Wittgenstein, Aesthetics and Philosophy

Peter B. Lewis, Peter B. Lewis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351872508
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría filosóficas

Although universally recognised as one of the greatest of modern philosophers, Wittgenstein's work in aesthetics has been unjustly neglected. This is the first book exclusively devoted to Wittgenstein's aesthetics, exploring the themes developed by Wittgenstein in his own writing on aesthetics as well as the implications of Wittgenstein's wider philosophical views for understanding central issues in aesthetics. Drawing together original contributions from leading international scholars, this book will be an important addition to studies of Wittgenstein's thought, but its discussion of issues in literature, music and performing art, and criticism will also be of interest to many students of literary and cultural studies. Exploring three key themes - the capacity of the arts to illuminate our lives; the nature of the particular responses involved in understanding and appreciating works of art; the role of theory and principle in artistic and critical practice - the contributors address issues raised by contemporary philosophers of art, and seek to make connections between Wittgenstein's work and that of other significant philosophies of art in the Western tradition. Displaying the best practice of modern philosophical writing - clarity, cogency, respect for but not blind obedience to common sense, argument illustrated with detailed examples, rejection of speculation and pretension - this book demonstrates how philosophy can make a valuable contribution to understanding the arts.

PART I
TRADITION, THEORY AND PRACTICE

Chapter 1
Wittgenstein and the Aesthetic Domain

Kjell S. Johannessen*

In the years following World War II, Ludwig Wittgenstein acquired the status of a grey eminence in the field of aesthetics. A number of the most reputed philosophers of art from this period (Barrett, Cavell, Tilghman, Weitz, Wollheim, Ziff) were significantly influenced by him. This influence was sufficiently strong for it to be reasonable to speak of a Wittgensteinian tradition in art philosophy. Yet it is not Wittgenstein’s own reflections on aesthetic matters that have stood centre stage. His own voice has been heard only to a modest degree. This is of course largely due to the fact that Wittgenstein himself never wrote anything that was intended as a contribution specifically to the philosophy of art. On the other hand, he did give lectures on the subject on two occasions.¹ In addition to the transcripts of these lectures, Vermischte Bemerkungen (Culture and Value) is a useful source for Wittgenstein’s views on art, both on the private and the philosophical levels.² And in addition to that, there are numerous passages scattered throughout his published works that take up questions of aesthetics. This is true not least of Philosophische Grammatik, Philosophische Untersuchungen, The Blue and Brown Books and Zettel. Any person intent on giving Wittgenstein’s own opinions a hearing in the philosophy of art debate is therefore not short of material.

For some curious reason, however, it seems that this has not been an attractive project. So far, no comprehensive study serving this purpose has seen the light of day. In 1968 Francis J. Coleman published an article whose title proclaimed it to be a critical investigation of Wittgenstein’s aesthetic theory.³ This might lead us to believe that the study covered Wittgenstein’s entire authorship. But this assumption is wrong. For Coleman is concerned exclusively with the 1938 lectures. Moreover, his article is marred by a curious lack of understanding of the logico-grammatical level on which Wittgenstein’s later philosophy works. In 1973 Jacques Bouveresse undertook a slightly more perceptive summary of the central features of Wittgenstein’s aesthetics,⁴ even if a number of his points are indebted to Coleman’s explications. And in 1980 Jörg Zimmermann published the book Sprachanalytische Ästhetik. Ein Überblick, in which he collects together Wittgenstein’s ideas on aesthetics from right across his authorship.⁵ But as with the other surveys ‘with the possible exception of Coleman’s slightly confusing deliberations’ Zimmermann does not offer any discussion of central topics. Even so, at least he prepares the ground for an encounter with Wittgenstein himself which is far more exciting than anything the analytic philosophers can offer. He emphasizes, for example, the importance of the concept of understanding in aesthetic contexts, and notes how understanding is expressed in such circumstances. He also devotes attention to the connection between understanding and the type of reasons we give in aesthetics, pointing moreover to the connection between aesthetics and other aspects of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. In particular he makes it clear that what Wittgenstein calls ‘intransitive’ understanding has an important role to play in this field of interest. Zimmermann’s insights have been of great value for my own work, not least for the study I have made of the concept of intransitive understanding,⁶ but also for my interpretation of Wittgenstein’s views on aesthetics which I have presented in the article ‘Wittgenstein og estetikken’ (‘Wittgenstein and aesthetics’).⁷

