Ø (1) To demonstrate art’s power to inform philosophy.
o It can direct us to important phenomena that helps us understand them on their terms.
Ø Chapter 1 – Phenomenological Relevance of Art.
o (9) Art is capable of showing us the phenomena under consideration.
§ More so than philosophical prose.
§ Influenced by Heidegger, Ponty and Sartre.
o Phenomenology – Every showing of a thing that reveals aspects about it.
§ The process of learning how to see things on their terms.
o Giving language, descriptions to phenomena illustrates apprehension of the subject.
§ But language can get in the way of experience.
o (10) Describing the substance of a hammer does reveal the sensory experience of hammering a nail.
o Heidegger suggested poetical or pictures can reveal deeper levels of conveying experiences.
o Nietzsche – Only artists enable people to project themselves onto a state in front of them.
§ To see past everyday life to nobler goals.
§ To lift people to what otherwise would be a standard of vulgarity of the common man.
o (10) Art moves beyond influencing out beliefs of the world,
§ by affecting our dispositions toward encounters of the world.
o (10) All art exercises the power of suggestion over the muscles and the senses.
o (10) Heidegger supported the idea that art can reorient us toward the world.
§ And show us things we don’t normally see.
§ (10-11) It can bring forth possibilities of existence that cannot be understood any other way.
§ (11) He believed art was losing its ability to disclose the truths.
§ And wanted to return art as experience.
o (11) Ponty – Focus of essay
§ Art can teach us how we perceive and engage with the world.
§ Only art can open the world as it is for our life and body.
§ Because the artist sees different and translates it to canvas.
§ People focus on the objects within art,
· But no the light, lighting, shadows, reflections of the objects.
· Almost invisible attributes few people see.
· Aspects that only reside in the visual.
o (12) Artists interrogate the world with their gaze.
§ And viewers view their gaze
§ Two separate acts.
o (16) Art doesn’t produce the visible.
§ Rather it makes it visible.
o (17) According to Ponty
§ A phenomenological approach addressed
· A “sensibly and opened world, such as it is, in our life and for our body.
o (17) We think of things in terms of how we use them.
§ With action of need and
§ Temporally through time (Heidegger).
o (18) The world acts on us and we feel our way through events.
§ Without reflection
§ We are with the world.
§ How we move through the world is different than how we observe or reflect on it.
o (19) Heidegger thinks ther are to views of the world.
§ One where we are with the world where we take feature sin relevant to our body
§ And one that is descriptive and primarily used for identification and communication.
· Different than living in the world.
§ Note – There is a gap between how we experience the world, and how we present.
o (20) It is possible to describe an experience, but it is often flat.
§ Pictorials can describe experience, because
· It can make visible the invisibly ordinariness of the everyday life.
· “Secret Ciphers of Vision”
o (21) We can see things without it being a mental act.
§ Paul Klee
· Pictorial work come into being from motion.
· Is itself motion that has been fixed into place
o And is taken up in motion (eye movement).
o (22) Artists are more keenly attuned to what we pick up in perception.
o (23) Artists must
§ find their way in the world
· To bring order into the passing streams of images and experience.
o (24) The aim is to elicit movements of the body,
§ and in the body of the viewer.
o (24) Art makes visible in two ways
§ What we don’t ordinarily see, and sometimes
· What’s so close we can’t see it,
§ And it can teach the eye to see.
o (25) How do we change the ordinary to motivate new response to the world around us.
§ An artwork (the frame) brings into sight the world.
o (25) The eye cannot see everything at once.
§ It must graze through the image.
§ The artist can exploit the grazing through light and emphasize design elements.
o ** Art can teach the eye to see
§ We learn by observing how other artists see
§ And by observing our own work.
o (26) Our perception of a thing is rooted in an temporal structure.
o (27) It’s kind of trick to catch ourselves during the act of perceiving.
o (28) To train people in art means
§ To get them to perceive things they having been picking up on.
· The goal is to penetrate the cosmos deeply, and emerge with change.
o We then wait for the things we’ve learned to see.
o Descriptive – What we see
o Normative – How new things become normal – How things effect change.
Ø Chapter 2 – Why art matters.
o [31] Aesthetics – 1735 – Alexander Baumgartner:
§ Philosophical inquiry into how we know things through the senses.
· Beauty is a “sensible perfection.”
