weitz art who needs it.pdf

7/30/2019 weitz art who needs it.pdf

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/weitz-art-who-needs-itpdf 1/10

Art: Who Needs It?Author(s): Morris WeitzSource: Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Jan., 1976), pp. 19-27Published by: University of Illinois PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3332006

Accessed: 01/12/2010 23:41

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=illinois.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

University of Illinois Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of

Aesthetic Education.

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=illinois

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3332006?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp



http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3332006?origin=JSTOR-pdf




Art:Who Needs It?

MORRIS WEITZ

Is there really anything left to say on the topic assigned: "The Uses of

the Arts in Personal Life and Professional Practice?" Philosophersand

critics have long ago exhausted the varieties of the first uses; and

ProfessorBroudyhas already said most of what is useful on the second

of the uses as well of course much of significance on the first because,after all, his mind, like his heart, is in philosophy. Since I cannot hopeto improve on what the great historical philosophers and critics or

some of the fine contemporaryeducatorshave said, all I can do usefullyis to remind you of some of the issues, both central and peripheral,that are involved in the problem posed.

First, there is the distinction between art as created object as againstart as consumer object. I take it our question relates to the latter, so

that we are not especiallyconcerned with what art does to its producers.

However, I must confess that I find that problem as fascinating aswhat it does to those of us who cannot do more to art than respond to

it. Certainly some artists have been intrigued by the problem, so much

so that certain major writers at any rate have devoted whole novels

or novellas to it. I think, for example, of Joyce's Portrait of the Artist

as a Young Man or Thomas Mann's Tonio Kr6ger. Both ask, as other

writers do, What is the price of becoming a total artist, hence of for-

saking the ordinaryconcerns and emotions of life? The cost, they find,

MORRISWEITZ is professor of philosophyat Brandeis

University. Amongthe

important volumes he has written are Hamlet and the Philosophy of LiteraryCriticism; Philosophy in Literature; and Problems in Aesthetics, ed.

This paper was presented at a three-day interdisciplinary conference "The Uses

of Knowledge in Personal Life and Professional Practice" held at the Universityof Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in September, 1974, upon the occasion ofProfessor Harry S. Broudy's retirement as professor of philosophy of education

from the University of Illinois.



20 MORRISWEITZ

is high and, at least for them, worth it; indeed, it is all that is of value

or that they can afford as dividends on their invested capital in art.

The sacrifices of the all too human and the alienation of the creative

type seem to vanish as one turns from what art does to the artist to

what it does to us. For a striking effect of art on our lives is that art

replenishes without depletion as it makes us whole without isolation

from our fellow human beings. It is therefore no wonder that manydefenders of art and our participation in it by way of response to it

have stressed this singularly spiritual contribution of art'spresence. Forthem, the use of the arts is simple- to enhance human development.

Unfortunately, however, as we all know, there have been great minds

and cultivated souls who do not share in this conviction of the en-

nobling use of art. Plato, for one, at least in the Republic, where

political considerations are dominant, devastates the Greek as well as

perennial assessmentof art as a good. It is not only not good but, with

a very few exceptions, downright harmful in the manner in which it

sponsorsfiction and falsehood and engendersfeelings and emotions that

endanger morals and the rational life altogether. For Plato, art has nouse. Better a personal life and a professional practice in which the in-

tellectual and moral virtues prevail to submerge the aesthetic or, per-

haps, artistic, since Plato, even at his most brutal, praises the beautiful

as he condemns the artistic.

Plato does not distinguish the uses from the misuses of art. Tolstoydoes. Like Plato, he denounces much, perhaps most, of the history of

art, not simply because this art enfeebles us but because it does not

make us whole in a communal sense. For him, art has a great use - to

effect through shared feelings a universal brotherhood of man. Mostart, he proclaims, forsakes this ideal in order to promote emotions and

ideas that serve an effete elitism which divides mankind.

As incredible and repulsive as all of us, I hope, find the strictures

on art and its proper uses or misuses in Plato and Tolstoy, their state-

ments are difficult to defeat by argument and almost impossible to

mitigate in practice, especially in a world such as ours in which art and

artists are still considered dangerous, even in their ascribedimpotence.

Any one, from soft-hearted humanist arguing with hard-headed scien-

tist, to soft-headed teacher pleading with hard-hearted administrator,

recognizes the echoes of the Platonic-Tolstoian arguments against the

arts: that they do not promote knowledge whereas they do encourageundesirablemoral and social acts. Who needs it since art is not science

and can stir up the wrong feelings? No one. And it is no repudiation



ART:WHONEEDS T? 21

of this rejection of art, rather a variant on it, to provide a minimum,ornamental place for the arts in our lives and in our schools. Art, ac-

cording to this view, has no real use; but taken in small doses, it causes

little harm. Like play and sport, it relaxes tensions and allows us to

returnrefreshedto the serious concernsof life.

