179.Dominic McIver Lopes, Being for Beauty

COMO CITAR:

Morais, Inês. «Dominic Mciver Lopes, Being for Beauty». Forma de Vida, 2021. https://doi.org/10.51427/ptl.fdv.2021.0062 .

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51427/ptl.fdv.2021.0062

Inês Morais

(Versão em português / Portuguese translation)

Being for Beauty begins with a few anecdotes involving aesthetic experts, ‘not all gentlemen, not all European, not all “highbrow”’ (p. 26). These set the tone of the book, which aims to be both progressive and alternative to highbrow philosophical aesthetics, occasionally relaxed and entertaining, while engaging mainly with classical, mainstream work in general philosophy. Breadth of interest and the project of covering literature from large neighbouring areas of philosophical discussion—to defend aesthetics—are immediately salient qualities of this book.

I should say that the explicit purpose of the book, proposing the so-called ‘network theory’ against arguably hegemonic ‘hedonism’, via formal analysis as well, is perhaps less important (and less successful) than the informal discussion of the several issues the theory does address. This doesn’t mean that I don’t agree with the project of fostering a more meaningful, active, and reflective engagement with beauty that doesn’t link it essentially to pleasure. The theme is thus described on p. 215: ‘the theme of this book, made explicit in the network theory, is that being for beauty does not consist in taking an attitude; it consists in a configuration of agency that kits us out to get in gear and act in accordance with our aesthetic reasons’. I shall leave out the details of the theory as defined in the book (those interested in the details of the definitions will read the book), and I shall address only its general project.

One first aspect addressed is the normativity of aesthetic value, in response to claims that the aesthetic involves no genuine obligations (the references made are to Hampshire 1954 and Nussbaum 1990). Nussbaum is quoted saying that our aesthetic choices involve no guilt: ‘If one day I spend my entire museum visit gazing at Turners, I have not incurred a guilt against the Blakes in the next room’ (1990:132, quoted on p. 40). Nussbaum’s point is interesting because the reference to guilt is made—that is to say, it didn’t go without saying, and this of course didn’t go unnoticed by McIver Lopes. The idea of an aesthetic choice that is a moral dilemma seems for Nussbaum unsupported. ‘In response’ (writes McIver Lopes on p. 40) ‘Marcia Eaton (2008) offers nice cases of interpreters and museum curators who face serious aesthetic dilemmas that entrain painful emotional consequences’. The question for me is whether such dilemmas are irreducibly aesthetic, or whether they are always also moral, since the aesthetic realm seems to be the realm of possibility, and, if necessity is ever present, it is not obvious whether any obligation could be distinctively aesthetic, or whether it always refers ultimately to a moral obligation applied to aesthetic matters.

Another thought-provoking discussion of the much-debated ‘disinterestedness’ of the aesthetic, associated with our interest in art, is offered on p. 45: ‘disinterested pleasure has a unique motivational profile. It motivates no act but appreciation, or “mere contemplation,” in Kant’s expression (2000[1790]: 90; see also Hutcheson 1738: 11–13). Hence, what is special about aesthetic values is that they figure only in reasons to perform acts of appreciation; they do not give agents reason to perform any other acts’. Some find the Kantian view incoherent or at least controversial: it is not clear that ‘mere contemplation’, or perception without some degree of personal interest (or desire), will allow for the perception of aesthetic values. What McIver Lopes (with Kant) is emphasising is that the interest is in appreciation. Nevertheless, even this exclusive interest (and Kant’s view) can be questioned since we may have a serious interest in a work of art as an aesthetic object and yet have other concerns in our engagement with it that don’t necessarily detract from aesthetic appreciation and that may arguably be inherent to it. However, McIver Lopes’s emphasis on the primacy of the appreciation of beauty is, I think, in the right lines.   

Noël Carrol is quoted explaining a new attitude towards art in the modern period: ‘“instead of serving objective social purposes, art began to be esteemed for the subjective pleasure it sustained” (2007:152)’. This description (endorsed by McIver Lopes) of how modern art appears to critics and (or) the public, opposed to the ways of art of earlier periods, is refreshing and suggestive of the problems and interest that art since Romanticism brings to the history of art.

This book includes several surprising metaphilosophical claims, sometimes made just in passing, such as this one on p. 109: ‘Sometimes the hardest trick in philosophy is to glom onto the obvious, and then make it count’. McIver Lopes’s book also gloms onto the non-obvious, presented as a corrective: ‘Most of us get pleasure from aesthetic appreciation. This book correctively spotlights non-appreciative aesthetic acts that are overlooked in thinking about aesthetic agency and value.’ The innovative suggestion made is that the pleasure often afforded by works of art is contingent, not an essential feature of aesthetic experience: for McIver Lopes, ‘[a]esthetic appreciation is often, but contingently, a source of pleasure’ (p. 162). This is indeed one of the most unexpected and probing claims made in the book, and one that clearly aims at defending aesthetics and the philosophy of art from the charge that they deal just or simply with the easy and the pleasant. McIver Lopes sums up his position thus: ‘aesthetic appreciation is a distinctive act-type that implicates the exercise of a competence suited to the relevant aesthetic practice. Exercising the competence typically brings pleasure, though aesthetic appreciation is not, in essence, a pleasure-seeking activity. Finally, aesthetic appreciation is key to many, but not all, aesthetic practices’ (p. 163). McIver Lopes’s position is at odds with traditional views of beauty (such as Aquinas’, for example) that make essential reference to pleasure, the views he assembles under the term ‘hedonism’; for Aquinas, the apprehension of beauty is itself pleasant. Think also about the works that we deem aesthetically superior but that don’t move us particularly. Does our experience of them involve pleasure because we recognise their aesthetic value? I think it all depends on what we mean by ‘pleasure’.

