Free Video Course on Art & Beauty
Brought to you by Christendom College and yours truly
My wife and I are just back from a magnificent trip to Ireland and England, one full of literary inspirations. The experiences were too full to be contained in any one post, so in the weeks ahead I will be sharing my reflections on our visits to various sites associated with St. John Henry Cardinal Newman, to Shakespeare’s Stratford-upon-Avon, to Oxford, and to Jane Austen’s house in Chawton, Hampshire. I took lots of great pictures along the way, and I will be sharing some of those as well.
Okay, I’ll share just one now. Of me playing dress-up outside the Jane Austen house and museum in Chawton. “Who is it?” “Mr. Darcy, as he calls himself!”
Today, however, I am delighted to bring to your attention a short video course I made for the college at which I teach, Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia. The course is an abbreviated version of a course I teach to philosophy majors at Christendom: Philosophy of Art & Beauty.
Though my more finished thoughts on the philosophy of art and beauty will appear next year in my book, The Way of Beauty: A Philosophical Reflection on the Arts (Word on Fire Academic, forthcoming June 2024), this short video course captures the general drift of my thinking.
There is a sign-up form to be filled out, but you can enjoy the course for free on Christendom’s website. Here’s the link…
FREE ONLINE COURSE ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART & BEAUTY
We are gearing up for the fall semester at Christendom (starting Tuesday), and last night at the freshmen parents’ reception I had a lovely chat with the mother of one of my students, who is also a painter. She and a group of fellow artists in Southern California meet once a week to talk about issues at the intersection of art, philosophy, and Catholic theology, and I was much gratified to learn that my video course on art and beauty had been a key resource for their recent discussions.
In an email prior to my chat with her, this is what this Catholic artist had to say about the course (quoted with permission):
“It never occurred to me to examine art from a philosophical perspective, but this is the bridge my Catholic creative fellows have been searching for, and discussing every Wednesday Morning for a year and a half.
The Holy Spirit has been fueling our collective desire to confront the world with a counter-cultural, underground-type approach with the arts. We had been dissecting the theological perspective, but needed a way to understand and explain/teach what we are doing to other Catholic creatives, and non-believers as well.
In addition, we had been theorizing about a manner in which to help creatives not of faith to understand why contemporary art is not art (in your sense of “mimetic” arts) but had not yet found a model and common language. Then, voilà! God helped me stumble upon your Principles course….”
I hope you enjoy the course!
Please feel free to ask me any questions about it.
And if they are helpful to you, here are my (unedited) notes for the course…
Philosophy of Art & Beauty
Principles Online Course
Dr. Daniel McInerny
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Christendom College
LESSON 1: ART IS THE SIGNATURE OF MAN
I.
Cold opening: Video from the Pech Merle website or still photography.
Introduction of myself and then directly onto G.K. Chesterton and Chapter 1 of The Everlasting Man: The cave art at Pech Merle over 20,000 years old.
Art, in a sense, doesn’t change. It came into being in full flower. YouTube clip of Picasso drawing a bull.
“Art is the signature of man.” Art is the most obvious sign of our rationality.
So the beautiful work of art has something to do with what we human beings are and what we are made to do: we use our intellects to pursue truth and our appetites to pursue the good. Art has a pivotal role in discovering truth and the meaning of human life (the intellect) and in human fulfillment in the good (the appetites). Bishop Barron has described art as the via pulchritudinis.
II.
In the Catholic tradition, the Church has always appreciated the value of art. And indeed, some of the greatest works of art in the Western tradition have been inspired by the Faith.
In his 1999 Letter to Artists, Pope St. John Paul II wrote the following:
“the Church has not ceased to nurture great appreciation for the value of art as such. Even beyond its typically religious expressions, true art has a close affinity with the world of faith, so that, even in situations where culture and the Church are far apart, art remains a kind of bridge to religious experience. Insofar as it seeks the beautiful, fruit of an imagination which rises above the everyday, art is by its nature a kind of appeal to the mystery” (section 10)
Art is a “bridge” to religious experience. Or to change the metaphor: art has one foot in the world of the senses and another foot in the realm that transcends the senses. As we examine history we see that art has its very source in religion. But here we see why JP2 says that art has a close affinity with the world of faith: art, like the Faith, is a kind of incarnation. et Verbum caro factum est: the Word becomes flesh. Christian art depicts the action of grace working through nature, the things of this world.
The Catholic imagination is often called an “Incarnational imagination.” But as JP2 says, even non-religious art appeals to the “mystery.” What mystery? The mystery of who we are as human beings and where we are going—even God Himself as understandable by our natural lights.
