Philosophy 301 Reflections on the Arts, Spring 99, 1 MWF in UANX 150; 3 units
J.W. Powell, Office 110 UANX, phone 5753; jwp2@axe
Office hours: 11:00 MW (not F), 2-4 Tues, and by appt.;
Stop by at any time--your odds are good of catching me if I am not teaching.
What is art? What is it for? What's the relation of art to life, art to reality? How can we judge good art and bad
art? Can we ever be wrong about those judgements? What ever happened to beauty? How is art connected with human
nature, with rationality, with imagination, with emotion, with madness, with our talk about art?
To start, we will collect some raw data--specimens of art and artists to fix straightpins through their little
heads--as well as take inventory of our own interests, backgrounds, and prejudices, and decide on an agenda of problems.
We will look at slides, listen to poetry, think about literature. The instructor's background in the traditionally central arts
is strongest in poetry, drama, short stories, and essays, and in philosophy of art among those who have talked about
painting, photography, and visual arts, so the instructor can be expected to bring up those kinds of examples. We will also
look at some examples from other cultures not usually included in the artworld's discourse. (For example, we'll look at
Navajo sandpaintings.) Other members of the class with other fields of expertise are invited to help out by providing
other examples. We will then read some classic theoreticians on art, always with an eye to whether their arguments are
strong and are confirmed by our examples. With enough enthusiasm, we'll wade into some current controversies. Though
this is not meant to be a comprehensive course in aesthetics, we will take up a good sample of the classic, central issues.
Because of the readings, the issues, and the methods of this course, it can be a core, important part of your HSU
general educaton. The course has been set up with these goals in mind. You will read influential arguments which have
shaped our current intellectual situation, where "our" means belonging not just to dead white European males but to the
world. You will also learn skills in reading, writing, and thinking critically about controversies which will help you in
your HSU coursework and in your life after you leave HSU (supposing you leave alive). You will both know and be able
to think. You and the world, which needs knowledgeable and thoughtful people, will benefit.
Grading: Students will write essays for the class on three different occasions, two midterms and a final exam,
plus take part in required discussions of student writing. Each student will present one of those essays to the class.
Exams will consist of two or three essay questions chosen from twice that many distributed a week ahead of the exams,
which may be turned in then as a take-home or written in class. Optional or voluntary assignments may be available late
in the term. Note that the final exam will be early enough in the term that the last week can include discussions of what
students have written. Attendance the last two weeks of class is compulsory.
Approach: Here are some beginning remarks, to reduce hidden agendas and to expose my prejudices and
interests: I am tempted to think that Jung's suggestion that every theory is a personal confession is especially true when
philosophers start to talk about the arts. I am particularly interested in the weird behavior which sometimes shows that
artists have believed philosophers, especially when artworks seem to stretch awfully hard to be evidence for some
philosophical theory or other. Art becomes a way of doing philosophy, usually to the detriment of both. One may think of
art history as a long line of artists at their easels stretching back through time, each with a winged cherub wearing the
face of Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Marx, Foucault, . . . .whispering in her/his ear.
I am also interested in how poorly most theoretical writers have captured the life or the experience of the artist,
and I expect this will be a theme in the course. The exceptions are noteworthy and make the rest of the pack seem shoddy.
On the other hand, some of the most gifted writers on the arts, though they are not themselves artists, make us wince at
how blind artists are to their own work, and we will look at some of those.
Other interests: There is a story that art sometimes shows the human soul working to become whole by struggling
to incorporate elements from the unconscious in the face of psychological defense mechanisms and societal sanctions--art
as therapy both for the individual artist and for the society. Art can be the realm in which someone who might not fit in
easily, indeed, who might otherwise be institutionalized, finds a role on the margins of the society--or, with success, in
the centers of power; that is, sometimes outsiders or crazies can find a voice through art. I am also interested in the
objectivity of descriptions of artworks, how one learns to read a work of art, and the relationships among artworks and
the talk about the artworks. I am also interested in ego, in the need of artists for audiences, in what happens when artists
become powerful and successful, in levels of ambition, in power and corruption, and in domestic arts and temporary
arts--flower arranging, quilting, crocheting, letterwriting, woodworking, especially art done with no public audience. I am
curious to investigate the suggestion that women's art has been generally purer because done under the assumption that it
had access only to audiences without power or was done heedless of power issues.
I choose philosophical problems I'm interested in and ones about which I have not yet settled in my mind how to
think. Students will be given opportunity to influence our choices of problems.
Texts: Two books are required, one expensive and one less so. If you cannot afford the expensive one, wait til
you hear of alternatives in class. The moolah one is Dickie, Sclafani and Roblin, Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology , 2nd
ed. (St. Martin's, NYC: 1989). The other is Garry Hagberg, Art as Language (Cornell U.P.: 1996) There will be
handouts provided at irregular intervals all semester (including student-written work), and these will be covered on
exams.
Schedule (This is tentative, subject to change)
Week Topic; Readings; Exams, etc.
1. What is art? Collecting Specimens, sketches of topics, looking at works and artifacts.
2. Art is imitation or otherwise is not reality; Art is inspired and mad. Plato, from The Republic and from Ion.
3. Plato continued: From Symposium, from Phaedrus, Acastos.
4. Aristotle on imitation and on art's place among productive activities. Second slide set, with student choices.
5. First Midterm, in fourth or fifth week; Hegel's vocabulary lessons, Tolstoy: art is expression of certain emotions.
6. Bouwsma dynamites expression theories. Nietzsche on human needs and truth in art.
7. The Institutional view: Art is what the artworld takes as art, and welcome, stranger, to the artworld.
Dickie, Danto, Weitz. Defining art as a problem.
8. Methods for continuing, inventory of results so far. 3rd slide set.
9. Second Midterm, ninth or tenth week;Definition continued, and its role in philosophy; Powell handout. Navajo
sandpaintings as counterexamples for definitional accounts.
10. Foucault; paradox and irony as artistic values, argument as servant of ideology and power.
11. Art and socio-economic class; Benjamin; Linda Nochlin handout.
12. Final exams, end twelfth week. Non-DWEM aesthetics; Irigaray; Mudimbe; Clifford (no, not that Clifford); Fry
and Willis.
13. Alienation, Madness, Insight: Outsider artists. Powell handout.
14. Art as sex or as sex substitute; Freud; N.O. Brown handout. Student papers.
15. Student Papers continued.
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