Yevgeny Basin SEMANTIC PHILOSOPHY OF ART
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[2] __AUTHOR__ Yevgeny Basin __TITLE__ SEMANTIC PHILOSOPHY OF ART __TEXTFILE_BORN__ 2007-03-27T16:58:35-0800 __TRANSMARKUP__ "Y. Sverdlov"Progress Publishers ~ Moscow
[3]Translated from the Russian by Christopher English
Designed by Boris Kuznetsov
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[4] CONTENTS Page From the Author.................. 7 Introduction. METHODOLOGY OF ANALYSIS....... 10 Section I. ART AND LANGUAGE Chapter I. The Neo-Positivist Conception of Art as the Highest Form of Emotive Language: I. A. Richards . . 27 1. The Theory of Communication and Art....... 28 2. Poetry as the Highest Form of Emotive Language . . 32 3. Wherein Does the Value of Art Lie?........ 42 Chapter II. The Linguistic Philosophy of Wittgenstein in His Later Period and ``Analytic Aesthetics" .... 51 1. Conceptions of the Language and Philosophy of LatePeriod Wittgenstein.............. 51 2. ``Analytical Aesthetics"............ 54 Chapter III. The Neo-Hegelian Linguistic Conception of Art: Benedetto Croce............. 62 1. The Intuition-Expression Theory in Croce's Philosophy and the Identification of Language and Art..... 63 2. Art as Poetic Expression............ 75 3. Beauty as ``Successful Expression"........ 79 Chapter IV. The English Version of the Crocean Theory of Art as Language: R. G. Collingwood..... 83 1. R. G. Collingwood as a Croceanist........ 84 2. Collingwood's Modification of Crocean Aesthetics ... 88 Section II. ART AND SYMBOL Chapter V. The Neo-Realistic Philosophy of Symbolism and Art: A. N. Whitehead.......... 97 5 1. Art and the Epistemological Theory of Symbolism . . 98 2. Social Symbolism and Art........... 108 3. Beauty as Value............... 112 Chapter VI. The Nee-Kantian Conception of Art as Symbolic Form: Ernst Cassirer........... 120 1. Critique of Symbolic Forms in Place of Kanfs Critique of Reason................. 121 2. Art as Symbolic Form............. 127 3. ``Pure'' Form as ``Meaning'' in Art........ 133 4. Beauty as a Function of Symbolic Form...... 140 Chapter VII. The Phenomenological Theory of Art as a Virtual Symbol: Susanne Langer.......... 146 1. The ``New Key": Discursive and Presentational Symbolism .................. 146 2. Expressive Form............... 153 3. Metaphorical Symbolism............ 159 4. Beauty as Expressive Form........... 166 Section III. ART AND THE SIGN Chapter VIII. Pragmatism, Semiotics and Art: Charles Peirce . 171 1. The Iconic Sign and Art............ 173 2. Beauty as ccKalos"............. 181 3. The Emotional Interpretant........... 183 4. The Idealistic Character of Peirce's Aesthetics ... 187 Chapter IX. Behaviourism, Semiotics and Art: Charles Morris . 201 1. Behaviourist Semiotics and Art......... 202 2. Art and Signs. The Aesthetic Discourse...... 210 3. The Icon and Art.............. 217 4. Semiotics, Axiology and Art........... 221 Conclusion. THE SEMANTIC PHILOSOPHY OF ART AND MODERNISM.................. 228 Bibliography...........,....... 232 Name Index.................. 244 [6] __ALPHA_LVL1__ FROM THE AUTHORA number of objective factors connected with the progress of such scientific disciplines as linguistics, symbolic logic, information theory, cybernetics etc., have led to the prominence of the concept sign and its related concepts ``meaning'', ``signal'', ``symbol'', ``language'', ``sign system'', etc., in modern scientific thought. However, as Lenin pointed out, reactionary attempts are engendered by the progress of science. In the present instance this is manifested in the emergence in 20th century bourgeois philosophy of a sign (or semantic) idealism, which capitalizes on the problem of the sign.
Modern bourgeois philosophy and aesthetics are characterized by a semantic orientation. In essence this orientation means that all fundamental philosophical problems of scientific and artistic cognition are resolved through the formulation and idealistic interpretation of semantic problems of the sign, meaning, language, etc. ``Historical circumstances are such that in the modern period the problem of the sign has occupied a frontal position in the struggle between materialism and idealism. Although the problem of the sign does not of course constitute the main issue of philosophy it is one of the forms taken by the eternal philosophical problems, and amongst them by its main issue" (1, 17).
Practically all the main tendencies in bourgeois aesthetic thought have, in some way or other, been drawn into the orbit of the semantic movement. The semantic trend is one of the most prominent in modern western aesthetics, particularly in England and the USA. This is attributable to the 7 close links between the semantic orientation of western philosophy and the pragmatic and neo-positivist tendencies of modern philosophical thought, which have received particularly wide currency in the English-speaking world. For a number of reasons neo-positivism and pragmatism have not become very developed in such European countries as France, Germany and Italy.
The present book is an analysis of the semantically-- oriented philosophical conceptions of art, which were formulated by American (C. Peirce, C. Morris, S. Langer) and English (I. A. Richards, the analysts, A. Whitehead, R. Collingwood) philosophers, as well as those of other nationalities who lived in England and America, and worked there for many years (E. Cassirer, L. Wittgenstein). One exception is the analysis of the linguistic conception of art of the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce, for without this it would be impossible to understand and evaluate the conception of art as language formulated by Croce's pupil Collingwood.
In the 20th century, as we have already stated, the linguistic, symbol and sign (semiotic) approaches to art are closely connected with the entire semantic orientation of western philosophy, largely concentrated in neo-positivism and pragmatism. This semantic orientation also affected, although to a lesser extent, other philosophical schools, in particular neo-thomism (J. Maritain) and phenomenology (M. Dufresne).
In the mid-60's structuralism emerged as the most influential of the philosophical movements in France. This is reflected in aesthetics in the prominence acquired by the problem of ``art and structure''. This problem, although it has its own specific features, is none the less closely connected with the semantic problems discussed in the present book: ``art and language'', ``art and symbol'', and ``art and sign".
The philosophical and ideological kinship of French structuralism and the semantic philosophy of art cannot be called into question. But, in contrast to French structuralism, the semantic conceptions of art of the English and American authors reviewed in the present study have a more explicit 8 idealistic and metaphysical philosophic orientation and a more tangible social essence.
The author will be deeply gratified if his book helps shed any light for the English-speaking reader on the discussions and controversies around present-day English and American semiotics.
9 __ALPHA_LVL1__ Introduction.In accordance with the principles of criticizing the antiMarxist philosophical tendencies established by Lenin in his book Materialism and Empiric-Criticism the author has set himself the following primary methodological objective: to show the idealistic and metaphysical essence of the semantic tendency in contemporary bourgeois aesthetics, over the full range of epistemological questions.
The very emergence of semantic aesthetics, as well as semantic philosophy as a whole, is largely due to the need of bourgeois ideology for such philosophical theories capable of replacing the traditional schools of objective and subjective idealism, which became defunct at the turn of the century, and proved incapable of answering the questions posed by new scientific cognition. Theories were needed which would be able to serve beneath the banner of science without breaking with idealism-the dominant world-view of contemporary bourgeois society. It was the semantic movement in modern bourgeois philosophy and aesthetics that espoused this mission.' For all that it parades as science it is basically unscientific. As its methodological point of departure it retained philosophical idealism. Semantic idealism in aesthetics not only failed to resolve the crisis in modern bourgeois philosophy and aesthetics, but actually served to reveal its characteristic features in graphic form.
In this analysis of the philosophical essence of modern aesthetics in the west we proceed from the principle that subjectivism is the dominant tendency in all contemporary bourgeois schools and directions, including aesthetic ones. This 10 does not mean that objective idealism has lost its significance in modern aesthetics, but that it reveals an increasingly marked tendency towards subjectivism. At the same time western philosophy is characterized by a tendency to deviate from subjectivism, and to function as an objective idealistic metaphysics of neo-realism, of the phenomenology of `` essences'', etc.
This characterization is fully borne out by an analysis of the semantic trend in modern western aesthetics. The eclectic combination and amalgamation of subjective and objective idealism, of rationalism and biologism, of vulgar materialism and apriorism generates an inner inconsistency and confusion of the aesthetic theories of semantic idealism. This eclecticism of semantic idealism has nothing in common with the great contradictions of the classical forms of idealism, with those contradictions that were often more interesting than the theories themselves. ``The contradictory nature of bourgeois philosophical theories,'' writes the Soviet scholar B. V. Bogdanov, ``acquires a different import with the entry of capitalism into the stage of imperialism. The theories become eclectic, for they cannot afford to ignore the problems made prominent by life itself, by the development of science. But these problems are treated in the spirit of idealism and irrationalism, and a mutual critique of the theories inevitably takes on the character of petty quibbling. Such are the epigonic theories that smack of Machism, and their emergence bears witness to the general decline of the bourgeois worldview" (3, 67).
The intrinsic connection between idealism and the metaphysical method of thinking found its most graphic manifestation in the epigonic idealistic conceptions of bourgeois aesthetics and philosophy in the age of imperialism. All the philosophical and aesthetic conceptions discussed in this book are, to a greater or lesser extent, metaphysical in essence. At their basis lies a metaphysical, one-sided exaggeration of one of the aspects of art, which makes it possible in principle to treat art as a language or sign and symbol system, and to turn this aspect into the essence of art. As the dominant tendency of these theories, subjectivism is also 11 epistemologically conditioned by the metaphysical absolutization of the linguistic (sign, symbolic) activity of the subject in artistic creation, which is connected either with exclusively psychological factors-with the emotions, the imagination and intuition, or with biological impulses, etc.
As evidence of the anti-scientific nature of this tendency we can take its inherent agnosticism. Without exception all the aestheticians of the semantic school deny that art provides an adequate reflection of objective reality. Such denial is most outspoken in Cassirer's neo-Kantian aesthetics, in Croce's intuitional aesthetics, in conventional analytic aesthetics, etc. In aesthetic conceptions of this sort, it is man, independent of reality, of social experience, who is regarded as the subject, the creator, of art. These conceptions display the' oppositions, so characteristic of modern western philosophy, between the axiological and epistemological approaches to science, philosophy, religion, morality, art and other spheres of the intellectual life of society. Croce, Cassirer, Whitehead et al. have made efforts, fruitful in themselves, to elicit the specifics of artistic creation in comparison to scientific and philosophical analysis. These efforts are, however, manifested in relativistic negation of artistic truth. Relativism should also be noted as one of the indications of the agnostic essence of the semantic tendency in bourgeois aesthetics.
The second task of the present book is to show the connection of the semantic trend to the main directions of modern idealistic philosophy. This task has been complicated by the fact that representatives of the most varied directions and schools have been united under the banner of semantic idealism in aesthetics.
Semantic aesthetics took form as a specific tendency of 20th century aesthetic thought in the mainstream of idealistic semantic philosophy. Semantic philosophy came out with ``ideas connected with the various directions of recent philosophy from which semantic philosophy derived its own energy and inspiration" (16, 78). The semantic movement attracted into its orbit to a varying degree the schools of neo-positivism (Russell, Richards, Carnap, Wittgenstein), pragmatism (Peirce, Dewey, Morris), neo-realism (Whitehead), neo-- 12 Kantianism and phenomenology (Cassirer, Langer). Some influence from this movement was also felt by the neo-- Hegelians (Croce, Collingwood), the existentialists (Heidegger), the neo-thomists (Maritain).
What exactly is the special nature of this philosophical tendency? To state that the semantic orientation in philosophy is distinguished by ``common concern with signs and meanings" (D. Kalish) and with linguistic problems^^1^^ may be quite true, but it does not provide a full answer to this question, for such an interest, albeit displayed to a lesser extent, can be observed in the history of philosophy long before the time of the semanticists. ``Its concern,'' Marx wrote, ``is to distinguish in each system the determinations themselves, the actual crystallisations pervading the whole system...'' (13, 506). One such motif in the semantic trend was the fact that it had made ``an important, although little-noticed step from the premise that language is also an object of philosophical study, to the premise that it is its only object of study" or at least the ``main and most important object of investigation and philosophical analysis" (16, 47--48, 78). On the basis of this theoretical principle attention was paid predominantly to the possibility of using procedures of linguistic analysis in the construction of methods, including a method for investigating philosophy itself.
The heightened interest of philosophers in language and signs not only as the instrument but also as the object of study was of course not accidental or arbitrary development, but was determined by objective requirements of new advances in science. Soviet philosopher P. V. Kopnin in his article ``An Analysis of Language as a Logico-Epistemological Problem" remarks that at the turn of the century essential changes took place in the structure of scientific knowledge, the _-_-_
~^^1^^ As Soviet philosopher I. S. Narsky correctly points out, ``Depriving linguistic positivism, existentialism, Freudism, phenomenology and the neo-realistic conceptions of their theories on language is tantamount to undermining all their most recent constructions. It was far from coincidental that the given philosophical tendencies found their points of convergence and unification with one another through precisely these theories" (14, 70).
13 formation of scientific theories and in the way new scientific results were achieved. The elimination of all sensuousness from the content of scientific research-with the consequence that the concepts of science acquired an extremely abstract character-led to the prominence of that aspect of a scientific theory which would enable the theory to be regarded as a language, a system of signs admitting various interpretations. This created the basis for the extensive use of the logical and mathematical apparatus in different fields of science described by V. I. Lenin in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. In the course of its development science set logic and mathematics a number of new problems, and in solving them they proceeded from the premise that knowledge is a language, artificially created and formalized. On the basis of this premise they developed a method of analysing knowledge by creating artificial formalized languages (8, 32--33). This, in its turn, served as a stimulus for the formation of new scientific disciplines such as semiotics and systems theory.It so happened that amongst the logicians, mathematicians and semioticians who addressed themselves to these concrete problems, as science developed, there were a considerable number of philosophers from various schools of philosophical idealism-Peirce, Russell, Whitehead, Carnap and others. It would be an oversimplification, when discussing the achievements of these scholars in their various fields, to disassociate these achievements from their philosophical beliefs, and to make it appear as though they first made discoveries in particular areas and only afterwards, post factum, subjected them to an idealistic interpretation. And yet, in discussing semantic philosophy as a whole, we can say that its representatives, as so often in the past, made use of new discoveries connected with problems of language and sign systems to substantiate the latest forms of idealism. As an indicative example we can take the works of the American logician and philosopher Charles Peirce, who is considered the founder of semiotics. In his works semiotics formed an organic part of his phenomenological and pragmatic epistemology. Charles Morris, who developed Peirce's ideas in semiotics and argued from the positions of semantic philosophy for its liberation 14 from ``metaphysics'', correctly pointed out that Peirce made use of semiotics to support idealistic metaphysics. (Morris himself, as will be shown below in Ch. 9, did not manage to avoid idealistic ``metaphysics''.) The advancement of language, sign and meaning as the central object of philosophical study enabled semanticists, by falsifying philosophical significance of the recent achievements of logic, mathematics and semiotics, to find a new approach to the substantiation of traditional idealistic conceptions. This falsification consisted in an idealistic interpretation of the problems of language, sign and meaning. Whereas the materialists proceeded from the proposition that neither thought nor language formed separate domains on their own-that they were merely the manifestation of real life-the idealistic semanticists divorced language and signs (symbols) from the world of things and the world of ideas, isolating them in an independent domain, an intermedial world. Language and signs (symbols) were turned by semanticists from the vital means of human communication, from instruments and active epistemological means into demiurges of those real worlds which people apprehend and in which they live.
In his summary of Feuerbach's Lectures on the Essence oi Religion V. I. Lenin recorded the following view: ``If one is not ashamed to allow the sensuous, corporeal world to arise from the thought and will of a spirit, if one is not ashamed to assert that things are not thought of because they exist, but that they exist because they are thought of; then let one also not be ashamed to allow things to arise from the word; then let one also not be ashamed to assert that words exist not because things exist, but that things exist only because words exist" (11, 75--76). The representatives of 20th century semantic idealism showed that they were not ashamed to make precisely such an allowance when they modified the Kantian idea of patterned experience. The semanticists invested not the a priori forms of intuition and reason, but language and signs (symbols) with the function of demiurges.
There was no lack of idealistic philosophers among the logic semanticists. Many of them were interested in 15 questions of aesthetics, ethics, axiology, etc. as well as of epistemology. ``.. .It is to be expected,'' writes the American historian of aesthetics Monroe C. Beardsley, ``that philosophers working along this line [semantic philosophy) would consider applying their results to the problems of aesthetics" (2, 32). And it is indeed the case that the philosophers who were active in founding semantic philosophy-Peirce, Cassirer, Whitehead, Richards-as well as those who developed their ideas-Morris, Langer et al.-laid the foundations of the semantic philosophy of art and are regarded as the classics of semantic aesthetics. Another of the initial impulses to semantic aesthetics was the linguistic philosophy of art of Benedetto Croce, subsequently developed by the English neo-- Hegelian Robin Collingwood. Although these philosophers were not semanticists in their philosophical activity, in aesthetics they professed (with certain differences) the basic principles and methods of the semantic approach to art.
Soviet philosophers Alexei Bogomolov, Yuri Melvil and Igor Narsky have advanced the view that in modern bourgeois philosophy, alongside fragmentation and differentiation, we can observe the contrary process of integration of philosophical schools. As the authors have shown, this process usually corresponds to the three main tendencies in the development of modern bourgeois philosophy: (1) the neo-positivist (orientation to science and pseudo-science, an essentially subjective-idealistic principle of theoretical knowledge); (2) the irrationalist (irrationalism and intuitivism, the combination of a basic subjective principle of the theory of knowledge with an objective idealism in religiously oriented philosophers) and (3) religious and dogmatic. As an intermediate tendency between them the authors name modern realism, which has frequently attempted to ``synthesize'' these tendencies, showing a preference first for one, and then the other (12, 346--48). In our opinion, on the basis of an analysis of semantic conceptions it is possible to state that modern bourgeois aesthetics displays a process of integration with respect to these same tendencies. Amongst the idealistic semantic conceptions of art we can also observe both an irrationalist tendency, connected with the reduction of the role of the 16 intellect in art, the biologization of art (Richards), and the absolutization in it of the spontaneous and intuitive (Peirce, Croce, Langer), a religious and dogmatic tendency (Maritain) and an intermediate neo-realist tendency (Whitehead). However, there can be no doubt that a dominant role is played in semantic idealism, both in philosophy and aesthetics, by the neo-positivist tendency with its orientation to science and pseudo-science and its subjective idealistic attitude to theoretical knowledge. This tendency is generally followed, and can be felt not only in the aesthetic theories of Richards, Wittgenstein and the analysts, which developed in the neopositivist mainstream, but also, to a greater or lesser degree, in all the semantic conceptions of art reviewed in the present study.
The third methodological task of the present study is to show how and to what purpose the semantic tendency in modern aesthetics relates to modern scientific cognition. We take as our point of departure the conviction that a review of western aesthetics should not be limited to its ideological aspect since the growing interest of aestheticians in the data of specialized sciences is a vital concomitant of the intensified ideological functions of modern aesthetics. This can be attributed to a number of circumstances.
First, to the crisis in the idealistic philosophical aesthetics of the 19th century, with its inherent speculative character and predominance of subjectivism.
Secondly, to the fact that the imperialist bourgeoisie have, as the Soviet scholar T. Oizerman has put it, ``learned from historical experience that an outspoken reactionary approach ... is not ideologically effective''. The needs of the bourgeoisie lead to the ``emergence of refined idealistic theories" formally based on scientific data and (verbally) dissociated from speculative idealistic philosophy (15, 15--16).
Thirdly, to the endeavours of modern science to integrate the investigative activities of different sciences, to the growth of multi-disciplinary research, and the use by the sciences and the humanities, of the methods of other special, natural and technical sciences. ``...A powerful current,'' wrote V. I. Lenin, ``...from natural to social science . . . remains __PRINTERS_P_17_COMMENT__ 2---826 17 just as powerful, if not more so, in the twentieth century too" (10, 196).
The present stage in the development of scientific research is characterized by the intensive adoption of the exact methods of research of natural sciences and mathematics by the humanities. The emergence of such new special scientific disciplines as semiotics, information theory, cybernetics, systems structural analysis, based on principles embracing a wide range of phenomena and making possible the elaboration of new approaches to and methods of research, has stimulated scholars to apply these principles and methods in their study of the objects of the humanities. The first of the humanities to give wide application to these principles and strict deductive methods, previously the exclusive domain- of the natural sciences, was linguistics. The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure laid the foundations of structural linguistics, subsequently developed in the Prague (N. S. Trubetskoy et al.), Copenhagen (Louis Hjelmslev et al.), American (Edward Sapir, Leonard Bloomfield) schools of structuralism, in the writings of some Soviet linguists and in the works of Noam Chomsky in the USA. Exact methods of research enabled linguistics to attain important theoretical and practical results, and placed it in the forefront of scientific progress. Another humanitarian discipline which used semiotic and structuralist theoretical principles to obtain tangible results was anthropology, guided in this direction above all by the writings of Claude Levi-Strauss.
Aesthetics, and in particular that component of aesthetics which deals with the theory of art, followed linguistics and anthropology in applying the principles and methods of the exact sciences. A number of attempts have been made by western scholars to apply semiotic, information theory and structuralist principles and methods in the analysis of various forms of art. These principles and methods have been extensively employed in the work of a group of Soviet authors, who constitute an entire movement (we should mention above all the writings of Yuri Lotman, Boris Uspensky, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Vyacheslav Toporov, Yuri Lekomtsev et al.). The Soviet scholars are divided in their opinion of the worth and 18 potential of this direction in the description and interpretation of aesthetic phenomena, above all the phenomena of art, and of the limitations and possibilities of applying exact methods in aesthetic research.
The present work discusses this tendency in aesthetics characterized by the use of the analytical methods of such disciplines as linguistics, semiotics etc. There are good reasons for the promotion of the method of analysing art peculiar to semantic aesthetics as the criterion for distinguishing it among other trends.^^1^^ If we look at the writings of the actual proponents of semantic aesthetics we will find that they often contain claims of the sort that their aesthetics are not a theory, nor a system of interpretation, but a system of methods of analysing aesthetic objects (Marx Dense).
Without in any way denying that the semantic tendency in aesthetics is characterized by the desire to employ new exact methods of analysis borrowed from linguistics, semiotics etc., we nevertheless consider it worth pointing out that the view of semantic aesthetics as method and no more contradicts the Marxist principle of the dialectical unity of theory and method. This is also the premise behind the essential principle of Marxist studies in aesthetic history, which holds that _-_-_
~^^1^^ Note in this connection the characteristic title of the paper by the Polish aesthetician M. Wallis-Walfisz at the 2nd International Aesthetic Congress, where for the first time semantic aesthetics was proclaimed (for the first time, that is, at an international aesthetic congress. In 1934, at the 8th International Congress on Philosophy J. Mukafovsky delivered a paper on ``Art as a Fact of Semiotics''; and the basic ideas of this direction in aesthetics were formulated at an even earlier date in the writings of Peirce, Cassirer, Richards and Whitehead, which will be discussed below). The paper was called: ``Art from the Semantic Point of View. A New Method in Aesthetics''. At the 4th Congress in Athens a paper on semantic aesthetics was read at a special sub-section devoted to ``Methods of Analysis and New Aspects''. In his paper ``Towards a Systematics of Semantically Interpreted Aesthetics" at the 5th International Congress in 1964 the Yugoslavian aesthetician M. Damjanovic, a specialist in the field of the theory and history of semantic aesthetics, maintained that this systematics should be subsumed under the general heading of ``semantic method".
19 in order to reveal the essence of aesthetic theories it is essential first of all to analyse their authors' philosophical views. The philosophical essence of semantic aesthetics is connected primarily not with the methods but with an idealistic interpretation of the initial premises.^^1^^ The view of semantic aesthetics as pure method is a carry-over from semantic philosophy. It was in this field, semantic philosophy, that the neo-positivists M. Schlick, R. Carnap, L. Wittgenstein and the pragmatist W.~James declared that the ``revolution in philosophy" brought about by semanticists consisted in the apparent transformation of philosophy from the theory, its previous function, into the method of linguistic analysis, thanks to which it can no longer be considered ``metaphysics'', in contrast to all classical philosophy hitherto. The fact that the subversion of metaphysics in semantic philosophy was actually a myth, that notwithstanding its own assertions it was a fully determined idealistic theory, has been convincingly demonstrated in the writings of Marxist philosophers and is accepted by many bourgeois philosophers, including even some who assisted at the birth of this movement (e.g. Bertrand Russell). It should be noted that a view of aesthetics as pure method is also untenable.Method cannot serve as the main criterion for the isolation of an aesthetic trend or a tendency in the study of art. This criterion is the way the actual nature of art and the laws to which it is subordinated are interpreted or explained in this trend. In other words, which theory of art it subscribes to, and which theoretical principles it advances. As for the methods and devices of analysis, they are determined by these theoretical premises.^^2^^ Like the majority of the directions and _-_-_
~^^1^^ While emphasizing the difference between theory and method it should not, of course, be forgotten that the actual process of cognition knows no such insuperable barriers between the means of cognition and its results, between theory and method, and that in a sense theory itself can be regarded as a method of acquiring new knowledge.
~^^2^^ In his article ``The Semantic Trend in Modern Aesthetics" M. Damjanovic, by contrast with his above-mentioned paper, argues more correctly, in our view, by placing amongst the basic __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 21. 20 tendencies of modern western aesthetics, semantic aesthetics is mainly concerned with art. It is methodologically important to distinguish two levels of analysis: the material-- scientific and the philosophical. At both levels semantic aesthetics is primarily a system of theoretical principles, a particular theory of art, with, of course, corresponding methods and devices of analysis. Method rests on the basic premises of theory, and thus any transference of the methods of other disciplines to art means that theoretical models are also transferred. The application of the methods of semantics, linguistics etc. to the analysis of art presupposes, first, as its primary theoretical concession (implicit or explicit), that art is a semiotic, linguistic, etc. object and, secondly, the construction of semiotic, linguistic, etc. models of art with the help of these methods.
This approach to the semantic tendency in aesthetics makes it possible to resolve correctly the problem of the classification of the semantic conceptions of art.
M. Damjanovic identifies the following three directions within semantic aesthetics:
1. Special scientific theories, like, for example, aesthetic information theory.
2. Doctrines occupying a transitional position between special scientific theories and philosophical theories. These are the ``analytic'', the ``meta-critical'' directions of thought. On the one hand they are connected with a philosophical tendency, and on the other their analysis of aesthetic language is oriented towards the different sciences, and empirical analytical procedures.
3. A symbolic philosophy of art, concerned primarily with its epistemological aspects. This direction is characteristic of the work of Morris, Langer and others (6, 80--81).
In his article ``The Semantic Trend in Modern Aesthetics" _-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 20. characteristics of this tendency the theoretical problems it examines. ``By `semantic aesthetics','' he writes, ``we must, consequently, understand an aesthetic theory centred on the problem of meaning in the analysis of the language of aesthetics, the problem of aesthetic signs and symbols, the treatment of art as language" (5, 304).
21 published two years later Damjanovic terms the above directions respectively semiotic, analytic and symbolic.This classification is particularly useful because it is based on the connection between semantic theories of art and philosophy, and not the differences in their procedures of analysis, for the latter have a subordinate character.^^1^^
The present critical study has as its object not the material-scientific semantic theories of art, but the philosophical semantic theories (the 3rd group of theories in Damjanovic's classification). It has already been stated that the semantic philosophy of art came into being as a result of the projection of the main principles and methods of semantic idealism onto aesthetics. The metaphysical method and idealistic principles of semantic idealism conditioned the non-scientific use of exact methods in the semantic philosophy of art.
We believe that an observance of the following principles will give an application of exact methods in aesthetics that answers the requirements of Marxist-Leninist methodology.
First, that the applied methods at the present time form a component of the methodology of the natural and social sciences, assisting the convergence of these two areas of study and providing the pre-conditions for a deeper examination of the essence of social processes and the human individuality. Secondly, that the indicated methods ``characterize only a certain, limited aspect of the study of real complex objects. The above-indicated methods are not intrinsically philosophical, and have a special character" (9, 92--93). Seen from this point of view, the problems of art as an object of aesthetics closely linked with philosophy cannot be reduced to questions which are entirely soluble by the methods of mathematics, semiotics, systems theory, etc., despite the fact that these latter have a wide range of application. Aesthetics is concerned with problems of art as a whole, with the question of the nature of art, of the most general laws of its _-_-_
~^^1^^ From the point of view of the proposed basis of the classification, aesthetic theories which, for example, employ the methods of structuralism do not form an independent direction, and can be related to any of the three groups, depending -on the nature of their connection with philosophy.
22 development, of the interrelation of the material and spiritual sides of art, of the laws of creative artistic activity, of artistic cognition (reflection), of the assimilation of the outside world etc.It cannot be denied that the semiotic, structuralist, etc. methods of analysis represent an important advance in the modern methodology of scientific study. Application of these methods makes it possible for art as the object of study to be represented in the form of different systems (linguistic, of information theory, etc.), or, which comes to the same thing, in the form of different subject-matter of study. This approach leads to a comprehensive analysis. However, it also conceals a certain danger: we lose sight of object as objective entity and are left with only the subject-matter of study, determined by the tasks set by the given problem. This creates the possibility of an arbitrary interpretation of the object of study.
The semantic philosophy of art, which is based on the methodological principles of semantic idealism (language is the only subject-matter of philosophy!), is characterized by a view of art as language (or another form of symbolism) not from some aspect or other, but as a whole, from the point of view of its essence. The adherents of the semantic philosophy of art proceed from precisely this premise when they employ for their analysis of art the methods of such disciplines as semiotics, linguistics, systems analysis, etc.
When viewed from the positions of Marxist dialectics this approach reveals an unmistakable metaphysical absolutization of one of the aspects of art. Marxist aestheticians believe that ``art admits the possibility of being viewed in the same aspect in which its sign nature functions'', however, as the Soviet scholar Ya. I. Hajikyan aptly emphasizes, ``its sign nature does not exhaust its essence" (4, 249--250). The metaphysical absolutization of the sign (linguistic, communicative, etc.) aspect of art contains within itself the epistemological possibility of an idealistic explanation of the essence of art. Art, when interpreted as language (or some other sign system) becomes the idealistic semanticist's main, if not only, aspect of aesthetic study, language itself (or any other form 23 of symbolism), moreover, being interpreted in the spirit of some particular school of semantic idealism. The contiguity of such disciplines as semiotics or cybernetics to philosophy in principle makes possible a natural and simple transition from them to philosophy, and in particular to the theory of knowledge.
Furthermore, the majority of philosophers of the semantic direction, and in particular such of its prominent adherents as Peirce, Cassirer, Richards and others, are aware that it is impossible to understand the essence of art if you ignore its aesthetic nature, its connection with beauty, its value aspect, which constitutes the researcher's closest link with philosophy. The semantic philosophers go on to give the very concept of artistic value an idealistic interpretation. Objective idealist approaches (Peirce, Whitehead, Croce) treat artistic value as an objective, but exclusively spiritual value, while in subjective idealistic theories (Cassirer) the role of the subject in the aesthetic context is absolutized and the objective character of beauty is denied.
While criticizing the idealistic interpretation of axiology, Marxist scholars (Avner Zis et al.) point at the same time to the necessity to study the axiological aspect of art from scientific, dialectic materialistic methodological positions (7, 101).
The philosophical interpretation of language, signs and information, when combined with a philosophical interpretation of the artistic value of art, leads to a situation where as a rule semantic aesthetics practically functions as a philosophy oi art. The philosophical interpretation of the semiotic (sign) and axiological (value) aspects of art from the positions of semantic idealism is another principal topic of the critical analysis undertaken in the present work. In this connection the following terminological definitions should be made. Insofar as the term ``semantic'' in its philosophical aesthetic application is intimately connected with the idealist tradition in the interpretation of signs and symbols, and the term ``aesthetics'' as a rule designates the philosophical theory of art, it is clearly inadvisable to use the expression ``semantic aesthetics" for semantic conceptions of art which employ in their analyses exact methods based on concrete scientific 24 theories. It would perhaps be better to term them ``semantic theories of art" with subdivisions into ``semiotic'', `` linguistic'', ``structural'', etc. The term ``semantic aesthetics" should properly be used to designate idealistic semantic aesthetics, and since in the west aesthetics is predominantly the study of art ``semantic aesthetics" can be taken to be the ``semantic philosophy of art". This term is less ambiguous than others, such as ``symbolic philosophy of art'', and, in addition, it at once makes it clear that we are concerned precisely with the philosophy of art (and not with a special scientific theory), and moreover an idealist semantic philosophy.
Thus, the orientation to science, the use of the methods of linguistics, semiotics, etc. in the semantic philosophy of art can be seen to be a complex and contradictory process. It should be pointed out above all that the reliance on science is fundamentally formal. That is to say, that scientific data, and in particular the research methods of special branches of the sciences, provide not so much a means of attaining scientific truth as a source of new methods, approaches, means of substantiating idealistic conclusions bearing on the crucial problems of aesthetics. This is a graphic illustration of the well-known Marxist belief that idealism is a constant parasitical formation on scientific achievements. At the same time the epistemological mechanism of the birth of idealism revealed by Lenin in his Philosophical Notebooks remains the same as before: the single-mindedness, one-sidedness, subjectivism and metaphysical basis of the idealistic analysis distort the nature of the aesthetic fact. The general disposition of ideas and tendencies in contemporary society is such that the ruling classes are concerned to give firm currency to this idealistically distorted interpretation.
At the same time it must be pointed out that, whereas idealists are not led by their employment of the research methods of the sciences to an essentially new resolution of crucial philosophical and aesthetic problems, the same cannot be said of the way they state their problems (in particular those which concern specific areas of knowledge). ``There are no grounds to deny that certain modern bourgeois philosophers occasionally state new problems. . . . Bourgeois 25 philosophers may now and again advance and resolve certain problems which, for a number of reasons, have not yet been examined by Marxist philosophers. To ignore the ideas of bourgeois authors simply because they are put forward by our ideological opponents or because they contain certain errors would be to hold up the development of Marxist philosophy. It is possible-indeed essential-to identify in the flood of pseudo-problems advanced by bourgeois philosophers certain genuine epistemological, methodological, psychological and social problems, even if they are imprecisely stated or erroneously resolved" (12, 362--363). In their article ``Leninism and Methodological Questions of the History and Criticism of Contemporary Bourgeois Philosophy'', from which the above quotation was taken, A. S. Bogomolov, Yu. K. Melvil, and I. S. Narsky develop Lenin's views about the ability of bourgeois authors to ``make very valuable contributions in the field of factual and specialized investigations'', and the necessity for Marxists to ``be able to master and refashion" the discoveries of bourgeois philosophers, and to ``be able to lop off their reactionary tendency, to pursue our own line and to combat the whole line of the forces and classes hostile to us".
Proceeding from Lenin's methodological directions mentioned above, we take as the fourth vital task of the present study the exposition of the class nature of the semantic philosophy of art, diametrically opposed to materialism, and ultimately expressing the class interests of the bourgeoisie. The clearest manifestation of this is in the hostility of semantic aesthetic idealism to progressive realistic art and in the theoretical justification of various forms of modernist art.
[26] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Section I. __ALPHA_LVL1__ ART AND LANGUAGE __NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter I. __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Neo-Positivist Conception of Art asIvor Armstrong Richards (b. 1893), a famous English critic, aesthetician and semanticist, published, in 1921, together with C. K. Ogden and J. Wood, The Foundations of Aesthetics, which provided a classification of aesthetic theories and definitions of beauty (1). He became famous with his second book, co-authored in 1923 with Ogden, The Meaning of Meaning, which was to become a classic and best-seller of semantic philosophy in its neo-positivist variation.
In The Meaning of Meaning the authors examined the relationship between words, things and thoughts, or emotions, regarding this as the primary theoretical problem of the science of symbols, and pointing out the strong influence of language both on our everyday lives and on the most abstract philosophical deliberations. The authors see the practical problem of symbolism as the elimination of the many errors in abstract arguments (both in philosophy and in aesthetics) as well in the process of communication, caused by deficient theories of language and incorrect views of this process. They maintain that a study of all these problems may also provide a basis for a scientific aesthetics. Richards' main work on aesthetics is his book Principles of Literary Criticism (1925). Here he applies to art (and primarily literature) the basic principles of symbolism formulated in his previous work. In a third book. Science and Poetry (1926), Richards popularized one of the main ideas of this earlier work-that of the different ways language is used in science and poetry. These books, together with his Practical Criticism (1929), earned their author the status of one of the most influential aestheticians and literary critics of his time.
27In his early works (The Meaning of Meaning, Principles of Literary Criticism, Science and Poetry) Richards' aesthetic ideas developed in the mainstream of neo-positivist philosophy. The critical literature on Richards (Marx Black et al.) contains statements to the effect that in his later works he rejected the ideas of his earlier writings, and that Richards' philosophy evolved towards a weakening of positivism and an approximation to idealism in the spirit of Plato and Kant. It is true that in such late works as Coleridge on Imagination we no longer encounter a number of traditional positivist terms such as ``stimulus'' and ``reaction'', ``impulse'', `` attitudes'', etc. Neither can there be any doubt that the author's enthusiasm for positivism and its claims to solve all philosophical and aesthetic problems declined gradually over the years, but on the whole his views remained within the bounds of semantic idealism. Richards himself, in one of his later books, Speculative Instruments, comments on criticism of his ideas (particularly that of M. Black), writing that on rereading Principles of Literary Criticism he finds more ideas which anticipate his later views than ideas which need revision. ``I changed my vocabulary and my metaphors somewhat ... to present much the same views again" (8, 53).
__b_b_b__ __ALPHA_LVL3__ 1. THE THEORY OF COMMUNICATION AND ART. __NOTE__ "A Close" (first two word of sentence) are on *SAME LINE* as "1. THE THEORY..."A close examination of Richards' aesthetic views will show that they are clustered around two main issues: the problem of communication in art and the problem of value. From the very start Richards the semanticist clearly states these two problems as the main problems of the theory of art. ``The two pillars upon which a theory of criticism must rest,'' he writes, ``are an account of value and an account of communication" (3, 25).
It is necessary to understand, the author insists, the full significance of the fact that we are social animals and are used to communication since earliest childhood. ``The very structure of our minds is largely determined by the fact that man has been engaged in communicating for so many hundreds of thousands of years" (3, 25). Our experience (and experience for him is a spiritual state, 'a spiritual process) 28 intrinsically requires being communicated. The scientific theory of communication is of enormous significance for an understanding of art, for ``the arts are the supreme form of the communicative activity" (3, 26). Many a difficult and obscure question of structures in art can be easily understood, in Richards' view, if they are considered from the viewpoint of communication. The artist may not himself be aware that he is a communicator. As a rule he is concerned with something else. The real desire to communicate something has to be distinguished from the desire to create something with a hidden and disguised communicative potential.
Thus we can see a desire in Richards to base art criticism on science and in particular on the scientific theory of communication. This desire was a sound and significant feature of his aesthetics. However he was not able to realize his intentions in full measure. A large share of the blame for this failure must be attributed to the neo-positivist philosophical premises of his views. It is only possible to make a true analysis of the communicative aspect of art in connection with its other important aspects, and above all with its epistemological problems. But it so happens that Richards' neo-- positivist position consists in a negation of the epistemological problems of art as ``metaphysical''. Richards is guilty of scientism. As Marxist literature points out, the essence of scientism consists, first, in the reduction of scientific information to information received by means of exact, quantitative methods; secondly, in the absolutization of the role of scientific theories; thirdly, in declaring the scientific attitude to be the only legitimate attitude to the world; and fourthly, in the elimination of philosophy from the components of man's world-view and the so-called metaphysical problems from the sphere of scientific issues. Richards, in accordance with the principles of scientism, is prepared to have recourse only to ``experience'', only to the sciences with their exact scientific language, but not to philosophy, nor to epistemology. Richards' scientism, as Black has correctly pointed out, took the form of faith in the universality of scientific method, resulting in unwarranted claims to be in possession of exact experimental techniques of studying art, and to the creation of 29 a science of criticism. Other western authors also expressed criticism of Richards' ideas (Blackmur, James et al.).
Richards turned to physiology (in particular, Pavlovian methods) and psychology to explain the role of communication in art, and in the process displayed behaviourist tendencies in his explanation of consciousness, communication in general and communication in art in particular. There is no doubt that he was influenced here by the ideas of Peirce and of pragmatists, by their behaviourist approach to the problem of meaning. Many authors discuss his behaviourist tendencies (Ransom, James). Black goes so far as to describe the conception advanced by the authors of The Meaning ot Meaning as a behaviourist theory. In our opinion, Richards' behaviourism is more precisely evaluated by Morris, the founder of behaviourist semiotics. He pointed out that some of Richards' ideas (such as his definition of meaning as delegated efficacy) develop in the direction of behaviourism, but this does not imply that Richards himself has followed a behavioural lead: he simply accorded an increasingly important role to ``thought'' in his account of sign, and showed greater scepticism as to explaining thought in behavioural terms. He showed an increasingly strong proclivity for mentalism. It is quite probable that Richards was prevented from becoming a consistent behaviourist by the fact that he was primarily concerned with art, which, in his own words, is characterized by an absence of actual behaviour. Consequently he was increasingly at pains to interpret reactions to a work of art as taking place in the sphere of imagination.
This ``narrow'' orientation exclusively to the methods of physiology and psychology^^1^^ (primarily behaviourist) led to a _-_-_
~^^1^^ Richards' orientation to empirical psychology led to his being labelled as a representative of psychological semantics. However, it is hard to draw a sharp boundary between philosophical and psychological semantics, since psychological semantics is frequently required to resolve philosophical problems too, problems of the theory of knowledge. Richards' aesthetics, as G. Santinello correctly points out, claimed to mark a new departure in empirical psychology, but nothing came of it, and their positions do not differ markedly from those definitions of a philosophical type against which Richards was campaigning (G. Santinello, Estetica della forma, Fadova, 1962).
30 naturalistic conception of communication, already a feature of Peirce's thought, and also characteristic of pragmatism and neo-positivism as a whole.One positive aspect of this conception of Richards' was his anxiety to present communication as an entirely everyday affair which had been unjustifiably obfuscated by the transcendentalists. The latter had postulated as the objective basis of mutual understanding in the process of communication a mystical supra-individual communality of minds, a ``transcendental minimum'', in Wilbur Urban's expression. But what does the neo-positivist Richards propose in place of the ``transcendental minimum"? People, he says, can understand one another's utterances because they possess the same physical and mental structures (``the similarity of minds''), and also are dealing with a reality common to them all. One person experiences something and reacts to his environment in such a way that another person's mind experiences exactly the same thing (3, 176--77).
The narrowness (and anti-historism) of such an anthropological, naturalistic approach was clearly apprehended and criticized by Hegel. Naturalism, Hegel points out, cannot cope with the singularity of the consciousness, it only describes the reason, remaining within the limits of the psychological attitude and the empirical manner. Hegel himself tried to overcome the narrowness of the empirical approach from the positions of objective idealistic dialectics. The deficiency both of the Hegelian and of the naturalistic explanation of the essence of man, of his consciousness and mutual understanding in the process of communication is seen by Marxism to consist in the impossibility of resolving these questions materialistically from a social and historical point of view. Only from these positions is it possible to explain how communal historical experience is recorded and communicated in art, when perceived in the form of individual experience, as an objective artistic value with a personal message. A scientific explanation of the particular nature of communication in art-avoiding the errors of hedonism and the theory of emotional infection-is only possible on condition the common object of artistic cognition-when it functions as 31 objective basis of communication-is understood as the communal practice of feelings, which, in a work of art, moves from a dynamic to an existential or objective form. Richards the naturalist was far from such a materialistic approach in his explanation of communication in art.
__b_b_b__ __ALPHA_LVL3__ 2. POETRY AS THE HIGHEST FORM OF EMOTIVE LANGUAGE.There is a direct connection between scientism and one of the most important principles of neo-positivism: the principle of verification, according to which all the facts of consciousness which cannot be verified by the facts of experience ( understood as sensual experiences of the subject) are pseudo-- statements, devoid of scientific meaning. In Richards' theory of symbolism this principle is manifest in its central premise about the distinction between the symbolic (or referential) and emotive uses of signs. The symbolic use accords with the principle of verification, has referents in experience, and is consequently applicable in science. The emotive (or evocative) use does not accord with this principle, has no referent in experience, and is an unscientific means of using signs. There is a link between the theory of the two types of the use of the symbolic language and the basic idea of Richards' communicative theory of art, that the specifics of poetry and art as a whole should be sought in their special use of words and signs.
Peirce had pointed out previously that in their influence on the addressee signs may provoke various ``significate effects": thoughts, actions and feelings. The authors of The Meaning of Meaning also suggest that ``our interpretation of any sign is our psychological reaction to it" (2, 244). They regard this reaction to be the ``meaning'' of a sign. Further on they concentrate exclusively on an analysis of one of the varieties of signs-words.
The reaction to a word, the authors argue, contains a number of components, which can be divided into two main groups constituting its symbolic (or referential) and emotive (or evocative) meanings.
The meaning of a word in the most important sense'of the word ``meaning'' is that part of a total reaction to the 32 word which constitutes the thought about what the word is intended for and what it symbolizes. Thus thought (the reference) constitutes the symbolic or referential meaning of a word. Occasionally the authors treat ``reference'' as an attitude to our thought about something or other, but this distinction is not explained, and most of the time symbolic meaning simply signifies thought. Thoughts refer to objects outside us, and thus words designate objects through our thoughts about these objects. A total psychological reaction to a word also includes ``feelings'', ``emotions'' and `` attitudes'', which constitute the emotive meaning of a word.
Richards introduces an important distinction between the ``meaning'' of words and their ``use'', or ``functions''.^^1^^ He distinguishes two main types of the use (or two functions) of words: the symbolic (or referential) and the emotive (evocative). The first type characterizes the use of language in science, and is sometimes in fact called the scientific use of language. The second type characterizes the functions of words (signs) in poetry (art). Poetry is defined as the highest form of emotive language. It is interesting to see what criteria are advanced for the differentiation of these two types of the use of language.
The first criterion is concerned with which meaning of the word the speaker is trying to convey in the process of its use (its functioning). When we use words to convey their symbolic meaning (their sense), to convey information, to communicate our thoughts about things, to symbolize attitude to referent, we are using them symbolically. This function may be realised basically through the symbolic meaning of a word, but Richards maintains that the emotive meanings of a word may also sometimes come to its aid.
The emotive use of language is characterized by three main functions: (1) the expression of an attitude (feelings) to the listener, (2) the expression of an attitude (feelings) to the object (referent), (3) the production of the desired effect in _-_-_
~^^1^^ This distinction is not entirely clear, witness the fact that some commentators (e.g. Pollock) maintain that for Richards the `` functions" of words characterize their meanings and are distinct from their use, while others (Morris) equate ``functions'' and ``use''.
__PRINTERS_P_33_COMMENT__ 3---826 33 the listener (5, 181--82).^^1^^ The emotive use is exercised through the emotive meaning of words. Richards believes that in poetry language is used to provoke emotions and attitudes, and such is its function. This gives such communication a more profound character than that whose purpose is solely referential. It is this that distinguishes science and poetry, which, ``in its use of words ... is just the reverse of science" (4, 33), i.e. they are used symbolically, to convey information. What relation does the emotive use of language in poetry (and in art as a whole) have to the symbolic meaning of words, to their sense and to the symbolic use of language?First let us have a look at the role of the symbolic meaning of words (their sense) in poetry. Many commentators note that Richards asserted in his early works that in poetry language may be used purely emotively, without referring to the sense of the words. There are indeed statements in Richards' works from which it follows that he recognizes the possibility of using words in poetry without referring to their sense. Thus, in The Meaning of Meaning he discusses how it is possible in the emotive use of words not to have recourse to their symbolic meaning and to attain the desired goal by the direct effect of the words. In the perception of verse the actual sound of the words operates before their meaning, as does their tone in ordinary speech. There are great works of music and painting which have no representation, this latter corresponding to thought in poetry. While admitting the possibility of using language emotively in poetry without referring to the sense of the words, Richards does not however deny the significance for poetry either of the sense of words or of statements (which can be true or false), neither does he deny the significance of representation for painting. What _-_-_
~^^1^^ In his book Coleridge on Imagination Richards uses a quite different terminology to designate the functions of words. Sense relates to the symbolic function of a word, and, correspondingly, tone, feeling and intention relate to its emotive function. In Speculative Instruments he distinguishes seven functions: indicating, characterizing, realizing (which relate to the symbolic use) and valuing, influencing, controlling, and purposing (which relate to the emotive use) (6, 88; 8, 26).
34 role does Richards in fact accord them in his aesthetics? The authors of The Meaning of Meaning rightly believed there is an element of reference inherent in practically every use of words, at least by civilized adults. These two functions usually occur together, but nevertheless they are in principle distinct (2, 150). This led the authors to the correct conclusion that in poetry the emotive use of words coexists with the symbolic use. And insofar as the latter is realised predominantly through the sense of the words the thoughts which are provoked by a reading of poetry are occasioned above all by their sense. Thus the sense of words and statements in poetry conveys information, in this way exercising the symbolic use of language.While recognizing the inseparability of these two functions the authors emphasized that the main function of poetry is the emotive, and the symbolic function here plays a subordinate role. The main function of the language of poetry is fulfilled on condition the right attitude is found and the desired emotions provoked, and in this case any symbolic function the words may have will be merely instrumental and ``subsidiary to the evocative function" (2, 150). Thus, in poetry the symbolic meaning of words, their sense, by and large serves not to convey information, but to provoke emotions.
This idea, which receives clear formulation in as early a work as The Meaning of Meaning, was emphasized by Richards later too, and in particular in Speculative Instruments (8, 42).
As the second criterion for their distinction between the two types of the use of language the authors of The Meaning ot Meaning advance the question which follows from the neo-positive principle of verification: ``is such a statement true or false?" If the question is appropriate it means that it is a symbolic use, and if not, an emotive use. The authors, admittedly, make the reservation that the question of the truth, in the strictest sense of the word, of a statement cannot really be asked with respect to the emotive use of words, but they argue that the question is at least obliquely possible.
There has been much discussion and disagreement around Richards' theory, advanced in Science and Poetry, that in 35 poetry statements are in fact pseudo-statements (4, 70).~^^1^^ In our opinion, Richards wished to use this term to emphasize the essential distinction between the use of statements in poetry and their application in science. Statements in science are used for information. The emotional effects they might cause are not of importance to science. Science requires that its statements be non-ambiguous, logical and true. True statements are verified by their correspondence with the ``facts''. They also occur in poetry: ``I didn't and couldn't mean,'' writes Richards, ``that ... they are not statements at all" (8, 148). But these statements only have an emotive use. Their task is not to inform. Richards is hostile to the `` message-hunting" in poetry, to the intellectual reaction, which can often obstruct emotional appreciation. The task of statements in poetry is to act on the emotions, to order them, and to organize impulses and attitudes. ``The point is that many, if not most, of the statements in poetry are there as a means to the manipulation and expression of feelings and attitudes, not as contributions to any body of doctrine of any type whatever" (5, 186). Statements in poetry are not logical inferences, logic here is subordinate to feelings. In another context, such as in science, pseudo-statements can be true or false, but in poetry they are neither one thing nor the other. Their correspondence to fact is at times hard to establish. A possible reason for this is that ``facts'' can be made up, and that pseudo-statements themselves have a generalized and ``vague'' character, with insufficiently clear spacial and temporal coordinates. It does not matter in poetry how wide the differences are in the reference if the poem achieves its effect by provoking the desired emotions and attitudes. Attitudes are broader and more generalized than references, and are not always pointed at the same things to which statements refer. It is possible to talk of the truth and falsity of pseudostatements, but in a different, poetic sense. Pseudo-- statements are true if they serve certain desired attitudes, linking _-_-_
~^^1^^ There are grounds for the criticism that this term is ``implicitly pejorative" for poetry (Hyman), that it emphasises ``attractive nullity of poems" (Wimsatt and Beardsley), and suggests that poetry is a lower form of science (Ransom, Tate).
