engleski

Challenges of Philosophical Art

This paper is concerned with the connection between art, in particular literature and film, and philosophy. My basic question is how to understand claims such as the one made by literary critic in reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Minister’s Black Veil, when he proclaims that “in this tale and in others Hawthorne tests the proposition that human identity is contingent and circumstantial, rather than an inherent essence – that is, not identity at all”. These kinds of claims, which not only see art as coming together with knowledge seeking disciplines but as capable of philosophizing, raise the question of whether indeed there is a category of philosophical art. Drawing an analogy with religious, pornographic and erotic art, I offer an array of challenges that philosophical art sets to aestheticians, the crucial of which is determining whether or how a work of art is or can be philosophical, or whether its ‘philosophical’ character is imposed upon it. My crucial concern is determining whether the fact that an artwork is in some sense philosophical has implications for the identity of that artwork, and I then proceed to show how this concern relates to artwork’s interpretation and appreciation, and in the case of literature, even classification. On my view, those who advocate a strong liaison between art and philosophy tend to ignore the relevance of this question and I end by showing that this ignorance leads to unsatisfying conclusions regarding philosophical art.

Appreciation ; Interpretation ; Literature ; Philosophical Art

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