What follows is a case examine by Theodore Gracyk, excerpted from Bloomsbury Contemporary Aesthetics, the most recent module of the Bloomsbury Philosophy Library. Bloomsbury Modern Aesthetics is anchored by a set of unique and authentic case research contributed by among the main voices in aesthetics at this time, and written to introduce new college students to the broad vary of subjects in aesthetics and the philosophy of artwork, from interpretation and ontology to appropriation, style, curiosity, and the aesthetics of confusion. Extra data on BCA and the Bloomsbury Philosophy Library follows under.
Each time a member of my prolonged household visits me in Minnesota for the primary time, we invariably take a two-hour drive into the north woods to behold the supply of one of many world’s nice rivers: the Mississippi. Seeing the river’s headwaters generally is a disappointing and even disorienting expertise for individuals who’ve seen the river anyplace south of the dual cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Under that time, the river carves out a large valley because it travels by means of 2 hundred miles of rugged, hilly terrain. Then the panorama flattens out and the unobstructed river spreads out even additional. The huge Mississippi creates an indelible reminiscence for anybody who’s seen it on the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, or skilled it because it rolls previous Memphis, or New Orleans, or at nearly any of the opposite locations Individuals are almost definitely to come across it. And there isn’t just its huge expanse: the river meanders south for greater than 2,500 miles from its origin close to the Canadian border earlier than it enters the Gulf of Mexico because the lengthy center finger of the chicken-footed splay of delta on the southern excessive of Louisiana. It’s not for nothing that Johnny Money, looking for a metaphor for a flood of tears, wrote of the “Huge River,” yielding successful single in 1958.
Nonetheless, I believe that its origin level at Lake Itasca has by no means elicited aesthetic rapture from anybody. As a substitute, the headwaters nearly come throughout as a deadpan joke of nature. Though the Mississippi drains the fourth largest watershed on this planet, it begins as a shallow stream flowing from the north finish of an unremarkable lake. Almost a century in the past the Civilian Conservation Corps of FDR’s New Deal “improved” the positioning by setting a set of huge rocks into the lake’s spillover level to allow guests to maintain their toes dry as they stroll throughout the Mississippi. On a sizzling summer time day, many will take off their sneakers and stroll on to the opposite aspect. In its pure state, this origin level was so obscured by a marsh of reeds and grasses that early geographers couldn’t discover it—and it didn’t assist them that, at its origin, the river flows north towards Canada for its preliminary forty miles earlier than hooking south towards the Gulf.
Sarcastically, my automobile’s Minnesota license plate jogs my memory that that is the land of 10,000 lakes. Many lakes are simply as good, if not nicer, than Lake Itasca. One visits Itasca solely as a result of its nice however uninspiring spillover stream is the Mississippi. The headwaters draw admiring vacationers solely as a result of that different, wider river, a elegant surprise of nature in its would possibly and dimension and energy, is one and the identical with the Itasca stream. Vacationers go to due to what they already know concerning the river, and never a lot for the sight they’ll see—“is that this all there’s?” So why go to? Clearly, as a result of data concerning the Mississippi informs the expertise, making it totally different from and extra particular than a go to to any comparable spillover at every other close by lake. The expertise turns into particular, and aesthetically extra rewarding, for individuals who carry the correct background data to the go to.
I supply these preliminary paragraphs to make two factors concerning the aesthetic expertise of various sorts of issues.
The primary level is that many individuals look to artwork greater than nature as their supply of aesthetic reward. The humanities are usually sorted into two varieties: temporal and spatial. Some issues, resembling a film or a bit of music, are solely skilled by being skilled as temporal objects unfolding in time. Different arts contain the creation of (comparatively) static objects resembling work and statues. The viewer can resolve how a lot time to spend with the factor, however the place you can’t actually declare to have watched Hitchcock’s Psycho for those who flip it off earlier than the bathe scene, you can say that you simply’ve seen the Mona Lisa after spending thirty seconds in entrance of it—which is extra time than the common vacationer will spend with every other portray in every other artwork museum. Nonetheless, there’s a third case, most frequently encountered with pure issues. This stuff lack the sharp boundaries that typify most artwork—we all know when the film begins and ends, and we all know that the Mona Lisa ends on the fringe of the canvas. Nonetheless, many pure issues are so giant that there isn’t a one strategy to view them. What’s extra, many are higher understood as an ongoing course of than as a static factor. An enormous sequoia redwood could also be approached as a static object, however a part of the purpose of visiting it’s its age, not simply its dimension. In conventional Japanese thought, rivers are ceaselessly handled because the paradigm of aesthetic expertise, and of the transience of something and the whole lot: “The movement of the river is ceaseless and its water isn’t the identical. The bubbles that float within the swimming pools, now vanishing, now forming, aren’t of lengthy length” (Kamo No Chomei quoted in Bell).