36 them together. The truth of these pseudo-statements is entirely determined by their effect in releasing or organizing our impulses and attitudes (4, 70--71). Utterances which are false from a scientific point of view, may be poetically true. For example, the old necromantic theories are valuable because they make possible a complex play of emotions, and the development of our feelings. Their loss brings with it the danger of emotional starvation or a one-sided exercise of the most trivial impulses. But Richards warns against the view that poetry is a negation of science. Erroneous statements should not be introduced into poetry, it should not be used for the creation of a new mythology or a return to childhood: this profanes poetry and is a hazardous venture. Richards argues against the common view of poetry as a correlative of science. Poetry, he believes, serves other goals than science, it has its own function.Thus Richards recognizes, especially in later works, that reference which carries information and knowledge plays a certain role in poetry, but he emphasizes its subsidiary position with respect to the emotions and attitudes. We should note that the authors of The Meaning of Meaning and Richards in his other early works are not always consistent in putting across this point of view. Alongside true statements about the link between the emotive and symbolic functions of language we find in The Meaning of Meaning assertions of quite another type-assertions that, if these functions are not confused, the exercise of one function need not in any way interfere with the exercise of the other; that as science frees itself from the emotional outlook so does poetry abandon the ``obsession'' of knowledge and symbolic truth; that it is not necessary to know what things are in order to take up fitting attitudes; and that it ought to be impossible to talk about poetry as though capable of giving ``knowledge'' (2, 158--59). Man's emotional development, maintains the author of Science and Poetry, does not depend on the achievement of scientific objectivity in knowledge. In his later works, such as Speculative Instruments, Richards does however give a more consistent account of knowledge's proper place in art.
37In addition to those mentioned above there is a third criterion advanced for the distinction of two types of the use of language. It has to do with the causal theory of meaning. Communication, according to Richards, presupposes that the ideas of one person act on another, and this person experiences something similar to the experience of the first person. It follows from this that to the psychological reactions that the listener has to a word (i.e. to its meaning) there are similar corresponding states in the mind of the speaker. It is these that are the immediate reasons for the use of the word in question. ``Between a thought and a symbol causal relations hold. When we speak, the symbolism we employ is caused partly by the reference we are making and partly by social and psychological factors-the purpose for which we are making the reference, the proposed effect of our symbols on other persons, and our own attitude" (2, 10--11). The symbolic use of words is operated by thought, and in particular by thought about some specific object, while all the other reasons cause emotive use. Emotive words, when considered .with respect to their psychological reasons, are expressive.
In Richards' theory the use of words is also considered in connection with the contextualist theory of meaning or the theory of interpretation, set forth both in The Meaning of Meaning and in his later works. This theory holds that the sign is to be defined as something which was once a part of the context, acting on the mind as a whole. When the sign appears again the result is such as if the rest of the context was present with it. The context acts on the use of words, on their meanings: words, as signs, act through their context. The view that meanings appertain to words in isolation is tantamount, Richards argues, to an acceptance of the mystical theory of names (7, 132). Each word is situated, as it were, in two contexts. Its meaning belongs to the class of things, which it designates (i.e. to the concept), and to the word order, i.e. to the text (contemporary linguistics uses the terms paradigm and context in this sense). The tension between them is a possible cause of polysemanticity, and ambiguity is a specific feature of poetic language. The contextual character of 38 meaning is responsible for its metaphorical properties, which is a feature not only of the emotive, but also of the symbolic use. This is an omni-present principle of language and of thought, which uses metaphors as models of things.^^1^^
Richards' theory of the two types of the use of language and its application to poetry contains some valuable elements. His very inquiry into the specific nature of poetry (and of art in general), particularly in comparison to science, sheds light on the use (or function) of words (or signs), and is very fruitful. It has been further developed in the semiotic theories of art. A correct scientific interpretation of the emotive function of language in art admits the thesis that the symbolic function (connected with the designation of suprapersonal meanings and concepts), so specific to science, may also play an important, albeit subordinate, role in art. However, these views, along with his accurate thesis about the importance of the scientific theory of communication to the theory of art, were denied their due development by the influence of neo-positivist ideas. Richards patently displays the neo-positivist tendency of exaggerating the role of the linguistic problems of art and turning them into the central concern of aesthetics. In essence Richards tried to turn literary criticism into a division of linguistics. Moreover, his opposition between the ``egocentric'' language of art and the language of science, which refers to external objects of reality, provided the theoretical foundation for ``pure descriptivism" (in the spirit of the Prague linguistic circle).
The theory about the two different uses of language (and about the criteria for this division) and, in particular, the interpretation of this theory as related to art, were subjected to serious criticism by, amongst others, Richards' followers. M. Black, the most influential of the neo-positivists, pointed out that Richards had not carried through the distinction _-_-_
~^^1^^ The idea that not only artistic thought, but also to a certain degree scientific thought, ordinary thought processes, etc. can be metaphorical is correct and has been further developed in the works of C. Levi-Strauss, in particular. However, the influence of the subjectivist theory of knowledge of modern positivism has led with Richards, too, to an overestimation of these metaphorical properties.
39 between presentation and statements. It follows from Richards' theory that any reference in art is simultaneously assertion, and the absence of an assertion means that the reference is also absent. It is true. Black agrees, that poetry may ``state'' nothing, but this does not imply that there is no reference in this case. Reference here functions in the form of presentation (representation, depiction). Richards' error in this matter, the critic believes, was one of the reasons for his underestimation of the importance of intellectual understanding as a factor in aesthetic appreciation, and for his underestimation of the cognitive factor in aesthetics in general (18, 207--08).Thomas C. Pollock agrees that Richards' theory of the use of language has certain merits, but is of the opinion that ``as a theoretical basis for the study of literature, it can best be described quite simply as inadequate" (15, 8). First, not all types of the use of language can be accommodated in these two groups, there are also ``mixed'' groups, but Richards does not analyse these; secondly, we cannot agree that in the majority of more complex poems the words are used primarily to produce effects in emotion and attitudes; thirdly, the distinction he makes is particularly inadequate for the language of prose fiction and drama; fourthly, Richards does not consider more complex evocative units than the word. Pollock considers the most misleading feature of this theory to be its ``elementalism''. In his use of this term the author actually has in mind the fact that the psychological theories employed by Richards-associationism and psychological functionalism (James, Dewey, Angell et al.) were varieties of the psychology of elements. Despite his avowal that he regards man as an integral whole, Richards divided his psychological functions into two types. He denned the symbolic use of language in terms of intellectual psychological elements (thought, reference), and the emotive in terms of nonintellectual elements (emotion, attitudes). Richards' classification divides the human essence into the intellect, on the one hand, and the emotions, on the other. Richards is mistaken when he argues that content in literary communication can be explained in terms of non-intellectual psychological elements, 40 such as emotion and attitude. Analogous accusations of `` elementalism" have been made by J. Spaulding.^^1^^
Even Hotopf, Richards' staunch disciple, while he believes that criticism of Richards is as a rule the result of an incorrect understanding of his ideas, himself criticizes Richards' explanation of the use of language. First, he does so from the viewpoint of the purpose of an utterance, arguing that the alternative division made by Richards is narrow, since it is possible to have a neutral exposition (not persuasive), which at the same time is not scientific, e.g. the language of instructions. Secondly, there cannot be a sharp division between the emotive and referential uses of language from the point of view of psychological practice either. There can be no such thing as a pure referential use, for it will always contain certain human interests, the satisfaction of the speaker's requirements. Hotopf holds that the thesis that poetry is purely emotive, only concerned with the harmonising of the personality, is an extreme view, and perhaps the ``main weakness of Richards' theory" (13, 50, 245--46).
Many critics (Ransom, Barfield, Eastman et al.) have pointed out that Richards' theory of the two types of the use of language leads to the nominalistic tendencies in his aesthetic views: art for him is not connected with objects of the real world. Richards considered the function of poetry only from the point of view of its stimulation attitude and organization of human behaviour without having recourse to the world of things, without comparing poetry and reality, relating all epistemological problems to the competence of science thereby opposing it to poetry. The scientism of neo-- positivism, which pays lip service to science, indeed denies its cognitive powers. This can be seen in the well-known neopositivist teaching that sensuous data are the only reality which science is concerned with. The same holds true for the conception of conventionalism, which argues that statements _-_-_
~^^1^^ In their criticism of Richards both Pollock and Spaulding employ the views of Alfred Korzybski and Gestalt psychology. These views also contain errors, but the critics' opinion of Richards' ``elementalism'' remains valid.
41 in science are the result of arbitrary agreement. Richards acts in full accordance with these neo-positivist theories when he characterizes science as a fiction, as a ``myth'', placing it on a par with religion (6, 177). Black was quite correct when he termed this attitude to science idealistic.Many of Richards' commentators, while they correctly see the weaknesses of his philosophical and aesthetic position fail to appreciate that these weaknesses issue from the ``basic error" of Richards' neo-positivist position. This error consists, first of all, in his ignoring the problems of the theory of reflection, and the epistemological questions of art, regarding them as devoid of scientific sense, and secondly, in his failure properly to understand the socio-historical essence of art and the communicative processes which correspond to its nature.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ 3. WHEREIN DOES THE VALUE OF ART LIE?As we have already noted, in Richards' view the theory of ``value'' forms the other mainstay of artistic criticism (and of the theory of art), alongside communications theory. The author devoted a special chapter of his Principles of Literary Criticism to a proof of the necessity of a general theory of value for art criticism. We have to know, Richards maintains, what is ``good''.
In his work Ethics and Language (1941) Charles Stevenson correctly points out that Richards operates with two incompatible theories of value: an analytical (emotive) and a naturalistic. Let us look first at his emotive theory of value. His positivist tendency to rely on proven facts and his proclivity for empiricism led Richards to attempt to construct a theory of value without recourse to ethical and ``metaphysical'' ideas, and, in particular, to the theory of absolute value. In The Meaning of Meaning the authors advance the thesis that arguments about beauty as a specific inherent quality of things is the ``survival of primitive word-superstitions" (2, 144). The term ``beauty'' and other vital concepts of aesthetics are, Richards maintains, not used referentially ( symbolically), but emotively. Having no ``referent'' ``outside the mind" these terms only express emotions and the attitudes of those who use them. Richards sees the proof of this in the polysemanticity of these terms, counting, for example, 42 60~different definitions of the term ``beauty''. The utterance ``it is beautiful" serves merely as an emotive sign of the expression of our attitude to it, and it may also provoke a similar attitude in others, as well as preparing them for some action or other. Thus Richards was in fact applying the positivist criterion of verification to the fundamental concepts of aesthetics. It has already been shown in the Marxist literature that the principle of verification is a focus of both the strong and the weak sides of empiricism. The former have to do with the fact that the very requirement for the empirical verifiability of knowledge is a generalization of the experimental achievements of modern natural sciences. Latent in this requirement, however, is the danger that a considerable portion of the objects of scientific knowledge (in the present instance, aesthetic knowledge), irreducible, fully or in part, to objects, which can be registered by experimental methods, is entirely excluded from consideration and declared insubstantial. For Richards the neo-positivist the central aesthetic concept-``beauty''-belongs to the class of abstractions devoid of scientific sense. The same fate as ``beauty'' was shared by such concepts as ``form'', ``composition'', ``harmony'', etc. In Richards' view no qualities ``outside the mind" correspond to these concepts.
Richards holds that not only utterances about art (about the ``beautiful''), but also the utterances of art itself have an emotive character, expressing emotions as attitudes. In his Principles of Literary Criticism he writes that works of art (A) produce an effect (B) on us with a feature (C). But we usually speak as if we perceived A with a quality C (`` beautiful''). We project the effects of works of art onto qualities which exist outside the mind. In Richards' opinion such projection is a mystical view.
Richards' emotivist position is that of negation of the objective character of aesthetic value, the position of relativism and subjectivism.
Richards tried to overcome subjectivism and relativism, making, to quote Black, ``heroic efforts" to provide a naturalistic criterion of evaluation. Richards' ``naturalism'' is to a considerable extent due to the influence of orthodox British 43 positivism (Bentham), Dewey's pragmatic theory of value and Perry's theory of value, which took as its basis the concept of ``interest''.
A key notion in Richards' naturalistic theory of value is the concept of ``impulse'', which is extremely close in its content to that of need. Impulse designates both physiological need (``nerve impulse'') and psychological need. In the latter instance, when an impulse is conscious, it is a ``desire'', `` preference'', ``interests''. An unconscious or subconscious impulse is appetence. When an impulse displays a tendency for action, for behaviour of a certain type, it is characterized as an ``attitude''. Moreover, this tendency for action is more often concealed and imagined than overt. Value (or good) is in every case connected with the satisfaction of an impulse.
Richards is not always consistent in his definition of what is good. He sometimes regards as good objects (the natural properties of objects) which satisfy impulses, and in this case he recognizes the objective character of value as a natural property. In other cases he regards as good a psychological process, the properties of the impulses themselves, distinguishing the more and the less important impulses. In this second case Richards' theory gets into a vicious circle. What is of value is experience highly valued by a good critic. A good critic is someone who is able to appreciate valuable experience. To get out of this circle he ``secretly'', in Bilsky's expression, introduces absolute value, namely a quantitative factor. The value of experience is reckoned by the quantity of impulses which it satisfies. A difficulty arises when impulses are equal in their quantity, and in such cases experts can clearly turn only to their intuition. Thus Richards arrives at the very intuitivism against which he is arguing.^^1^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ The position taken by Richards' critic Manuel Bilsky is interesting in this connection. Bilsky criticizes Richards the naturalist from the positions of intuitivism, correctly maintaining that any empirical theory is bound to lead to ``intuition'', and that anyone who introduces qualitative distinctions is forced to renounce the status of a consistent ``naturalist''. But Bilsky sees no alternative but to resolve the problem by means of looking for a source outside experience-``immediate conviction'', intuition (9, 545). Bilsky, as an __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 45. 44
How is one experience to be distinguished from another from the viewpoint of value? How, for example, does aesthetic experience differ from non-aesthetic? Richards replies that experiences differ from one another in their quantity and quality of impulses. In what, then, does the particular nature of aesthetic experience consist? Richards refused to recognize specific aesthetic qualities ``outside the mind''. But perhaps there is such a thing as specific spiritual aesthetic experience? The whole of modern aesthetics, says Richards, proceeds from this admission, but he regards this very admission as mistaken, arguing that the view of art as a refuge of aesthetics obstructs the study of its value. Experiences of beauty and value are in principle closely similar to many other experiences; they can be seen merely as a further development, a finer organization of ordinary experiences (3, 16). Their value is particularly high because many impulses are satisfied in them, impulses which, moreover, are not specific aesthetic impulses, and which are also operative in non-artistic activity. Thus, his sound tendency not to isolate aesthetic experience and to see its connection with other manifestations of man's psychic life led Richards to deny the specifics of aesthetic value. This was a shortcoming inherent both in the old utilitarianism and in the new, both in its pragmatic and neo-positivist varieties.
Richards maintained that not only the direct satisfaction of impulses may be of value, but also their actual exercise, which leads to an elimination of the conflict between impulses: either by means of the ``victory'' of one of the impulses, or of the harmonization of impulses, bringing the soul into a state of equanimity, which increases its ability to satisfy impulses in the future. The more impulses (positive interests) there are, ordered and free, and the less they are suppressed, the more valuable such experience is for man. The harmonic variety of impulses, their intensity-albeit calculated, and their freedom-albeit illusory, are not exclusive _-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 44. idealist, does not consider the possibility of looking for the objectivity of value on a basis other than naturalistic, or ``absolute'', and in fact on the basis of a recognition of the social objectivity of value.
45 properties of aesthetic experience, but they are more inherent in the latter than in other forms of experience.A work of art orders impulses which are unordered in most minds and interfere and conflict with one another. Poetic experience restores the violated balance of interests. Art organizes impulses by two means: exclusion and inclusion, synthesis and elimination. Mental activity is usually based on both procedures, but it is still possible to distinguish experiences which are stable and ordered, thanks either to the narrowing, or extension of reactions. In some poetic works we can see a number of parallel impulses, while in others we see heterogeneous and even contradictory impulses. The second instance is more valuable since systematization has a more stable character. Proceeding from these views Richards accords high value to tragedy, as well as the Aristotelian analysis of tragedy with its concept of catharsis. Richards also explains impersonality, in connection with this property of the aesthetic experience, as a characteristic of this experience. It is manifested in our reacting not in the narrow channel of our personal interest (a single impulse), but through the channels of many, simultaneously active interests (impulses), which become, as it were, disinterested. At the expression level this property corresponds to the fact that the language of most sublime poetry is often extremely abstract (7, 99).
The systematization of impulses influences the future potential to satisfy impulses. Literature and art are the main means of propagating such influences. Insofar as the impulses which are satisfied by art are not specifically aesthetic, but also enter into non-artistic activity, this influence effects the reader and viewer just as it does the artist. Thus, on the one hand, the value of experience consists in actual, immediate particulars of reactions and attitudes. On the other hand, in noting the potential of art to influence the future satisfaction of impulses, and regarding this as a great merit of art, Richards opposes his position to the conception which merely emphasizes the role of ``high moments'', ``the quality of the momentary consciousness" as valuable factors of communication with art.
46Emotions and reactions of pleasure and displeasure, are indicators of impulse satisfaction and of the value of experience. In his explanation of emotions Richards clearly upholds James-Lange theory of emotions. Emotions are primarily signs of attitudes, and they owe their prominent role in the theory of art to this circumstance. Emotions have ``a cognitive aspect''. Emotional reactions underlie ``immediate judgments" in aesthetic appreciation or, in other words, underlie intuition. Emotions tell us whether impulses have been satisfied or not, and give us information about attitudes and, indirectly, about the outside world (3, 98--99, 132). In his work Coleridge on Imagination Richards formulates this more precisely: ``The patterns of our thoughts represent, in various ways, the world we live in. The patterns of our feelings represent only a few special forms of our commerce with it" (6, 89).
Emotions, as we have said, are primarily signs of attitudes. An attitude is a readiness for action which takes the place of actual behaviour in the absence of the corresponding situation. It is the essential peculiarity of poetry and all the arts that they lack the full appropriate situation (4, 29). Attitudes organize a number of different reactions into a unit, and, moreover, not in actual behaviour but ``covertly'', in the imagination. Perception of a work of art is similar to learning a game, in that we organize our reactions more and more effectively. And just as intellectual problems are more economically, swiftly and efficiently resolved in the mind, on paper than in actual behaviour so are emotional problems resolved and impulses ordered more ``economically'' in the imagination with the aid of art. Aesthetic experience-the formation and signalling of attitudes and emotions-is achieved precisely by means of the emotive use of language (of words in poetry, and of signs in general in art) we were discussing in the previous section.
The analysis of the value of art from the point of view of its psychological and biological effect on man is extremely important. And here Richards' idea of the harmonizing role of art, of the generalization of emotions, of art as an orientation towards future behaviour is strictly scientific. There is 47 an unmistakable similarity between these ideas and many of the views advanced by Lev Vygotsky in his book The Psychology ot Art, written between 1914 and 1922. However, whereas Vygotsky clearly understood that art can be made into the object of scientific study only when it is considered as one of the vital functions of society in its inalienable connection with all the other spheres of the life of society and in its historical conventions, Richards the neo-positivist did not go further than a naturalist theory of the value of art. In criticizing Freud (namely, his assertion that man stands face to face with reality of nature) Vygotsky wrote in The Psychology oi Art that there is also a social milieu between man and the world, which refracts and directs any stimuli acting directly on man and any reaction of man to the outside. Richards the ``naturalist'' failed to understand the social nature of the value of art. He fought against the conception of Absolute Values and turned for an explanation of the value of art to ``impulses'', but, as Black has aptly observed, `` Richards was fighting one mythology by propagating another".
__*_*_*__Western authors accord Richards an important place in the development of semantic aesthetics, giving in general a high evaluation of his activity. Hotopf, the author of a large monograph on Richards, calls him ``an important figure in the intellectual history of our times''. Th. C. Pollock, who took part in the 2nd Congress on General Semantics, maintains that there was no other writer of his generation who did as much to stimulate interest in the basic problems of semantic and literary theory. Tracing the intellectual sources of the semantic theories of art Marx Rieser names Richards alongside Peirce, Cassirer, Whitehead and others. Charles Morris described Richards' activity ``on the semiotical approach to poetry" (or to aesthetics in general) as ``pioneer work'', pointing out that it is still of great importance.
For all the hyperbole of such evaluations the fact remains that Richards' ideas had great influence on modern aesthetics, particularly of the semantic trend. There can be no 48 doubt that all the leading representatives of semantic aesthetics-Morris, Langer, Heyl and others-felt and feel the influence of his theories. As we have noted above, his theories, and in particular his methods of a semanticolinguistic analysis of text and his theory of interpretation had a considerable influence on the formation of the so-called ``analytical'' aesthetics.
All students of the ``new criticism"---one of the most active directions in English and American literary studies, as well as the actual members of the school point out that Richards' ideas played a considerable part in the emergence and development of this tendency, typical of modernist aesthetics as a whole. The new criticism is a strictly formalist tendency, which regards the work of art as an autonomous, closed structure. The new critics exaggerate the role of form at the expense of content, proclaiming the independent role of ``pure form" and working out a theory of the aesthetics of abstractionism. This formalist exaggeration in the new criticism was not of course accidental, and was accompanied by the anti-democratic, anti-liberal position they took in the literary struggle raging in the USA. The new critics' apologia of ``pure form" and ``pure art" was combined from their very first statements with venomous attacks on Marxist criticism and on what they dubbed ``propagandist art''. The hostility of the new critics to progressive art could not fail to influence their general estimation of Richards' work. After all, it was precisely from him (and T. S. Eliot) that the new critics took the idea of the ``autotelic'' character of poetry, that develops out of itself and has no aim outside itself, and such formalist methods of interpreting the text as the explanation of ``symbols'' and ``close reading''. The new criticism was in particular characterized by its raising of ``ambiguity'', polysemanticity to the status of the supreme virtue of poetry, in consequence of which objective ``denotation'' is masked by subjective ``connotation'' and the literary work divorced from reality. This methodology undertakes to defend all that is suggested, subconscious and obscure, in contrast to the logical and clearly and precisely expressed. In other words it is the methodology of modernism.
__PRINTERS_P_49_COMMENT__ 4---826 49In Marxist literature criticism of Richards' aesthetics follows the line of a general differentiation of the total inacceptability of his conceptions and a revelation of the true significance of the problems he examines (see 11). Thus, Robert Weimann, a leading critic from the GDR, points out in his book The ``New Criticism" and the Development oi Bourgeois Literary Studies (1962) that Richards' works Principles ot Literary Criticism and Practical Criticism are important works in the theory of literature and that Richards' aesthetics needs a circumstantial critical analysis with the help of Marxist psychology, ethics and theory of knowledge (19).
While noting the positive aspects of Richards' aesthetic work it should be stressed that the anti-scientific methodology of neo-positivism prevented the English aesthetician from reaching a correct solution of the problems he tackled. Nominalism, behaviourist tendencies and naturalism in his interpretation of process of communication, an underestimation of the cognitive factor in art, emotivist and naturalist conceptions of value in art-such was the price this talented critic and aesthetician paid for his adherence to the philosophy of semantic idealism.
[50] __NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter II. __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Linguistic Philosophy of WittgensteinAs a tendency in the neo-positivist stream of the ``semantic philosophy of art" we can isolate ``analytic aesthetics'', which was formed in the 1950's and 1960. This tendency was unusual in that it did not analyse art as language, but the language of analyses of art, the language of the actual aesthetic theories. And although there are grounds to pursue this tendency when analysing the semantic philosophy of art we must agree with M. Damjanovic when he says that ``analytic aesthetics'', insofar as it does not analyse art itself, is at best only an introduction to aesthetics. Richards had some influence on the emergence of this tendency, but in the main the aestheticians of this school worked from the ideas of Wittgenstein in his later period and English linguistic philosophy which developed his views (12, 21).
__ALPHA_LVL3__ 1. CONCEPTIONS OF THE LANGUAGE AND PHILOSOPHY OFWittgenstein's views in his later period are mainly propounded in his Philosophical Investigations. In this period Wittgenstein kept as before to the basic principle of semantic philosophy: the only task of philosophy is the analysis of language. But the drastic change in Wittgenstein's later attitude toward language led, as Thomas E. Hill has correctly pointed out, to a change in his view of the nature and function of philosophy.
Previously (in the period of his Tractatus Logico-- Philosophicus) Wittgenstein had maintained that the origin of philosophical, or ``metaphysical'' problems was to be sought in the complexity of ordinary language, and thus in order to 51 eliminate these problems we should concentrate on an analysis of perfect logical language. The search for the latter was connected with a construction of language as a system of abstract signs with the precise structure of a formula of logical calculus, and reflecting the structure of the world (the theory of ``reflection'', ``isomorphism'').
In his later period, Wittgenstein believed that the origin of ``metaphysical'' philosophical problems was not the complexity of ordinary language but its ``metaphysical'' use. He now saw it as the task of philosophy ``to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use" (1, 48). The scholar's efforts should now be directed towards the explanation and description of the latter as well as a revelation of the ways language is misused ``metaphysically''.
Natural language is normally used, asserts Wittgenstein, not for the single purpose of reflecting the world, `` describing" facts in the form of true or false statements, but for the realisation of the most diverse aims (giving orders, making up a story, a joke, asking etc.) (1, 12). Language is not a reflection opposed to the world, but a part of the world, linguistic activity, included in a complex network of linguistic and non-linguistic contexts. All this requires the scholar to pay the closest attention to linguistic practice in all its variety. In the theory of meaning Wittgenstein now took up the position that ``the meaning of a word is its use in the language" (1, 20). A multiplicity of uses means that meanings can be grouped into sets of variants of meanings, which in its turn leads to the element of uncertainty in meaning, something inevitable and often useful in language. The use of linguistic expressions is subordinated to a set of rules and norms of working with signs, which admit a certain freedom and possible alternatives. All this gave Wittgenstein cause to compare language to a game (1, 23). There are different `` language-games'', connected with different forms of human activity and irreducible one to the other. There are no properties or groups of properties equally common to all the games. A similarity can only be partial, like a ``family resemblance": some people have similar eyes, others noses, and others have some other feature in common.
52As Soviet scholar Maria Kozlova has convincingly shown in her study Philosophy and Language Wittgenstein's new approach to language, which rejected some of his previous errors, contains a number of positive elements, but, taken as a whole, it shows ``the metaphysician hurtling from one extreme to the other''. Thus, the positive tendency to overcome the abstract logicism in his former approach to language, to rely on facts of speech communication in the varied process of social activity and to take into account the pragmatic aspect of language, in actual fact led Wittgenstein the neopositivist to a one-sided, narrowly empirical description of the concrete variations of linguistic behaviour. The metaphysical logomorphism of the Tractatus was succeeded by an opposite extreme-the point of view of unrestrained polymorphism, which provided a favourable soil for linguistic naturalism, empiricism and relativism (11, 161). Wittgenstein's theory of meaning contained, in addition to a positive tendency to overcome the errors of ``mentalism'' and ``realism'', and to take into account the system nature of language, the role of context, etc., a strong bias towards the use of language in human behaviour. This accent on the ``code'' functions of language brings Wittgenstein's position close to the errors of behaviourism and operationalism. The problems of the relation of the sign to the object (25), of the cognitive function of language, and of the ``mirror'' aspect of meaning were in essence eliminated from his linguistic philosophy, and this in its turn could not fail to leave the imprint of subjectivism and relativism on his conception.
In Wittgenstein's interpretation ``language-games'', as a useful abstraction and model for the description and understanding of certain of the functions of language, reveal his tendency towards a conventionalist, anti-historical, `` isolationist" approach to the explanation of ``languages'' in different sign systems.
Wittgenstein's positive tendency to avoid the extremes of abstract ``metaphysical'' thought leads him, however, to the no less absurd opposite extreme, which can be distinctly observed in the ``therapeutics'' for the deliverance of language which, in the philosopher's opinion, proceed from the 53 picture of the real use of natural language he proposes. Wittgenstein correctly points out that the mingling of different meanings (usages) of one and the same linguistic expression or of outwardly similar grammatical forms, the proclivity to use words which have no precisely fixed meaning just as if their meaning was strictly determined in definitions, and many other features can serve as the source of ``linguistic traps'', generating confusion. Wittgenstein examined the real difficulties and inevitable losses that occur when the flexible and plastic meanings of everyday language are ``translated'' into the language of theoretical and in particular philosophical abstractions and idealizations. However, instead of opposing a scientific, dialectical conception of abstraction to the dogmatically speculative metaphysical passion for generalizations, Wittgenstein advanced the conception of ``family resemblance" : the philosophical essence of this conception consists in the typically positivist fear of any generalization, the rejection of such an important tool of the theory of knowledge as abstraction, and an underestimation of definitions. No surprise, either, that the theory of ``family resemblance" was used by all those who wished to undermine theoretical thought which operates with scientific concepts and generalizations. This applies above all to philosophical cognition, for philosophy without generalizations is philosophy-without philosophy. Wittgenstein's neo-positivist anti-philosophical weapon turned out to be a traditional one: nominalism and empiricism.
Such are the basic ideas of Wittgenstein in his later period, the starting point of ``analytical aesthetics".
__ALPHA_LVL3__ 2. ``ANALYTICAL AESTHETICS''.The representatives of `` analytical aesthetics" are characterized above all by their high estimation of the philosophical views of Wittgenstein in his later period. Thus, to quote one of the leaders of this aesthetics, Morris Weitz, these ideas have ``furnished contemporary aesthetics with a starting point for any future progress" (4, 30). Of course, by ``modern aesthetics" Weitz understands `` analytical aesthetics".^^1^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ Besides Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations great influence __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 55. 54
Weitz states the programme of ``analytical aesthetics" as follows. The primary aim of easthetics is not to seek new definitions of those basic concepts which are used in discussions about art, but to elucidate the use or employment of these concepts. As Wittgenstein stated: ``Don't ask for the meaning, ask for the use" (20, 80). Instead of asking what ``art'', ``artistic creation'', ``expression'' and ``form'' are, in the hope of receiving real definitions of these concepts, the analysts explain the logical nature of those terms which are actually used in the discussion of artistic matters (20, 80).~^^1^^
This programme was given a more developed justification by M. Weitz in his article ``The Role of Theory in Aesthetics''. He correctly states that the problems of the theory of art, .questions about the nature of art and its definition were always the central issue of aesthetics and characterized it as a philosophy of art. As an analyst Weitz is unhappy with the ``traditional'' approach to aesthetics. He asks whether a theory of art is in general, or in principle, possible which is understood as art's true definition, embracing a range of necessary and sufficient properties of art. No, answers the ``analyst'', a theory of art is logically impossible, for art does not and cannot have a system of necessary and sufficient properties. In his justification of this assertion the author bases his arguments on Wittgenstein's ideas, developed in the Philosophical Investigations. In contrast to the ``closed'' concepts of logics and mathematics, the concept of ``art'' (like other empirico-descriptive and normative concepts) is ``open''. This means that it is impossible to identify some of art's necessary properties because of the emergence of new forms of art, that the conditions of the application of this concept are changeable, etc.
_-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 54. was exerted on the analytical aestheticians by his Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, published posthumously.~^^1^^ As R. W. Hepburn shows the analysts try and apply their technique only to critical discussions of art, ignoring the beauty of nature (6, 285).
55From what has been said it is easy to identify the problem which is posed and examined by the analytical aestheticians, as well as the metaphysical and idealistic means of resolving it which they propose. There can be no doubt that art as an object of aesthetics changes with time. Many of the theoretical premises which claim to be ``universal'', inherent in ``art as a whole'', are in actual fact historically transient. MarxistLeninist aesthetics as a historically developing science, does not, in principle, place restrictions on the possibility of further changing the object of aesthetics. It can subsequently be extended or narrowed.
On the basis of the fact that art develops and, consequently, its definitions change and develop, Weitz and other analysts quite unjustifiably reject any possibility of true definitions and theories of art. They entirely discount the dialectics of the relative and absolute in the cognition of art. In their campaign against ``metaphysics'' in aesthetics they are themselves to all intents and purposes proceeding from a metaphysical notion of the ``theory'' of art, interpreted by them not as a process but as absolute, completed cognition. For this reason, when they see a collision of different theories and a certain move backwards in the history of aesthetics this leads to the sceptical conclusion that modern theories of art have no closer a relation to the truth than the theories of Plato's time, and that, in general, theory in the required ``classical'' sense will never be achieved (4, 27). M. Weitz and the other analysts are in fact declaring, in the guise of a criticism of ``traditional theories'', that the essence of art is unknowable.
So what does Weitz propose? We should not start with the question ``what is art?" but with the question ``what is the concept of `art' like?" The main problem of aesthetics is to explain the relations beween the use of certain types of concept and the conditions in which they can be properly applied.
The programme set out above fixed the results of work already carried out by the analysts in applying the methods of linguistic philosophy to aesthetics. These results are best 56 represented in two collections: Aesthetics and Language (1954)^^1^^ and Problems in Aesthetics (1959) (See 7; 10; 14; 18; 19).
The authors of these works are primarily aiming at a `` diagnosis" and explanation of the incorrect application of concepts in aesthetics, of the confusion which is mainly of linguistic origin. They oppose the ``traps of generalization''. John Passmore sees one of these ``traps'' in the very concept of ``aesthetics'' and the concept of ``aesthetic experiences''. Perhaps, he asks, the truth lies in the assertion that there is no aesthetics, but there are principles of literary, music etc. criticism? Perhaps it is better to concentrate on the real differences between the actual works of art, on the specific features of the different arts, than to operate with the concept of ``aesthetic experiences"? The analysts maintain that superficial generalizations have led to irregular assimilations of differences, and to reductionism. The word ``art'', writes W. B. Gallic, cannot be reduced to a single thing, as the idealists propose. It is reducible neither to naturalistic elements (H. Taine) nor to imagination and expression (Croce and Collingwood), nor to handiwork nor to illusion. Art is a plurality. A tendency to make incorrect generalizations, claims Gallic, has led to a predisposition to ``essentialism'', inherent in idealistic aesthetics, for example in Collingwood and Croce. The idealists are looking for the special ``essence'' of art, its ultimate nature, and that using methods which differ from the empirical and mathematical, from the methods of ``common sense''. Incorrect analogies constitute another source of the confusion. Expressions of the type ``music of poetry'', ``the logic of music'', etc. lead to the accent in such cases being placed on the general and trivial and not on the unique, on what is specific to art. Beryl Lake traces the tautologies and a priori nature of theories of art on the example of Croce and Clive Bell. In addition to establishing the criterion for the correct use of the word ``art'', a number of studies examine the use _-_-_
~^^1^^ In his introduction William Elton, the editor of the collection, writes that this book is a ``model of analytical procedure in aesthetlics" (3, 1).
57 of the concepts ``expression'', ``feeling'', ``truth'' (27) and ``meaning'' on the basis of a critical analysis of different theories.In accordance with the orientation of linguistic philosophy the followers of this school investigate the various ways in which language is used in criticism (in ``descriptions'', `` interpretations" and ``evaluations''), and such terms as ``value'', and show how criticism differs from science. The critic does not prove: he merely gives information about the work of art, like a pianist who demonstrates the value of a sonata when he plays it. There are no arguments which can support aesthetic evaluations. It is not the critic's task to justify anything. It is precisely in this sort of criticism that the analytical aestheticians see the important problems of the philosophy of art to lie.
The analysts therefore see the task of aesthetics, like the task of philosophy, to consist in the elucidation of the criteria for the correct use of concepts. Aesthetics, in their opinion, should be concerned with nothing else (20, 80). Even after such a brief look at the main problems which analysts tackle in the field of aesthetics it can be seen that they keep strictly to the programme worked out by linguistic philosophy.
Analytical aesthetics and linguistic philosophy have the same epistemological roots, connected with the objective requirement for scientific study, including philosophical and aesthetic, to elaborate linguistic and logical means of analysing the very methodology of research, and in particular of analysing the different use of words in aesthetic studies. The elaboration of such means being the most important task of aesthetics that acts as a metatheory in this case, will, of course, also assist a more exact and non-ambiguous use of terms and the avoidance of verbal confusion (ambiguity, false analogies, categorial errors etc.). For this reason it would be wrong to think that the writings of the analytical aestheticians contain nothing of note as far as the elaboration of special ``technical'' means of such an analysis goes, although on the whole the results of their work are very modest. And one of the main reasons for this lies in the misleading idealistic principles behind their methodology.
58Thus the analysts reject any notion of aesthetics as a science assisting a correct understanding of art itself, of its essence, the laws of its development, or its social role, and instead reduce its purpose to the correct use of words ``about art" (taking, moreover, as their definitive criterion for such use instead of the ``immediate datum" of the Vienna Circle the no less metaphysical notion ``everyday usage''). While criticizing false theories of art the analysts did not endeavour to work out the principles of a consistent, materialistic, scientific theory of art, considering a justification of any theory to be in principle metaphysics and suggesting nothing more than a ``cure'' or ``therapeutics'' for these theories.
Criticizing the idealism of the Young Hegelians Marx and Engels showed in their German Ideology that all the forms and products of consciousness cannot be dissolved by mental criticism (by transformation into ``apparitions'', ``spectres'', ``whimsies'') and theoretical deduction. In fact the critical stance of the analysts with regard to what they see as erroneous aesthetic theories is analogous to the critical zeal of the Young Hegelians and Proudhon. Slightly paraphrasing Marx's ironic characteristic of the latter we can say that the representatives of analytical aesthetics worked with the following theory: if aesthetics wants to ``eliminate all the drawbacks" from which it suffers it has only to alter its language and abandon certain incorrect terms. To do this it must apply to the analysts, to their model of analytical procedure with the language of aesthetics.
``The course taken by the linguistic philosophers was unsuitable either for a correct study of the philosophical problems of language, or for the resolution of traditional philosophical problems" (5, 108; 16). This conclusion applies fully to analytical aesthetics, which has proved insubstantial for the solution of the radical problems of aesthetics.
It should be stated that many of the representatives of bourgeois aesthetics themselves are sceptical about the socalled achievements of analytical aesthetics, often pinpointing its shortcomings. Such, for example, is the estimation of analytical aesthetics given by Thomas Munro, a highly respected scholar in bourgeois aesthetics. No one would 59 disagree, he writes, that aesthetics needs its concepts and misleading notions cleared up. But Munro feels, along with, in his opinion, a lot of other scholars, that ``analytical philosophy seldom clarifies anything''. Analytical aestheticians commonly display undue scepticism towards all positive generalizations in aesthetics. The difficulty of defining notions like ``beauty'' and ``aesthetics'' have led them to reject any objective ``referent'' of these terms. They pay little attention to the arts, the history of culture, psychology or sociology. They limit the role of philosophy and aesthetics to a minimum and deny that art is a factor of progress in improving human conditions.
Similar arguments were adduced against the analysts by the American aesthetician Maurice Mandelbaum in his article ``Family Resemblances and Generalization Concerning the Arts" and in his paper ``Linguistic Analysis and Aesthetic Theory" at the plenary session of 5th International Congress of Aesthetics. Noting that the method of linguistic analysis has had a palpable influence on aesthetic theory, Mandelbaum expressed his conviction that a number of the partis pris of analytical philosophy are prejudicial to the study of art. The author justly criticizes the analysts' claims that traditional attemps to make generalizations about art and its essence are in principle misguided, and correctly establishes a connection between these claims and Wittgenstein's neopositivist doctrine of the ``family resemblances".
In October 1962, at the annual meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics a symposium was held on the theme: ``Analytical Philosophy and Aesthetics''. During this forum a number of serious criticisms were levelled at analytical aesthetics. Thus Jerome Stolnitz pointed to the insubstantiality of the analysts' claims that their definitions and clarification of concepts could be of help to art criticism. It is impossible to achieve this end while ignoring extra-linguistic contexts, which is precisely what the analysts are attempting to do. The investigations made by analytical aestheticians, in his opinion, can at best play an auxiliary, tactical, heuristic role (23). In his paper another speaker, Bertram Jessup, who has some affinity with the analytical movement, made the 60 traditional disclaimer that the analysts were not united by any common principles and that analytism is merely an activity, etc. Nevertheless, he correctly noted the eclecticism of this direction in the semantic philosophy of art. He takes a more sober view of the analysts' claims to be bringing about a ``revolution'' in philosophy and aesthetics, which is supposed to consist in a total rejection of theoretical generalizations. Jessup shows that in practice the analysts inevitably also have recourse to generalizations, like those whom they criticize. For this reason the ``revolution'' is not as momentous as the analysts would wish it to be thought (9). Along with Black, he believes that analytism could best be described as a sound working method and even then none too effective in a positive role.
The criticism of analytical aesthetics by Munro, Mandelbaum and other bourgeois aestheticians (22) has the substantial shortcoming that it fails to reveal the social significance of this tendency in bourgeois aesthetic thought. This significance can be seen, in particular, in the fact that analytical aesthetics to all intents and purposes-though it does not directly investigate the problems of art itself-by insisting in principle that the aesthetician and critic do not concern themselves with the approval or disapproval of aesthetic theories or even works of art, provides justification for every theory and practice of modernistic art.
[61] __NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter III. __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Neo-Hegelian Linguistic Conception ofIn this chapter we shall deal with the philosophical conceptions of art of the leader of Italian neo-Hegelianism, Benedetto Croce, and of the leading representative of English neo-Hegelianism, Robin Collingwood. As will be shown in the course of the analysis, there are grounds to view Croce's and Collingwood's aesthetic conceptions as belonging to the mainstream of the semantic philosophy of art.
The philosophy of a major Italian scholar, Benedetto Croce (1866--1952), is not usually considered within the context of the semantic orientation. The point is that, although problems of language and symbolism occupy an important place in his thought, they are nonetheless not the main theme of his ``philosophy of the spirit''. All the same, his philosophy contains in embryo the main idea of semantic epistemology: that ``expression'' (language, symbolism) creates the object of cognition. As far as Croce's aesthetics is concerned, its central idea of the inalienable unity of intuition and expression means for him the identity of art and language, and of the philosophy of art and the philosophy of language.
Croce's aesthetic views underwent constant changes throughout his long life. We can identify two basic landmarks in all these changes: Aesthetics as Science ot Expression and General Linguistics (the so-called ``first aesthetics''), published in 1902, and La Poesia, Croce's last major work on aesthetics, published in 1936. Below we shall consider the conception of art put forward in Aesthetics, since it is precisely in this work that the semantic thesis of the identity of art and language received its most developed treatment. 62 The changes made to this conception in La Poesia will be briefly characterized below (Ch. Ill, 2).
What led the Italian aesthetician to his notion of the identity of art and language? Croce himself later remarked that he first discovered the creative nature of language, and then identified art and language (20; 29; 41). A different opinion is held by the majority of commentators, who argue that Croce moved away from aesthetics towards language, and that he needed linguistics for a new substantiation of aesthetics. Leaving aside the question of how Croce arrived at his identification of art and language, it is possible to state that this thesis logically follows from Croce's theory of intuition as expression.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ 1. THE INTUITION-EXPRESSION THEORY IN CROCE'SCroce's aesthetics is a component of his philosophy of the spirit: it is concerned with the intuitive form of the spirit, or with intuition. Intuition is identified with the activity of expression. By ``expression'' Croce understands language. This includes, alongside the words of everyday speech, the words of the poet, the notes of the musician, the forms of the artist, lines, colours, sounds, etc. (1, 8). Thus intuition-expression covers both language in the proper meaning of the word and art, which are regarded as identical in Croce's philosophy of the spirit.
Every expression has an aesthetic character. Croce distinguishes aesthetic expressions from naturalistic expressions, which are concerned with the relation between cause and action. Naturalistic expressions qua natural signs are excluded from language, since they lack the true character of `` activeness" and ``spirituality'', inherent in ``spiritual'' expressions. Regarding semiotics as the study of precisely such natural signs, Croce maintains that aesthetics, or the study of spiritual expression, has nothing in common with semiotics.
What is the relation between language and art, understood as expressions, and the concept of ``symbol''? Croce does not object to this concept so long as it concurs with ``expression'', which means that the symbol is inseparable from what is 63 expressed or symbolized-from intuition, if the symbol is identical with intuition. ``If, however, the symbol is something separable from intuition, if on the one hand one can express the symbol and on the other the thing symbolized... this posited symbol is the exposition of an abstract concept" (1, 35). In this case Croce is again regarding symbol neither as expression nor as language in its proper sense. Thus Croce rejects the symbolic nature of language and art, relying on the principle of the identity of intuition and expression, a principle which, in his opinion, determines the essence of language and art. At the same time it is true to say that he recognizes the intuitive symbolic nature of language and art.^^1^^
The principle of the identity of intuition and expression is in essence the principle of the identity of content and form. The non-dialectic identification of form and content, intuition and expression was criticized by many western authors (16; 35). Many criticized the thesis of the identity of intuition and expression for its reduction of the material (expression) to the ideal (intuition). This is the direction taken by the criticism of R. Patankar and the Italian aestheticians-Calogero, Banfi, Paci.
It should be borne in mind that Croce distinguishes `` expression"---the ideal, spiritual, inner---and its material manifestation in the outer, physical world, something which can be designated with the terms ``objectivization'' or ``externalization''. The Italian philosopher's mistake was not in his making this distinction, but in his incorrect interpretation of the role and place of externalization both in the process of intuitive cognition as a whole, and in the sphere of language and art in particular. Albert Hofstadter, professor of philosophy at Columbia University, criticizes the Crocean idea of the inalienable unity of presentation (intuition) and expression, which, in his view, was the central idea in Croce's idealistic _-_-_
~^^1^^ In the opinion of the well-known American aesthetician and semanticist Abraham Kaplan the view of art as a symbol is a characteristic of modern aesthetics since Croce (Freud and the 20th Century, New York, 1957).
64 aesthetic theory and had enormous influence in the first half of this century, for its radical subjectivization of the phenomenon of art. Croceanism, asserts Hofstadter, was a reaction against naturalism (literal reproduction), ``essentialist'' realism (reproducing the essence of the object) and metaphysical idealism (reproduction in the finite appearance of the infinite reality etc.). But this reaction, argues the American professor, led Croce to subordinate the expression of objective content to the actual subjective act of expression, in which he in fact saw the essence of art. Hofstadter correctly points out one of the main shortcomings of Croce's aesthetics (in the process justly emphasizing the continuity between Croce's ideas and Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms), although he does so in the interests of idealism, campaigning for `` objectivism" in the spirit of Schelling, Hegel, Husserl's phenomenology etc.It follows from Croce's identification of art and language that ``the science of art and the science of language, aesthetics and linguistics, are by no means two different sciences .. . but one and the same science.... General linquistics, as far as it is reducible to a science or philosophy, is nothing other than aesthetics.... Philosophy of language and philosophy of art are the same thing. ... The problems which linguistics seeks to resolve, and the errors against which it has campaigned and continues to do so, are the very ones which occupy and stir up aesthetics. If it is not always easy it is however always possible to reduce the scientific questions of linguistics to their aesthetic formula" (1, 137--38).
The intuition-expression theory not only determined the fact of the identification of art and language and of aesthetics and linguistic philosophy, it also conditioned their concrete characteristics. In this process the demands of the philosophical system frequently meant that language and art were dogmatically ascribed features which are contradictory to the facts.
The terms ``intuition'' and ``expression'' are not used consistently by Croce, and this leads to great confusion. Intuition-expression is mainly understood as a process of activity, a universal form of activity. According to Croce, intuition is __PRINTERS_P_65_COMMENT__ 5---826 65 theoretical cognitive activity, which uses fantasy to create individual images of things. Croce tried to interpret intuition dialectically both as cognition or reflection, and as action or creation. But the Italian philosopher's thought, as Plekhanov pointed out, is precisely deficient in a dialectical element, which explains almost all his errors. Anxious to avoid the weaknesses inherent in the view of cognition as a passive ``mirror'' reflection, he was unable to find any other alternative than the principle of ``idealistic activism'', according to which the subject creates the object of cognition. It was precisely this approach to the problem of object and subject that gave Plekhanov grounds for the assertion that the Kantian critique left a deep, ineradicable stamp on his entire world-view, that as a neo-Hegelian Croce corrects Hegel's philosophy in the spirit of subjective idealism.
The Kantian idea that the world is constructed by a transcendental act of reason is transformed by Croce into the theory (in the spirit of the semantic trend) of the intuitive-- expressive act which constructs human reality, in which expression is language, understood as a spiritual formation.
The intuitive-expressive act is the subjective, individual, free creation of unique, individual images. It is from this point of view exclusively that Croce analyses language and art, which alone is sufficient to give a one-sided character to his linguistic and aesthetic theories. But it is not onesidedness which is the point. Croce does not merely limit himself to a consideration of certain aspects of language and art, he in principle reduces language and art to these aspects.
Language and art are interpreted by him as mere speech, or, to be more precise, as the process of individual, subjective ``speech'' creation. Every event of language and art, Groce maintains, is a fully individual fact that exists only in given, concrete acts of expression, whether of a sentence or a poem, which are born and die instantaneously, and are indivisible and unique. Every work of art is a small revolution which every time contains its own language as a unique miracle. New form means a new novel, a new picture, etc. Language and art constitute a continuous process of creation, 66 realisable at any given moment; it is people who talk, paint, compose verse or perceive. It is only possible to reveal language and art in the work of the spirit of these people. The reality of language and art consists either in the acts of producing sentences and works of art or in the acts of their perception. Outside these acts they are dead. The search for an ideal language and art, which would have stability of concept, or rather abstraction, Croce declares to be absurd. `` Language does not have any reality outside utterances and sets of utterances and written statements... For what is the art of any given people, if not the totality of all their artistic works?" (1, 142).
Insofar as intuition-expressions are individual, unique and incomparable one to the other, any classification in languages, such as of parts of speech, or in art, such as the categorization into types and genres, has at best for Croce the practical use of an auxiliary method or pattern, useful for the learning of languages and arts, but devoid of any objective, theoretical value and unable to pretend to any philosophical truth (5, 43--49). The unique character of expressions also makes translation either between languages or in any area of the arts impossible.
Croce's position, which we have discussed above, is, with regard both to language and to art, vulnerable to criticism on many points. Naturally, language and art only exist in objective reality in the individual speech and individual works of art of many billions of past, present and future people. Language ``in general" and art ``in general" are abstractions, ideal invariants, constructs. When Croce says that we do not know what language in general and art in general are, he is making exactly the same claim as Karl Wilhelm von Nageli, who asserted that we do not know what time in general, space in general, matter in general, etc. are. With regard to Nageli Engels wrote that with this he was merely saying that we first make abstractions from the real world in our heads and then we cannot cognize these self-made abstractions because they are things of thought and not of the senses. Croce was unable to approach in a dialectic way the problem of abstraction and abstract essences in linguistics and in the general theory of 67 art, or the closely connected problem of invariance. In his rejection of the existence of language and art as an objective system of socially significant categories, norms and structures independent of the individual (26), Croce is close to the positivist identification of language and art with an ``immediate datum''. This aspect of the Italian thinker's views characterizes him as a ``nominalist'' with reference both to language and to art.
