GEORGE DICKIE—The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude

Philosophy Looks at the Arts
ed. Joseph Margolis
(Third Edition, 1987)

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What to do with this, knowing that it comes not at the end but at the beginning of a long series of refinements, abandonments and reformulations?

I only know how to do one thing, so that's what I'll be doing here.

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The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude

GEORGE DICKIE

[orig. 1964]

Some recent articles¹ have suggested the unsatisfactoriness of the notion of the aesthetic attitude and it is now time for a fresh look at that encrusted article of faith.

Note 1 lists two articles:

Marshall Cohen, "Appearance and the Aesthetic Attitude" (1959)

Joseph Margolis, "Aesthetic Perception" (1960)

This conception has been valuable to aesthetics and criticism in helping wean them from a sole concern with beauty and related notions. However, I shall argue that the aesthetic attitude is a myth...

There is a range of theories which differ according to how strongly the aesthetic attitude is characterized. This variation is reflected in the language the theories employ. The strongest variety is Edward Bullough's theory of psychical distance, recently defended by Sheila Dawson.⁴

"'Distancing' as an Aesthetic Principle" (1961)

The central technical term of this theory is "distance" used as a verb to denote an action which either constitutes or is necessary for the aesthetic attitude. These theorists use such sentences as "He distanced (or failed to distance) the play." The second variety is widely held but has been defended most vigorously in recent years by Jerome Stolnitz and Eliseo Vivas. The central technical term of this variety is "disinterested" used either as an adverb or as an adjective. This weaker theory speaks not of a special kind of action (distancing) but of an ordinary kind of action (attending) done in a certain way (disinterestedly). These first two versions are perhaps not so different as my classification suggests. However, the language of the two is different enough to justify separate discussions. ...

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... In the following I shall be concerned with the notion of aesthetic attitude and this notion may have little or no connection with the ordinary notion of an attitude.

Presumably because that connection is similarly tenuous for the theories and theorists thusly implicated?

The above is implicitly cognitive, but of course "distance" or "disinterest" may always be rendered in a more simple, bullheaded, behavioral way, should anyone care to. To say that the aesthetic attitude is a myth is to suggest, among other things, that we cannot simply go out and locate clear behavioral instances which would prove its existence; we cannot easily point to unequivocal instances of people exemplifying this "attitude." At that point, the weak explanatory power of the theory itself is the least of our problems; a more severe problem is that there seemingly are no clear examples of anything in this arena: an "attitude" (especially in the ordinary notion) is a very difficult thing to prove the existence of. The skeptic will always have that in their favor. i.e. I think the first problem we face in handling the ordinary notion of an attitude is that this "ordinary notion" presumes (and is presumed by some!) to be an artifact of naive cognitivism when really it is an artifact of naive behaviorism.

Even under the rubric of Taleb's Plane Crash, where the severity of an event is permitted to modulate its epistemic weight, "attitudes" per se are slippery. An unhinged person can stab a random bystander on the street without unequivocally revealing any "attitude" held toward the bystander, not in any cognitivistic sense at least; but severity tends to modulate this slipperier question of "attitude" anyway, just as it modulates the various epistemologies of prevention, enforcement, and punishment. It may be unclear whether "passion" or "prejudice" was evinced, but "hostility" and "violence" certainly have been. These "attitudes" may well be "myths," as so many radical reformers of the law enforcement and justice systems have suggested. What is left, then? Behavior. Material. The wound, the weapon, and the surveillance footage serve here as the only unequivocal evidence of anything at all. And the student of "attitudes" seems condemned to do without it!

In this regard, the phrase "aesthetic attitude" is indeed misleading and hardly seems essential. What would salvage it? I would think at least this much is needed: (1) A stipulated definition of the concept; (2) stipulated criteria for recognizing it behaviorally; and (3) the opportunity to observe human beings who do not know they are being observed nor for what purpose.

Paraphrasing Bullough, Cupchik writes:

"The medium can affect psychical distance, sometimes hindering and at other times facilitating it. Thus, the fact that ‘living human beings’ are ‘vehicles of dramatic art’ is a problem faced by theatrical performances that encourage under-distancing."

What better lens with which to view the 2020s than this? "Distance" may be the wrong metaphor, but "interest" seems exactly right. Many people nowadays are very "interested" in certain aspects of casting in a way that they seemingly were not (were not compelled to be) even in Bullough's time. There's nothing inferential or dissociative or dualist about saying so: word and action alike are crystal clear in numerous concrete instances. Strictly speaking, "attitudes" will always be slippery; "interest" on the other hand is a canonical issue in the social and psychological sciences. We may be headed up the river, but we at least have a paddle.

I

Psychical distance, according to Bullough, is a psychological process by virtue of which a person puts some object... "out of gear" with the practical interests of the self. Miss Dawson maintains that it is "the beauty of the phenomenon, which captures our attention,... "

Later she maintains that some persons (critics, actors, members of an orchestra, and the like) "distance deliberately."

Well, let's flag the orchestra brats here, just in case. There's nothing at all controversial in applying the theory, as thus far elaborated, to what orchestra performers do; and of course this differentiates them from the(ir) audience, drastically and infamously so. That certainly is a dire problem for the theory if it is to be applied indiscriminately to other interest(ed) groups outside of the orchestra pit.

Miss Dawson, following Bullough, discusses cases in which people are unable to bring off an act of distancing or are incapable of being induced into a state of being distanced. She uses Bullough's example of the jealous ("under-distanced") husband at a performance of Othello who is unable to keep his attention on the play because he keeps thinking of his own wife's suspicious behavior. On the other hand, if "we are mainly concerned with the technical details of its [the play's] presentation, then we are said to be over-distanced."

So, the players themselves are over- rather than under-  distanced??

