Philosophical Persistence (Bear With Me On This!)

My relationship to philosophy is cordial. I understand that for others, philosophy is simply insufferable, with all its complexities and quagmires. I acknowledge this everyday with my wife. Yet, I love philosophy and am not put off by people's perceptions of it. I will endure every form of ridicule for its sake.

The reason, I think, for my affinity to philosophy is its magnetism in terms of how it survives. That is, how it can persist despite its obsession with formulating questions and not (direct) answers. This is the part of philosophy that I find personally more attractive than theology. Theological thought attempts to answer philosophical questions (for better and for worse), whereas philosophy is content to live with the irreconcilable questions of human existence.

Undoubtedly, I find, as a theologian, the idea of existing without any belief in God to be full of many existential difficulties. But this does not keep me from admiring those who live their lives morally without any notion of God. There is ethical valence here. Acting morally without the need for God seems to be a stronger notion of morality than what Christians typically offer. This is why Kierkegaard, as a Christian, was an absolute genius with his "teleological suspension of the ethical" In short, this means that there comes a point where people of faith must be willing to risk everything, including moral imperatives, for a relationship with God . (His famous example is Abraham who went against Semitic law all for the purpose of serving God). Like I said, I recognize the potency of living morally without the need for God. This does not mean, however, that I am ready to assume it.

All this to say that I have found yet another philosophical gem that has drawn my serious attention, even to the point of distracting me from my classwork (How terrible!). What I found was Hans-George Gadamer's Truth and Method, a book about how to interpret human experience. Specifically, the part I am reading now has to do with aesthetics. I am sure many of you are wondering why I find this important enough to write about it in my blog (and why I am unnecessarily boring you with my findings). But I think his thought bears repeating here because his philosophy is vital for understanding how art affects us.

That being said, I will try to keep it short, and if you are still with me until the end, I will be very grateful, because I think what he has to say on art affects us in more ways than we think. It might even help us to rethink how we approach things. Here it goes....

Fundamentally, Gadamer wants to get rid of the notion that our experience of art is something that is cultivated (through culture) and brought to a situation. Instead, what he wants to do is bring our attention to the "temporality of art," that is, he wants to resist the idea that art can be timeless as well as the notion that people interpret art subjectively. That may seem strange, but what Gadamer attempts to do is get rid of the notion that we come to art with experiences, cultivated by our society and our past experiences, in order to appreciate art. He calls this way of approaching art as "aesthetic consciousness." Yes, that may sound confusing, but you really do not have to fully understand what that means in order to understand what he is trying to say about art.

Gadamer believes that art can be better understood as "play". What he means by play is that when a person is playing a game they are not playing in order to achieve an end necessarily, but rather because they are drawn into play and they become a participant in play's constant repetition (it is an endless means). In this way, the subject of play is not the player herself, but "play". If the person was the subject then this would be opting for the above belief that a person brings with themselves an experience in which to draw from. Gadamer finds this insufficient because it denies the immediacy of the event itself. Playing also entails something that responds to our activity. (Imagine a kitten playing with a ball of wool, they play with the ball of wool because it responds to its action. In that way, it is inviting.)

This response though is risky for the person because all play presents itself with serious possibilities or undetermined outcomes. (For instance, we watch football games because they present undetermined outcomes. This is what absorbs us as we watch 4th quarter drives. We do not know the outcome. As such, we are absorbed into the game. We may not be personally playing the game, but this does not mean that we are not participating in it.) This is essentially what Gadamer wants to get at in our experience of art and beauty. The piece of art becomes "immediate" to us and we participate in art because art is something that invites us into itself. I know speaking of art as having its own being is confusing, but think of it this way: when we listen to music we are ushered into its world. By doing this, we participate in the music. We are not playing the music personally, but it is drawing us into itself. In this way, Gadamer counters the notion that experience of art is something that we bring to the situation. The belief that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is an example of this wrongful subjectivism in art.

The reason why approaching art with subjectivism is inadequate is that it ignores how art presents itself to us. It invites us into itself. This is why we experience such a high when we listen to music, or see a beautiful sunset; we are actually drawn into the art. This is why he speaks of art as play, because play entails participation.

Play also entails transformation. That is, when we play, we are transformed into a different person. In that sense, art is powerful for us because it convokes a change in who we are.

The problem with "aesthetic consciousness" is that when it seeks to find what is truly beautiful it attempts to differentiate between our cultivated notions of the beautiful and the work of art itself. It compares these two and comes up with an analysis of whether or not the artwork is beautiful. This is problematic, and it affects us more than we know.

For example, when we are judging a performance of a play by Shakespeare, say Romeo and Juliet, based upon our previous experience of reading the play we are using "aesthetic consciousness". We are separating the original written work from the performance that we just experienced. By differentiating these two, we deny the temporality of art, its immediacy. Another example would be judging a particular musician's new recording by previous recordings. This is once again separating the work from its mediation.

Gadamer wants to say instead that you cannot separate a work from its mediation (or, a written play from its performance). Doing so would put a method on art that is not fit for art. Like, for instance, using scientific methods to determine how beautiful something is. That is impossible! THIS IS WHY HE WANTS TO AVOID THE CRITICAL NATURE OF AESTHETIC CONSCIOUSNESS. When we seek to determine whether something is aesthetically pleasing, in other words, we are basically assuming that one can correctly interpret a work of art. Of course, no one would say that there is something seemingly beautiful in a certain piece of music that does not exist in another piece of music. So why would we attempt to criticize something based on our preconceived notions of what is beautiful? This approach either assumes that "art is timeless" or that all "art is subjective." Both assumptions are, without a doubt, untenable and useless.

In this way, Gadamer is a genius. He wants to interpret art not from the perspective that one can come to a correct interpretation of art (like the subjectivists assume, in that they either judge art from their own experience or their own culture) and the perspective that art is timelessly beautiful but he wants to focus instead on how art affects us. In this way, our experience of art is different than that which assumes that we can come to a work of art with experiences. This latter notion of "experience" is possessive, in that we have something. (For example, think of this experience in the sense that "McCain has more military experience than Obama") The former is an experience in which something outside of us draws us into itself. (Think of this sense of experience as, "Van Gogh's artwork sets off so many emotions in me.")

Indeed, this analysis of art means that true experience of art comes from the object itself (in other words, this object becomes the subject) not us.

I find this extremely stimulating and helpful. I have always noticed how hypocritical some people are of movies and music, to the point that our notion of the aesthetic becomes a game of criticism. Art is art, let it affect you. Do not try to base it on how you think beauty should be presented, but rather allow the art itself to present itself to you.

Once again, I thank you for following me throughout this post. If I have confused you, do not think you are dumb. I may need to clarify some things. So, please, by all means....comment away!