It is only worthwhile to reproach Croce for subjectivism and a negation of the objectivity of language and art for asserting that language and art actually exist only in individual ``speech'' insofar as this assertion is not supplemented by his statements about the social nature of this individual speech. Croce has indeed been reproached for ignoring the social nature of language. Thus the Soviet philosopher Valentin Asmus maintains that Croce's position ``leads to a negation of the social nature of language" (15, 146). Robert Hall writes that Croce's idealism totally fails to take account of social conditions in its study of language (25, 35). In answer to criticisms of this sort Croce wrote in a letter to Karl Vossler (in 1923) that his individual is not abstract and not empirical: he is individual as a historical situation and therefore social, and that he has already discussed this misunderstanding of his position in his Philosophy oi Practice, Economics and Ethics (See 13).
As Marx had pointed out, the individual may be manifested and realised as a social entity, even if his activity does not form direct part of collective activity parallel with other actions. But the social character of the individual and his language, which he is given in the capacity of a social product is derived from the forms and means of material activity, from communication within the collective. Marx described the notion of the development of language without cohabiting and intercommunicating individuals as outright nonsense.
However, within the framework of his philosophical system Croce explains the social character of the individual and of his language in an idealistic way: as a universality of spirit, which is embodied in every speech act. The idealistic 68 ``philosophy of the spirit" ignores the factor of actual interaction of individual languages in the process of the activity and actual interaction of the individuals themselves-an interaction which determines everything in the individual language.
__*_*_*__The ideal, spiritual nature of intuition-expression in Croce's philosophy required him, insofar as language and art are identified with intuition-expression, to recognize the exclusively spiritual, ideal, inner character of language and art.^^1^^ In the foreword to the fifth edition of Aesthetics (1921) Croce wrote that the book was conceived and written in the atmosphere of the universal dominance of positivism, and had as its aim the defence of the spirituality of art. The idea of ``spirituality'', of the inner, ideal character of language and art had already been given clear formulation in the Tesi (1900) to his Aesthetics. In these Croce wrote that when we acquired the gift of inner speech, when a figure or statue appears clearly and vividly in our minds, or we alight on a tune, expression is born and has taken full form. Developing this idea in Aesthetics the author writes that language is a spiritual creation and will remain such forever, that the work of art is always inner, and that what is described as outer can no longer be a work of art (1, 50, 139); that the view of linguistics and aesthetics as a natural science has to do with the confusion of expression in language and art with expression in the physical sense.
Thus by identifying language to speech the Italian philosopher is rejecting the latter's material nature. He rejects the fact which forms the basis for the materialistic conception of language, namely that ``the `mind' is from the outset afflicted _-_-_
~^^1^^ ``The absolute subjectivity of Italian neo-Hegelianism,'' writes James Collins, ``required him to locate the artistic process entirely within the ideal realm, without any essential reference to an independent product or object of intuition" (18, 57).
69 with the curse of being 'burdened' with matter in the form of ... language'', that language, the primary component of thought that reflects the process of formation of ideas, is also sensory by nature.^^1^^What role does Croce accord the process of exteriorization (objectivization) of intuition-expression in the material physical sphere? He believes that it is necessary to accomplish exteriorization because it can be ``preserved'' and ``conveyed to others" in the form of ``physical stimuli of reproduction" (1, 93, 106). Exteriorization was referred to the sphere of practical spirit, meaning that Croce had to make in reference to language and art all those conclusions which logically proceeded from the metaphysical dichotomy of the theoretical and practical in his philosophy. He did make these conclusions, even though he had to move in direct defiance of the facts.
For the Italian philosopher theory logically precedes practice and is totally independent of it. In accordance with this dogmatic and metaphysical requirement of the system, the intuitive-expressive activity of language and art is seen to precede the practical activity of the materialization of images, whether by sounds, or colours, etc., and is totally independent of it. The artist, Croce declares categorically, never creates a form he has not already envisaged in his imagination. In all cases of exteriorization, he continues, we are confronted by a new fact which is joined to the first and subject to laws quite different from those of the first fact, and which we do not have to pay attention to, for the time being, although we recognize now that it is the production of things and may be a practical fact or one of the will (1, 50).
Practical activity in language and art is subject not to _-_-_
~^^1^^ In commenting on these views, V. Panfilov correctly points out that they are in need of clarification in connection with the necessity to distinguish between language and speech. If we take into account the non-concurrence of language and speech, he writes, we could rephrase Marx's and Engels' words as follows: speech is actual consciousness (V. Z. Panfilov, Vzaimootnoshenie yazyka i myshleniya (The Correlation of Language and Thought) Moscow 1971).
70 aesthetic but to physical laws, whether these are the phonetic laws of language or the laws of statics in architecture. The search for a transition or link between spirituality and the physical complex of colours, sounds and voices is, in Croce's opinion, a hopeless undertaking.Acts of material exteriorization are goal-oriented and have at their disposal knowledge about the means of achieving this goal, and therefore Croce calls them technical acts (or technique). The latter are important for the process of exteriorisation for reproduction, but have no influence whatever on the intuitive-expressive processes in language and art. A good artist can be a poor technician. In this period Croce fully rejects the significance of any technique, i.e. of those acts which presuppose knowledge about their goal and the means of attaining it, for practising intuition-expression. ``Expression has no means, it just sees, it wants no goal.. .'' (1, 108). Nor can there be any such thing as, for example, dramatic technique in the aesthetic sense: there can only be theatrical technique.
K. Gilbert and H. Kuhn point out in their A History of Esthetics that of all the aspects of Croce's ``simplification'' his denial of the physical, objective reality of art-work roused more objection than any other. Marxist critics pointed to the blatantly idealistic nature of this.theory, to its subjectivism. ``The desire to isolate aesthetic expression from exteriorization resulted in particular from the idealistic postulate of art as a totally free, undetermined sphere of man's activity" (19, 103). Croce contradicts the facts when he rejects materially palpable activity as a constitutive element both of linguistic and artistic creation. If they are not expressed in sounds or other matter language and art do not exist for others and cannot be analysed. When they are materialized, according to Croce, they lose their theoretical and scientific significance. The agnosticism which results from this is inevitable in the Crocean conception. His disregard of the materially palpable side of art relieves Croce's aesthetics of the need to study the laws of the existence of different forms of art. Croce underestimated the role of ``technique'' in the properly aesthetic intuitive-expressive processes of creation. In 71 consequence of this he did not study the technical procedures of the different forms of art.
Croce contradicts himself when he ascribes to exteriorization the function of physical stimulus of reproduction. If the physical side of art is for him an aesthetically heterogeneous fact it cannot serve as an objective basis for the process of reproduction, which must be regarded as wholly dependent on the subjective perception of the intuiting agent. It also follows from this that communication of aesthetic experience is impossible, and Croce is inconsistent when he says that intuition-expressions, being exteriorized, can be conveyed to others. This inconsistent admission is most likely caused by the actual conditions of the existence of art, rather than by the demands of his philosophy. Croce either had to reject the identification of expression and intuition, or renounce his view of the communicability of aesthetic experience. Croce failed to understand that communication is an essential factor of aesthetic expression and in no way an appendage, having no relation to the essence of the matter.
__*_*_*__Human cognition, according to Croce, ``is either intuitive cognition or logical cognition; cognition with the help of imagination or with the help of the intellect; cognition of the individual or cognition of the universal; of the things themselves or of their relationships-in other words, either a creator of images or a creator of concepts" (1, 1). ``From this contraposition of two types of cognition,'' writes V. F. Asmus, ``it is clear that Croce's theory excludes intuition from the intellectual forms of knowledge. . . It exists alongside intellectual knowledge as a form of non-intellectual cognition. Moreover, intuition is not only placed on a par with intellect, as an equal and parallel form, it is proclaimed a basic, primal form with respect to concept, independent of the intellect and autonomous" (15, 134).
In accordance with this interpretation of intuition-- expression language and art in their primal, aesthetic function acquire an alogical, extra-intellectual character. In Croce's 72 opinion, there is no such thing as logical expression. Expression is always aesthetic. In many places of his Aesthetics the author writes that language can exist without concepts, and grammar is separable from logic. In this point Croce parts company with Humboldt, who interpreted language above all as the logical activity of spirit, which creates concepts, and is closer to Hugo Steinthal, who freed language from any dependence whatever on logic. Like language, argues Croce, the facts of art, whether these are ``a painter's impression of moonlight; a cartographer's map; a musical motif, tender or energetic; the words of a sighing lyric poem, can all perfectly easily be intuitive facts, without the shadow of any relation to the intellect" (1, 2).
Croce's theory of the ``alogical'' extra-intellectual character of language was also subjected to serious criticism. Many authors pointed out that Croce, while he correctly identified the alogical aspects (or functions) of language-the aesthetic, emphatic, etc., exaggerated their significance and in essence ignored the logical intellectual essence of language. A persuasive critical analysis of Croce's theory of the ``alogicality'' of language can be found in V. F. Asmus' work Problema intuitsii v filosofii i matematike (Intuition in Philosophy and Mathematics).
For Croce art has an alogical character, as language does. Poetry, he writes, lies outside logic (3, 148). The Crocean principle of the alogicality of art is discussed in detail in a monograph by the Soviet philosopher Yelena Topuridze, Estetika Benedetto Croce (1967). The author is careful to avoid superficial criticism, and points to a number of profound and valuable ideas in Croce's thought. At the same time she remarks that as a result of metaphysical ``dialectics'' ``the correct notion of the sui generis existence of the intellectual factor (as well as of other spiritual factors) in the imagination becomes declarative and intuition is turned from logical into pre-logical and extra-intellectual intuition" (42, 80).
Croce was undoubtedly right to emphasize the role of the intuition in art. ``Where Croce errs is not, of course, in his idea that artistic intuition performs the function of cognition, or that it performs this function by specific means, which 73 distinguish it from science. It is when he asserts that artistic (intuitive) cognition is non-intellectual and extra-intellectual cognition" (15, 136). Following Kant, although not in such a categorical form, Croce understands by intuition only sensual intuition and ridicules those scholars who recognize the activity of ``mental imagination'', ``intuitive intellect" or `` intellectual intuition''. There is no such thing, wrote Croce, as aesthetic intellectual intuition in art (1, 65). By rejecting intellectual intuition Croce could not fail to come to the conclusion that concepts cannot be expressed either in language or in art. The word and the work of art are individual, while concepts are universal. Speech and art as intuitiveexpressive activity only constitute form, while concepts are intellectual content, but the quality of its expression (as form) is not derivable from the essence of a concept (as content). For this reason the transition from the concept to its expression is impossible in Croce's aesthetics. This transition is in essence something completely irrational. Concepts in language and art can only be designated, and in relation to them expression is no longer expression, but merely a sign or index (1, 43). In art such signs or symbols are the statements of abstract concepts, allegories-low art, which copy science (See 7). The concept is faced by an unhappy choice: either not to be expressed in art, or to be designated, thereby lowering art to an approximation of a science. In Aesthetics Croce suggests a solution to the problem on another level, namely by studying the special properties of concepts and the intellectual factor in art as an element of intuition, but this suggestion remained only a suggestion until Croce's later period when he developed it.
We have reviewed the Crocean thesis of the identity of art and language, and as we have shown, this interpretation had an openly idealistic character, recognized both by Croce and his followers.^^1^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ As an example we can take a comment by Vossler, who shares Croce's idealistic ideas. Pointing out that Croce's philosophy has an idealistic character as a whole, he writes that for this reason the identification of language and poetry also has an idealistic character (43, 508).
74 __ALPHA_LVL3__ 2. ART AS POETIC EXPRESSION.Croce's views on art, stated in his ``first'' aesthetics, were later subjected to substantial alterations (See 24; 39). One of the least tenable theses of the Aesthetics, as we have pointed out above, was the absolute identification of art and linguistic expressions. Anxious to free himself from the fetters of this identification Croce differentiates the concept of intuition. In the essay Pure Intuition and the Lyrical Character of Art (1908) he introduces the concept of ``lyrical intuition" in art, distinguishing it from other intuitions. The question of what this distinction consists in is only answered by Croce-both in this article and in his subsequent writings-in the most general way. Artistic intuition or intuition in art is ``pure'', lyrical intuition, and these are not abstract concepts but a ``state of mind'', affected content, which possesses the quality of feeling (5, 25). Intuition in art is a synthesis of feeling and image, it is ``contemplated'' feeling (See 38). Carlo de Simone writes that when Croce reached his understanding that artistic expression is the clarification of feeling he realized that this property of artistic expression could not be a common feature of all linguistic acts. This was the first blow to the absolute identity of art and language (40, 7).
Croce introduces a classification of expressions. These classifications were already present in embryonic form in Aesthetics, where true expressions are distinguished from the naturalistic expression of feelings and signs of concepts. This classification is most fully presented in La Poesia (1937).
Art is now identified not with all types of expressions and language as a whole, but only with poetic expression. In contrast to poetic expressions, which are the only true expressions, i.e. connected with intuition as a theoretical factor of the spirit, language contains three more types of non-poetic expressions-sensual, prosaic and oratorical. Sensual expression is the naturalistic expression of feeling in articulated sounds, for example in interjections. By contrast, poetic expression is not naturalistic and gives theoretical form to feeling. Thus a poetical interjection is already a theoretical fact.
75Prosaic expression is the language of the sciences and logical thought. Its main point of difference from that of art is in its sign character. Here thought is expressed in symbols or signs. By contrast poetry can never be a symbol, i.e. the sign of something else (9, 17, 211). Prose is language which has been purified from its primitive expressiveness. The expressiveness of poetic language is not a complementary feature of prose language, it constitutes the primal essence of this true form of expression. By contrast to the theoretical character of poetic expression, prose expression is made use of for practical purposes and is created by means of practical activity. Whereas poetry has no standards prose does have such standards, or patterns, according to which its effectiveness can be measured. In this the main criterion is truth, along with the criteria of clarity, precision and economy.
In general Croce gives accurate indications of the properties of the language of the sciences, and its differences from poetic expression. It is true that in doing so, as Topuridze points out, he contradicts his own theory of the nature of logical synthesis. According to this theory logical synthesis must contain a true word-intuition and a concept must have a verbal expression. Croce attempts to retain the factor of the true word in its conceptual expression, but here he lacks ``clarity and consistency" and as a result the word and concept are divorced and isolated from one another (42, 141). At the same time, by emphasizing the specific features of poetic expression by comparison with the expression of discursive thought in signs and on this basis rejecting the symbolic, or sign, nature of art Croce inevitably sidesteps the question of the specific nature of poetic expression precisely as a special type of symbolism, or semiotic phenomenon. His isolated statements to the effect that a work of art may be viewed as a symbol, if it is to be approximated to intuition, and that feeling and not idea gives art the ethereal lightness of a symbol (5, 25), remain completely undeveloped.
Art, or poetic expression, must also be distinguished, in Croce's view, from rhetorical expression. In contrast to art the latter constitutes practical activity, the goal of which 76 consists in the evocation of a certain state of mind in people with the aid of articulated sounds.^^1^^ The primary motive for the isolation of this type of expression and its opposition to art is an idealistic and metaphysical anxiety to isolate art as a theoretical, autonomous, free activity from everything practical and socially conditioned. For precisely this reason poetry is contrasted to rhetorical expression as to a practical language, a social activity, which creates signs with the aim of communication and necessarily presupposing an addressee. But for art, argues Croce, an addressee is not obligatory. Earlier, in his lectures under the heading The Defence of Poetry, Croce had written that pure poetry, in the pure sense of the term, does not communicate a conception, a judgement (14, 22). Rhetorical expression as practical activity is subject to all the restrictions and control of society, while art is ``free''.
The Italian aesthetician's ``good'' intention to ``pinpoint'' the specific features of art in comparison to other forms of activity turned into the ``grotesque'' and ``paradoxical'', in the Italian Marxist Antonio Banfi's expression, opposition ``poetry---not poetry''. Moreover, he sees a logical connection between this opposition and the interpretation of art as an autonomous factor of the spirit in the metaphysical sense which this concept acquired in the eyes of the epigones of idealism.
In addition to poetic, sensual, prose and rhetorical expressions Croce also isolates a fifth form of expression: literature, which is constituted by the combination and harmony of different forms of expression, and the combination of poetic form and non-poetic content. Depending on which type of expression is meant in a consideration of literature Croce distinguishes the following classes of literature: the literary processing of feeling (so-called religious literature, etc.), didactic literature (history, science, philosophy, etc.), and rhetorical _-_-_
~^^1^^ Orsini, an American scholar of Croce's aesthetics, has pointed out that Croce realized, long before the modern semanticists, that words are not only a vehicle for thought but also purveyors of stimuli (33, 255--56).
77 literature. The latter is subdivided according to whether it has as its goal (a) to appeal (e.g. patriotic books) or (b) to entertain (detective stories, romances). Croce's classification of literature unquestionably contains many accurate observations. But, as a number of commentators have pointed out (Theodor Osterwalder et al.) it is contradictory to a number of the requirements of his philosophical system-the principle of distinguishing concepts, which requires a definition of the pure essence of each spiritual fact (and for Croce literature does not have such an essence), the theory of categories (good, beautiful, useful, true etc.) (See 34; 36).The main tendency in Croce's distinction between poetry and literature is to ``divorce'' various types of ``literary'' works (e.g. political poetry) from real art, from ``poetry'' (8, 265), and to regard them as quasi-art. Croce pointed out that, despite its poetic covering, the essence of such literature is not poetic (10, 136). This tendency is undoubtedly metaphysical in its basis and extremely questionable in its results.^^1^^ Croce's idea of quasi-arts received its most developed form in the writings of his successor Collingwood, in which its metaphysical essence is more clearly revealed.
Insofar as external expressions are fixed in articulated speech, and unpoetical content can be clothed in poetical form, their difference can only be established on the basis of their signification. The classification of expressions given by Croce is in essence his ``theory of meaning''. The nature of the meaning of an expression is determined, in Croce's view, not so much by its objective content and objective structure as by the establishment of an ``inner position''. Poetic meaning is determined by the position of a pure expressive act, and prosaic by the position of a conceptual, logical act. The poetical position is characterized by rapture and _-_-_
~^^1^^ Wolfgang Kayser, one of the leading modern western critics, takes an extremely critical stance with regard to Croce's criterion for the distinction between literature and poetry. There are no grounds. Writes Kayser, to exclude as objects of the study of poetry (as Croce does) Horace, Moliere, Byron and others (W. Kayser. Das spzachliche Kunstwerk. Bern und Munchen, 1960).
78 ecstasy, the literary by control and reflection. The establishment of positions depends on the context.^^1^^Croce's approach to the analysis of meaning, and in particular to the analysis of the meaning of works of art, distracts the scholar from the study of those objective properties, of that objective structure inherent to the language of art, which is the ``primal'' and essential prerequisite for the emergence of a poetic ``position'' in relation to works of art.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ 3. BEAUTY AS ``SUCCESSFUL EXPRESSION''.``We can define beauty," writes Croce in Aesthetics, ``as successful expression, or better still, as expression plain and simple, for expression, when it does not succeed, is in no way expression" (1, 77). Croce's definition of beauty means that beauty is not an inner property of an object, but a meaning of a language which has to be known. This is a subjectivist theory, continuation of Hume and Kant. By restricting the existence of the beautiful to the sphere of expressions in language and art Croce denies the existence of the beautiful in nature or natural, physical beauty. There are two factors behind this negation. One, the positive factor, has to do with critical theories of beauty as an essence independent of man's activity. Croce considers among them the transcendental theories and the naturalistic conceptions of beauty as a property of physical natural things. The beautiful, in Croce's view, is not a physical fact and does not relate to the sphere of things, but to the activity of man. There is no transition from a physical fact to an aesthetic fact. To define beauty as a physical property is tantamount to establishing the economic value of things according to their natural features. But there are no natural or naturally useful things, there is labour and there are demands, from which things acquire the epithet useful. In his work The Young Croce and Marxism the Italian scholar Emilio Agazzi points out that Croce's positive desire to link beauty and human activity is a product of the influence of _-_-_
~^^1^^ In this connection we might point out that Croce develops a point of view extremely close to the contextual theory developed in the west today by a number of linguists and psychologists.
79 Marxism, of his study of the economic phenomenon and the social activity of man connected with it.The negative side of Croce's criticism consists in the fact that, not recognizing objective reality, he absolutizes the factor of man's activity and denies the objectivity of beauty, a denial that goes together with his criticism of the theory of reflection in art. There is no such thing, according to Croce, as objective models of beauty. Art has only itself as a model.
Beauty in the Crocean philosophical system is one of the four main values alongside truth, usefulness and good. Insofar as expression in Croce's philosophy is identical with an aesthetic act, the expression of value is for him synonymous with poetry or art (2, 76). In his explanation of the nature of value itself Croce criticized the Rickertian metaphysical dualism of facts and values, but this was criticism from the right. All reality was reduced to the reality of value. This meant that there was no longer any necessity for a special study of values, which, according to Croce, was philosophy itself. Under the influence of Marxism he identifies the reality of value with human activity, but interprets it in a spiritualistic way. He claims that the only reality is dynamism, activity, purposefulness, spirit (2, 31). Thus the elimination of dualism was in effect the ``monism'' of absolute idealism, and this led Croce to a conception of aesthetic value close to the Platonic theory of beauty as an eternal immutable category. But Platonism cannot explain the transition from the domain of ideal, eternal beauty to the world of chance manifestations. Neither could Croce explain this. As a result Croce developed precisely that dualism he was so vigorously opposing. The subjective-idealistic aspect of Croce's philosophy also gives grounds for viewing his axiological position within the framework of subjectivism.
A consideration of Croce's aesthetics in its philosophical aspect gives grounds for the assertion that it does not make an essential contribution to scientific knowledge. This does not of course mean to say that the Italian aesthetician's observations and conclusions do not contain anything rational with regard to facts of art and the process of artistic creation. Croce was no ordinary thinker, and a great connoisseur of 80 art. The principles of Marxist-Leninist criticism require the retention of everything positive contained in Croce's observations and generalizations, even though this positive is not all that easy to separate from his metaphysical idealism. In actual fact, taken precisely as ``Crocean'', they constitute a part of his philosophical system and lose their objective value in its context.^^1^^
__*_*_*__Croce's philosophy of art had an enormous influence on the development of aesthetic thought in the 20th century (See 21; 22; 27). In the opinion of the authors of A History of Aesthetics, K. Gilbert and H. Kuhn, it was dominant in aesthetics at the end of the last century and throughout at least the first quarter of the present century.
When Gillo Dorfles, characterizing modern tendencies in Italian aesthetics, pointed to a gradual withdrawal from Crocean philosophy, and also stated that only his ``idealistic language" was retained, Gian Orsini took exception to this evaluation. In his opinion, Croce's aesthetics ``is the operational directive" in most departments of Italian literary criticism and historiography (32, 306). Crocean methods of analysing art are influential on the representatives of semantic aesthetics, applying the methods of linguistic analysis (17; 28; 31). It is characteristic that Croce's influence is felt to a certain extent even by those aestheticians of the semantic orientation who criticized his aesthetics (G. Calogero, M. G. Tagliabue et al.).
Outside Italy Croce's ideas influenced the English aesthetics (E. F. Carritt, L. A. Reid, J. A. Smith, S. A. McDowall, L. Abercrombie, A. B. Walkey et al.). Croceanism was represented in American literary criticism by J. E. Spingarn. Croce's influence can be traced in the philosophy of art of H. Read, C. G. Jung. Particular attention should be paid to the representatives of the semantic philosophy of art. First mention here should go to the English philosopher and _-_-_
~^^1^^ The American aesthetician Sidney Zink fails to understand this point. His article ``Intuition and Externalization in Croce's Aesthetics" shows that he interprets in too simplistic a way the task of `` separating" the rational in Croce's aesthetics from his idealistic philosophy (44, 210).
__PRINTERS_P_81_COMMENT__ 6---826 81 aesthetician Collingwood. Richards, another prominent representative of the semantic school, who in fact criticized many of Croce's aesthetic views, also took up many of his ideas about art. The American semanticist Susanne Langer points to the kinship of her aesthetics with Croce's philosophy of art.We should mention in particular the connection between Croce's aesthetics and the decadent tendencies in art, to which he expressed a sharply negative attitude when stating his subjective opinion of them. He wrote in 1948, in support of John Dewey's argument that we must reject the formalists' theories of art, which make beauty consist in lines, colours, lights and shadows, and such, separating it from its psychological content and meaning (11, 204; 38). He protested against ``decadence'' in poetry, considering it the extreme of ``pure poetry" (14, 19), against ``abstract art'', correctly characterizing it as an illness rather than healthy art.
Despite these statements by Croce most of his commentators, Marxist (V. F. Asmus, A. G. Yegorov et al.) and nonMarxist (J. Lamere, J. Collins et al.) point to the formalist essence of his aesthetics (18; 27). Croce's ideas were employed by European formalism and received theoretical substantiation in the writings of G. Lanson, H. Wolfflin and O. Walzel. The ``new criticism'', and ``interpretation theory'', the most formalist tendencies in modern bourgeois literary criticism are largely based on Croce's theories. Thus formalism is the bridge linking Croce with both the practice and the aesthetics of modernism.
In addition to its formalism, another feature of Croce's philosophy of art by virtue of which he is the spiritual father of modernist aesthetics is his intuitivism. His theory of the ``spirituality'' of art, which is intimately connected with intuitivism, is extremely close to the theories of abstractionism. Like Croce they see the greatness of the art they propagate in the fact that it contains a ``pure spirit''. Like Croce they emphasize that there exists only spirit, intuitive energy. Thus, Croce's aesthetic ideas are in essence those very ideas which lie at the basis of all the main schools of modernist art-not only of abstractionism, but also of the theories of futurism, surrealism and expressionism.
[82] __NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter IV. __ALPHA_LVL2__ The English Version of the Crocean TheoryAs a number of Marxist philosophers have pointed out (Alexei Bogomolov, Mikhail Kissel, Maurice Cornforth) Robin George Collingwood (1889--1943), a famous English historian, philosopher and aesthetician, continued in English philosophy the line of absolute idealism of Bradley, Bosanquet and McTaggart, but approached the traditional problems of this school (in particular the problem of the ``unity of experience'') with the tools of Crocean philosophy, which gives us grounds to view him as a neo-Hegelian.
By his own admission and the testimony of many commentators, Collingwood was particularly strongly influenced by Croce in his aesthetic views. This influence is already seen in his early writings on the philosophical problems of art Speculum Mentis, 1924, and Outlines ot a Philosophy ot Art, 1925.^^1^^
Collingwood's later aesthetic writings are marked by an even closer proximity to Croce,^^2^^ which can be seen in his fundamental study. The Principles ot Art, written in 1937. _-_-_
~^^1^^ The latter work constitutes, together with the articles: ``Ruskin's Philosophy" (1925), ``Plato's Philosophy of Art" (1925), ``The Place of Art in Education" (1925--26), ``Form and Content in Art" (1929), the content of the book Essays in the Philosophy of Art. This book only lacked Collingwood's reviews of works on aesthetics, and the chapter ``Aesthetic'' written by him in The Mind, published by a group of authors in 1927.
~^^2^^ Collingwood translated into English Croce's book The Philosophy of Ciambattista Vico, the article ``Aesthetics'' for the Encyclopaedia Britannica and his autobiography. Croce and his follower conducted a friendly correspondence.
__PRINTERS_P_85_COMMENT__ 6* 83 As John Hospers points out, after the appearance of The Principles oi Ait many commentators started regarding Croce's and Collingwood's views, for practical purposes, as a single theory (15). When sending Croce his book The Principles ot Art Collingwood wrote in a letter of April 20, 1938 that he was obliged to the Italian philosopher in all areas of thought and particularly in aesthetics. In certain places he modifies Croce's Aesthetics and even enters into a polemic with it, but, argues Collingwood, even in these modifications he remains true to the spirit and principles to which, in his opinion, Croce gave ``classical expression''. In all essential points the theory set out in The Principles ot Art belongs to Croce. ``My central theme,'' Collingwood writes in this letter, ``is the identity of art and language, and my book is nothing but an exposition of that theme and some of its implications" (11, 315--16).Collingwood is of course right. We cannot but agree with W. Johnston that ``those who would picture Collingwood as a disciple of Croce are overlooking the points on which the two men differ" (16, 84). Collingwood tried to substitute new ideas for Croce's misleading ones, at the same time remaining true to ``the spirit and the principles" of Crocean aesthetics. What resulted from this will be seen from the ensuing description of his The Principles oi Art.
__b_b_b__ __ALPHA_LVL3__ 1. R. G. COLLINGWOOD AS A CROCEANIST.As is the case with Croce, Collingwood's later aesthetics has a philosophical character (22) and is in fact a philosophy of art. Art, according to Collingwood, is a form of experience, of cognition (to be more precise, of self-cognition of the mind), which is realised with the help of the imagination, which corresponds to Croce's intuition. In true Crocean spirit he regards his theory of the imagination as the basis for his theory of aesthetic experience. Art is the activity of the imagination, indivisibly connected with the activity of expression. By combining within itself these two features art becomes identical to language. Language is not identified with speech, but is taken in a broad sense as the purely physical emotion converted by the act of consciousness (7, 273, 274).
84In accordance with Croce's position set out in The Breviary ot Aesthetics (1913), where the essence of art is seen in lyrical intuition, expressing a feeling, Collingwood maintains that the essence of language and art consists in the expression of emotion (7, 273). Croce and Collingwood display a common tendency to see aesthetic experience as essentially expression, or symbolism, of feeling, and to connect it as such with all use of language and other symbolism. The expression of emotions should be distinguished from the ``psychological expression" of emotions (or, as Croce puts it, ``naturalistic''), which is non-arbitrary, unconscious, and connected with the emotions by a necessary link. Art and language proper should also be distinguished from symbolism or ``intellectualized'' language. A symbol is something arrived at by agreement and accepted by the parties to the agreement as valid for a certain purpose. These characteristics do not apply to art and language proper (7, 225--26).
For a correct understanding of art and language it is essential to characterize them as activities of the creative process. Language, interpreted as the product of such activity, is a metaphysical fiction. The division into words and parts of speech is thought up in the course of analysis. Each word is accomplished only once in speech, and thus the meanings of words, the relations of synonymy are fictitious essences. The words and sentences are idioms, and imply something personal and private, which contains a protest against its use by society. Grammar has a use, but it is practical and not theoretical.
Like language art does not tolerate cliches, and every genuine expression must be an original one. The artistic activity does not ``use'' a ``ready-made language'', but ``creates'' it. It is only possible to use ``by-products'' (ready-made words, phrases, types of pictorial and sculptural form, etc.) and the habits of artistic activity, but this use is inherent not in art proper, but in a pseudo-aesthetic activity (7, 275--76).
Insofar as Collingwood follows Croce's principles in characterizing language and art as individual creative activity it is possible to level the same criticisms at him as at his teacher. These include an accusation of subjectivism and 85 psychologism, of linguistic and aesthetic nominalism, and idealistic relativism.
Collingwood also preserved Croce's most dubious notion, about the exclusively ideal character of the work of art, amongst his principles of art. There is no necessity, he argues, for the work of art to be a real thing, it can be imaginary. A work of art can be entirely created within the mind of the artist. Thus, a musical work need not be something audible, but can exist solely in the mind of the musician as something imaginary (an imaginary experience of total activity) (7, 151). Like Croce, in this respect Collingwood considers the hedonistic view of art as sensory pleasure insubstantial. The material aspect of a work of art, as, for example, the sound in music heard by the audience, is not music at all, but merely the means by which the audience reconstruct for themselves the imagined melody which exists in the composer's mind.
Pointing to the Crocean sources of this view, Collingwood's commentators have correctly shown its openly idealistic and subjective character (14, 196). Moreover, this view is in clear contradiction to other important views of his theory of art, which we shall be discussing below.
Just as Croce (following Vice's lead) had excluded intuition from the intellectual forms of knowledge and proclaimed it primal and autonomous with respect to intellect, Collingwood characterizes imagination in exactly the same metaphysical way. Correspondingly language and art acquire an alogical, extra-intellectual character. Language and art, together with imaginative experience as such stand outside the intellect and beneath it. In their original essence they express emotions, and not thoughts. Only subsequently is language modified and does it acquire the ``secondary'' function of the expression of thought. Art, however, never expresses thought as such (7, 252).
Just as with Croce, here we can see how the correct tendency to resist the intellectualization of language and art turns into anti-intellectualism, alogism and the metaphysical isolation of linguistic and artistic activity from the intellect. As A. Hofstadter correctly points out, Collingwood, 86 by distinguishing its intellectual and emotional aspects, arbitrarily identifies language with the expression of emotion. His similar identification with respect to art has the same arbitrary character.
A further development (with certain modifications) of the Crocean classification of expressions and his distinction between poetry and non-poetry, of art and pseudo-arts is given by Collingwood's theory of the so-called arts, which are incorrectly designated by this term. Collingwood regards the expression of emotions as the only goal connected with the essence of art. All other goals which can be attained with the help of art he characterizes as utilitarian, lying outside art and relating to the sphere of the use of art. In this connection Collingwood criticizes the ``stimulus-reaction'' theory, developed by psychologists. According to this theory a work of art is an artefact serving as the means towards the realisation of a goal which lies outside it. Such goals might be the desire to evoke certain emotions, or intellectual activity and actions. Collingwood believes that if art serves the attainment of the goals indicated above and not the expression of emotions we are dealing not with art proper, but with pseudo-arts, of which he counts six.
First, there is ``art'' as entertainment which evokes emotions for their own sake, as an experience providing pleasure. Entertaining art is characterized by ``illusion'', ``game'', but it is at the same time utilitarian. Examples of this pseudoart are pornography, horror stories, detective stories.
Secondly, ``art'' as magic, evoking emotions for their practical value in life. As examples of magic types of ``art'' we can take religious and patriotic ``art'', the music of military and dance bands, etc. Their primary function is not aesthetic, but the generation of specific emotions.
The remaining four kinds of pseudo-art are: ``art'' as a puzzle, in which the intellectual faculties are stimulated for the sake of their exercise, ``art'' as instruction, in which they are stimulated to learn some thing or other, ``art'' as advertizing (or propaganda), and ``art'' as a sermon, in which practical activity is stimulated as something useful or proper.
87Collingwood's classification of the pseudo-arts reproduces the corresponding classification of Croce's with certain minor, insubstantial changes. In his approach to the problem of the specific features of art Croce tried metaphysically to isolate art as a theoretical, autonomous, and totally free activity from everything practical and socially conditioned. Collingwood did not share this tendency, yet neither was he able to avoid the metaphysical nature of Croce's approach to the specifics of arts, as the critics have pointed out.
The problem of beauty is approached by Collingwood entirely in the spirit of Croce's subjectivism. Beauty is not an objective property, but the subjective quality of an act of expression, or an aesthetic emotion. The rejection of the objectivity of beauty leads to the rejection of aesthetics as a theory of beauty (7, 36--41,115--17).
All the above bears out the truth of the assertion that Collingwood remained true to ``the spirit and the principles" of Croce's aesthetics-the principles of neo-Hegelian idealism and metaphysics.
__b_b_b__ __ALPHA_LVL3__ 2. COLLINGWOOD'S MODIFICATION OF CROCEAN AESTHETICS.The modifications made by Collingwood to Croce's aesthetics, as well as his polemic with Croce are attributable not only to the influence of the English tradition and Gentile, but also to certain peculiarities of Collingwood as both a philosopher and a person. In the opinion of the Soviet historian of philosophy Alexei Bogomolov, Collingwood is the only one of the English bourgeois philosophers of the time who tried to connect philosophy and problems of political struggle and to define his position both in philosophy and in politics on this basis. As a ``man of action'', tackling the problem of how ``to make the world better'', he was impressed by Marx's view that it is necessary to change, and not just explain, the world (6, 102). It is to precisely this progressive side of his worldview that we can attribute his promotion of the social function of art, of art for the ``public'', for society, to primary place amongst the principles of art, and his criticism of the individualistic theory of art. It is true that neither the neoHegelian Croce nor Hegel himself had denied the importance 88 of the social role of art, but this function of the ``use'' of art was not included in the aesthetic essence of art. Collingwood made it such, this being an indubitable step forward which involved an entire series of ``modifications'' of Croce's aesthetics.
The essence of art, according to Collingwood, is in the expression of emotions. But the artist expresses those emotions which he shares with the public, and not those which are his own private emotions; he says what the public want to say, but are unable to do so without his aid. The artist's job is a public one, he works for the sake of society. In this sense his relation to the public is not merely a by-product of his aesthetic experience but an integral part of this experience itself. This is somthing more than communication from the artist to the public, this is collaboration with his audience, with other artists and performers (7, 311--21).
It follows from the above that in the case of aesthetic experience the presence of a physical perceptive work of art, that is to say of a ``language'' of art, is essential for the public. For only language, the material bearer of meaning, provides us with, as Marx and Engels pointed out, a practical, real awareness, which also exists for others and by virtue of this alone also exists for ourselves. Collingwood realises that, when he recognizes this necessity he must show the necessity of a physical work of art for the artist's aesthetic experience as well, or else the identity of experience in both cases and its communication will be incomprehensible. How was he to resolve this -problem?
Relying to a considerable extent on Croce's aesthetics, Collingwood identifies three levels of experience: the psychic, the imaginative and the intellectual. The two latter are the two stages of awareness. In the resultative expression sensation (or impression) corresponds to the psychic level, ideas or images of imagination to the imaginative, the concepts to the intellect. Each level of experience contains emotion as a ``charge'', an essential, but autonomous element. Psychic emotions and the emotions of consciousness are distinguished correspondingly, the latter functioning either as the 89 emotions of imagination or intellectual emotions.^^1^^ Emotions of any level cannot exist without physical expression. There are no unexpressed emotions. Psychic expression corresponds to emotions of the psychic level. This is a non-arbitrary, unconscious physical act, necessarily connected with the `` expressed" emotion.
The consciousness elevates psychic emotions to the level of emotions of the imagination, idealized emotions, to which imaginative expression corresponds. Such expression is not an automatism of the psycho-physical organism, but physical acts which are experienced in our self^awareness as an activity belonging to us and controlled by us. Physical acts which express certain emotions are language, insofar as they (the acts) are performed under our control and are perceived by us as our means of expressing these emotions. Thus language emerges alongside imagination as a feature of experience at the level of consciousness. In its natural, original state language is an imaginative-expressive activity, whose function is to express emotion, it is the motor side of the total imaginative experience. But language actually is art. Psychophysical activity, whose ``charge'' is emotion, is transformed into an activity of the organism controlled by the consciousness, and ``this activity is language or art" (7, 225, 235, 247, 274). If we take, for example, painting, we will see in it two activities: vision (related to ``knowledge'' and not sensation) and decoration with colours. The first experience is inner, imaginative, and the second outer, or physical. These two activities are not identical, but indivisibly interconnected, and form a single, indivisible experience. We find no `` exteriorization" of inner experience here, the experience being achieved within itself and by itself.
Thus Collingwood comes to the point of rejecting the most offensive aspect of Croce's aesthetics, about the exclusively spiritual character of expression, language and art. What for Croce was outer ``exteriorization'' is included by Collingwood in the expression itself. This rejection is not surprising, and what is surprising is that he believes it possible that these _-_-_
~^^1^^ Collingwood gives a more differentiated classification of emotions in his work The New Leviathan (5, 75).
90 correct (although rather trivial) notions are compatible with Croce's ideas, which we discussed in the previous paragraph. Collingwood claims that it does not follow from the necessity for a physical side to aesthetic activity that we should reject the fact that the work of art is not physical and perceptive, but is the product of our imagination. This is of course wrong, and such a rejection does necessarily follow. After all, Collingwood's assertion that a work of art cannot be accomplished within itself and by itself independently of the physical process of expression is contradictory to his Crocean thesis that the work of art can be entirely created in the mind of the artist.^^1^^As we have already stated, Collingwood was right when he wrote that if the physicality of the work of art is necessary for the public its necessity must also be proved for the artist. But this is still insufficient to explain the process of communication. Insofar as, according to Collingwood, emotion is communicated in the language proper of art, he should recognize that there is of necessity a certain similarity ( likeness, isomorphism) between idealized emotion and its physical expression in language and art, which makes possible the reproduction of a similar emotion during perception.
As is known, Croce considered it futile to look for a transition from the spiritual to the physical, arguing that the physical side of language and art is heterogeneous with respect to its aesthetic essence. In contrast to Croce, Collingwood regarded physical expression in art and language a necessary factor of aesthetic activity itself. And nevertheless we will not find in his writings even a mention of the question of the similarity of expressed emotion and expression, to say nothing of an analysis of the character of this similarity or of the mechanism of the projection of this similarity to material and of its reproduction in the mind of the perceiver. Without an explanation of these processes Collingwood's version of the process of communication (like Croce's) is still to be explained.
Croce counterposes the creative character of intuition-- _-_-_
~^^1^^ Merle Brown's statement is right that this contradiction is in Collingwood's thinking rather than in his subject-matter (9, 215).
91 expression to exteriorization as to technical activity, containing knowledge about the goal and the means of its attainment. As we have shown, this leads to an underestimation of the ``technical'' factor for spiritual acts of expression. Since Collingwood included exteriorization in expression, this led him to a metaphysical opposition of language and art, regarded in their physical aspect as well, to craft or the technical act, where we find a distinction between goal and means, planning and performance, content and form. These factors were now placed ``beyond the brackets" not only of the spiritual creative act, but even beyond the bounds of exteriorization, and everything which contained them was declared without sufficient grounds to be elements of craft and not creation.Collingwood absolutizes the circumstance that the process of creating a work of art has a probability character, and is not strictly determined. Until the work is completed as a whole it is impossible to forecast, with any degree of certainty, its aesthetic state. But this does not in any way mean that some goals and intentions are not attained within certain limits of uncertainty, that is, something may be known in advance.
The metaphysical opposition of language and art to craft, or technique, led Collingwood to the equally metaphysical opposition of ``expression'' to emotion and its ``evocation''. An activity aimed at evoking a certain emotion with the aid of an artefact is, according to Collingwood, neither language nor art, but a ``technical'' act of emotional representation: evoking a feeling that reflects the feeling, evoked by the original.
This view of Collingwood's contradicts his view of art as communication and collaboration. If we proceed from this conception of his, the expression of emotion not only does not exclude, it actually of necessity demands the evocation of emotion. In actual fact to communicate an emotion is to evoke it (or one similar to it) in someone else, as Collingwood understands. If, by counterposing the expression of emotion to its evocation, Collingwood means that the latter necessarily takes place, but is not the goal the artist sets himself, there are insufficient grounds to support this assertion. Of 92 course, in the act of creation the artist may not set himself such a goal, but there are no grounds for the assertion that he is unable to do so. Collingwood's critics correctly pointed out that the evocation of an emotion and its expression are not mutually exclusive, and Collingwood is hardly right when he insists that the artist's activity is never an activity directed at the evocation of a specific emotional effect in the audience who are perceiving his work of art. It is in this precise point that Collingwood's theory of art as language is in the last analysis untenable.
The English philosopher also modifies Croce's Aesthetics in the question of the interrelation of language and art with thought and intellect. Admittedly this modification reproduces to a large extent the changes made by Croce himself in the course of the evolution of his views.
To get round the charge of anti-intellectualism Collingwood introduces two meanings of the term ``thought'': a broad and a narrow sense. In the broad sense language is an activity of thought, a level of consciousness, of imagination, and in the narrow (=intellect) it is beneath this level. Language at the service of intellect is a product of its (language's) later modification. It may seem that since art is the imaginative expression of emotion, then this secondary development of language is of no interest for aesthetics. Collingwood regards this view as mistaken. Although art never expresses thought as such, certain works of art express emotions which come into being as ``charges'' on the base of intellectual activity. And since the emotional life of the consciousness is much richer on the intellectual level than on the simple psychic level, it is natural that these higher levels should be the main source of the emotional content of works of art. Thought enters art and is translated into emotion, expressing what the artist experiences, the way he feels the ideas and thoughts which he has in his mind and which he thinks in a particular way.
Like Croce in his later period Collingwood correctly endeavours to pinpoint the specific features of the expression of thought in art. He is right to try and see these features in the special connection of thought with emotions and the 93 imagination. What is questionable is his categorical and unfounded assertion that art never expresses thought as such, that it should be ``diffused'' in emotion. Correctly maintaining that the theory of art should investigate how languageand art-must be modified to express the emotions of intellectual activity Collingwood unfortunately goes no further than this statement, and does not himself undertake such an investigation. As in many other points of his theory of art he is inconsistent and self-contradictory in the question of the interrelation of art and thought.^^1^^ In actual fact, to say that art as such contains nothing which it owes to the intellect, then to add that certain works of art may contain a lot which is owed to the intellect, and finally to admit that the emotional content of works of art is derived largely from emotions at the intellectual level is self-contradictory in the extreme.
Collingwood failed to define the specifics of art in comparison with other types of intellectual activity. As Hospers correctly remarks, the English philosopher provides no criterion for the distinction between artistic creation and the creation of mathematics, scientific creation. Morris-Jones also mentions this, pointing out that Collingwood's understanding of art subsumes a scientific argument, that it is too general to be of any use (20).
To sum up we can say that Collingwood's attempt to free Crocean aesthetics of its inherent radical defects, caused by its idealistic and metaphysical basis while at the same time staying true to ``the spirit and the principles" of this basis, resulted in total failure. In consequence a talented book, which contains a mass of fruitful discussions, fine and exact observations, was fraught with contradictions. His valid conception of the communicative and social essence of art thus could not fit in the idealistic construction of Croceanism. Collingwood's philosophy of art did not after all take Croce's conception a step forward, as Collingwood had hoped and attempted to do.
_-_-_~^^1^^ Revealing the contradictory nature of Collingwood's aesthetics M. E. Brown argues that it is his treatment of the relation of art to intellect which is most contradictory (9, 231).
94 __*_*_*__R. G. Collingwood unquestionably is amongst the major representatives of English early 20th century idealist aesthetics. A. Donagan, an English student of Collingwood's work, asserts: ``R. G. Collingwood ... is generally acknowledged to have contributed more to the philosophy of art and the philosophy of history than any other British philosopher of his time" (13, ix). In the opinion of the American philosopher M. E. Brown, concerned with the study of neo-Hegelian aesthetics (Croce, Gentile, Collingwood), Collingwood is the most important non-Italian proponent of neo-idealistic aesthetics (9 ,12). The Principles of Art is especially popular and highly acclaimed in the West. G. R. G. Mure regards this as probably the best modern book on aesthetics (21, 331). Opinions of this sort (many more of which could be quoted), including some expressed by scholars who criticized Collingwood's conception of art as a whole from their own (as a rule, idealistic) positions, is evidence of the place occupied by Collingwood in modern western aesthetics and of his influence. The latter can be felt in the works of many aestheticians, including those of the semantic orientation (e.g., S. Langer).
What exactly is Collingwood's position vis-a-vis modernism? Like his teacher Croce, Collingwood was subjectively opposed to content-less formalist art, bare eccentricity, ``pure literature'', whose interest is directed not towards its content, but towards its ``technical qualities''. Collingwood does not object to art ``serving'' politics, expressing political emotions, including ``communistic sentiments" (7, 278--79, 330--31). He was right to state that the sincerity of the expression of feeling is a necessary condition for this. But the metaphysical dichotomy between the ``expression'' of feelings and `` converting others into them" leads to the false conclusion that any effort by the artist to affect people with his art, to convey to them his emotions may at best be good service to politics, but bad service to art (7, 286). The English philosopher's erroneous thesis that art can be ``good'' and not turn into `` magic" only on condition the artist does not aim to affect 95 people can objectively lead to a negation of its important political and educational function in society. Objectively Collingwood's aesthetics can and does serve the cause of theoretical substantiation of modernism.^^1^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ A. Hofstadter's position is characteristic in this connection. Pointing to the connection between the aesthetics of Collingwood (as well as of Croce and Langer) and the flowering of expressionism, which culminated in abstract expressionism, and pointing out that in the period when Jackson Pollock and Arnold Schonberg were active Croce's, Collingwood's and Langer's books were reprinted as bestsellers, Hofstadter makes a remarkable reservation. He warns that his statement should not be interpreted as a denigration of the value of their work. On the contrary, he sees in their analyses the ``authenticity'' of the living art-reality of his time (A. Hofstadter, Truth and Art). Thus, the theoretical ``stimulation'' of formalist art is regarded as a merit. It would indeed be hard to expect any different approach from a bourgeois theoretician.
[96] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Section II. __ALPHA_LVL1__ ART AND SYMBOL __NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter V. __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Neo-Realistic Philosophy of SymbolismAs we have already pointed out in the Introduction, neotealism acts as the transitional stage between the three main tendencies (neo-positivist, irrationalist, and religious-- dogmatic) in modern bourgeois philosophy. One of its leading proponents is the English neo-realist philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead (1861--1947), whose philosophical system, in his own words, can be seen as the transference of certain primary ideas of absolute idealism onto a realistic foundation (27, 112, 303; 28, 25).
His epistemology is characterized by a realism which consists in the recognition of nature existing separately from cognition. Nature itself is revealed as something derived from eternal objects, akin to the Platonic ideas. Thus, in his ontology (or ``metaphysics'') Whitehead is an objective idealist, as is noted both by Marxist scholars (Alexei Bogomolov, H. Frankel, Harry K. Wells) and by most bourgeois commentators. The idea of God plays an important role in the philosophy of the English neo-realist, which, as the Soviet philosopher Bogomolov has correctly pointed out, is ``irrefutable testimonium paupertatis" of his philosophical system, which strives to provide a scientific resolution of the problem.
In Whitehead's philosophy an important role is played by problems of language and symbolism. In the opinion of Victor Lowe, Wilbur M. Urban, Arthur H. Johnson and other commentators his theory of symbolism constitutes the kernel of his philosophy. The problems of symbolism are examined mainly in his special study Symbolism. Its Meaning and __PRINTERS_P_97_COMMENT__ 7---826 97 Effect (1927), as well as in his magnum opus Process and Reality (1929). Like Peirce Whitehead did not concentrate on aesthetics and the theory of art. Nevertheless, in his writings he touches on these problems, mainly in connection with the theory of symbolism and problems of axiology.
__b_b_b__ __ALPHA_LVL3__ 1. ART AND THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL THEORY OF SYMBOLISM.Whitehead does not analyse symbolism as a specifically linguistic problem, he approaches it from philosophical, epistemological and sociological positions. He gives the following formal definition of symbolism: ``The human mind is functioning symbolically when some components of its experience elicit consciousness, beliefs, emotions, and usages, respecting other components of its experience. The former set of components are the 'symbols', and the latter set constitute the 'meaning' of the symbols. The organic functioning whereby there is transition from the symbol to the meaning will be called 'symbolic reference'" (3, 7-8). As examples of symbolism we can take heraldry, church rites, and ecclesiastical architecture. A deeper form of symbolism, which people cannot dispense with, is language, spoken or written, conversational or scientific. In describing the characteristics of the symbolism of language Whitehead points out that between the natures of symbol and meaning there should be ``some community'', but, despite this, the connection between a symbol and a meaning does not have a determined character. The relation between them is reversible, they can change places. ``There are no components of experience which are only symbols or only meanings" (3, 10). Symbols point to meanings, but taken in isolation, symbols and meanings do not require a symbolic relationship, this is introduced by the percipient. Connected with the concept of symbolism is the possibility of error, the incorrect transition from the symbol to the meaning. The latter thesis, which is given energetic formulation by Whitehead, is most characteristic of the semantic direction as a whole.
In Whitehead's writings there are statements from which it is possible to ascertain how he interprets art from the point 98 of view of his conception of symbolism. Thus, for example, he remarks, when explaining the principle of the reversibility of the symbol and the meaning, that there is a dual symbolic reference in language: from things to words on the side of the speaker, and from words back to things on the side of the listener. As an illustration he takes the use of symbols in poetic art. A forest, a certain combination of trees, suggests words to the poet. For the poet sights, sounds and emotional experiences are symbols which refer to words, functioning here as meanings. These same words refer the reader in his turn symbolically to the sights, sounds and emotions which the poet wishes to evoke in him. For some purposes, in particular to evoke aesthetic emotion, it is easier to reproduce aesthetic experience not through words but through some other symbols such as the symbolism of painting (2, 20--23; 8, 278).