There is, then, a species of action—distancing—which may be deliberately done and which initiates a state of consciousness—being distanced.

The problems with this seem obvious enough! One does not turn the aesthetic faculties on and off at will. But there remains the observational problem of deliberate as against ascribed species of action. On what behaviors might such ascriptions (or non-ascriptions) be soundly based?

Once again, it's tough to deny that something like "distance" is not evinced in divergent audience reactions to sensitive or sensational content; and it's tough to argue that "interests" are not most or all of the reason. What am I missing here? It seems obvious that there are at least occasional cases where this much is undeniable. Perhaps Song of the South is a useful example, especially considering that it was immediately controversial.

Of course all that sort of thing is indeed mostly "cognitive" in nature. What is behavioral? How about: Repeated viewings? Conferral of awards? How about: The life cycle of a song?

How about it, tweeps?

The question is: Are there actions denoted by "to distance" or states of consciousness denoted by "being distanced"?

I have been suggesting that the wildly different epistemological protocols for establishing the commission of actions as against states of consciousness might be enabling some unwarranted skepticism of the Aesthetes.

Probably even I would answer "no" to both parts of the above question as it is given, but I would want to take a close look at so-called "contexts of action" before entirely discarding the theory of "distance" and "disinterest." Someone (Danto?) has the example of two people and a tiger in a room: only one person has noticed the tiger, but the other could be alerted to the presence of danger without noticing the tiger themselves, if they have merely noticed the behavior of the first person. No one really is tigerblind, nor tigerpathic, but we do not have to rely upon such implausible ascriptions as these when the stimulus is, say, a TV screen upon which all eyes of family are fixated. Say they're watching one of those nature shows where the tigers devour live prey. I wonder if certain ascriptions of over-/under-distancing, or of interest/disinterest, are not in fact quite easy to make within such "contexts of action" and within shared experiences? I wonder, ultimately, if such ascriptions, then and there, are not in fact quite robust epistemologically, simply because their task is made tractable by familiarity? Whereas these ascriptions become impossible to make only in a normless, faux-universalistic public world where no one knows what to expect from anyone else? What if "institutions" constitute aesthetes the way laws constitute markets? But that is not quite a "social" or "institutional" Theory of Art! It seems more an example of people creating what they need, with the need (as always) both preceding the "institutions" and promising to outlast them. As Chomsky somewhere says, markets were originally a "left-wing" idea.

... I do not recall committing any such special actions or of being induced into any special state,... The distance-theorist may perhaps ask, "But are you not usually oblivious to noises and sights other than those of the play or to the marks on the wall around the painting?" The answer is of course—"Yes." But if "to distance" and "being distanced" simply mean that one's attention is focused, what is the point of introducing new technical terms... ?

Not quite the example I would choose. People can be (usually are) oblivious to all kinds of things despite being entirely focused in the right direction.

Admittedly, the only way we can say even this much is merely by comparing people to other people. If that makes this a "social theory of art," then count me in.

The distance-theorist might argue further, "But surely you put the play (painting, sunset) 'out of gear' with your practical interests?" This question seems to me to be a very odd way of asking (by employing the technical metaphor "out of gear") if I attended to the play rather than thought about my wife or wondered how they managed to move the scenery about.

Hmm. . . obviously something important is coming down the pike here, because there is (to me!) nothing at all odd about the question . Choose any technical metaphor you want. The important part of the question is the notion of practical interests. It seems obvious enough from a 2024 vantage point that, say, "message cinema" (as it may have been called around the time this paper was written) is, definitionally, cinema which preempts precisely this "putting out of gear." But this only points up, again, that we need to agree on a definition of "practical interests."

Why

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not ask me straight out if I paid attention?

Totally fair question here! But it is only the first of several. There are many reasons besides "practical" preoccupations that someone's attention may flag. By raising the specter of "practical" preoccupation, something more specific is honed in on, something further down the chain of proximate causes.

Thus, when Miss Dawson says that the jealous husband under-distanced Othello and that the person with a consuming interest in techniques of stagecraft over-distanced the play, these are just technical and misleading ways of describing two different cases of inattention.

How different are these cases, really? It all depends on our own critical "interest" in the proximal chain. Let's hear Our Man out on this.

In both cases something is being attended to, but in neither case is it the action of the play. To introduce the technical terms "distance," "under-distance," and "over-distance" does nothing but send us chasing after phantom acts and states of consciousness.

True enough, if we are (already) monogamous students of states of consciousness . But if we are students of the total situation, we may be chasing phatoms on account of the breadth of our purview, but they are not the phantoms Our Man thinks they are.

It may indeed be that the terminology arising from the notion of "distance" is misleading on its semantic surface, but it seems to me to have a few advantages too. One need only substitute for Othello some other, less conjugally topical play. If the suggestion is that the play reminds the husband of something from his "real life," i.e. if this is a simple question of prompting, then the problem of "under-distancing" is not really a problem of "consciousness" at all, except perhaps in the too-obvious sense that every waking human action is, of course, a "conscious" action. The problem, rather (if it is one!), is of a certain latent potential "problem" of "consciousness" meeting with precisely some "problematic" stimulus; problematic, that is, in a very particular way.

Once the distancing problem is seen as a two-sided problem of stimulus and response (rather than a mere one-sided problem of consciousness ), suddenly content becomes important; and, just as suddenly, it is not just permissible but actually essential to divorce form from content. That is . . . in the play hypothetical.

All of this, of course, as far as it goes. And we have not gone very far at all here, not yet.

Miss Dawson's commitment to the theory of distance (as a kind of mental insulation material necessary for a work of art if it is to be enjoyed aesthetically) leads her to draw a conclusion so curious as to throw suspicion on the theory.

