the intentional fallacy (wimsatt and beardsley, orig. 1946)

Wimsatt and Beardsley
"The Intentional Fallacy"
(orig. 1946)
in
Margolis,
Philosophy Looks at the Arts
(Third ed., 1987)

[SK's comments]
[minimal proofreading]
[many italics omitted]

[367]

19. The Intentional Fallacy
W. K. WIMSATT, JR. AND
MONROE C. BEARDSLEY

[...] [epigraph] [...]

I

The claim of the author's "intention" upon the critic's judgment has been challenged in a number of recent discussions,

notably in the debate entitled The Personal Heresy, between Professors Lewis and Tillyard.

But it seems doubtful if this claim and most of its romantic corollaries are as yet subject to any widespread questioning.

The present writers, in a short article entitled "Intention" for a Dictionary¹ of literary criticism, raised the issue but were unable to pursue its implications at any length. We argued that the design or intention of the author is

neither available nor desirable

as standard for judging the success of a work of literary art,

and it seems to us that this is a principle which goes deep into some differences in the history of critical attitudes.

It is a principle which

accepted

or

rejected

points to the polar opposites of

classical "imitation"

and

romantic expression.

It entails many specific truths about inspiration, authenticity, biography, literary history, and scholarship, and about some trends of contemporary poetry, especially its allusiveness.

There is hardly a problem of a

[368]

literary criticism in which the critic's approach will not be qualified by his view of "intention."

Carroll—A contemporary introduction—Chapter 3—Part 2

Noël Carroll
Philosophy of Art: A contemporary introduction
(1999)

 

[SK's snark]

 

---

[137]

Part II
What is artistic form?

 

Excellent question. Perhaps this should be Part I?

 

 

Different views of artistic form

Form is an important concept for talking about art. ... However, ... it cannot serve as the

defining feature

of all art ... Formalists and neoformalists ... overplay their hand. ... But much art

possesses form

and that, in large measure, is often why we appreciate it. ...

So, what is artistic form?

Perhaps the most common way of thinking of artistic form is to conceive of it as

one half of a distinction—

the distinction between

form
and
content.

The neoformalist tries to clarify this contrast by turning it into the distinction between

meaning
and
mode of presentation.

However, ... if there are artworks without meanings, ... then this way of conceptualizing form entails that such artworks lack form altogether.

But ... Often "meaningless" artworks—such as works of pure music—are what we typically take to be the greatest exemplars of artistic form. ...

This suggests that one might look for a broader way of crafting the contrast between form and content.

One way

of doing this is to say that

content is
whatever makes up the artwork,

and

form is
the way that
whatever makes up the artwork
is organized.

Content is the
matter;

form is the
manner.

Form operates on whatever comprises the content. Again, this makes our conception of

the form

of an artwork

dependent on

our conception of

the content

of the artwork. That is, one cannot determine

the manner of its organization,

until one knows

what is being organized.

A problem arises here almost immediately. ...

[138]

the notion of content, as just stated, is

excessively ambiguous,

and this ambiguity is likely to infect whatever we say about artistic form ...

...   Imagine a historical painting of St. Francis and a donkey. What

makes up

this artwork? In one sense, ... oil paint. At another level ... lines, colors and closed shapes. ... representational figures that refer to certain subjects or referents, ... which, in turn, may also be expressive of the human quality of kindness. Furthermore, the painting may take a point of view ... It may ... suggest a thesis about St. Francis: ... the painting may even advance a more general theme: ...

...   this list could be even longer if our descriptions of these dimensions were more fine-grained.

 

In other words, criticism can never be fully 'objective' so long as fine-ness of grain is left to the critic themselves to decide upon. The "grain" can always be tailored to critical needs, turning up as much or as little basis for commentary as is needed/desired.

 

Wolterstorff—Kissing, Touching, and Crying

Nicholas Wolterstorff
"Why Philosophy of Art Cannot Handle Kissing, Touching, and Crying"
(2003)

---

[17]

I

From Friday, March 15 through Sunday, March 17, 2002, the Vienna Philharmonic performed four concerts in New York City, three in Carnegie Hall, and one, on Sunday evening, in St. Patrick's Cathedral. Two of the three Carnegie Hall concerts were enthusiastically reviewed inside the Arts section of the New York Times of Tuesday, March 19, by one of the Times regulars, Allan Kozinn. The heading for the review was "Fresh Power in Familiar Works." In his review, Kozinn writes that Bernard Haitink, the conductor of the Carnegie Hall concerts,

imposed order and an almost narrative sense of drama on [Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 8] without taming it or smoothing its raw emotional edges. The Vienna players were in their element: the brass and winds produced the textured chords that are central to this orchestra's trademark sound, but it was the dusky, dynamically fluid string playing that gave the performance its soul.... The Schubert Ninth, on the Saturday program, was appealing in a similarly visceral way. Its familiar themes were writ large and driven hard, yet there was also sufficient transparency in the orchestra's sound that details of the music's inner lines sometimes shone through and altered the perspective.

The review of the concert in St. Patrick's Cathedral took up three columns on the front page of the Arts section, and then continued inside with three columns at the top of page 5, side by side with the two columns of the other review. The concert was described as a "free program to honor the victims of Sept. 11"—this being the date, in 2001, that a terrorist attack destroyed the Twin Towers in New York City. The review was headed "A Somber Memorial from the Vienna Philharmonic." The reviewer, another of the Times regulars, James R. Oestreich, wrote,

The memorial program anchored a basic sense of mourning in the Christian season of the Passion, centering on Haydn's unrelentingly somber "Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross." The evening opened with the solemn Adagio from Bruckner's Seventh Symphony. It ended with Mozart's "Ave Verum Corpus," a simple consolatory choral work, performed without applause and with everyone in the audience holding a lighted candle.

One concertgoer was quoted as saying afterward, "After all the angst and the anger and the hassles of the last few months, the Mozart was like a benediction. It seems O.K. to let go a little, to let the dead rest in peace." Another attendee was quoted as saying, about the whole evening, "It is a warm, wonderful gesture [on the part of the Vienna Philharmonic]. It is very generous and very healing."

How unthinkably rude it is, even within the social norms of New York City, Planet Earth, ca. 2002, to subject this attendee's pronouncement to the scrutiny of analytic philosophy!