In the symbolic interpretation of art Whitehead accords particular importance to the question of the symbolic transfer of emotion, a question which, in his opinion, ``lies at the base of any theory of the aesthetics of art" (3, 85). In this he distinguishes between feelings and emotions, evoked by the contemplation of the meaning of symbols and words and those directly exited by symbols, and regards emotions of the second type as intensifying feelings of the first. This property is peculiar to language, while a comparable process operates in religious symbolism, and constitutes ``the whole basis of the art and literature" (3, 83--84). Music, in Whitehead's opinion, is particularly well-adapted to the transfer of emotions by the method described above. On its own it generates strong emotions which at once suppress any meaning, such as, for example, information about the positioning of the orchestra, etc. Thus, in these contexts by the ``symbolic transfer of emotion" we understand the indisputable fact that in art the very symbols (and not only their meanings) directly arouse emotions, which have an aesthetic character. Whitehead discusses this in clear terms, pointing out that ``certain aesthetic features" are inherent in the effect of symbolism described above (3, 83). As we shall see below, the `` symbolic transfer of emotion" in other contexts is taken to mean 99 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1979/SPA248/20070327/199.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.03.27) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ something completely different. From the ensuing discussion it will also become manifest that his emphasis on the symbolic transfer of emotion as ``the basis" of art is evidence not only of the recognition of the importance of this aspect of art, but also of the underestimation of content emotions, caused by the ``meanings'' of symbols, and of the subjectivist tendency of Whitehead's aesthetics (23).
For Whitehead the field of symbolism is not confined merely to the sphere of material expression. The main example of the principles which govern all symbolism in the sphere of perception, .should, in Whitehead's opinion, be sought in symbolic reference between the two perceptive modes (8, 274): the mode of causal efficacy and of presentational immediacy. The first mode is characteristic of an experience felt by 'the body and emerging from a past experience, an unconscious, indeterminate, vague, complex and forced experience. The second mode is formed or inferred on the basis of the sense^datum of the first and is a property only of highly organized beings. This datum is clearly segmented sense-datum precisely localized, lacking any relation to past or future, and is simpler and emotionally more neutral. Consciousness is possible at this stage of experience. Perception is the symbolic relationship of the two modes indicated, each of which can be both symbol and meaning.
Giving examples to illustrate the symbolic reference in perception the philosopher once again turns to art. When we enter a room at first we see a coloured shape (causal efficacy), which symbolically refers us /to perception in the other mode (presentational immediacy) and we see a chair. The artist, however, is a person who is able to train himself to perceive ranges of colour only and can limit himself to the perception of colour, but this requires effort and special training. When we listen to music, Whitehead goes on, it seems as though our emotions are entirely due to the musical sounds perceived in the mode of presentational immediacy. But this is only how it seems. For example, the sound waves at first produce in the body, in the mode of causal efficacy, a state of pleasurable aesthetic emotion, which is then symbolically transferred to the sense-perception of the sounds in the mode 100 of presentational immediacy. In exactly the same manner sounds just below or just above the limit of audibility seems to add an emotional tinge to a volume of audible sound (3, 85).~^^1^^
Some western aestheticians have tried to ``develop'' Whitehead's theory of the symbolic reference of the two modes of perception with application to aesthetics, and, in particular, music. The author of one such attempt, the American semantic aesthetieian Eva Schaper, expresses the traditional admiration of Whitehead's philosophy, but in actual fact reaches extremely modest conclusions about the value of this theory for aesthetics. Whitehead's distinction between the two perceptual modes, she states, does not provide a ready explanation of aesthetic experience. Moreover, an interpretation of aesthetic experience on the basis of this theory would be ``detrimental to aesthetic thought" (28, 274). Such a negative opinion, even on the part of an author who admires Whitehead's philosophy, should not surprise us. In his theory of the two modes of perception and the symbolic reference between them the English philosopher tried to explain the fact that in the sphere of our knowledge, and in particular in the sphere of perception, certain components express ( represent) others. However, this explanation is quite unsatisfactory. For a start, from the point of view of psychological science the characteristics of perception and its structural layers are set out unclearly and in a completely lax way even for his time. But its main shortcoming consists in the fact that Whitehead, without any justification, transferred the characteristics of linguistic symbolism and primarily the conventional and indeterminate nature of the connection between signs and meanings to the sphere of the relations of expression and the expressed, the latter being peculiar to perceptive knowledge. In consequence the description of perception as a symbolic reference acquired an explicitly _-_-_
~^^1^^ Cf. Tarmo A. Pasto's hypothesis in his article ``Notes on the Space-Frame Experience in Art": ``Many awarenesses (art and other) are body functions before the individual, through rational thought processes, lifts them to consciousness" (The Journal ot Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. XXIV, No. 2, 1965).
101 expressed subjective idealistic epistemological interpretation. The connection between the modes of perception was made by such an interpretation to seem conventional and indeterminate, conditioned by the activity of the cognizing subject. Hence it is quite understandable why he should so insistently repeat his idea that the main source of ``fallibility'' is the ``symbolic reference'', and in particular the complex symbolic analysis of causal efficacy. Whitehead's critique of symbolism in cognition as the source of error is accompanied by the conclusion, highly characteristic of his philosophy with its tendency towards irrationalism and mysticism, that only ``direct cognition" is unerring, free as it is from the `` symbolic reference'', forming an act of intuition based not on inference but on self-evidence (1; 4; 5).^^1^^If symbolism is the main source of error and delusion, how is the problem of cognitive possibilities, of truth in art, to be resolved in Whitehead's philosophy? An answer to this question is largely provided by the work Adventures ot Ideas (1933). The category of truth, according to Whitehead, is applicable only to Appearance, which is primarily sensory perception. Truth is the correspondence of Appearance and Reality. Amongst the different types of ``truth-relation'' we have ''symbolic truth''. This is the relation we have between Appearance and Reality (not connected by a causal relation) when the prehension of the Appearance leads to the prehension of the Reality and sheds light on the Reality. The subjective form of these perceptions is how the subject perceives what is objectively given. We can find examples of symbolic truth in language and in art. Thus literature and music, as well as conveying an objective meaning, also include a conveyance of subjective form. In this process we may observe both symbolic truth and symbolic falsehood. In the latter case a minimum of objective meaning is conveyed, _-_-_
~^^1^^ His critique of language and symbolism represents, in W. Urban's view, a prolegomenon to Whitehead's metaphysics, whose ``basal assumption ... is the inability of natural language to express reality''. Criticizing, from other idealistic positions, Whitehead's tendency to purify experience from language and symbolism, Urban calls this tendency ``a pure myth" (27, 304, 309).
102 and the conveyance of subjective form is at its height. In music, for example, there is a vague truth-relation, owing to the fact that music and the Appearance which emerges in its perception have common subjective form. In their turn Appearance and Reality (the Reality of National Life, etc.) are connected by a truth-relation. This complex fusion of truthrelations with falsehoods constitutes the indirect interpretative power of Art to express the truth about the nature of things. Beauty is an integral feature of art. Art, argues Whitehead, has a dual goal: truth and beauty, while perfect art has only one goal: ``true beauty''. Thus the problem of truth in art is seen to be closely connected with the problem of beauty. In Whitehead's opinion truth is of enormous general significance for the achievement of beauty. But truth is only an auxiliary means towards the production of beauty. Furtheremore, for beauty the type of truth is connected with revelation, and not with repetition, and in distinction to the truth of words it is ``truth of feeling''. Art is that area of Appearance intentionally adapted to Reality. The beauty of Apperance is not necessarily connected with truth, since beauty can be regarded independently of the correspondence between Appearance and Reality, and this correspondence constitutes, in Whitehead's view, its own area of truth-- relations. Art can even make use of false statements for its own purposes. Thus Whitehead appears to provide a positive resolution of the question of the possibilities of art expressing the truth about the nature of things. At the same time, in accordance with his semantic orientation to the critique of symbolism, he opposes to the symbolic truth of language and art a higher, more direct truth, which is grasped by direct intuition, namely, a ``correspondence of clear and distinct Appearance to Reality" (4, 318--22).As we have already noted, the irrationalist element in the philosophy of the English neo-realist is connected with this latter thesis. Evidence of this, as the Marxist scholars H. K. Wells and H. Frankel correctly point out, is the accent on ``feeling'', ``emotion'', ``satisfaction'', etc. (29, 151), which we can see in Whitehead's aesthetics too. The theory of `` feelings'', incidentally, like everything written by him, is set out 103 very unclearly and interpreted in different ways by different commentators.^^1^^
Aesthetic emotion, according to Whitehead, is apparently ``co-extensive'' (having the same duration in space and in time) with the subjective form of the ``shaping'' of objective data by the subject and is one of the components of the subject (5, 288). We have already stated that art conveys both objective meaning and subjective form, i.e. including aesthetic emotion. Moreover, according to Whitehead, aesthetic emotion only emerges directly in the mode of causal efficacy. At the level of presentational immediacy, however, it is transferred through the mediation of the first level of perception, i.e., symbolically. In this approach Whitehead completely fails to take account of such an important factor, which determines aesthetic emotion in the perception of art, as the intellectual aspect of a work of art. Since the consciousness, according to Whitehead, may only appear in the second mode ( presentational immediacy),^^2^^ aesthetic emotion, which is also connected with the intellectual factor, cannot in any way be mediated by the first mode, in which the consciousness is absent, and in this sense it is conveyed directly and not symbolically. In Whitehead's aesthetics aesthetic emotion at the level of presentational immediacy, i.e. at the level where the conscious, content factors of art become operative, acquires a secondary, voluntary character.^^3^^ By linking aesthetic emotion _-_-_
~^^1^^ For example Percy Hughes points to the inadequacy of Whitehead's theory of feelings from the psychological point of view (27, 298; 13; 14).
~^^2^^ We should bear in mind that, while he admits the possibility of the appearance of elements of consciousness in the second mode of ``symbolic reference'', Whitehead does not, however, identify them with ``thought'' or conceptual content (22, 335; 24, 76).
~^^3^^ The opinion of F. David Martin, professor of philosophy at Bucknell University, expressed in his article ``The Power of Music and Whitehead's Theory of Perception" is characteristic in this connection. The author makes a distinction between the ``embodied'' meaning in the work of art, primarily connected with causal efficacy, and the ``designative'' meaning, which presupposes consciousness. Martin highly rates the ability of art to give the feeling of ``compulsion'', and points out that it is achieved only in pure music. In such other forms __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 105. 104 to the first mode of perception Whitehead is showing a marked proclivity to accentuate the subconscious bases of art. ``That art,'' he writes, ``which arises within clear consciousness is only a specialization of the more widely distributed art within dim consciousness or within the unconscious activities of experience. These dim elements provide for art that final background of tone apart from which its effects fade" (4, 347--48). By critically analysing these statements of Whitehead's we do not in any way mean to call into question the important role of subconscious elements in art. What we are getting at is that in the general context of Whitehead's idealist philosophy these views are evidence of the irrationalist tendencies of his aesthetics, which in the given aspect is not unlike the theories of art of Bergson and Freud (20).
Essential for an interpretation of Whitehead's conception of art is the analysis of ``proposition'', one of the categories of his philosophical system. Proposition is the objective data in an act of cognition, but not the actual things: it is an ideal principle, pure form, or structure (12). As an example of proposition we can take the structure of a judgment. Proposition should be distinguished from the psychological equivalent or subjective form of prepositional cognition. As the subjective form of this act we can take judgments, true or false. It is precisely this restricted aspect of the role of proposition in experience which expresses the logical knowledge of propositions, and thereby obscuring the fact that in actuality propositions serve other purposes too. In the real world what matters is not whether propositions are true or false, but whether they are of interest. Thus literature and art can use false propositions as a means of persuasion or as ``norms'' to which reality may be compared. In this case subjective form no longer functions as judgments, but as the emotions of horror, repulsion, or pleasure. It is true, admits Whitehead, that true propositions are more able (for particular purposes) to arouse interest than false ones. It should also be noted that the form of the words from which the proposition is _-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 104. of art as cinema and literature designative meaning weakens this important feeling (23, 318).
105 constructed also generates judgments. In figurative literature this sort of generation is checked by the general context or even the verbal structures (for example, ``once upon a time'').In Whitehead's philosophical system the theory of propositions rests and is developed on the basis of objective idealism. Propositions are a synthesis of actual phenomena, taken in abstraction, and ``eternal objects''. By eternal objects Whitehead understands what are usually called ``typal concepts" and which he treats in the idealistic spirit of Platonic ideas. Anti^scientific in its essence, the concept of ``eternal objects" leads to, as H. Frankel shows circumstantially and convincingly, a proliferation of incongruities in all Whitehead's speculations connected with ``eternal objects" (17).
Whitehead himself did not make any explicit attempts to apply the theory of the proposition to the analysis of art, although there are some suggestions of this, which led a number of bourgeois aestheticians to ``develop'' these into definite aesthetic conceptions. One of these conceptions is substantiated in a book A Whiteheadian Aesthetic. Some Implications of Whitehead's Metaphysical Speculation, by D. W. Sherburne, professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. The arguments of Whitehead's that we quoted above, to the effect that there are such things as propositions whose subjective form is not judgments but emotions of pleasure etc., served as the point of departure for those ideas which then expanded into the theory expounded in Sherburne's book, as he himself acknowledges. The annotations to Sherburne's book correctly state that the success of the author's aesthetic theory will be proof of the truth of Whitehead's metaphysical system. To this we should only add that the insubstantiality of this theory is equal proof of the unsuitability of Whitehead's metaphysical system for the scientific resolution of aesthetic problems. Sherburne's book demonstrates precisely this point. The author's main thesis consists in the following: ``art objects have the ontological status of Whiteheadian propositions" (25, 98). Inasmuch as propositions are potential and not actual a distinction should be made between the work of art and its execution, corresponding to the distinction between propositions and their objectivization. 106 There are strict rules covering this in some arts, for example, musical notes. We should not confuse the work of art ( proposition), execution (objectivization of the proposition) and the rules of objectivization. A work of art is not merely a proposition, but such a proposition which attracts attention in a unique fashion, thanks to the fact that its execution possesses the property of beauty.
Sherburne's conception contains the true notion that in art there is a spiritual, ideal aspect, and points in particular to the ideal logical structure in a work of art, which in the form of thought or ideal image in the artist's consciousness can precede the act of material embodiment of this structure in the work of art. However, this thought receives inadequate idealistic explanation in Sherburne's book. ``The aesthetic theory I am developing has strong affinities with that of Benedetto Croce,'' he writes. ``Like Croce I argue that the art object is not an actual entity, but a thing of the spirit. But ... I am running them through the categories of Whitehead's system in such a way that they emerge with fresh value for aesthetic insight and firm metaphysical grounding...'' (25, 110). The idealism and insubstantiality of this conception consist in its interpretation of the spirituality of art not as a ``secondary'' factor with respect to objective reality, of which it is a reflection, but as the primariness of eternal objects. As far as the material aspect of art (the means of execution) is concerned this is arbitrarily removed from within the bounds of the aesthetic object. The untenability of this Crocean viewpoint is generally accepted, and we can only marvel at Sherburne's attempt to revive it, relying on Whitehead's ideas.
By way of concluding our analysis of the epistemologioal conception of symbolism in Whitehead's philosophy as applied to aesthetics and art it is essential to emphasize another important factor. In his epistemology Whitehead, as we have already pointed out, is a realist. Correspondingly his theory of the ``meaning'' of -symbols has a realistic character. ``The symbols do not create their meaning. The meaning, in the form of actual effective beings reacting upon us, exists for us in its own right. But the symbols merely discover this meaning for us" (3, 57). Realistic statements of this sort 107 make it impossible to claim that Whitehead ``in general tended towards materialism".^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, in criticizing the claims of idealists to ``realism'', pointed out that in actual fact objective reality, nature, is not perceived as immediately given, it is reached as the result of a long transition, through abstractions of the ``psychical''. Such an abstraction of the ``psychical'' can be seen in Whitehead's system in the modes of immediate experience (advanced as ``neutral elements''), from which both spiritual and physical nature are composed. Whitehead's endeavour to depict the world as an unbroken chain of elements of perceptual experience characterizes his epistemology ``as a modification of the BerkeleyHume 'philosophy of experience'~" (18, 125). It is hardly surprising that the symbolic philosophy both of Whitehead himself and of his followers bears, alongside features of objective idealism, the stamp of subjective idealism.
__b_b_b__ __ALPHA_LVL3__ 2. SOCIAL SYMBOLISM AND ART.What is of undoubted interest in Whitehead's theory of symbolism is the aspect connected with one of the early attempts in bourgeois philosophy and sociology to analyse the particular features of social symbolism. The symbolic philosophy of art is given additional illumination in connection with this analysis.
Whitehead considers the problems of social symbolism in the context of his views on civilization and culture expressed in various works and given their fullest treatment in the book Whitehead's American Essays in Social Philosophy. According to Whitehead the progress of civilization (which to him is synonymous with culture) is based on a successful modification of behaviour-systems. Behaviour or actions are instinctive, reflectory and conditioned by symbols. The acts of behaviour itself, and particularly of habitual behaviour, can _-_-_
~^^1^^ Amongst others H. Frankel adheres to this point of view. A. S. Bogomolov correctly points to the ``imprecision'' of such an interpretation of Whitehead's ``realism'' (11, 266). At the same time we should bear in mind that for many philosophers in the west who tend towards materialism realistic tendencies often serve as their point of departure and consequently have a definite positive value.
108 become the instrument of symbolic expression (4, 120). The growing complexity and clarity of symbols determining behaviour is an important indicator of progress. Symbolic elements in social life are ``no mere idle fancy" or ``idle masquerade'', but the inner principle of the very fabric of human life. It is most important that the function of social symbols be clearly defined, so that it is possible to control and reproduce these symbols. Thus Whitehead was one of the bourgeois philosophers of the modern age who, as A. H. Johnson has pointed out, emphasized the function of symbol in society (10, 12).Symbolic elements in the life of 'Society, Whitehead points out, tend to ``run wild''. Practical reason, the theoretical desire to receive facts and not symbols, is a constant source of criticism levelled against symbols, one of the characteristic elements of the cultural history of civilized people. Such criticism is valuable, argues Whitehead, because every society necessarily requires not only the successful adaptation of old symbols to the changing social structure (the interpretation of symbols changes more quickly than the rituals themselves), but also new forms of expression, repeated revolutions in symbolism. Thus, the feudal doctrine of subordination implied ceremony, and the doctrine of human equality acquires its own symbolism, the simplification or abolition of an official isymbolism being compensated for by a symbolism created by various associations and private clubs, etc.
Whitehead does not give an exact definition of ``social symbolism''. He prefers to talk about the use of 'Symbols for the most varied social purposes (communication of information, military commands, etc.). One of the important social objectives reached with the help of symbols is social unity. In the emergence of social life the striving for unity, social conformism, is achieved thanks to an instinctive reaction. With the development of reason this instinctive mechanism falls into decline and is substituted by various complex forms of symbolic expression. Nations and lesser social groupings and institutions can be integrated with the help of social symbols. As examples of social symbols of this sort we can take flags, coats-of-arms, national heroes, and great technological 109 achievements. Social symbols have two types of meaning: the first is pragmatic and consists in directing the individual towards the performance of a given action. The second is theoretical, and implies an elementary, vague concept, which is however capable of the organization of a heterogeneous society. The main task of social symbols such as flags, coats-of-arms, etc., is ``the enhancement of the importance of what is symbolized" (3, 63). Thus, according to Whitehead, a social symbol conveys a value judgment with regard to the significance of the institution or group which it represents (19). One of the ways in which symbols achieve this end is the emotional ``concurrence'' of the meaning of symbols. We can see that Whitehead displays a clear understanding of the importance of the emotional factor in the influence of symbolism . As noted above, Whitehead remarks on the great role of emotions directly evoked by the symbols themselves, as well as on that of emotions connected with the contemplation of meaning. Common emotions are concentrated around habits, prejudices and language, and assist the preservation of social order and national unity.
All that has been said above with regard to the social use of symbols also applies to art. Whitehead regards art as a vital factor in civilization. He links its very origins with the evolution of ritual behaviour, which supplements its own inner value for the life of a family or tribe by acquiring the role of an instrument of symbolic expression. Art, he argues, is highly effective in the expression of emotions and in the control of behaviour. Codes, rules of behaviour and canons of art are all attempts to impose the sort of ``systematic'' action which on the whole will promote favourable symbolic interconnections. Whitehead saw social symbols to have an advantage over the instinct particularly in their ability to retain both the common good and the individual point of view, whereas the instinct suppressed the individual. But it is precisely art, writes A. H. Johnson, describing Whitehead's characterization of the role of art in civilization, and in particular great art, which emphasizes the importance of individual components as essential elements in the unification of the group to which the individual belongs. Whitehead 110 connects the educational function of art in society with precisely this one of its properties-to help the individual become more profound.
The analysis of art as a social institution, of its functions of social control and of the role which symbolic means play in the realization of this function is an important task of the sociological analysis of art. It follows from this that the analysis of art from the point of view of social symbolism, undertaken by Whitehead, deserves the most serious consideration. His writings contain a true description of those symbolic functions performed by art in the conditions of bourgeois society. But his symbolic conception of art, as well as the theories of many other western sociologists (Duncan, Parsons et al.), is insubstantial from the point of view of method, which is connected, in particular, with the idealistic interpretation of symbolism in general and of social symbolism in particular.
Whitehead's sociological views, including his theory of social symbolism, are a component part of his ``total'' philosophical system.^^1^^ At the basis of these views lie the idealistically interpreted categories of his ``metaphysics'' ( individualization, creation, interaction, process, stabilization, value and God), as well as the idealist theory of the symbolic relation of the two modes of perception, whose principles, according to Whitehead, control any form of symbolism. It is quite understandable that all the weaknesses and vices both of his ``metaphysics'' and of his theory of the symbolic reference are also inherent in Whitehead's theory of social symbolism.
It has already been noted that, according to Whitehead, the symbolic reference is introduced by the subject. However, it is doubtful whether it is fair to criticize the English philosopher because, having declared things to be simple signs, or symbols, he thereby declares them to be an arbitrary product of reason. Whitehead understands that social symbolism is a necessity and not a caprice, and he correctly connects changes in the system of social symbolism with those in _-_-_
~^^1^^ In the opinion of Victor Lowe, Whitehead's sociological views are one of the main sources of his entire philosophy (27, 113).
111 social structures. However, along with the overwhelming majority of western sociologists he is far from a scientific, materialistic explanation of the nature of social structures and the causes for their alteration.^^1^^ The socio-economic (and above all class) nature of social relationships as the primary cause of the emergence and functioning of social symbolism in the specific sense of this word was not, indeed could not be, the object of Whitehead's idealistic sociological speculations. These latter do not go any further than the eclectic bourgeois theory of factors. Pointing to such factors of social life as ideas, economic activity, great people, the inanimate world, Whitehead does not ascribe primary significance to a single one of them. The English idealist's insufficiently profound, and, in the last analysis, non-scientific view of the system of social symbolism cannot, of course, serve as a theoretical basis for an analysis of art in the system of social symbolism. __b_b_b__ __ALPHA_LVL3__ 3. BEAUTY AS VALUE.It was noted above that Whitehead connects the problem of the symbolic transmission of emotions in art with aesthetic aspects, i.e. with beauty. The latter he analyses within the framework of his general theory of value, or the good.
Whitehead's theory of value is inconsistent and self-- contradictory, which in its turn leads to its receiving contradictory responses from different authors. Thus, some commentators (V. Lowe), argue that his axiology is a variant of the theory of ``interest'', others (D. Sherburne) maintain that he regards this theory as inadequate. In his axiology, as throughout his philosophy, Whitehead tried to overcome the extremes of subjectivism and ``naive realism'', the dualism of subject and object, of ``the World of Fact" and ``the World of Value" by taking the path of Platonic objective idealism (11, 276). On the one hand, values function in his philosophy _-_-_
~^^1^^ A critical analysis of the conceptions of social symbolism in contemporary western sociology (as well as an attempted positive resolution of certain connected problems) is given by the present author ( together with V. M. Krasnov) in an article ``Social Symbolism" (Voprosy filosofii, 1971, No. 10).
112 as value ideals. They are a timeless coordination of the infinitude of possibility for realization, in no way conditioned by ``transitory'' circumstances and in the last analysis have divine nature. On the other hand, value, according to his conception, loses its significance in isolation from its relation to the world of fact, requiring, for the completion of its concrete reality, embodiment in ``actual essences''. It is as a result of the coming into being, ``realization'', ``unification'' of an actual essence that a value is in fact formed as the immanent reality of a phenomenon (7, 694--96). The process of ``realization'', the embodiment of value ideals in the world of facts is necessarily connected with activity, but this activity does not have to be human and acquires a ``cosmic'' character. Value is therefore transformed into ``cosmic variables".In order somehow to explain the process of transformation of ``divine'' values into the immanent principle of real things, Whitehead has no choice but to turn for help to God. The idealist (of neo-Kantian persuasion) W. Urban, criticizing another idealist-Whitehead-remarks acerbicly about one of the English philosopher's statements: ``I understand the words, but I get no sense.'' This remark could also apply with full justification to Whitehead's attempt to explain the transition from the world of values to that of facts. The objective idealistic theory of values of Whitehead the neorealist acquired a mystical, irrational shade of cosmic theologism, as did his philosophy as a whole.
Certain bourgeois authors (H. B. Dunkel, M. Bense et al.) credit Whitehead with having connected the theory of values with the concept of ``pattern'', or ``structure'', correctly stated the problem and given indications towards its resolution, with having ``laid a firm foundation'', etc. As we will indicate below, this evaluation does not square with the facts.
In Whitehead's opinion the penetration of pattern into phenomena and the constancy and modification of these patterns are necessary conditions for the realization of value ideals in actual essences (6). The analysis of values becomes the analysis of patterns in the English philosopher's axiology, and as a criterion of value he uses good patterning (or __PRINTERS_P_113_COMMENT__ 8---826 113 structuring), which makes possible the unification of harmony, intensiveness and liveliness. A good pattern: a) is not too simplified, has a sufficient number of elements which combine in a non-routine fashion and consequently arouse interest; b) does not consist of more components than can be united in a unit; c) has elements which agree with one another, which can contrast, but not conflict, meaning that the variety is not greater than the unity; d) contains harmony between its parts and its whole. Mathematics, or to be more precise mathematical (or symbolic) logic, is the most powerful technique for the analysis of patterns and their relations. It will, in the distant future, become the basis of aesthetics, and then of ethics and theology (9, 99).
The sort of systems approach to values employed by Whitehead is nothing original. Whitehead postulates without proof the view that good should be patterned, and gives ``too general a characteristics of `pattern'" (16). This shortcoming led to his failure to draw a sufficiently clear distinction between the various types of value, and to declare which he regards as the highest value-truth (logic), beauty (aesthetics), or good (morality).^^1^^
Be this as it may, beauty is at any rate one of the three main values in the English philosopher's axiology. With regard to beauty Whitehead definitely adopts a Platonic stance, asserting that objects are beautiful when they embody the ideal of Beauty, an ideal possibility, an eternal object (4, 324). Beauty has a ``cosmic'' character. It embraces everything and exists even when no organism perceives it. A flower in some isolated glade of a primeval forest, may possess a subtle beauty, although it will never be perceived by any living being, as no one even knows of its existence (5, 164). Thus, working from the basis of objective idealism _-_-_
~^^1^^ The vagueness noted above led some authors (e.g. S. Harris) to believe that the highest value in Whitehead's axiology was truth, while logic lay at the basis of aesthetics, others to give beauty and good an ``equal'' place, and truth one subordinate to them, and still othersforming the majority (S. L. Ely, H. B. Dunkel, E. P. Shahan et al.)-are inclined to the thought that Whitehead gives beauty the primary role in his system of values.
114 Whitehead comes to axiological objectivism (``realism'') in his explanation of aesthetic value. Postulating a number of different forms of beauty in nature Whitehead also shares the viewpoint of aesthetic pluralism.Beauty is defined by Whitehead as ``the internal conformation of the various items of experience with each other, for the production of maximum effectiveness" (4, 341). The internal conformation of items of experience can be of two types: when mutual interference is lacking (``minor beauty'') and when, in addition to this, there is harmony of ``patterned contrasts" (``major beauty''). It is obvious that in the context of such an understanding of beauty the term ``beauty'' is to all intents and purposes being used as a synonym of value in general. Whitehead talks of intellectual, sensory (or aesthetic) and moral beauty in accordance with this use of the word. When he talks about the realization of value in the process of ``unification'', self-realization of actual essence Whitehead turns for his model to aesthetic experience. An act of aesthetic experience functions for him as the paradigm of his theory of actual essence. In this connection it is easy to understand his declaration that ``the most fruitful ... starting point is that section of value-theory which we term aesthetics" (9, 129). It is clearly this aspect of Whitehead's philosophy which served as the main argument in defence of the claim that beauty is the highest form of good.^^1^^
Beauty, according to Whitehead, as an inalienable feature of art. Art, he argues, has a dual purpose: truth and beauty. ``The perfection of art has only one end, which is Truthful Beauty" (4, 344). The canons of art express in specialized form the general requirements of aesthetic experience and in pride of place the requirement for pattern. Whitehead illustrates this thesis with a description of Ohartres Cathedral, with the dependence of beauty on the regularity of geometrical form in Greek sculpture etc. The harmony of ``patterned _-_-_
~^^1^^ Certain commentators describe Whitehead's philosophy as a whole as aestheticism. Thus, for example, B. Morris maintains that Whitehead definitely approached philosophy from the aesthetic point of view (27, 463).
__PRINTERS_P_115_COMMENT__ 8* 115 contrasts" (or ``major beauty'') in art does not exclude a certain ``discord'' (``chaos''), ``imperfection'', ``vagueness''. Otherwise, argues Whitehead, art is threatened by ``anaesthesia'', or ``tameness'' (4, 339). To support this he adduces facts from the history of the art of various cultures-of Greece, Byzantium, and China. Pattern is not enough, argues Whitehead, to explain in full the beauty of art. For example, not only geometrical form, but also colour is of importance to a picture. As can be seen from this statement, Whitehead had an extremely narrow understanding of ``pattern'' in art, inasmuch as he excludes the possibility of a ``patterned'' consideration of all the components in art, including colour.As noted above, Whitehead states the purpose of art to be truthful beauty. He argues that truth is of immense significance for the attainment of beauty.
Truth and beauty embrace, according to Whitehead, the values of art. As far as good (or evil) are concerned, these values have to do with Reality and not Appearance, i.e. with qualities which do not enter the sphere of art. Proceeding from this Whitehead proposes the extremely doubtful view that `` Goodness must be denied a place among the aims of art'', that works of art are ``analogous to an unseasonable joke, namely, good in its place, but out of place a positive evil" (4, 345).
Whitehead's treatment of the question of the functions of art in society, and of its role in the formation of values proceeded to a considerable extent from his characteristics of the values of art. In doing so he does not deny that beauty in art also has a positive influence on the formation of moral values. In its capacity as the harmony of patterned contrasts `` major beauty" in art introduces order into human behaviour too, exercising a disciplinary influence. Whitehead was well aware that art's performance of its functions in the formation of values is impossible in unfavourable social circumstances. Furthermore, he shows that ``under our present industrial system . .. freedom is being lost. This loss means the fading from human life of values infinitely precious to it''. However, as the English Marxist philosopher H. Frankel correctly remarks, Whitehead rarely drew any conclusions from this. 116 According to his metaphysics, which see the root causes of qualitative change not in matter but in God, his conception of man was such that it precluded revolutionary change (See 17).
__*_*_*__Expressing his opinion of Whitehead's philosophical work, A. S. Bogomolov calls him ``one of the leading representatives of 20th-century objective idealism'', who ``tried to answer the very important questions posed by the development of science in the 20th century" (11, 253, 291). It is precisely this which explains the increasing influence of and interest in his philosophy in the last few years. Monographs are published on Whitehead, his views are discussed in journals and at symposia, and two collections of articles were published in 1961 to mark the centenary of his birth. This extensive literature includes books and articles which comment on Whitehead's aesthetic ideas. These ideas exert considerable influence on modern western aesthetics (21), and in particular on the semantic philosophy of art. This influence can be most clearly felt in S. Langer's theory of art (26). She names Whitehead as her teacher and dedicates her well-known book Philosophy in a New Key to him. Whitehead was extremely influential in the formation of Max Sense's ``new aesthetics" (see Max Sense. Aesthetica. Einfiihrung in die neu Aesthetik. BadenBaden, 1965, S. 284--90). Bense particularly highly rates Whitehead's theory of realization, believing -that no one else had so deep an understanding or gave so clear an expression to ``realization'' in its metaphysical and cosmological aspect. Inasmuch as ``realization'' is connected for Whitehead with choice (from the available possibilities) Bense sees a kinship between this concept and the concept of information (and correspondingly between the theory of ``realization'' and information theory), and also between the process of `` individualization" connected with realization and ``aesthetic information''. Moreover, he regards the theory of information and communication as a universal theory of ``realization''. As noted above, Bense was one of those bourgeois authors who 117 highly estimated Whitehead's attempt to introduce the concept of pattern into the theory of values. In his opinion, for Whitehead this concept corresponds to the concept of `` structure" in Bense's own informational aesthetics. Bense points to the connection between the concepts of ``pattern'' and `` value" in Whitehead's philosophy to explain how the Whiteheadian cosmology comes to have an aesthetic as well as metaphysical aspect. In this connection he names Whitehead •as one of the influences (alongside Peirce and Morris) on the emergence of his own cosmological aesthetics.
Our critical analysis of Whitehead's aesthetics suggests that his idealist philosophy can be used to substantiate the theory and practice of modernism. The connection between Whitehead's philosophical and aesthetic ideas and the formalism and modernism of bourgeois art is not easy to establish because of the highly abstract and intricate nature of Whitehead's own conception. But there is such a connection, if not direct, then at one remove. Whitehead made his contribution to the general philosophical and aesthetic atmosphere of idealism with its sustenance of various forms of modernistic aesthetics and practices. For example, his book Science and the Modern World had an enormous effect on the leading theoretician of modernism, Herbert Read, who called the book the most significant (of books at the crux of science and philosophy) since Descartes' Discours de la methode. This book, in Read's opinion, makes necessary a new interpretation -not only of science and philosophy, but also of religion, and of art.
Let us now see what in Whitehead's philosophy could serve as the theoretical basis for modernism. M. Bense, who has himself made considerable efforts in this field, argues that nothing could fit so well as Whitehead's theory of cognition and theory of perception on the one hand, and Kandinsky's theory of painting and aesthetics on the other. He sees a connection between Whitehead's category of `` realization" in the sphere of aesthetics and the analyses of Expressionism, Tachisme, and automatic writing. Many commentators, when noting the influence on the emergence of abstractionism exercised by the notions of modern physics, also 118 mention Whitehead in this connection. Thus, the Polish aesthetician W. Tatarkiewicz writes in his article ``Abstract Art and Philosophy" that, alongside the influence of modern physics on abstractionism we should also note the influence of Whitehead's ideas, as it was he who made the step forward from physics and philosophy to aesthetics and attempted to connect the abstractions of physical science with the principles of aesthetic experience. The American professor of art history Irving L. Zupnick draws a parallel between Whitehead's philosophy and Mondrian's abstract painting in his article ``Philosophical Parallels to Abstract Art".
Thus, the idealistic philosophy of Whitehead the neo-- realist, which, as we have seen, is an unsuitable basis for a scientific theory of art, provides fertile soil for the justification of the theory and practice of modernism.
[119] __NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter VI. __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Neo-Kantian Conception of Art asErnst Cassirer (1874--1945) can, with full justification, be considered one of the main ``inspirations'' of the semantic philosophy of art.
Cassirer wrote no studies specially devoted to the problems of aesthetics. It is probably for this reason that in the literature on the German philosopher the view can be found that the philosophy of art was almost completely untouched by Cassirer, that supposedly he nowhere gives an analysis of art and only mentions it insofar as it has a partial similarity with myth and language. We cannot agree with this point of view. Art and literature occupy a far greater place in Cassirer's writing than in that of any modern western philosopher.
In his main work Die Philosophic det symbolischen Farmen there are no special sections on questions of art, but all the -same this work is extremely important to an understanding of the philosopher's aesthetic views. In An Essay on Man a special chapter (the ninth) is devoted to an analysis of art. Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaiten (1961) considers problems of the methodology of the study of the ``sciences of culture'', including the ``science'' of art. Two papers are of interest from the point of view of aesthetic theory: ``Das Symbolproblem und seine Stellung im System der Philosophic'', and ``Mythischer, asthetischer und theoretischer Raum'', which Cassirer delivered respectively at the 3rd (1927) and 4th (1930) German congresses on aesthetics and the general science of art. In his studies of Holderlin, Lessing, Schiller and Kleist, the majority of which were published in the 120 collection Idee und Cestalt (1921), in such works as Freiheit und Form (1916), Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophic det Renaissance (1927) amongst others we find a number of statements which directly or obliquely touch on theoretical problems of art.
Cassirer studies art as a philosopher. For this reason his theory of art can only be understood in the context of his entire philosophy.
__b_b_b__ __ALPHA_LVL3__ 1. CRITIQUE OF SYMBOLIC FORMS IN PLACE OF KANT'SAs the point of departure of his philosophy Cassirer, the major representative of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism, took the Kantian critique of pure reason. Philosophy, according to Kant, studies not being, but knowledge, which itself constructs the object of knowledge. Kant's ``critique'' is the study of the synthesizing (creative) activity of a priori forms of knowledge (sensory perceptions, categories of reason, ideas of reason) in the sphere of scientific knowledge-mathematics and the natural sciences. The two main premises of Kant's transcendental idealism-the idealistkally interpreted conception of philosophy as a methodology of knowledge and apriorism-lay at the basis of Cassirer's idealistic system.
Cassirer's development of Kant's theory moved in two directions. On the one hand, the Marburg school announced the necessity to purify Kant's philosophy of the dualism created by his theory of the ``thing in itself" as an object affixing the human senses, in other words, to purify it of elements of materialism. On the other hand, they announced the necessity to bring Kant's philosophy into line with modern science. In accordance with the first requirement Cassirer refused to interpret the concepts ``subject'' and ``object'' in an ontological sense, for him they only have methodological meaning. These are not two different essences, but two elements, two factors of knowledge (8). The division into `` subject" and ``object'' is only meaningful within the framework of knowledge. Within these limits the object of knowledge and the act of cognition itself are correlatively connected with 121 one another and complement one another. An object does not exist prior to and besides synthesis but is merely stated by such synthesis, it does not thrust itself on the consciousness and does not leave its mark on it, but comes as a result obtained with the help of consciousness itself, with the help of contemplation and pure thought. From the positions of the logico-cogni'tive view of the unity of subject and object Cassirer argues against their ontological interpretation, declaring this to be ``metaphysics''. He counts as the latter spiritualist theories (of Hegel and Schelling), the realistic theory of ``primary data" and materialism. In accordance with the Marburg tradition the German philosopher occupies a markedly anti-psychological position.^^1^^
By distinguishing between the subjective and the objective in cognition Cassirer is decisively rejecting subjectivism. However, he was incapable of justifying his ``decisive'' position. Nowhere does he define the criteria for his distinction between subjective and objective, and his rejection of the Kantian concept of the ``thing in itself" required a substantiation of the object in the very subject. As a result, Cassirer's attempt, as well as that of the entire Marburg school as a whole, to construct an ``objectless'' epistemological theory of human activity turned out to be yet another variety of subjectivism. This was one of the lamentable results of the `` development" of Kant's philosophy ``from the right".
Let us now see in which direction Cassirer answered another requirement of the Marburg school-to bring Kant's philosophy into line with modern science and above all with natural science. First, Cassirer was one of the founders of the semantic direction in philosophy, and properly emphasized the immense significance for philosophy of the problems of the analysis of symbolism, highlighted by the development of science at the turn of the century. As we shall see below, _-_-_
~^^1^^ Cassirr holds that, from the point of view of the psychology of the cognizing individual the object of cognition has a transcendental character, i.e. exists independently of the psyche of the cognizing individual as something self-sufficient. But the epistemological approach to cognition is for the neo-Kantian substantially different in this matter from the psychological approach.
122 the German philosopher interpreted these problems in an idealistic way. Secondly, Cassirer was one of the few bourgeois philosophers who turned their attention at an early stage to such a characteristic and important property of science in general, and in particular of the natural sciences, of the 20th century-Cassirer refers to studies in the fields of physics, biology (the work of Bertalanffy), psychology (the analyses of Gestalt-psychology) and art criticism (the wi iting of W6lfflin)-as systemic structural analysis. He regarded the characteristic features of this analysis to be the promotion as leading principles of scientific analysis of such concepts as {unction (relation) and structure (the whole). In the study of culture he also names Wet'den-Analyse (9, 90--96).^^1^^ Correctly pointing out the value of the above-named concepts both for the natural sciences and for the humanities, Cassirer the neo-Kantian interprets the latter as he does the problems of symbolism, from the positions of idealism.The main theme of Cassirer's writings is the philosophical interpretation of the problems of symbolism. The ``symbol'' (``the symbolic'') is given a fairly traditional definition: it embraces all those phenomena which in some form or other reveal the meaning in what is sensory, when the sensory is represented as something special and as the embodiment and revelation of sense (meaning) (3, III, 109). In contrast to signals, for symbols it is essential not that they be part of the physical world of being (since they have physical or substantial being), but that they enter the ``human world of meaning" and have only a ``functional value" (10, 32). The material essence of a -symbol is absorbed by its function of meaning. The spiritual meaning and the material bearer form an indivisible unity in the symbol. As the paradigm, the exemplary instance of such unity we can take the connection between the body and the soul. The meaning of the spirit may only be revealed in its expression; the ideal (that which is _-_-_
~^^1^^ It is worth noting that according to Gerard, the leading modern specialist in the field of general systems theory, three aspects are characteristic of the analysis of live systems: structure, function and history (or becoming).
123 designated) becomes known only within the system of sensory signs through which it is expressed (3, I, 18, 42).Insofar as the spiritual imperatively demands material expression, the process of cognition, according to Cassirer, has a symbolic character, independently of the level at which it takes place.^^1^^ The true import of this premise will become clear when it is understood what role (function) Cassirer accords the iSymbol in cognition. This role naturally follows from the basic Kantian premise of Cassirer's epistemology, namely, that cognition itself creates its own object. Cassirer refines this premise in the sense that cognition functions in an inseparable connection with sensory expression, and not as the activity of pure consciousness. In other words, the object of cognition is created by symbols.
The German philosopher gives a special place in this to linguistic symbols. Language is situated at the focal point of spiritual existence, and lines lead from it to all the areas of the mind. Criticism or study of language is in fact criticism of knowledge (3, I, 1-41; III, 143). Cassirer was one of those modern philosophers who saw ``the full significance of the relations of problems of language to problems of philosophy and, therefore, the first also to develop a philosophy of language in the full sense of the word''. Wilbur M. Urban, author of these words and a follower of Cassirer's philosophy, in clarifying his characterization, correctly points to the `` idealistic" nature of Cassirer's philosophy of language, linking him with Kantian ``critical idealism''. Pointing out that for Cassirer language does not by a long way exhaust all the riches of the forms of symbols, he remarks astutely that Cassirer's ``philosophy of language leads directly to a philosophy of symbolism" (16, 403, 412, 420). In the light of all that has been said the semantic orientation of the German philosopher and its idealistic character should be unmistakably apparent.
Cassirer cannot be reproached with having emphasized _-_-_
~^^1^^ ``The thesis that a symbolic relation obtains for any possible ( culturally encounterable) context in which we perceive or observe a 'world','' writes Carl H. Hamburg, ``expresses what is most distinctive in Cassirer's conception of philosophy" (16, 81).
124 the fact that language and symbols are not only the `` bearers" of, and means of communication for ``meanings'', but also function as the tools for the formation of the meanings themselves. This notion is correct, but Cassirer carried it to an absurd idealistic extreme. He has symbols transform into organs of reality, since it is only thanks to their action that any reality can become the object of intellectual cognition and as such be visible to us. The question of what precisely reality consists of, considered independently of these symbols, and of what its independent attributes are like is seen to be inappropriate (4, 8). With the help of symbols man creates the object of cognition, and it is only this object, and not in any way objective reality, which is accessible to cognition. Insofar as cognition, according to Cassirer, has a symbolic character (in the sense of the word indicated above) at all stages, including that of sensation and perception, it follows that we must reject the direct character of knowledgethe knowledge of things themselves. ``Instead of dealing with the things themselves man is in a sense constantly conversing with himself" (10, 25). No detailed explanation is required to reveal the Kantian agnosticism manifested by this position.For Kant sensory contemplation, the categories of understanding and the ideas of reason are forms, superimposed on empirical content and therefore synthesizing nature as an object of scientific cognition. The main function of symbols in Cassirer is also a formative and constructive function of structuring experience. In order to emphasize this function Cassirer prefers to call symbols ``symbolic forms" and his philosophy the ``philosophy of symbolic forms''. The Kantian approach can also be felt in his interpreting ``symbolic forms" as a priori structures integrating experience. To sum up, the main Kantian characteristic of knowledge-the function of synthesis, of structuring the object of cognition, and apriorism are also the main features of Cassirer's symbolic forms.^^1^^
In addition to Kant's transcendental idealism, the _-_-_
~^^1^^ In this connection we cannot but agree with Fritz Kaufmann's view that Cassirer is closer to ``the original Idealism" of Kant than are the other representatives of the Marburg school, even Cohen and Natorp (16, 801).
125 functional and structural (systems) approaches mainly taken by Cassirer-as noted above-from the natural sciences, also had a profound influence on his treatment of symbolic forms. In particular we should -single out Gestalt psychology with its interpretation of the structures of cognition. ``Modern Gestalt psychology .. . has shown,'' writes Cassirer in his An Essay on Man, ``that the very 'Simplest perceptual processes imply fundamental structural elements, certain patterns or configurations" (10, 38). The idea of Gestalt can by no means be reduced to the mere assertion of wholeness and a structural character of perception: Gestalt psychology does away with the dependence of perception on the object. The characteristics of mental structures as closed phenomenal fields was extremely close to Cassirer's treatment of symbolic forms as a priori structures. Gestalt psychology developed in the philosophical stream of Husserl's ideas, and a similarity with these can also be observed in the philosophy of symbolic forms, as we shall show in an analysis of Cassirer's interpretation of artistic form. Thus, taking as his point of departure Kant's critique of reason, Cassirer the neo-Kantian directed his philosophy along a -semantic channel-the study of symbolism.While moving in this direction Cassirer made one important step to the side. Kant had analysed only scientific knowledge, proceeding from the fact of the existence of knowledge (of mathematics and natural sciences) and asking the question: how was this fact possible. This approach left one question open, namely, does pre-iscientific knowledge exist, and if so in what form, and is knowledge in forms other than scientific possible? Cassirer tried to avoid the speculative and unhistorical method of analysis used by Kant. He proceeds from the fact of the existence of culture, to which he assigns, alongside 'Science, such forms as language, myth, religion and art. All these forms he considers forms of knowledge. The critique of reason becomes a critique of culture.^^1^^ As a _-_-_
~^^1^^ When examining different forms of human culture Cassirer was concerned first of all with their cognitive aspect, and thus his entire philosophy of culture can be regarded as an original, broadly interpreted theory of knowledge (13, 59; see also 12, 33).
126 semanticist Cassirer believes that ``reason is a very inadequate term with which to comprehend the forms of man's cultural life in all their richness and variety. But all these forms are symbolic forms" (10, 26). The philosophy of symbolic forms is therefore transformed into the philosophy of cultural forms, within which a symbolic function is performed. To understand culture, for Cassirer, is to understand the essence of man. As a result the philosophy of symbolic forms becomes the ``philosophy of man" or philosophical anthropology. It is in the light of the above-indicated three factors of the idealistic philosophy of ``symbolic forms"---the theory of knowledge, the philosophy of culture and of man that Cassirer's views on art should be examined. As Harry Slochower correctly remarks, Cassirer's analysis of art is the most characteristic application of his method and system. __b_b_b__ __ALPHA_LVL3__ 2. ART AS SYMBOLIC FORM.According to Cassirer, the view of the universum of culture as a system of symbolic forms enables one to show the true unity of cultural forms as an organic whole and to indicate in this whole the proper place for each of them, including art. The connection between the different forms of culture, which forms the basis of this unity, is functional and not substantial. As an example of such a connection the German philosopher takes the connection between art and language. The common ``basic'' function of all the forms of culture is symbolic. Thus, the central position of Cassirer's aesthetics-his premise that art is a symbolic formenables us to talk of his semantic orientation. Further evidence of this is Cassirer's frequent recourse to the analogy between art and language.
Art, like all symbolic forms, has two sides or two `` dimensions''. One is physically present being, the other the underlying mental aspects, which are manifested in physical meaning and constitute a common factor of everything we designate with the name ``culture''. Cassirer points to three logically possible types of the connection between ``physical'' and ``meaning'' in symbolic form: 1) expression, 2) representation, 3) pure meaning. These three possible types of 127 connection function for Cassirer as the logical substantiation of a historically established typology of forms of culture: myth and art (expression), language (representation), science (pure meaning).^^1^^
At the stage of pure meaning-i.e. in science-the dominant role is played by sense, meaning.^^2^^ At the stage of representation in language a certain balance can be observed of the two polar elements: what is given through the senses represents something quite different.
Art corresponds to the stage of expression. Here the balance is violated in the direction of the sensuous, the physical, while meaning is somehow diffused in these. Reality can here be seen in the fusion of external and emotion-arousing features with features which have a physiognomical and affective character. The world is represented in its primal, expressive value, whereby all phenomena reveal their specific, direct and spontaneous nature. The expressed phenomena are gloomy, tender, exciting or pacifying. Aesthetic experience is in this respect richer than simple sensory perception, in which many possibilities are not realized. One of the greatest manifestations and deepest enchantments of art is in the way it reveals that the sensory aspects of things are infinite in their variety.
In order to give a fuller characterization of this property of art Cassirer turns once again to the analogy with language. ``Art,'' he argues, ``may be defined as a symbolic language" (10, 168). But this definition does not point to art's specific features. In the opinion of the German philosopher, modern aesthetics is so exclusively concerned with the _-_-_
~^^1^^ H. Buczynska, correctly pointing out that for Cassirer the rationalist and ``apriorist'' an empirical substantiation of the typology of symbolic forms of culture would be ``inconsistent'' and that in his system only a logical substantiation is possible, advances the rather doubtful argument that Cassirer lacks not only the empirical but also the logical substantiation, and that therefore his entire classification is arbitrary (13, 44).
~^^2^^ As the West German author Lorenz Dittmann correctly remarks, at the third level of ``meaning'' the term ``symbol'' is for Cassirer tantamount to non-sensory sign (See L. Dittmann. Stil. Symbol. Struktut. Munchen, 1967, p. 106.).
128 commonality of art and language that the specific features of art have been left in the shade. For example, Croce insists that between language and art there is ``full identity'', not just a close connection. ``There is, however, an unmistakable difference between the symbols of art and the linguistic terms of ordinary speech or writing.'' One of the manifestations of this difference is that in art ``a representation in the medium of sensuous forms differs widely from a verbal or conceptual representation" (10, 168).Thus the peculiarity of the physical bearer of meaning in art consists in the fact that art is a sensuous form, in which meaning is, as it were, diffused. Recognition of the importance of sensoriness, of the physical in art is a valuable factor in Cassirer's aesthetics. In this connection he correctly criticizes Croce and Collingwood for their underestimation of the sensory factor in art.