Aristotle offered a ploy of this sort, though of course in a more

sophisticated vein. Tragedy at least has a use, to purge us of the emo-

tions of pity and fear that, put into the context of his book on govern-

ment, serves as a therapeutic to the citizens of a healthy body politic.Plato, he suggestsin the Poetics, is wrong in his interpretationof art as

false and his fear of art as emotionally harmful. And Tolstoy, he would

have said, is also incorrect in his insistence on true, simple emotional

art rather than difficult ideational art. Tragedy, for example, thoughnot quite philosophy or science- episteme- is in its universality at

least an approximation of knowledge and truth. Anyway, it is better

than history so far as knowledge is concerned. Thus, for him art has a

use, rather two uses: to teach us certain truths in a non-abstract,

easily understood form; and to relieve us of tensions that could beharmful outside of the theateror the world of art.

There are, to be sure, other theories of the uses of art that challengeand repudiate Plato's or Tolstoy's stringent views or Aristotle'ssensible

compromise. From Plotinus on, philosophers have tried to find an

inexpugnably high place for art in the hierarchy of values. For Plo-

tinus, art is primarily soul invested in matter - a creative act that

brings both the artist and the spectator closer to reality. Thus, the use

of art in personal life is like the use of philosophy: to facilitate the

journey to the One. With a single thrust, then, that devoted follower ofPlato demolishes his master'sanimadversionson the falsity and degra-dation attributed to art. However we assess the metaphysical, mystical

premises of Plotinus's argument for the divine analogue of art, we

cannot but applaud his as the first of a series of stunning victories for

the declaration that art has a great use in human affairs- to remind

us of the presence of soul in matter or, in more contemporary terms,of the creative process in the imagination as it labors over mundane

matter.

Aquinas also finds the radiance of soul in art, as a constant reminderof the divine in creation. For him too, art has a primaryuse in human

life- to rendervisible or empirical religious truths; and, in its integra-tion of sensuousmaterials, to make art possible for all who can see or

read even though they are not capable of assimilationof abstract truth



22 MORRISWEITZ

that is embodied in art but comprehended only by philosophy and

theology. In a tradition which allowed for powerful prelates to excori-

ate and suppress the supposed idolatry of religious ornamentation,

especially of the glitter and gold in the cathedrals, Aquinas's justifica-tion of art in the home of the divine stands firm as an analogue of

Aristotle's reply to Plato. Reverting to Aristotle's notion of art as

techne, Aquinas also formulated a use of art in professional practice.Art he said is a virtue--an excellence--of the practical intellect,

bent on the making of objects; as a virtue, it is on a par with morality,another virtue of the practical intellect that aids in the production of

good acts. Together, his two uses of art ensured an intellectual respect-

ability to the whole artistic enterprise, a respectability that rests on

discipline and hard work as much as it does on inspiration. We will do

well to rememberAquinas'sinsistence on craftsmanshipand the intelli-

gence it embodies in an age such as ours in which art for too many

signifies caprice and narcissisticindulgence, the very opposites of pro-fessionalpractice in the arts.

What, now, about art and pleasure? Surely one use of the arts is toprovide gratifications that are either unobtainable in real life or are

not possible for all. And, of course, the history of aesthetics contains

many such explorations into the use of the arts. From Hume to San-

tayana, the hedonic justification of art has played a major role, where

at least part of this justification has centered on the way the arts offer

sources of pleasure and gratification we cannot secure otherwise.

Perhaps I have said enough to remind you of the diversity in the

answers to our posed problem: art has no use; art has misuses; art has

a use. Is any of these theories true? This question brings me to thesecond distinction- the first, you remember, was the distinction be-

tween the use of art to the artist and the use to the consumer- the

distinction between the factual and the normative. What does art do

for us? What ought art to do for us? The confusion or conflation of

the factual with the normative is as nefarious in aesthetics as it is in

ethics. Most of the theories I have already mentioned obliterate this

distinction. Tolstoy is an exception. He saw what art was doing to our

lives, hated what he saw, and strove to persuade us of a new ideal use

of art. Whatever we may think of his ideal, especially of the conse-

quences for art in accepting his ideal, Tolstoy, it seems to me, is abso-

lutely correct in differentiating what art does and what it should and

can do. Indeed, I wish to go even further than Tolstoy and suggestthat the factual question is properly one for psychology or sociology,



