Philosophy and fashion
Roger Seruton
Oh Art and the Mind, Richard Wollheim (Allen Lane, £6.) rile present book is a collection of Professor Wollheim's articles and lectures, all of which have been written recently and three of which have not been published before. It is divided into two parts, the first dealing abstractly With issues in aesthetics and the philosophy of mind, the second devoted to individual critics and philosphers of art. As a whole it represents an impressive achievement, and `A'ill be welcomed by all who have an interest in aesthetics. In its modern form aesthetics Was virtually created by Idealism, and in consequence it has been ignored or misunderstood by almost every recent school of thought. Not only is Wollheim one of the few linguistic philosophers with a genuine understanding of Idealism, he also brings to the subject a rare sophistication and an imaginative grasp. It is these qualities which lend an interest to his work beyond what might be expected in the tradition of English analytical philosophy. All the essays are distinctive, not only as examples of Wollheim's particular intellectual gifts, but also as attempts to unite the concerns of culture and philosophy and treat them as continuous. Indeed, Wollheim regards not only philosophical anaylsis but also PsYchbanalysis as integral to the culture of our age: without some knowledge of both, we are led to suppose, a man's understanding of contemporary thought and culture will be either vitiated or at best impaired. Modern Philosophy has been abused as sterile, irrelevant and evenphilistine. It is to such thinkers as Wollheim that we turn for the basis of a fairer verdict.
But despite all their merits — and these are considerable — one reads many of these articles with a sense of disappointment. The varied attempts to assimilate the phenomena of modern intellectual culture — in particular, modern art and psychoanalysis — are sometimes empty and unrewarding, and the specifically philosophical arguments are so larded with disclaiming subtleties and ingenious qualifications that one frequently finds it impossible to pin down the author to any definite point of view. The criticisms of Others are, as always, masterly. There can be no doubt of Wollheim's skill in argument, and his discussions of Gombrich and Nelson Goodman will surely be read with profit by everyone interested in the philosophy of art.
But one cannot avoid, all the same, a certain sense of cunning sophistry, combined with a " Robust respect for fashion" (as Wollheim calls it) which very often appears as affecta tion or modishness. 'The Work of Art as Object ', for example, is devoted to three points: that artistic creation required a concept of art, that paintings necessarily have surfaces, and hence that the modern artist's emphasis on surface requires no departure from a tradi tional conception of art. Wollheim seems to think that seventeen pages of fulsome prose are necessary if his reader is to be properly persuaded of these truths, and is prepared to go to extravagant lengths to ensure that the point has been made: '' I am not of course, making the self-evident point that even before 1905 paintings had surfaces. I am making the somewhat less self-evident point that before 1905 the fact that a painting had a surface, or the more general fact that works of art" (he means work of visual art) " were physical, were not, regarded as accidental or contingent 'facts about art." It is in this manner, by saying over and over again what he is not saying, that Wollheim attempts to persuade the reader of the profundity and importance of what he is saying, sometimes keeping this last a secret until so far towards the end of a lecture that a proper investigation of the matter is no longer in question, and in any case no longer desired.
This fault is perhaps a weakness of expression, a natural proneness to pomposity. But there are more serious faults that cannot be so easily discounted. In particular Wollheim has a knack of avoiding problems. Fun damental concepts and ideas are often so hedged round with uninteresting subtleties that the main questions are ignored. The ex tremely interesting article on 'Expression', for example, is entirely inconclusive on account of Wollheim's failure to analyse, or even to say anything illuminating about, the concept of 'correspondences ' on which the main argument rests. Again, he frequently relies, in his philosophical articles, on an unexamined notion of ' thought ', which in some contexts seems to indicate belief, in others judgment, and in others the Fregean idea of a ' mental content' common to belief, emotion and desire. Most serious of all is Willheim's unquestioning employment of psycho-analytic doctrines which he neither clearly states, nor examines impartially. For example, much of his theory of imagination (expounded in a previously unpublished lecture) relies on a psychoanalytic account of identification. Here Wollheim expresses himself quite freely in terms that few philosophers would accept without some analysis of their meaning. This is of some importance, since the nature and meaning of psychonalytic doctrines has never been properly explained. We are told that "in projective identification the individual con ceives of his imaginings as a method by which he rids himself of certain thoughts and feelings ", and this not only gives a man a reason for identifying, it is also " what he thinks he is doing " when he identifies, say with a character in a play. Taken literally this
is just false. This is not what / think I am doing. Indeed, I am not aware of doing
anything. Surely it is the task of the philosopher to interpret these statements, not just to parrot them. Everywhere an unques tioning acceptance of, not to say addiction to, psychoanalysis is taken for granted. Indeed, Wollheim shows a more or less theocratic contempt for scepticism, and a high-toned reluctance to indulge in any but the most cursory enquiries into the meaning of his fundamental terms. One might well be ex cused for thinking that he has not so much united philosophy and psychoanalysis as divided them, rejecting the one precisely where it impinges on the territory of the These are serious faults, but one reads the book with interest despite them, and leaves it with a sense of having been led through a great many difficult topics and made to think seriously about each of them. In the present state of philsophical aesthetics one must accept this as a major virtue, certainly one which few philosophers acquire.
Roger Scruton is a Lecturer in Philosphy at Birlibech College, London.
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