Hi Eric
Just a few points (not necessarily in the order of your
post)
RE: “to the cult
of the museum (which you have repeatedly trashed with some effect).”
I don’t
understand. I am in no sense wanting to trash museums. In fact, I think they are
of major importance and need to be given a lot more attention and thought than
aesthetics usually gives them. Analytic aesthetics has virtually nothing to say
on the subject; continental is almost invariably negative. I have lots more to
say on this topic, but I’ll leave it there.
RE: “my reply was that for the Bertrand Russell
crew Temporality is deemed to contaminate the purity of the thought experiment.
This reminds
me of a recent comment by a leading UK analytic aesthetician (whose name I shall
omit to protect the guilty): “…all
these earlier thinkers might have been confused in their analyses so why dwell
on mistaken views. Analytic philosophy seeks the truth about the
subjects it addresses, and timeless truth as far as that is attainable”. From which we presumably deduce (a) that “these
earlier thinkers” were not seeking the
truth (what were they doing I
wonder?); and (b) that one can readily distinguish “timeless truths” (i.e.
truths impervious to historical influence) from non-timeless truths. (Do the latter
carry warning flags, I wonder?).
Analytic philosophy is particularly naïve, not to say obtuse,
in this respect. Interestingly, it has already abandoned some of its own earlier views. (They were presumably
only masquerading as “timeless”.)
RE: “I do not believe that Art or
artistic appreciation/response can be explained wholly within terms of the
historical.
Neither, emphatically,
do I. But I also do not think that one can simply dismiss history – including one’s
own place in it – with a disdainful (and largely ignorant) wave of the hand as analytic aesthetics standardly does (e.g. as in the statement above).
RE: “the fact
that so much was buried can attest to the Egyptian devotion to their Forms, as
the interred artifacts were meant to serve as votive offerings to Eternity,
which certainly reflected a sense of the Egyptian's assessment of the artistic
merit of their own creations.”
This strikes
me as a case of what psychologists call “projection”. We know for a definite fact
that there was no word – and therefore no concept – for “art” or “artistic” in
the Egyptian language (or in hundreds of other languages). Yet because we think in those terms, we insist that
the Egyptians must have done so as
well. We today certainly regard many Egyptian
objects as art. The challenge – not an easy one – is to understand how objects that were not regarded as art when created
have become (what we call) art today. Simply arguing that the Egyptians must “really” have
regarded them as we do is to short-circuit that challenge and deny historical fact. Of course, conveniently, the Egyptians are
not here to express an opinion…
And the idea
of eternal “Forms” (without or without a capital) is surely very dubious. What “eternal
forms” are shared by, say, an Egyptian statue, an ancestor figure from the
Sepik River (some excellent examples on display at the NGA at the moment), a
Sung landscape, and Titian's Pieta? The
idea of eternal forms in art is viable only to the extent that one carefully avoids saying what they are... Aesthetic phantoms.
RE: “And let's not forget that your historicist
rigor, from a Platonic perspective, ultimately betrays itself as symptomatic of
the very thing that philosophy is intended to rectify: uncertainty,
imprecision, and opinion.”
I usually distrust labels
and I don’t know exactly what you mean by “historicist”. If it means that history
is the be-all-and-end-all, then it certainly doesn’t apply to me. But I do not think
one can simply ignore history and (a)
pretend it never happened, (b) assume –
on the basis of what? – that one's own position/methodology is exempt, or (c) pick
and choose what one accepts and rejects (so, for example, one rejects the clear evidence re
the absence of the concept art in many cultures). Analytic aesthetics' position in
this regard is, to my mind, simply ridiculous – a clear case of the intellectual ostrich.
Continental, of course goes to the other
extreme and puts history (and politics) on a pedestal. There is no need to do either.
DA