws, and its interpretations (cf. Goodman and Elgin 1986).
- 21.
See more about philosophy of moods Bollnow (1941).
- 22.
Cf. § 27.5.
- 23.
In the realm of popular music, for instance, the Beatle Paul McCartney was in his youth a highly successful composer of pop tunes, producing a series of top-rated popular hits. But McCartney proved unable to compose equally successful pop tunes in his mature and late years. One could attribute this decline in musical creativity to McCartney’s inability to sustain the level of mood he had once achieved.
- 24.
According to the pop artist Robert Irwin, ‘to be an artist is not a matter of making paintings or objects at all. What we are really dealing with is our state of consciousness and the shape of our perceptions.’ (Schoenholz Bee and Heliczer 2004, p. 269).
- 25.
First variant of this paper was delivered under the title “Aesthetic Gestures: Essay in Frege–Wittgenstein Theory of Art” at the 39th International Wittgenstein Symposium at Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria, on August 10, 2016. The author is indebted to stimulating remarks of the audience.
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Milkov, N. (2020). Aesthetic Gestures: Elements of a Philosophy of Art in Frege and Wittgenstein. In: Wuppuluri, S., da Costa, N. (eds) WITTGENSTEINIAN (adj.). The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27569-3_27
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