ART:WHO NEEDS T? 23

but not for philosophy. The actual uses of art must be as multiple as

the varieties of response or exploitation of the arts. What, therefore,would be important is not a mere survey of these but the formulation

of a generalizationor hypothesisabout the cause and effects of art and

life. Freud, for example, offered such an hypothesis- that art is a

form of sublimation, both to the artist and to the spectator, a kind of

substitute gratification of basic libidinal desires we cannot realize in

our lives. Art, along with alcohol and religion, is an escape-valve for

our bottled up miseries,sharedby all who cannot have their civilizationwithout its discontents. Freud'sis a brilliant theory; and for all I know,it may be true. The great difficultywith it, as Popper and others have

taught us, is that it is no scientific hypothesis at all, rather a piece of

artistic fiction in its own imaginative right, posing as a scientific law

but without the requisitepossibilityof disconfirmation.All the philoso-

pher can say of Freud's theory- or of any other theory- is that if it

were a scientific hypothesis, subject to refutation, and if it were true,that fact would reduce the normative question to nonsense.For there is

no point in asking how art ought to affect our personal lives if as amatter of fact there is only one way it does and no other way it might.

Fortunately, for me anyway, there is no scientific law about the uses

of art. This deficiency allows the philosopher or whoever to continue

his perennial exhortations of normative answers to our posed question.And by way of courtesy,it allows me to state my own deep convictions

about what art should and can do, if only we let it. Here, then, at last,is my answer to What are the uses of the arts in personal life and pro-fessional practice?

For me, the great gifts of the arts to our lives are the two of enlarge-ment and intensity. Each of the arts in variousways opens up by means

of its actualities of visual, verbal, tonal, or emotional and intellectual

worlds created by the artist infinite imaginative possibilitiesof experi-ence and at the same time an awarenessof the richness of the texture

of actual experience. This is what I mean by enlargementand intensity:the expansion of the realm of possibilities for personal experience and

the intensification of the experiences already had. Philosophy achieves

this too but only on an intellectual level, governed as it is or should be

by standardsof objective truth. Some art, for example, great works of

literature, can satisfy this demand for truth. But all art, including

literature, goes beyond the stringenciesof the quest for truth in its own

exploration of largelynon-intellectual enlargement and intensity. Paint-

ing, for example, creates universe on universe of different ways of



24 MORRISWEITZ

seeing the world or a non-existent world the artist creates for himself,as in abstract painting or surrealism.An individual painting representsa visual world that in its concentration on one way of seeing intensifies

our own vision as it invites us to participate in a new visual experience.Whether it is a Giotto or a Martini, a Leonardo or a Raphael, a van

Eyck or a van der Weyden, a Picasso or a Matisse, a Jackson Pollock

or a De Kooning, we are given a new way of looking at our world

or the world created by the painter which at the same time changes and

intensifies our present perceptual responses.What greater gift can artbestow on us than to make us see for the first time and to see differentlyat the same time? We all know what it is to look at a Cezannelandscapein which his intensityof vision and form is so serenelymonumental that

we cannot but marvel both at his created world and at the inevitable

difference it makes to our present and future perceptions. His land-

scape invites us to see nature the way he does as it forces us to see what

we thought we saw but only glanced at, and with a visual intensity bor-

rowed from him. If, therefore, we transform our omnibus question of

the uses of art to What does a Cezanne landscape do for us? theanswer is that it changes our vision of the world. This, I submit, is no

mean achievement. An Einstein or a Kant can also change our visionof the world but only in a figurative sense, because theirs are truly

conceptual changes, not changes in visual experience, especially if we

take seriouslyas we must the distinction between mathematics or ideas

and images as basic to physics and philosophy. Cezanne, on the con-

trary,literally changes or invites us to change the way we see the world

--its colors, shapes, textures, lines, composition, monumental form.

And when I turn from a Cezanne to a Jackson Pollock or back again toa Leonardo, I find the same unity of enlargement and intensity. Each

invites me to a new awareness of visual possibilities, either a world

dissolved in plastic abstract rhythmsor a world ensconced in a penum-bra of chiaroscuro; and each provides- to borrow a thought of T. S.

Eliot - a further intensity into a deeper visual communionwith nature.

Let me assureyou that I am not claiming that this enlargement and

intensity of the visual is what painting is all about or that they are the

only raisons d'etre of painting. All I want to insist on is that if we re-

quire an answer to our question, What are the uses of the arts in per-sonal life? then the two mentioned are among the uses, gifts, or effects

of art that are actual, hence possible and, at least to me, ought to be

shared by all, even if need be, against the better judgments of the

indifferent and philistine. These two uses also tie in with the second



ART:WHO NEEDS T? 25

assignment regarding professionalpractice. For if you believe as I do

that among the deprived are, in addition to the underdeveloped and

underprivileged,what I call the underperceivers,then those of us who

are teachers of the arts have deep obligations to work out the requisitesfor an education into the uses of the arts that will accommodate and

pay homage to the visual as well as to the traditionally accepted eco-

nomic, moral, and intellectual capacities of our fellow beings.