One remembers the horrible loss of distance in Peter Pan—the moment when Peter says "Do you believe in fairies? . . . If you believe, clap your hands!" the moment when most children would like to slink out of the theatre and not a few cry—not because Tinkerbell may die, but because the magic is gone. What, after all, should we feel like if Lear were to leave Cordelia, come to the front of the stage and say, "All the grown-ups who think that she loves me, shout 'Yes'."

It is hard to believe that the responses of any children could be as theory-bound as those Miss Dawson describes.

It is a bit hard to believe, but also, it's not very sporting to simply refuse to believe it.

In fact, Peter Pan's request for applause is a dramatic high point to which children respond enthusiastically.

I had a thought a few months ago that maybe the long-awaited invention of a time machine will not be for time travel so to speak but rather for photojournalistically recording history. One can only hope, because this would save many people their lives and sanity, all while making it possible, finally, to settle the most ridiculous petty disputes such as just what kind of moment this, e.g., really was for all the children .

The playwright gives the children a momentary chance to become actors in the play. The children do not at that moment lose or snap out of a state of being distanced because they never had or were in any such thing to begin with. The comparison of Peter Pan's appeal to the hypothetical one by Lear is pointless. Peter Pan is a magical play in which almost anything can happen, but King Lear is a play of a different kind.

Okay, well . . . who is theory-bound now, my man?

This has something of the flavor of Arnheim's "reality levels" applied not to representational painting but to theater.

There are, by the way, many plays in which an actor directly addresses the audience...

Yep, no shit. This necessarily permits of no comparison whatsoever with the very specific example proffered by Miss Dawson .

Such plays are unusual, but what is unusual is not necessarily bad; there is no point in trying to lay down rules to which every play must conform independently of the kind of play it is.

I have missed the part where rules to this effect are laid down .

It is perhaps worth noting that Susanne Langer reports the reaction she had as a child to this scene in Peter Pan.

Or perhaps not . . .

Miss Langer was not yet a noted philosopher when she had the reaction !

In either case, she is just one! No more!!

As she remembers it, Peter Pan's appeal shattered the illusion and caused her acute misery. However, she reports that all the other children clapped and laughed and enjoyed themselves.

The point being . . . that she was a philosopher-in-embryo after all?

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II

The second way of conceiving of the aesthetic attitude—as the ordinary action of attending done in a certain way (disinterestedly) is illustrated by the work of Jerome Stolnitz and Eliseo Vivas. Stolnitz defines "aesthetic attitude" as "disinterested and sympathetic attention to and contemplation of any object of awareness whatever, for its own sake alone." Stolnitz defines the main terms of his definition: "disinterested" means "no concern for any ulterior purpose.", "sympathetic" means "accept the object on its own terms to appreciate it"; and "contemplation" means "perception directed toward the object in its own right and the spectator is not concerned to analyze it or ask questions about it."

What a terrible way to live.
/^;

The notion of disinterestedness, which Stolnitz has elsewhere shown to be seminal for modern aesthetic theory, is the key term here. Thus, it is necessary to be clear about the nature of disinterested attention to the various arts. It can make sense to speak, for example, of listening disinterestedly to music only if it makes sense to speak of listening interestedly to music.

My note says:
This is weird.
"Interestedly" could
mean what Lasch
calls Instrumental
as against practical.

Later:
Yep!! It does not make (much) sense to speak of listening interestedly to music , but I'm not sure what this proves in the matters under consideration here.

As a last resort, there is always the case of the unfortunate Music Major cramming for one of Dr. Grayson's drop-the-needle tests. Dickie (below) has already decided that this is a special case which need not be taken too seriously. It would be better that it need not be taken too seriously, but I do fear that he was wrong to think so; and not merely because there are now many more Music Majors in the world than there were in 1964, although that is certainly its own problem!

Conjure some contemporary examples of interested audition. Be polite! But do conjure them, please. And then, apply this back to the above polemic, now with the benefit of some hindsight. Surely Miss Dawson cannot have foreseen all of that any better than Mister Dickie did; all the same, perhaps he dismisses her a bit too rashly here.

It would make no sense to speak of walking fast unless walking could be done slowly. Using Stolnitz's definition of "disinterestedness," the two situations would have to be described as "listening with no ulterior purpose" (disinterestedly) and "listening with an ulterior purpose" (interestedly). Note that what initially appears to be a perceptual distinction—listening in a certain way (interestedly or disinterestedly)—turns out to be a motivational or an intentional distinction—listening for or with a certain purpose. Suppose Jones listens to a piece of music for the purpose of being able to analyze and describe it on an examination the next day and Smith listens to the same music with no such ulterior purpose. There is certainly a difference between the motives and intentions of the two men: Jones has an ulterior purpose and Smith does not, but this does not mean Jones's listening differs from Smith's.

Hmm . . . I beg to differ!

It is possible that both men enjoy the music or that both be bored.

Well . . . canonically speaking (this is a twice-over Music Major speaking to you, sir), it is far more likely that Jones will be bored in this hypothetical; and, for monogamous students of phantom psychological artifacts, it is very easy to explain why; much easier, actually, than for thoroughgoing analytic philosophers of art (apparently).

But the philosophers have already got the argument cinched at that point, because all such truisms are true only on the whole, and therefore they cannot rationally be leveraged to meet such arguments as above; all of this despite the fact that everyone knows (if they have been to music school) that these on-the-whole truisms have some teeth to them.

That much being conceded (and it is a lot to concede!!), the bare statement that the two men's listening does not actually differ is a statement that I find much harder to believe than anybody's recollections of Peter Pan. It seems possible to believe this only by withholding from one side of the polemic the ability to make use of the type of evidence marshaled by the other side.

The attention of either or both may flag and so on. It is important to note that a person's motive or intention is different from his action...

Shaw 'nuff!!

