Values of Art (PHIL20048)

For cultural critic bell hooks, art has the power to transform lives—but culture, class, gender and race conspire to ensure that only a select few benefit from art’s transformative power. But in what respects, exactly, can art transform lives? In other words, why is it so important that everyone should have access to it? This subject aims to address this question. Our discussion will be guided by a mixture of historical and contemporary philosophical readings, as well as careful interrogation of our own experiences of art.

If art is to transform your life, you have to be able to engage with it. And so, we begin by asking: What conditions must be in place if one is to appreciate (or indeed make) art? To what extent do we have to be sensitive to the cultural and historical context of an artwork if we are to appreciate it? Is aesthetic experience inherently ‘disinterested’, as Kant thought, and does it inevitably involve pleasure? Readings for this first section of the course include bell hooks, Immanuel Kant, Antonia Peacocke and Richard Moran.

The second part of the subject explores whether art’s transformative power might lie in its capacity to give us knowledge of a distinctive kind. We begin with Arthur Schopenhauer, who claims that art (and in particular, music) gives us a disquieting insight into the fundamental nature of reality. After that, we move to the Hegelian tradition: those philosophers who claim that art affords knowledge not of the world ‘out there’, but of ourselves. We explore R. G. Collingwood’s view (in Principles of Art) that an artwork gives artist and audience alike a cognitive purchase on feelings that would otherwise remain unconscious, and in so doing, liberates us from those feelings. As a counterpoint, we consider Susanne Langer’s view (in Feeling and Form) on which art gives us cognitive purchase not on our own feelings, exactly, but rather on the nature of subjective experience itself.

The final part of the subject investigates the moral and political resonance of art. Can art give us the strength to carry on, in the face of life’s inevitable suffering—and if so, how does it do this? Can artworks impart moral insights in a particularly compelling way? Can art engender respect for otherness? Can artists effect political change through their art, and if they can, are they obliged to do so? Readings include W. E. B. Du Bois, Friedrich Nietzsche (The Birth of Tragedy), Martha Nussbaum, and Iris Murdoch.