One characteristic of symbolic form is that it is not static, functioning like a dynamic principle. ``The philosophy of symbolic forms,'' writes R. Hartmann, ``is a philosophy of creation. .. The symbolic form ... represents the process of creation itself" (16, 292--93). The act of creating symbolic form in art is similar to analogous processes in language and science.
In accordance with the idealistic principle of the Marburg school, which holds that knowledge must seek the origins of its ``data'' in thought, Cassirer asserts that in language and science we must classify our sensory perceptions and subsume them under general concepts and rules, in order to give them objective meaning. Such classification is the result of simplification. The ability to define the indefinite, to limit the limitless, to derive the finite from chaos does not only belong to the theoretical concept. Artistic contemplation also possesses this ability. It has its own method of classification, which works not through thought and theoretical concepts, but with the help of pure form, Gestalt, and has an organic character. In contrast to a logical classification into classes and types, in the order of universality, the division in art is closer to the basic principle of life itself, that is, retains the freshness and directness of individual life. In contrast to the __PRINTERS_P_129_COMMENT__ 9---826 129 processes of conceptual simplification, abstraction and deductive generalization the processes of condensation, concentration, intensification and concretization are operative in art.
As Cassirer stresses, the above-indicated productive process of creating symbolic form is necessarily carried out in some sensuous medium (another thing underestimated by Croce and Collingwood). For great artists colour, line, rhythms and words are not simply part of their technical apparatus, but an essential factor in the very productive process.
Taking place as they do in the sensory sphere, a cognitive, formative act in art remains essentially a mental process, an act of symbolic consciousness, whose objective condensation is pure forms, or Gestalten. This idea is given clear expression by the German philosopher in describing the method, initiated by Lessing, of classifying art in dependence on the nature of sensory signs. Recognizing the value of such an approach (applied by Lessing to painting and poetry, by Herder to music), Cassirer warns however that the essence of the problem should not be forgotten. The variety of the means of portrayal, of form (Gestalt), he says, does not only proceed from the material portrayed. What is decisive in every art, independently of the sensuous matter with which it operates, is meaning (7, 335).
Cassirer's disciple W. Urban, in his description of this method, calls this principle the ``primacy of meaning" (16, 409). This principle is by no means reducible to emphasizing the role of ideal meaning with relation to sensuous matter. Elucidating the essence of his method, which he calls phenomenological, Cassirer points out that his understanding of phenomenology is the same as Hegel's: to understand the development of spiritual forms from within, not from without (17). At the same time he rejects the speculative idealistic explanation (offered by Hegel and Schelling) of culture and art, describing this method of explanation as aesthetics from above. Neither does he recognize aesthetics from below, to which he assigns the naturalistic interpretation of art.
Cassirer rightly criticizes naturalism (in particular Taine) with its attempt to derive art from nature and to reduce the study of culture to a natural science. ``No matter,'' he writes, 130 ``from how many viewpoints we may observe and analyze the marble as a natural object, the result will never divulge anything about its form and the beauty of its form" (11, 339). Cassirer holds that a causal analysis of art and culture must be supplemented by a structural analysis, an analysis of form. This methodological requirement, which is correct in itself, receives, with him, an idealistic explanation. Despite his reservations to the effect that a structural analysis should be supplemented with a causal consideration, that it is impossible to construct a theory of art and culture in a void of abstraction and speculation, Cassirer in fact opposes the structural approach to the causal explanation. This is apparent not only from the fact that the structural approach is claimed to be the leading principle of the analysis, and the cognition of form its main objective, but also in the suggestion that we should turn in the causal analysis to phenomena ``within a particular form''. In other words, the primary cause for the development of art and culture should be sought actually within art and culture, within the mental processes, out of which they arise and whose objective condensation they form (9, 98).~^^1^^ Thus the structural approach to art is transformed by Cassirer the neo-Kantian into an instrument of idealistic interpretation. This approach for him means the requirement to interpret art as a process of a priori, spontaneous creation of ideal form, an act which takes place entirely within the mind.
According to Cassirer's idealistic epistemology, by creating symbolic form art performs its main function, that of cognition. Cassirer regards the view of art as a complement, an adornment to life as greatly mistaken. To think this is to underestimate the real significance of art and its active role in human culture. Art is the revelation of reality, its _-_-_
~^^1^^ In an article analysing Cassirer's views on art Katharine Gilbert correctly remarks that ``in all contexts the Kantian Cassirer asserts the primacy of the spontaneity of consciousness''. Harry Slochower also writes of this. In his opinion Cassirer, even when concerned with social reality, effectively considers it in terms of its mental (``Geistige'') situation. He restricts the material aspect to ``material form" which is manipulated by art and other cultural expressions (16, 619, 654--57).
__PRINTERS_P_132_COMMENT__ 9* 131 interpretation (representation), but it achieves this through the intuition, and not with the help of concepts, through sensuous forms and not thought. The artist is just as much of a discoverer as the scientist, only in contrast to the latter, who discovers facts and laws of nature, the artist discovers forms. A great artist shows us the forms of outer things, and, for example, a dramatist the forms of our inner life. The main purpose of art, its influence is the deep penetration into the formal structure of reality. But what, we may ask, does Cassirer understand by reality?For the neo-Kantian Cassirer the forms of the outer and inner world which art discovers, have absolutely no existence independent of art. Like all other symbolic forms art is not only a reproduction of an already existing, given reality. The forms which art discovers are free of any mystery, they are accessible, visible, audible, but are not given to us directly, and we only find out about them when they are revealed to us in the works of great artists. In fact, art helps us cognize not the forms of the objective world, but the forms created by art itself. The creation of forms is at the same time the cognition of these forms. Forms in art do not reflect the forms of objective reality, their main task is to construe and organize human experience. The fundamental feature of art, as of other symbolic forms, is its constructive power in the framing of our human universe (10, 167).^^1^^
Thus, the agnosticism of Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms is consistently extended to cover the explanation of one of these forms: art. The epistemological source of agnosticism, the drawing of a fundamental boundary between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself, is manifested here in the fact that the world of ``phenomena'' of art is in principle hedged off from the objective world (whose reflection it in fact constitutes) and is taken to be the only accessible object of cognition in the sphere of art.
_-_-_~^^1^^ In her commentary to Cassirer, Langer notes that insofar, according to Cassirer, ``as there are alternative symbolic forms, there are also alternative phenomenal 'worlds'''. Art, alongside language, myth and science, creates its own phenomenal world (16; 18).
132According to Cassirer the symbol is the thread of Ariadne, which unites the different approaches to man, to the general nature of human culture. The essence of man consists from this point of view in the ability to produce and use symbols. Man should therefore be defined not simply as an animal rationale but as an animal symbolicum. This definition, argues Cassirer, also points to the specific distinction of man, and enables one to understand the path which lies ahead of him-the path to civilization, to culture. The social consciousness is formed on the basis of the symbolic forms of culture, and it is this, according to Cassirer, which alone distinguishes man and human society from the animal forms of social life.
Apropos of such definitions Marx and Engels had written in as early a work as The German Ideology that although men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else, the first historical act of these individuals, thanks to which they are distinguished from animals, is not the fact of their thinking, but of their beginning to produce their means of subsistence. Cassirer approaches the problem in an idealistic way, in direct contradiction to this, the only true approach to the genesis of man and human society.
__b_b_b__ __ALPHA_LVL3__ 3. ``PURE'' FORM AS ``MEANING'' IN ART.In the previous section we showed that art in Cassirer's interpretation consists of the process of creating symbolic form characterized by unity of the sensuous matter and mental meaning, a unity in which, moreover, meaning has pride of place.
Let us now consider in more detail Cassirer's understanding of the concept of meaning in art. Cassirer as a neo-- Kantian did not accept the ``metaphysical'' interpretation of meaning in art as an ``infinity'' (Schelling), an ``absolute'' (Hegel), etc. Art is indeed symbolism, but this symbolism must be understood in an immanent, not a transcendental sense. This means that ``the real subject of art" should be sought ``in certain fundamental structural elements of our sense experience itself-in lines, design, in architectural, musical forms" 133 (10, 157). This position taken by Cassirer meant that he recognized that ``in art `meaning' is form" (15, 21).
For Cassirer the immanent character of symbolism in art meant that sensuous form as the bearer of meaning does not refer to any other objects than itself. Cassirer's writings do, admittedly, contain statements about art which cannot be accommodated in the concept of immanent symbolism. Thus, for example, he says of music that is reveals to the listener the range of human emotions, that the comic poet and the tragic poet reveal to us their views of human life as a whole, etc. It is perfectly obvious that these emotions and views take us beyond the limits of sensuous form, and are transcendental in relation to it. Cassirer's inconsistency in this matter is connected with his attempts to give a comprehensive interpretation of ``meaning'' in art, going beyond the bounds of his formalist conception, according to which the essence of art consists of the ``meanings'' of form or formal meanings.
The immanent character of symbolism in art means at the level of perception that ``meaning'' converges with its sensuous bearer until they are indistinguishable and the meaning is intuited, and not derived. Art ``gives us the intuition of the form of things" (10, 143). Symbolism in art, in Cassirer's interpretation, could in consequence be called ``intuitive symbolism'', although the philosopher himself does not use this term.^^1^^
The merger of ``bearer'' and ``meaning'' at the level of perception does not, however, acquire the full identity inherent in the mythological consciousness. At the level of thought the ``polar'' distinction between the sign (sensuous matter) and ideal meaning in art can be seen with full clarity. Thus it is not sensuous, but ideal form, or Gestalt, which is taken to _-_-_
~^^1^^ A. Hofstadter (Truth and Art, New York, 1965, pp. 8-10), with some justification detects here the influence on Cassirer of the Crocean theory of the insoluble unity of intuition and expression, the view that expression in art can be called a symbol if the symbol is identical with the intuition. At the same time it should be pointed out that Cassirer does not contrapose, as does Croce, intuitive cognition as direct to symbolic cognition as mediated. Intuitive cognition itself has a symbolic character in his treatment. In this connection Cassirer criticizes, for example, Bergson's anti-intellectualist conception of intuition.
134 be meaning in art in Cassirer's aesthetics. Arising in the process of formative cognitive acts-condensation and concentration, intensification and concretization-form has a cognitive structure, which implies its rational character. For this reason the factor of purposefulness, ``teleological structure'', is essential for linguistic and artistic expression. A gesture is no more a fact of art than an exclamation, a fact of speech. Both the one and the other are spontaneous and instinctive reactions, and not rational forms of expression inherent to art. In the rational structure of artistic form each separate element must be felt to be a part of the whole. Since the rationality of art is the rationality of form, and not of the things and phenomena themselves, art has the ability to go beyond the bounds of the natural canons of form-creation (i.e. has the property of transcendence). The latter is also connected with the fact that a decisive role is played in art by the process of imagination, alongside the cognitive acts we have pointed out.According to Cassirer ``meaning'' in art functions in two forms.- 1) gegenstdndlich-darstellenden and 2) personlichaufgedriickten. The former constitutes the objective aspect of meaning, the latter the subjective aspect. Art, like language, constantly fluctuates between two poles: the objective and the subjective. No theory of art can afford to ignore either one of these poles, although the accent may be placed on one or the other. If the accent is placed on the objective, art and language will fall under the general heading of imitation, and their primary function will be mimetic (e.g., as in Aristotle). When the subjective aspect is accented the main function is declared to be expression (as in Rousseau). Cassirer holds that if by expression we understand the spontaneous expression of feelings, then instead of the reproduction of things we will have the reproduction of inner life. And although the accent here is placed on the subjective pole in its essence art remains reproductive. Making an analogy with the theory of language, continues the German philosopher, it is possible to say in this case that the place of the onomatopoetic theory of art is taken by the theory of exclamations (or interjections).
135Criticizing the one-sidedness of these theories Cassirer points out that in art, as in the other symbolic forms of culture, there is no simple opposition of ``I'' and the ``world'', no alternative of object and subject. These two poles interpenetrate into one another. No expression of ``I'' in art is possible without something concrete, appearing before us in its full objectivity and plasticity (9, 31). For example, in Cassirer's opinion it is doubtful whether we can ascribe a more subjective character to such a subjective art-form as lyric poetry than to all other forms. Admittedly, by comparison to other forms of culture, and particularly science, which eschews all personal and anthropomorphic elements, the factor of original, individual creation is prevalent in art. Despite its peculiar tendency, inherent in language, too, to preserve old forms, passing them on from generation to generation, returning to the same motifs, every great artist to a certain extent ushers in a new epoch. His imagination creates a unique system of forms. Every great work of art has its own idiom, which makes it impossible to achieve an exact `` translation".
Whilst proclaiming the objectivity and universality of forms (i.e. of ``meanings'') in art Cassirer does not give any explanation or indication of whence this objectivity and universality arises. Of course the philosopher's references to Kant's theory of aesthetic universality cannot function as scientific proof. It is only possible to reject subjectivism in aesthetics from scientific, materialistic positions, or from the non-- scientific positions of objective idealism. Cassirer the neo-Kantian, by rejecting the materialistic explanation of art as a reflection of reality, was left with only one alternative-objective idealism.
When Cassirer talks of a new area of pure forms which do not concur either with the world of physical objects, or with the sphere of the individual, when he maintains that forms in art are not invented arbitrarily but shown in their ``true shape" (10, 145), he is moving in the direction of the Husserlian, phenomenological theory of ``pure essences''. In the Philosophic der symbolischen Formen the author states in no uncertain terms that the spread of Husserl's phenomenological 136 method from the sphere of logic to that of ethics and art would be one of the most fruitful developments of contemporary thought.^^1^^
Analysing pure form as meaning in art Cassirer gives special attention to the problem of space in art. This question is specially studied by him in his paper ``Mythischer, \"asthetischer und theoretischer Raum".^^2^^ Cassirer believes that the problem of form can only be cleared up if the question of the essence of space and spatial representations is first posed and decided. He expresses the hope that the problem of space might become the point of departure for an understanding of the specific laws of form to which art is subject. At the same time he correctly argues that in resolving this question aesthetics must rely on certain epistemological preconditions. ``It is impossible,'' he writes, ``to exaggerate the self-sufficiency, autarchy of aesthetics with regard to metaphysics and the laws of the scientific study of the world" (7, 26).
Let us now consider the interpretation of space which he proposes. As stated above, Cassirer correctly pointed to the importance of such concepts as ``system'' and ``relation'' for contemporary science, and in the given instance for a scientific explanation of space. However, this advance in the study of space was interpreted by him in a pronouncedly subjective idealistic way. The subordination of the concept ``substance'' to the concept ``system'' is interpreted by him to mean that the substance or matter which constitutes the substratum _-_-_
~^^1^^ The question of the similarity and difference between Cassirer's neo-Kantian philosophy and phenomenology is discussed in an article by F. Kaufmann: ``Cassirer, Neo-Kantianism and Phenomenology''. The author believes that the relation of neo-Kantianism to phenomenology as a whole may be described as ``rapprochement'' (16, 803). The objective idealistic tendencies in Cassirer's writings lead us to reject Hofstadter's assertion that Cassirer turns away from all forms of objectivism, although we cannot but agree that Croce's radical subjectivization of the phenomenon of art is also characteristic of Cassirer.
~^^2^^ It is worth noting that Cassirer read this paper at the 4th Congress of the Society of Aesthetics and General Science of Art. The work of the theoreticians who came together in this society in Germany in the early 20's (M. Dessoir, E. Utitz, H. Wolfflin, A. Hildebrand et al.) was characterized by the principles of a formal-compositional and structural consideration of the works and styles of art.
137 of spatial relations disappears. The essence of space and time, asserts the neo-Kantian Cassirer, is not ``an unknown something which hovers before consciousness, but is comprised and rooted in consciousness itself" (7, 21). In other words spatial structure and spatial relations are interpreted as something created by the mind and contained within it. Cassirer is effectively talking not about objective space and time, but about the system of spatio-temporal representations construed by consciousness. This is the only space that the neo-Kantian is concerned with: he simply does not know ``objective'' space and time, independent of the consciousness. It is this idealistic basic error which determined those idealistic aberrations which characterize Cassirer's interpretation of the systems (structural) approach to the problem of space and time.It is well known that systems analysis played an important role in the acceptance of the ``organized complexity'', instead of the ``organized simplicity" of the world of classical mechanics, as the object of scientific investigation in the 20th century. As Ludwig von Bertalanffy points out, 20th century science promotes the idea of the world as a mass of heterogeneous and irreducible spheres of reality. Cassirer also pointed to this phenomenon, noting that systems analysis marks the victory of pluralism over abstract monism, that the concept of system includes difference, polymorphism, multi-- qualitativeness, etc. But for Cassirer the neo-Kantian pluralism did not in any way mean the organized complexity and polymorphism of objective reality, but the possibility of ``spiritual formations of different types and different principles of form" (7, 26). He is effectively concerned with the polymorphism not of being, but of the cognizing mind, and derives the latter, furthermore, not from the ``complexity'' of objective reality, but by means of the differentiation of the spirit in itself (9, 19). It is precisely this which he uses to explain the existence of different sorts of space: mythical, aesthetic and theoretical.
All these types of space have their own definite form ( Gestalt) and their own connections, which are determined by a Sinn-Ordnung within which they are formed. Depending on whether the mythical, aesthetic or theoretical system of 138 meanings is under consideration the form of space also changes. This moreover applies not to a part, but to the whole, principle structure. ``The function of meaning is primary and determining, the structure of space a secondary and dependent factor" (7, 29). Thus mythical space is connected with the mythical form of thought and a specific lite intuition, with magic, etc.
The sphere of meanings in art is the sphere of pure representation, of pure form. Aesthetic space corresponds to the peculiarity and origination of this form in art. In contrast to the abstract geometrism of scientific space aesthetic space is concrete. ``Aesthetic space is the true 'space of life', in contrast to theoretical space, which is constructed with the help of pure thought, it is formed on the basis of pure feeling and imagination" (7, 31). Space in art is filled and pervaded with an intensive expressive value, it is ``enlivened'' thanks to the strong dynamic oppositions it contains. In each form of art a particular direction of the ``meaning'' of the representation operates, and it is this which determines the specifics of space and time (3, II, 35).
Cassirer's characterization of aesthetic space includes the astute notion that all forms of spatial presentation-mythical, aesthetic, and scientific-are subjective images. As such they are dependent on the subject, and, in particular, on his worldview. Cassirer stressed this dependence and engaged in a specific study of one of the spaces-the mythical, in connection with the mythical mode of thinking. The idea of the connection between space in art and the world-view (the direction of the ``meaning''), although it was not specifically elaborated by Cassirer, influenced the subsequent study of pictorial art.
A serious flaw in Cassirer's conception of aesthetic space was the way he completely disqualified the study of the connection between aesthetic space in art and the properties of objective space and the laws of its perception, by virtue of his one-sided idealistic orientation to the mind and its differentiation in itself. No special proof is needed to show that this aspect of the analysis rejected on principle is of considerable importance for an understanding of the nature of aesthetic space.
139From a philosophical point of view it is also important to stress that since objective space does not exist for Cassirer he lacks any measure of objectivity for the different systems of views of space. For this reason all the types of space--- the mythical, aesthetic and the scientific-all have equal rights in his mind, all forming their own phenomenal worlds. The scientific picture of the world is placed on a par with the mythological and the artistic conceptions of space, which are characterized by a considerable degree of subjectivity and conventionality.
__b_b_b__ __ALPHA_LVL3__ 4. BEAUTY AS A FUNCTION OF SYMBOLIC FORM.In contrast to the other representatives of semantic philosophy of art Cassirer lacks a theory of value and hardly ever uses the term ``value'' (or ``good''). However, an important role in his conception of art is accorded to such an aesthetic value as beauty, although it is not called a value. The point of departure for Cassirer's analysis of beauty is his view of beauty as a quality or function of the symbol, or of symbolic form in art. ``Beauty,'' stated Cassirer in his paper to the 3rd German Congress on Aesthetics, ``is necessarily and essentially a symbol" (6, 296), because it is connected with sensuous matter and at the same time is situated above it.
The definition of art as symbolic form presupposes for Cassirer a certain extension of the concept of the symbol. Art is not limited to the expression of emotions or the representation of ideas. It is mainly a construction of beautiful form. But if we are to recognize the symbolic character of art, we have also to recognize a fourth dimension of the symbol: beauty. The perception of beautiful forms has to be joined to the distinction between the perception of things and of expressions. Consequently ``aesthetic function'', or the function of the ``revelation'' of beautiful forms is added to the representative and expressive functions of symbols (15, 21).
In accordance with the anti-metaphysical direction of the theory of symbolic forms the German philosopher is extremely sceptical of the metaphysical conceptions of beauty, 140 which connect it with the Infinite (Schelling), the Absolute Idea (Hegel), describing them as aesthetics from above. Beauty, he asserts, is a well-known phenomenon of human experience, its part and parcel, and it stands in no need of metaphysical theories for its explanation. It is palpable and can be identified infallibly. Instead of searching for the metaphysical essence of beauty we should simply analyse the direct experience of contact with works of art. In this approach to the analysis of beauty Cassirer sees, in particular, the advantage of psychological theories (by comparison with metaphysical theories), although he does not subscribe to them.
Which properties of immanent symbolic forms in art make them ``beautiful'', and experience aesthetic? Cassirer names the following as the principal ones: structural equilibrium and order, unique architectonics of the forms, which transforms every true work of art into an untranslatable idiom. Equilibrium in art has a dynamic character. Aesthetic experience is connected with the ``dynamic aspect of form" (10, 152).
This dynamism is particularly manifested in those works of art (e.g. drama) which in their forms show us the forms of our inner life and our emotions. Feelings are embodied in art with the help of the imagination. Lev Tolstoy, in Cassirer's opinion, was right to point out the connection between aesthetic experience and an intense passion, but he overlooked the factor of form. In art emotions are transformed both according to their nature and to their meaning, acquiring aesthetic form. Emotion in art is, as it were, present, but we see it rather than feel (sense) it directly. We are not in the power of the emotions, but see through them in a way and try to penetrate into their very nature and essence, to cognize the ``forms of our inner life" (10, 147). What we feel in art is not a simple and united emotional quality, it is the dynamic process of life itself, an incessant fluctuation between opposite poles: between joy and sadness, hope and fear, etc. This dialectic of form simultaneously creates tension and liberation, giving us an inner freedom which cannot be achieved any other way but in art. The feeling 141 of beauty must be susceptible to the dynamic life of forms, and this life cannot be perceived without the corresponding dynamic processes within ourselves.
Reviewing the different forms of human culture as symbolic forms Cassirer took account above all of their cognitive aspect. Art, he argues, may also be described as a special kind of cognition. The artist is just as much a discoverer of beautiful forms as the scientist, the discoverer of the facts and laws of nature. Cassirer willingly subscribes to Shaftesbury's observation that ``all beauty is truth''. Beauty as truth may be described by the classic formula: ``unity in variety''. However, the truth of beauty does not consist in the theoretical description or explanation of things, but rather in a sympathetic vision of things. The truth of beauty and the truth of science are opposites, but not mutually contradictory. The conceptual interpretation of the sciences does not exclude an intuitive interpretation of art.
The truth of beauty is perceived intuitively, but Cassirer does not sharply oppose intuition to rational cognition. He admits that beauty is based not only on intuition but also on an act of judgment and contemplation.
Cassirer's conception of beauty, such as it is stated above, appears at first glance to be fully compatible with the objective theory of beauty. But this is only at first glance. ``That beauty is not an immediate property of things, that it necessarily involves a relation to the human mind,'' asserts Cassirer, ``is a point which seems to be admitted by almost all aesthetic theories" (10, 150). Cassirer treats critically the various interpretations of the participation of the spirit in aesthetic experience: the associationist theory of Hume, Bergson's theory of intuition, Nietzsche's conception of artistic inspiration, Santayana's hedonistic theory of pleasure, and the Freudian theory of the subconscious.
The rational side of Cassirer's criticism can be seen in his correctly noting the absence in these theories of a true understanding of activity, of the creative constructive function in aesthetic experience. Beauty, according to Cassirer, must be defined in terms of the activity of the mind. Only thanks to a constructive act by the mind can we discover 142 beauty. This act constitutes the precondition for the aesthetic enjoyment of beautiful forms. The process of the `` activity of the mind'', which results in the creation of beautiful forms, is not, maintains Cassirer, ``subjective in character; on the contrary, it is one of the conditions of our intuition of an objective world" (10, 151).
It is correct that aesthetic experience presupposes the mental activity of the subject, that this activity does not necessarily mean subjective activity, and that it can have objective content. But correct only on one vital condition: the subject from the very start deals not with itself, but with the object, and if it divides the object, then along the lines along which it is itself divided internally. It is precisely this condition which is lacking in Cassirer's neo-Kantian conception of the mind. In his epistemology there is no place for an object understood as an objectively existing reality, independent of the consciousness, the subject and the symbolic activity of this consciousness. Both the subject and the object are elements of the cognition. From such an epistemological premise it is only possible to proceed to a subjectivistic theory of beauty. Admittedly Cassirer's theory of the area of pure forms opens up the possibility for an objective-idealistic interpretation in the spirit of Husserl's phenomenology. The philosopher's noble intentions to steer clear of ``metaphysics'' in his explanation of beauty proved futile.
__*_*_*__In assessing the value of Cassirer's activity we must bear in mind his real place in modern western philosophy. In the opinion of a number of scholars (D. Cawronsky, S. Langer, C. Hamburg et al). Cassirer had all the attributes of a great philosopher in the latest period. Such evaluations are somewhat exaggerated, although we cannot but agree that Cassirer is a major phenomenon in 20th century European philosophy.
Cassirer's philosophy and aesthetics of symbolic forms was one of the main contributory factors to the fruitful 143 work of the Warburg Institute. The best illustration of Cassirer's conception of symbol as interpreted by the Marburg group is provided by Erwin Panofsky's study Perspective as Symbolic Form.^^1^^ The 3rd German Congress on Aesthetics and General Science of Art (1927), devoted to the problem of symbol and rhythm was an important landmark in the development of the semantic philosophy of art. The congress was conducted mainly in the form of discussions of Cassirer's ideas, and Cassirer himself read a paper on the `` Problem of the Symbol and Its Place in the System of Philosophy".
Cassirer's aesthetics of symbolic forms had a serious influence on many philosophers and aestheticians of semantic orientation. First place amongst these belongs to Susanne Langer, who dedicated her major work on aesthetics. Feeling and Form, to Cassirer. We can also mention the American professor Nelson Goodman, who directly acknowledges Cassirer's influence on him in his most popular book The Languages ot Art. An Approach to the Theory ot Symbols (1968).
In recent years Cassirer's philosophy and aesthetics have attained particular popularity in Europe and America, and are experiencing a ``renaissance'' of sorts. Evidence of this can be seen, in particular, in the republication of his main works and their translations into foreign languages ( English, Italian, Spanish, Japanese). The main reason for such popularity consists in the circumstance that, while remaining essentially and avowedly idealistic, Cassirer's semantic philosophy of art at the same time possesses the prestige of a theory which expresses certain important tendencies (the structural functional approach, etc.) in scientific (and above all natural scientific) thought of our century. It is to the advantage of idealistic aesthetics, which is undergoing a crisis, to arm itself with such a theory, and all the more so _-_-_
~^^1^^ K. Gilbert, H. Kuhn, L. Dittmann and others write of Cassirer's influence on E. Panofsky. Panofsky himself on many occasions mentions the similarity between his views and Cassirer's understanding of ``symbolic'' values (cf. on this point Studies in Iconology and Meaning in the Visual Ait).
144 because this theory has proved very suitable for use as a justification of the aesthetics and practice of modernism. The latter is connected with the tact that there is a pronounced formalist tendency in Cassirer's approach to tne analysis ot art.Many western commentators write of the formalist tendency in Cassirer's philosophy of art. L. Dittmann correctly points out that symbolic form, for all that it was originally connected with an aesthetics of content, leads to an aesthetics ot lorm, and K. Reichhardt, the author of the article ``Ernst Cassirer's Contribution to Literary Criticism" asserts that tor Cassirer ``art's main element is not the content; it is the creation of a torm which ... offers us the cognition of a content'', and that Cassirer also constructs his critical studies in accordance with this orientation. In the opinion of M. Rein, the main task of art, as construed by Cassirer, is the construction or intuiting ot beautiiul torm. H. Slochower in his article ``Ernst Cassirer's Functional Approach to Art and Literature" maintains that Cassirer analyses art purely in its tormal aspect, moreover separating torm from content and historical motivation, and regarding it as a thing in itself. This accent leads to a diminishing ot the most important side of art-its connection with actual things, or (to use n. Slochower's term) denotation in art.
__NOTE__ Ink problem; tops of letters missing.The tormaiism ot Cassirer's aesthetic conception is greatly obliged to the influence of H. Wolfflin's writings in art criticism, to which Cassirer trequently relers as a ``model'' of the structural analysis of art. Woltliin's influence on Cassirer is also noted by a number of commentators (H. Slochower, F. Kautmann et al.). It is this tormaiism of the aesthetics of ``symbolic torms" which leads the authors of many ot the aesthetic conceptions of modernism, as well as the theoreticians of the ``new criticism" and the defenders of abstractionism, to see Cassirer as one of their inspirations.
__PRINTERS_P_145_COMMENT__ 10---826 [145] __NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter VII. __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Phenomenological Theory of Art as aSusanne Langer (born December 20, 1895) is well known in the USA and abroad for her writings on philosophy and aesthetics: Philosophy in a New Key (1942), Feeling and Form (1953), Problems ot Art (1957), Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling, Vol. I (1967) and others.^^1^^
In Langer's opinion the contradictions and confusion in the existing theories of art are mainly attributable to the fear harboured by many theoreticians for the concept `` artistic symbol''. She regards her immediate objective in aesthetics as the interpretation of art in the ``new key" of symbolism.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ 1. THE ``NEW KEY'': DISCURSIVE AND PRESENTATIONALThe range of ideas mainly responsible for engendering Langer's symbolism comprise: Cassirer's philosophy of ``symbolic forms" (her book Feeling and Form is dedicated to him), the realist theory of ``meanings'' of Whitehead (in dedicating Philosophy in a New Key to him Langer calls him a ``great teacher and friend'') and Russell, Wittgenstein's early theory of ``reflection'', Richards' neo-positivist conception of symbolism, the semiotics of Peirce and Charles Morris. Moreover, as already stated, her writings bear the stamp of phenomenalism (originated from Cassirer's version of neo-Kantianism, strengthened by the influence of _-_-_
~^^1^^ In Soviet literature on aesthetics critical discussions of Langer can be found in articles by Victor Martynov, Yelena Nemirovskaya and the present author (13; 14; 25; 26).
146 Husserl's views and by the conceptions of Gestalt psychology), of pragmatism (Dewey et al.) and of genetic psychology. It should be noted that this range of ideas does not go beyond the bounds of the idealistic world-view, but within these bounds it contains contradictory positions. These contradictions could not but tell on Langer's views. It is perfectly obvious that, armed with such a philosophical ``key'', Langer could not count on a scientific interpretation of symbolism in general, and, in particular, with application to art. All the less so since real difficulties arise in the interpretation of art, connected with the extremely complex and refined nature of symbolism in art. But we will not make any premature general assessment and turn instead to an analysis of Langer's understanding of symbolism.The most general and basic idea of her conception of symbolism is the idea of ``symbolic transformation''. Following Cassirer she believes that all human activity has an essentially symbolic character as well as all the activity of the human mind. ``All conscious experience is symbolically conceived experience" (10, 100). In her explanation of the origin of ``symbolic transformation" Langer relies on genetic psychology. Thus in the New Key the author writes that ``the symbolic transformation of experience" which takes place in the brain creates a biological need for this process to be completed in external activity. Speech, art, and ritual are all an active completion of a symbolic transformation of experience, connected with the needs of the mind. Thus ``minds of certain species, at certain stages of their development and communion, naturally produce" symbolic transformations (3, 49). Symbols such as speech, sacrifices and art are just as natural as birdsong. Langer's conception of the mind can be seen therefore to have a naturalistic character. In essence the explanation of the emergence of symbolism is also ``naturalistic''.
In accordance with Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms Langer sees the main function of the symbol in the creation of the object of cognition, the articulation of the perceived experience, and making it epistemologically relevant. With Cassirer this thesis has a consistently idealistic __PRINTERS_P_147_COMMENT__ 10* 147 character. The objective world is not given man per se. The symbolic forms which create the objects of cognition are not a reflection of something actually existing, they are the autonomous products of the mind. Langer tries to connect this thesis with an interpretation of symbolism in the spirit of Russell's neo-realistic epistemology and Wittgenstein's theory of reflection. It should be said that, first, such an amalgam of the two interpretations is contradictory, and, secondly, that Langer's interpretation is in essence also idealistic.
In contrast to Cassirer Langer explains the process of symbolization as a reflection of the logical structural features of perceived reality. In the spirit of Wittgenstein's theory of reflection Langer asserts that ``formal analogy, or congruence of logical structures, is the prime requisite for the relation between a symbol and whatever it is to mean. The symbol and the object symbolized must have some common logical form" (5, 27). Since the expression of one and the same logical form in different embodiments forms the basis of the process of projection, the symbol itself is often called the ``projection'' of that which is symbolized. One of the projections which is most easily perceived is used as a symbol tor anything unclear or which eludes analysis. Like all projection symbolic projection does not copy the designated torm, the similarity having an isomorphic nature. It follows from the very treatment of the symbol as projection that it symbolizes something else, to which it is similar, some other whole, whose elements have analogous relationships.
Another important function of the symbol-communicating (as a result of articulation) an idea, a concept-is considered in close connection with the creative (``instrumental'') function. The symbol is always the ``projection'' of an idea (10, 75--76). In contrast to the signal, which is directly connected to things, the symbol is directly connected to ideas, concepts, and only via them to things. Whereas the general scheme of the sign situation in the case of the signal includes three elements: subject-signal-referent, in the case of the symbol a fourth is added: the concept (idea). The 148 relation of the symbol to the object or referent is designated by the term ``denotation'', the relation to the concept by `` connotation''. The essential link with ``ideas'' and ``concepts'' makes the symbol an instrument of the rational mind. The sphere of the symbol is the sphere of logics, semantics, of meaning and not of psychology.
The process in the course of which an idea is articulated Langer calls a ``transformation''. Each symbolic proiection is a transformation. The most important of the transformational processes is abstraction. The most important function of the symbol is to be an instrument of abstraction. ``A symbol is any device whereby we are enabled to make an abstraction" (5, xi).
The semantic neo-positivists traditionally hold that only the method of expression inherent in everyday language and the lancmage of science relates to symbolism. This svmbolism has been called ``discursive''. Its most characteristic feature, in Lancrer's ooinion, consists in its being based ``on one dominant oroiertion''. The main peculiarity of this projection is its ``linearity'':^^1^^ expression is situated in a spatial and temporal ``chain''.
The essence of lancmaae as discursive symbolism is `` statement" (10, 102). All the other means of expression accompany the main system. The ``line'' of this symbolism is the propositional construction, and all other forms-interrogatory, imperative, vocative-are auxiliary. Here too we can see the principle of dominant proiection. Lanaer also calls ``logic'' in the traditional sense as reflected in different grammatical systems of particular languages the fundamental principle of this symbolism.
According to Langer, in addition to discursive symbolism there also exists non-discursive symbolism. For this reason _-_-_
~^^1^^ The well-known western linguist and semiotician Roman Jakobson takes a similar position. However, he believes that it is wrong to interpret the primacy of succession in language as linear, for a second axis can also be seen in any speech sequence in defiance of the `` dogma of linearness" (see Semiotika i iskusstvometria. p. 84). The Soviet scholar Victor Martynov defends the conception which holds that every sian is linear, i.e. has an extent and direction in time (V. V. Martynov. Kibernetika. Semiotika. Linguistika, Minsk, 1966).
149 the inexpressibility of feelings in language-and Langer fully agrees with this thesis of the semanticists-does not auite mean that they are entirely inaccessible to symbolic ( logical) expression. The premise for this statement is the view that feelinos have a morphology, structure, logical form. She bases this thesis on the Gestalt theory of isomorphism, according to which the physiological processes in the brain and psychological processes have a common dynamic structure. On the basis of this theorv the view was expressed that isomorphism is also maintained between the structure of feelings and the structure of the outer expression of these feelings-in gestures, movements, intonations and music.^^1^^ Relying on these studies many musicologists (Hoeslin, Hauptman, Carrer et al.), followed by Langer, point to the isomorphism of the structure of feelings and the structure of the expression of these feelings in music. It is precisely this phenomenon, given a detailed analysis in the book Philosophy in a New Key, which served as the author's point of deoarture in her conception of art as a whole-a conception which, in the author's own words, is a generalization of the theory of music (5, 32).^^2^^Langer's theory of non-discursive symbolism is based on philosophical statements about the symbolic processes which _-_-_
~^^1^^ Even before the Gestalt principle of isomorphism scholars pointed to the projection of the ``pitch'' of feelings in rhythmic structures of movements, voice, music, etc. In this connection Langer quotes Wilhelm Wundt, who showed that rhythm is a temporal means of the expression of feelings, and that a separate rhythmic pattern depicts a stream of emotions, as well as the interesting work of Jean d'Udine L'Art et le geste. One of Langer's critics, B. Lang, has shown ``the difficulty of specifying in an empirically verifiable form the analogy between the expression of the art work and the life of sentience'', which he attributes to the ``ambiguity of the art work'', and its ``apparent correspondence to several sometimes conflicting emotional analogues'', etc. (24, 355--56).
~^^2^^ The Italian authors Delia Volpe, Gillo Dorfles et al. correctly point out that Langer generalizes too much in moving from music to other art forms (cf. 31, 87).
The works of Levi-Strauss are in particular fraught with a tendency to use the structure of musical symbolism as a meta-structure, an instrument for studying myth and other forms of culture.
150 lie beyond language, and particularly in art, about the symbolic expression of feelings in art, the Gestaltists' theory of the morphology of feelings and attempts to identify an isomorphic reflection of this morphology in music. And although Langer worked from the art of music to reach her theory she realizes that this symbolism is not only employed in art. ``I have always,'' writes the author in Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling, ``called its characteristic symbolic mode simply 'non-discursive'; but there are other non-discursive symbols, such as maps and plans" (10, 104). Non-discursive symbolism is called ``intuitive'', ``presentational'' or ``implicit'' in Langer's works. It is first mentioned in her The Practice of Philosophy, given its most detailed treatment in Philosophy in a New Key as ``presentational'', and additional features are described in Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling.Like every symbolic projection presentational symbolism must have a common logical form with the thing it designates. But this is not discursive form. This means that although it may be articulated it does not constitute a system of discrete elements with a fixed meaning, or a system of separate symbols. Therefore, if we are to understand by the term ``symbolism'' a system of such elements, there is no such thing, strictly speaking, as presentational symbolism, but only isolated presentational symbols. Langer -takes the picture as an example of such symbols.
Presentational symbolism is also studied by Langer in music. In her opinion music satisfies the basic requirements of symbolism. What exactly are these? Basing her arguments on the theories of the Gestaltists Langer maintains that musical structures reflect a certain dynamic system of human experience, a morphology of feelings, projecting feelings onto tones. Moreover, these feelings are not simply symptomatically expressed in music (``self-expression''). Music articulates, forming a logical projection of feelings, an idea of the feelings. Insofar as the general forms of feelings are reflected (an algebra of feelings) a process of abstraction is taking place. According to Langer all this characterizes music as symbolism, but a presentational, and not discursive, symbolism with all its innate features.
151Langer's theory of presentational symbolism as a symbolism characteristic for art became the subject of lively discussion in semantic aesthetics. In the view of the Italian Renato Barilli this theory ``is a problem of the first order in modern aesthetics" (12, 234). A critical analysis of this theory can proceed in three directions. First, if we are to recognize the distinction between discursive and presentational symbolism, it follows that Langer draws this distinction too sharply (21; 22). As a result her application of this principle of distinction is not always appropriate in practice, and in particular with respect to art. Thus, for example, the feature of `` linearity'', characteristic of discursive symbolism, is fully inherent in musical symbolism as well. Neither can we deny the possibility of segmenting a discrete non-discursive form (15, 496).^^1^^
The second critical direction is connected with the ambiguitv and conseeruently the vaoneness of the term `` presentational symbolism''. Thus, P. Welsh identifies three basic meanings of this term in Langer's usage: 1) a means of abstract forming, of modelling the ``raw'' material of experience; 2) an ``image'', whose referent is our inner life; 3) a ``figure'' in figurative representational art, an artistic representation as a whole (35, 192--93). The first meaning of the term-any means of abstraction-is too general and therefore unsatisfactory. The second meaning, which emphasizes similarity, is also vague. Even if there is a morphological similarity between the structure of feelings and the artistic structure of a work of art, this is still insufficient for a work of art to function as a symbol of feelings. A subjective process of interpretation is necessary here. In addition, the view of the similarity, of the isomorphism between the arrangement of feelings and the structure of a work of art should be denned much more exactly. A similarity between a picture and an object is one thing, and one between musical structures and _-_-_
~^^1^^ Roman Jakobson is of the belief that the sequence of musical sounds must be separated into discrete elementary components in order to be generated, perceived and remembered (see Semiotika i iskusstvometria, p. 85).
152 a feeling quite another. In the first case the similarity is at the level of likeness, in the second it is a more general instance of similarity---isomorphism. This difference should also be fixed terminologically, which, as we shall see below, is what Langer does. Artistic form, which reflects feelings, she calls ``expressive form''. The first meaning of the term `` presentational symbol" is connected with Cassirer's interpretation of symbolic forms as creating objects of cognition, and not reflecting them. The second meaning proceeds directly from the theory of reflection of the early Wittgenstein. The fusing of these two interpretations in Langer's conception of symbolism is, as we have noted, fraught with inner contradiction. The third meaning offers essentially nothing more than Peirce's and Morris' iconic sign.The third direction in criticizing presentational symbolism oan essentially be reduced to the argument that, if we are to subsume music or other works of art under presentational symbolism, then it is not symbolism at all, since it lacks the essential features of symbolism. Namely, every symbol has a meaning, i.e. it refers to something else outside itself. But the work of art, according to Langer, refers to nothing but itself. The meaning of a symbol is usually cognized indirectly, through mediation, and it is connected by association with a transmitter-sign, there being a transition from a sign to its meaning. However, Langer maintains that the artistic `` meaning" of a work of art is cognized directly, without mediation, in the process of perception, through intuition; she does not see any transition here from the sign to its meaning. She does not regard artistic meaning as a function, but as a quality of the work of art. It is clear that, by calling a work of art a presentational symbol, Langer, as Ernest Nagel is quite right to point out, is using the term ``symbol'' in a radically new and previously unencountered meaning.
In her subsequent works the American aesthetician describes a new variant of her theory of presentational symbolism^the theory of expressive form.
__b_b_b__ __ALPHA_LVL3__ 2. EXPRESSIVE FORM.Langer sets high store by the theory of expressive form, arguing that this theory gets closest to 153 an understanding of the essence of art. She regards as main deficiency of this theory in the past the fact that its advocates, amongst whom she counts Clive Bell, Roger Fry, R. G. Collingwood, Otto Baensch et al., will not on any account recognize expressive form as an artistic symbol, which, in her opinion, leads to contradictions. She regards it as her task to interpret the theory of expressive form in the spirit of symbolism, in order to free it from paradoxes and anomalies. Whether or not Langer has succeeded in this we shall see below.
In its most abstract sense form-and in this case it is also called logical-is the structure, the means by which a whole is created. Objects and phenomena may have a similar logical form. The different embodiments of one and the same logical form are its different projections. A projection does not copy logical form, but it is isomorphic to it (that is, it is in a relation of one-to-one correspondence). Thus, for example, Mercator and globular maps of the world are different projections of a single loaical form, such that it cannot be said with reference to a Mercator map that its geographical relations have been copied. If we take two different projections of one logical form we can say of either of them that it expresses the other, that it is an expressive form with respect to the other. In this way the banks of a river express the dynamic form of the river. Expressive form is any perceived or imagined whole which displays the relationships between parts or points, or even qualities and aspects, in such a way that it can be taken to represent another whole whose elements have analogous relations. Langer believes that the work of art is an expressive form, which is analogous to, or congruent with, the dynamic form of our feelings and therefore expresses them (6, 15). From what has been said above we already know that, in contrast to many semanticians ( Wittgenstein, Russell, Carnap et al.) Langer proceeds from the premise that affective life, for all its fluidity and complexity, is not chaotic and amorphous, but has its own structure, its morphology of feelings, which is what the work of art reveals. Human feeling is the culmination of the vital process, and therefore possesses organic, or living form. 154 Accordingly, any articulated image of a feeling must be a reflection of this living process. That is why every work of art must appear organic and alive, in order to reflect feeling. Art is organic in its essence. Art is characterized as living form by a number of features: integrity, functional unity, indestructibility, rhythm, dynamism, the dialectics of stability and variability, growth and decline, the principle of phases, etc. All these properties distinguish expressive form in art from other non^discursive symbols such as the map or plan, which does not have an organic structure. Langer is fully aware that the work of art is not an organism. ``The principles of life are reflected in the principles of art, but the principles of creation in art are not those of generation and development in nature.'' The ``quality of life" is ``virtual'' in the work of art (10, 152).
The idealistic, phenomenological features of Langer's aesthetics are most prominently displayed in her theory of the ``virtual'' character of expressive form in art. Naturally enough in works of art things function differently from the way they manifest themselves in life. If this were not the case, why would there be any such thing as art? Langer takes this circumstance as the epistemological platform for idealistic speculation. She argues that for the ``naive'' mind the philosophical problem of art revolves around the `` relationship between the image and the object''. But, she asserts, in actual fact the philosophical argument is concentrated round ``the nature of images as such and their essential difference from actualities" (5, 46--47).~^^1^^ Thus her programme is clearly mapped out: the main emphasis in this study should not be on the explanation of how the principles of life are reflected in the principles of art, but on the demonstration of the essential differences between art and reality. Let us see just how she realizes this programme.
In as early a work as Philosophy in a New Key Langer _-_-_
~^^1^^ C. Barret notes in this connection that since Langer connects the image with feeling she hopes to evade the ``mind-matter'' dichotomy with the help of the concept of ``feeling''. (C. Barret, ``Review: S. K. Langer. Mind., v. 1, 1967. In The Philosophical Quarterly, 1969, v. 19, No. 75, p. 188).
155 correctly showed that the artist cannot comprehend, and. consequently. Intentionally create artistic forms ``from nothing'', he must find them in the surrounding world. The primitive artistic impulse seeks its reflection and that of inner forms of feeling in nature and in man: in action, in the inexhaustible wealth of tensions, rhythms, continuums and contrasts. All these forms function as similar projections of the ``inner forms of feeling''. They can be expressed for us through the ``external forms" of art: line and colour, artistic, musical and poetic compositions. In this way art functions as ``the obiectification of feeling, and the subiectification of nature" (10, 86--87). Langer considers it guite natural that art begins with an imitation of nature, with representation, the depiction of things and phenomena. But in her view imitation obscures the emotional content of form and obstructs the loqical expression of feeling. In art a special ``technique'' of making abstractions is elaborated, and thanks to this a work of art can be used for the abstraction of forms which express the structure of feeling.Abstraction in art-in contrast to generalizing abstraction in science, the author calls it ``presentational''-functions in various forms (isolating, metaphorical, etc.), but has a single objective: to ``make the logical projection of feeling" (8, 380--81).
The most important and most ``direct'' form of abstraction is isolating abstraction (the term belongs to W. Wundt), or to express it differently, the principle of ``primary illusion''. This ipso facto abstractive process represents an essential ^transformation of the actual dimension-be it space, time, action-in which the work is realized into a virtual dimension. Langer states that as a result of the abstractive process of ``primary illusion" artistic form pertains to an illusory, virtual world, created in art. She treats logical expressive form in art in a phenomenological spirit: it is not equivalent to physical form; it is not a perceivable, but an imagined form, an ``abstract'' (5, 50).^^1^^ But she completely ignores the _-_-_
~^^1^^ The phenomenological nature of Langer's theory of the virtual nature of artistic form is pointed out both by the author herself and by other western commentators. These views of Langer's were __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 157. 156 question of the connection between this ``abstract'' and physical expressive form, as well as the connection between the latter and the ``morphology of feelings''. As a result it is quite unclear why virtual artistic form is isomorphic with the structure of feelings. If one does not have recourse to a mediating link in the form of material structure the similarity between virtual form and feeling acquires a mystical character.
Langer's position inevitably leads to the rejection or underestimation of sensuousness in art. For this reason she makes numerous qualifications, stating that abstract form as such is not an artistic ideal, that the creation of an abstraction, insofar as it is possible, and the attainment of pure form only as a bare conceptual means are the business of the logician, and not of the artist or poet, etc. Arguing in this vein Langer contradicts herself.^^1^^
While ignoring the intermediation of physical form in the formation of virtual artistic form Langer was unable to substantiate the similarity (isomorphism) of virtual form with vital form in such features as dynamism, tension, wholeness (ciosedness) and certain others. In her article ``Abstraction in Art" Langer tries to explain the presence of the abovementioned properties of form in art, without having recourse to the analogy with vital form. She adduces the Gestalt principle as her explanation. According to this principle, formed in Gestalt psychology (M. Wertheimer, Kurt Kortka), ``good'' form, created by the perception itself, is characterized by _-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 156. subjected to criticism on the part of semanticists who view any traditional philosophy, including phenomenology, as ``metaphysics''. Thus M. Rieser, the author of a well-known article on semantic aesthetics in the USA, writes when analysing Langer's views about the `` virtual" nature of space, time, etc. in art, that all these and similar statements have nothing in common with semantic aesthetics and are traditional aesthetic metaphysics (Max Rieser, ``The Semantic Theory of Art in America''. In Tne Journal ot Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1956. No. 1, p. 19).
~^^1^^ One of Langer's reviewers, V. Tejera, writes that we remain unaware as to the character of form in Langer's conception: ideal or sensual (cf. 34, 561). In actual fact her point of departure is quite clear: expressive form in art has a virtual (ideal) character. It is quite a different matter that she often contradicts herself by talking about it as sensuous, physical form.
157 ``closedness'', dynamic structure, tension, etc. Moreover all these properties are inherent in the perception itself, and they automatically (passively) emerge in the process of perception. ``The principle of gestalt or articulation of forms,'' writes Langer, ``has intimate relations with the principle of dynamic structure or tensive design in all the arts,'' and goes on: ``...the tensions arise from the very existence of closed forms" (8, 384).Langer fails to take into account that modern psychology and cybernetics take an extremely critical view of the Gestalt theory of the automatic emergence of images of perception, of the inborn capability to construe form. Analyses have shown that the perception of form is a complex analyticalsynthetic process, which presupposes a special form of interaction between man and object, and which requires `` training''. It is true that if we take a good work of art it is possible to abstract artistic form in it itself, without comparison and generalization of a lot of other examples. But then this takes place because the artist has done all the ``preparatory'' work for the abstracting of this form ``for us'', or, to be more precise, created preconditions to facilitate its abstraction. Langer shows this rather well, illuminating the different principles, or types of ``abstractive technique" in art.
The above-mentioned explanation represents a total surrender to phenomenalism. Whereas earlier Langer had spoken of the isomorphism of virtual form in art and of real vital forms, although it was impossible to explain this isomorphism from phenomenological positions, now there was no further need to talk of this isomorphism. Virtual form and those of its properties like tension are explained as properties of perception itself. Tension is treated as a subjective quality ---a property of perception-and not an objective quality of artistic form. Such an explanation fails to consider the most important question: what should the properties of the material structure of the work of art be if emotional tension is to come about in its perception?