There is only one way to listen to (to attend to) music, although the listening may be more or less attentive and there may be a variety of motives, intentions, and reasons for doing so and a variety of ways of being distracted from the music.

Very true, again.

This is extremely interesting in light of more recent developments: we are being veritably railroaded into cognitivism here. I'd much rather stay out of cognitivism at almost all costs, unless and until forced to make such an appeal; and so here, right tf here, is the particular rhetoric which does so. This cannot possibly have been knowing and intentional, could it? But it is very effective anyway. Seems to me that Dickie is speaking behavioristically here, and so if we want to object we need to have some cognitivist findings in our quiver. i.e. In order to object, we first have to untangle the nexus between ways to listen to (to attend to) music and motives, intentions, and reasons for doing so .

Perhaps one clue to the formulation of an objection is in the last bit above: if there truly are a variety of ways of being distracted , then how can there be just one way to listen ? It seems more plausible that, to borrow a McLuhanism, we are all patchworks of distractedness, and the resulting pattern depends upon (is determined by) our "interest."

In order to avoid a common mistake of aestheticians—drawing a conclusion about one kind of art and assuming it holds for all the arts—the question of disinterested attention must be considered for arts other than music. How would one look at a painting disinterestedly or interestedly? An example of alleged interested viewing might be the case in which a

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painting reminds Jones of his grandfather and Jones proceeds to muse about or to regale a companion with tales of his grandfather's pioneer exploits. Such incidents would be characterized by attitude-theorists as examples of using a work of art as a vehicle for associations and so on, i.e., cases of interested attention. But Jones is not looking at (attending to) the painting at all, although he may be facing it with his eyes open. Jones is now musing or attending to the story he is telling, although he had to look at the painting at first to notice that it resembled his grandfather. Jones is not now looking at the painting interestedly, since he is not now looking at (attending to) the painting. Jones's thinking or telling a story about his grandfather is no more a part of the painting than his speculating about the artist's intentions is and, hence, his musing, telling, speculating, and so on cannot properly be described as attending to the painting interestedly. What attitude-aestheticians are calling attention to is the occurrence of irrelevant associations which distract the viewer from the painting or whatever. But distraction is not a special kind of attention, it is a kind of inattention.

True enough, but this literal parsing of terms seems not to be rooted in the best of intentions; it is effective in problematizing the concept of (dis)interestedness only by looking at the moment of encounter and compartmentalizing that moment entirely from any and all later cognition-and-behavior.

This seems to me not an entirely good-faith effort at parsing the argument. A more generous look would parse so-called "attitude theory" differently: one possibility which springs immediately to mind in light of the above would be the (hypothetical) observation that Jones cannot look at a certain image (better yet, family of images) without landing in a similarly narrow "family" of storytelling cognitions-and-behaviors: there is a threshold of explicitness in representing certain content beyond which Jones' cognition-and-behavior becomes predictable. It may be, then, that although Jones brings a perfect disinterest to his encounters with artworks, certain artworks with certain semantic contents are almost certain to shatter this disinterest.

This is a pure hypothetical, but it seems to me barely a hypothetical at all; on which point the discussion must be referred to empirical rather than philosophical work!

The flipside of this hypothetical: Jones is a profoundly "interested" art consumer who consciously and consistently seeks out only certain semantic associations, and who therefore succeeds in finding them in every kind of art except perhaps for fully realist portrature, documentary photography, and the like.

Consider now disinterestedness and plays. I shall make use of some interesting examples offered by J. O. Urmson,¹⁸

18. "What Makes a Situation Aesthetic?" in Philosophy Looks at the Arts, Joseph Margolis (ed.), (New York, 1962). Reprinted from Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 31 (1957), pp. 75-92.

but I am not claiming that Urmson is an attitude-theorist. Urmson never speaks in his article of aesthetic attitude but rather of aesthetic satisfaction. In addition to aesthetic satisfaction, Urmson mentions economic, moral, personal, and intellectual satisfactions. I think the attitude-theorist would consider these last four kinds of satisfaction as "ulterior purposes" and, hence, cases of interested attention. Urmson considers the case of a man in the audience of a play who is delighted. It is discovered that his delight is solely the result of the fact that there is a full house—the man is the impresario of the production. Urmson is right in calling this impresario's satisfaction economic rather than aesthetic,... However, my concern is not with Urmson's examples as such but with the attitude theory. This impresario is certainly an interested party in the fullest sense of the word, but is his behavior an instance of interested attention as distinct from the supposed disinterested attention of the average citizen who sits beside him? In the situation as described by Urmson it would not make any sense to say that the impresario is attending to the play at all, since his sole concern at the moment is the till.

Again, this seems like a less-than-good-faith parsing of the argument. Why can't we assume that the impressario intends to take in his play as an audience member but is unable to make good on this intention because it is compromised by another consideration? That seems to be the hypothetical that "attitude theory" is getting at.

(The reason why we can't assume this is because, purportedly, Urmson has said solely . Maybe that is the reason that this isn't a worthy example?)

[Note from the moment:]
I'm at Bootleggers right now, half "distracted" by the TVs. Holy shit!! WNBA!! Crazy topical example!! And ironic for it to arise this way!!

... I do not mean to suggest that an impresario could not attend to his play if he found himself taking up a seat in a full house; I am challenging the sense of disinterested attention. As an example of personal satisfaction Urmson mentions the spectator whose daughter is in the play.

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Intellectual satisfaction involves the solution of technical problems of plays and moral satisfaction the consideration of the effects of the play on the viewer's conduct. All three of these candidates which the attitude-theorist would propose as cases of interested attention turn out to be just different ways of being distracted from the play and, hence, not cases of interested attention to the play.

A bizarre line of argument. It seems that the play has been transfigured into an Ideal rather than Material or Real entity. Calling this kind of parent distracted from the play doesn't make sense any other way.