As a philosopher, I am most interested in the appeal of non-religious art to the mystery of human existence, as this reveals the way in which grace builds upon nature and the harmony of Faith and reason (which is why I will refer so much to Aristotle).
III.
THESIS: our aim in this course is to understand art’s role as a manifestation of truth and as an aid in the development of our appetites. In pursuit of this aim we will need to make three central moves:
We will first of all consider the definition of art.
Next we will explore the pivotal role that narrative or storytelling plays in the understanding of art, even of arts that don’t seem to be narrative, like painting and music.
Finally, we will take up the theme of beauty and ask what it is, whether it is, as we often say, “objective,” and the role it plays in manifesting truth and helping form our appetites.
To be clear about what this course is not
Not exclusively concerned with sacred art
Not a course in art history or art appreciation. We will not be considering Da Vinci’s development of perspective or Caravaggio’s use of chiaroscuro.
But a philosophical inquiry into the meaning of art and its role in man’s search for meaning and fulfillment. Even so, it will not be a philosophical survey. Rather a focus on the philosophical understanding of art that undergirds the Catholic intellectual tradition.
Finally, a word about the word “art.” We’re not interested in useful art, which can often of course be very beautiful. We will be considering the “fine arts. When we hear the word “art” in modern English we typically think first, and perhaps only, of the art of painting. But this course will consider the full panoply of what we commonly call the “fine arts,” though we will also consider why it is best to prefer the term “mimetic arts” to “fine arts.” Which leads us into our first topic…
LESSON 2: THE DEFINITION OF ART
I.
Cold opening: Video of celebrity impersonations.
Isn’t it strange that we enjoy people doing voice impressions of other people! Why do we enjoy it so much? Aristotle says that we take a natural pleasure in imitations. But what is the nature of the pleasure we take in them? It’s the not just the object imitated, but the object imitated by another medium. The imitation is a sign; it points to something else. It’s the pleasure of knowing, of making a connection. We learn our first lessons by imitating others.
Art in general is recta ratio factibilium (right reason in things to be made). But the fine arts involve a special kind of skilled making, making that is also imitation. So we will define the fine or mimetic art as skilled making that involves a mimêsis, an imitation or representation of human beings that produces a “cognitive delight” in the spectator or reader.
The two aspects of art that we talked about in regard to the Pech Merle cave drawings are very much in play in this definition: (a) art is a discovery of truth and meaning; and (b) art is associated with our appetites (both the will and the emotions).
II.
What do the mimetic arts imitate? Begin by thinking of the simple act of watching a movie. Isn’t this a strange activity! Image of people watching a movie.
Aristotle says that the mimetic arts imitate the actions, passions, and character of men. In short: they imitate human beings doing things.
So what the mimetic arts do is allow us to contemplate our own actions, our own adventure in this world, in order to achieve a better understanding of it.
But again, the experience is not simply intellectual. If an imitation has not made us feel a certain way, then the imitation is surely a failure. There is delight. Somehow the appetites are changed in the contemplative exercise. And we might call it a moral delight. Not that we automatically become a better, or worse, person. But a subtle connection exists between what we feel when experience a work of art and the appetites in play when we act in the world. The feelings we feel are well-adjusted to reality; they help us experience what we should experience when we ourselves are engaged in action.
III.
The cognitive delight that we take in works of art has three aspects:
[a] there is purely sensible (including emotional) pleasure, amusement;
[b] a moral delight or “catharsis”;
and [c] a more intellectual, contemplative delight.
LESSON 3: THE NARRATIVE ARTS
I.
In this lesson we’ll take a closer look at the narrative or storytelling arts—drama, epic poetry, the novel, the short story, even the ballet and opera—and how they accord with our definition of art. Special attention will be paid to storytelling as a form of argument. So what does it mean to say that something is beautiful? “It means simply that this object is so perfect or integral, so well proportioned in itself, so clear in its intelligible form that the knowing faculty is delighted in the contemplation of it. Pulchrum est quod visum placet” (that which, being seen, pleases) (Rover 193).
In the last segment we considered that art imitates human beings doing things. So what do human beings do? They pursue happiness: their ultimate fulfillment in virtuous activity.
What a story does is show a human being achieving, or failing to achieve, happiness. The plot of a story is the event-structure of a person’s pursuit of happiness.
Example: the film 1917. Image or video of the film 1917.
