Wittgenstein on Aesthetic Understanding

400 Pages·2017·15.71 MB·English

by  Garry L. Hagberg (eds.)

Philosophers in Depth
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Philosophy
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Garry L. Hagberg
Editor
Wittgenstein
on Aesthetic
Understanding
Editor
GarryL.Hagberg
BardCollege,US
Rhinebeck,NewYork,USA
PhilosophersinDepth
ISBN978-3-319-40909-2 ISBN978-3-319-40910-8(eBook)
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Contents
’
Part I The Aesthetic Dimension of Wittgensteins
Philosophical Work
’
1 TheAestheticDimensionofWittgensteinsLaterWritings 3
William Day
’
2 Improvisation and Imagination in Wittgensteins
Investigations 31
Beth Savickey
3 Wittgenstein, Music, and the Philosophy of Culture 61
Garry L. Hagberg
Part II Narrative, Interpretation, and Literary Language
4 Is a Narrative a Something or a Nothing? 99
Robert Chodat
5 Narrative Aspect Change and Alternating Systems
of Justice: A Wittgensteinian Reading of Borges 131
Shlomy Mualem
v
vi Contents
’
6 Thinking the Poem: Elizabeth Bishops Transcendental
“ ”
Crusoe in England (For Example) 153
Walter Jost
Part III Musical Understanding
7 Wittgenstein on Musical Depth and Our Knowledge
of Humankind 217
Eran Guter
8 Wittgenstein and the Inner Character of Musical
Experience 249
Gary Kemp
’ “ ”
9 Wittgensteins Criticism of a Science of Aesthetics
and the Understanding of Music 281
Alessandra Brusadin
Part IV Experiencing Art and Perceiving Persons:
An Intimate Connection
10 The Philosophy of the Face 305
Bernard Rhie
11 Seeing Stars: the Reception and Ontology
of Movie Stars 329
David Goldblatt
12 If an Artwork Could Speak: Aesthetic Understanding
After Wittgenstein 355
Constantine Sandis
Index 383
Introduction
It is remarkable that the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein have exerted
fl
a great in uence on aesthetics and the philosophy of art, because
Wittgenstein actually wrote very little directly on the philosophical issues
that arise in connection with the arts. However, since the publication of
his Philosophical Investigations in 1953, philosophers of art have found
’
many of Wittgensteins fundamental contributions to the philosophy of
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language and the philosophy of mind to hold deep signi cance for some
aesthetic questions, and like the impact his work made on the areas of
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language and mind, that aesthetic signi cance was regarded as revolu-
tionary.Ratherthanacceptingwithoutquestiontheproblemsthataesthe-
ticians traditionally faced and then proceeding to the development and
elucidation of theories designed to answer those questions, Wittgenstein
provided an avenue of escape from, or a new method for treating, those
classic questions. Central among them were the essentialist questions of
fi “
de nition: What essential properties must anobject possess to qualify as
” “
a work ofart? and Whatquality or property do all worksof art have in
” ’
common? Wittgensteins famous contribution to the problem of uni-
versals, the question asking why all members of a class are placed in that
class (e.g., objects of knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, and art), was
revolutionary in that it undercut rather than answered the question of
’ “
universals. Wittgensteins new proposal proceeded in terms of family
”
resemblance, but the great impact of this proposal led to the consensus
vii
viii Introduction
fi ’
that the signi cance that Wittgensteins philosophical writings held for
aesthetics could be summed up in antiessentialist terms. This is in fact
untrue, as the present collection demonstrates. Further topics include the
fl
often-hiddenin uencesofimplicitpreconceptionsaboutlanguageonour
conceptionsofartisticmeaning;thecomplexinterrelationsamongwords,
music, pictures, gestures, and the recognition of facial expressivity; the
analogy between the arts and what Wittgenstein antireductively refers to
“ ” fi
as a form of life ; the clari cation of the ways in which art can embody
thought; relations between philosophical conceptions of the self and
conceptions of artworks; the role of the imagination, aspect perception,
and a kind of visual and auditory metaphor in aesthetic perception;