But unfortunately that’s about as far as it goes. The vast majority of contributions to the Wittgensteinian tradition in art philosophy pick out single themes from Wittgenstein’s general philosophy and transfer them onto discussions of aesthetic relevance. Weitz’s famous article ‘The Role of Theory in Aesthetics’ is typical in this regard. To my mind this trend is rather unfortunate. For there are aspects of Wittgenstein’s work which are both original and of such importance that they deserve to be dealt with on their own terms. I am thinking here of such things as his insistence that in philosophical aesthetics it is the language we use in our direct encounters with artworks which should constitute our primary object of study; that we should regard aesthetic enquiries as a central element of aesthetic discourse; that we should regard the artwork as prototypical of physiognomic meaning, involving an intransitive mode of understanding, whereby the crucial factor is the internal relationship between the expression and the content; that we should focus on the analogical basis of aesthetic understanding and give due weight to comparisons as the primary tool in aesthetic explanation; that we should examine the distinction between the example, or the individual case, and the constitutive role which this plays in the aesthetic discourse; that we should acknowledge aesthetic judgements as bona fide judgements and investigate the unique conditions of their use, and so on. These are all themes which have only occasionally been touched upon in the discussions that constitute the Wittgensteinian tradition. It is high time they were brought into focus. It will of course not be possible to do justice to all these themes in the scope of a single article. But I wish to take a fairly close look at some of Wittgenstein’s own reflections concerning aesthetic questions, both in the way they have been recorded in the lecture transcripts and in the way they are worded in his posthumously published writings.

Aesthetics as a Field of Philosophical Reflection

With this objective in mind it is natural to begin by asking: how does Wittgenstein imagine one should approach the field of aesthetic experience? For it has to be said, he leaves us in no doubt that his own ideas on this topic are very different from those that have dominated traditional art philosophy. The opening remark of the 1938 lectures is particularly revealing. For here he makes the forthright assertion that: ‘The subject (Aesthetics) is very big and entirely misunderstood as far as I can see’ (LC I 1). Although its meaning is not immediately clear, this provocative beginning can be taken to set an agenda. It consists of two claims: aesthetics is ‘very big’ and ‘entirely misunderstood’.

How are we to understand the first of these claims? Does Wittgenstein mean this as a simple characterization of traditional art philosophy, or is it an expression of how he himself sees the field and hence a critique of the tradition? We will only be able to answer this by delving into Wittgenstein’s views on art and philosophy. If it turns out that the second alternative is more appropriate, then the two claims will be thematically related. This would mean they cannot be dealt with independently, which, from a systematic point of view, would be a disadvantage. But it is a disadvantage we must learn to live with, if we wish to give a suitably detailed account of the view of aesthetics that motivated Wittgenstein’s opening remark. But first I want to take a closer look at those two claims in the order in which he presented them.

Assuming that we interpret the first as a criticism of the tradition, we expose ourselves to certain temptations. For the context invites us to interpret the expression ‘very big’ as meaning something like ‘far more extensive than traditional aesthetics usually takes it to be’. It is, however, an invitation best declined. Otherwise we would start wondering what Wittgenstein would include under aesthetics which the philosophical tradition tends to exclude. In this case we would be thinking purely in terms of the field’s extent. We would commit ourselves to a picture which merely ascribes to Wittgenstein a desire for more of what is already there, that is, more of the objects investigated by philosophical aesthetics. But in accepting this picture we would immediately exclude the possibility of another and equally probable reading, namely that we are simply not dealing with the same extension, the same scope. If we suppose that Wittgenstein conceives the task of art philosophy in an entirely different way from traditional aesthetics, then its concerns will define a scope which is distinct from the one generally assumed by the subject. From such a perspective it becomes natural to include the narrowness of the tradition among the misunderstandings which he attributes to traditional aesthetics. Assuming we find the latter alternative attractive, we should be able to identify things in Wittgenstein’s writings which imply an extended and different view of aesthetics as a field of philosophical reflection. Just such a hint can be found in the choice of examples Wittgenstein gives in his 1933 lecture when objecting to the idea that beauty should be regarded as the dominant category in art philosophy. For here he talks about faces, flowers and trees as beautiful and claims that the adjective ‘beautiful’ is contextually bound up with the object to which it is applied (A 35).