Of course, there is no reason to think that in any of these cases the distraction or inattention must be total, although it could be.

This is the right answer to the wrong question,...

In fact, such inattentions often occur but are so fleeting that nothing of the play, music, or whatever is missed or lost.

...and once again...

The fact that such inattentions often occur even in those who qualify as "disinterested" is actually crucial in pointing up the problem with the line taken here. An "interest" is (1) a peculiar kind of distraction, and (2) it may arise in varying degrees. This is why the impressario example seems to me actually a very good one to consider: the impressario can be made or un-made in an instant.

Fast-forward this to today, when we still (yes) have impressarios and have exponentially multiplied the ways they may be un-made: imagine taking a risk on an irreverent performer who may say something so funny or profound that it "makes" everyone concerned in an instant, or it may "un-make" them all just as quickly. It's not hard to imagine this particular channel of producerly "interest" being highly contingent, i.e. depending upon the cultural climate; it's not hard to imagine because that's exactly what happened as the 2010s wore on. I would bet that the validity and salience of the impressario example could be measured empirically in the blood pressure of so many present-day media executives. In a less fraught climate where their every move is not being watched quite so closely, the contour of their "interest" would be correspondingly different.

The example of a playwright watching a rehearsal or an out-of-town performance with a view to rewriting the script has been suggested to me as a case in which a spectator is certainly attending to the play (unlike our impresario) and attending in an interested manner. ... Our playwright—like Jones, who was to be examined on the music—has ulterior motives. Furthermore, the playwright, unlike an ordinary spectator, can change the script after the performance or during a rehearsal. But how is our playwright's attention (as distinguished from his motives and intentions) different from that of an ordinary viewer? ...the kinds of things which may happen to the playwright's attention are no different from those that may happen to an ordinary spectator , although the two may have quite different motives and intentions.

Honestly, I question the author's sincerity by this time, so absurd does this latter declaration seem to me. Maybe I'm too fond of my own compositions! Meaning: maybe I'm a composer.

(Since music is not theater, I would need a playwright to tell me what they think about assuming it holds for music too.)

For the discussion of disinterested-interested reading of literature it is appropriate to turn to the arguments of Eliseo Vivas whose work is largely concerned with literature. Vivas remarks that "By approaching a poem in a nonaesthetic mode it may function as history, as social criticism, as diagnostic evidence of the author's neuroses, and in an indefinite number of other ways."²⁰

"Contextualism Reconsidered," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 18 (1959), pp. 224-225.

Vivas further notes that according to Plato "the Greeks used Homer as an authority on war and almost anything under the sun," and that a certain poem "can be read as erotic poetry or as an account of a mystical experience." The difference between reading a poem as history or whatever (reading it nonaesthetically) and reading it aesthetically depends on how we approach or read it. A poem "does not come self-labelled," but presumably is a poem only when it is read in a certain way—when it is an object of aesthetic experience. For Vivas, being an aesthetic object means being the object of the aesthetic attitude. He defines the aesthetic experience as "an experience of rapt attention which involves the intransitive apprehension of an object's immanent meanings and values in their full presentational immediacy."

Yes, this is an absurd argument. As an adolescent, I often accorded rapt attention this same pride of place. Clearly enough, now, that is absurd. "Attention" is not a one-sided concept but rather a two-sided (at least) mediation between subject and object; what might be called the vicissitudes of both subject and object inevitably explode "attention" into a motley. So, I agree that it is useless philosophically in precisely the ways our author here finds it to be.

What does this prove in the matters at hand? It proves only that the authors and arguments appealed to here are not good ones. I know nothing of Vivas besides his hatchet job on Marcuse; it's unfair to judge solely on this, certainly, but let's just say that it doesn't inspire confidence!

For me, now, a big part of the refinement of this problem has been to realize that the "vicissitudes" of subject and object are at least as determinative of outcomes as are the more readily observable, robustly observable aspects of each. If the contextualist argues that is it how we approach or read that is determinative, then they have presented less than half the story. With some ingenuity, perhaps erotic poetry can be coaxed out of almost any artwork, especially by male readers; but just because someone is able to convince themselves of this doesn't make it an actionable interpretation. To become the basis of any kind of social action, someone else (probably several of them) have to agree that there is something "erotic" in the "poetry" thus considered; and at that point, if these others are dealing in good faith, they won't be able to agree that a monochrome canvas or preclassical symphony is actually a form of "erotic poetry," and they won't be able to ascribe any such erotic authority to those works.

After Milo-quoting-Musil: There are limits to good faith, whereas bad faith knows no bounds. That is an obvious problem with construing things as I have here, but that does not make it tout court an invalid or irrational construal. I think it is both valid and rational, and that it simply points up everything that is so pernicious about taking art as the basis for social action. Start here: if someone does posit a monochrome canvas as, essentially, a form of erotic poetry, there is no valid or rational argument against them. If that is what they say, the only good-faith course of action is to make a determination as to whether or not you are going to take them at their word. Refusing to take them at their word may evince good faith as easily as swallowing everything whole may evince bad faith; such determinations of good or bad faith must consider the total situation. It is only the total refusal to entertain the assertion that counts tout court as bad faith.

Vivas maintains that his defini-

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ton "helps me understand better what I can and what I cannot do when I read The Brothers [Karamazov]" and his definition "forces us to acknowledge that The Brothers Karamazov can hardly be read as art." This acknowledgment means that we probably cannot intransitively apprehend The Brothers because of its size and complexity.