Apart from the principle of the ``primary illusion'', or `` isolating abstraction" Langer identifies the principle of `` metaphor''. ``Sensuous metaphor,'' she writes, ``does play an 158 important role in art" (8, 387). The meaning of this principle consists in the fact that the emotional meaning of form, embodied in sensory elements of one kind, such as, for example, sounds, can be expressed in sensory elements of another kind. By the very fact of ``translation'' expressive form is as it were abstracted from a particular embodiment. The third form of artistic abstraction is the principle of ``secondary illusion''. When we contemplate a building we are sometimes suddenly able to feel a sensation of expanding space, when listening to music, to ``see'' colour or light, to ``read'' the eloquence in the line of a statue. Langer provides a phenomenological explanation for secondary illusion, as she does for primary illusion, pointing to its virtual character, and does not even pose the question of the material basis of this process.
We considered above Langer's conception of expressive form. From a scientific point of view it is insubstantial and self-contradictory. The main reason for this is its phenomenological idealistic methodology. Below we shall endeavour to show that by undertaking to interpret expressive form from the positions of symbolism Langer not only failed to free this theory from its deficiencies, she actually increased them, adding new weaknesses connected with her own interpretation of symbolism.
__b_b_b__ __ALPHA_LVL3__ 3. METAPHORICAL SYMBOLISM.Langer sets herself the goal of showing that ``an expressive form is, after all, a symbolic form" (5, 385). It is only natural that in the process she should concentrate on an analysis of the meaning of the artistic symbol. In her work Feeling and Form the author writes that all the main contemporary theories of the aesthetics can be reduced to a single problem: What is ``meaning'' in art? In other words, what does ``meaningful form" mean?
We have already noted that expressive form expresses a feeling, which is itself a ``meaning''. The term ``feeling'' is taken in its broad sense: it is not necessarily always emotion, as many critics of the theory of expressive form believe; the term means subjective reality, the subjective aspect of 159 experience, which includes the dynamic system of feelings as well as forms of imagination.^^1^^ Langer makes a distinction between the feelings which are experienced directly, and those which are contemplated and grasped by the imagination, between the contemplation of a feeling and the actual phenomenon known as ``to have a feeling''. In Langer's view, it is not the direct feeling of the artist but the nature of feelings understood, or grasped, by the imagination and depicted through the formulation and abstractive vision, which is the meaning of expressive form in art. The artist's purpose is to reflect ideas-ideas about human emotion and sensuality, of which the work of art is a projection. The artist's idea is his conception of human feeling, the depiction of forms of knowledge which are the cognition not of ``facts'' but of the ``inner life" of tne conscious being, the symbolic revelation of truth about actual life. A work of art is a ``symbolic projection of our insights into feeling" (10, 103--04).
Insotar as Langer declares the main purpose of the artist to be the expression of an ``idea'' of human emotion, and insofar as she maintains that feelings in art are represented not so much for pleasure as for comprehension (28), her philosophy of art acquires a pronounced intellectual (cognitivist) character. A rift opens in Langer's aesthetics between the direct expression of feeling (``self-expression'') and the logical projection of feeling, and the question is resolved dogmatically in favour of knowledge (32).
Of course Langer is well aware that the ``meaning'' of expressive form in art always to a certain extent represents a feeling, a sensation, an emotional awareness, which is conveyed by a good work of art. However, this simultaneous communication by the work of art both of the feeling itself and of an idea about the feeling is not illuminated by Langer. Rudolf Arnheim, a leading American expert in the _-_-_
~^^1^^ This ``broad'' understanding of the term ``feeling'' in Langer's works bears out Rudolf Arnheim's criticism that this term is used too vaguely in works on aesthetics, made to include everything (desires, evaluations, etc.) except the perception and the intellect (R. Arnheim. ``Toward a Psychology of Art''. Collected Essays, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966, p. 302).
160 psychology of art, has correctly noted that in those of Langer's views discussed above her use of the term ``idea'' (or `` conception'') of feeling is not entirely clear. If for Langer an idea is perceived by the usual means as intellectual information, then in this case the distinction between the artistic and the purely informational statement is lost. If, however, the idea is felt, if it in fact is feeling, then the difference between actual feelings and the idea of a feeling remains still unexplained.Under the influence of the criticism discussed above Langer provides a detailed analysis of the special nature of the meaning of an artistic symbol. She sees this special nature in the inseparability of artistic meaning from the symbol itself, the fact that the depiction of the feeling is inseparable from its meaning. Its perceptual form is the only one it can have; it is not based on agreement, its meaning is innate to the symbol. Whereas in Philosophy in a New Key meaning is regarded as a function of the artistic symbol, now it is characterized as a quality of expressive form. Quality in art ``is the projected feeling" (10, 106). In constrast to the meaning of a genuine symbol, which is communicated indirectly, via intellectual interpretation, with an essential ``transition'' from the symbol to its meaning, artistic meaning does not require interpretation, a full and clear perception of the represented form being sufficient. The vital meaning of a work of art does not require interpretation, and cannot be deduced in this way. Such a process in actual fact destroys any perception of meaning. Thus, direct perception of artistic meaning-intuition-is introduced in place of interpretation.
Langer argues that the problem of intuition is of primary significance for the theory of the artistic symbol as a whole. But psychologists and epistemologists have, in her opinion, completely by-passed this problem. The main reason for this she sees in the habitual, common-sense interpretation of art as emotional self-expression and social communication. ``If you grant,'' she writes, ``that artistic perception is an act of intuition, you do throw the doors wide open to this sort of mysticism, mixed with every degree of philosophical __PRINTERS_P_161_COMMENT__ 11---826 161 irrationalism and transcendentalism on the one hand, and on the other with sheer sentimentality and romantic fancies. But the fact that an important concept has been used in confused or questionable ways does not prevent anyone from using it properly" (6, 61). By ``proper'' use she has in mind the Lockeinspired interpretation of intuition as a basic intellectual function: the direct logical or semantic perception of similar formal structures in sensually different things, the perception of one as a symbol of the other, etc.
In Langer's view, intuitive cognition in art makes connections or conditions by applying symbols of a special kind. ``Langer,'' writes M. Damjanovic, ``has the 'logical courage' to interpret intuition symbolically" (19, 255). It requires courage because symbolic cognition is usually regarded as mediated cognition, and intuitive as unmediated. Admittedly the author gives in to her critics and concedes in Problems of Art that it is really impossible to talk of intuitive symbolism, clearly having in mind the essential difference between the work of art and the genuine symbol. Nevertheless, insofar as expressive form in art is interpreted as symbolic form, the paradox of intuitive symbolism remains in effect. Moreover, her phenomenological interpretation of expressive form meant that Langer was unable to evade the transcendental approach to intuition. Indeed, with the help of intuition (of ``pure perception'') we cognize the expressive form which obtains in the transcendental virtual field, and not rational essences. Thus, Langer's phenomenological conception appears to lack a clear understanding of the fact that intuitive cognition is conditioned by two types of material circumstances: the environment and the physiological processes which take place in the nervous system, i.e. Langer lacks the view which is the only one to accompany a correct scientific resolution of the psychophysical problem-the affirmation of the oneness of the physical and the mental.
The inseparability of meaning and symbol, the lack of a transition from the symbol to the meaning, and the intuitive grasping of meaning-all these features of the artistic symbol lead Langer to a comparison of the symbol and the met aphor. In her Problems of Art she writes that the principle 162 of metaphor is a principle of language to which the latter resorts in order to express new experience in a non-- discursive manner, for discursive, verbal symbolism is unable to do this. The principle of the metaphor is a principle which consists in being able to talk about one thing and at the same time express the meaning of another through it. A metaphor is an idea which functions in its turn as a symbol, in order to express something. It is non-discursive and therefore in actual fact does not affirm the idea, but formulates new concepts for our direct imaginative grasping. A work of art is a developed metaphor.
The author develops the analogy between the artistic symbol and the metaphor in her Mind... and notes that the work of art is a highly elaborate, and not simple, metaphor, even when it has the simplest composition, and that a work of art as metaphor must be comprehensible without translation or comparison of ideas. It just reveals its form, and its meaning is perceived directly. For this precise reason Langer stressed that the problem of intuition and the metaphor is of primary significance for the theory of artistic symbolism.^^1^^ On the basis of the analogy she makes between the work of art and the metaphor Langer considers it worthwhile to ``call a work of art a metaphorical symbol" (10, 104). The idea of the metaphorical symbol in art, advanced long before by Peirce, unquestionably deserves attention and is of heuristic value.
An analysis of Langer's conception of expressive form, interpreted as a metaphorical symbol, clearly shows that Langer was persuaded by her critics to make considerable corrections to her theory of presentational symbolism, placing her main accent on an explanation of the special nature of the artistic symbol by comparison with discursive symbolism. She states outright that the difference between the functions of ``a genuine symbol" and a work of art were _-_-_
~^^1^^ Cf. Mario Bunge, who analyses the types of intuition and isolates the concept of intuition as imagination, also including here the ability to form metaphors (M. Bunge. Intuitsiya i Nauka (Intuition and Science), Moscow, 1967).
__PRINTERS_P_164_COMMENT__ 11* 163 greater than she had realized before (6, 126). For this reason she changed her terminology. She replaced `` presentational symbol" and ``artistic symbol" (on M. Rader's advice) with the terms ``expressive form'', and also ``symbolic projection''. The term ``meaning'' to designate the meaning of a work of art was replaced with the term ``import'', and sometimes ``vital import''. Despite all these corrections Langer continues to hold that the function of the work of art is more like the symbolic function than anything else. She sees this similarity in the fact that ``expressive form" in art, like any symbol, on the one hand reflects something elsea dynamic system of feelings-and on the other articulates, creates form, resorting to a process of transformation and above all to abstraction, which we discussed in detail in the previous section: ``The function of a symbol is not only to convey a form, but in the first place to abstract it" (10, 105). Like any symbol expressive form is a projection of an idea, which it communicates, and which constitutes the meaning of the work of art.Langer's new conception of the artistic symbol was also subjected to criticism. Some critics, and above all those who attacked the theory of presentational symbolism for failing to take account of the specific features of works of art as against those of discursive symbols (Nagel et al.) now praise Langer, as she has taken these into account. They approve of the fact that she has recognized that expressive form in art does not refer to anything other than itself, has no `` references'', that the value of art is cognized intuitively, without mediation, etc. These critics were right to reproach Langer for contradicting herself and continuing to call the work of art a symbol, when a symbol without reference cannot be a symbol (29; 33). Langer's arguments that a work of art is a symbol because, like a linguistic simbol (a sentence), it forms an idea for comprehension, abstracts, etc., are convincingly refuted. Thus A. Berndtson has shown in his detailed criticism of these arguments of Langer's that the symbol's ability to be an instrument in the formation of thought (in language) or of feelings (in art) is indivisibly connected with its function of representing something else. Without this function 164 the symbol can still be an instrument, but it ceases to be a symbol.
In addition to this criticism other criticisms are levelled from an opposite position-that of defending the symbolic nature of art. Thus the Italian aesthetician Enrico Fubini asserts that as early as in Feeling and Form the author herself points to the crisis in her theory of artistic symbolism, for she emphasizes that the artistic symbol cannot be separated from meaning, and contrasts two radically different methods of expression: the mediated, logical, peculiar to discursive and scientific languages, and the unmediated, intuitive, and therefore alogical method, inherent in art. In Langer's theory art now reveals feeling but does not communicate it. Fubini makes a perfectly' justifiable conclusion: a gradual decline can be observed in Langer's theories from her premises to her conclusions. Her basic requirement-to draw art into the field of analytical activity, to see in art human experience comprehensible in the framework of symbolic activity-is all reduced to naught; her polemic with the neo-positivists is ultimately reduced to squabbles over terminology and as a result Langer's theory of the artistic symbol ``imperceptibly slips into neo-positivist positions" (23, 77).
M. Damjanovic's criticism follows the same course. In his opinion Langer, having opposed the artistic to the genuine symbol and introduced a new, semantically inexact concept of the symbol, was unable to substantiate the symbolic character of art. We believe that Damjanovic is correct when he points out that one of the main stumbling-blocks encountered by Langer was the problem of the unmediated and the mediated in art. Having posed this important question, she was unable to give it a dialectical resolution, proceeding as she did from unsatisfactory philosophical premises. Instead of explaining the really difficult problem of how the artistic symbol manages dialectically to combine unmediated ( intuitive) and mediated (logical) factors, Langer decided the question metaphysically in favour of the unmediated, intuitive, thereby undermining the basis of the symbolic interpretation of art. To talk of the mediated nature of cognition 165 in art is tantamount to talking of the reality of the world and the feelings to which the artistic symbol refers. However, on the basis of the idealistic, Cassirer-inspired theory of ``symbolic forms'', on the basis of phenomenalism Langer was only able to formulate a theory in which the artistic symbol represented something which it creates itself and which we are intuitively aware of. In this process ``any ontological, realistic meaning of art is rejected" (19, 261).
We should also mention that Langer's conception of symbolism contains such aspects as her view that expressive form in art reflects the morphology of feelings, by developing which she would have been able to avoid many of the contradictions and idealistic conclusions to which her theory led.^^1^^
__ALPHA_LVL3__ 4. BEAUTY AS EXPRESSIVE FORM.In her writings Langer almost never uses the term ``value''. This is quite understandable. In Philosophy in a New Key the author asks the question: ``What is artistic value?" and answers: ``It's beauty" (see 3, 204). In Feeling and Form she gives a precise formulation of her interpretation of beauty. ``Beauty is expressive form" (5,396). In Mind. .., insofar as expressive form is treated as a quality, the formulation acquires the following shape: it is this quality (the quality of expression) ``that constitutes beauty in art" (10, 127). The author says that she means by ``quality'' not what the English empiricists called `` primary and secondary qualities''. ``This quality is the projected feeling" (10, 106).
Functioning as a quality of a created object artistic value is objective in the sense that it exists outside the subject. In connection with this Langer writes that although the work of art displays a subjective character it is itself objective. _-_-_
~^^1^^ E. Ballard in his article ``In Defence of Symbolic Aesthetics" writes that if we are to accept that art has our emotional life as its `` referent" then we are quite justified in talking of a symbol with reference to the work of art, which is interpreted as a ``logical reflection" of our inner life, and the term symbol is not being used in any new sense in this case (11,100).
166 For Langer artistic value is objective insofar as it represents a projection of knowledge of a feeling, of the truth about the actual state of feelings, and not a personal, subjective feeling. Moreover in every beautiful work of art this knowledge and this truth are new. The objectivity of quality, and therefore of beauty (of artistic value) does not in Langer's conception have anything in common with the materialistic notion of objectivity. We must not forget that quality in Langer's theory is the quality of expressive form, and the latter is not sensuous (physical) form, but ideal form, and it obtains in a virtual field, having a phenomenological nature. That is why there is every reason to assert that Langer's writings are essentially concerned with a phenomenological conception of beauty. This conception is inevitably connected with the negation or underestimation of the role and place in art of sensually perceived components, as mentioned above. In actual fact, if the essence of art is to be seen in virtual expressive form, which has an imaginary status, it follows that the better the work of art the more it loses its material status, the less we perceive the actual properties, focussing our attention on its phenomenal virtual form, on pure phenomenon. This line of thought has a certain logic, but the conclusion to which it leads contradicts experience of human contact with art. This experience shows that real, sensually perceived components of art are the most important and necessary conditions for an authentic aesthetic perception of works of art.We should note that the American author, is not over-- consistent in this question either. The ambiguity, in her reviewer Tejera's phrase, of her approach to the ideal or sensuous nature of expressive form in art can also be felt in her notion of quality. In direct contradiction to its phenomenological treatment, the term ``quality'' is frequently understood as ``sensually perceptible''. Thus is her book Mind... the author writes that the purpose of the work of art is to present his idea of some mode of feeling in the nameless but sensible quality (10, 124). She continues in the same ``key'' with her many qualifications to the effect that artistic form cannot make an integral impression if we abstract ourselves from 167 colour, weight, volume, etc. When we see the essence of Langer's conception of ``expressive form" it is not hard to make thd conclusion that these qualifications, which represent lipservice to common sense, or, to be more exact, to irrefutable experience of human contact with art, cannot be coordinated around the central idea of Langer's aesthetics of the `` illusory'', phenomenal space, in which the work of art exists.
We have already noted above the influence of pragmatic philosophy on Langer's views. This influence can also be detected in her concept of beauty. Like the pragmatist aestheticians Langer does not identify the specifics of aesthetic feeling. Understanding by beauty a projected feeling she is clearly stating that all types of feeling can be projected in art. The terms ``aesthetics'' and ``aesthetic'' are hardly used at all in her writings. Neither is this surprising, for the problems of ``aesthetic quality'', ``aesthetic perception" as specific phenomena, constituting the object of study of the science of aesthetics effectively do not exist for Langer.
__*_*_*__Langer's works on aesthetics are extensively known (20; 27). They are reviewed in American, English, Italian, German, Polish and other journals, and provoke polemic responses. Two basic lines can be clearly discerned in the variegated opinions of her commentators. The first is the recognition that in modern (western) aesthetics Langer is in the front rank of writers on the philosophy of art, and is a respected and influential leading thinker in her field.^^1^^ The second is the sober realization that her works do not contain a fundamentally new resolution of the theoretical problems of art, which have already been identified by modern aesthetics and received a certain amount of illumination.
_-_-_~^^1^^ The well-known English semanticist B. C. Heyl, in his discussion of the book Philosophy in a New Key, writes that Susanne Langer's analysis of semantic problem is the most skillful one known to him (B. C. Heyl. New Bearings in Aesthetics and Art Criticism. New Haven, 1943, p. 5).
168There is no doubt that there are grounds for the high esteem enjoyed by Langer. The writings of the author of Philosophy in a New Key have undeniable philosophical merit. She identifies and resolves the problems of art in the broad context of the problems of modern philosophy in general. Admittedly, this context is restricted largely to the problems of the neo-positivist (in the spirit of Whitehead and Wittgenstein), phenomenological (Husserlian) and neo-Kantian (in Cassirer's version) schools. We should note Langer's critical attitude (of course, from idealistic positions) to the conception of art in the theories of pragmatism, behaviourism and Freudianism. The American aesthetician's arguments have the allure of being based on the achievements of modern psychology. The author has a particular proclivity for Gestalt psychology, which is attributable both to the undoubted practical achievements of this branch of psychology and to its close kinship to Langer's own views with its phenomenological foundations. We should also note the refinement of her aesthetics. Langer is a connoisseur of art and art history, and makes use of a wealth of factual material from different arts.
All this together explains the great popularity of Langer's views, whose influence can be traced in many a monograph, article and paper read at conferences on aesthetics.
There is a close kinship as well between Langer's conception of art and those modern theories of anti-realist art which sanction the poetry of ``pure meanings" without any similarity to reality (T. A. Meyer), and defend the theory of absolute music (E. Hanslick), etc.^^1^^
Langer's aesthetics have had undoubted influence on the theory and practice of modernist art, and there is an obvious _-_-_
~^^1^^ Noting the closeness of Langer's theories to modernism A. Hofstadter writes that when Jackson Pollock paints his expressive ``acts'', and American composers learn to compose in Schonberg's manner Langer's books are received with enthusiasm by all those who are interested in art. Langer's description of the experience of art does not ``sound right" to that generation weaned on Phidias and Raphael, but is comprehensible to the generation of Van Gogh, Klee, Kandinsky, and Pollock (A. Hofstadter. Truth and Art, pp. 17--19).
169 connection between this influence and the formalist essence of her theory of art. The first, last and only objective of the artist's work she declares to be the creation of form. But then what role, we might ask, is accorded in Langer's aesthetics to the content of the work of art? In the terminology adopted in her writings, this is as follows: to elucidate the meaning of representation in art. In her earlier works she has a more ``radical'' position on this question. She regards as ideal art that which is free from imitation, from representation and which effectively communicates the meaning of expressive form. The latter, in Langer's opinion, is the ``quintessence'' of art, which is what ``so-called `abstract art' seeks to convey'', and which is what ``non-imitative arts have always expressed" (6, 107). Thus, Langer considers abstract art most suitable for the fulfilment of the tasks and objectives which it is required to fulfil by her theory.In her work Mind... the author talks of the ``close link" between art and nature, of the ``rationality'' of the age-old and almost universal practice of representation in painting and sculpture. Here she expresses a different opinion of ``abstract art": ``Our present cultivation of non-representational art, for all its importance, is episodic in history" (10, 87). Thus, Langer's attitude to content in art changed in the direction of a greater recognition of its value, but throughout she retained her basic premise: not form for content, but content for form, form is the goal, content the means. There is every justification to describe this approach as formalist.
In a general evaluation of Susanne Langer's aesthetics we can say that she did not achieve a theory of art in a ``new key''. The idealistic methodology in the American philosopher's analysis of art prevented her from avoiding the `` paradoxes and anomalies" which are the inevitable concomitants of idealistic aesthetics.
[170] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Section III. __ALPHA_LVL1__ ART AND THE SIGN __NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter VIII. __ALPHA_LVL2__ Pragmatism, Semiotics and Art: CharlesThe semantic trend can as a whole be characterized not merely by its sign orientation, but its specifically semiotic position: the sign is viewed as a systemic object, as the element of a sign system. The semiotic approach was employed to a greater or lesser extent by Richards, Langer, Wittgenstein and Cassirer. However, the most marked theoretical expression of this approach is to be found in the work of the American philosophers Charles Peirce and Charles Morris. The philosophical thought of both authors was dominated by pragmatism with a behaviourist tendency, particularly marked in the case of Morris.
The prominent American thinker, logician, mathematician, philosopher and natural scientist Charles Sanders Peirce (1839--1914) is rightly considered the founder of a new science : semiotics. Peirce's works contain no full, systematic description of semiotics (this was provided later by Morris), and his semiotics are not clearly delimited, sometimes becoming confused with logic, but he does formulate the principal notions of the science, defines its basic terms and elaborates a detailed classification of signs. ``I am as far as I know,'' wrote Peirce, ``a pioneer... in the work of clearing and opening up what I call semiotic, that is, the doctrine of the essential nature and fundamental varieties of possible semiotics" (1, 5. 488).^^1^^ Peirce defines semiotics as the science of _-_-_
~^^1^^ In references to the Harvard edition of Peirce's collected works (C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vol. I-VI, 1931--1935; Vol. VII-VIII, 1958, Harvard University Press) the numbers in brackets, after the comma, indicate the volume, and after the period the paragraphs.
171 sign processes, and he analyses in detail the functions of signs in the sphere of scientific cognition-in logic and mathematics.Peirce neither developed nor even posed the question of the application of semiotics to the analysis of the aesthetic sphere, and, in particular, to art. We will not find anywhere in his writings a developed semiotic theory of art. Such a theory can only be deduced on the basis of his theoretical views as a whole, and the statements about art which we find in his works and which must not be regarded merely as illustrations of various semiotic arguments. Peirce's semiotic theory of art presupposes a particular philosophical interpretation of semiotics.^^1^^
This theory of art must also be viewed in the context of Peirce's general aesthetic views. A number of difficulties arise in the elucidation of the latter. First, as James K. Feibleman has correctly remarked, aesthetics is the weakest of all the sections of his philosophy. Secondly, Peirce felt himself least competent in this field, and his views consequently undergo constant fluctuation. Thirdly, this is the least studied aspect of Peirce's philosophy.
The order and character of the description which follows is determined by certain principal premises of Peirce's semiotics, and in particular by his definition of the sign: ``A sign is something, A, which denotes some fact or object, B, to some interpretant thought, C" (1, 1. 346). Thus, any sign situation has a ``triadic''nature, including sign, object and interpretant. We shall also examine the relation of signs in art as seen by Peirce in accordance with this triadic interpretation: the character of the signs themselves in art, the nature of the objects and phenomena which they designate, and the special features of the interpretant in art (16).
__b_b_b__ _-_-_~^^1^^ This problem has been given sufficient attention in the enormous literature on Peirce's philosophical views (over 500 articles and monographs have been published to date). In Marxist literature this aspect has been thoroughly investigated in Yuri Melvil's monograph Charles Peirce and Pragmatism (1968) (see 3; 6; 7; 14; 17; 22).
172 __ALPHA_LVL3__ 1. THE ICONIC SIGN AND ART.Peirce views the work of art as a sign. Thus, the performance of a piece of concert music is a sign which conveys and seeks to convey the musical ideas of the composer (I, 5. 475). Peirce argues that we can find the most diverse signs in art, but the sign which he regards essential to art is the iconic sign, or simply icon. There are straightforward statements by Peirce in which he names pictures and sculptures as illustrations of icon (1, 3. 362; 2. 276;
2. 281). Perhaps icons are only inherent in the representational arts? In a letter to Lady Welby written in 1904 Peirce refers to musical illustrations in his characterization of icon (2, 391) and else where refers to architecture (1, 2. 281). Thus icon is the universal sign of art. Insofar as it is accorded a special place in art and bearing in mind also that in subsequent semantic aesthetics (in the works of Morris, Langer et al.) the problem of the icon acquires central importance, it would be advisable for us to examine in greater detail Peirce's characterization of the icon.
The icon is classed amongst those signs which represent an object thanks to a quality which they themselves possess (1, 2. 247). This quality is similar to a quality of the object: ``A sign may serve as a sign simply because it happens to resemble its object" (1, 8. 119). Icon ``is of the nature of an appearance, and as such, strictly speaking, exists only in consciousness although for convenience in ordinary parlance and when extreme precision is not called for, we extend the term icon to the outward objects which excite in consciousness the image itself" (1, 4. 447). Consequently, the term ``icon'' is applied by Peirce both to external things (photos, pictures, sculptures) and to mental images. For example, ``any qualisign, like a vision or the sentiment excited by a piece of music considered as representing what a composer intended" is also characterized by him as an ``icon''. (2, 391). Admittedly, when talking about mental images Peirce sometimes uses the term ``mental icon'', and when talking about such icons as a painted picture the term ``material image" (1, 2. 276).
Icon is a sign which bears a similarity with the designated object. A similarity in what? If we keep in mind Peirce's argument that pure icon does not represent anything except 173 form (1, 4. 544), we are forced to conclude that it is a similarity of form which constitutes the basis of representation in Peirce's interpretation. But what does he understand by form?
It follows from Peirce's categorization of diagrams, algebraic equations, the logical diagrams which underlie the syntax of any language as forms of icons (1, 2. 22; 2. 282) and from the fact that he also regards mental images as icons, that by form Peirce means not only outer but also inner forms. The latter represents a structure, or system of relationships between elements. Thus, diagrams, largely speaking, represent dual relations (consisting of two elements) between their own elements (1, 2. 277).
The essence of all phenomena (including logical arguments) consists, according to Peirce, in mathematical form (1, 5. 551). The reproduction of mathematical form underlies any form of representation and partakes of the nature of pure representation. Insofar as Peirce argues that any means of communicating ideas is ultimately based on representation (1, 2. 278), it follows that the application of representation must also underlie communication through art. This means that we will find mathematical form at the basis of art.
The mathematical form which lies at the basis of representation is, Peirce argues, intimately manifested in logical form, in the arrangement of the representation. The American logician constantly inquired into the logical bases of art. Peirce was familiar with Kant's statement in the Critique ot Pure Reason about the false hope of reducing the critical evaluation of beauty to the principles of reason and to elevate its rules to the status of a science. Initially Peirce also doubted whether it was possible to establish the logical nature of aesthetics (1, 2. 197) but he was determined to find a connection between aesthetics and logics, arguing that ``esthetics and logic seem, at first blush, to belong to different universes (1, 2. 197), but ``there is a family likeness between Esthetics, Ethics, and Logic" (1, 2. 156). These views lead Peirce, when he talks about works of art, to regard them often not merely as terms and sentences, but as developed conclusions, logical systems, which right from the beginning contain their 174 premises alongside the rules of deduction and which are subsequently carried over to the deduction of theorems.
Peirce describes a true poem as ``sound argument" (1, 5. 119). A novel is also a form of deduction. The novelist is free to choose his ``premises'', but once these have been chosen he must keep strictly to them. If the hero is blind at the beginning of the story he cannot suddenly recover his eyesight in the middle, unless the author provides a special explanation for this ``metamorphosis''. Scherherazade, for example, is a fiction, a fancy, but once the author imagined and ``made her young, beautiful, and endowed with a gift of spinning stories, it becomes a real fact ... which ... he cannot destroy by pretending that he imagined her to be otherwise" (1, 5. 152).^^1^^ Peirce also sees a logical basis to architecture. We can understand why he should have been concerned by the analogy between mediaeval architecture and the logical theories of that age (1, 4. 27). Painting, according to Peirce, can also be viewed as an analogy with deduction. As an illustration he takes an impressionist seashore piece. Here each quality in a premise is one of the elementary coloured particles of the painting, and all together they are meant to go together to make up the intended quality that belongs to the whole. The resultant quality of parts of the whole, which can be evaluated as a deduction, is brought about by the combination of elementary qualities that belong to the premises (1, 5. 119).^^2^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ Modern semiotic analyses of art (V. Propp, A. Greimas, C. Bremond et al.) display a growing interest in the analysis of narrative texts. These studies show that, indisputably, a certain inner logic is essential to the development of the text. But, correctly argues Yu. M. Lotman, this logic, as material from the narrative texts of different cultures and ages shows, cannot be denned as self-evident on the basis of the intuition of the scholar, but must be revealed through an analysis of secondary modelling systems, constituting the structure of the given culture (see Semiotika i iskusstvometria, pp. 17, 18).
^^2^^ Peirce's tendency to link logic and aesthetics stimulated certain authors to analyse the facts of art also making use of the apparatus of logic. Thus, Max Hocutt commenting on this example of Peirce's which illustrates the logical pattern of a work of art, refers to one of the concepts of modern logic-consistency, which characterizes one of the properties of mathematical form (the opposite of contradiction, __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 176. 175
In addition to pure icons Peirce also identifies two other forms of icon: images and metaphors. Images are not only mental images, but also photographs, paintings, etc. The examples adduced by Peirce indicate that he gives the name image to forms of icon which have a similar external, spatial form to that of the object, and can also have merely a common quality (1, 2. 277), such as, for example, colour. Peirce said very little about the metaphor as a variety of the iconic sign. Those forms of icon which display the representative character of a sign, ``representing a parallelism in something else, are metaphors" (1, 2. 277). In a formal respect a metaphor is also an expression of similarity, in which a sign of predication is used instead of a sign of similarity, such as, for example, when we say: ``This man is a fox" instead of ``is like a fox" (1, 7. 590).
In its pure form icon does not have a physical, or, as Peirce expresses it, ``dynamical connection with the object it represents" (1, 2. 299). He is clearly thinking of those cases where the object of representation ``may be a pure fiction, as to its existence" (1, 4. 531). For example, a still life is ``created'' not by the actual objects of inanimate nature, but by the artist. There is a great difference between a plaster-of-Paris mask, in the creation of which the object actually ``takes part'', and a sculpture. The mask cannot exist without the existence of the object, whereas the sculpture can.
Turning away from the question of the real existence of the object of representation Peirce maintains that a pure iconic sign ``can convey no positive or factual information; for it affords no assurance that there is any such thing in nature" and only lets the interpreter study what the properties of such an object would be if it did exist (1, 4. 447). However fictitious the object of representation might be, it must, in Peirce's view, be logically possible. This means that insofar as the object does not exist ``the Form of the Icon, which is also its _-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 175. a sort of disharmony), arguing that there should be a certain consistency in works of art (10, 161). Another author, Theodore Albert Schulz, applies his theory of the three types of proof, and in particular of ``abduction'' (inductive proof), to art, and comes to the conclusion: ``Abduction is the point of departure for aesthetics" (18, 82).
176 object-must be logically possible" (1, 4. 531). To be logically possible, in Peirce's interpretation means to have an iconic structure, to be an icon. As far as art is concerned it follows from this that although art also has recourse to images and metaphors, these are of necessity based on pure representation which is by nature logical.Peirce realizes that icon (including that in art), like any sign, is not reducible to its material embodiment. For the designation of the latter he introduces the term ``hypoicon'' (1, 2. 276), leaving the term ``icon'' to designate its ideal aspect. ``So in contemplating a painting, there is a moment when we lose the consciousness that it is not the thing, the distinction of the real and the copy disappears, and it is for the moment a pure dream-not any particular existence, and yet not general. At that moment we are contemplating an icon" (1, 3. 362). To see a hypoicon does not necessarily mean to contemplate an icon. We shall discuss below how the icon proper, i.e. the ideal aspect, is interpreted. We should in this statement note the psychological observation of the perception of artistic representation, in which the icon as it were blends with that which is represented and ``icons are so completely substituted for their objects as hardly to be distinguished from them" (2, 3. 362).^^1^^
In Peirce's semiotics icon is interconnected with all the other types of sign. Signs themselves Peirce categorizes according to their character as qualisigns, sinsigns and legisigns. These signs constitute his first trichotomy. He characterizes them in the following way. ``A Qualisign is a quality which is a sign" (1, 2. 244), for example, ``odors are particularly apt to act as signs" (1, 1. 313). In art this role is clearly apportioned to sounds, colours and light. ``A Sinsign ... is an actual existent thing or event which is a sign" (1, 2. 245). Any sculpture, statue or play can serve as an example of icon, which is ``an actual existent thing or event''. ``A Legisign is a law that is a sign. This law is usually established by man. Every _-_-_
~^^1^^ Peirce does not keep strictly to the terminological distinction he introduces between ``hypoicon'' and ``icon''. We will therefore only use the term ``icon'', qualifying its meaning when necessary.
__PRINTERS_P_177_COMMENT__ 12---826 177 conventional sign is a legisign. It is not a single object, but a general type which, it has been agreed, shall be significant" (1, 2. 246). ``Every Legisign requires Sinsigns" (1, 2. 246). Peirce calls this sort of concrete application or expression of a legisign in the form of a sinsign a replica. It would appear that among icons in art replicas are those signs which are created in accordance with conventional rules (the depiction of saints in icons, whose differential features-the conventional colours of their garments, the shape of their beards-are strictly regulated in the handbooks of icon-painting). Thus, writes Peirce, ``anything whatever, be it quality, existent individual, or law, is an Icon of anything, in so far as it is like that thing and used as a sign of it" (1, 2. 247).The iconic sign also enters the second trichotomy, which emerges upon consideration of the sign with reference to its object. In addition to icon the second trichotomy comprises indexes and symbols. An index, for example a weather-vane, has a dynamic link with its object and points to its existence. Like an icon it has a quality in common with the object. But it receives this quality as a result of ``actual modification of it by the Object" (1, 2. 248), when the object in its interaction with the sign leaves ``traces'' in it. If in the process these traces retain a similarity with the original we are confronted with an iconic index, such as, for example, a photograph that ``not only excites an image, has an appearance, but, owing to its optical connexion with the object, is evidence that that appearance corresponds to a reality" (1, 4. 4,47). Peirce distinguishes genuine indexes, which have a physical connection with the object, from degenerate indexes, which, though they may lack such a connection, still perform the essential function of indexes: they direct attention to their objects, identify the object and point to its existence ``here and now''. Such propositions as ``this'', ``that'', proper names, pointing with the finger, are all examples of ``degenerate'' indexes. Peirce argued that it would be hard to find a sign totally void of the property of an index, and that indexes are essential to mutual comprehension.
According to Peirce, indexes are apparently also necessary in art, in the process of interpreting icons. All those 178 components of an icon which enable the viewer to identify its time, social background, etc., as well as legends (inscriptions on icons, credits in films, etc.), without which the pure picture only says ``something is like this'', are all probably indexes. The picture's true meaning is conveyed by its inscription (1, 8. 183).
Peirce expressed a profound thought, which given the level of psychology in his day he was unable to develop, that not only a photograph but also, say, a portrait painted from life is not pure representation in the sense that the latter should not have a physical connection with the designated object and is not created as a result of the influence of the object itself. Although there is no direct influence from the original in this case there is, argues Peirce, indirect influence, mediated by the artist. A portrait is an effect, caused by the original's appearance (1, 2. 92). Only at its modern stage has psychology attempted to take the original itself as the explanation for the man-mediated determination of representation.
Peirce does not regard representation as ``pure'' representation for the additional reason that it also includes conventional references. But conventional references characterize symbols which, according to Peirce, must also find their place in art. The symbol is a sign which ``fulfills its function regardless of any similarity or analogy with its object and equally regardless of any tactual connection therewith" (1, 5. 73). The symbol ``is connected with its object by a convention that it shall be so understood, or else by a natural instinct or intellectual act which takes it as a representative of its object" (1, 2. 308). Once it comes into being the symbol performs its function as if submitting to some law or rule. At the psychological level this means that symbols ``denote the objects that they do by virtue only of there being a habit that associates their signification with them" (1, 4. 544). Peirce believes that ``any material image, as a painting, is largely conventional in its mode of representation" (1, 2. 276), that ``every picture (however conventional its method) is essentially a representation" (1, 2. 279). Peirce's writings contain statements of the type ``the most perfect of signs are those in which the iconic, indicative, and symbolic characters are blended as equally as __PRINTERS_P_180_COMMENT__ 12* 179 possible" (1, 4. 448). Theodore Schulz maintains that according to Peirce the work of art is also a perfect sign when it possesses the indicated quality. Max Dense argues to the contrary, that for Peirce the symbol is the highest step of free creation (the highest ``semioticity''), while the index and the ``icon'' occupy a lower step (``degeneration''). We should note that both Peirce's approach and his interpretation by Schulz and Dense suffer from an abstract approach. The practice of using signs in science and art indicate that, depending on the purpose to which they are used, and genres, etc., ``perfect'' signs are those with a different proportion of iconic, indicative and symbolic characters. Dense's interpretation contains in addition the tendency to exalt modernist art, its conventional, arbitrary character.
Peirce's classification of signs also presupposes a third trichotomy in which signs are divided, according to their relation to the interpretant and the way in which they are interpreted, into terms, propositions and arguments (1, 2. 95). ``A term is simply a class-name or proper-name" (1, 8. 337). A term cannot be described as true or false. A proposition refers to something which has real existence, i.e. it is an index and is either true or false (1, 2. 310). In Peirce's view pure icon can only be a term and cannot be said to be true or false. Dut we have already quoted statements by the philosopher from which it is clear that icons in art as a rule function together with indexes and symbols and can be regarded as propositions and arguments. Thus the portrait of a man which bears that man's name can be qualified as a proposition (1, 2. 320) and in this instance we can talk about its truth or falsity.
The distinguishing property of the iconic sign consists in the fact that ``by the direct observation of it other truths concerning its object can be discovered than those which suffice to determine its construction" (I, 2. 279). Studying an iconic sign in terms of its cognitive results is tantamount to studying its object. ``It is true to say,'' writes Yuri Melvil in this connection, ``that the sign (in the form of an explicit schema) functions for Peirce as a sort of model, the study of which reveals the properties of its archetype" (14, 187). When he talked of icon as a means of discovering new truths Peirce 180 undoubtedly had in mind representation as applied in science (mathematics, logic), however we can justifiably also apply his views to representation in art, since this form of representation was also seen by Peirce to have a logical nature and mathematical basis. Peirce's theories of representation and its place in art undoubtedly contain an implicit view of the modelling nature of art.
Since icons are applied not only in art we also encounter the question of the specific features of artistic representation. Peirce sees these specifics in the expressiveness of signs. Signs may possess a moral goodness-veracity (1, 5. 137), and a logical goodness-truth (1, 5. 142). Dut there is ``a special variety of esthetic goodness that may belong to a representamen, namely, expressiveness" (1, 5. 137). Expressiveness can and should be possessed by all varieties of signs: terms, propositions and arguments (1, 5. 140). Let us now see how signs acquire this property. Peirce elucidates this with respect to icon: since it reproduces the qualities of an object, including its aesthetic qualities, an emotion arises similar to that evoked by the object itself (1, 5. 308). In those cases where the designated object is fictitious and ``coincides'' with the form of the icon itself the latter must also be aesthetically expressive. Thus, in all cases expressiveness of icon is due to the aesthetic properties of the designated object, which are reproduced in the icon. Now let us take a look at these properties.
__b_b_b__ __ALPHA_LVL3__ 2. BEAUTY AS ``KALOS''.Peirce calls an ``aesthetic quality" (1, 1. 591) aesthetic goodness, which in modern day terms is designated ``value''. Consequently, Peirce connects the use of signs in art with the concept of value. This position is also taken by many of the subsequent conceptions of the semiotic theory of art.
Most frequently the American philosopher recognizes as aesthetic goodness that quality of an object which is capable of evoking admiration by itself (1, 5. 594; 1. 191). This quality can be shared by King Lear and an elegant mathematical proof. Aesthetic goodness is universal, there for all to perceive. In his analysis of which term best designates this 181 value, Peirce decides in favour of the Greek KO^OC, (I, 2. 199). Peirce's understanding of ``kalos'' is extremely close to the antique conception of beauty as ``kalos''. Just like the Greeks he takes music as his starting point for many of his theories and extends his conclusions to all forms of art. He sees the basis for this generalization in mathematics, and looks for similarities between the artist and the mathematician.
Aesthetic value, interpreted as kalos, is harmony, unity, the integration of the parts of the whole in the work of art. The aesthetic object has a multitude of parts, which act as a totality (1, 5. 132). Harmony is created by a system of relations. Thus, Peirce sees the aesthetic value of a musical work as a pattern of sound sequences (1, 5. 396).
We stated above that, according to Peirce, mathematical form lies at the basis of representation as applied in art. Now we have to reinterpret this view, and state that mathematical form lies at the basis of aesthetic quality. Peirce's commentators emphasize that he did not approximate beauty to mathematical form, regarding the latter as merely a necessary condition of beauty. Peirce lays stress on quality as a whole, and not on its parts in their analytically interpreted relations. This interpretation of Peirce's views is supported by a number of Peirce's own statements. In one of these he expresses the important notion that although anything good (i.e. including aesthetic) can also be seen from a quantitative point of view, that is from the standpoint of the degree of this value, not one normative science-one of which Peirce considers aesthetics to be, as we shall elaborate below-deals only with quantity (1, 5. 127). ``As for esthetics,'' writes Peirce, ``in that field the qualitative differences appear to be so prominent that, abstracted from them, it is impossible to say that there is any appearance which is not esthetically good" (1, 5. 127).
Since Peirce was concerned to find the logical bases of art, he was faced with the question of the correspondence of beauty and truth, and in this connection with the confrontation between the work of the artist and that of the scientist. The American philosopher argues that the question of truth and falsity is applicable to representation in art (1, 8. 183). ``I hear you say: `All that is not fact; it is poetry.' Nonsense! 182 Bad poetry is false, I grant; but nothing is truer than true poetry. And let me tell the scientific men that the artists are much finer and more accurate observers than they are, except of the special minutae that the scientific man is looking for" (1, 1. 315). We should note that Peirce does not provide a clear answer to the question of how ``truth'' should be understood with reference to art. There are statements in his writings in which he approximates truth and beauty, but does not identify them. ``The work of the poet or novelist is not so utterly different from that of the scientific man. The artist introduces a fiction; but it is not an arbitrary one; it exhibits affinities to which the mind accords a certain approval in pronouncing them beautiful, which if it is not exactly the same as saying that the synthesis is true, is something of the same general kind" (1, 1. 383). There are other statements, however, from which we can conclude that Peirce rejected the possibility of applying the category of truth to art, at any rate not in the sense in which it is applicable to science. For example, he holds that the scientific imagination deals with explanations and laws, while in art we have to deal with an imagination which lacks scientific value (1, 1. 48). A hypothesis created by a poet of genius may be great but its creation cannot be classed as scientific since it produces nothing either true or false and therefore is not knowledge (1, 4. 238). Since the resolution of the question of truth in art depends on whether we ask the question of truth or falsity with respect to the feelings, or emotions, and on how the question is asked, we shall have occasion to return to it in the following section when we discuss Peirce's views on the ``emotional interpretant".
__b_b_b__ __ALPHA_LVL3__ 3. THE EMOTIONAL INTERPRETANT.The majority of commentators note that the concept of the interpretant for the American semioticist is far from clear. One of Peirce's most important statements provides an ``extensive'' definition of the interpretant as ``significate effect of sign'', an effect expressed in thought, action or experience, and feeling (1, 8. 332). ``The first proper significate effect of. a sign is a feeling 183 produced by it" (1, 5. 475). Peirce calls this type of ``significate effect" of the sign its ``emotional interpretant'', which is sometimes the only result produced by the sign. The latter is only attested when the ``idea'' expressed (or conveyed) by the sign is itself a feeling. ``Thus, the performance of a piece of concerted music is a sign. It conveys, and is intended to convey, the composer's musical ideas; but these usually consist merely in a series of feelings" (1, 5. 475). We noted above that Peirce gives the name expressiveness to the ability of signs which possess aesthetic value to evoke the corresponding feeling. In Peirce's view, to be an expressive sign is clearly tantamount to having an emotional interpretant of an aesthetic nature. Of the signs it is precisely icon which represents feeling (1, 4. 544). An icon substitutes for qualities of an object, including aesthetic qualities, and in consequence a similar emotion arises (1, 5. 308). An emotional interpretant is the direct result of the action of a sign, which prompts Peirce to give it a different name: ``immediate interpretant" (1, 4. 536).~^^1^^ But ``the only way of directly communicating an idea is by means of an icon; and every indirect method of communicating an jdea must depend for its establishment upon the use of an icon" (1, 2. 278). Thus, in Peirce's semiotics the emotional interpretant is inherent in icons. From what has been said we can conclude that, according to Peirce, icons in art possess expressiveness, i.e. evoke an aesthetic emotion in the interpreter, or feeling of beauty.
Is it only the emotional interpretant, we might ask, which is inherent in signs used by art? Peirce does not give a straight answer with respect to art. But he argues that other ``significate effects" may also come about on the basis of an emotional interpretant (i.e. mediated by it). In his statement quoted above Peirce reduces these effects briefly to ``thought'' and ``action'' (1, 8. 332), to which ``logical'' and ``energetic'' interpretants correspond (1, 5. 475--76). When the ``ideas'' expressed and conveyed by a work of art cannot be reduced to _-_-_
~^^1^^ According to John J. Fitzgerald, the majority of Peirce's commentators hold that he identifies the emotional interpretant and the `` immediate interpretant'', although Fitzgerald does not himself share this view (8, 78; 5; 20).
184 a mere ``series of feelings" (1, 5. 475), but are thoughts, the interpretant becomes ``logical''. This means that the ``effect'' is expressed in the form of thought, of an idea, the intellectual content of the mind. But since ``all thought. . . must necessarily be in signs" (1, 5. 251, 253), the interpretation of signs is their extrapolation into a different system of signs. With application to art this can mean (and we are talking now of the logical, and not the emotional, interpretant of the signs of art!) a translation of poetic content into the sign system of our usual language (e.g., into the language of art criticism) or into the language of other arts (Peirce himself did not specially investigate the question of the translation of the signs of art into the language of other arts). Acting via the emotions art also influences the actions and behaviour of people (``energetic interpretant''). It must be emphasised that, according to Peirce, art in every instance directly evokes an aesthetic emotion.The characteristics of the emotional interpretant have shown that the presence of an icon, whose basis is form, is a sine qua non for the communication of emotion. But then the actual sentiment evoked by a musical piece Peirce views as an icon, reproducing what the composer had in his own mind (2. 391). It follows from this that feeling has form too, and iconic structure. An icon representing external appearance is perhaps enabled to express sentiment by being endowed with an adequate, or similar, form. The posing of this question and its resolution are implicit in the essence of Peirce's views, but they were not given direct expression by him. Subsequently Susanne Langer attempted to resolve this problem.
Peirce holds that ``every emotion has a subject" (1, 5. 292). The feeling of beauty either comes about as the predicate of certain objects (``not-I''), or is determined by previous cognitions coming about on the basis of a set of other impressions (1, 5. 291). It is characteristic in this process that emotions occur when our attention is arrested on complex and incomprehensible circumstances. Fear arises when we are unable to foresee our fate. The indescribable, inexpressible and incomprehensible usually evoke an emotion, and a scientific explanation is the surest way to calm it. Emotion, including that 185 of the aesthetic variety, is always a less complex predicate than the predicate which it substitutes or the impressions which evoke it. Hence Peirce states that in a sense emotion fulfils the function of a ``hypothesis'', since something simpler takes the place of something complex. Emotion is thus also knowledge, but of a very narrow character (1, 5. 292).^^1^^
The feeling of beauty, analysed as an ``element of cognition'', is placed in dependence on the cognition of those `` logical" properties of beautiful objects which characterize `` kalos" such as harmony, unity of parts in the whole, etc. In this the aesthetic feeling acts as a criterion or ``indicator'' of true synthesis. The reason is not infallible and needs the help of aesthetics (1, 2. 197). Aesthetic feeling can indicate whether or not we have perceived the corresponding effect of a sign, ``although the foundation of the truth in this is frequently very slight" (1, 5. 475). Sometimes aesthetic emotion simply emerges on contemplation of ``scientific beauty and truth" (1, 1. 171). Thus, the occurrence of aesthetic feeling is an indicator of the truth of a work of art in the sense of the word ``truth'' accorded it by Peirce when he talks of ``true poetry''. Conversely, bad poetry is false, in the sense that it does not evoke an aesthetic emotion or at any rate does not evoke a proper equivalent emotion.
But what are we to understand by a proper emotion? Aesthetic value, according to Peirce, is universal. This means that in principle it can evoke an aesthetic emotion in everyone. But this is only ``in principle''. In fact this requires a number of separate conditions. Not actually denying that aesthetic emotion is pleasant, Peirce connects its emergence with, above all, an aesthetic ideal, to which beauty must correspond. At the psychological level the ideal should be the habit of feeling, and this habit has grown under the influence and in the process of self-criticism and hetero-criticism (1, 1. 574). The concept of ``habit'' in general occupies a prominent place in Peirce's philosophy. He regards habit _-_-_
~^^1^^ The above shows that Peirce, without resorting to the terms and concepts of the theory of information, is in essence here setting forth the informational theory of emotion. Cf. P. V. Simonov. Chto tdkoye emotsia (What Is Emotion), Moscow, 1966.
186 as ``the essence of the logical interpretant" (1, 5. 486). Placing aesthetic emotion in dependence on an ideal, i.e. on the habit of feeling, Peirce sees, by the same token, the essence of the emotional interpretant in habit.The dependence of aesthetic emotion on an aesthetic ideal, an active role in whose formation is played by reason, makes it more than a mere phenomenon of feeling, rather a ``sort of intellectual sympathy, a sense that here is a Feeling that one can comprehend, a reasonable Feeling" (1, 5. 113). This feature of aesthetic emotion can be seen in its generalized character. The generalization of sentiment functions in different ways. One of the forms of the generalization of sentiment, and insofar the regenerative metamorphosis of sentiment, is poetry (1,1. 676).
We can conclude our description of Peirce's semiotic theory of art at this point. It would be no exaggeration to state that Peirce identified all the basic problems of the semiotic theory of art, which are being developed in pace with advances in the theory and its enrichment with new data. To sum up briefly, these problems can be reduced to the following: art as a special type of communication through signs, the role and place of the icon in art, the connection between the signs of art and aesthetic value, semiotics and the problem of representation and expressiveness in art, the correlation of science and art, truth and beauty, the ``emotional interpretant" of the signs of art, the structure and generalized character of aesthetic emotion.
Peirce not only posed these problems, he also resolved them on the basis of his philosophical and general aesthetic views. The following section will be devoted to the philosophical interpretation of the semiotic theory of art.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ 4. THE IDEALISTIC CHARACTER OF PEIRCE'S AESTHETICS.Peirce's aesthetics, like all his philosophy in general, has an explicitly idealistic character, and is just as inwardly contradictory as his philosophy.^^1^^ Two main contradictions can be _-_-_
~^^1^^ Practically all his commentators write of Peirce's contradictoriness, offering different explanations for it. Yuri Melvil calls Peirce one of the most contradictory philosophers (14, 28).