· Indicates a normative property.
o Measured against a standard of what it ought to be.
o Beauty is something sensed
§ A distinctive pleasure.
· Natural beauty is traditionally most important.
o A sign of order and purpose
o The standard
o A priori
· Natural beauty is seen as a path to the divine.
· Artistic viewed as a copy – Plato.
· Aristotle viewed art as a path through truth.
o Reveals universals that people can grasp.
o A gathering of meaning.
o [32] By Kant’s time:
§ Beauty is reduced to a symbol or morally good.
§ Kant revealed beauty alone is not enough of a standard to evaluate art.
§ Art must include the presentation of aesthetic ideas.
§ Art’s claim is independent of beauty.
o [33] Aesthetic ideas could become the philosophy of art once beauty was reduced to ideas as well.
§ A transition from truths to morals.
o Again – Because it was apparent that art was separate from beauty
§ Aesthetics changed to ideas of beauty as good and moral.
§ And it could be considered a philosophy of art.
o Hegel – Society demands its truth to be rooted in science.
§ As such, art has lost its value.
§ Its become a thing of the past.
§ It no longer informs the culture.
o Phenomenology and Philosophy of Art
o [46] Art places things within our vicinity.
§ Able to thin on things that normally elude us.
§ Things become noticeable as revealed by the craft of the work.
Ø Chapter 3 Objectivity and self disclosedness
o [54] What is the relationship between the objectivity of an artwork, the material object, and its nature as art.
o [55] The material aspects are medium
§ Art works through the material.
o Seeking the distinction between
§ How art works
§ The kind of thing an artwork is
o [56] While some things may be art
§ The central question is
· On the way it is art
· How odes art articulate itself as a work.
o [57] Art will always fail if we continue to perceive it as an object.
o [58] Makes a point the nature of art is revealed through individual works,
§ rather than thinking of art as a whole.
o Author wants to analyze how metaphors work to gain insights to art.
o [60] The metaphor is something different than the words used to form them.
§ The meaning of the metaphor is different than then meaning of the works.
o [61] Metaphors are mediums of language.
§ One uses language to do something with words.
§ Metaphors are much like a way of seeing.
§ It is to be understood in certain cognitive context.
o [61] Linguistic expression – Dreamwork of language.
§ A distinction between what words are
· And what they used to do.
· A matter of what is done with words.
· They are dependent on their ordinary usage and meaning.
o A metaphor enables us to see one thing as another thought
§ A literal statement that prompts insight.
o [62] At its best, a metaphor
§ Says something that inspires revelation.
o The ordinary meaning in context of use is odd enough to prompt us to disregard the question of truth.
§ And to understand something under a different intention.
§ The tension between the literal and the context of what is presented.
o [63] Appreciating art is more of a doing rather than a having.
§ Artwork makes present ideas.
o [64] Heidegger – We cannot understand the artwork by analyzing the material only.
o Heidegger – Art opens world
§ World – the space a work opens.
· The relatedness of things within the image.
§ Earth – Material object
§ What its – How it relates.
§ *** There is the work – Earth
· And how things within in relate to each other
o And to the viewer.
· It speaks in metaphors that –
o Allows the presentation of things relative to their context in ordinary and cultural life.
o It does so in a manner that enables the viewer to suspend notions of established reality and reflect on things in new context.
· In this way the work opens itself.
· Art opens context on
o How things are generally perceived rather than,
o What is presented.
o [68] The work itself in context is put against the context of where its hainging.
§ This difference in context opens a space of possibility.
§ It also becomes a place in terms of
· Establishing a certain topic.
· It invokes it’s own setting.
o [69] We tend to look for metaphors relating to our own life,
§ But art can extend beyond that to a work that appears on its own terms rather than the viewers.
Ø Chapter 4 – Horizon Oscillation Boundaries
o The imagination
§ Holds together in oscillation
· The opposing spheres of the
o Objective and the subjective.
o The temporal and the eternal.
o [79] The thinking subject controls the act of intuiting something.
§ The object creates the space for subjective interpretation.
· How to stimulate the imagination and possibilities resides on the artists craft.
· Has to be crafted well enough to enable freeplay,
· While maintain interest while
· Suspending belief.
Ø Representing the real
o Searching for pointing,
§ Not as its imitated,
§ But as it’s experienced.