"Intransitive" is the key term here and Vivas's meaning must be made clear. A number of passages reveal his meaning but perhaps the following is the best. "Heaving [sic] once seen a hockey game in slow motion, I am prepared to testify that it was an object of pure intransitive experience [attention] for I was not interested in which team won the game and no external factors mingled with my interest in the beautiful rhythmic Now of the slow-moving men." It appears that Vivas's "intransitive attention" has the same meaning as Stolnitz's "disinterested attention," namely, "attending with no ulterior purpose." Thus, the question to ask is "How does one attend to (read) a poem or any literary work transitively?" ...let us consider the examples Vivas offers. He mentions "a type of reader" who uses a poem or parts of poem as a springboard for "loose, uncontrolled, relaxed day-dreaming, wool-gathering rambles, free from the contextual control" of the poem. But surely it would be wrong to say such musing is a case of transitively attending to a poem, since it is clearly a case of not attending to a poem.

:=/

Another supposed way of attending to a poem transitively is by approaching it "as diagnostic evidence of the author's neuroses." Vivas is right if he means that there is no critical point in doing this since it does not throw light on the poem. But this is a case of using information gleaned from a poem to make inferences about its author rather than attending to a poem. If anything can be said to be attended to here it is the author's neuroses (at least they are being thought about). This kind of case is perhaps best thought of as a rather special way of getting distracted from a poem. ...it is at best a case of attending to certain features of a poem and ignoring others.

. . . And there's nothing at all to be said about just why someone, sometime might attend  to certain features? And other people, other times, to other features?

Another way that poetry may allegedly be read transitively is by reading it as history. This case is different from the two preceding ones since poetry

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often contains history (makes historical statements or at least references) but does not (usually) contain statements about the author's neuroses and so on nor does it contain statements about what a reader's free associations are about (otherwise we would not call them "free associations"). Reading a poem as history suggests that we are attending to (thinking about) historical events by way of attending to a poem—the poem is a time-telescope. Consider the following two sets of lines:

In fourteen hundred and ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Someone might read both of these raptly and not know that they make historical references (inaccurately in one case)—might this be a case of intransitive attention? How would the above reading differ—so far as attention is concerned—from the case of a reader who recognized the historical content of the poetic lines? The two readings do not differ as far as attention is concerned. ... Perhaps by "reading as history" Vivas means "reading simply as history." But even this meaning does not mark out a special kind of attention but rather means that only a single aspect of a poem is being noticed... [e.g.] Some poems simply are or contain social criticism, and a complete reading must not fail to notice this fact.

I can't imagine that complete reading is a sensical concept.

Can't aspects be multiplied endlessly?

The above cases of alleged interested attending can be sorted out in the following way. Jones listening to the music and our playwright watching the rehearsal are both attending with ulterior motives to a work of art, but there is no reason to suppose that the attention of either is different in kind from that of an ordinary spectator.

Happily conceded.

But the kind of experience must be different in some meaningful way?

The reader who reads a poem as history is simply attending to an aspect of a poem. On the other hand, the remaining cases—Jones beside the painting telling of his grandfather, the gloating impresario, daydreaming while "reading" a poem, and so on—are simply cases of not attending to the work of art.

Could they be cases of intending to attend but proving unable to do so for some specific reason?

In general, I conclude that "disinterestedness" or "intransitiveness" cannot properly be used to refer to a special kind of attention. "Disinterested-

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ness" is a term which is used to make clear that an action has certain kinds of motives. Hence, we speak of disinterested findings (of boards of inquiry, disinterested verdicts (of judges and juries), and so on. Attending to an object, of course, has its motives but the attending itself is not interested or disinterested according to whether its motives are of the kind which motivate interested or disinterested action (as findings and verdicts might), although the attending may be more or less close.

Well then we should be examining motives!

I have argued that the second way of conceiving the aesthetic attitude is also a myth, or at least that its main content—disinterested attention—is; but I must now try to establish that the view misleads aesthetic theory. I shall argue that the attitude-theorist is incorrect about (1) the way in which he wishes to set the limits of aesthetic relevance; (2) the relation of the critic to a work of art; and (3) the relation of morality to aesthetic value.

...

First, what is meant by "aesthetic relevance"? Stolnitz defines the problem by asking the question: "Is it ever 'relevant' to the aesthetic experience to have thoughts or images or bits of knowledge which are not present within the object itself?" Stolnitz begins by summarizing Bullough's experiment and discussion of single colors and associations. Some associations absorb the spectator's attention and distract him from the color and some associations "fuse" with the color. Associations of the latter kind are aesthetic and the former are not. Stolnitz draws the following conclusion about associations:

If the aesthetic experience is as we have described it, then whether an association is aesthetic depends on whether it is compatible with the attitude of "disinterested attention." If the association re-enforces the focusing of attention upon the object, by "fusing" with the object and thereby giving it added "life and significance," it is genuinely aesthetic. If, however, it arrogates attention to itself and away from the object, it undermines the aesthetic attitude.

It is not clear how something could fuse with a single color, but "fusion" is one of those words in aesthetics which is rarely defined. Stolnitz then

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makes use of a more fruitful example, one from I.A. Richards's Practical Criticism. He cites the responses of students to the poem which begins:

Between the erect and solemn trees
I will go down upon my knees;
I shall not find this day
So meet a place to pray.

The image of a rugby forward running arose in the mind of one student-reader on reading the third verse of this poem. A cathedral was suggested to a second reader of the poem. The cathedral image "is congruous with both the verbal meaning of the poem and the emotions and mood which it expresses. It does not divert attention away from the poem." The rugby image is presumably incongruous and diverts attention from the poem.

It is a confusion to take compatibility with disinterested attention as a criterion of relevance. If, as I have tried to show, disinterested attention is a confused notion, then it will not do as a satisfactory criterion. Also, when Stolnitz comes to show why the cathedral image is, and the rugby image is not relevant, the criterion he actually uses is congruousness with the meaning of the poem, which is quite independent of the notion of disinterestedness. The problem is perhaps best described as the problem of relevance to a poem, or more generally, to a work of art, rather than aesthetic relevance.

i.e. "Semantic relevance."