187 identified. The first consists in the following: when he formulates his views of scientific importance Peirce sometimes adopts the positions of spontaneous materialism, incompatible with his conscious adherence to the idealistic ``faith''. The second contradiction characterizes his idealistic position itself.In Peirce's aesthetics, as in his philosophy, his commentators note such contradictory (in a single channel of idealism) tendencies as the subjective-idealistic doctrine of pragmatism and objective-idealistic metaphysics (Melvil), the positivist tendency, which can be traced through Mill and Bain to Hume and Berkeley, and the objective-idealistic tendency inherited from German classical idealism (Bogomolov), naturalism and transcendentalism (Goudge, Thompson), empiricism and metaphysics (Nagel), rationalism and irrationalism (Feibleman) etc. We will not concern ourselves here with the reasons for this contradictoriness, which would take us too far away from our subject. His spontaneous materialism is clearly due to scientific tendencies in Peirce's views, while his hostility to materialism is in many respects connected with the impossibility of reconciling this philosophy to religion, and also with false view of materialism as a vulgar and mechanistic philosophy.
The contradictory character of Peirce's idealism is attributable to the conflicting sources of his philosophy. Above all we should mention Kant, who greatly influenced both Peirce's semiotics and pragmatism,^^1^^ and particularly his ethics and aesthetics. But, in Kant's subjective-idealistic philosophy, and in particular his ethics and aesthetics, the concept of the supra-sensual world served as the point of departure in the development of the philosophy of German objective idealism. The objective-idealistic current in Peirce's philosophy was reinforced by the influence of Hegel, Plato and ``scholastic realism".
The contradictory and confused nature of Peirce's views in aesthetics are additionally compounded by his lack of _-_-_
~^^1^^ Peirce held that ``Kant (whom I more than admire) is nothing but a somewhat confused pragmatist" (1, 5. 525). Cf. also (20; 22).
188 confidence. Despite the fact that throughout his creative life (we know that at the early age of 16 he read Schiller's Letters on Aesthetic Education, which greatly influenced the young thinker) aesthetics remained within the range of his interests, particularly in his last years, Peirce, by his own admission, remained ``lamentably ignorant" (1, 2. 120), a ``perfect ignoramus" (1, 5. Ill) and did not feel himself entitled ``to have any confident opinions about it" (1, 5. 129).^^1^^Soviet scholars (Yuri Melvil, Lazar Reznikov) note that a spontaneous materialist tendency can be observed in Peirce's interpretation of semiotics. Peirce, argues Melvil, ``proceeds in his interpretation of the iconic sign and its function virtually from the materialist principle of reflection, although he does not explicitly recognize it and does not keep to it consistently" (14, 187--88). But the icon, according to Peirce, lies at the basis of art. This substantiates the view that Peirce's semiotic theory of art implicitly contains materialist tendencies. We should not, however, go to the opposite extreme and see Peirce as consistent materialist. His materialism, as Mikhail Kissel and Maria Kozlova correctly note, was no more than ``realism'', serving as a link between pragmatic methodology and objective-idealist cosmology (11, 158).
The primary epistemological interpretation of semiotics is also connected with the interpretation of the semantic aspect of signs, with their ``signification''. The problem of signification and meaning is a stumbling block for semantic philosophy and semantic aesthetics, and is in general one of the most serious philosophical problems. In Peirce's writings we encounter the same varieties of the idealistic approach to this problem which we will observe when we trace the development of semantic aesthetics. Until about 1902 Peirce's semiotics took form independently from his pragmatism. In the triadic sign relationship of sign, object and interpretant there was no place for a special fourth member-``signification'', which occupies the central place in pragmatism. This can be _-_-_
~^^1^^ Certain bourgeois commentators (e.g. Feibleman) attempt to represent his philosophy and aesthetics as a coherent system of theories. Such interpretations are marred by partiality and fail to answer the requirements of objective scientific study (7, 397).
189 attributed to the fact that Peirce here digresses away from the communication process, and therefore from the ``fourth member" of the sign situation-the addressee of the sign. In this case ``signification'' can only be one of the members of the triad. Most often Peirce ties ``signification'' with the interpretant (1, 8. 179, 184). We may note that in this period the ``interpretant'' is primarily interpreted in its logical aspect as thought, concept, which contain signs. ``By a sign,'' writes Peirce, ``I mean anything which conveys any definite notion of an object in any way. ... In particular, all signs convey notions to human minds" (1,1. 540). In attempting to evade the infelicities of the vulgar object treatment of meaning, Peirce does not include the outer object (``dynamic object'') in the sign relationship, and at the same time identifies various forms of the connection between the sign and the real object. When he discusses the sign process-the chain of sign triads (triad being a sign relationship)-he is anxious to emphasise the function of the sign in the system of language, in its interconnection with other signs, thereby avoiding the atomistic and strictly denotational approach to language. In the first and the second cases he omits from consideration the mechanism of representation of reality in the sign process, or in the process of reflection, which creates the ``philosophical threat of phenomenalism" (11, 159). What was a ``threat'' for Peirce becomes a fact in subsequent idealistic interpretations of semiotics.It is clear that on the basis of the phenomenological interpretation of semiotics the semiotic theory of art can also only be interpreted in the idealistic spirit as a closed system of signs which do not reflect or give cognition of objective reality. We find precisely this interpretation of the semiotic theories of art in the writings of a number of subsequent semanticists, who can quite justifiably be described as Peirce's heirs.
Peirce realized that the analysis of the actual communication process presupposes the inclusion of a fourth member connected with the interpreter. The sign ``is a vehicle conveying into the mind something from without. That for which it stands is called its object; that which it conveys, its 190 meaning; and the idea to which it gives rise, its interpretant" (1, 1. 339). This approach made it possible to draw a distinction between ``meaning'' as an objective element of communication and the interpretant, which would now be understood in another ``second'' sense as the interpretation of ``meaning'' by the subject. But Peirce took a different course, prompted by his attempts (particularly in his last years) to bring semiotics into agreement with the pragmatic interpretation of meaning, which constitutes the essence of the pragmatic theory. The pragmatic interpretation of meaning, which receives its fullest expression in the famous ``Peirce's principle'', redirected attention from what was being communicated to the interpretant in the second sense. We have already mentioned Peirce's extensive interpretation of the ``interpretant'' as the ``significate effect" (1, 8. 332) of the influence of the sign in the form of thought, feeling and action (which corresponds to the logical, emotional and energetic interpretants). It is precisely in this version that the interpretant is now declared to be the ``meaning of the sign''. The effect produced by the sign must have a general character and proceed in accordance with a general rule. Peirce sees the essence of the interpretant, and, therefore, of the ``meaning'' of the sign in habitintellectual, emotional and behavioural habit.
The fact that Peirce directed attention to the nature of the effect of the sign on the interpreter (i.e. to its pragmatic aspect) was an important and valuable factor in his semiotics. In particular his isolation and characterization of the emotional interpretant made possible a more accurate examination of the semantic processes in art. It was not of fundamental significance that the term ``meaning'' had now been shifted to designate the ``interpretant'' in its second sense, i.e. to designate the habitual reaction of the interpreter to the sign. What was important was the loss of ``meaning'' in the sense of an ideal reflection of objective reality-a process, on the basis of which signs can evoke ``significate effects''. The ``meaning'' of a sign was reduced to custom and habit. Thus, ``in his endeavour to introduce to semiotics the pragmatic theory of meaning and to adapt the theory of signs to the subjectivist doctrine of pragmatism Peirce moved away from 191 objective scientific research and advanced the agnostic and behaviouristic conception of custom or habit in action as the apparently definitive and true meaning of the sign" (14, 245). This conception was seized upon by bourgeois philosophers of the most diverse schools, but its most thorough development it received in the behaviourist semiotics of Charles Morris.
If we fail to take account of the reflective aspect of the meaning of signs it is impossible to achieve an accurate interpretation of the facts of art. The interpretant, including that of the emotional variety, is an aesthetic reaction, combined with all the accidental processes which this reaction provokes in the individual mind. Peirce notes that the interpretant, understood as the meaning of the sign, is characterized by vagueness.^^1^^ In general, notes the philosopher, ``no communication of one person to another can be entirely definite, i.e., non-vague" (1, 5. 506). And the more ``vague'' the emotional interpretant appears. ``I know no facts,'' writes Peirce, ``which prove that there is never the least vagueness in the immediate sensation" (1, 3. 93). Thus, the pragmatic interpretation of the ``meaning'' of a work of art as an emotional interpretant only takes into account the subjective aspect of the ``meaning'' of the work of art. As for the objective aspect, which has to do with an analysis of the content and the structure of the work with their reflection of reality, this is ignored by the pragmatic interpretation of ``meaning''. The reduction of the ``meaning'' of a work of art to an interpretant characterized by ``vagueness'', served as the point of departure for the fundamental argument of pragmatic aesthetics (Dewey, Morris)-a position, which leads to agnosticism, the theory of absolute indeterminateness and the relativity of ``meaning'' in works of art.
Peirce's interpretation of the ideal as the habit of feeling is also narrow. It is impossible on the basis of this interpretation to reveal all the depth of the concept of the ``aesthetic _-_-_
~^^1^^ Mikhail Kissel and Maria Kozlova correctly point to the rational core of this idea: the sign cannot be absolutely determined, and its further clarification and definition via other signs or experience is always possible (see 11, 159).
192 ideal'', its socio-psychological, class nature, the entire complex mechanism of its regulating effect on art as a whole. Peirce's interpretation of the ``ideal'' as habit only touches on the psychological side of the mechanism of the functioning of the ideal, and not its epistemological and social essence. The latter can only be revealed by turning to the reflection of reality in the artist's consciousness.Without taking into account the process of reflection it is similarly impofsible to explain the effect of art on the behaviour of people. We are forced to admit that Peirce did not himself interpret art in terms of ``behaviour'', ``habit'' and ``custom''. But his semiotics contain all the premises for such an interpretation, and these were developed in the semiotic theory of art advanced by Charles Morris.
Let us now examine Peirce's general aesthetic views. Of decisive importance for these was his interpretation of `` quality"---the first category of his phenomenology. Depending on how we understand this concept we will also be able to explain artistic representation, aesthetic quality and aesthetic feeling.
``Quality'' is the first category in Peirce's phenomenologythe section of his philosophy which studies the different types of phenomena. By phenomenon he means ``whatever is present at any time to the mind in any way" (1, 1. 186). Quality as a phenomenon of the consciousness is actualized, realized quality. Until it is actualized it exists as ``possibility'' (1, 1. 25), ``abstract potentiality" (1, 1. 422). ``The mode of being a redness, before anything in the universe was yet red, was nevertheless a positive qualitative possibility" (1, 1. 25). This argument applies fully to aesthetic qualities too. The world of aesthetic qualities or values is the world of eternal objects, outside time and space. Many commentators correctly note the kinship cf these ideas with Platonism. We should only stress that the objective-idealistic tendencies of Kantian philosophy are directly developed in this. Peirce ``anticipated'' in his phenomenology the ideas of the neo-Kantians, who developed the tendencies noted above into the theory of the transcendental kingdom of values.
Much common ground can be traced in the phenomenology __PRINTERS_P_193_COMMENT__ 13---826 193 of Peirce and Husserl (although it would be wrong to talk here of mutual influence). According to Peirce, aesthetic quality (or beauty), understood as potential, exists neither in the mind nor in objects, but in a special world of phenomenological essences. This phenomenological understanding of aesthetic quality applies closely to the characteristics of icon. By definition, an icon represents an object thanks to a quality which it itself possesses and which is similar to a quality of the object. Therefore icons belong to the ``first'' category in Peirce's classification of signs. We have already stated that the term ``icon'' in Peirce's exact use of the word refers to the ideal side of representation. Moreover, when quality is understood as possibility, an icon does not exist in the mind. We have already quoted Peirce's statement about the perception of painting, in which he stresses that when we contemplate an icon proper we contemplate an essence which is neither a ``partial'' (i.e. material) existence, nor a universal (i.e. existing in the mind) (1,3.362).
Aesthetic quality, understood as being in possibility, exists outside and independently of the mind of man. Western commentators (N. Bosco, T. Schulz, M. Hocutt et al.) conclude on the basis of this that in Peirce's interpretation aesthetic quality has an objective character. We should only bear in mind that this ``objectivity'' is interpreted by Peirce in the spirit of objective idealism. Moreover, Peirce's works also contain statements which give grounds for viewing his theories as subjective-idealist, as we shall be elaborating below.
Unrealised quality as being in possibility characterizes the metaphysical aspect of quality. In its psychological aspect quality is already actualized and constitutes a mere quality of direct consciousness (1,1. 707). Aesthetic quality is revealed in the mind as ``the quality of the emotion upon contemplating a fine mathematical demonstration" (1, 1. 304) or as the quality of ``universal'' feeling which is evoked by the tragedy of King Lear (1, 1. 531). Thus, aesthetic quality becomes the quality of feeling and acquires a subjective character.^^1^^ It _-_-_
~^^1^^ The Canadian scholar Th. Goudge, who in general shares Peirce's views, maintains that the ``subjectivist'' position was the most usual one taken by Peirce (9, 303).
194 seems as though Peirce distinguishes an aesthetic quality, which exists objectively (in the sense of objective idealism) and the quality of aesthetic feeling as the ``subjective correlate" of this aesthetic quality. In actual fact the situation is slightly different. When Peirce talks of ``firstness'' as the ``quality of feeling" he never makes a distinction between the felt quality and the quality of feeling. Peirce shares the monist interpretation of phenomena, which can be found in Ernst Mach and in the radical empiricism of William James in his later period. Aesthetic feeling is compared to such ``secondary qualities" as ``blue'', ``hard'', ``sweet'', it acquires an ontological status and is placed beyond the limits of the human mind. That there should be no doubt on this score we can quote Peirce himself: ``I prefer to guess that it is a psychic feeling of red without us which arouses a sympathetic feeling of red in our senses" (1, 1. 311). Aesthetic feeling outside mansuch is the paradoxical conclusion of Peirce's ``objectivism'', a conclusion that inevitably proceeds from his idealistic, positivist (in the spirit of Mach) understanding of quality. `` Quality" for Peirce embraces both aesthetic quality and aesthetic feeling in an indivisible union.We noted above that according to Peirce aesthetic quality has a logical and mathematical basis. It can be understood, it is rational, generalized and has structure. These characteristics were connected with that stage in Peirce's interpretation of the nature of the first category when he rejected the spontaneity of quality and viewed it as ``an element of cognition''. In his subsequent phenomenology Peirce started to lay emphasis on the spontaneity of quality, arguing that quality ( interpreted in particular as aesthetic quality and aesthetic sensation) is ``not intelligible'', one can feel it, but to comprehend it or express it in a general formula is out of the question (1, 5. 49). It is ``spontaneous, free, vivid, conscious, and evanescent. . . Every description of it must be false to it" (1, 1. 357). In aesthetic experience an increasingly greater role is now being accorded to instinct, which is acquiring exceptional significance for the explanation of aesthetic behaviour. This position of Peirce's can be described as anti-intellectual, irrationalist, and extremely close to intuitivism with its rejection of 195 the possibility of cognizing beauty. It can be said of Peirce that he made the first decisive step from intellectualism to antiintellectualism in modern American thought (P. Crosser).
__b_b_b__In addition to his interpretation of the first category, Peirce's ``third category" is of grate significance for an understanding of his aesthetics. In contrast to the ``first'', which regards ``quality'' as possibility, and the ``second'', which expresses the idea of individual existence, of the fact, the third category acts as a link between the first two, as ``Medium, between a Second and its First" (1, 5. 66) and expresses the idea of a law, of regularity and universality. Whereas Peirce views aesthetic quality, or beauty, within his ``first'' category, into the ``third'' he introduces the concept of the aesthetic ideal, interpreted as summum bonum. The aesthetic ideal, in correspondence with the characteristic features of the ``third'' category, expresses the idea of ``regularity'' (we might remind ourselves here of his psychological definition of the aesthetic ideal as the ``habit of feeling''), and is characterized by universality (1,1. 613). As for its function as a ``medium'', we should perhaps discuss that in greater detail.
Pleasure could form the link between aesthetic quality as an abstract possibility and the individual phenomenon in which this quality is realised. But Peirce rejected hedonism, which regards sensual pleasure as the ultimate goal of aesthetic experience. Yet, as M. G. Murphey correctly notes, once he had rejected hedonism Peirce had to find another regulator, another ``medium'' between quality and individual existence (15, 353). This link he eventually found in the concept of the norm, of the aesthetic standard, or ideal. The task of the aesthetic ideal is to realise and embody the quality of feeling (1, 5. 129). But why, we might ask, should the aesthetic ideal perform the function of a ``medium''? Because it acts as an ultimate goal, the summum bonum of all human activity. Aesthetics, however, which embraces the field of the ideal (1, 1. 197, 574) is viewed as an analysis of the sort that is not exclusively connected with the interpretation and evaluation of the nature of such forms of art as painting, sculpture, music etc. Aesthetics is a science of goals, and the business of 196 the aesthetician ``is to say what is the state of things which is most admirable in itself" (1,1. 611).
What then is the ultimate goal, the summum bonum for Peirce? We have already seen that Peirce rejects hedonism. Neither can we, in his opinion, identify the ideal with any particular state of society, for these are transient. The summum bonum should be in harmony with the infinite community in its development (1, 2. 655). This is ``rationalization of the universe'', ``law of nature" (1, 1. 590), ``Reason itself comprehended in all its fullness" (1, 1. 615).
Peirce's views have much in common with the conception of cosmic teleology (whose essence is that the universe is pursuing a global goal), which combines objective idealism with elements of naturalism (the true goal is close to a ``law of nature''). If, however, we are to take into account the ``scandalous'', in Melvil's expression, conclusion reached by Peirce as a result of his many years of study that ``the laws of nature are ideas or resolutions in the mind of some vast consciousness, who ... is a Deity relatively to us" (1, 5. 107), it will become clear that Peirce was approaching a divine conception of the ideal.
Making use of the concept of the summum bonum, or the aesthetic ideal, Peirce tried to substantiate the normative character of aesthetics. Aesthetics was included along with ethics and logic in the normative sciences (which together with phenomenology and metaphysics form philosophy), concerned with the study of what should be, or in other words, ideals. Aesthetics lies at the basis of ethics, and ethics at the basis of logic. Thus aesthetics forms the foundation stone of the entire edifice of the normative sciences. He accords this place to aesthetics because it studies the ultimate goal of all activity-the summum bonum, or the aesthetic ideal.
In the literature on Peirce we encounter attempts to explain his theory of the aesthetic ideal and aesthetics as a normative science, proceeding from the demands of Peirce's pragmatism (12, 90--92). The connection between Peirce's aesthetics and pragmatism is indisputable, but both the aesthetics and the actual pragmatism of the American philosopher have their theoretical roots in Kantianism. His normative approach to 197 philosophy comes from Kant. Kant subordinated the idea of supreme virtue to a moral law, a categorical imperative. And although Kant himself distinguished between aesthetic and ethical ideals, his idea of the categorical imperative as a moral duty, the only supreme law controlling human activity, provided the basis for his followers' (e.g. Fichte) diffusion of the aesthetic ideal in the ethical. Peirce's summum bonum or aesthetic ideal is extremely close to a moral ideal, or, to be more precise, to Kant's categorical imperative. ``Kant's categorical imperative,'' writes Feibleman, ``set up an aesthetic ideal for the guidance of moral action, and Peirce was of the opinion that it could be defended" (7, 390). Like the categorical imperative the aesthetic ideal, as the ultimate aim both of aesthetic and ethical behaviour, is an ultimate end, an end in itself, irrelevant to all other goals. Just as Kant approximated the imperative of duty to a universal law of nature, Peirce naturalistically views the aesthetic ideal (summum bonum) as something like a natural law. Just as Kant's imperative is something obligatory, so is Peirce's ideal supposed to be the sort of goal which must be energetically pursued, and if this goal is ignored it is not an ideal (1, 5. 133). Thus, Peirce's aesthetic ideal contains nothing properly aesthetic, and we can observe something comparable to Fichte's tendency to diffuse the aesthetic in the ethical.
These are some basic aspects of the philosophical interpretation of Peirce's semiotics and their application to the explanation of art. Briefly, this interpretation can be reduced to the following views: the phenomenological and pragmatic tendency in the explanation of the ``meaning'' of the signs of art, which admits the possibility of behaviourist conceptions; the objective-idealist, phenomenological theory of aesthetic value alongside the Machian interpretation of ``aesthetic quality'', the view of aesthetics as a normative science in the spirit of Kantian philosophy.
__*_*_*__Peirce's semiotics itself, and also the ideas it contained which made possible the construction of a semiotic theory of 198 art, exercised an enormous influence on the development of the semiotic theory of art (21; 22). Richards and Ogden were the first, after Peirce's death, to draw attention to his work in semiotics, and in the supplement of their The Meaning of Meaning they included a resume of Peirce's view on semiotics. They assessed Peirce's semiotics as the most relevant attempt at an explanation of signs and their meanings. Peirce's ideas are distinctly evident in the subsequent work of Richards in the field of aesthetics. Peirce was a primary influence on Charles Morris, the systematizer of semiotics and a prominent representative of semantic aesthetics. Morris wrote that Peirce's work in the field of semiotics was a stimulating source and had no equals throughout its history. Peirce's theory of icon in many respects determined the ``semiotic'' aspect of Susanne Langer's theory of ``presentational symbolism''. Peirce's semiotics had decisive influence on the formation of semiotics and the semantic theory of art in the work of M. Bense. As Bense himself writes in his Semiotic, he makes use in every instance of the bases of Peirce's theory of signs. In his opinion Peirce's semiotics (together with Morris' work Foundations of the Theory ot Signs) opened up a new avenue for aesthetic theory, by which he meant the creation of a `` contemporary" aesthetics-text and communication theory.
Peirce's semiotic methods, and in particular his classification of signs (index, icon, symbol) have provoked lively interest in recent years and have penetrated the methodology of literary criticism.
Peirce's followers have received from him, in addition to the solid gold of his semiotic ideas, which are interesting and valuable from a scientific point of view, the lead of his idealistic interpretation of semiotics and art. We have already quoted Morris' words to the effect that Peirce made use of semiotics to support his metaphysics.
Peirce's semiotics, which rests on a phenomenological and pragmatic foundation, has enabled its interpreters to make idealistic deductions with respect to art. We should note here the admission by the American aesthetician A. Levi of the idealist ``strategy'' of applying Peirce's ideas to special problems of art criticism (13, 35). As an example of such an 199 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1979/SPA248/20070327/248.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.03.27) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ interpretation of Peirce we can take the article by Max Hocutt, professor of philosophy at the University of South Florida, ``The Logical Foundations of Peirce's Aesthetics''. In particular this author writes: ``There is nothing in Peirce's view of art to suggest that 'realism' is the only legitimate or proper art technique" (10, 159). It patently follows from the entire context of the article that by the non-realist technique the author means modernism. M. Bense's interpretation of Peirce's view of the symbol as the highest level of free creation, in contrast to the icon as less free and dependent on the object, moves in the same direction. Whether we accept or reject such interpretations of Peirce's thought the fact remains that apologists in certain social conditions use Peirce's views as a source of theoretical (semiotic) justification for art which is at variance with realism.
[200] __NUMERIC_LVL2__ Chapter IX. __ALPHA_LVL2__ Behaviourism, Semiotics and Art: CharlesThe pragmatic version of the semantic philosophy of art, developed on the basis of behaviourist semiotics, is the work of Charles Morris (b. 1901), an American philosopher and leading figure in semiotics, the science which he was the first to represent in systematized form.
In his writing Morris was inspired by the semantic movement to create a unified science, which found expression in his work Foundations oi the Theory of Signs (1938) (1). In Morris' opinion, the most significant results in this movement had been achieved in mathematics, logic and physics (Russell, Carnap, Reichenbach). Nothing of comparative worth had come out of the social sciences and humanities. Morris set himself the task of bringing the social sciences and humanities into the study programme for a unified science.
With the long-term aim of constructing a general human science he decided to start by working out a general theory of the sign (semiotics) and a general theory of value ( axiology). ``For several decades my work has centered,'' he wrote, ``around two problems: the development of a general theory of signs and the development of a general theory of value" (8, vii). The first problem is given detailed treatment in his book Signs, Language and Behavior (1946), and the second in the book Varieties of Human Value (1956). Both theories were developed in the terms of the theory of action or behaviour, given its basic development by the American pragmatist G. Mead. In his book Signification and Significance (1964) Morris tried to combine these two developmental lines of his own studies. The final ``strategic'' objective of the American 201 philosopher's analyses is to view the general study of man as part of a still more general science of behaviour. In addition to the books we have mentioned these problems have been analysed by Morris in his numerous articles.
As noted above, Morris first endeavoured to view the `` socio-humanitarian" disciplines-science, morality, politics, religion and art-from a single semiotic point of view. In particular, in his early articles ``Aesthetics and the Theory of Signs" (1939) (2), ``Science, Art and Technology" (1939) (3), as well as in the sections devoted to art in his book Signs, Language and Behavior, questions concerned with the semiotic analysis of art are specially discussed. In these analyses the author also briefly touched upon the problem of the value nature of art.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ 1. BEHAVIOURIST SEMIOTICS AND ART.Basing himself on the analysis of Peirce, Richards and Ogden, Gatschenberg, Buhler and others, Morris systematized semiotics as a science, creating a language in which it was possible to talk about signs, and pointed out the basic directions in which this science should be developed. Morris identified the three main aspects of semiotics (semantics, syntactics and pragmatics); gave a detailed classification of the modes (or ``dimensions'') of signification (designative-characterizing, appraisive-evaluating, prescriptive-prescribing, formative-forming), the ways of using signs (informing, evaluative, stimulating, systematizing), types of discourse (scientific, technological, political, propagandistic and others), pointed out the possible ways of measuring them quantitatively; developed the views expressed by Peirce of the difference between true, adequate and reliable uses of signs; illuminated a number of problems about the place and role of signs in the life of the individual and society (signs and mental disorders, the role of signs in social control etc.); and provided a short sketch of the history of semiotics.
Morris himself saw one of his primary tasks in semiotics to be its elaboration on the basis of behaviourist psychology. In contrast to radical behaviourism (Watson, Thorndike, 202 Lachley, Weiss, Ranter) and following Tolman, Morris does not exclude the mind, does not hold that such ``mentalistic'' terms as ``ideas'', ``thoughts'', ``mind'', ``consciousness'' are meaningless, and that the data of self-observation are without value etc. He merely believes that such behaviourist terms as ``organism'', ``stimulus'', ``responce-sequence'' etc. are more suitable, more precise for scientific progress (5, 28).
The functioning of any particular phenomenon as a sign is signalled by the emergence of an idea in the mind of the perceiver of the sign. But, asks Morris, what is the more reliable criterion of the existence of an idea, a criterion which can be tested by other people: behaviour or recounted selfobservation? He answers: of course, behaviour. That is why, he argues, it makes sense to express the theory of signs in behavioural terms, and not those of the psychology of consciousness.
The endeavour first of Tolman, and then of Morris, to give a functional definition of the concepts of psychology of consciousness through objective data about behaviour, is of indisputable interest. This approach acquires particular significance in connection with the achievements of cybernetics, which is in fact characterized by its study of the external functions of systems, of their behaviour, and a lack of concern for the inner structures which form the basis of these systems. The validity of this approach as one of the fundamental stages in the study of inner structures is particularly justified, as W. Ashby has emphasized, with respect to complex dynamic systems. The human mind has an uncontested place amongst such systems. The functional approach makes possible the ``mathematicization'' of a particular area of knowledge and is widely applicable in modern science.^^1^^
However, neither Tolman nor Morris succeeded in carrying out their design. Instead of reaching cognition of the inner through the outer, of the structure of the mind as one of the factors determining behaviour, through behaviour itself, they _-_-_
~^^1^^ ``Behaviourism,'' writes G. Klaus, ``a variety of pragmatism, is one of historical sources of cybernetics" (G. Klaus, Die Macht des Wortes, Berlin, 1965, S. 57).
203 mechanically equated the outer to the inner, the mind to behaviour. When he advanced actions and reactions as a criterion of signs Morris came up against difficulties in the explanation of the meaning of signs which do not directly stimulate any outer behaviour. Amongst such signs are the majority of lingual symbols expressing complex phenomena in the aesthetic, legal, scientific etc. spheres. We may recall that Richards had pointed out that art was precisely characterized by an absence of outer behaviour. To circumvent this difficulty Morris claims in Signs, Language and Behavior that the sign does not function as a sign when it provokes a reaction but when it provokes a disposition to respond in certain circumstances. He calls the disposition to respond the interpretant. Morris' interpretant corresponds to Pirce's interpretant when understood as a ``habit'' (a readiness to act in a particular way etc.), and Richards' ``attitude''. In his interpretation of ``interpretant'' Morris basically operates with those working concepts used by modern behaviourism and neuro-cybernetics. The interpretant is understood as a neural physiological process. It can also be explained in probability terms as the probability of giving a certain response in certain conditions to a sign, or an intermediary variable postulated for certain purposes and capable of being controlled by direct empirical proof (8, 3).The behaviourist criterion of signs advanced by Morris-i.e. the ability of some stimulus or other to provoke a disposition to respond is vulnerable to criticism in a number of respects, in particular in its application to art. First of all, by regarding ``disposition'' as a cerebral phenomenon he is rejecting behaviour as a criterion (19). With application to art this means that it is not man's behaviour under the influence of art which serves as the criterion of the sign nature of a work of art but the neural physiological process in his brain. Even if we admit the possibility of an empirical revelation of these processes, we are forced to reject (as M. Black notes with regard to Richards' ``attitude'') the effectiveness of the `` criterion of disposition" from a practical point of view.
Let us examine the case where the conditions are created in which ``disposition'' is realized in behaviour. The 204 denotatum of the sign is the name given to whatever makes possible the completion of the sequence of responses to which the interpreter is susceptible as a result of the sign. Denotata are actually existing objects.^^1^^ Even if we allow that an observed response, behaviour with regard to an object (denotatum) enables us to explain this response-disposition which the sign has provoked we still have to explain those instances where it is in principle impossible to create the necessary conditions for the realization of such behaviour. We find the latter, for example, when past events are the denotata. All past events which are taken as the object of depiction in art are such denotata. A sequence of responses to them is never completed and we therefore never find out which ``dispositions'' were provoked in us by given works of art, nor, consequently, do we find out their significance or the meaning of the signs. Such a position can only be described as agnosticism with regard to fathoming the meaning of such works of art. It is no accident that Morris should display agnosticism with regard to signs of past events. The critics of pragmatism have long been pointing out that the tendency to deny the meaningfulness of terms or statements about past events, or of events as distinct from ``actions'', or of both together, is extremely marked both in Peirce and in the subsequent development of pragmatism.
It is impossible to define ``disposition'' with regard not only to past phenomena, but to any which are unobservable, whether these are present, future or imaginary events and people. If we bear in mind the significant role played in art by the reproduction of such events it will become apparent that it is in practice simply impossible to test a disposition to respond provoked by art through the completion of a sequence of responses when directly observing the denotatum of the sign. In reply to these objections Morris explains in his work Signification and Significance that in art the sign should have a ``meaning'', but does not necessarily have to have a _-_-_
~^^1^^ Morris arbitrarily limited ``denotata'' to the field of actually existing things. G. Gentry correctly sees in this the uncritical dogmatism of modern positivism (16, 380).
205 denotatum. But he fails to explain how in this case we are to establish which response-disposition is provoked by a work of art which does not have a denotatum.We might also mention a number of other serious objections to Morris' behaviourist semiotics (25), in particular to its application to art, religion, law, philosophy etc. All this together leads to the conclusion that Morris' ``promise'' to provide a more ``objective'' criterion of the iconicity of signs than those given with the help of the categories ``mind'', ``idea'', ``concept'' etc. remained unfulfilled. Morris' behaviourist semiotics had come to a dead-end. This statement holds true to an even greater extent for the interpretation of art from the positions of behaviourist semiotics.
The behaviourist method of analysis is extremely popular in the west, in particular in the USA. However, despite its popularity, many western scholars are becoming increasingly critical of it. For example, ``social behaviourism" as a conception of behaviour is characterized by many western sociologists (Talcott Parsons, Pitirim Sorokin et al.) as theoretically void and superficial. Many western aestheticians are similarly reaching extremely pessimistic conclusions about the scientific value of behaviourism for the analysis of art. Thus, Susanne Langer professes precisely this view. In her book Feeling and Form she notes that over at least the last fifty years a marked tendency can be observed to enclose all philosophical questions within the confines of ``behaviourism and pragmatism'', and asserts that there ``they find neither development nor solution".
It is clearly no accident that when Morris abandons his primary objective-to create a language of semiotics-and starts to apply semiotics in practice to the phenomena of art he ``forgets'' about the behaviourist method. His attempts to apply this method are restricted to statements of the most general character about the connection between art and behaviour, the influence of the former on the latter etc. Morris' views on art (just as those on science, philosophy etc.) become inane if we interpret the terms he uses---``sign'', `` representation'', ``language''-according to the behaviourist definitions which he gives these terms in his semiotics. Morris does not do 206 this. ``We are certainly not at present able,'' he writes in his Signs, Language and Behavior, ``to analyze in precise behavioral terms the most complex phenomena of esthetic, religious, political, or mathematical signs, or even the common language of our daily existence" (5, 11). This admission of Morris' contains, in addition to the correct view that a functional analysis of the mind, of semiotics and of art, is difficult and insufficiently elaborated, evidence that Morris is blind to one of the primary reasons for his failures-the methodologically insubstantial philosophical premises of his analysis.
Like many contemporary behaviourists and neuro-- cyberneticians, Morris takes the position of the mechanistic interpretation of the mind: only its physiological side is recognized, and the mind as something ``ideal'' is rejected, or at least is not accorded a proper place in explaining how human behaviour, including sign behaviour, is regulated. Morris argues that such terms as ``idea'', ``thought'', ``mind'', although they are not meaningless, may all without exception be covered by behaviourist semiotics (5, 30). This view leads to epiphenomenalism, to the view of the mind as an ancillary phenomenon (epiphenomenon), without any real influence on man's behaviour.
The rejection of the ideal side of the mind in its function of reflecting reality led Morris to irresoluble contradictions and confusion in the interpretation of one of the central concepts of semiotics-the ``meaning'' of the sign. The great majority of his reviewers, irrespective of their own philosophical persuasion, remark on this fact (14; 16; 18; 29). It is instructive to see how Morris himself reacted to this criticism, and which position he takes in his latest work Signification and Significance. As before he refuses to use the term `` meaning'', regarding it as infelicitous, and substitutes two terms for it: ``interpretant'' and ``signification''. His critics (J. Wild et al.) correctly noted that if we are to call the ``meaning'' of a sign the ``interpretant'', the individual mental reaction to a sign, then ``meaning'' inevitably acquires a subjective character, which is contradictory to its universal nature. In reply to his critics Morris stated that the interpretant is not necessarily subjective. To support his argument he 207 advances the concept of the interpretant as ``a disposition to react in a certain way because of the sign" (8, 3). But this argument does not exonerate him from the charge of subjectivism. However high the probability of a reaction, however typical it is, it still remains the reaction of an individual and therefore contains an element of subjectivism and is not `` universal".
Let us examine the second component of ``meaning'', designated with the term ``signification''. Morris explains that these are not ``essences'' in any objective (Platonic!) sense. These are certain describable aspects of the complex behavioural process in the natural world. To avoid charges of nominalism Morris points out that these are not only actual things, designated by the term ``denotatum''. There is a lot of sound sense in this conception of ``meaning'': the rejection of Platonism, of nominalism, the interpretation of ``meaning'' as a relation functionally connected with the social process of semiosis (or the sign situation). But this conception lacks a primary element: the interpretation of ``meaning'' as an ideal reflection of reality. This prevents Morris, and, incidentally, all the adherents of the pragmatic conception of language (including Dewey), from understanding the cognitive function of signs, and without such understanding the regulative function is also left without substantiation. In the view of the Soviet scholar L.~A. Abramyan ``the concepts of sign and significance, as they are presented by Morris, are in essence unscientific abstractions".^^1^^
The American semioticist's behaviourist mishaps with ``meaning'' are also extremely characteristic of semantic idealist and mechanistic philosophy as a whole, and of the _-_-_
~^^1^^ L. A. Abramyan, Gnoseologicheskiye problemy teorii znakov (Epistemological Problems of the Theory of Signs), Yerevan, 1965, p. 100. Many western commentators reach similar conclusions. Thus, in the opinion of G. Gentry, since Morris fails to give an acceptable explanation of the ``meaning'' of the sign he can hardly claim to have laid the foundations of the science of signs (16, 323).
A. Bentley, discussing Morris' attempt to create a language and science of signs, asserts: ``Our conclusion will be that the present attempt is a failure" (12, 107).
208 semantic (of neo-positivist persuasion) version of pragmatism in particular, whose positions were taken by Dewey, Mead and their pupil and successor Morris.The philosophical foundations of Morris' aesthetics are also in full harmony with the pragmatic-positivist interpretation of semiotics and the ``meaning'' of signs. For the general theoretical basis of his semiotic analysis Morris took pragmatic aesthetics. By his own admission he does not claim to have come up with an original aesthetic theory. In his article ``Aesthetics and the Theory of Signs" he points out that his views on art correspond in all essential respects to the views expressed by Dewey in his work Art as Experience. In addition to Dewey he also mentions the pragmatists G. Mead (The Philosophy oi the Act-1938) and S. Pepper (Aesthetic Quality -1937). Morris saw his task to be the translation of the pragmatic theory of art into the language of semiotics (2, 131).
Morris' rejection of the reflective, epistemological aspect of the ``meaning'' of the sign from his semiotics finds expression in the fundamental thesis of pragmatic aesthetics of the ``instrumental'' character of art-a thesis, whose development led the pragmatists and Morris to the point where they no longer viewed art as cognition, the artistic reflection of reality. Morris fails to see and to analyse the ideal, reflective side of the ``meanings'' of works of art, when viewed as signs; It is precisely this failing that leads him to his crudely mechanistic, simplistic resolution of the problem of the connection between art and human behaviour. Our general evaluation of Morris' semiotics given above fully applies to the semiotic theory of art as well. Since Morris did not provide a correct interpretation of the ``meaning'' of the signs of art he can hardly be considered the founder of the scientific semiotic theory of art.
It would be quite wrong to form the conclusion from all that has been said that Morris' writings contain nothing but error and confusion. We have already stated that ``in practice'', when applying semiotics to the analysis of art, Morris practically never resorts to his ``behaviourist'' interpretations, and he adduces a wealth of material, observations and conclusions reached by semiotics. His writings contain much of __PRINTERS_P_209_COMMENT__ 14---826 209 interest in the way he approaches his subject, and numerous accurate observations and conclusions which have enriched the ``sign complex" of the semiotic theory of art. The scientific discussion around a number of premises of Morris' semiotic theory of art is of undoubted value for the development of this theory. Let us now proceed to an analysis of these premises.
__b_b_b__ __ALPHA_LVL3__ 2. ART AND SIGNS. THE AESTHETIC DISCOURSE.At the basis of Morris' semiotic analysis of art lies the theory of `` discourse'', first formulated in the article ``Science, Art and Technology''. According to this theory, over the course of time the need for an improved performance of certain functions has led to the specialization of sign systems, of ``languages'', or, in Morris' term, types of ``discourse''. In accordance with the three types of activity which he isolates-scientific, artistic and technological-he distinguishes three basic, ``primary'' types of discourse, which serve these types of activity: scientific, aesthetic and technological. Since types of discourse are the components and products of activity, their analysis, the writer correctly argues, can serve as one of the means of studying the activity itself.
In his attempt to define the specifics of the aesthetic discourse, of the aesthetic sign Morris looks, in his articles ``Aesthetics and the Theory of Signs" and ``Science, Art and Technology'', to the iconic character of the aesthetic sign. But as the iconic sign, or icon, is not only used in art, the iconic character of a sign cannot be a sufficient condition for the definition of the specifics of the aesthetic sign. Therefore Morris names the designation of value as the second characteristic of this type of sign: the aesthetic sign designates the value properties of real and possible situations. Moreover, its specific nature is seen to consist precisely in its designation of value via an icon. The work of art is a specific aesthetic sign, i.e. an icon which designates value (3, 415). Thus, in Morris' early articles the aesthetic discourse is characterized as language which serves to communicate values through icons.
210We can see a slightly different position in the work Signs, Language and Behavior. When he later evaluated this new position in his work Signification and Significance Morris maintained that this resolution does not represent an alternative to his previous viewpoint, that it is simply its development as a result of the introduction of the category of the ``use'' of the sign and the particular stress placed on the evaluative dimension of meaning (8, 72). Let us see in what exactly this new position consists and whether it is really only a development of his previous viewpoint. Morris now refuses to regard the icon which designates value as a specific aesthetic sign, distinguishing the aesthetic discourse. ``No sign is as such esthetic,'' he now writes, ``and the attempt to isolate the fine arts by isolating a special class of esthetic signs seems now an error" (5, 195).
He now bases his classification of discourse on two parameters : (1) the mode of signifying, (2) the way they use (the goal-oriented use) signs. Morris identifies the traditional modes. The primary modes are: the designative (in Richards' terminology-referential, or symbolic), the appraisive and the prescriptive (these two modes correspond to Richards' emotive mode). To which mode of signifying any particular discourse is ascribed depends on the proportional use of these or other modes of signifying in the set of signs (ascriptor). This means that art will be that discourse in which the appraisive mode is dominant in the sets of signs. This basis for the classification justifies a quantitative study of the different types of discourse. In order to take account of the qualitative factor the second parameter of the classification is introduced-the mode-use. Morris identifies the following four modes of using signs: informative, incitive, systemic and valuative. All discourse can be divided into 24 different types on the basis of these two parameters taken together.
Art figures in two types in this classification. The fine arts (painting, music) and poetry Morris considers the appraisive discourse and fiction, the designative-appraisive. The valuative mode-use is, in Morris' opinion, and we cannot but agree with him on this point, one of the most characteristic features of the signs used in art. This mode is best realized 211 when the properties of the designated objects are embodied vividly and concretely for direct observation, i.e. by the means of representation. But Morris now holds that art in its further use of signs, first, is not limited either to representation, or to the evaluative mode of signification.
Signs in art, holds Morris, can be both iconic and noniconic, with both an evaluative and any other mode of signification. In painting, music and poetry the evaluative mode of signification is dominant, and the designative in fiction. In all cases the evaluative use of signs is essential for art, with moreover, as Morris correctly notes, an extra requirement. This requirement consists in the fact that the signs themselves, like the objects they designate, should evoke a positive evaluation of themselves, i.e. this evaluation should be at the least a part of, and in some cases even equal to their evaluative use.
In Signs, Language and Behavior Morris also discusses the position of certain semanticists, in particular Susanne Langer, who recognise the sign (symbolic) nature of art and at the same time deny that art is language, since it has no `` dictionary'', i.e. total set of signs with definite meanings. Morris advances what we regard as true counter-arguments: If you take a musical note or a line in painting you cannot indeed say that they have a definite meaning, and you cannot compile from them a ``dictionary'', but neither can you compile a dictionary of the separate phonemes, which constitute wordsigns. If however we take the representation of certain objects and people, which is the business of realist painting and programme music as the ``word'' of art, these can be seen to constitute a dictionary of signs which combine `` grammatically" in various ways depending on the style, school or personality of the artist. In this case a piece of music or work of art can be regarded as a language, composed of icons. We have every ground, therefore, concludes Morris, to consider the arts languages. These languages partly depend on phonic language, and are less adequate than this latter for certain purposes of communication, but then they are more effective for other purposes.
Morris' view of the different use of signs with any mode 212 of signification within a work of art, the interpretation of art as a sui generis ``language'', the attempt at a quantitative analysis of discourse, including art, the isolation of the evaluative use of signs as the most characteristic for art with the additional requirement for a positive evaluation of the actual signs themselves, as well as a whole series of more specific theories (for example, the negation of the formalist requirement that only the actual signs should be evaluated in poetry etc.)-these are all fruitful and interesting from the semiotic point of view.
At the same time the classification of discourse offered by Morris suffers from schematism and oversimplifies, in certain cases even distorts, the true state of affairs.^^1^^ Morris' classification rests on two basic points. One of these is the ``mode of signifying''. Let us take a closer look at this point. As we have already stated, Morris' differentiation of meanings is traditional for semanticists. He sees the shortcoming of previous (including Richards') differentiations of meanings in the absence of behaviourist criteria for their differentiation. He attempts to give just such a criterion, basing it on the difference between response-dispositions. We will not here attempt another analysis of Morris' behaviourist approach to this question. Suffice it to refer to the fact that many commentators (V. Aldrich, M. Black et al.) have remarked on his inconsistency in the question of the differentiation of the modes of signifying. It has been pointed out in particular that Morris in effect failed to distinguish the designative mode from the valuative.
As if in reply to such criticism, Morris adduced additional explanations in his Signification and Significance. In this work we no longer encounter the ambitious efforts to establish a behaviourist criterion of modes of signifying. Now modes, or dimensions as they are termed in this work, are distinguished depending on their reference to different aspects of the context and behaviour. The designative dimension points to the _-_-_
~^^1^^ Thus, for example, G. Klaus has pointed out that Morris displays a certain tendency to isolate separate ``words'' and to overestimate the isolated consideration of separate component parts of language (G. Klaus, Die Macht des Wortes, S. 77).
213 observable properties of objects which function as stimulants. The evaluative dimension points to consummatory, affirmative properties of objects. The prescriptive dimension points to the instrumental nature of the act and behaviour. In contrast to the emotivists and together with the pragmatists (Dewey et al.) Morris holds that all signs have a meaning, i.e. a reference to the context and behaviour. At the same time he joins the emotivists in isolating the normative terms (evaluating and prescriptive), which cannot be characterized merely in terms of ``signification''. They have other forms of interpretant, namely, what the emotivists designate as ``attitudes'' and ``emotions''.Such is Morris' point of view, and it provokes a number of questions and objections. If it is insufficient to characterize normative terms, such as, for example, evaluating terms, merely in terms of ``signification'', then the differentiation of the dimensions of ``signification'' into designative and evaluative, which he makes without involving the ``interpretant'' is in effect non-existent. This also holds true for the prescriptive dimension. Those differences which Morris points to are the differences within a single designative dimension. It remains unclear whether every designative dimension becomes evaluative in the presence of a specific interpretant (e.g. emotion) or only those which Morris isolates as evaluating dimensions. The second would appear to be closer to the truth: the special nature of the properties (perfect etc.) with which the given designative dimension is connected generates a specific interpretant (``attitude'', ``emotion''). Below we will examine how Morris connects the evaluating dimension with its reference to value properties, or simply to values.
We can now briefly summarize the point of view expounded in Signs, Language and Behavior as follows. The work of art is regarded as a discourse which uses different signs, amongst which icons play an important role, but these are not the only signs. The signs have different modes (or dimensions) of signification, but the evaluative mode is the most characteristic. This means that in this case signs designate values. Signs in art are used to evoke a particular attitude in the perceiver to the values designated.
214Morris insists as before that representation has an enormous role in art, and in this respect his previous articles retain their significance. However, he now no longer views the work of art as a whole as an icon. By regarding the iconic sign as a component (amongst others) of the work of art he is not merely ``supplementing'' his prior point of view, according to which the work of art as a whole is an iconic sign, but formulating a new, alternative view, although Morris is loth to admit this. In Signification and Significance he returns to the point of view of his early articles (although he does not directly admit this anywhere) claiming that on the whole the aesthetic discourse is in certain important aspects iconic (8,73). This reversal to his old position, taking account of the new classification of discourse by ``dimensions'' and the ``usage'' of signs within works of art constitutes a step forward.
In connection with the modes of signification and the varieties of the use of signs Morris considers the question of `` expressiveness'', which, in his opinion, is of great importance for studies in art, religion, science, morals, and politics. He gives his fullest interpretation of ``expressiveness'' in Signs, Language and Behavior (in § 4, chapter 3). Morris points out here that a close connection can often be observed between the reproduction of certain signs and the state of those who produce this sign. Thus, a person in an excited state may speak more intensely, in short sentences, faster than someone who is not excited. Thus, the means of reproducing signs and the forms of signs produced by someone (e.g. designative, evaluative, prescriptive) may by themselves function for others, or for those producing the signs,^^1^^ as signals of the state of those producing the signs. Such signs, in Morris' view, can be called ``expressive''. In explanation he writes: ``A sign on this usage is expressive if the fact of its production is itself a sign to its interpreter of something about the producer of the sign" (5,68). The author regards as expressive signs only those signs of states which are connected with the fact of the _-_-_
~^^1^^ The person producing the signs may himself be the interpreter of the signs, in which case the signs will be self-expressive (17).
215 production of the signs, e.g. such features of speech as tempo, sentence type, etc. Signs of states (such as blushing) which are not connected with this fact he does not regard as expressive signs.The essence of Morris' conception consists in the isolation of ``expressiveness'' from the modes of signification. Signs, irrespective of whether they are designative, evaluative, or prescriptive, may express in addition the state of those who produce these signs. ``The expressiveness is not part of the signification of the sign in question but rather the signification of another sign, namely of a sign which consists in the fact that a certain sign is produced" (5, 68).
Thus expressiveness is an additional property of signs, over and above their signification, which does not serve as a basis for the differentiation of the modes of signification. In Morris' view, the distinction he introduces is extremely important in the study of art, religion, science, morals, politics etc.
There are a number of undoubtedly important factors in Morris' conception of expressiveness. The main one of these is that the signification of signs does not embrace the state of the person using those signs. This argument can be taken as the epistemological basis for a rejection of erroneous aesthetic theories which view art as the ``self-expression'' of the artist, of his emotions, instincts, subconsciousness, subjective intentions, etc. However, the rejection of subjectivism, of the theory of ``self-expression'', is in contradiction to the initial subjectivist principle of the interpretation of the `` signification" of signs. Such a rejection is found, incidentally, in the writings of Dewey, Morris' teacher in the field of aesthetics. In actual fact, to the state of a person using (or creating) signs as an individual state we can only oppose ``signification'' interpreted not as a behavioural reaction but as the social and objectively significant reflection of natural and social reality in the minds of people.
As one of the shortcomings of this conception we can also take Morris' restriction of the term ``expression'' to the expression of the state of a person in the actual production of signs, which resulted in his withdrawal from the 216 consideration of those phenomena which constitute an important aspect of the problem of ``expressive'' signs. There is only a suggestion of this when in the notes Morris quotes Leibnitz's interpretation of ``expressiveness'': one thing expresses another. . . when there is a constant and regulated relationship between what can be said about each of them. The semiotic analysis of the correlation between expressiveness and iconicity in art, and in particular, in the representative arts is of great theoretical significance. But this aspect of the problem also slipped out of the American semioticist's field of vision.
In Signification and Significance Morris endeavours to widen somewhat the scope of the signs which he regards as expressive. He notes Parsons' observation that it is not only man who acts on objects with the help of signs, but that the objects themselves act on the ``agent''. Morris admits that this ``passive'' aspect of behaviour has its own form of sign function and that such signs are for the large part `` expressive''. This area requires further study and ``may throw considerable light on mythic, aesthetic, and religious symbolism" (8, II).^^1^^ Thus, in this question too we can see corrections and refinements in the direction of a fuller semiotic theory of art.
__b_b_b__ __ALPHA_LVL3__ 3. THE ICON AND ART.In the preceding discussion we have already dwelt on the evolution of Morris' views on the place and role of the icon in art: these range from a characterization of the work of art as a whole as an icon designating value to an aesthetic discourse with an evaluative usage of diverse signs, predominantly iconic, as the most characteristic for this discourse, and back to iconicity as a general, important aspect of art as a whole.