My second level pertains to the position of background data in aesthetic expertise, particularly experiences of pure issues and processes. In these circumstances, there’s seldom something like goal closure to the factor and our expertise of it. There may be the place and time that we start our statement, and a spot and time we cease. However the factor is there earlier than we’re there, and it’ll proceed on afterwards, and all of the whereas it is going to (usually) prolong out past the restricted space that we are able to observe. The human expertise of pure issues, and thus our aesthetic expertise of these issues, is woefully partial, selective, and incomplete. And so the experiential shortfall should be corrected and enhanced by additional data. To place it extra technically, the aesthetic encounter is of little worth until the direct expertise receives cognitive supplementation and steering. This supplementation is clearly required on the a part of those that make the journey to the Mississippi headwaters. There isn’t any level to visiting that tepid stream at Lake Itasca until one already has some appreciation of how huge that huge river is and lets that data inform the direct expertise of the headwaters. In different phrases, a constructive and appreciative response requires applicable cognitive framing.
To complicate issues and convey them into higher focus, allow us to contemplate an outline of experiencing the Mississippi in Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi (1883). The e-book is an autobiographical account of the lengthy means of turning into a steamboat pilot within the 1850s. The next paragraphs are closely edited, and so I urge readers to find the complete textual content, which is simple to seek out on the web. Twain’s description reverses the dynamic of my instance, which confirmed how cognitive framing is required to improve an encounter with nature. Twain’s autobiographical account of his personal experiences with the Mississippi exhibits that cognitive framing doesn’t essentially improve an expertise. It could possibly additionally erode or negate the aesthetic expertise of a pure entity such because the Mississippi.
The face of the water, in time, turned a beautiful e-book—a e-book that was a useless language to the uneducated … The passenger who couldn’t learn it was charmed with a peculiar kind of faint dimple on its floor (on the uncommon events when he didn’t overlook it altogether); however to the pilot that was an italicized passage; certainly, it was greater than that, it was a legend of the biggest capitals, with a string of shouting exclamation factors on the finish of it, for it meant {that a} wreck or a rock was buried there that might tear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated. It’s the faintest and easiest expression the water ever makes, and essentially the most hideous to a pilot’s eye. …
Now after I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know each trifling characteristic that bordered the nice river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a invaluable acquisition. However I had misplaced one thing, too. I had misplaced one thing which might by no means be restored to me whereas I lived. All of the grace, the sweetness, the poetry, had gone out of the majestic river! I nonetheless take into account a sure fantastic sundown which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. …
I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The world was new to me, and I had by no means seen something like this at house. However as I’ve mentioned, a day got here after I started to stop from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the solar and the twilight wrought upon the river’s face; one other day got here after I ceased altogether to notice them. (Twain 1883: 119-21)
I want to be aware that two very totally different points will be extracted from my contrasting examples. First, there’s a psychological problem. How a lot and how much data is required to rework the nice however comparatively humdrum viewing of the headwaters right into a particular expertise? Or, conversely, to vary “speechless rapture” right into a involved wariness? Are these conversions inevitable as soon as we possess a specific amount of data, or can a person resist or management their response? Second, there’s a philosophical query. Is there a proper method and a improper strategy to reply aesthetically to nature and issues in nature? And naturally, it’s the second, philosophical query that can occupy the remainder of this essay.
The undercurrent of Twain’s reminisce is that constructive aesthetic experiences are a great factor and due to this fact it’s a disgrace that he misplaced his aesthetic appreciation for the river as he educated to be a steamboat pilot. Twain’s expertise should be balanced towards my instance of visiting the headwaters for the primary time, which is a case of factual data creating the (hopefully) constructive expertise. It appears to me, due to this fact, that solely a short-sighted hedonist might suppose that one ought to stay ignorant the place ignorance improves the expertise. That’s, solely somebody who says that constructive aesthetic experiences are self-justifying—that they’re at all times and essentially fascinating—will deal with the constructive or detrimental high quality of the expertise because the figuring out consider whether or not (or how a lot) data to construct into the cognitive body. They are saying that ignorance is bliss, however a part of Twain’s level is that blissful ignorance sinks steamboats. To supply a extra modern instance, I like a great hamburger from time to time, however I additionally suppose folks ought to be conscious that many fast-food hamburgers come from South America and that increasingly more of the Amazon rainforest is destroyed yearly to develop cattle manufacturing to provide these burgers. If realizing that makes low-cost meat much less palatable, then that’s a great purpose for offering shoppers with that data, moderately than a purpose to look the opposite method. (The argument I’ve simply given paraphrases Marcia Eaton.)
Consequently, thinker Allen Carlson argues that argues that aesthetic experiences of nature and issues in nature ought to at all times be told by primary scientific information concerning the type of factor we’re experiencing. Moreover, possession of such information is required to justify a person’s aesthetic response to nature. There are higher and worse responses, however a response counts as higher if it’s the typical response of somebody who’s knowledgeable concerning the type of factor they’re experiencing. And that additionally extends to disappointing or impartial responses. They’re generally the higher response. It’s higher (within the sense of being justified) to have a much less constructive aesthetic response if that’s the response generated by a better-informed cognitive body. For instance, somebody who thinks Monarch butterflies are lovely as a result of they’re delicate creatures has a faulty response. In distinction, somebody who finds them lovely as a result of they perceive that their design makes them terribly robust and resilient has a justified response. (Monarchs migrate, and people wings permit them to journey a thousand miles or extra.)