Aesthetics are notoriously subjective. Semantics are somewhat more tractable. Except perhaps when the object is a poem. In that case the reverse may be true!

A second way in which the attitude theory misleads aesthetics is its contention that a critic's relationship to a work of art is different in kind from the relationship of other persons to the work. H. S. Langfeld ... characterizes the critical attitude as "intellectually occupied in coldly estimating . . . merits" and the aesthetic attitude as responding "emotionally to" a work of art. ... Stolnitz declares that if a percipient of a work of art "has the purpose of passing judgment upon it, his attitude is not aesthetic." ... appreciation (perceiving with the aesthetic attitude) and criticism (seeking for reasons to support an evaluation of a work) are (1) distinct and (2) "psychologically opposed to each other." The critical attitude is questioning, analytical, probing for strengths and weakness, and so on. The aesthetic attitude is just the opposite: "It commits our allegiance to the object freely and unquestioningly"; ... Stolnitz does not, of course, argue that

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criticism is unimportant for appreciation. He maintains criticism plays an important and necessary role ... but he questions, "Does this mean that we must analyze, measure in terms of value-criteria, etc., during the supposedly aesthetic experience?" His answer is "No" and he maintains that criticism must occur "prior to the aesthetic encounter," or it will interfere with appreciation.

How does Stolnitz know that criticism will always interfere with appreciation?

Takes one to know one!

His conclusion sounds like one based upon the observations of actual cases, but I do not think it is. ... According to his view, to appreciate an object aesthetically one has to perceive it with no ulterior purpose. But the critic has an ulterior purpose ... But here, as previously, Stolnitz confuses a perceptual distinction with a motivational one.

. . . And motivation doesn't mediate perception?

If it were possible to attend disinterestedly or interestedly, then perhaps the critic (as percipient) would differ from other percipients. But if my earlier argument about attending is correct, the critic differs from other percipients only in his motives and intentions and not in the way in which he attends to a work of art.

Of course, it might just be a fact that the search for reasons is incompatible with the appreciation of art, but I do not think it is. Several years ago I participated in a series of panel discussions of films. During the showing of each film we were to discuss, I had to take note of various aspects of the film (actor's performance, dramatic development, organization of the screen-plane and screen-space at given moments, and so on) in order later to discuss the films. I believe that this practice not only helped educate me to appreciate subsequent films but that it enhanced the appreciation of the films I was analyzing.

I believe that the rationalization always comes last, not first.

...

I am unable to see any significant difference between "perceptively and acutely" attending to a work of art (which Stolnitz holds enhances appreciation) and searching for reasons, so far as the experience of a work of art is concerned.

Well . . . only one of these is a search. That seems like a significant difference!

If I attend perceptively and acutely, I will have certain standards and/or paradigms in mind (not necessarily consciously) and will

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be keenly aware of the elements and relations in the work and will evaluate them to some degree.

But who knows what else might you find if only you were "searching" for it!

Stolnitz writes as if criticism takes place and then is over and done with, but the search for and finding of reasons (noticing this fits in with that, and so on) is continuous in practiced appreciators.

Oh how these appreciators suddenly sound so much like critics!

A practiced viewer does not even have to be looking for a reason, he may just notice a line or an area in a painting, for example; and the line or area becomes a reason why he thinks the painting better or worse. A person may be a critic (not necessarily a good one) without meaning to be or without even realizing it.

Yep, that's exactly what I would say! It would be surprising, actually, if the "critics" of the world did mean to be what they are, or if they did realize what they are! Precisely because it takes interestedness to make a critic! That's what "criticism" is! But not everyone who notices also arrogates to critic-ize. Not everyone who is practiced in "noticing" has an ounce of "criticism" in their body.

There is one final line worth pursuing. Stolnitz's remarks suggest that one reason he thinks criticism and appreciation incompatible is that they compete with one another for time ... But seeking and finding reasons (criticism) does not compete for time with appreciation. First, to seek for a reason means to be ready and able to notice something and to be thus ready and able as one attends does not compete for time with the attending. In fact, I should suppose that seeking for reasons would tend to focus attention more securely on the work of art. Second, finding a reason is an achievement, like winning a race. (It takes time to run a race but not to win it.) ... How much time does it take to "see" that a note is off key (or on key)? How long does it take to notice that an actor mispronounces a word (or does it right)? ...

If you're lucky, you don't notice any such things, ever!

The ignorant naive are the true aesthetes!

Disinterest is a rather special way of being naive!

... Finding a reason is like coming to understand—it is done in a flash. I do not mean to suggest that one cannot be mistaken in finding a reason. ...

A third way in which the attitude theory misleads aesthetic theory is its contention that aesthetic value is always independent of morality. This view is perhaps not peculiar to the attitude theory, but it is a logical consequence of the attitude approach. Two quotations from attitude-theorists will establish the drift of their view of morality and aesthetic value.

We are either concerned with the beauty of the object or with some other value of the same. Just as soon, for example, as ethical considerations occur to our mind, our attitude shifts.

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Any of us might reject a novel because it seems to conflict with our moral beliefs. . . . When we do so . . . we have not read the book aesthetically, for we have interposed moral . . . responses of our own which are alien to it. This disrupts the aesthetic attitude. We cannot then say that the novel is aesthetically bad, for we have not permitted ourselves to consider it aesthetically. To maintain the aesthetic attitude, we must follow the lead of the object and respond in concert with it.

This conception of the aesthetic attitude functions to hold the moral aspects and the aesthetic aspects of the work of art firmly apart. Presumably, ... the moral aspects of a work of art cannot be an object of aesthetic attention because aesthetic attention is by definition disinterested and the moral aspects are somehow practical (interested). ...