§ Discussed realism and the greats.
o [92] To produce images with the same power and force as reality.
§ Is the author’s perspective of realism.
o [93] The author has the insight that realism transitions from
§ objects portrayed as real
§ to the perceptual forces that make them real.
§ How we see real life, and
· How we see art is physically the same.
· It is in how we perceive it that things change.
o [95] Alber durer – self portrait – 1500
§ Portrays himself as Christ.
§ First time highlights are used in the eye.
§ First time they are used to enliven and image.
o [96] Detached and absorbed on an object.
§ Viewers of objects are detached.
§ People doing actions in paintings are absorbed.
· Two distinct modes of focus that cannot occur at the same time.
o [97] the absorbed or engaged attitude is the perceptual attitude we adopt.
§ Towards objects.
§ When we see them as meaningful in the environment.
§ The detached mode is not aimed toward the meaningful,
· But to how something looks.
o Questions
§ How do we produce images that engage
· When the creator is detached,
· Or vice versa.
§ Realism used mirrors and camera obscura to present images as framed – ad detached to bring it out.
§ Author believes Cezanne and Picasso did exactly that.
o [99] – Cezanne wanted to astonish Paris with an apple.
§ He focused on weight, heftiness, and independence.
§ He was focused on the experience of the object.
· How we engage with them
· Over the realistic portrayal.
§ Cezanne’s images felt like they occupied space.
o [100] Realism was traced from a single lens – monocular.
§ However, Czanne was sensitive to binocular vision.
· Two images a touch different that create tension and some ambiguity.
Ø Judgment of Adam
o [105] How could Adam understand the difference between right and wrong before eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
o [105] Looking at an old painting to help understand the structures of consciousness, experience, and acts of human judgments.
o [106] Adam and Eve is a story about shame.
§ Shame is a fundamental form of self-consciousness.
o A look at the painter Cranach who depicted Adam and Eve for over 30 years.
§ His scenes require acts of judgments.
o [107] God set forth a dietary restriction to not eat from the tree of knowledge or of good and evil.
§ Adam lacks self-consciousness – which is revealed later,
§ And lack of knowledge of good and evil.
o [108] Author’s perspective
§ Ethics – the problem of knowing what to do.
§ We have the perspective,
· But Adam is lacking in “what to do.”
§ Prompts the question
· How would one deliberate
o Without self-consciousness
o Knowledge of good and evil.
o Adam had no knowledge that following god’s command was good.
o [111] If a bird eats the last of the fruit from a tree,
· We don’t hold the bird accountable.
· But we do if our neighbor eats the fruit,
o Because they decided to.
o Cranach frequently depicts Eve as similar to the serpent.
§ Same expression, same eyes.
§ Adam is depicted as baffled and infantile.
§ Further Adam’s perfect companion appears to be aligned with the serpent.
§ The deck is clearly stacked against Adam.
o [114] Luthor – The name of “knowledge of good and evil” only makes sense in retrospect.
§ It couldn’t be good or evil without prior knowledge of what good or evil is.
§ The name came from an event that occurred in the future.
o [119] The author suggests
§ God’s demand of Adam was the first covenant, or contract.
§ Moses and the Ten Commandments was the second.
§ Christ was the third.
§ Visual references follow a theory that links the 1st contract to the 3rd.
· There were twelve animals in Eden – the same number of apostles.
· There was one black animal – Judas.
· There is a horse in the background – hoof held high –which is symbolic of resurrection and overcoming evil.
· Jesus is taken as the new Adam.
§ It reflects a history of Christianity, but
§ The first contract had to fall in order to get to the 3rd..
§ What had to happen to get to God’s mercy on man.
o [120} The author is not trying to validate the painting,
§ But the processes Cranach uses to engage a solution.
o [120] Ontological self-consciousness
§ Author explores Adam’s judgment,
· And the nature of man.
§ Adam’s decision sets a course for nature.
§ God curses man, the serpent, and the very ground.
· Thorns and Thistles are the introduction of adverse elements.
§ [122] The painting suggests the change from peace to conflict through the animals.
· The Lion is not a rest because he’s not living to his nature among the other animals.
· He is gaunt because he’s not hunting meat and forced to eat vegetables.
· Author suggests the lion knows of the impending change in his favor.
o Through a natural self-consciousness in the lion.
§ It knows its true nature.
