12 ideas
| 22687 | Maybe literary assessment is evaluating the artist as a suitable friend [Gaut] |
| Full Idea: An approach in Hume (elaborated by Wayne Booth) holds that literary assessment is akin to an act of befriending, for one assesses the author of a work as a suitable friend. | |
| From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Some') | |
| A reaction: I like the idea that art exploits our normal range of social emotions and attitudes, so I think this has some truth, but some of the best artists are so out of my league as to not even be candidates for friendship. Dostoevsky? Webster? Caravaggio? |
| 12163 | Literary meaning emerges in comparisons, and tradition shows which comparisons are relevant [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: We must discover the meanings that emerge when works of literature are experience in relation to each other. ...The importance of tradition is that it denotes - ideally, at least - the class of relevant comparisons. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.27) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice attempt to explain why we all agree that a thorough education in an art is an essential prerequisite for good taste. Some people (e.g. among the young) seem to have natural good taste. How does that happen? |
| 22686 | Formalists say aesthetics concerns types of beauty, or unity, complexity and intensity [Gaut] |
| Full Idea: The formal objects which individuate the aesthetic attitude may be narrowly aesthetic, as beauty, and its subspecies, such as grace and elegance, or more broadly by other formalist criteria, such as Beardley's unity, complexity and intensity. | |
| From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Objections 1') | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about unity or complexity, but intensity was endorsed by Henry James. Intensity doesn't sound very 'formal'. 'Beauty' doesn't seem the right word for the wonderful 'King Lear', or even for Jane Austen novels. |
| 12162 | In literature, word replacement changes literary meaning [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: In literary contexts semantically equivalent words cannot replace each other without loss of literary meaning. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.25) | |
| A reaction: The notion of 'literary meaning' is not a standard one, and is questionable whether 'meaning' is the right word, given that a shift in word in a poem is as much to do with sound as with connotations. |
| 12159 | Without intentions we can't perceive sculpture, but that is not the whole story [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: A person for whom it made no difference whether a sculpture was carved by wind and rain or by human hand would be unable to interpret or perceive sculptures - even though the interpretation of sculpture is not the reading of an intention. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.15) | |
| A reaction: Scruton compares it to the role of intention in language, where there is objective meaning, even though intention is basic to speech. |
| 12160 | In aesthetic interest, even what is true is treated as though it were not [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: In aesthetic interest, even what is true is treated as though it were not. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.18) | |
| A reaction: A nice aphorism. I always feel uncomfortable reading novels about real people, although the historical Macbeth doesn't bother me much. Novels are too close to reality. Macbeth didn't speak blank verse. |
| 12161 | We can be objective about conventions, but love of art is needed to understand its traditions [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: An historian can elucidate convention while having no feeling for the art that exploits it; whereas an understanding of tradition is reserved for those with the critical insight which comes from the love of art, both past and present. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.24) | |
| A reaction: This aesthetic observation is obviously close to Scruton's well-known conservatism in politics. I am doubtful whether the notion of 'tradition' can stand up to close examination, though we all know roughly what he means. |
| 22690 | 'Moralism' says all aesthetic merits are moral merits [Gaut] |
| Full Idea: The view that the only aesthetic merit of works are ethical ones is known as 'moralism'. | |
| From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], n 1) | |
| A reaction: [He says this view was demolished by R.W.Beardsmore in 1971] Gaut contrasts this with his own carefully modulated 'ethicism'. Moralism predominated in the eighteenth century, but now looks clearly wrong (or naïve). |
| 468 | Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.] |
| Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice. | |
| From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where? |
| 22684 | Good ethics counts towards aesthetic merit, and bad ethics counts against it [Gaut] |
| Full Idea: I defend 'ethicism', which says that ethically admirable attitudes count toward the the aesthetic merit of a work, and ethically reprehensible attitudes count against its aesthetic merit. | |
| From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Ethicism') | |
| A reaction: He recognises that morally admirable works can explore unethical behaviour, and also that identifying the 'attitude' of a work is not simple. The ethics are not necessary. 'Triumph of the Will' is a classic test case. I disagree with Gaut. |
| 22689 | If we don't respond ethically in the way a work prescribes, that is an aesthetic failure [Gaut] |
| Full Idea: Our having reason not to respond in the way prescribed (because it is unethical) is a failure of the work …so that is an aesthetic failure, which is an aesthetic defect. | |
| From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Merited') | |
| A reaction: A key argument for Gaut's theory of 'ethicism' about literature. If 'Triumph of the Will' gets the right response from Nazi sympathisers, that is probably all aesthetic success. Jane Austen hasn't failed if she is rejected as bourgeois. |
| 22685 | Good art does not necessarily improve people (any more than good advice does) [Gaut] |
| Full Idea: Ethicism does not entail the causal thesis that good art ethically improves people, …any more than it follows that earnest ethical advice improves people. | |
| From: Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Ethicism') | |
| A reaction: How successful were sermons, in the great days of Christianity? It seems hard to disagree with Gaut's point. |