David Pole in a recent article⁴⁴ has argued that the moral vision which a work of art may embody is aesthetically significant.

44. "Morality and the Assessment of Literature," Philosophy, vol. 37 (1962), pp. 193-207.

It should perhaps be remarked at this point that not all works of art embody a moral vision ... but certainly some novels, some poems, and some films and plays do. ... Pole notes the curious fact that while so many critics approach works of art in "overtly moralistic terms, it is a "philosophical commonplace . . . that the ethical and the aesthetic modes . . . form different categories." I suspect that many philosophers would simply say that these critics are confused about their roles. But Pole assumes that philosophical theory "should take notice of practice" and surely he is right.

Of course we ought to take notice. But we do not have to acquiesce. When has practice ever been sufficient to our needs? When it has not been, why has it not been?

In agreeing with Pole's assumption I should like to reserve the right to argue in specific cases that a critic may be misguided. This right is especially necessary in a field such as aesthetics because the language and practice of critics is so often burdened with ancient theory. Perhaps all moralistic criticism is wrong, but philosophers should not rule it out of order at the very beginning by use of a definition.

Pole thinks that the moral vision presented by a particular work of art will be either true or false (perhaps a mixture of true and false might occur). If a work has a false moral vision, then something "is lacking within the work itself. But to say that is to say that the [work] is internally

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incoherent; some particular aspect must jar with what—on the strength of the rest—we claim a right to demand. And here the moral fault that we have found will count as an aesthetic fault too." Pole is trying to show that the assessment of the moral vision of a work of art is just a special case of coherence or incoherence, and since everyone would agree that coherence is an aesthetic category, the assessment of the moral vision is an aesthetic assessment.

I think Pole's conclusion is correct but take exception to some of his arguments. First, I am uncertain whether it is proper to speak of a moral vision being true or false, and would want to make a more modest claim—that a moral vision can be judged to be acceptable or unacceptable. (I am not claiming Pole is wrong and my claim is not inconsistent with his.) Second, I do not see that a false (or unacceptable) moral vision makes a work incoherent. I should suppose that to say a work is coherent or incoherent is to speak about how its parts fit together and this involves no reference to something outside the work as the work's truth or falsity does.

In any event, it seems to me that a faulty moral vision can be shown to be an aesthetic fault independently of Pole's consideration of truth and coherence. As Pole's argument implies, a work's moral vision is a part of the work. Thus, any statement—descriptive or evaluative—about the work's moral vision is a statement about the work; and any statement about a work is a critical statement and, hence, falls within the aesthetic domain.

Less said the better!

To judge a moral vision to be morally unacceptable is to judge it defective and this amounts to saying that the work of art has a defective part. (Of course, a judgment of the acceptability of a moral vision may be wrong, ... ) Thus, a work's moral vision may be an aesthetic merit or defect just as a work's degree of unity is a merit or defect. But what justifies saying that a moral vision is a part of a work of art? Perhaps "part" is not quite the right word but it serves to make the point clear enough. A novel's moral vision is an essential part of the novel and if it were removed (I am not sure how such surgery could be carried out) the novel would be greatly changed. Anyway, a novel's moral vision is not like its covers or binding. However, someone might still argue that even though a work's moral vision is defective and the moral vision is part of the work, that this defect is not an aesthetic defect. How is "aesthetic" being used here? It is being used to segregate certain aspects or parts of works of art such as formal and stylistic aspects from such aspects as a work's moral vision. But it seems to me that the separation is only nominal.

Suit yourself!

The thesis of essential parthood seems inarguable, but he might better have said "integral" rather than "essential"; this more fully contrasts with the materially "discrete" covers or binding. Axiomatically, removal of some integral part portends qualitative change to the whole. But the question of removal per se really is oblique to the question of segregating certain aspects. Who is advocating for removal anyway?!

"Aesthetic" has been selected as a name for a certain subset of characteristics of works of art. I certainly cannot object to such a stipula-

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tion, since an underlying aim of this essay is to suggest the vacuousness or the term "aesthetic." My concern at this point is simply to insist that a work's moral vision is a part of the work and that, therefore, a critic can legitimately describe and evaluate it.

No aesthete could possibly quibble with this part! But suddenly the Stolnitzian theory of competing for time has its day! It takes time to describe and evaluate! The easiest thing in the world is to simply refrain from doing so!

I would call any defect or merit which a critic can legitimately point out an aesthetic defect or merit, but what we call it does not matter.

It would, of course, be a mistake to judge a work solely on the basis of its moral vision (it is only one part). The fact that some critics have judged works of art in this way is perhaps as much responsible as the theory of aesthetic attitude for the attempts to separate morality from the aesthetic. In fact, such criticism is no doubt at least partly responsible for the rise of the notion of the aesthetic attitude.

A more parsimonious explanation: At some point in the past, people started to notice that their moral and aesthetic senses were in fact separate, somehow or other; or at least this seemed to be the case whenever they were confronted with morally repugnant yet aesthetically arresting content. Who hasn't stumbled into that impasse a few (thousand) times?

...

III

... "If looking at a picture and attending closely to how it looks is not really to be in the aesthetic attitude, then what on earth is?" I shall take this sentence [of Tomas] as formulating the weakest version of the aesthetic attitude. ...

But the aesthetic attitude ("the hallmark of modern aesthetics") in this formulation is a great letdown—it no longer seems to say anything significant. Nevertheless, this does seem to be all that is left after the aesthetic attitude has been purged of distancing and disinterestedness. The only thing which prevents the aesthetic attitude from collapsing into simple attention is the qualification closely. ... if the definition has no vices, it seems to have no virtues either. ...

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...

Notes

...