Plot functions as a kind of argument. There is a thesis or claim—“action(s) of the type X will typically either achieve or fail to achieve happiness, or perhaps an ironic mixture of happiness and unhappiness”—and the narrative itself is the “argument” or “proof” of the claim. Robert McKee calls the thesis or claim of a story its Controlling Idea (Value + Cause) which is then argued for by the dialectical structure of the plot.
II.
We’ve been talking about how stories argue about the nature of happiness. But how are we persuaded by such an argument? St. Thomas, prologue to the commentary on the Posterior Analytics: “the task of the poet is to induce men to virtue through a fitting representation.” So a story’s argument works as a kind of seduction of reason. But why does reason have to be seduced?
As a first step, we need to understand that a story does not present us with an abstract argument. In a story we are in the realm of singulars. But we can’t really make sense of singulars in and of themselves. So what the story offers to our reason, to paraphrase Aristotle, is a universal notion embedded in imitated singulars, a “universalized” singular.
This universal is not a necessary truth but a probable truth couched in singulars. What, given these types of characters, would likely happen. The thesis of a story is not going to be E=mc² but, as we said, —“action(s) of the type X will either achieve or fail to achieve happiness, or perhaps an ironic mixture of happiness and unhappiness.”
III.
But again we have to be careful not to intellectualize the experience of story at the expense of the appetitive experience. The emotions are involved of course as well, as is the will to some extent. Story attracts our intellectual nature and our embodied nature. To go back to JP2’s metaphor, it serves as a bridge between the world of the senses and the world that transcends the senses. And we humans cannot get enough of this experience of transcendence, of what JP2 calls the “mystery,” within the particular.
We see here the importance of storytelling to the formation of culture. A culture is its stories—the tales that form the intellect and appetites. What a culture needs are beautiful stories…
LESSON 4: THE WAY OF BEAUTY
I.
Examples of distressing images: Oedipus the King; Picasso’s “Guernica”; Munch’s “The Scream.”
Beauty doesn’t seem to be the “nice” or the “pleasant.”
So what does it mean to say that something is beautiful? “It means simply that this object is so perfect or integral, so well-proportioned in itself, so clear in its intelligible form that the knowing faculty is delighted in the contemplation of it. St. Thomas: Pulchrum est quod visum placet.” (Rover 193). But beauty is not exclusively a property of works of art. How are these qualities in play in a work of art?
II.
But what is the distinctive beauty of the mimetic arts? It is cognitive delight in the work as an imitation or image-sign as well as a delight in the pleasing order of sensible parts (Rover 196).
Example from a story. A beautiful story—in its unity, proportionality, and radiance—shows us the reality of the way things are in a way that summons the best expression of our appetites.
III.
So is beauty objective? Most certainly. But this doesn’t mean that preferences aren’t legitimate, or that just anyone is in the best position to judge what is a beautiful work of art. Sometimes we can be repulsed by what is genuinely beautiful: education is needed. Sometimes, too, we are overwhelmed by the beauty of something—our intellect and appetites are smitten—even though we have little understanding of why it’s beautiful. Beauty is powerful like this. This is why people talk about the via pulchritudinis (the way of beauty).
LESSON 5: VISUAL ARTS, ALONG WITH THE SPECIAL CASE OF MUSIC
I.
In this final lesson we’ll look more closely at painting and other visual arts, as well as music, and see how they are best understood by analogy to the narrative arts. Music, as the most abstract of the arts, presents a special case. Can music also be thought of as an imitation of human beings in action?
Other narrative arts (involving song and dance): opera, dance, ballet. These are all “arguments” about the quest for happiness. And they are beautiful insofar as they imitate what is true with unity, proportionality, and radiance.
II.
How to “read” a painting or a sculpture as a kind of narrative about human happiness. Extended discussion of examples from both narrative and non-narrative art.
III.
The special case of music. Oesterle, music, and the voice.
“But rhythms and melodies contain the greatest likenesses of the true natures of anger, gentleness, courage, temperance, and their opposites, and of all the other components of character as well” (Aristotle, Politics 8.5 1340a17). For Aristotle, music imitates emotions, and all the other components of character. “Moreover, everyone who listens to representations comes to have the corresponding emotions, when the rhythms and melodies these representations contain are taken in isolation” (Politics 8.5 1340a10-12).
But music does not only image emotion. Oesterle: music imitates the emotions coming under the sway of reason (Aristotle Politics 8.5: “all the other components of character as well”). So those two elements of reason and the appetites, in particular the emotions, come into play as well.
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GREAT PHOTO!!!!!!