From a traditional point of view, this could be understood as a clear argument in favour of the view that aesthetics should concern itself not only with artistic beauty, but also, and in equal degree, with natural beauty. But Wittgenstein would probably have considered such a general distinction to obscure more than it reveals. For him the point is rather that the individual context in which the word ‘beautiful’ is used should be allowed to speak for itself. For there is nothing which our various uses of this expression have in common. In Ambrose’s transcript of the 1933 lecture, Wittgenstein is reported as saying:

The word ‘beauty’ is used for a thousand different things. Beauty of face is different from that of flowers and animals. That one is playing utterly different games is evident from the difference that emerges in the discussion of each (A 36).

What seems most important for Wittgenstein in this passage is that the character of the various types of objects should be discussed and established on its own terms, that is, the terms which are given by the context for the use of the expression ‘beautiful’ and related words. He elaborates this idea of differences in meaning by claiming that ‘a difference of meaning is shown by the fact that “you can say more” in discussing whether the arrangement of flowers in a bed is “beautiful” than in discussing whether the smell of lilac is so’ (M 313). A flower arrangement is of far greater complexity; there is much more to get to grips with than there is in talking of perfumes.

It is not difficult to see that if we transfer this train of thought to the art world, the result will be an equivalent diversification. For what we might see as the beauty of a musical work by Fartein Valen will, understandably enough, be radically different from the beauty we experience in relation to works by Mozart and Bach. And when we look more closely at the latter two, we would again be able to articulate interesting differences. Something like this would apply to all and every type of art. Taken to logical extremes it would mean that one must abandon the search for a general account of the nature of beauty and concentrate instead on the character of individual works. Only in this way will we find firm enough ground for a meaningful discussion of its expression. It is this orientation towards the individual work which provides the foundation for an analogically based discourse, as we shall see in the following.

Be that as it may, it makes us little the wiser about the category of ‘beauty’. But already in his 1933 lecture, Wittgenstein takes the matter a step further – and thereby gives us another hint. For he uses the occasion to point out that it is simply not the case that beauty is of such central relevance in discussions of artworks. On the contrary, it is quite another type of word we tend to encounter, words like ‘correct’, ‘incorrect’, ‘right’, ‘wrong’, and so on (A 36). According to Moore’s version

he said that the actual word ‘beautiful’ is hardly ever used in aesthetic controversies: that we are more apt to use ‘right’, as, e.g. in ‘That doesn’t look quite right yet’, or when we say of a proposed accompaniment to a song ‘That won’t do: it isn’t right’ (M 313).

The same observation is repeated in the 1938 lectures with slightly different examples and a subsequent elaboration. What he points out here is that where aesthetic judgements are employed in daily life – in contrast to the examples which philosophers construct in their texts – it is exceedingly rare for adjectives such as ‘beautiful’, ‘charming’, ‘magnificent’, ‘fine’, and so on, to be used. As a matter of fact, it is only those who lack aesthetic competence, and who are therefore incapable of expressing themselves adequately, who use the kind of statement which for Kant was the only kind that mattered in aesthetics, namely those of the type ‘this X is beautiful’. On the other hand, one frequently says such things as ‘The passage here is incoherent’ or ‘His use of images is precise’ (LC I 8). Wittgenstein makes it clear that remarks of this nature tell us a great deal about the speaker’s aesthetic competence. This I have pursued in depth in other contexts, where my intention has been to depict the exercising of aesthetic competence as a command of aesthetic practices.⁸ But as far as the current topic is concerned ‘namely Wittgenstein’s view of the scope and nature of aesthetics’ it is quite another aspect that has to be stressed. I am thinking here of the aforementioned elaboration on this point, in which Wittgenstein marks out the difference between his own and the traditional approaches. It is a matter of the contrast between the aesthetic discourse such as it unfolds in real life, and the caricatured picture thereof which is constructed in traditional texts on aesthetics.

This provides us with yet another indirect argument for a reorientation of perspective in the philosophy of art. What we have this time is an argument that requires us to turn our backs on the simplifying fictions of aesthetics and to focus instead on the aesthetic discourse such as it actually takes place in real life.

This point might well remind us of the comment Wittgenstein makes about his philosophical method in Philosophical Investigations: ‘What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.’ (PI 116, Wittgenstein’s italics). It is of course the same agenda that determines his reflections on aesthetic phenomena. But in this field he proposes a strategy which could not be transferred in any straightforward way to other areas. For in the 1933 lecture he suggests that there is a good deal to be learnt from situations where disagreement about aesthetic matters arises. And what matters most in this respect is disagreement or perplexity in response to individual artworks and their character, not to aesthetic principles, norms or essential definitions. This is clearly implied by the examples cited above. As far as ‘This passage is incoherent’ is concerned, the subject of the conversation is evidently an extant and parti...