Literature, too, has for its primary uses the enlargement of the

imaginative possibilitiesfor experience and the intensificationof presentexperience. Of course these are not the point of literature or why it

should be. Like any art, literature is autonomous; it needs no reason

other than itself to exist. Consequently,no theoryof its uses or effects-

whether factual or normative- can ignore this autonomy without vio-

lating the nature of literaryart. This is not the appropriate occasion to

probe the nature of literature or even to call into question whether it

has a nature. I take it that all of us know what it is and shall concen-

trate on what it can do for us if we let it. And what it can do is, as I

suggest, to present an enormous range of verbal, emotional, and idea-tional possibilities for future experiences as well as a deeper intensityinto our present experiences. Consider any novel, poem, drama you

wish, whether you like it or not, if it is any good, and there are plentythat are, each of these, in the dramatic, human world it invents and in

the verbal materials out of which it is created, contains world picturesor themes that remain just that or sometimes suggest theses about the

way the world is. The different, even opposing, world pictures- quite

independently of their truth or falsity or of their being taken by the

reader to be true or false to reality-open up new possibilities forthought and action. Who can read Oedipus Rex or Candide or Four

Quartets or Anna Karenina or A la recherche du temps perdu without

responding to the vast arrayof actualized world views and experiences

presented in these masterpieces as imaginative possibilities for our

world and as intensive probings of our own paltry range of actual

experiences? We may not glean hard truths from these works but we

do learn about how the world could be and very well may be for all

we know. This is not to imply that no literaryworkscontain true claims

since it is obvious that many do; and these truths, though presented

differently from the arguments of pure philosophy, often vie with

philosophical truths. Indeed, some works of literature, for example,Greek tragedy, supersedephilosophyto proclaim truths about man that

the philosophers wrongly rejected. It is a fact, I think, that there is



26 MORRISWEITZ

something irretrievably tragic about human experience, however vari-

ously interpretable this fact is. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripidessaw this. But neither Plato nor Aristotle accepted it, arguing in effect

that the dialectic of reason could overcome the tragic. The philosophers-not the artists- were wrong; so here we have a clear case of

artistic knowledge superior to philosophical. I should not want to

argue from this example, however, that even literature which contains

truths, has a fundamental cognitive use. Its cognitive contributions,

when present, are a use although surely not central. We do not go toSophocles for a truth about men as we might to Plato or Aristotle; we

turn to him for his art in which his revelations of truth are but one

integral constituent, ultimately justifiable on aesthetic rather than

philosophical grounds.Music is like painting at least in its uses to personal life: it enlarges

our sensory experiences as it intensifies them. But it is unlike painting

and, of course, literature in that it does not offer possibilities for new

auditory experiences in ordinary life nor does it intensify the noises

and sounds we hear. Music may relate to noise and ordinarysounds, itmay even exploit them. But fundamentally it creates its own world

of pure sound. It is by doing this that music enlarges our limited audi-

tory experiences; it adds to them and with an expressive, formal

intensity of its own. Mozart, for example, does not make us hear differ-

ently as Cezanne makes us see differently. Mozart makes us hear some-

thing different. It is in this way that his music intensifiesas it enlarges,

by offering us an actuality of organized sound far beyond anything we

can listen to in ordinarylife.

The uses of music rest on the autonomy of that art. Enlargementand intensity belong to it. We share in these but our participation does

not carry over into ordinary life. The great use we can make of music,

consequently, is not to use it to effect anything in our personal lives

but to bring ourselves to listen to it for its own sake- as an indepen-dent world of sound, supremelyvaluable in itself. Now, if this is true

or, since we must stick to the normative mode, if this is how we oughtto respond to music, why should we not come to respond to all the arts

in the same way: as autonomous, goods in themselves, not as extrinsi-

cally valuable because of what they do for us or to us? If we adopt thisoverall approach to the arts, the importance of the enlargement and

intensity I have been talking about would depend on the arts, not on

the uses we make of them, which are only incidental to proper responseto art. Art, then, on such a view, may retain its uses in personal life



ART:WHONEEDS T? 27

but the greatest use we can make of it is to come to see it as autono-

mous: as art for the sake of itself. I am well aware of the conclusion

that must be drawn from such a position- that art, properlyattended

to, is useless. I accept the conclusion. At least it joins art with mathe-

matics, physics, and philosophy, those other absolutely useless subjects,without which for some- alas, too few - life would be more intoler-

able than it is.

weitz art who needs it.pdf

Documents