The distinctive ‘charm’ of aesthetic disputes, that opposes them to the non-aesthetic kinds of dispute, stems from their happening mostly, if not exclusively, in the realm of (joyful) possibility: ‘the charm of our aesthetic activities seemingly hangs on in their freeing us to be quite safely and enjoyably out of step with one another’ (p. 165). Alexander Nehamas is quoted for going even further and claiming that a world with complete agreement in matters aesthetic would be ‘a desolate, desperate world’ (2007: 83). I have to say that I disagree with this point that whereas philosophy and science ‘ultimately aim to extinguish disagreement’ (p. 165), disagreement in aesthetic matters is not to be extinguished, arguably because it involves no fault on either side. It is not clear how this position can be reconciled with the presence of normativity; and although McIver Lopes claims that ‘[o]nly some cases of aesthetic disagreement are faultless’ (p. 167), he gives no example of these. The solution McIver Lopes offers to aesthetic disputes that go beyond what is possible to share as information is suspension of judgment. ‘Aesthetic disputes are part and parcel of aesthetic culture. So, too, is a commitment to suspend judgement when mutual understanding reaches, for now, its limits’ (p. 180).

Another thesis endorsed in the book is aesthetic value naturalism. Invoking a claim by J. Fodor (1974) according to which the special sciences do not reduce to physics (p. 183), McIver Lopes goes on to claim that ‘[m]uch of what is at stake is earning our commitment to aesthetic cognitivism and realism […] by housing aesthetic normativity and aesthetic value facts in the natural world’ (p. 196).

On p. 216 we see more explicitly the motivation for this project. Lopes wishes to lend seriousness to aesthetics, or rather to show that aesthetic activity is important, without resorting to high culture or the (high) fine arts alone: ‘The deep anxiety is that [our aesthetic pursuits] are pastimes, diversions from the serious business of life, mere trivialities. The overreaction is to insist on the great cultural significance of the fine arts. That throws the rest of our aesthetic lives under the bus. A better reaction embraces all aesthetic activity.’ Indeed, invoking an ‘unjustly overlooked’ 1970 article by Monroe Beardsley, ‘Aesthetic Welfare’, McIver Lopes notes the economic and non-economic advantages of aesthetic activity discussed by Beardsley. In the words of McIver Lopes, ‘[e]conomic spillovers get top billing: the arts are said to bring in tourists, boost exports, create jobs, raise tax revenues, and attract skilled workers. Non-economic spillovers are also acknowledged: the arts are said to incubate innovation, lend prestige, cement national identity, facilitate the acceptance of diversity, inculcate moral character, and promote democratic citizenship’ (p. 220). And I couldn’t agree more with McIver Lopes agreeing with and quoting Thomas Nagel (p. 221): ‘“some things are wonderful and important in a measure quite beyond the value of the experiences or other benefits of those who encounter them” (1985: 237).’ McIver Lopes’s book does teach us to pay attention to aesthetic value and reasons beyond the pleasure beauty affords. According to McIver Lopes an item’s aesthetic value cannot be measured alone by the pleasure it affords: ‘The wine’s flinty smokiness is also a reason for a connoisseur to appreciate it, and she might derive pleasure from the act, but its aesthetic value does not lie in its affording pleasure in appreciation’ (p. 221). This is an unusual claim, and one worth making.  

The book closes with the moral note that there are plenty of serious issues to address, perhaps suggesting that there are better and worse aesthetic pursuits, which aesthetics discusses, and that, more generally, there are moral constraints to our aesthetic pursuits, in another reference to Beardsley:

Nothing resonates more for us, nowadays, than Beardsley’s agonies, in 1968, about the seeming absurdity of aesthetics in times troubled by violence, hate, environmental breakdown, and calamitous assaults on liberal democracy. In truth, however, our aesthetic commitments are not optional. We cannot down tools and make for the barricades. We will take our tools with us. (p. 233)

I wholeheartedly share the moral commitment to addressing this famously ‘intractable’ area in what can be addressed. There is plenty in it that is important—a priority, in fact, even if we don’t think about it.

Works cited

Beardsley, Monroe C. 1970. ‘Aesthetic Welfare,’ Journal of Aesthetic Education 4 (4): 9–20.

Carroll, Noël. 2007. ‘Aesthetic Experience, Art, Artists,’ Aesthetic Experience, ed. Richard Shusterman and Adele Tomlin. London: Routledge, pp. 45–65.

Eaton, Marcia Muelder. 2008. ‘Aesthetic Obligations,’ Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66(1): 1–9.

Fodor, Jerry. 1974. ‘Special Sciences (Or: the Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis),’ Synthese, 28(2): 97–115.

Hampshire, Stuart. 1954. ‘Logic and Appreciation,’ Aesthetics and Language, ed. William Elton. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 161–9.

Hutcheson, Francis. 1738. An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, 4th ed. London.

Kant, Immanuel. 2000[1790]. Critique of the Power of Judgement, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nagel, Thomas. 1985. ‘Public Support for the Arts,’ Columbia Journal of Art and the Law 9(208): 236–9.

Nussbaum, Martha C. 1990. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

REFERÊNCIA:

Lopes, Dominic McIver. Being for Beauty. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.