§ Not through knowledge, psychology, or direct awareness,
§ But through its own being and what is right for the self.
o [123] Adam is self conscious before the fall
§ Because he knows the kind of being he is.
§ That Eve is a fitting mate, and not the other animals.
§ Adam can discriminate what is good, as according to being.
§ That Adam realizes it is fitting for his nature to know good and evil.
o The author believes it is the ontological self-consciousness was how peopled viewed man’s interaction with the world,
§ What is in man’s nature,
§ What is fitting for man.
o [129] The scripture has god placing man at the cross roads.
§ He consistently tempts and challenges man while knowing
· There is only one path for man’s nature.
· The decision will be based with self-knowledge and self-awareness.
· To teach man about his own constitution.
· Show man his inability to do good and to then despair.
· To make every man a sinner,
o In the realm of self-esteem and awareness.
o The author notes Luther’s dark interpretation of surrounding.
§ Self-knowledge
§ Self-recognition
§ Self-Awareness.
§ The aim of scripture is to make every man a sinner.
o [130] God doesn’t place commandments to be obeyed,
§ he knows they won’t.
§ It is the nature of the commandment, and how they are directed towards man.
o Man despairs at his inability and then seeks help elsewhere.
§ The nature of the commandments is to seek help because of
§ Self-consciousness and ontological despair.
o [131] The self, the norm and failure emerge at once.
§ When we fail, what norm do we use.
· The public sphere
· Or the personal.
o [133] The primary manifestation of self-consciousness is
§ an awareness of the self.
§ A norm
§ A sense of failure.
§ From a religious view
· A norm no conforming to scripture or god’s law.
§ Failure from within to obey
· That forces help from other sources.
Ø Phenomenological History and Freedom
o Knowing the history of painting is needed for:
§ Full understanding of a work, and
§ Phenomenological insight.
o The visual has a greater capacity to radicalize the question of being,
§ More so than writing.
o Intent to demonstrate how visual interpretation makes us rethink our understanding of the meaning of being.
o The annunciation as history.
§ The shift from the old testament to the new testament.
· Prompts questions in terms of history through epochs.
o It is a continuation of history, or
o A rupture.
o Annunciation
§ When Gabriel announced to Mary the future of Christ.
§ [164] It is presented as a future,
· and not a question of willingness.
§ Botticellies Cestello Annunciation
· Depicts the Annunciation,
· In a way or context, in which we know the ending,
· But it is still a happening with massive changes for Mary.
o [165] Because it’s visual
§ There are several things happening at once.
· It gives a moment that we understand, because
· We already know the story.
o [166] The author discussed the path his eyes follow,
§ and how it affects interpretation.
o [168] History as Phenomenology
§ History doesn’t exist for its own sake,
· But how it can inform our present and our future.
§ History shapes our institutions, culture, etc.
o Heidegger – history
§ The possibility of existence that has already been there.
§ What we can become is based on what we have been
§ We formulate the choices of what we would like to be.
o [169] As such, we have an interest in
§ Mary’s life – her history
§ Gives context to the story.
o We make sense of a moment in the past,
§ A moment configured by its future.
§ By a sense of possibilities formed
§ By context and concrete in the contingencies of the moment.
o Our ability to recognize something important in the past occurs only
§ Because its important to us now.
§ The present draws from the past to inform the future.
· It gives context and possibilities to what we don’t know in the present.
o Phenomenology rejects I think therefore I am.
§ It is – I am what I lived through
§ My experiences.
§ History needs to be oriented toward experience,
· To include the particulars as oriented toward the body.
§ [170] Ponty – the aim of phenomenology is a reconnecting with world and giving it philosophical status.
o [171} The world provides me the tools to grasp it.
§ It has determined my perceptions relative to the other constructs within it.
§ The historian looks for patterning of the world
· Unique events that occur within it.
· Unique events w/context of the patterning.
§ However, the pattern recognition is something the world has given the historian.
· Without reflection, the historian can only see something one way,
o And as a given.
o [172] Heidegger’s clearing
§ When something gives us meaning
§ But we become of the forces that shape it.
· Culture – Assumptions – structure.
§ A seeing of the background of the world.
§ History is a study of the foreground to reveal the background.
o [175] Heidegger
§ The essence of freedom must by more primordial than man.
§ Human freedom now means
· A possibility of freedome
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