Art and imitation
J. 0. URMSON
Prelude to Aesthetics Eva Schaper (Allen and Unwin 40s) Fundamental aesthetic theory is in a far less satisfactory condition than any other field of philosophical inquiry. Hanslick said that music had no reference beyond itself, Mendelssohn that it was a language differing from ordinary language by being more precise, and we need suppose neither to be deficient in musical appreciation. Philosophical aesthetics ought at least to make it intelligible how such opposed views can be held, but the professionals usually either give us stones for bread (they invent a word or a phrase such as synaestbesis or significant form and offer it as an illumina- tion) or, in this country more commonly still, preserve a baffled silence. Certainly there are attempts at plain sense, but Miss Schaper rightly says that aesthetics is 'often the despair of clear-headed philosophers and the delight of fringe-practitioners.'
In these circumstances Miss Schaper pro- poses that we look back to see how it all started. As usual this means going back to Plato and Aristotle, to the Ion and the Poetics. Plato's basis is that art is a mimesis of the natural world and clearly means that it is an imitation of it. Miss Schaper treats Plato with great respect. The inconsequences of Socrates's arguments against Ion appear as the playing of the angler with his victim rather than as the fumblings that the less sympathetic would diagnose. But in the end she has to admit that the picture of the natural world as a copy of the ideal world and art as a copy of the natural world will not do. If the artist who depicts a bed is aiming at producing a deceptive imitation of a bed he should hope that one will sling the canvas and use it as a haminock. Plato was too neurotic about art to talk.good sense about it, though he could pro- duce it.
Aristotle retains the word mimesis, but re- interprets it. Miss Schaper elucidates this reinterpretation very well. The artist imitates nothing, but rather makes a representation of a possibility. In doing so he can exclude the accidental and inappropriate and thus his work can be more universal than history. So Aristotle sides, with Mendelssohn rather than Hanslick, but avoids the detestable romantic theory of the artist communicating his own emotional state. Aristotle does not give us a completed theory; but he at least offers us a sober programme for one which Miss Schaper soberly explains an!paRarrrines; though sobrietyis not noticeably
desirable in the arts, it is a desperately needed ingredient in their theory.
But it might be doubted whether Aristotle is starting at the right end. Why start with the grandiose question of the nature of art? Would it not be wiser to start with such ques- tions as the relation of joyful music to joyful news and whether Haydn's representation of chaos is a representation in the same way as Kneller made a representation of John Locke? Since we still have all to do, 'one step enough for me' is the best motto; though the steps just proposed may be too giant strides for others as well as for the writer of this review.
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