It seems to me that this discussion of 'truth' applied to art is proceeding without the required common agreement, or stipulation, on what 'truth' is supposed to mean, when applied to a work of art, (as opposed to when applied to a scientific conclusion.)
And here I thought this was the point I was trying to make...:-)
Do you want to try your hand at asking Chuzz what he means in these passages, from two separate posts, in one of which he grants Art only "subjective truth" (not as good as "objective" truth), and in the other of which he grants it no "truth" at all?
I think the problem arises when those of us who are not versed in the sciences start to talk about the truths emerging from from the arts as if these truths were on an equal footing with the truths that emerge from science. Clearly, they are not. There is no objective truth in esthetics. If there is a "truth" it is entirely subjective.
Message 10095797
The point that I was making is that there is no "truth" that arises from these arts. Nevertheless they enrich our lives in myriad ways. I enjoy reading Keats, but I would be hard-pressed to point to any truth emerging from his poetry. That is not to say that there is no resonance -- there certainly is. But truth? No.
Message 10096954
And of course I realize that Science is an "analytic activity," and that Art is an "expressive activity." What I would deny is that there is "no truth" in the latter.
Let me take a quick, preliminary stab at defining what I mean by artistic truth. (And please remember it is just "a stab," because I really don't have time to "think" right now. <g>) If, by truth, we mean only "a truth that is independent of mind," that is, that will be true irrespective of who observes it (i.e., if sunrise in Washington, D.C. occurs at 6:00 a.m., any resident of the city will see it rise at 6:00 a.m.), then Art indeed has no "truth."
But we do not go to Art for facts. Or even for opinions. Art does not preach -- it depicts. It gives us visions of worlds, many different worlds. I would say it gives us Truth, with a capital T, in the singular, rather than truths with a small t, in the plural. (That, incidentally, is why we can admire a poem that expresses sentiments we do not share.) It is True, in the sense that love is True: it allows us to participate in the inner lives of others.
To quote Shelley's A Defense of Poetry:
A poem is the image of life expressed in its eternal truth.
Lest anyone think that Shelley was engaged in a bit of special pleading here <g>, let me point out that his essay was not published until years after his death, and that by "poetry" he meant all forms of creative expression.
And Shelley's defense of "poetry" against the charge of "immorality" seems to me to be valid against the charge of "pure subjectivity" as well:
The exertions of Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau, and their disciples, in favour of oppressed and deluded humanity, are entitled to the gratitude of mankind.....But it exceeds all imagination to conceive what would have been the moral condition of the world if neither Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Calderon, Lord Bacon, nor Milton, had ever existed; if Raphael and Michael Angelo had never been born; if the Hebrew poetry had never been translated; if a revival of the study of Greek literature had never taken place; if no monuments of antient <sic> poetry had been handed down to us; and if the poetry of the antient world had been extinguished together with its belief. The human mind could never, except by the intervention of these excitements, have been awakened to the invention of the grosser sciences, and that application of analytical reasoning to the aberrations of society, which it is now attempted to exalt over the direct expression of the inventive and creative faculty itself.
As for your PS, I am afraid that Chuzz may seize on it as proof that there are no "objective" criteria (and hence no "truth") in Art. <g>
I still think it far more important (and far easier) to distinguish Art from Garbage, than to establish hierarchies within Art itself.
Joan |