From Carlson’s perspective, Twain’s change of angle places him in a extra justified place as he strikes from a superficial appreciation of magnificence to a extra complicated and cautious “studying” of the “e-book” of the river. This additionally matches with the purpose that I made above about Lake Itasca. The Mississippi headwaters are principally indistinguishable from the identical kind of lake overflow in lots of different close by lakes. Nonetheless, an knowledgeable customer is justified in having a extra complicated response at Itasca than on the different lakes. It’s complicated in having two levels. I believe most guests are initially disillusioned. As I mentioned on the outset, it nearly looks like nature is making a joke or taking part in a prank. This response comes from realizing what the river will grow to be downstream, and so the preliminary letdown is justified on this case, as a result of one arrives anticipating one thing particular. Nonetheless, the identical response of disappointment would make no sense—and so can be unjustified—at 100 different comparable websites. Then, for many guests to Itasca, there’s a second, constructive stage of the expertise. Figuring out what it’s, and realizing something in any respect about rivers, most guests will understand that any preliminary disappointment was attributable to false expectations. After all, it doesn’t appear like a lot! What might one have anticipated? That is merely how rivers are! And this data of the variety of factor one is coping with (river headwaters) then combines with data about this particular river (it’s the fourth largest watershed, and many others.), and one can then reply extra positively to this small stream, appreciating it in a method that one can’t admire all these close by streams that merely feed some native marshland. Simply as one can reply to a Monarch butterfly with a extra complicated and extra justified appreciation when one connects the visible with the background data, one can admire the one stream in a method that’s not applicable for the others.
Different philosophers will now name me out on some extent that’s suppressed in Carlson’s account and within the protection I’ve simply given it. Mere data of the information will not be enough to generate a brand new or totally different response. The enriched aesthetic response additionally will depend on the operations of creativeness. One has to think about the gap of the butterfly’s journey relative to its small dimension, and to think about how the headwaters steadily grow to be the nice river that finally ends up on the Gulf of Mexico. Why do we are saying that one imagines it? As a result of, wanting getting right into a canoe and making the journey, the connection of the headwaters to the larger river solely takes place within the thoughts’s eye. Equally, Twain’s remodeled angle to what was previously lovely is because of his new capability to think about how the steamboat will reply to the hidden shoal, and to think about how exhausting will probably be sooner or later to evaluate the boat’s exact location as soon as the useless tree is gone.
Concerns of those types lead Emily Brady to conclude that we should always not join justification so intently to possession of factual details about nature. Aesthetic responses additionally rely on imaginative engagement with pure objects. In different phrases, Carlson places an excessive amount of emphasis on cognitive framing, whereas aesthetic appreciation is best understood as an integration of imaginative, emotive, and cognitive processes. Individuals ought to be free to let their imaginations reply freely to nature, and their aesthetic responses shouldn’t be evaluated so narrowly in relation to the accuracy of their cognitive body.
However I confess that my sympathies align extra with Carlson than Brady. Suppose I can not bear the 2 hours it takes to get to Lake Itasca, and so I drive my subsequent out-of-state customer to a lake with an analogous streaming outlet, however one which’s a lot nearer to house. I invite my visitor to wade throughout the Mississippi whereas (falsely) declaring the way it flows north as an alternative of south, explaining (falsely) that it turns south at some extent farther north. And so forth. In different phrases, I have interaction the customer in an prolonged guided session of imagining that they’re visiting the headwaters of the Mississippi. Why not? In the event you’ve seen one Minnesota headwaters, you’ve just about seen all of them!
However that might be a imply and maybe unforgivable trick to play for the sake of a shorter drive. To adapt an argument from Carolyn Korsmeyer, the gullible vacationer could have a rewarding expertise, however only a few of us need an imaginary encounter when the true factor is just a bit additional down the street. If somebody desires to see the headwaters of the Mississippi, it’s as a result of they’ve some prior appreciation of that factor and never another. The purpose of the go to isn’t merely to have a constructive expertise in nature. The purpose is to have a constructive expertise of that very river. I need to see the river that Mark Twain and Johnny Money wrote about, not some creek that occurs to be the identical type of pure phenomenon.
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Theodore Gracyk is the creator of numerous books on philosophy of artwork and music, together with On Music (Routledge 2013). He co-edited The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music (Routledge 2011) and was co-winner of the 2002 Woody Guthrie Prize for I Wanna Be Me: Rock Music and the Politics of Identification (Temple College Press, 2001). He additionally conducts analysis on the historical past of aesthetics and has printed on David Hume, Thomas Reid, and Edward Hanslick, amongst others.