_-_-_~^^1^^ In conjunction with V. M. Krasnov the present author has undertaken research in this direction, partly reflected in the article ``The Status Assimilation of Culture as a Regulator of Social Intercourse under Capitalism" (Voprosy filosofii, 1969, No. 10). The article shows that the status (prestige) assimilation of forms of culture can be characterized, from the point of view of semiotics, as a sign situation in which the forms of culture perform the function of signs and are employed for the purpose of regulating social behaviour.
217In this section we shall view in greater detail Morris' characterization of the actual icon and its special features in art. In his work Signs, Language and Behavior he gives the following definition of the icon: ``A sign is iconic to the extent to which it itself has the properties of its denotata" (5, 349). In semiotics the name ``denotatum'' is given to whatever the sign points to, while a phenomenon (or object) which functions as a sign is called a ``sign vehicle''. Morris argues that, in accordance with this terminology, a sign is iconic insofar as the sign vehicle possesses the properties of the sign's denotatum.
In a sense the denotatum is perceived simultaneously with the icon, i.e., information about certain properties of the object is received both directly and indirectly. The sign vehicle functions in this as one of the denotata of the icon. Morris holds that it is theoretically possible to imagine a totally iconic sign, in which case its sign vehicle will also be its only denotatum. We do not agree with this view of the American philosopher's, and subscribe instead to the view that a sign has a signification, i.e. is a sign insofar as it designates something distinct from what it is. In the theoretically possible case adduced by Morris the sign ceases to be a sign and simply becomes a thing. And a thing which represents itself is not a sign. In practice, continues Morris, every iconic sign is relative, since, first, it is never capable of embodying with absolute identity all the properties of its denotatum, and secondly, it almost always has properties which its denotatum lacks. To prevent the interpreter taking the sign vehicle for the denotatum, i.e. for the designated object, artists frequently intentionally emphasise in the sign those of its properties which are lacked by the object (the frame of a painting, the stage in the theatre, the pedestal in sculpture etc.)
The iconic sign, Morris notes correctly, is no more nor less expressive than any non-iconic sign. It can designate in any way: by designating (portrait), by evaluating (caricature), by prescribing (visual command), etc. Correspondingly, icons may in principle be scientific, poetic, mythological, religious etc. Such forms of icons as, for example, the iconic performance of actions (ritual, theatre, film) can serve the 218 most diverse individual and social purposes (aesthetic, informative etc.). The icon's strong side is its ability to present for the viewer's contemplation that which it designates, and its weakness is that it is restricted to the designation of objects which it resembles.
Morris is right to see the special significance of icon for art in the fact that it enables values to be embodied in art in such a way that they can be observed directly, e.g. the beauty of spatial forms, colour pattern in painting etc. In the perception of icons the direct cognition of value properties is rendered possible by the presence in the icon of that value which it designates. We shall return to the question of the connection between icon and value when we consider the question of values.
Morris' conception of the iconic sign and its place in art provoked lively discussion both amongst the adherents of semantic aesthetics and amongst its opponents (20; 22; 23). In the article ``Aesthetics, Signs and Icons'', co-authored with D. Hamilton, as well as in Signification and Significance Morris discusses criticism levelled at him and draws certain conclusions from it. Let us briefly consider these critical remarks and the conclusion drawn by Morris.
Morris regards as just the remarks made by Benbow Ritchie, Louise Roberts and Clifford Amyx to the effect that it is essential to make a clear distinction between the question of the iconic character of the work of art as a whole and that of the iconic character of the signs used within the work of art. But he does not agree, quite rightly, with assertions (by Amyx and Ritchie) that iconicity is a syntactic and not semantic problem. It is quite a different matter that within an iconic sign, such as for example a picture, we can analyse syntactic relationships.
The critics also point out that a clearer distinction has to be made between the iconic and non-iconic sign. The difficulty here is ascertaining which properties they have in common and how many there need to be before a sign can be called iconic.
Morris and Hamilton suggest a way of evading this difficulty by doing away with the iconicity-non-iconicity 219 dichotomy and replacing it with a scale of iconicity. Since iconicity is not subordinate to strict rules the essence of things is in the degree to which it is present. In the authors' opinion this approach disposes of the question of which set of properties should be taken to fit the definition of iconicity. This does not of course dispose of the question of which properties are essential for an icon. These vary in different sign situations (9, 361).
The definition which the authors here propose for iconicity does not seem successful. We consider it more productive to isolate the concept of icon by delimiting the most widely shared concept of similarity, such as the concept of isomorphism, elaborated in mathematics.
In Signification and Significance Morris introduces more refinements. The presence of mere similarity, he states, is as yet insufficient to regard one phenomenon as the icon of another. Reproductions are not iconic signs with respect to one another, they only become such in one special case-with respect to the original. The sign vehicle can itself have different significations in different semiotic processes. Thus, to an art historian a drawing may be the sign of styles, of an author etc.
Morris dwells in particular on the criticism of his theory that the sign vehicle of an icon belongs amongst those objects which it can designate. The attraction of such a position for the explanation of aesthetic perception is, in Morris' opinion, obvious, since everything that is designated is in actual fact embodied in the work of art and the observer has no need when perceiving an icon to move away from what the work itself gives him. But, Morris admits, such an explanation contains a serious degree of simplification, for the qualities which are designated are not present in the sign vehicle with their full force. Iconicity can be ``weak'' in degree, and in this case there will be a strong divergence between the sign vehicle of the icon and the designated objects.
We have already stated above that what matters here is not ``attraction'' or ``over-simplification'' but the absolute necessity for the sign to designate a ``certain something" which is distinct from itself.
__b_b_b__ 220 __ALPHA_LVL3__ 4. SEMIOTICS, AXIOLOGY AND ART.Summarizing the many discussions on the relation of semiotics to axiology, in Signification and Significance Morris points out that to unite semiotics and axiology it is necessary to decide on the corresponding type of behaviour. This, in his opinion, is preferential behaviour, and axiology, or the study of values, should be regarded as the study of preferential behaviour. Preferential behaviour at the positive level serves to preserve and construct an object, and at the negative to evade or destroy such situations. A value situation is one in which preferential behaviour takes place. The term value is employed in three senses designating different aspects of the value situation. In the situation where preferential behaviour is expressed in the choice of perceived objects (e.g. a preference for portraits over landscapes at an exhibition) we are dealing with operative values. When preferential behaviour, is in accord with the values designated by signs we have conceived values. Finally, the term value is employed with direct reference to objects, and such values can be called object values.
The orientation of axiology to the study of value behaviour, or of behaviour with regard to values, cannot in principle be criticized, but the behaviourist elimination of the mind as a factor of this behaviour condemns Morris' study to failure. When, for example, Morris introduces into his behaviourist axiology the concept of designated (or conceived) values, i.e. of such mentally represented values of which the sign significations are made up, he retains the full force of all the difficulties and contradictions of the behaviourist interpretation of meaning (which we have discussed above). As an illustration we can take the following example. In Varieties of Human Value, when he examines the factors which influence value or preferential behaviour, the author cannot avoid naming such conceived values as philosophical convictions, and a person's attitude to life. But Morris fails then to explain how these factors of value behaviour are to be understood from a behaviourist point of view. Here too he is beset by his previous difficulties in explaining such behaviour with regard to values which are expressed, strictly speaking, not in behaviour but, for example, in emotions and intellectual reactions.
221Let us now see what connection Morris finds between axiology and semiotics. Values can exist without signs just as signs without values. But there are such aspects of sign behaviour, namely preferential behaviour, where values come into play. It is here, Morris argues, that axiology and semiotics intersect. This is particularly characteristic of prescriptive, as well as evaluative, signs, which are extremely typical and important in art. Irrespective of whether, Morris continues, a work of art contains signs or not, discussion of art values on the aesthetic level presupposes axiology. Morris sees there being two questions, or aspects to the relation of values to art: 1) of the nature of aesthetic evaluation. This question can be studied from a semiotic point of view, i.e. it can be explained how different schools of criticism differ from one another depending on whether they are predominantly designative, prescriptive or evaluative; 2) of the relation of the actual work of art to values.
As we have already noted, in his pre-war articles Morris held the view that aesthetic signs designate value as icons. Now he advances a new approach which uses in its analysis the distinctions between operative, conceived and object values. By bearing in mind this distinction, argues Morris, it is possible to assert that a work of art is capable of designating the object value of objects which it designates. In just the same way it designates operative and conceived values. In illustration to his claim Morris points out that in painting, for example, it is possible to ``depict'', or embody a situation of people drinking a tasty drink (object value) or people whose character displays a markedly preferential behaviour (operative values) or Utopian scenes and ideal people ( conceived values).
The explanations which Morris provides in his book Signification and Significance do not strike us as convincing, for Morris refers to painting. But the essence of our objection is that it is impossible to say, with application to the non-- representational arts, e.g. to literature, that values are directly embodied or represented.^^1^^ If, in the case of the _-_-_
~^^1^^ We defend this thesis in our article criticizing Morris: ``On the Semiotic Theory of Art" (11, 297).
222 representational arts, the designated values are to a greater or lesser extent inherent in the sign vehicle and in this sense accessible to the perception, to direct cognition, then what is to be the case with literature, and particularly prose, in which the designated values, whether operative, conceived or object, are not, with minor exceptions, inherent in the sign vehicle and belong to the mental sphere? These are not accessible to the perception and, therefore, to direct cognition. The cognition of these values is mediated by the system of language, which is to a considerable extent neutral with regard to those values which it designates and to which it refers. Morris does not clear up this question. Nor, for that matter, does he explain which type of value can be directly embodied in the material substratum of language and in its outer form (structure).In his philosophical interpretation of value Morris as a whole follows the value theories of R. Perry and J. Dewey. As Morris himself points out, the central concept of his behaviourist axiology-preferential behaviour-is analogous to Dewey's concept of selective-rejective behaviour and Perry's of interest. In Morris' view, the concept of value is relatively objective, in other words value is a property of objects, but with respect to preferential behaviour, to the subject. Values, consequently, include both objects and subjects. The subjectobject relation is no less objective than object-object relations. Thus, on the main question in the theory of value, i.e. that of the subjective or objective character of value, Morris follows Perry (and Mead) in occupying an intermediate position between axiological subjectivism, which is characterized by a relativistic interpretation of value, and axiological realism, which regards value as independent of the subject. Morris himself calls his position objective relativism.
However, despite his pronouncements against subjectivism, in his discussion of the aesthetic sphere Morris is effectively influenced to a large extent by Dewey's relativistic theory of value. Thus the theory that he shares with Perry of the connection between value and interest Morris interprets in Deweyan spirit as interest in the performance of an action: only that which is relevant for the behaviour of the subject can be said to have value. Like Dewey Morris was unable to 223 overcome the primary shortcoming of utilitarianism, inherent in pragmatic axiology as well, namely, their inability to show the specific features of aesthetic value as distinct, say, from moral values or simply from utility. Just like Dewey Morris effectively does not distinguish aesthetic value. In his description of the aesthetic sign he does not even ask which type of value-aesthetic, moral etc.-is designated by this sign. The beautiful is not distinguished as a special and important factor of the content of art, nor does he analyse the aesthetic character of the actual means of designation. As a result the correct view that in art the actual signs should stimulate a positive evaluation of themselves remains unsubstantiated, since positive evaluation is not elucidated in the concept of aesthetic evaluation.
We should note Morris' anxiety to overcome the limitations of the naturalist approach to the explanation of values, an approach which links the content of values exclusively with the bio-psychological nature of man, his biological needs. In addition to bio-psychological he notes the social determinants of value behaviour: cultural tradition, religion, economics, the performance of social roles etc., and in the process stresses that ``the main determinant of the ratings is a social one" (7, 69). It would of course be pointless to look for a dialectical-materialist interpretation of social life as socio-- historical practice in the thought of a bourgeois philosopher. Morris' interpretation of social life goes no further than the theory of factors typical of modern bourgeois sociology.
Morris also tried to investigate through experiment the relation of signs and value in art, and primarily in painting. ``Peirce, James, Dewey, Mead and Lewis,'' writes Morris, ``were major influences on my thinking, and they had all believed that... a scientific study of values and evaluations not only was possible but would be of service to man in his characteristic activity as valuer. It seemed desirable to put this philosophic position to a serious empirical test" (7, vii). Morris also tried to perform this task in his Varieties of Human Value and in a number of articles. Generalizing from the results he obtained through experimentation Morris concluded that values can be studied scientifically and that 224 evaluation can be controlled in the terms of scientific method. The increase of information on this subject would influence the very evaluation of ethical, artistic, philosophical and religious activity. This does not mean, argues Morris, that science can replace these and other forms of reality or perform their functions and purposes (7, 186--204).
E. Schulz, a reviewer of Varieties of Human Value, wrote that the value of this book consisted not in its concrete conclusions, but in the general tendency of the scientific approach to value study and the development of a technique for the realization of this goal, and that in this respect Morris' book is one of the most significant in the last few decades.
There is no doubt that the general desire to apply the technique of scientific-empirical analysis to the study of values is of serious interest. Incidentally, Morris bases his method on familiar methods of measuring values, the scale of value, methods of measuring meaning (including those proposed by Osgood) and factorial analysis. It is also important to stress that the scientific approach to the study of values can only succeed if the objectives of science itself are correctly understood. Dewey lacks such understanding, and so does Morris, both of them interpreting science as a phenomenon of an instrumental-pragmatic order without reference to its objective content.
In Soviet aesthetic literature the question of the application of quantitative methods in the analysis of artistic value is posed, the stress being laid on that the accumulation of empirical material and obtention of quantitative data should proceed from scientific theoretical principles-the idea of determinism, the inevitability that the aesthetic consciousness should be conditioned by social existence, social practice. Only on these conditions will the quantitative approach be effective. But in the work of many western sociologists, including Morris, these essential conditions are lacking.
__*_*_*__There are two marked tendencies in Morris' work: one is connected with his activities as a scholar in the field of __PRINTERS_P_225_COMMENT__ 15---820 225 semiotics, the other sets him out as a representative of contemporary bourgeois philosophy. As noted above, in this second capacity his views are not outstanding for their originality. In his philosophical views Morris is a pragmatist who is strongly influenced by behaviourist psychology and the ideas of logical positivism. ``Thus,'' writes one Soviet critic, ``in its philosophical basis Morris' semiotics is an idealist conception" (21, 104). It is not therefore surprising that as a philosopher, and also as a representative of the semantic philosophy of art, Morris does not have the weight and influence of, say, Croce, Cassirer or Whitehead.
In contrast to Morris the philosopher Morris the semiotician (where he is unencumbered by the burden of behaviourism) is a highly respected authority.^^1^^
Morris' importance and popularity in aesthetics is also largely due to his semiotic (in the concrete scientific sense of the word) methods of studying art. If Peirce stood at the origins of the semiotic methods of the study of art, and Richards was the pioneer in the field, Morris can justly be called the founder and systematizer of these methods. It was Morris' writings that served as a stimulus for many discussions at symposiums and congresses on aesthetics and which influenced all the leading representatives of semantic aesthetics (I. Richards, S. Langer, A. Kaplan, B. Heyl et al.) as well as the entire school.
When we assess the value of Morris' aesthetic studies from a Marxist point of view we should bear in mind that his semiotic theory of art can serve as a characteristic example of how such an abstract science as semiotics can be used for the theoretical ``substantiation'' of formalist ``abstract art".
With specific reference to Morris' attempt to give semiotic _-_-_
~^^1^^ Thus, despite all his critical remarks, M. Black still calls Morris' Signs, Language and Behavior one of the most prominent books on the subject (13, 272). ``An encyclopaedic book"---such was Aldrich's opinion of the work. Rynin, Vaccarino and many other authors have also esteemed its value highly. Marxist philosophers (L. Abramyan, A. Vetrov, P. Dobronravov et al.) have positively valued the American scholar's contribution to the development of semiotics as a scientific discipline.
226 substantiation to abstractionism in his article ``Aesthetics and the Theory of Signs'', the inconsistency of this endeavour has already been indicated in a number of articles (see 10; 11). It is important .here to emphasize the actual desire to find theoretical justification for one of the most formalist directions of contemporary modernist art. [227] __ALPHA_LVL1__ Conclusion.In summing up we must say a few words about the social essence of the semantic philosophy of art. The social application of semantic idealism provides a key to the understanding of its social content. With respect to art this content involves the diminishing of the significance and role of art in the progressive development of mankind and a desire to absolve it of responsibility for the direction of artistic quests. The objective possibility of this social application of the semantic philosophy of art is conditioned by its formalist essence. The latter is connected with the general epistemological formalism of semantic idealism. But here we have to take account of another important factor.
The Marxist-Leninist methodology of historical aesthetic study requires that the development of aesthetics should be considered in connection with the development of art. Art and aesthetics interact in their development. Just as aesthetics influences art so does the latter, with its relative independence, exercise its own influence on the development of aesthetics. Certain characteristic features of the development of bourgeois modernist art in the 20th century undoubtedly stimulated the development of the semantic philosophy of art.
The interconnection of the semantic philosophy of art and modernist art in the west is a part of the more general question of the interconnectedness of philosophy and art, of modern bourgeois philosophy and modern bourgeois art. The different forms of artistic creation-painting, cinema, literature, music, theatre, etc.-in the capitalist world are all strongly under the influence of reactionary philosophical and aesthetic 228 schools, either working separately or in unison. The ideas of these philosophical schools are often more constant in art than in their abstract form. This is particularly true of semantic aesthetics, whose connection with modernism has frequently been noted in Soviet aesthetic literature, a connection which, moreover, has a more indirect character than that of other philosophical trends. It is not the point that the various semantic theories are popular with artists, writers, etc. What is important is the general philosophical atmosphere of idealism, from which the artists' minds take nourishment, and one of the sources of this atmosphere is the semantic philosophy of art.
Of course, semantic aesthetics tries not to base itself exclusively on modernist art. But the fact that it is above all this art which fuels the semantic philosophy of art and forms the object of its apologetics cannot be disputed. In the writings of the philosophers and aestheticians of the semantic persuasion, whom we have been discussing in this book, as well as of other members of the school we are able to find outright attempts at a theoretical justification of modernism and, in particular, of abstract art.
The kinship between the semantic philosophy of art and modernism is pointed to by a whole series of philosophical principles-idealism, subjectivism, irrationalism, agnosticism, relativism.^^1^^ We shall here dwell on one important feature of the semantic philosophy of art, which is partially rooted in certain essential features of modernist art.
Just as the development of science at the turn of the century was marked by heightened interest in the problems of the language of science, its structure and form, the artistic quests of the 20th century also display a keen interest on the _-_-_
~^^1^^ Of course the variety of the aesthetic schools of modernism at the present stage is such that it cannot be reduced to a monotonous ``list of philosophical trends" and their general principles. The Soviet scholar A. Myasischev is absolutely correct to stress in his article ``On the Philosophical Basis of Modernism" the necessity to take into account the originality of the aesthetic views of certain modernists and the way each of them approaches the complex problems of art and literary criticism (See 4, 387--88). However, this is outside the limits of our study.
229 part of the artists in the problems of artistic form, of the ``language'' of art. It is not possible here to go further into the reasons for this general tendency, but there is no doubt that it has deep epistemological foundations. Just as logic is developing a method of analysing knowledge by creating artificial formalized languages, those artistic schools of the 20th century which come under the general rubric of ``avant-- gardism" display an experimental approach to the question of artistic form. Many avant-garde works, if we ignore a number of factors-a proviso which is both necessary and justifiable-can be assessed as artificially created, constructed `` languages" of art, by means of which their creators, over and above all else, objectively tried to elicit the laws of the structure, composition, forms and language of ``natural'' works of art. The present crisis-ridden conditions of bourgeois society, and the general decadent orientation of bourgeois art have brought about the absolutization of this experimentation and quest for innovation in the area of form, which has become an end in itself. The constructive aspect of these experiments (``building'', ``inventing'', etc.) has also been exaggerated and declared to be the essence of artistic creation, and quite unjustifiably opposed to ``imitation'', ``reflection'', etc. The degree of abstraction from content necessary in the conditions of an experiment has been absolutized and form itself declared to be the content of art (language, colour, texture, weight, which ``only designate themselves''). This absolutization, which, as stated above, had its own socio-psychological motives, was the epistemological soil of aesthetic formalism-i.e. of the most universal and essential feature of bourgeois modernist art (see 3, 63--111).The above-noted interest in the ``language'' of art and, in particular, the formalist actualisation of this interest nourished the aesthetic formalism of bourgeois aesthetics, including the semantic philosophy of art, and in its turn was theoretically ``justified'' and sanctioned. It often happens in the process that one representative or other of the semantic philosophy of art does not personally set himself such goals. ``We cannot make proper progress,'' writes the English Marxist philosopher John Lewis, ``in the struggle for the 230 intelligentsia, for the more conscientious sections of the population of western countries, if we are unable to provide a calm and convincing reply to our ideological opponents. We must respect the intellectual integrity which characterizes many of them" (2, 91). We should, however, recall here Lenin's words in a famous letter to Maxim Gorky: a good intention remains a personal affair, a subjective ``innocent desire''. The proper sense of any theory, its significance is defined not by a benevolent attitude, but by the ``relationship of social forces, the objective relationship of classes" (1, 128). Whether or not the various adherents of the semantic philosophy wish this subjectively, the fact remains that the objective logic of their ideas and theories leads to the theoretical justification of formalism and modernism. This thesis is true with respect to all the philosophers of the semantic orientation that we have discussed in the present work.
In works both by Marxists and non-Marxists which analyse the philosophical premises of modernism, its aesthetics and critique, the authors invariably mention, amongst others, the theories of art of Peirce, Croce, Cassirer, Richards, Whitehead, Morris and Langer. Its idealism combined with tendencies of formalism, which nourish and uphold the various forms of modernist art, constitutes convincing evidence of the reactionary orientation of the semantic philosophy of art.
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C n03HTHBH3MOM B aHrJIHHCKOH (pHJIOCOlpHH XX B. «0HJIOCOCpCKHe
nayKn», 1960, N° 2
19. KopHCpOpT M. DpOTHBHHKH HAeajIH3M3 B COBpeM6HHOH aHrJIHHCKOH
6yp>Kya3HOH c})iuioco(l)HH. «Bonpocbi ^HJIOCOIJJHH;*, 1955, N° 4
20. Morris-Jones H. Art and Imagination. Philosophy, 1959, Vol. 34, No. 130
21. Mure G. R. G. Benedetto Croce and Oxford. The Philosophical Quarterly, 1954, Vol. 4, No. 17
22. Tomlin E. W. F. R. G. Collingwood. London, 1953
CHAPTER IV.
1. Collingwood R. G. Speculum Mentis or the Map ot Knowledge. Oxford, 1924
2. Collingwood R. G. Outlines ot a Philosophy ot Art. London, 1925
3. Collingwood R. G. Aesthetic. Mind, London, 1927
4. Collingwood R. G. Review of the book: S. Alexander. Art and Instinct. Oxford, 1927. Journal of Philosophical Studies, 1928, Vol. 3, No 11
5. Collingwood R. G. The New Leviathan. London, 1942
6. Collingwood R. G. An Autobiography. New York, 1944
7. Collingwood R. G. The Principles ot Art. New York, 1958
236CHAPTER V.
1. Whitehead A. N. Science and the Modern World. Cambridge, 1943
2. Whitehead A. N. Religion in the Making. Cleveland-New York, 1961
3. Whitehead A. N. Symbolism. Its Meaning and Effect. New York, 1958
4. Whitehead A. N. Adventures of Ideas. Cambridge, 1933
5. Whitehead A. N. Modes ot Thought. New York, 1938
6. Whitehead A. N. Mathematics and the Good. The Philosophy ot A. N. Whitehead. Evanston and Chicago, 1941
7. Whitehead A. N. Immortality. The Philosophy of A. N. Whitehead. Evanston and Chicago, 1941
2378. Whitehead A. N. Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology. New York, 1957
9. Whitehead A. N. Essays in Science and Philosophy. New York, 1948 10. Whitehead's American Essays in Social Philosophy. New York, 1959
2. Cassirer E. Idee und Gestalt. Berlin, 1921
3. Cassirer E. Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. Berlin, Bd. I-III, 1923--1929
4. Cassirer E. Sprache und Mythos. Leipzig, 1925
5. Cassirer E. Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance. Leipzig, 1927
6. Cassirer E. Das Symbolproblem und seine Stellung im System der Philosophie. Zeitschrift fiir Asthetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, Bd. XXI, Stuttgart, 1927
7. Cassirer E. Mythischer, asthetischer und theoretischer Raum. Vierter Kongress fur Asthetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft. Hamburg, 7-9 Oktober 1930, Stuttgart, 1931
8. Cassirer E. Was ist ``Subjektivismus''?. Theoria, Vol. V, 1939
9. Cassirer E. Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften. Flint Studien. Darmstadt, 1961
10. Cassirer E. An Essay on Man. An Introduction to a Philosophy ot Human Culture. New Haven, 1947
11. Cassirer E. Implications of Physics for Ethics. The Structure of Scientific Thought, ed. by E. H. Madden, Boston, 1960
11. BoroMOJioe A. C. Heopea;iH3M H cneKyjisrHBHaa (
(A. H. yaHTxefl). «CoBpeMeHHbift o6T>eKTHBHbift H,nea.nH3M». MOCKBa, 1963
12. Bubser E. Sprache und Metaphysik in Whitehead's Philosophic. Archiv fur Philosophie, Stuttgart, 1960, Bd. 10, No. 1-2
13. Cobb J. B. Toward Clarity in Aesthetics. PPR, 1957, Vol. 18, No. 2
14. McCreary J. K. A. N. Whitehead's Theory of Feeling. The Journal ot General Psychology, 1949, Vol. 41, First Half
15. Dunkel H. D. Whitehead on Education. Ohio State University Press, 1965
16. Eisendrath C. R. The Unifying Moment. The Psychological Philosophy of William James and Alfred North Whitehead. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971
17. Frankel H. Misadventure of Ideas, London, 1959
18. HKymeB A. A. KpHTHKa TeopHH cnMB(wiH3Ma A. VaHrxeAa. «Bonpo-
Cbl <pHJIOC04)HH», 1962, NO 12
19. Johnson A. H. Whitehead's Philosophy of Civilization. Boston, 1958
20. Johnson A. H. Whitehead's Theory of Reality. New York, 1962
21. Kogan J. Arte y Metafisica en Whitehead. Cuadernos Americanos, 1963, Vol. 131, No 6
22. Lawrence N. Whitehead's Philosophical Development. A Critical History of the Background of Process and Reality. Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1956
23. Martin F. D. The Power of Music and Whitehead's Theory of Perception. /AAC, 1967, Vol. 25, No. 3
24. Shahan E. P. Whitehead's Theory of Experience. New York, 1950
25. Sherburne D. W. A Whiteheadian Aesthetic. Some Implications ot Whitehead's Metaphysical Speculation. New Haven, 1961
26. Sherman P. Whitehead, Langer and the Uniting of ``Fact'' and ``Value''. ETC, A Review of General Semantics, 1949, Vol. 6, No. 2
27. The Philosophy of A. N. Whitehead. Evanston and Chicago, 1941
28. The Relevance ot Whitehead. London, New York, 1961
29. Wells H. K. Process and Unreality. A Criticism ot Method in Whitehead's Philosophy. New York, 1950
CHAPTER VI.
1. Cassirer E. Freicheit und Form. Studien zur deutschen Geistes Geschichte. Berlin, 1916
23812. Buccellato M. II linguaggio e la filosofia di forme simboliche. Rivista critica di storia delta filosofia, 1955, anno 10, fasc. 1
13. Buczynska H. Cassirer. Warszawa, 1963
14. KpaBHeHKO A. Kaccnpep 06 HCKyccxse KBK CHMeojiHiecKoft 4>opMe. «Byp>Kya3Hafl aereTHKa ceroflHH». MocKBa, 1970
15. Rein M. Ernst Cassirer. Montevideo, 1959
16. The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer. Evanston, 1949
17. Verene D. Kant, Hegel and Cassirer: The Origins of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Journal of the History of Ideas, 1969, Vol. 30, No. 1
18. Verene D. Cassirer's View of Myth and Symbol. The Monist, 1966, No. 1
CHAPTER VII.
1. Langer S. K. The Practice ot Philosophy. New York, 1930
2. Langer S. K. An Introduction to Symbolic Logic. London, 1937.
3. Langer S. K. Philosophy in a New Key. A Study in the Symbolism ot Reason, Rite and Art. Cambridge, 1942
4. Langer S. K. The Primary Illusions and the Great Orders of Art. Hudson Revue, 1950, Vol. 3
5. Langer S. K. Feeling and Form. A Theory ot Art Developed from Philosophy in a New Key. New York, 1953
2396. Langer S. K. Problems ol Art. New York, 1957
7. Langer S. K. On Artistic Sensibility. Daedalus, 1960, Vol. 89, No. 1
8. Langer S. K. Abstraction in Art. JAAC, 1964, Vol. 22, No. 4
9. Langer S. K. The Social Influence of Design. Who Designs America. New York, 1966
10. Langer S. K. Mind : An Essay on Human Feeling. Baltimore, 1967, Vol. 1
28. Reid L. A. Susanne K. Langer: A New Theory on Art. Diogenes, London, 1954, No. 6
29. Reid L. A. Symbolism in Art. BJA, 1961, Vol. 1, No. 3
30. Reid L. A. New Notes on Langer. BJA, 1968, Vol. 8, No. 4
31. Russo L. Susanne Langer e la problematica della pittura. Rivista di estetica, 1968, Anno XIII, Facs. I
32. CapflJKCHT y. <I>HJioco(pHH HCKyccTBa Cyaan K. Jlanrep. « AnepHKa», 1968, Ns 140
33. Szathmary A. Symbolic and Aesthetic Expression in Painting. JAAC, 1954, Vol. 13, No. 1
34. Tejera V. Prof. Sheffer's Question. Structure, Method and Meaning. Essays in Honour of H. M. Sheffer. New York, 1951
35. Welsh P. Discursive and Presentational Symbolism. Mind, 1955, Vol. 64, No. 254
CHAPTER VIII.
1. Peirce Ch. S. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Vol. 1-6, Harvard University Press, 1931--1935; Vol. 7-8, Harvard University Press, 1958
2. Peirce Ch. S. Values in a Universe of Chance. Selected Writings of Charles S. Peirce. New York, 1958
11. Ballard E. In Defence of Symbolic Aesthetics. JAAC, 1953, Vol. 12, No. 1
12. Barilli R. L'estetica di Susanne K. Langer. Rivista di estetica, Torino, 1961, Anno VI, Fasc. II
13. BacHH E. O reopeTHHecKHX B3rjiH,nax C. Jlanrep. «HcKyccTBO», 1967, M> 6
14. BacHH E. TeopHH HCKyccTBa B «HOBOM Kjnowe» (KpHTHwecKiift oqepK ceMaHTHiecKoft KOHiienuHH HCKycciBa CycanHH Jlanrep). « BypHcyaanafl scxeTHKa ceroflfu». MocKBa, 1970
15. Berndtson A. Semblance, Symbol and Expression in the Aesthetics of Susanne Langer. JAAC, 1956, Vol. 14, No. 4
16. Bertocci A. Review Article: Susanne Langer or the Symbol Abstracted. The Philological Quarterly, 1969, Vol. XLVIII, No. 2
17. Colombo G. Saggi recenti di S. Langer. Rivista di estetica, 1959, Anno IV, Fasc. II
18. flaMjaHOBHi M. KpHTHKa reopHJe yueTHHiKHX cHMScuia y aejiy Cysane Jlanrep. «KHbHweBHocT», 1963, N° 11--12.
19. Damjanovic M. Problem umetnickog simbolizma u delu Suzane K. Langer. Nauka i Glozofija, 1964, No. 2
20. Detweiler R. Langer and Tillich: Two Backgrounds of Symbolic Thought. The Personalist, 1965, Vol. 46, No. 2
21. Dorfles G. L'estetica ``simbolica'' e 1'opera di S. Langer. Rivista critica di storia delta filosofia, 1955, Anno X, Fasc. II
22. Formigari L. Considerazioni sull estetica di S. Langer. Rivista di estetica, 1966, Anno XI, Fasc. Ill
23. Fubini E. Susanne Langer: una nuova estetica (musicale)? Rivista di filosofia, 1962, No. 1
24. Lang B. Langer's Arabesque and the Collapse of the Symbol. The Review of Metaphysics, 1962, Vol. 16, No. 2
25. MaprbiHOB B. T. O HOBOM BapHanre CHMBO.nHqecKoft reopiiH HCKyccTBa. «$HJiocot})CKHe HayKH», 1964, Ns 4
26. HeMHpoBCKan E. M. Teopna npeseHTaiHBHoro CHMBO^HSMB (K KpHTimecKOMy anajinay ceMaHTHqecKofl KonuenitHH HCKyccTBa C. K. Jlanrep). «Bonpocbi (J)HJioco<pHH», 1972, N° 7
27. Oesterle J. A Problem of Art by Susanne K. Langer. The New Scholasticism, 1958, Vol. 32, No. 4
2403. Alston W. Pragmatism and the Theory of Signs in Peirce. PPR, 1956, Vol. 17, No. 1
4. Bosco N. Etica ed estetica in Peirce. Filosofia, Anno XII, Fasc. I, Torino, 1961
5. Buchler J. Charles Pence's Empiricism. New York, 1966
6. Burks A., Weiss P. Peirce's Sixty-Six Signs. JP, 1945, Vol. 42, No. 14
7. Feibleman J. An Introduction to Peirce's Philosophy, with a foreword by B. Russell. New York and London, 1946
8. Fitzgerald J. J. Peirce's Theory of Signs as Foundation for Pragmatism. The Hague-Paris, 1966
9. Goudge Th. A. The Thought of Ch. S. Peirce. Toronto, 1950
10. Hocutt M. O. The Logical Foundations of Peirce's Aesthetics. JAAC, 1962, Vol. 21, No. 2
11. Knccejib M. A., KosJiosa M. C. Peu. na KH.: K). K. MejibBHJib. Mapjia Flnpc H nparMaiHSM. MocKBa, 1968. «Bonpocbi <pHJioco<J>HH», 1970, tt« 1
12. Knight Ph. D. Charles Peirce. New York, 1965
13. Levi A. W. Peirce and Painting. Philosophical and Phenomenological Research, 1962, Vol. 23, No. 1
14. MejibBHJib K). K. Hapjis Flnpc u nparMaiHSM. MocKaa, 1968
24115. Murphey M. G. The Development of Peace's Philosophy. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1961
16. Perspectives on Peirce. Critical Essays on Charles Sanders Peirce. New Haven and London, 1965
17. PeaHHKOB JI. O. FIparMaTHCTCKaH reopHH anaKa H anaHeHHa. « CoBpeMeHHan HfleajiHCTHMecKaa rnoceojiorHsis. MocKBa, 1968
18. Schulz Th. A. Panorama der Asthetik von Charles Sanders Peirce. Stuttgart, 1961
19. Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce. Amherst, 1964
20. Thompson M. The Pragmatic Philosophy of Ch. S. Peirce. Chicago, 1963.
21. Wennerberg H. The Pragmatism of Ch. S. Peirce. An Analytical study. Uppsala, 1962
22. Wiener Ph. P. Evolutions and the Founders of Pragmatism. Harvard University Press, 1965
24214. Ducasse C. J. Some Comments on Ch. W. Morris's Foundations of the Theory of Signs. PPR, 1942, Vol. 3, No. 1
15. Gentry G. V. Some Comments on Morris's ``Class'' Conception of the Designatum. ]P, 1944, Vol. 41, No. 14
16. Gentry G. V. Comments and Criticism. JP, 1947, Vol. 44, No. 12
17. Kaplan A. Referential Meaning in the Art. JAAC, 1954, Vol. 12, No. 4
18. Kattsoff L. O. What Is Behavior? PPR, 1948, Vol. 9, No. 1
19. Phillips J. The Concept "Disposition to Respond" in a Behavioral Semiotic. Philosophy of Science, 1950, Vol. 17, No. 4
20. Price K. B. Is a Work of Art a Symbol? JP, 1953, Vol. 50, No. 16
21. PeaHHKOB JI. O. FHoceoJiorHH nparinaraaMa H ceMHOiwa M. Moppnca. «Bonpocbi C|)H./IOCOC{>HH», 1963, N° 1
22. Rudner R. On Semiotic Aesthetics. JAAC, 1951, Vol. 10, No. 1
23. Rudner R. Some Problems of Non-Semiotic Aesthetic Theories. JAAC, 1957, Vol. 15, No. 3
24. Wienpahl P. D. Are All Signs Signs? The Philosophical Review, 1949, Vol. 58, No. 3
25. Wild J. An Introduction to the Phenomenology of Signs. PPR, 1947, Vol. 8, No. 2
CONCLUSION.
1. Lenin V. I. Letter to A. M. Gorky (second half of November 1913). Collected Works, Vol. 35
2. JIbioHC Rx. OHJiococJjcKafl Mbicjib Sana^a B anoxy MapKCHSMa. «Bonpocbi (pHjioco<pHH», 1966, N° 6
3. Maua H. Opo6^eMbi xy,no>KecTBeHHOH KyjibTypu XX BeKa. MocKBa, 1969
4. «CoBpeM6HHbie npoC.neMbi pea^H3Ma H MOAepHH3Ma». MocKBa, 1965
CHAPTER IX.
1. Morris Ch. Foundations of the Theory of Signs. International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. Chicago, 1938, Vol. 1, No. 2
2. Morris Ch. Aesthetics and the Theory of Signs. The Journal of Unified Science (Erkenntnis) , 1939, Vol. 8, No. 1-3
3. Morris Ch. Science, Art and Technology. The Kenyan Review, 1939, Vol. 1, No. 4
4. Morris Ch. The Search for Life of Significance. The Work of Raymond Johnson, American Painter. To morrow, 1941, Vol. 1, No. 1
5. Morris Ch. Signs, Language and Behavior. New York, 1946
6. Morris Ch. Comments on the Paper by Jean A. Phillips. Philosophy of Science, 1950, Vol. 17, No. 4
7. Morris Ch. Varieties of Human Value. Chicago, 1956
8. Morris Ch. Signification and Significance. A Study of the Relations of Signs and Values. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1964
9. Morris Ch., Hamilton D. Aesthetics, Signs and Icons. PPR, 1965, Vol. 25, No. 3
10. AjieuiHHa H. H. O6ocHOBamie aScrpaKTHoro HCKyccrsa B ceMan-
THK6 M. MoppHCa. «KpHTHK3 COBpeMCHHOft 6yp>Kya3HOH 3CT6THKH».
MocKBa, 1968
11. BacHH E. 0 ceMHOTHiecKoft reopHH HCKycciBa. «KpH?HKa OCHOBHHX HanpasjieHHH coBpeMeHHoft 6ypxya3Hoft SCTBTHKHX. MocKBa, 1968
12. Bentley A. The New ``Semiotic''. PPR, 1947, Vol. 8, No. 1
13. Black M. The Limitation of a Behavioristic Semiotic. The Philosophical Review, 1947, Vol. 56, No. 3
[243] __ALPHA_LVL1__ NAME INDEXCornforth, M.-83, 237
Creary, J. K.-238
Croce, B.-12, 13, 16, 17, 24, 57,
62--96, 129, 130, 134, 137, 226,
231, 235
Fry, R.-154 Fubini, E.-165, 240
244Gallie, W. B.-57
Gatschberg, R.-202
Gennaro, A. de-235, 237
Gentile, G.-88, 95
Gentry, G. V.-205, 208, 242
Gilbert, K.-71, 81, 131, 144
Gogh, V. van-169
Goodman, N.-144
Gorky, M.-231
Goudge, Th. A.-188, 194, 241
Greimas, A.-175
H
Haecht, L. van-234
Hajikyan, Ya. I.-23
Hall, R.-68, 235
Hamburg, C. H.-124, 143
Hamilton, D.-219
Hanslick, E.-169
Hanter, A.-203
Harris, S.-114
Hartmann, R.-129
Hauptman, M.-150
Hegel, G. W.-31, 59, 62, 65, 66,
69, 88, 122, 130, 133, 141, 188 Heidegger, M.-13 Haine, H.-57 Hepburn, R. W.-55, 234 Herder, J. G.-130 Heyl, B. C.-49, 168, 226 Hildebrand, A.-137 Hill, Th. I.-51 Hjelmslev, L.-18 Hocutt, M. O.-175, 194, 200, 241 Hoeslin, J.-150 Hofstadter, A.-64, 65, 86, 96, 134,
137, 169
Holderlin, F.-120 Horace-78
Hospers, J.-83, 94, 237 Hotopf, W. H.-41, 48, 233
Hughes, P.-104
245Abercrombie, L.-81
Abramyan, L. A.-208, 226, 232
Agazzi, E.-79
Aldrich, V.-213, 226
Aleshina, N. N.-242
Alston, W.-241
Amyx, C.-219
Angell, J. R.-40
Aristotle-46, 135
Arnheim, R.-160
Ashby, W.-203
Asmus, V. F.-68, 72, 73, 82, 235
48, 61, 204, 213, 226, 233, 242 Blackmur, R. P.-30, 233 Bloomfield, L.-18 Bogdanov, B. V.-ll, 232 Bogomolov, A.-16, 26, 83, 88, 97,
108, 117, 188, 238 Bosanquet, B.-83 Bosco, N.-194, 241 Bradley, F.-83 Bremond, C.-175 Brown, M. E.-91, 94, 95, 235, 237 Bubser, E.-238 Buccellato, M.-239 Buchler, J.-241 Buczynska, H.-128, 239 Biihler, K.-202 Bunge, M.-163 Burks, A.-241 Byron, G. G.-78
Damjanovic, M.-19, 20, 21, 22, 51, 162, 165, 232, 240
Descartes, R.-118
Dessoir, M.-137
Detweiler, R.-240
Devoto, G.-235
Dewey, J.-12, 40, 44, 82, 147, 192, 208, 209, 214, 216, 223, 224
Dittmann, L.-128, 144, 145
Dobronravov, P.-226
Donagan, A.-95, 237
Dorfles, G.-81, ISO, 240
Ducasse, C. J.-242
Duncan, H.-111
Dunkel, H. B.-113, 114, 238
B
Baensch, O.-154
Bain, A.-188
Ballard, E.-166, 240
Banfi, A.-64, 77
Barfield, O.-41
Barilli, R.-152, 240
Barret, C.-155, 234
Basin, E.-240, 242
Beardsley, M. C.-16, 36, 232
Bell, C.-57, 154
Bense, M.-19, 113, 117--19, 180,
199, 200 Bentham, J.-44 Bentley, A.-208, 242 Bergson, H.-105, 134, 143 Berkeley, G.-188 Berndtson, A.-164, 240 Bertalanffy, L. von-123, 138 Bertocci, A.-240 Bilsky, M.-44, 233 Black, M.-28, 29, 30, 39, 42, 43,
Eastman, M.-41, 233
Eisendrath, C. R.-238
Eliot, T.S.-49
Elton, W.-56
Ely, S. L.-114
Engels, F.-59, 67, 70, 89, 133
Calogero, G.-64, 81
Carnap, R.-12, 14, 20, 154, 201
Carritt, E. F.-81
Cassirer, E.-12, 13, 16, 19, 24,
48, 65, 120--45, 147, 148, 153,
166, 171, 226, 231, 238, 239 Cavaciuti, S.-235 Cawronsky, D.-143 Chomsky, N.-18 Cobb, J.-238 Cohen, H.-125 Collingwood, R. G.-13, 16, 57, 62,
78, 81, 83--96, 129, 130, 154,
236, 237
Collins, J.-69, 82, 235 Colombo, G.-240
Feilbleman, J. K.-172, 188, 189,
198, 241
Feuerbach, L-15 Fichte, J. G.-198 Fitzgerald, J. J.-184, 241 Formigari, L.-240 Frankel, H.-97, 103, 106, 108,
117, 238
Freud, S.-48, 105, 142 Friedrich, H.-235
Humbold, F. H. von-73 Hume, D.-79, 142, 188 Husserl, E.-65, 126, 136, 147,
169, 194 Hyman, S.-36
Kravchenko, A.-239 Kuhn, H.-71, 81, 144
246Mill, J.-188
Moliere, J. B.-78
Mondrian, P.-119
Morris, B.-115, 118
Morris, Ch.-12, 15, 16, 21, 30, 33, 48, 49, 146, 153, 171, 192, 193, 199, 201--27, 231, 242
Morris-Jones, H.-94, 237
Mukafovsky, J.-19
Mundel, C. A.-234
Munro, Th.-59, 61
Mure, G. R.-95, 237
Murphey, M. G.-196, 241
Myasischev, A.-229
N
Nagel, E.-153, 164, 188 Nageli, K. W. von-67 Narsky, I. S.-13, 16, 26, 233 Natorp P.-125 Nemirovskaya, Ye.-146, 240 Nietzsche, F. W.-143
O
Oesterle, J. A.-240
Ogden, C. K.-27, 199, 202, 233
Oizerman, T.-17, 233
Orsini, G.-77, 81, 236
Osborne, H.-234
Osgood-225
Osterwalder, T.-78, 236
Pepper, S.-209
Perry, R.-44, 223
Pesce, D.-236
Phillips, J.-242
Phidias-169
Plato-28, 80, 114, 188
Plekhanov, G. V.-66
Pollock, J.-96, 169
Pollock, Th. C.-33, 40, 41, 48,233
Price, K. B.-242
Propp, V.-175
Proudhon, P. J.-59
Ivanov, V.-18
Lachley, K.-203
Lake, B.-57
Lamere, J.-82, 236
Lang, B.-150, 240
Lange, C. G.-47
Langer, S. K.-13, 16, 17, 21, 49,
82, 95, 96, 117, 132, 143, 146-
71, 185, 206, 212, 226, 231,
239Lanson, G.-82 Lawrence, N.-238 Leibnitz, G. W.-217 Lekomtsev, Yu.-18 Lenin, V. I.-14, 15, 17, 22, 25,
26, 108, 231, 232, 243 Lenneberg, E. H.-236 Leroy, M.-236 Lessing, G. E.-120, 130 Levi, A. W.-199, 241 Levi-Strauss, C.-18, 39, 150 Lewis, J.-224, 230, 243 Lotman, Yu. M.-18, 175 Lowe, V.-97, 111, 112
M
Mach, E.-195, 198
Mandelbaum, M.-60, 61, 234
Mann, M.-236
Margolis, J.-234
Maritain, J.-13, 17
Martin F. D.-104, 238
Martynov, V.-146449
Marx, K.-13, 59, 68, 70, 88, 89,
133, 232 Mayo, B.-236 McDowall, S. A.-81 McTaggart, J. M.-83 Mead, G.-201, 209, 223, 224 Melvil, Yu. K.-16, 26, 172, 180,
187--89, 197, 241 Meyer, A. A.-169
Jakobson, R.-149, 152
Jakushev, A. A.-238
James, D. G.-233
James, W.-20, 30, 40, 47, 195,
224Jessup, B.-60, 61, 234 Johnson, A. H.-97, 109, 110, 238 Johnston, W. M.-84, 237 Jones, P.-237 Jordan, J.-235 Jung, C. G.-81
Rader, M.-164
Ransom, J. C.-30, 36, 41
Raphael-169
Read, H.-81, 118
Reichenbach-201
Reichhardt, K.-145
Reid, L. A.-81, 240
Rein, M.-145, 239
Reznikov, L.-189, 241, 243
Richards, I. A.-12, 16, 17, 19, 24, 27--51, 81, 146, 171, 199, 202, 204, 211, 213, 226, 231, 233
Rieser, M.-48, 157
Ritchie, B.-219
Roberts, L.-219
Romanell, P.-236
Rousseau, J. J.-135
Rudner, R.-243
Russell, B.-12, 14, 20, 146, 148, 154, 201
Russo, L.-240
K
Kalish, D.-13
Kandinsky V.-169
Kant, I.-15, 28, 66, 74, 79, 121-
26, 136--38, 174, 188, 198 Kaplan, A.-64, 226, 242 Kattsoff, L.-243 Kaufmann, F.-125, 137, 145 Kayser, W.-78
Kissel, M.-83, 189, 192, 237, 241 Klaus, G.-203, 213 Klee, P.-169 Kleist, H.-120 Knight, Ph. D.-241 Koffka, K.-157 Kogan, J.-238 Kennick, W. E.-234 Kopnin, P. V.-13, 232 Korzybski, A.-41 Kozlova, M.-53, 189, 192, 234,
241 Krasnov, V. M.-112, 217
Paci, E.-64
Panfilov, V. Z.-70
Panofsky, E.-144
Parsons, T.-lll, 206, 217
Passmore, J.-57
Pasto, T. S.-101
Patankar, R.-64, 236
Pavlov, I. P.-30
Peirce, Ch. S.-12, 14--17, 19, 24, 31, 32, 48, 98, 118, 146, 153, 163, 171--200, 202, 204, 205, 224, 226, 231, 241
Santinello, G.-30
Santayana, G.-142
Sapir, E.-18
Saussure, F. de-18
Schaper, E-101
Schelling, F. W.-65, 122, 130,
133, 141 Schlick, M.-20 Shahan, E. P.-114, 238
247Sherburne, D. W.-106, 107, 112,
238Sherman, P.-238 Shields, A.-234 Schiller, J. C.-120, 189 Schonberg, A.-96, 169 Schultz, E.-225 Schulz, Th. A.-176, 180, 194, 225,
241Shaftesbury, A. A.-142 Simonov, P. V.-186 Simone, C. de-75, 236 Simoni, F. S.-236 Slochower, H.-127, 131, 145 Smith, J. A.-81 Sorokin, P.-206 Souriau, E.-236 Spaulding, J. G.-41, 233 Spingarn, J. E.-81 Steinthal, H.-73 Stevenson, Ch.-42 Stolnitz, J.-60, 234 Szathmary, A.-241
Vaccarino, G.-226 Verene, D.-239 Vetrov, A.-226 Vico, G.-86 Vivas, E.-233 Volpe, D.-150 Vossler, B. K.-236 Vossler, K.-68, 74 Vygotsky, L.-48
W
Waismann, F.-234
Walkey, B.-81
Wallis-Walfisz, M.-19
Walzel, 0.-82
Watson, D.-202
Weimann, R.-50, 233
Weiss-203
Weitz, M.-54--56, 234
Wells, H. K.-97, 103, 238
Welsh, P.-152, 241
Wertheimer, M.-157
Whitehead, A. N.-12, 14, 16, 17, 19, 24, 48, 97--119, 169, 226, 231, 237
Wiener, Ph. P.-242 Wienpahl, P. D.-243 Wild, J.-207, 243 Wimsatt, W.-36
Wittgenstein, L.-12, 20, 51, 52--56, 60, 146, 148, 153, 154, 169, 171, 233, 234
Wolfflin, H.-82, 123, 137, 145 Wood, J.-27, 233 Wundt, W.-150, 156
Tagliabue, M. G.-81 Taine, H.-57, 130 Tatarkiewicz, W.-119 Tate, A.-36
Tejera, V.-157, 167, 241 Thompson, M.-188, 242 Thorndike, E. L.-202 Tolman, E.-203 Tolstoy, L.-141 Tomlin, E. W.-237 Toporov, V.-18 Topuridze, Ye.-73, 76, 236 Trubetskoy, N. S.-18
V
Udine, J. d'-150
Urban, W. M.-31, 97, 102, 113,
124, 130
Urnsom, I. O.-234 Uspensky, B.-18 Utitz, E.-137
Yegorov, A. G.-82
Zink, S.-81, 236 Zis, A.-24, 232 Zupnick, I. L.-119
248 __ALPHA_LVL0__ The End. [END] ~ [249]