complex interrelations between texts and contexts; nuances of self-
revelation and autobiographical disclosure in literature and poetry; the
relations and parallels between literary-interpretive and philosophical
“ ”
undertakings; the logic of criticism and the nature of critical reasoning
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andjusti cation;andtheseparationofempiricalandconceptualmethods
in aesthetics. And there is the issue of Wittgenstein as a philosopher of
culture,where onecan extractfromhis writings a newandclearerunder-
standing of how a tradition is transmitted, the importance of seeing a
particularworkwithintheconceptualframeofthelargercultureinwhich
ithasitshomeandfromwhichitemergesandinwhichitresonatesorina
“ ”
sense sends out implications. There is thus much greater aesthetic and
’
cultural illumination to be had from Wittgensteins philosophy than the
“ ”
antiessentialistor family-resemblance consensuswouldbegintosuggest,
andallofthesericherthemesarewoventhroughtheessayspresentedhere.
fi
The chapters in this volume divide into four broadly de ned areas.
’
These include (1) the aesthetic dimension of Wittgensteins philosophi-
calworkandthe rolethat hisconsiderationofaestheticexperience plays
throughout his writings; (2) the nature of narrative and its role in
interpretation and in the active process of making sense of art; (3) the
special case of musical experience and the instructive relations between
makingsenseofaworkofmusicandmakingsenseoforcomprehending
the content of a culture; and (4) the remarkable connections between
understanding a work of art and understanding a person.
William Day begins Part I (The Aesthetic Dimension of
’
Wittgensteins Philosophical Work) by arguing that the nature or
Introduction ix
—
character of our seriously engaged aesthetic experience the ways we
fi —
nd meaning in the arts and the ways we exercise judgment
fi fi ’
signi cantly gures in Wittgensteins later conception of language,
’ fi
particularly in Wittgensteins conception of how philosophy justi es
the ordinary functioning of language. Following a review of some illumi-
’
nating biographical and textual matters concerning Wittgensteins life
with music, Day outlines the light-casting connections among (a)
’
Wittgensteins discussions of philosophical clarity or perspicuity, (b) our
attempts to give clarity to our aesthetic experiences by verbally formulat-
ing them, and (c) the clarifying experience of the dawning of an aspect,
“
whichWittgensteindescribesastheperceptionofwhathecallsan inter-
” ’
nalrelation. Then,byexaminingWittgensteinsuseofthistermfromthe
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus through to his later writings, Daycomes to
’
challenge the understanding of Wittgensteins appeals to grammar as an
appeal to something given (e.g., to a set of grammatical rules), arguing
instead that Wittgensteinian appeals to grammatical criteria would be
fi
better understood when modeled on the form of justi cation found in
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our conversations about art. Thus, the rst chapter brings insights drawn
from aesthetic considerations into the debate concerning what
“ ”
Wittgenstein means by internal relations and how this bears on our
understanding of both the structure of language and the relation of
language to the world.
Beth Savickey considers how and why acts of imagination play a
’
central role in Wittgensteins later philosophy. She observes that invita-
“ ...”
tions such as Let us imagine occur throughout his writings, and
they are neither occasional asides invoking quirky examples nor the
casual introduction of illustrative or theoretical material. Rather, they
fl
functionwithinhisworkasgenuinecallstoimaginethesceneshebrie y
describes, and they require a participatory response. Rooted in the
cultural and pedagogical movements of turn-of-the-century Vienna
(with their emphasis on grammatical investigation), these imaginative
acts take form, Savickey suggests, as improvisations. And as improvisa-
tional exercises, they truly come to life in the company of others and
encouragebothcreativityandphilosophicalcollaboration.Savickeythen
shows that the challenges and pleasures inherent in responding to
’
Wittgensteins later philosophy are similar to those of responding to a